Knowledge Governance for Sustainable Development: A Review
Journal Title: Challenges in Sustainability - Year 2013, Vol 1, Issue 2
Abstract
Sustainable development is a knowledge intensive process, but plagued by persistent concerns over our apparent inability to connect what we know with more sustainable practices and outcomes. While considerable attention has been given to ways we may better understand and enhance the knowledge-based processes that support the governance of social-ecological systems, relatively few have examined the governance of knowledge itself. The institutions—rules and norms—that govern knowledge may shed light on the persistence of 'gaps' between knowledge and action. In this review I seek to answer the question: can interdisciplinary knowledge governance literature contribute to understanding and analysing the institutional knowledge-based dimensions of sustainable development? I present and analyse the concept of knowledge governance as it is emerging in a range of disciplines and practice areas, including private sector management literature and public regulation theory and practice. I then integrate the findings from this review into a model of sustainable development proposed by Nilsson et al. [1]. I show that knowledge governance (as a scale above knowledge management) can inform Nilsson et al.'s three "nested" dimensions of sustainability: human wellbeing (through access to knowledge and freedom to exercise informed choice); resource-base management (though enhancing regulation and innovation and transitions from exclusive to inclusive knowledge systems); and global public goods (by balancing public and private interests and fostering global innovation systems). This review concludes by presenting a framework that places sustainable development in the context of broader socio-political struggles towards more open, inclusive knowledge systems.
Authors and Affiliations
Lorrae Kerkhoff
Keywords
Related Articles
- EP ID EP196664
- DOI 10.12924/cis2013.01020082
- Views 216
- Downloads 0
Knowledge Governance for Sustainable Development: A Review
Sustainable development is a knowledge intensive process, but plagued by persistent concerns over our apparent inability to connect what we know with more sustainable practices and outcomes. While considerable attention...
Cultivating the Glocal Garden
This paper addresses the question under which conditions small-scale urban agriculture (UA) initiatives can accelerate a sustainability transition of the global food system. It develops the notion of a glocal garden, a l...
Towards the Evaluation of the Ecological Effectiveness of the Principles, Criteria and Indicators (PCI) of the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC): Case study in the Arkhangelsk Region in the Russian Federation
The Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) is a voluntary sustainability standard with global reach that has been developed to encourage responsible and sustainable forest management. Despite its broad appeal, there is little...
Time for Decarbonization of Conservation and Development Projects? The Political Ecology of Carbon Projects
The globe's first carbon projects were designed and implemented approximately 20 years ago following scientific insights that emissions of greenhouse gases needed to be mitigated. Visible in some of these early projects...
Enabling Transformative Research: Lessons from the Eastern and Southern Africa Partnership Programme (1999-2015)
World leaders at the 2015 United Nations Sustainable Development Summit in New York have re- confirmed the relevance of sustainability as the guiding paradigm in countering the development and climate crisis of the Anthr...