Explore the vast range of titles available.

Citizen science (CS) is receiving increasing attention as a conduit for Indigenous and local knowledge (ILK) in ecosystem stewardship and conservation. Drawing on field experience and scientific literature, we explore the connection between CS and ILK and demonstrate approaches for how CS can generate useful knowledge while at the same time strengthening ILK systems. CS invites laypersons to contribute observations, perspectives, and interpretations feeding into scientific knowledge systems. In contrast, ILK can be understood as knowledge systems in its own right, with practices and institutions to craft legitimate and useful knowledge. Such fundamental differences in how knowledge is generated, interpreted, and applied need to be acknowledged and understood for successful outcomes. Engaging with complementary knowledge systems using a multiple evidence base approach can improve the legitimacy of CS initiatives, strengthen collaborations through ethical and reciprocal relationships with ILK holders, and contribute to better stewardship of ecosystems.

Effective responses to rapid environmental change rely on observations to inform planning and decision-making. Reviewing literature from 124 programs across the globe and analyzing survey data for 30 Arctic community-based monitoring programs, we compare top-down, large-scale program driven approaches with bottom-up approaches initiated and steered at the community level. Connecting these two approaches and linking to Indigenous and local knowledge yields benefits including improved information products and enhanced observing program efficiency and sustainability. We identify core principles central to such improved links: matching observing program aims, scales, and ability to act on information; matching observing program and community priorities; fostering compatibility in observing methodology and data management; respect of Indigenous intellectual property rights and the implementation of free, prior, and informed consent; creating sufficient organizational support structures; and ensuring sustained community members’ commitment. Interventions to overcome challenges in adhering to these principles are discussed.

In 2013 the European Commission launched its new green infrastructure strategy to make another attempt to stop and possibly reverse the loss of biodiversity until 2020, by connecting habitats in the wider landscape. This means that conservation would go beyond current practices to include landscapes that are dominated by conventional agriculture, where biodiversity conservation plays a minor role at best. The green infrastructure strategy aims at bottom-up rather than top-down implementation, and suggests including local and regional stakeholders. Therefore, it is important to know which stakeholders influence land-use decisions concerning green infrastructure at the local and regional level. The research presented in this paper served to select stakeholders in preparation for a participatory scenario development process to analyze consequences of different implementation options of the European green infrastructure strategy. We used a mix of qualitative and quantitative social network analysis (SNA) methods to combine actors’ attributes, especially concerning their perceived influence, with structural and relational measures. Further, our analysis provides information on institutional backgrounds and governance settings for green infrastructure and agricultural policy. The investigation started with key informant interviews at the regional level in administrative units responsible for relevant policies and procedures such as regional planners, representatives of federal ministries, and continued at the local level with farmers and other members of the community. The analysis revealed the importance of information flows and regulations but also of social pressure, considerably influencing biodiversity governance with respect to green infrastructure and biodiversity.

Climate change is projected to have severe implications for smallholder agriculture in Africa, with increased temperatures, increased drought and flooding occurrence, and increased rainfall variability. Given these projections, there is a need to identify effective strategies to help rural communities adapt to climatic risks. Yet, relatively little research has examined the politics and social dynamics around knowledge and sources of information about climate-change adaptation with smallholder farming communities. This paper uses a political ecology approach to historically situate rural people's experiences with a changing climate. Using the concept of the co-production of knowledge, we examine how Malawian smallholder farmers learn, perceive, share and apply knowledge about a changing climate, and what sources they draw on for agroecological methods in this context. As well, we pay particular attention to agricultural knowledge flows within and between households. We ask two main questions: Whose knowledge counts in relation to climate-change adaptation? What are the political, social and environmental implications of these knowledge dynamics? We draw upon a long-term action research project on climate-change adaptation that involved focus groups, interviews, observations, surveys, and participatory agroecology experiments with 425 farmers. Our findings are consistent with other studies, which found that agricultural knowledge sources were shaped by gender and other social inequalities, with women more reliant on informal networks than men. Farmers initially ranked extension services as important sources of knowledge about farming and climate change. After farmers carried out participatory agroecological research, they ranked their own observation and informal farmer networks as more important sources of knowledge. Contradictory ideas about climate-change adaptation, linked to various positions of power, gaps of knowledge and social inequalities make it challenging for farmers to know how to act despite observing changes in rainfall. Participatory agroecological approaches influenced adaptation strategies used by smallholder farmers in Malawi, but most still maintained the dominant narrative about climate-change causes, which focused on local deforestation by rural communities. Smallholder farmers in Malawi are responsible for <1% of global greenhouse gas emissions, yet our results show that the farmers often blame their own rural communities for changes in deforestation and rainfall patterns. Researchers need to consider differences knowledge and power between scientists and farmers and the contradictory narratives at work in communities to foster long-term change.

For a decision support framework (DSF) to enable effective decision-making in climate change adaptation, it is important that stakeholders are involved in its development, in order to ensure that it is usable and useful. More specifically, stakeholder involvement may help to ensure that the DSF better meets user needs and expectations, as well as providing legitimate, relevant and trusted information. Involving users also helps to support social learning and build a community of adaptors. This paper describes a case study in Australia of the development of a DSF, called CoastAdapt, for coastal decision makers to adapt to the impacts of climate change, in particular sea-level rise. We use the IAP2 Spectrum to outline how stakeholders were involved. We also describe the specific activities undertaken in developing the DSF, according to how they contribute to conditions of legitimacy, credibility and saliency suggested in ‘boundary’ work. We conclude with some practical suggestions for considering these attributes in development of a DSF, noting that each attribute is important and requires consideration both separately and together.

