Speakers: Federico Robledo, Thieu Besselink, Lindsay K. Campbell, Stefan Partelow
Presentations
Co-production of knowledge to facilitate access to climate information: the case of Argentina My Climate Risk Hub
Federico Robledo
Scientific institutions have a strategic role in generating knowledge and capacities based on the definition of social and environmental public policies, since they impact the daily life of the community and its territory. The comprehensive and regional approach plays an extremely important role in the search for resolution of these issues. However, it is a challenge to generate climate information at a local scale with decision makers. The World Climate Research Programme lighthouse activity My Climate Risk (MCR) aims at developing and mainstreaming a bottom-up approach to regional and local climate risk to construct climate information that is fit for integration in decision making. MCR uses principally a case study approach and is organized in a non-hierarchical way in a network of communities of practice, fostering dynamic, exploratory and transdisciplinary environments. One year after the kick-off of MCR there are eleven formalized communities of practice or “Regional Hubs” around the world. These Hubs comprise a variety of forms and modes of operation depending on the local interests and needs. The MCR Argentina Regional Hub (https://sites.google.com/view/mcrhubconicet) is constituted by researchers, university students and educators from different disciplines such as Anthropology, Biology, Climatology, Engineering and Physics. The participants are involved in different research projects aimed at promoting co-production to address local socio-economic challenges. The Argentinean Hub focuses on local communities and the public sector. Some of our projects have already co-produced knowledge and co-designed climate services with users, such as the development of a community rainfall monitoring network, the co-design of a smartphone application and co-production of a week-2 rainfall probabilistic prediction tool for small farmers activities within the framework of the CLIMAX project. Another of our projects, Anticipando la Crecida, has generated maps of flood impacts in vulnerable neighborhoods from dialogue with the local community.
Transformative learning and multi-stakeholder impact though bioregional regeneration
Thieu Besselink
Using the case of the RegioLab for the ecological infrastructure of the Amsterdam Metropolitan Region, we explore an approach to bioregional regeneration at the intersection between the city and surrounding rural polders. Part of the lab is a summer school of the Regenerative Regions Program (A collaboration of the Aliance between Utrecht University, Wageningen University and Eindhoven Technical University) where students of multiple universities contribute to the process. In this interactive session we will share the lab approach and work with students and participants of the session on the essential questions of the regeneration process. Other topics are the role of education and transformative learning in processes of bioregion regeneration, giving voice to the land, and diversity in languages and scales.
The Regiolab works on an ecological corridor of about 6000 ha, at more than 5 meter below sea level, with many competing interests and governmental scales, and an increasing pressure on the little available land. The RegioLab weaves together grassroots organisation, national, regional, and local government, nature and water management organisations, academia, artists, and farmers to find regenerative practices at the various scales.
Stewardship Salons: Sharing artistic ways of knowing and biocultural approaches to transform urban natural resources management
Lindsay K. Campbell
Transformation of urban natural resources management requires engagement with a diversity of worldviews and practices related to land and place. Yet, currently a narrow set of discourses and practices informed by positivist science and legacies of colonial land relations tend to dominate the field. Further, the natural resources sector lacks sufficient diversity in staff and volunteers. How can practitioners and researchers meaningfully connect with and be informed by different ways of seeing, knowing, and valuing the work of caring for urban ecosystems? Stewardship Salons are envisioned as non-hierarchical gatherings where everyone has the ability to be a teacher and a learner. This approach was first inspired by an exchange between NYC-based practitioners and Native Hawaiian educators and practitioners in 2017 (McMillen et al. 2020). Since then, partners from US Forest Service and NYC Parks based at the NYC Urban Field Station have organized outdoor, experiential salons that engage land managers, artists, educators, researchers, and practitioners in learning from place and each other (Campbell et al. 2021). Whether taking the form of a walk, a talk, or an embodied practice, salons are co-created experiences rooted in dialogue and co-learning. This article draws upon participant observation and program evaluation data to share our salon approach. Salons have been led by Tribal members, performance and visual artists, community activists and stewards, and different cultural and religious groups – all of whom are part of the social-ecological systems of NYC. We discuss the value of creating spaces for reflection, professional development that fully engages personal lived experience, and amplifying frequently untold narratives about urban ecosystems. We seek to further articulate and share artistic and embodied ways of knowing and biocultural stewardship practices that treat natural resources as cultural resources for pathways towards more inclusive approaches to the land rooted in reciprocity and care.
A pluralistic ethical toolbox for sustainability science
Stefan Partelow
Sustainability science aims to co-produce knowledge together with society to guide intentional transformations. However, there is a normative void in sustainability science. We argue that this void can best be navigated by a diverse ethical toolbox, and the embedding of ethical principles into sustainability science processes. This is needed because the core tenets of sustainability science require addressing trade-offs at different stages of research and practice, and the right decisions to make are often either unclear or context dependent. Key ethical concepts such consequentialism, reason/deontological, social contractualism and virtue ethics offer normative guides for navigating normative decision-making. A toolbox is needed, because no single ethical concept is sufficient for all situations and all stages of sustainability science. Rather, scholars and practitioners will be better equipped to deliver the ambitions of sustainability science when a knowledge base of ethical tools and the usefulness are available.