Katie Meehan

Stakeholders in climate science: Beyond lip service?

Local knowledge coproduction must be rewarded Research models are evolving in response to the need for on-the-ground knowledge of climate change impacts on communities. Partnership between researcher and practitioner is vital for adaptive policy efforts (1). Transdisciplinary research teams present new opportunities by involving academics and local stakeholders, who actively conceive, enact, and apply research on adaptation and mitigation actions (2, 3). In transdisciplinary research, stakeholders are also researchers. But if we want to engage stakeholders in climate research, then we cannot simply pay lip service to the idea while treating them as participants for extractive research.

Downspout politics, upstream conflict: formalizing rainwater harvesting in the United States

This article examines the formalization of rainwater harvesting (RWH) and the implications of new policy trends for water governance. Analysis of 96 RWH policies across the United States indicates three trends: (1) the ‘codification’ of water through administrative rather than public law; (2) the institutionalization of RWH through market-based tools; and (3) the rise of policies at different spatial scales, resulting in greater institutional complexity, new bureaucratic actors, and potential points of friction. Drawing on the cases of Colorado and Texas, the article argues that states with diverse legal traditions of water enable more successful regulatory environments for downspout alternatives.

The cultural dimensions of household water security: the case of Kathmandu’s stone spout systems

ABSTRACT This article contributes knowledge to the under-studied cultural aspects of household water security through the case of Kathmandu’s ancient stone waterspouts. It asks why and how ‘traditional’ water supply systems persist as a form of water provision, and examines governance arrangements that pose challenges to these systems. It demonstrates that spout systems are critical sources of secure water supply, particularly for underserved populations. Also, the religious, cultural and social significance of spouts enables community autonomy and facilitates their persistence. However, conflicts between cultural heritage and drinking water law and policy undermine spout revitalization efforts and the entire system’s integrity.

The Geopolitics of Climate Knowledge Mobilization: Transdisciplinary Research at the Science–Policy Interface(s) in the Americas

Climate change and sustainability science have become more international in scope and transdisciplinary in nature, in response to growing expectations that scientific knowledge directly informs collective action and transformation. In this article, we move past idealized models of the science–policy interface to examine the social processes and geopolitical dynamics of knowledge mobilization. We argue that sociotechnical imaginaries of transdisciplinary research, deployed in parallel to “universal” regimes of evidence-based decision-making from the global North, conceal how international collaborations of scientists and societal actors actually experience knowledge mobilization, its systemic barriers, and its paths to policy action. Through ethnographic study of a transdisciplinary research program in the Americas, coupled with in-depth analysis of Colombia, we reveal divergences in how participants envision and experience knowledge mobilization and identify persistent disparities that diminish the capacity of researchers to influence decision-making and fit climate knowledge within broader neoliberal development paradigms. Results of the study point to a plurality of science–policy interface(s), each shaped by national sociotechnical imaginaries, development priorities, and local social orders. We conclude that a geopolitical approach to transdisciplinary science is necessary to understand how climate and sustainability knowledge circulates unevenly in a world marked by persistent inequality and dominance.

Sociotechnical imaginaries of urban development: social movements around “traditional” water infrastructure in the Kathmandu Valley

ABSTRACT This article examines the role of so-called traditional stone waterspout technologies in struggles over urban modernization in Lalitpur, Nepal. In doing so, this article questions the status of tradition in urban theorizing and mobilizes the concept of sociotechnical imaginaries as a framework for understanding the contested spatial visions of urban development. In advancing this approach, this article analyses infrastructure as a visual discourse of materials, practices, and texts, including the label “tradition.” Findings indicate that stone spouts represent material and symbolic sites for residents to express discontent with hegemonic visions of modernization, legitimize certain cultural practices, and make claims on urban space. We argue that an alternate imaginary of urban development has emerged through the prism of traditional infrastructure. This article forwards sociotechnical imaginaries as a framework for situating the multiple and contested trajectories of urban modernization, particularly the ways in which past technologies come to shape desired urban futures.