Nicole Klenk

Evaluating the social capital accrued in large research networks: the case of the Sustainable Forest Management Network (1995-2009).

This paper examines the social capital that evolved in the Sustainable Forest Management Network (SFMN), one of the Canadian Networks of Centres of Excellence. Our longitudinal study shows a sevenfold increase in the total number of researchers and a high density of relationships among (researchers from) provinces across the country. The results of a social network analysis revealed that 52.6 percent of the network researchers maintained the same number of collaborators while 46.7 percent increased their number of collaborators enormously: the maximum increase in number of collaborators being 6900 percent and the minimum 6 percent. A bibliometric analysis suggested that the number of publications was strongly correlated to measures of social capital. From a science and innovation policy perspective, the finding that more than half of the researchers in the SFMN did not increase their personal networks of collaborators raises important questions. A theoretical model is proposed to examine whether funding agencies should focus on fostering various network structures and evolutions or rely on competition in the distribution of research funds through networks. The proposed model is designed to measure the impact of various network structures on the development of social capital and research output.

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.

Quantifying the research impact of the Sustainable Forest Management Network in the social sciences: a bibliometric study

This research note presents the results of a bibliometric analysis that was conducted to better understand the impact that Sustainable Forest Management Network (SFMN) funded research had in the forest-related social and Aboriginal research communities. We applied two indicators of research impact: (i) research outputs and (ii) citations. Our results suggest that the SFMN’s research outputs were highest in the fields of economics, sociology, and political science and law. The number of research articles that acknowledged the SFMN was 30% of the total research output of the SFMN-funded Principal Investigators. These articles represented 3% of the social science articles published in the Forestry Chronicle (the journal most frequently used by SFMN-funded Principal Investigators). Research output related to Aboriginal forestry indicated that the SFMN had a significant influence on the development of the field. Our citation analysis indicated that the average number of citations per SFMN-acknowledged publicat...

Social network analysis: A useful tool for visualizing and evaluating forestry research

SUMMARY One of the foundational studies of social network analysis produced a depiction of scientific collaboration by tracing a network of scientific papers linked by co-authorships and co-citations, which has since spurred numerous studies on the typology, organization and dynamics of scientific research networks. This paper introduces social network analysis and its analytical measures of network structure. It then demonstrates the utility of social network analysis in forestry, in the evaluation of large research networks such as the Sustainable Forest Management Network (SFMN), and suggests other important uses of network visualization to facilitate exploring, discovering and selecting resources in a database.

Listening to the Birds: A Pragmatic Proposal for Forestry

Recently, natural scientists have begun to support an interpretive turn in ecology. Yet the ethical implications of interpreting nature have not been sufficiently addressed. In this essay, I use different interpretations of nature to make three distinct but related points relevant to forestry: (1) ecological narratives should be evaluated on the basis of ethical norms, (2) the choice of which interpretations of nature and ethical norms to use in environmental policy should be conducted by a process of public deliberation, and (3) scientific narratives should be denied a priori privilege over non-scientific interpretations of nature for policy purposes.

THE ETHICS AND VALUES UNDERLYING THE "EMULATION OF NATURAL DISTURBANCE" FOREST MANAGEMENT APPROACH IN CANADA: AN INTERDISCIPLINARY AND INTERPRETIVE STUDY

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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.

Experimentalist Regional Governance for Climate Change Adaptation: A Canadian Case Study

Climate change is affecting the life, livelihoods and survival of individuals and communities in many parts of the world. Moreover, the uncertainties associated with climate change impacts present an unprecedented challenge for adaptation planning. While climate change projections can be developed on the basis of global information and models, adaptation has to be informed by the knowledge of the communities where the consequences are felt. For the maritime province of New Brunswick there is growing necessity for policy-makers to incorporate adaptation considerations into daily decision-making and policies. The Regional Service Commissions (RSCs) are a new governance arrangement put in place to deliver municipal services, to facilitate regional planning and act as decision-making body on cross-boundary issues. As such, this institution may be a driving force for regional adaptation planning and implementation. This chapter aims to answer the following research questions: How can regional planning facilitate cooperation among municipalities with shared water and infrastructure governance issues? How are regional planners integrating and mobilizing local knowledge into regional adaptation planning? What models of environmental governance could inform the further development of RSCs in the context of climate change adaptation planning? In-depth interviews with RSC directors and planners provided the data, which was analyzed with a grounded theory approach. It was found that RSCs play a leadership role for adaptation planning and some have policies for infrastructural adaptation already in place. Institutional barriers to adaptation such as outdated legislation, centralized provincial power, and lack of a clear mandate were found to be common themes among RSCs. We discuss regional planning in light of experimentalist and co-productive models of environmental governance to address these barriers. While we focus on a case study of adaptation planning in New Brunswick, Canada, the insights derived from this case study and its implications for adaptation governance are not limited to this location, but speak to common adaptation planning challenges. In addition to presenting an illustrative case, this article also makes a theoretical contribution to the role of regional organizations in climate change adaptation governance, and understudied focus of climate change adaptation governance (Antonson et al. in Land Use Policy 52:297–305, 2016).

Local Knowledge Co-production, Emergent Climate Adaptation Publics and Regional Experimentalist Governance: An Institutional Design Case Study

In this paper, we ask how are climate hazards, local knowledge, affects and political arrangements assembled and generated by co-productive adaptation planning? Additionally, we ask how climate change preparedness comes to articulate and embody social imaginaries of the future and the governance arrangements these call forth. Using a paradigmatic case study from New Brunswick, Canada, we ask how the material dynamics of climate change impacts and local knowledge co-production in community-based adaptation planning are constitutive of the formation of “climate adaptation publics”? Our chapter argues that current governance arrangements are not adequate to the task of empowering and coordinating emerging climate adaptation publics, and keeping different levels of climate adaptation decision-making transparent, adaptive and accountable. We propose an institutional design based on an experimentalist form of regional adaptation governance to support climate adaptation publics and derive insights from this case study to inform regional adaptation governance more generally. This article also makes a theoretical contribution to non-extractive conceptions of local knowledge mobilization in climate change adaptation governance.

Urban configurations of carbon neutrality: Insights from the Carbon Neutral Cities Alliance

This paper examines configurations of carbon neutrality in the building and energy sector as expressed in the urban governance documents of the members of the Carbon Neutral Cities Alliance (CNCA). ‘Carbon neutrality’ is a mutable idea, which makes it unclear what kinds of future urban systems are imagined. As self-identified pioneers of deep decarbonization, the CNCA members are constructing ideas about what carbon neutral means and how urban systems should be changed to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. In this paper, climate governance policy documents provide a window to understand how these carbon neutral imaginaries are being constructed. The analysis draws on discourse analysis and textual network analysis to unpack the sociotechnical configurations that are planned to be mobilized to constitute carbon neutral built environments. Concept map visualizations are used to scrutinize planned configurations of objects (e.g. solar photovoltaics, district energy and energy efficiency technology) and policy instruments (e.g. energy use benchmarking and urban planning tools). The analysis shows three key building and energy configurations: (1) The District Energy City, (2) The Zero Net Energy City and (3) The Natural Gas Transition City. Furthermore, the findings demonstrate that urban imaginaries of carbon neutrality are incorporating complex configurations of socio-technical objects while, at the same time, distinct socio-technical configurations are being favoured in individual places. These configurations inform socio-technical imaginaries that will continue to drive policy outcomes over time.