Co production through environmental monitoring and other ways of knowing? An interview study with scientists on Svalbard

• Main Author: Jasmine Zhang
• Format: Lecture
• Language: English
• Published: Zenodo 2021
• Subjects: Svalbard; Environmental monitoring; environmental change; co-production of knowledge; natural scientists; in-depth interview; Arctic; Arctic Archipelago
• Online Access: https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.5726703

There has been, both within social science and humanities, and natural science and technologies, an increasing interest and demand on co-producing knowledge on environmental changes across different ways of knowing. Situating the meta-narrative of co-production of knowledge in Svalbard, the high Arctic archipelago, here we focus specifically on the potential of co-producing knowledge through environmental monitoring and other ways of knowing the environmental changes on Svalbard. Through talking to natural scientists who have experiences in monitoring and long-term research on Svalbard, we discuss the tensions might generate from the practice of it and how we could view these tensions productively. While tensions and uncertainties were expressed by scientists regarding their monitoring activities and long-term research, place-attachment and other social aspects of knowledge-making seem to force environmental monitoring into directions that include knowledge and understanding from other disciplines and possibly also those from outside the scientific arena.