Towards Genuine Co-Production for Just and Sustainable Transformation: Reflections from a Session at TC/ESG25 in Johannesburg

At the Transformations Community Navigating Sustainability Transformations Towards Justice and Equity Conference (TC/ESG25) in Johannesburg (19-21 August, 2025) one session confronted a growing problem in sustainability debates and within the CGIAR: the tyranny of the “co’s.” Terms like co-production, co-creation, co-innovate and co-design are now used almost as slogans, repeated in policy papers, funding calls, and project proposals. Yet too often, the language is invoked without practice, serving as a veneer of inclusivity rather than a genuine shift in how knowledge and decisions are made.

When done well, co‑production in agricultural research for development integrates local knowledge and addresses power imbalances so that diverse actors influence transformation pathways towards outcomes that are more sustainable, equitable, inclusive, and responsive to the needs of those who have historically been excluded from decision-making processes. Yet, current short-term funding models and project cycles often fail to provide the time and space needed for the relationships, sustained engagement, flexibility, and long-term commitment necessary for meaningful co-production.

Beyond consultation

Participants in the session organized in collaboration between the Multifunctional Landscapes science program and the Accelerating Impacts of CGIAR Climate Research for Africa (AICCRA) project, agreed that co-production cannot be reduced to consultation or symbolic participation. It is not enough to assemble diverse actors in a room and label the process collaborative. Genuine co‑production requires long‑term engagement, dedicated space for local perspectives, and the ability for communities to shape both the vision and the pathway to achieve it. Processes that skip these steps risk sliding into tokenism, risking loss of trust and accountability by and from partners.

What the examples reveal

Examples shared during the session demonstrated both the potential and the pitfalls of co-production.

Zimbabwe – Agroecological Living Landscapes (ALLs): Through the CGIAR Agroecology Initiative, ALLs were designed as places where multiple stakeholders identify, co‑design, test, and adopt agroecological innovations. Establishing active participation among farmers, farmer groups, extension services, and other food‑system actors took time. Even with co‑design, projects can slip into introducing technologies misaligned with local priorities or reinforcing inequalities through uneven labor and resource burdens, especially when researchers serve as both conveners and implementers and default to the path of least resistance.

Lao PDR – ALLs in practice: A diverse set of actors co‑developed context‑specific solutions such as solar‑powered irrigation, rice–fish systems, organic red‑rice cultivation, and wetlands management. A deliberate focus on inclusion aimed to secure fairer outcomes. A central lesson was that sustained adoption depends on long‑term support for infrastructure, enabling policies, and capacity strengthening.

Climate services – Participatory Scenario Planning (PSP) under AICCRA: PSP blends indigenous and local knowledge with climate forecasts, translating complex meteorological information into actionable advisories that farmers can understand and trust. It moves beyond one‑way dissemination from meteorologists to farmers. However, well‑run PSP processes are resource‑intensive and unless power asymmetries are anticipated and mitigated, they can unintentionally entrench power hierarchies and top‑down narratives of resilience.

San Juan, Puerto Rico and the central highlands of Kenya- Balancing open-endedness and direction: One participant described a co-production process that shifted from a prescribed expectation of producing flood-risk mitigation solutions for San Juan to a focus on listening and facilitation that ultimately strengthened community leadership and collective agency. In this case, the shift to a process with less emphasis on deliverables successfully engaged and empowered participants. Another participant described the feeling of initial discomfort among participants with a rather “open, blank canvas” at the onset of the Central Highlands Ecoregion Foodscape (CHEF) program in Kenya. It was through a series of co-creation workshops, small-scale pilots on the ground, some complex coordination, and further integration of scientific and local knowledge, that this discomfort turned into a strength of the CHEF program.

What co‑production needs to succeed

• Trust and Relationships: Trust is not built through single workshops or short-term projects. It grows through repeated interaction, transparency, and accountability.

• Clarity of Purpose: Co-production may not start with a shared understanding of what success looks like. For communities, success may mean a stronger sense of belonging or agency, while for institutions it may mean policy influence or measurable outcomes. Recognising and negotiating these different expectations is therefore crucial.
• Power Sharing: True collaboration may require those who hold financial or institutional power to give up some control. Communities need a real voice in shaping priorities, rather than being brought in to validate pre-determined plans, but are they given that space?
• Resources and Capacity: Effective co-production takes time, funding, and facilitation skills. Consistent communication and dedicated spaces—such as joint learning plots—could help sustain participation and continuity.
• Local Context: Rooting processes in the knowledge, priorities, and rhythms of the people directly affected can enable better response to local conditions and priorities. Without this grounding, co-production risks becoming an external exercise that lacks legitimacy.
• Collaborative Adaptive Learning: Uncertainty is unavoidable. A successful process accepts this and builds in mechanisms for reflection, adjustment, and learning along the way.

From rhetoric to practice

The session underscored that co‑production is promising yet demanding: slow, often messy, and always relational. It calls for trust, time, resources, power‑sharing, local anchoring, and explicit accountability structures. If pluralism and reciprocity are taken seriously, co‑production can move from rhetoric to a real driver of transformation, not through grand gestures, but through the steady work of building relationships and creating processes that communities recognize as their own.

Tensions however, are inevitable. Competing interests in food systems, historical injustices, and uneven benefits all create pressure points. Rather than seeking to avoid conflict, facilitation should bring these issues to the surface so that they can be addressed openly. It was also acknowledged that not every outcome will be evenly distributed. There will be winners and losers, and it matters who carries the risks if a process fails. Understanding these dynamics from the start helps maintain fairness and trust. Public involvement exists on a spectrum, and calling something co-production does not make it so. Care is needed in choosing the right institutions and leaders for these processes.

We thus invite you to ask:

• How do we reflect about our role, privilege and power in co-production as researchers, practitioners, and brokers for policymaking?
• What does this mean for our partnerships and for fostering genuine co-production for projects and for effective and equitable scaling?
• What characteristics or practices define genuine co-production for you?

Acknowledgments

We would like to thank the conveners of the TCESG25 conference and the participants in the genuine co-production session.

Authors: Hanna Ewell, Vimbayi Chimonyo, Sarah Freed, Kosal Mam