Collaborating with communities: co-production or co-assessment?

Pathways from research to sustainable development: Insights from ten research projects in sustainability and resilience

Drawing on collective experience from ten collaborative research projects focused on the Global South, we identify three major challenges that impede the translation of research on sustainability and resilience into better-informed choices by individuals and policy-makers that in turn can support transformation to a sustainable future. The three challenges comprise: (i) converting knowledge produced during research projects into successful knowledge application; (ii) scaling up knowledge in time when research projects are short-term and potential impacts are long-term; and (iii) scaling up knowledge across space, from local research sites to larger-scale or even global impact. Some potential pathways for funding agencies to overcome these challenges include providing targeted prolonged funding for dissemination and outreach, and facilitating collaboration and coordination across different sites, research teams, and partner organizations. By systematically documenting these challenges, we hope to pave the way for further innovations in the research cycle.

Proposing DAPP-MR as a disaster risk management pathways framework for complex, dynamic multi-risk

Climate change impacts are increasingly complex owing to compounding, interacting, and cascading risks across sectors. However, approaches to support Disaster Risk Management (DRM) addressing the underlying (uncertain) risk driver interactions are still lacking. We tailor the approach of Dynamic Adaptive Policy Pathways (DAPP) to DAPP-MR to design DRM pathways for complex, dynamic multi-risk in multi-sector systems. We review the recent multi-hazard and multi-sector research to identify relevant aspects of multi-risk management frameworks and illustrate the suitability of DAPP-MR using a stylized case. It is found that rearranging the analytical steps of DAPP by introducing three iteration stages can help to capture interactions, trade-offs, and synergies across hazards and sectors. We show that DAPP-MR may guide multi-sector processes to stepwise integrate knowledge toward multi-risk management. DAPP-MR can be seen as an analytical basis and first step toward an operational, integrative, and interactive framework for short-to long-term multi-risk DRM.

Pursuing Plurality: Exploring the Synergies and Challenges of Knowledge Co-production in Multifunctional Landscape Design

Knowledge co-production has emerged as an important conceptual and processual tool in sustainability research addressing the needs of equity and inclusion. Indigenous communities and local people have engaged with the process of knowledge production, foregrounding their historical relationships with landscapes, based on their unique worldviews and knowledges. However, knowledge co-production, especially for multi-functional landscapes remains a contentious and complicated affair with enduring issues of power-sharing related to the different socio-political positions of stakeholders. This work explores the synergies and challenges in knowledge co-production for landscape re-design in the south Island of Aotearoa NZ through an assessment of the work done at the Centre for Excellence, Lincoln University. At this center, a multi-stakeholder team is grappling with designing a farm, through a transdisciplinary framework that attempts to include multiple worldviews. This work explores the various stages of the co-production process, analyzing the exchanges between various members as they prepare for co-production, the knowledge produced through this engagement, and how this knowledge is being utilized to further the goal of sustainability. Our results show that significant gaps remain between co-production theory and co-production practice which are a result of the mismanagement of the co-production process, the mismatch in the time and spatial scales of project goals, and the differences in the values and objectives of the different stakeholders. However, the process of co-production, though flawed, leads to the building of more open relationships between the stakeholders, and leads to some very meaningful knowledge products that address the multi-temporal and multi-spatial aspirations of multi-functional landscapes in Aotearoa NZ, while contributing to the broader scholarship on co-production in sustainability. Finally, both synergies and challenges prove meaningful when challenging the roadblocks to the inclusion of a diversity of worldviews, by clearly highlighting the places of engagement and why they were made possible. We suggest that knowledge co-production attempts in multi-functional landscapes around the world should attempt a similar assessment of their process. This can help build better relationships between scientists and IPLC, address disciplinary bias and marginalization of non-expert opinions, while also ensuring the relevance of the research to the multiple stakeholders of the land.

