Crafting usable knowledge for sustainable development.
This paper distills core lessons about how researchers (scientists, engineers, planners, etc.) interested in promoting sustainable development can increase the likelihood of producing usable knowledge. We draw the lessons from both practical experience in diverse contexts around the world and from scholarly advances in understanding the relationships between science and society. Many of these lessons will be familiar to those with experience in crafting knowledge to support action for sustainable development. However, few are included in the formal training of researchers. As a result, when scientists and engineers first venture out of the laboratory or library with the goal of linking their knowledge with action, the outcome has often been ineffectiveness and disillusionment. We therefore articulate here a core set of lessons that we believe should become part of the basic training for researchers interested in crafting usable knowledge for sustainable development. These lessons entail at least four things researchers should know, and four things they should do. The knowing lessons involve understanding the coproduction relationships through which knowledge making and decision making shape one another in social-environmental systems. We highlight the lessons that emerge from examining those coproduction relationships through the ICAP lens, viewing them from the perspectives of Innovation systems, Complex systems, Adaptive systems, and Political systems. The doing lessons involve improving the capacity of the research community to put its understanding of coproduction into practice. We highlight steps through which researchers can help build capacities for stakeholder collaboration, social learning, knowledge governance, and researcher training.
Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA 02138; william_clark@harvard.edu.
William C
http://orcid.org/0000-0001-8994-5251
WC
Clark
Fenner School of Environment and Society, Australian National University College of Medicine, Biology and Environment, The Australian National University, Canberra, ACT 2600, Australia;
Lorrae
http://orcid.org/0000-0003-0247-1511
L
van Kerkhoff
Unit for Social and Environmental Research, Faculty of Social Sciences, Chiang Mai University, Chiang Mai 50200, Thailand;
Louis
http://orcid.org/0000-0001-6187-6418
L
Lebel
Independent Scholar, Tte. Gral. J.D. Peron, Buenos Aires 1040, Argentina.
Gilberto C
http://orcid.org/0000-0002-4407-2204
GC
Gallopin
D003247:Conservation of Natural Resources; D006801:Humans; D019359:Knowledge; D012106:Research; D012108:Research Personnel
capacity; coproduction; knowledge systems; science–policy interface; sustainable development