MOBILISING HIGH‐QUALITY KNOWLEDGE THROUGH DIALOGIC ENVIRONMENTAL GOVERNANCE

Associated with the willingness to classify environmental issues as 'wicked', is a wavering of confidence in analytical models of 'resource management' in favour of social process models of 'environmental governance.' There is an attendant shift in epistemological perspectives for the mobilisation of knowledge in support of society's collective deliberation and decision making, with governance fields increasingly espousing a 'dialogic' approach. Looking through an 'interactive governance' lens, this article highlights the diversity of different forms of dialogue for the mobilisation of knowledge, before focussing on those forms that: (a) are inclusive of a wide spectrum of knowledge systems; (b) bring together knowledge through reciprocal dialogue; and (c) allow for the negotiation of knowledge quality in terms of 'credibility, salience and legitimacy.' It then unpacks and compares three specific approaches for the dialogic mobilisation of knowledge; deliberative democracy, collaborative learning and post-normal science, and suggests a dialogue framework that highlights the strong points of each as credible, legitimate and salient relative to limitations or 'blind spots' of the others.