Often as knowledgeable practitioners in a certain field or subject matter, it can be easy to overlook the opinions of stakeholders. We find ourselves thinking “well, if people only understood how their actions were affecting our planet, they would listen to me!” However, to take this approach to stakeholders if often a form of oversimplifying the complexity of the problem. By failing to recognize the framing of the problem by our stakeholders and the incentives that motivate them, we ignore an essential component to the solution.
The methodologies presented by Meadow et al. help researchers avoid this problem entirely, by incorporating stakeholder engagement directly into the design of the project. In all five of the participatory methods discussed, researchers give other stakeholders the opportunity to frame the situation. I agree with Meadow et al.’s assessment that climate science is a particularly promising area to apply these types of techniques, as often knowledge production is the purview of a small group of highly specialized experts (those working with the global circulation models). I can think of numerous examples where researchers in this field have identified the need for greater integration between disciplines and stakeholders.
For example, in my climate change law and policy class, we read a portion of the Stern Review, in which Stern calls for greater collaboration between scientists and policy makers. Specifically, he calls on scientists to take an active role in policy making, and to push back on policy-maker requests to deliver information that’s more specific than what can be generated by their models. Similarly, he calls for policy makers to understand the basics of climate modeling and not to push scientists for more specific predictions than they can provide.
This approach also seems like it would be useful for managing near-term climate change impacts. Since climate predictions are more certain in the long-term and on a global scale, participatory knowledge generation methods could help planners or policy-makers understand local impacts, based on trends that residents are already seeing or areas residents have identified as particularly vulnerable to climate change.
Question: What are other examples of ways in which knowledge co-production can be used to engage policy-makers with environmental problems?
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