By Mark Reed
What key actions can help research have impact? Interviews with 32 researchers and stakeholders across 13 environmental management research projects lead to the five principles and key issues described below (Reed et al., 2014).
Relationships
Co-Production: It’s all about relationships
By Kirsten Kainz
Relationships are the underpinnings of the co-production process. The quality of knowledge gained and the solutions produced are a function of the quality of relationships among the participants.
In a recent paper, Lorrae van Kerkhoff and Louis Lebel (2015) also made strong claims about the relevance, salience, and potential impacts of relationships in the co-production of science and governance needed for sustainable improvements responding to global environmental change.
One important clarification raised by van Kerkhoff and Lebel (2015) is that relationships exist not only among individuals, but also among institutions. These relationships among individuals and institutions exist in historical contexts that are interpreted differently by diverse members. Individual and institutional interpretations affect action and meaning-making in co-production settings.