Co-Producing Coastal Sustainability Through Higher Education

Coastal regions are undergoing rapid environmental and socio-economic transformations, driven by climate change, demographic shifts, and evolving human–ocean interactions. Despite growing scientific knowledge, significant gaps persist in understanding and governing the complex interdependencies between marine ecosystems and human societies. These gaps reflect a broader disconnect between knowledge production, policy implementation, and community practice. In response, sustainability science has increasingly emphasized knowledge co-production and transdisciplinary approaches, which highlight collaborative, context-sensitive, and action-oriented processes involving scientists, policymakers, and societal actors. Within this evolving landscape, environmental governance is being reconfigured as a dynamic process of social learning, negotiation, and adaptation, rather than a purely technocratic exercise. Higher education institutions are emerging as key intermediary platforms that facilitate such processes by connecting science, policy, and society through community-engaged and real-world learning approaches. This thematic issue brings together six case-based studies that examine how these shifts toward co-production, adaptive governance, and institutional innovation are realized in diverse coastal contexts. Collectively, the contributions demonstrate how universities and multi-stakeholder collaborations help bridge the gap between knowledge and action, supporting more integrated, participatory, and context-responsive approaches to sustainability transitions.