CO-Water aims to conceptualise a grassroots-led model of polycentric water governance in which the initiatives and aspirations of social movements are fruitfully integrated into co-production in the water sector. Four objectives have been defined: to comprehend the specific conflicts through which social movements come into being; to understand the potentialities and limitations of social movements in catalysing new forms of co-production; to evaluate existing state-led water governance and institutions, in regards to their transformational potentialities; and to envision a model of grassroots-led polycentric water governance by engaging with concerned groups. The empirical research consists of case studies of three social movements in the Jakarta metropolitan delta, as well as complementary case studies from Europe and Latin America. We look at the experiences of social movements in regards to these objectives, to advance key features of co-production and polycentric governance theories. Four bodies of literature are mobilised and cross-fertilised: the key works of Elinor Ostrom and selected reviews, developments, and critiques of these works by others; collective action literature within spatial planning and development studies, public administrative and management studies; literature on water governance in the Postcolonial South; and literature on urban social movements. Training during the Fellowship will focus on systematically expanding the researcher's theoretical horizon with an advanced comprehension of theories, improving her research and teaching methodology, extending her professional networks, and learning the management aspects of scientific co-operation and research development. Fuelled by an interdisciplinary approach to environmental conflicts, the Fellowship will link her research to development practices and add value for the coherent implementation of several SDGs, particularly SDG#6 on water and sanitation and SDG#11 on cities and communities.

Grand and persistent social-ecological challenges, such as climate change, push forward a rapidly growing discourse on how sustainability science can support society in dealing with today’s global crises. Between studying change and contributing to change, sustainability science seeks both to analytically understand sustainability problems, but also to design interventions that can contribute solution-options to these problems. However, knowledge about how to intervene in order to reach a desirable vision (i.e., transformation knowledge) is typically missing. Especially how to deliberately engage with values as places of intervention (leverage points), as proposed by the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services, remains a critical knowledge gap. To fill these gaps, LEVER aims to critically develop and apply a transformative theory and practice to support the (co-)production of transformation knowledge, including a focus on transformation knowledge necessary to investigate and unleash values as leverage points for sustainability transformation. To this end, LEVER originally combines transdisciplinary research with the empirically rigorous methods of social science experiments. The scientific breakthrough consists in delivering an integrated theory of transformative research, capable of representing the many co-evolving links between its design principles, philosophy of science, normative assumptions, and ethical dimensions. Methodologically, LEVER opens new avenues on how to produce transformation knowledge, by experimenting with, testing and evaluating novel transformative methods. Finally, LEVER seeks to answer the globally relevant and timely question of how to unleash values. Using a treatment and control group experimental design, LEVER assesses the impact of values-targeting interventions and demonstrates the potential of values as leverage points. LEVER pioneers a salient conscious science-society relationship in Europe.

The objectives of this research are to reveal the nature of large-scale human cooperation and to develop strategies for the protection of our global environment. Human activities are now the major driver of change in the biosphere, including the climate, the water cycle, and the distribution of species and biodiversity – with adverse effects that range from the local to the global scale. Since there is no world government that can enforce the protection of the global commons we have to rely on voluntary cooperation by sovereign actors. Previous findings from various disciplines have taught us important lessons about the nature of human cooperation. However, these literatures have almost exclusively focused on local or regional cooperation problems and their findings cannot be readily transferred to the international level. The research proposed here will fill this crucial gap. The methodological approach is genuinely interdisciplinary. In particular, the project will use and combine theoretical, experimental, evolutionary, and empirical methods. The interdisciplinary research team will start by analyzing case studies of international cooperation (or lack thereof). In an iterative process, the case-specific results will be explored in a rigorous context-free analysis using theoretical modeling, experiments, and simulations. With this, the project will: systematically analyze human cooperation from the local to the global scale and the differences between those scales; investigate which institutional arrangements enhance or prevent cooperative behavior at the global level; investigate whether individuals and groups are able to choose the right institutions and which factors determine their choice; synthesize the results to derive theoretical and practical insights about human cooperation and develop effective strategies for the management of the global commons; bring forward the integration of concepts and methods across disciplines for the study of human cooperation.