The Coproduction of Conflicts in Environmental Sustainability: Concepts, Methods, and Ethics

The literature on environmental conflicts has bloomed in describing relations between extractivist patterns, environmental justice movements, and sustainability transformations across the globe. In particular, numerous scholars have engaged in knowledge co-production processes with social and grassroots movements. Knowledge co-production has been widely advocated and tested as a form of collaborative knowledge generation in which actors are invited to collectively frame and explore problems. Through this approach, they have rendered power dynamics in conflictive situations visible and strived to deepen epistemological inclusivity. This however has led to a focus on conflicts around extractivism in which two radically different worldviews and initial power endowments clash. This special feature, instead, aims at contributing to the study of a different type of environmental conflict, presenting the following characteristics: (i) environmental degradation is caused by the distributed actions of multiple social actors, (ii) these actors are entangled in intersectional power differentials, and (iii) collaborative and conflictive patterns might co-occur.

This type of conflict questions the role and practice of knowledge co-production initiatives in multi-party settings where there are not sharp boundaries between oppressors and oppressed. Indeed, researchers aiming at including those different and conflicting perspectives have to handle multiple power asymmetries prior and during collaborative spaces that may otherwise not feel safe-enough for participants. Moreover, many practical and ethical questions are raised when divergence is strong among actors with similar power endowments and yet collective decisions are to be made concerning what is to be co-produced, who shall be involved, and how. These issues are particularly pressing in cases in which the same actors are simultaneously - or in turns - oppressed and oppressive, enemies and collaborators, and where there isn’t a single cause of environmental degradation.


We therefore invite theoretical and/or practice based contributions that address epistemic and ethical dilemmas emerging during processes of knowledge co-production in complex environmental conflicts as well as methodological reflections on how to cope with them. We also welcome works that examine the tensions concerning the positionality of researchers who hold their own values and opinions within the conflict while having to play different roles. We will also consider contributions that specifically focus on understanding horizontal and multifaceted conflicts and we encourage these contributions to include a reflection on the implications for knowledge co-production.

Timeline
- Call opens: 30 June 2023
- Abstracts submission: 15 September 2023. Please send your abstracts directly to the three Special Issue editors, see contact details below.
- Notification of acceptance: 30 September 2023
- (Optional) online workshop with contributing authors: November 2023
- Submission of full papers to Special Issue editors (for internal review): 30 March 2024
- Submission of full papers to journal (for review): 1-31 May 2024

Editors
Violeta Cabello, Basque Center for Climate Change (Violeta.Cabello@bc3research.org)
María Mancilla García, Université Libre de Bruxelles, Stockholm Resilience Centre, Stockholm University (Maria.Mancilla.Garcia@ulb.be)
Marcela Brugnach, Basque Center for Climate Change (marcela.brugnach@bc3research.org)

Publication fees
Editors may cover publication fees for contributing authors on a case by case basis depending on the author situation. Please let us know when submitting your abstract if you wish to apply for this funding.