Exploring the co-production process: Three case studies from the Pacific Northwest

Climate change has been characterized as a super wicked problem and with traditional science approaches continuously proving not suitable to address the problems associated with climate change, in the past 30 years we've seen shifts in science practice aimed at tackling wicked problems. Some of the new approaches to problem solving and answering research questions related to climate change include post-normal science: transdisciplinary research and co-production of knowledge. Co-produced climate change knowledge is considered to be more usable because it incorporates local knowledge, traditional knowledges and a wide range of experts, all contributing to the knowledge production process. Various institutions and researchers around the world have seen potential in this approach in producing solutions to the super wicked problem of climate change. One of the programs that help expand and build the nation's capacity to prepare for and adapt to climate variability and change since 1995 is NOAA's Regional Integrated Sciences and Assessments (RISA) program. This grand scientific experiment calls for novel forms of quality and impact measures - traditional discipline-based peer review systems are supplemented with economic, political, social or cultural criteria. Applying three case studies of co-production efforts in the Pacific Northwest, all supported by the NOAA Regional Integrated Sciences and Assessments program, we use criteria identified in extant scholarship to make comparisons and draw conclusions about co-production processes observed in our study contexts.