Transdisciplinary research in natural resources management: Towards an integrative and transformative use of co-concepts

Transdisciplinary research often utilizes collaborative ways of knowledge production to enable deliberate transformations towards sustainability. Multiple concepts with varying definitions are applied, leading to confusion in the aims and uses of these concepts. In this article, we review five concepts relevant to the current debate on the new collaborative ways of knowledge production in transdisciplinary research. We focus on the concepts of co-creation, co-production, co-design, co-learning, and adaptive co-management in the context of natural resources management (NRM). This study couples a literature review and a conceptual analysis, and aims to clarify definitions, use, the interlinkages of these concepts and to shed light on their intertwined nature. We propose an integrative understanding of the concepts to facilitate collaborative modes and to enable the transformative aims of research processes. To this end, we discuss how to harvest the transformative potential of the “co-concepts” by focusing on reflexivity, power analysis and process orientation.