Going with the flow? Using participatory action research in physical geography

Abstract

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Rethinking flood risk communication

“…Participatory approaches offer a potential avenue through which the reinvigoration of resilience in this fashion might occur. The results of our research demonstrate the importance of working together with end-users in developing new solutions to flood risk problems, similar to the findings of previous participatory research Lane et al 2011;Whitman et al 2015;Bracken et al 2016). The practices of participatory working help to unify local and official perspectives on flood risk and develop local capacity to understand and take action (Pain 2004) in ways that established approaches to communication have been shown not to be able to achieve.…”

“…Participatory working re-imagines the traditional roles of experts and lay people (Bucchi and Neresini 2008;Landström et al 2011;Lane et al 2011) and considers circulation of different forms of expertise (Whitman et al 2015), with participants working together as equals to co-produce shared knowledge and outputs (Mees . 2016).…”

“…2016). Participatory working approaches have been applied to a variety of environmental problems, including the co-production of options for managing local flood risk , the breaking down of borders between different organisations, professionals, and lay people involved in catchment-scale land management to manage floods (Bracken et al 2016), and developing end-user specific research outputs regarding agricultural pollution (Whitman et al 2015). To date, however, participatory practices have not been applied to flood risk communications, with recent research concluding only that participation was a useful approach for raising awareness or communicating flood risk complexity (Environment Agency 2012), or as a way of providing limited feedback on current communication approaches (Fisher 2015).…”

Managing Multiple Catchment Demands for Sustainable Water Use and Ecosystem Service Provision

“…Catchment management has benefitted from recognition that such approaches help to build consensus and share wider perspectives to inform the decision-making process, but a more comprehensive understanding of the variability of viewpoints associated with decision-makers and beneficiaries of catchment management is needed, and across multiple spatial and temporal scales [116]. Innovation in stakeholder engagement methodologies will help to underpin this need for improved understanding as participatory research continues to evolve to take advantage of more engaging and mutually beneficial approaches such as participatory modelling and the co-production of knowledge [107,117]. More in-depth analysis of the characteristics of successful participatory modelling and research are clearly needed to help overcome the cultural, economic and technical constraints that can hinder effective engagement and participatory research.…”

The Contribution of Physical Geographers to Sustainability Research

“…Participatory action research is seen as a way of moving research forward by collaboration and the co-production of research [107]. In contrast to shallow participatory approaches, the authors encourage the use of a deep approach, where participants participate in the formulation of research questions and processes.…”