Too much of a good thing? Building social capital through knowledge transfer and collaborative networks in the southern Philippines

Meaningful engagement of diverse stakeholders is essential for ensuring support for science-based responses to complex watershed challenges. A collaborative network in the Davao river basins, in the Philippines, provides evidence of an approach that enabled integration of science into local decision making and increased bonding social capital between shared-interest groups. Insufficient attention towards bridging and linking social capital allowed bottlenecks between policy and implementation to persist. This ‘dark side’ of social capital was evidenced by entrenched sector positions and lower levels of trust between different interest groups. A social-learning approach is recommended to create new spaces for productive ‘bridging’ relationships.