sparksforchange

The Learning for Sustainability (LfS) web portal brings together resources that help address the social and capacity building aspects of managing collective interests. The site highlights the wide range of social skills and processes that are needed to support constructive collaboration, and indicates how these skills and processes can be interwoven to achieve more integrated and effective outcomes. This site brings links to several hundred annotated on-line resources from different sectors and geographic areas together in one easy to access site. This portal has been substantially revised and updated over the past few months. This newsletter provides a brief introduction to new links that have been added, and more detail is provided through the on-line update available at http://learningforsustainability.net/newsletters/feb09.php

New portal content

A new section on governance has now been developed. This is accessible directly off the front page menu system, and provides managers, policy makers and others with links to resources that look at inclusive governance, adaptation and adaptive management. Other new sections link to resources that support thinking and practice around managing complex systems, community resilience, and participation. A central guides, tools and checklists section provides practical guidance to help readers address issues involved in managing multi-stakeholder processes. Lessons are drawn from different sectors including catchments and watersheds, natural resources, HIV/AIDS, climate change, and disasters. Other site sections provide links to best and emerging practice in specific areas including social learning, network building and mapping, dialogue, knowledge management, and evaluation. Research links cover action research, systems thinking, participation, integration and interdisciplinarity. One page lists on-line resources for both post-graduate research students and their supervisors.

Recent research papers and reports

The featured links in this newsletter are drawn from some of the new sections added recently. As the LfS pages show there is a wealth of really good material available - so this section is is by no means intended as an award list, it just lists a selection of recently published material that you may not have already come across. Direct links to these papers are provided through the on-line update – http://learningforsustainability.net/newsletters/feb09.php

• “Managing in an age of complexity” – This web paper by Jean Boulton reviews thinking around complex systems which suggests predictability is the exception rather than the norm  <more>
• “Achieving water conservation: Strategies for good governance” -  This policy report by Karen Bakker and Kathryn Furlong summarizes lessons learned about the links between “good governance” and water conservation, and explores how different governance models can both constrain and enable water conservation <more>
• “Stakeholder participation for environmental managment: A literature review” – This paper by Mark Reed points to the need to replace a “tool-kit” approach, which emphasises selecting the relevant tools for the job, with an approach that emphasises participation as a process <more>
• “Transdisciplinary research (TDR) and sustainability” – This report by Karen Cronin looks at the emergence of transdisciplinary research, including theoretical and practical developments internationally and in New Zealand, and its potential to contribute to sustainability outcomes <more>
• “Building Resilience in Rural Communities: Toolkit” – This new Queensland-developed toolkit outlines 11 resilience concepts found to be pivotal in enhancing individual and community resilience <more>