Facilitating Co-Production of Transdisciplinary Knowledge for Sustainability: Working with Canadian Biosphere Reserve Practitioners

Sustainability scientists argue that diverse knowledge holders should work together in social learning processes to co-produce knowledge in support of sustainability. Yet, how to co-produce such knowledge remains unexplored. A multi-year, national knowledge sharing partnership among Canadian biosphere reserve practitioners, academic researchers and policy advisors revealed that a skilled facilitator was necessary for successful knowledge co-production. We draw attention to the multiple barriers to learning and knowledge co-production, and to the skills required of the facilitator to address them. The facilitator helped draw together local and formalized western knowledge systems (weaving) and diffuse innovations across local sites (out-scaling) and between local sites and the broader program network (up-scaling). Our experience reveals that simply bringing parties together will not generate transformative change for sustainability. Rather, multi-lateral facilitators are needed to ensure deliberate and managed interventions and to institutionalize learning across a diverse collective.