Co-production revisited: from knowledge plurality to action for disaster risk reduction

Purpose

The authors revisit the notion of co-production, highlight more critical and re-politicized forms of co-production and introduce three principles for its operationalization. The paper’s viewpoint aims to find entry points for enabling more equitable disaster research and actions via co-production.

Design/methodology/approach

The authors draw insights from the authors’ reflections as climate and disaster researchers and literature on knowledge politics in the context of disaster and climate change, especially within critical disaster studies and feminist political ecology.

Findings

Disaster studies can better contribute to disaster risk reduction via political co-production and situating local and Indigenous knowledge at the center through three principles, i.e. ensuring knowledge plurality, surfacing norms and assumptions in knowledge production and driving actions that tackle existing knowledge (and broader sociopolitical) structures.

Originality/value

The authors draw out three principles to enable the political function of co-production based on firsthand experiences of working with local and Indigenous peoples and insights from a diverse set of co-production, feminist political ecology and critical disaster studies literature. Future research can observe how it can utilize these principles in its respective contexts.