Local Awareness and Interpretations of Species Extinction in a Rural Chinese Biodiversity Hotspot

Incorporating local perspectives is fundamental to evidence-based conservation, for both understanding complex socio-ecological systems and implementing appropriate management interventions. How local communities understand extinction, and whether these views affect perceptions of biodiversity loss and the effect of anthropogenic activities, has rarely been evaluated explicitly in conservation projects. To target this data gap, we conducted 185 interviews to assess levels and patterns of understanding about wildlife decline and extinction in rural communities around Bawangling National Nature Reserve, Hainan, China, a priority conservation site that has experienced recent species losses. Interviewees showed varying awareness of declines and extirpation of local wildlife species. Two-thirds did not consider the permanent disappearance of wildlife to be possible; among those who did, only one-third could comprehend the scientific term “extinction.” Thinking extinction is possible was associated with identifying declined and extirpated species, but not with perceiving locally-driven human activities, such as hunting, as the reason for wildlife loss. The government was seen as the entity most responsible for conservation. Variation found around local perceptions of extinction, its drivers, and conservation responsibility demonstrates that comprehension of key conservation concepts should not be assumed to be homogenous, highlighting the challenge of transposing scientific concepts between different social and cultural settings. Proactively incorporating local perspectives and worldviews, especially by obtaining context-specific baseline understandings, has major implications for other contexts worldwide and should inform conservation planning and management.

Loops and Building Blocks: a Knowledge co-Production Framework for Equitable Urban Health

This paper sets out a structured process for the co-production of knowledge between researchers and societal partners and illustrates its application in an urban health equity project in Accra, Ghana. The main insight of this approach is that research and knowledge co-production is always partial, both in the sense of being incomplete, as well as being circumscribed by the interests of participating researchers and societal partners. A second insight is that project-bound societal engagement takes place in a broader context of public and policy debate. The approach to co-production described here is formed of three recursive processes: co-designing, co-analysing, and co-creating knowledge. These 'co-production loops' are themselves iterative, each representing a stage of knowledge production. Each loop is operationalized through a series of research and engagement practices, which we call building blocks. Building blocks are activities and interaction-based methods aimed at bringing together a range of participants involved in joint knowledge production. In practice, recursive iterations within loops may be limited due of constraints on time, resources, or attention. We suggest that co-production loops and building blocks are deployed flexibly.

Dynamic meta-analysis: a method of using global evidence for local decision making

Background

Meta-analysis is often used to make generalisations across all available evidence at the global scale. But how can these global generalisations be used for evidence-based decision making at the local scale, if the global evidence is not perceived to be relevant to local decisions? We show how an interactive method of meta-analysis—dynamic meta-analysis—can be used to assess the local relevance of global evidence.

Results

We developed Metadataset (www.metadataset.com) as a proof-of-concept for dynamic meta-analysis. Using Metadataset, we show how evidence can be filtered and weighted, and results can be recalculated, using dynamic methods of subgroup analysis, meta-regression, and recalibration. With an example from agroecology, we show how dynamic meta-analysis could lead to different conclusions for different subsets of the global evidence. Dynamic meta-analysis could also lead to a rebalancing of power and responsibility in evidence synthesis, since evidence users would be able to make decisions that are typically made by systematic reviewers—decisions about which studies to include (e.g. critical appraisal) and how to handle missing or poorly reported data (e.g. sensitivity analysis).

Conclusions

In this study, we show how dynamic meta-analysis can meet an important challenge in evidence-based decision making—the challenge of using global evidence for local decisions. We suggest that dynamic meta-analysis can be used for subject-wide evidence synthesis in several scientific disciplines, including agroecology and conservation biology. Future studies should develop standardised classification systems for the metadata that are used to filter and weight the evidence. Future studies should also develop standardised software packages, so that researchers can efficiently publish dynamic versions of their meta-analyses and keep them up-to-date as living systematic reviews. Metadataset is a proof-of-concept for this type of software, and it is open source. Future studies should improve the user experience, scale the software architecture, agree on standards for data and metadata storage and processing, and develop protocols for responsible evidence use.

Supplementary Information

The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1186/s12915-021-00974-w.

