WORKING GROUP UPDATE: Working group on collaborative governance and management

As the turbulent year of 2020 slowly comes to an end, Michael Schoon took the opportunity to reflect the past year and the activities of the working group on collaborative governance and management:

As the new year approaches, and we gleefully say goodbye to 2020, the PECS working group on collaborative governance and management wishes everyone a healthy and prosperous 2021. In spite of the chaos and calamities due to COVD-19, our working group has had a productive year. In November of 2019, we launched a virtual webinar series on methodological approaches to the study of collaboration.We look back at these beginnings with a smile, as we remember having to explain to speakers and audiences how to use Zoom. No such problems anymore!

We have now had 14 speakers with bookings scheduled for the next several months.  A full listing of speakers and recordings of the webinars can be found here.

We also had our first virtual workshop – a two-day event with a few sessions per day to bring our group together. As a group, we now have roughly 30 members spread across 18 countries. In spite of the diverse time zones, we were able to have participation from nearly 25 group members! In the workshop, we advanced a few meta-analytic studies that we hope to publish in the coming year as well as launching new research initiatives between group members. This work builds on our latest group manuscript, published earlier this year and led by Jess Cockburn*.

Text and picture by Michael Schoon/ Upload by Johanna Hofmann

* manuscript details: Cockburn, J., Schoon, M., Cundill, G., Robinson, C., Aburto, J.A., Alexander, S.M., Baggio, J.A.,
Barnaud, C., Chapman, M., Garcia Llorente, M. and García-López, G.A., 2020. Understanding the context of multifaceted collaborations for social-ecological sustainability: a methodology for cross-case analysis. Ecology and Society, 25(3).