Implementing a governance transformation entails the creation of a new institutional system when ecological, economic, or social structures make the existing system untenable. It involves building capacities, establishing viable formal and informal institutions, and triggering major societal changes. Early assessments (EAs) provide a mechanism to fine-tune and support institutional learning processes, which are needed to provide legitimacy and political acceptability of transformational change. We performed an EA of a governance transformation aimed at implementing ecosystem-based, multilevel participatory fisheries management in Chile. We performed individual interviews and workshops and synthesized existing reports to assess the main challenges of the institutionalization of the new policy. Results showed that successful implementation of the governance transformation would need to address key issues related to building trust and improving transparency, including clear protocols for cocreating knowledge and securing resources and capacities. The EA allowed us to define specific recommendations associated with legal reforms, issuing of new executive orders to clarify implementation, and improvement in operational standards by government agencies. EAs provide a fundamental tool that helps build legitimacy and sustainability of new governance systems. They bring a sense of reality, informed by social science, that allows us to understand progress in the implementation of governance transformations, by identifying rigidities that fail to accommodate emerging realities.

The value of diverse perspectives in social-ecological systems research and transdisciplinarity is well recognized. Human well-being and how it is derived from dynamic ecosystems is one area where local knowledge and perspectives are critical for designing interventions for sustainable pathways out of poverty. However, to realize the potential to enrich the understanding of complex dynamics for sustainability, there is a need for methods that engage holistic ways of perceiving human-nature interactions from multiple worldviews that also acknowledge inequalities between scientific and other forms of knowledge. To date, photovoice has been used to elicit local knowledge and perspectives about ecosystem changes and ecosystem services. We expand this to explore the utility of the method for facilitating the mobilization of plural insights on human well-being, which is subject to complex social-ecological dynamics, and its role in processes for coproduction of knowledge that acknowledges the need for equity and usefulness for all actors. Drawing on two cases, one in community-based marine protected areas in Kenya and one dealing with agricultural decline and rural-urban migration in South Africa, we demonstrate two modes of application of photovoice: as a scoping exercise and as a deep learning tool. The studies descriptively illustrate how photovoice can depict the hidden and often neglected intangible connections to ecosystems, plural and disaggregated perceptions of complex social-ecological dynamics, and issues of access and distribution of ecosystem benefits. The studies also show how photovoice can encourage equitable participation of nonacademic actors in research processes and in particular contribute to mobilization of knowledge and translation of knowledge across knowledge systems. We discuss how local perspectives may be further recognized and incorporated in transdisciplinary research and reflect on the practical and ethical challenges posed by using photographs in participatory research on social-ecological systems.

The adoption of artificial intelligence (AI) in health care has outpaced education of the clinical workforce on responsible use of AI in patient care. Although many policy statements advocate safe, ethical, and trustworthy AI, guidance on the use of health AI has rarely included patient perspectives. This gap leaves out a valuable source of information and guidance about what responsible AI means to patients. In this viewpoint coauthored by patients, students, and faculty, we discuss a novel approach to integrating patient perspectives in undergraduate premedical education in the United States that aims to foster an inclusive and patient-centered future of AI in health care.

The phenomenon of addiction enables studies of how society governs citizens and produces (healthy) bodies through classifications and definitions within treatment, science, and politics. Definitions and explanations of addiction change over time, and collective narratives of addiction in society are shared between scientific, official, and colloquial discourses. It is thus reasonable to argue that scientists, clinicians, and practitioners, as well as politicians, journalists, and laypersons, co-create addiction as a (bio)medical, social, and cultural phenomenon defined by varying actions, experiences, contexts, and meanings. The mass media is a key link between science and citizens. Explanations and definitions of the nature and causes of, and solutions for, addiction are provided by science and communicated to the rest of the society in popular scientific representations. While the language of scientific discourse is actively used, reproduced, and redefined in everyday language, laypersons are seldom acknowledged as active participants in studies of knowledge coproduction. This study examines how 25 newspaper readers interpret and explain dimensions of addiction phenomena through their own knowledge and interpretation of scientific representations in the media. The analysis shows how (popular) scientific biomedical addiction discourse interacts with newspaper readers’ interpretations, focusing on lay discussion of the causes of and solutions for addiction, how lay coproduction of scientific explanations is made, and how we can understand it. The study contributes to our understanding of the complex network of interacting and competing actors coproducing knowledge of addiction, emphasizing laypersons’ involvement in this process.

The health of soil, a fundamental resource for life on Earth, is severely compromised by global environmental change. Evidence shows that the knowledge of Indigenous Peoples and local communities influences sustainable land management, hence the importance of understanding Indigenous soil classification. Using a participatory approach, we conducted semistructured interviews, focus groups, and collective mapping of soils in 4 Aymara communities of the Bolivian Altiplano. We found that families in the 4 communities organize their territory in homogenous zones, based upon characteristics perceivable by sight, touch, smell, and taste. The description and meaning of the zones refer to characteristics such as location, soil color, preferred land use, and topography. We argue that homogenous zones are kaleidoscopic and polysemic units of spatial organization of the Aymara territory. Each meaning conveyed is like a face of a kaleidoscope and refers to different features of the zone. They are polysemic because the descriptions of the zones refer to multiple elements of different kinds (eg color and fertility). Indigenous and local knowledge of soils has coevolved with thousands of years of Altiplano farming, leading to prescriptive and flexible homogenous zones of sustainable land management. These knowledge systems and the cultures they belong to constitute crucial elements for generating knowledge supporting transitions to sustainability.