Knowledge co-production in practice: Enabling environmental management systems for ports through participatory research in the Dutch Wadden Sea

•We explore knowledge co-production practices in the Dutch Wadden Sea.•Participation is deployed to develop port's environmental management systems (EMS).•We analyze the process of emergence, standardization, and enculturation of EMS.•Knowledge arrangements and co-production required to stabilize EMS in port-practices.

Coastal zone management is inconceivable without the mobilization and integration of different types of knowledge – that is, without knowledge co-production practices. This article applies the concept of knowledge co-production to analyze the process of emergence, standardization, and enculturation of environmental management systems (EMSs) within port communities in the Dutch Wadden Sea. Moreover, it is a report from the field in which we reflect on the participatory practices conducted to facilitate the knowledge arrangements required to develop EMSs for a group of ports. The article concludes that this type of knowledge arrangement and co-production practices (involving different types of actors and knowledge) might become mandatory in the near future to stabilize the EMS phenomenon in the practices of ports.