Transcript Welcome to SLIM

SLIM
Social Learning for the Integrated
Management and Sustainable Use of
Water at Catchment Scale
Barcelona
18-20 Feb 2003
Kevin Collins
Open University UK
[email protected]
www.slim.open.ac.uk
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Introduction
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Overview of SLIM
Approaches to social learning
Emerging themes
Conceptual and methodological issues
Public participation in the WFD….
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Aims & Objectives
To explore how a ‘social learning’ approach can
contribute to more sustainable use of water
– Develop interactive approaches to management of
natural resources based on social learning
– Develop guidelines and methods for capacity building
among stakeholders
– Explore how this can be scaled up to river basin
management
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Methodological Approaches
Multi-disciplinary
‘Systems practice' and learning approaches (UK)
Analysis and development of agro-ecosystems
(France)
 Facilitation of social learning and platform
development (The Netherlands)
 Analysis and maintenance of sustainable
ecological services (Italy)
Adaptive management and social learning through
GIS (Sweden)
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Deliverables
• Reviews of social learning in watershed management &
stakeholder involvement
• Methods and guidelines for facilitating development of
‘learning platforms’
• A set of ‘learning experiences’ for stakeholders in policy
development
• Development of a interactive ‘learning programme’ for
policy-makers and practitioners
• Web-based resource and learning materials
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Social Learning
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Not a new idea!
Not easily defined either!
Multiple definitions from psychology; education;
sociology, anthropology etc
Common themes:
change in behaviour
change in potential to behave differently
change in the learner
change that cannot be understood without
understanding context
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Social Learning (2)
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Group learning as more than the sum of
individual learning
Social learning as an attempt to conceive of
combined learning and problem solving activities
which take place within participatory systems
such as groups, social networks etc
Situated in conditions which are new,
unexpected, uncertain, conflictual and
unpredictable
(Wildermeesch et al, 1999, 2002)
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Working Definition of Social
Learning ….
Increased awareness and understanding of multiple
perspectives leading to an increase in connections and
negotiation for joint action in the sustainable use and
management of resources, including natural resources,
within catchments
Implies:
• Transformation of multiple cognitive systems into a shared
cognitive system
• An iterative process of knowledge co-production between
actors involved in social interactions
• Working with and actively exploring multiple perspectives
• A dynamic process
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SLIM’s focus
Research and co-research to explore social learning
in terms of:
• Context
• Stakeholders and stakeholding
• Facilitation
• Institutions and organisations
• Decision-making processes
• Practices in ICM
• Learning processes
• Learning about our own learning
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SLIM’s experiences suggest …
• Context – very significant
• Stakeholders – problem of multiple values
• Facilitation – a key ‘accelerator’ of social
learning
• Institutions & organisations – opportunities
for learning in-between boundaries
• Decision-making - participation does not
guarantee social learning
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Some questions…
• How do we make sense of a dynamic situation
• How do we make this available to other
stakeholders to raise their systemic awareness?
• How do we learn from each other?
• How does social learning become embedded in
new communities of practice and policy?
• How will we know?
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More questions….
Methodological problems of identifying social
learning over time / scale within project
deadlines:
– Who decides what is being learned?
– What constitutes social learning: changed ideas and / or
changed practices?
– What evidence is acceptable and to whom?
– Context: how to generalise findings?
– How do we understand power in social learning?
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Conditions for Social Learning
Adopting a social learning approach in water
resource management is dependent on:
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Willingness to collaborate
Building trust
Sharing understanding
Learning with rather than from
Identifying mutual benefits to you and stakeholders
Being open about uncertainty
Being open to emergent opportunities
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