Ten principles for generating accessible and useable COVID-19 environmental science and a fit-for-purpose evidence base

1. The 'anthropause', a period of unusually reduced human activity and mobility due to COVID-19 restrictions, has serendipitously opened up unique opportunities for research on how human activities impact the environment. 2. In the field of health, COVID-19 research has led to concerns about the quality of research papers and the underlying research and publication processes due to accelerated peer review and publication schedules, increases in pre-prints and retractions. 3. In the field of environmental science, framing the pandemic and associated global lockdowns as an unplanned global human confinement experiment with urgency should raise the same concerns about the rigorousness and integrity of the scientific process. Furthermore, the recognition of an 'infodemic', an unprecedented explosion of research, risks research waste and duplication of effort, although how information is used is as important as the quality of evidence. This highlights the need for an evidence base that is easy to find and use - that is discoverable, curated, synthesizable, synthesized. 4. We put forward a list of 10 key principles to support the establishment of a reproducible, replicable, robust, rigorous, timely and synthesizable COVID-19 environmental evidence base that avoids research waste and is resilient to the pressures to publish urgently. These principles focus on engaging relevant actors (e.g. local communities, rightsholders) in research design and production, statistical power, collaborations, evidence synthesis, research registries and protocols, open science and transparency, data hygiene (cleanliness) and integrity, peer review transparency, standardized keywords and controlled vocabularies.

Coproducing Science to Inform Working Lands: The Next Frontier in Nature Conservation

Conservationists are increasingly convinced that coproduction of science enhances its utility in policy, decision-making, and practice. Concomitant is a renewed reliance on privately owned working lands to sustain nature and people. We propose a coupling of these emerging trends as a better recipe for conservation. To illustrate this, we present five elements of coproduction, contrast how they differ from traditional approaches, and describe the role of scientists in successful partnerships. Readers will find coproduction more demanding than the loading dock approach to science delivery but will also find greater rewards, relevance, and impact. Because coproduction is novel and examples of it are rare, we draw on our roles as scientists within the US Department of Agriculture–led Sage Grouse Initiative, North America's largest effort to conserve the sagebrush ecosystem. As coproduction and working lands evolve, traditional approaches will be replaced in order to more holistically meet the needs of nature and people.

Revealing research preferences in conservation science

Conservation researchers are increasingly drawing on a wide range of philosophies, methods and values to examine conservation problems. Here we adopt methods from social psychology to develop a questionnaire with the dual purpose of illuminating diversity within conservation research communities and providing a tool for use in cross-disciplinary dialogue workshops. The questionnaire probes the preferences that different researchers have with regards to conservation science. It elicits insight into their motivations for carrying out research, the scales at which they tackle problems, the subjects they focus on, their beliefs about the connections between nature and society, their sense of reality as absolute or socially constituted, and their propensity for collaboration. Testing the questionnaire with a group of 204 conservation scientists at a student conference on conservation science, we illustrate the latent and multidimensional diversity in the research preferences held by conservation scientists. We suggest that creating opportunities to further explore these differences and similarities using facilitated dialogue could enrich the mutual understanding of the diverse research community in the conservation field.

The major barriers to evidence-informed conservation policy and possible solutions

Conservation policy decisions can suffer from a lack of evidence, hindering effective decision-making. In nature conservation, studies investigating why policy is often not evidence-informed have tended to focus on Western democracies, with relatively small samples. To understand global variation and challenges better, we established a global survey aimed at identifying top barriers and solutions to the use of conservation science in policy. This obtained the views of 758 people in policy, practice, and research positions from 68 countries across six languages. Here we show that, contrary to popular belief, there is agreement between groups about how to incorporate conservation science into policy, and there is thus room for optimism. Barriers related to the low priority of conservation were considered to be important, while mainstreaming conservation was proposed as a key solution. Therefore, priorities should focus on convincing the public of the importance of conservation as an issue, which will then influence policy-makers to adopt pro-environmental long-term policies.