Paper short abstract:

Future Earth is an international research initiative on global environmental change and sustainability, with a strong focus on co-design/co-production. This paper explores Future Earth as emergent experiment, co-produced with particular notions and systems of science, democracy, and local knowledge.

Paper long abstract:

Future Earth is an international research initiative on global environmental change (GEC) and sustainability that was launched in 2012, merging several existing international GEC research programmes. In its strong emphasis on the co-design and co-production of research at global, regional, and local levels, Future Earth offers the potential to challenge existing hegemonies in the production of knowledge and assemble new participatory collectives. This paper explores the analytical possibilities and ontological politics opened up in examining Future Earth as emergent, experimental and distributed participatory collective(s), co-produced with particular notions and systems of science, democracy, and local knowledge. Drawing on a qualitative case study of Future Earth (using documentary analysis, in depth interviews, focus groups and participant observation), it explores and positions Future Earth in relation to other experiments in democratic knowledge co-production (Klenk and Meehan, 2015) and ecologies of participation (Chilvers and Kearnes, 2016). In particular, it asks: whose and which knowledge is valued in Future Earth? What role is envisaged for and performed by local knowledge, and how is it (co-)produced? Which technologies of participation and experiments in co-production has Future Earth adopted, and how are they challenged or transformed in its international context and at global scale? And (how) can research policy, coordination, and institutions be (re)arranged to acknowledge and allow space for experimentation, local knowledge, diverse publics, and the performance of science and democracy by other means?