FRACTAL’s work in nine southern African cities was recently highlighted in an article in Nature‘s special edition on co-production (see Nature 562, 24-28 (2018)). FRACTAL has been committed to co-producing it’s knowledge from the outset of the project, working to establish a new collaboration capacity of innovative transdisciplinary research and working with stakeholders as equal partners, recognising the value of their inputs.
Nature describes co-production as “full involvement in research by people who hope to benefit from the work, in partnership with communities, policymakers and other members of the public.” FRACTAL’s many engagements in the form of learning labs, dialogues and webinars are testament to their belief in this co-production process. The successful implementation of embedded researchers has strengthened engagements even further and built valuable trust between researchers and municipalities. Intangibles such as the development of networks and relationships like these are something that Chris Jack, one of FRACTAL’s climate scientists, says are as valuable as the final outputs of the project.
Nature‘s full special edition of co-production is available here.
