March 27, 2020
We are excited to announce our planned working group activities for 2020, which grew out of the first live meeting of the Co-production of Sustainable Land Systems Working Group (WG) at the 2019 GLP Open Science Meeting (OSM) last April in Bern. For those members of the working group who were not able to participate we would like to provide a short recap of the OSM, followed by an outline of our activities in 2020.
The WG organised two sessions at the OSM in April 2019 in Bern. The first session was a great opportunity to get to know members of the WG, and to learn about their interests regarding co-production as well as their expectations for the WG. The session started with a positioning game asking if co-production leads to better science and/or more impact and if the impulse for co-production should come from individual scientists and/or from GLP network funders. After this icebreaker, the coordinators gave an overview of WG activities, followed by a brainstorming exercise on co-production challenges. WG members established a long list, which builds a source of inspiration for activities this year, including the following:
- When to co-produce or not, and how to choose the right methods?
- Can methods be co-produced?
- How to manage relationships and alignment of project timeframes with partners in co-production processes?
- What works, and what does not work? We need examples of failed attempts at co-production as a critical source of new skills and knowledge. We want to learning from both successes and failures.
- What is the scientific validity of co-produced results?
- How to sustain the change initiated through co-production in the long-run?
- How to increase facilitation and capacity development for co-production?
- How to finance co-production processes?
The second session about “Participatory shaping of GLP’s road map towards knowledge co-production” was organised as an immersive session. The session provided a summary of the key lessons of the webinar series about “Co-production in the field of land-system-science”. Four key lessons were discussed in a dynamic conversation with the participants of the session:
- Integrate co-production into a wider process of the respective land system, beyond the research logic and period. Build feedback loops into the stakeholder engagement process.
- Look for collaborative and funding frameworks that favour adaptive management of research and implementation projects.
- Develop a network or community of practice and a pool of skilled facilitators.
- Integrate notions of co-benefits and trade-offs into co-production processes to support negotiations and identify most promising collaborations.
Based on these stimulating exchanges the co-production WG has embarked on developing further activities, and a stronger community of practice.
The following activities are planned in 2020:
- A co-production blog series: stories, and practical experiences (including successes and failures)
- A special journal issues about co-production in LSS
- A creative set of live online events and group exchange formats
- A WG quarterly e-newsletter featuring interesting events, training, online courses, etc.
All members are invited to join these activities. If you are not already a member of the WG, please visit the group's page and request membership today. This will automatically subscribe you to our quarterly e-newsletter as well.
You can send us news for the quarterly e-newslestter about upcoming events, jobs, and news, as well as pass along feedback and proposals by emailing us at coproduction@glp.earth.
Your WG Coordinators,
Isabelle Providoli
Albrecht Ehrensperger
Narcisa Pricope
Jean-Christophe Castella