The idea that non-scientists should participate in knowledge production processes has become widespread in research policy in Norway, the EU and beyond. Yet, to the best of our knowledge, no studies have documented in empirical detail why and how strategies like co-design, co-creation, co-production and co-dissemination have become so proliferated, let alone how the advantages and disadvantages of this evolvement have been discussed and weighed up against each other in research policy making processes. This WP will map and analyze the emergence and diffusion of co-production approaches into research policy related to climate and energy research, how trade-offs as well as potential unintended consequences have been discussed and dealt with in formulation of research policy, including how the demand for user involvement affects the potential impacts of research on climate policy and mitigation/adaptation efforts.
COPP explores to what extent and how co-production, the collaborative production of science with stakeholders, is transforming the Norwegian climate research system and influencing two spheres of societal transformation: Climate services and adaptation; and energy transition. There is a push for participatory research in the transformation literature, and science funders increasingly require stakeholder participation in research for climate action, driven by an assumption that this leads to higher social impact. While co-production brings numerous benefits to the scientific process—such as legitimacy and insights that would otherwise not be accessible—the implications of institutionalizing co-production as a formal requirement in climate research has been little explored.
COPP will select and analyse cases consisting of co-production projects situated in Norway’s research system, including cases with indigenous participants, with a focus on how the co-production imperative influences the practices in each project while contributing to shifts in rules, norms and culture within this system. This perspective is further enriched with a longitudinal study of how the co-production has evolved in the national system over time. The project will develop and test a conceptual framework for assessing the outcomes and impact of co-producing climate knowledge. This framework will also be translated into best-practice guidelines and a training program for developing impactful research programs.
The project will advance our understanding of how and under what conditions knowledge co-production can help deliver transformative outcomes and impact, as well as identifying unintended and unwanted outcomes of coproduction. The project will contribute to a transformative climate research agenda and support societal action for transformative adaptation and mitigation.
COPP has four work packages, the first one pertaining to project organisation and communication. Read about WP 2, 3, and 4 below.
WP3 will analyze the relationship between co-production methods employed and outcomes and impacts in the different cases. We will determine whether differences in outcomes and impacts in the cases can be explained through the choice of methods, composition of project participants, organizational culture, power relations, or other factors that may emerge from the analysis. This WP will combine a grounded theory approach with existing frameworks including analyses of co-production methods, for example in terms of interventions (e.g., Mach et al. 2020), or/and sensitivity to organizational culture (Dannevig et al. 2020; Bremer et al. 2021). WP3 will conduct systematic evaluations of the characteristics of intended (and unintended) impacts and outcomes from normative co-production processes and feed lessons back to the descriptive string of co-production research. This is critical to transformation because co-production takes place between heterogeneous actors and in uneven power relations and capacities; ignoring such issues may lead to preserving status quo or reinforced power inequalities. The cases will be examined with a view to producing reflexive insight into the intersections between co-production, co-development, co-optation and power relations in climate transformation research projects.
Norwegian research systems for the future deployment of co-production approaches for societal transformation. Drawing on WP2 and WP3, it will distil lessons on factors that affect how co-produced research effects societal transformation, and assemble a repertoire of concepts, tools, guidelines, assessment frameworks, and training, to add to the competence, institutions, processes and technologies necessary for deploying the concept more effectively. This repertoire extends to a conceptual framework for assessing the outcomes of co-producing climate knowledge within research projects and their wider research systems, as well as how the outcomes link to transforming society’s climate governance. This framework will: (i) be translated into transferable and actionable best-practice assessment guidelines, (ii) include a set of targeted lessons with concrete approaches and technologies fitted to the shifting role of knowledge co-production in the Norwegian climate research system, (iii) and how it can better effect societal transformation, and (iv) a training program.