Rethinking water in the landscape - co-creating knowledge and pathways for collective climate action

In this project we are exploring the relevance of co-creation of knowledge, a participatory learning process, for fostering transformative capacity and pathways forward for landscape level climate action.

Water has surfaced as a central theme for Swedish climate change preparedness and addressing this challenge will require transforming how water is managed as a cross sectoral integrated landscape issue.

We focus on factors behind the capacity for collective action for ecosystem-based adaptation to increasing climate variability.

We will study the role of three factors: a) a broad knowledge base, b) landscape history and configuration, and c) collective agency. The Swedish island Öland will be our in-depth case study.

Extreme weather has severely affected Öland in recent years, and an active Water Council (Ölands Vattenråd) is currently facilitating collaborative water management.

Our hypothesis is that a guided process of knowledge co-creation can strengthen the collective capacity to understand climate challenges and to identify and implement novel solutions.

The research involves three tasks: 1) Preparation: baseline mapping of knowledge and joint problem formulation, 2) Implementation: process fostering transformative capacity, and 3) Evaluation: tracing the outcomes.

The project is designed to address key gaps in the emerging literature on co-creation of knowledge for sustainability, and will feed directly into local and regional planning and practice for climate action.