Knowledge governance for sustainable rural development: Exploring potentials, characteristics and barriers in the Northern Frisian Woodlands

Rural regions in the Netherlands cope with the challenge of sustainable rural development in a complex network context. There is neither consensus on facts nor consensus on values about what is sustainable and what not. Literature suggests knowledge governance as a promising form of governance. It focuses on the coordinative power of knowledge production and dissemination, and on the development of joint facts and shared ideas. In this paper we critically explore what knowledge governance can contribute to processes of sustainable rural development. It addresses the questions of what characterizes knowledge governance, and what are the barriers to its functioning. For this we combine the concept of knowledge governance with literature on communities of practice, policy learning and boundary work. These concepts were used to analyze the case study of a selfgovernance and regional development project in the Northern Frisian Woodlands. In this project farmers, civil servants and researchers deliberately experimented with new knowledge arrangements. Information was obtained from interviews, observations and from participation in project management, providing advice and co-organizing of workshops. The paper concludes that knowledge governance can be successful under the following characteristics: a common identity between participants in communities of practice, the inclusion of boundary workers, the willingness of actors to change routines and consider new ideas, and a certain distance between communities of practices and existing governance networks