J. David Tàbara

Sustainability Learning in Natural Resource Use and Management

We contribute to the normative discussion on sustainability learning and provide a theoretical integrative framework intended to underlie the main components and interrelations of what learning is required for social learning to become sustainability learning. We demonstrate how this framework has been operationalized in a participatory modeling interface to support processes of natural resource integrated assessment and management. The key modeling components of our view are: structure (S), energy and resources (E), information and knowledge (I), social-ecological change (C), and the size, thresholds, and connections of different social-ecological systems. Our approach attempts to overcome many of the cultural dualisms that exist in the way social and ecological systems are perceived and affect many of the most common definitions of sustainability. Our approach also emphasizes the issue of limits within a total socialecological system and takes a multiscale, agent-based perspective. Sustainability learning is different from social learning insofar as not all of the outcomes of social learning processes necessarily improve what we consider as essential for the long-term sustainability of social-ecological systems, namely, the co-adaptive systemic capacity of agents to anticipate and deal with the unintended, undesired, and irreversible negative effects of development. Hence, the main difference of sustainability learning from social learning is the content of what is learned and the criteria used to assess such content; these are necessarily related to increasing the capacity of agents to manage, in an integrative and organic way, the total social–ecological system of which they form a part. The concept of sustainability learning and the SEIC social-ecological framework can be useful to assess and communicate the effectiveness of multiple agents to halt or reverse the destructive trends affecting the life-support systems upon which all humans depend.

Let’s play transformations! Performative methods for sustainability

Coping with global environmental change demands new forms of civic engagement and interaction able to transform passive audiences attending to the drama of unsustainability into committed actors for sustainability. This entails linking diverse sources of scientific knowledge with personal experiences, emotion and ethical judgments. In this paper, we assess the potential as well as the limitations of innovative theatre-based participatory tools and methods aimed at supporting sustainability learning and agent transformation. To this aim, we first review a series of experiences using theatrical performance and introduce the notion of performative methods. Second, we assess to what extent these new approaches can be of relevance in environmental action research and sustainability science, practice and learning. Finally, we list a series of key research questions to further guide methodological innovation in this promising area of sustainability science and practice. Our findings show a growing and successful use of such methodologies worldwide, both in academia and in implementation-oriented approaches. An increasing number of topics and complexity is being embraced by these methods, offering a fertile ground for innovation in participatory sustainability science.

Integrated sustainability assessment of water systems: lessons from the Ebro River Basin

This paper describes the co-development and implementation of visioning and experimenting exercises, agent-based modelling, and gaming tools in Integrated Sustainability Assessments (ISAs) involving stakeholders. These new tools are aimed at supporting reflexive learning and at building alternative policy relevant knowledge and evaluative paradigms for managing sustainability. The specific case study relates to water management within the Ebro River Basin. Conclusions concern the use of these tools to represent complexity, to learn how conflict and collaboration between agents can be addressed, and to explore the roles played by power regimes, institutional rules, and culture in constraining or enhancing transition in the water domain.

Cross-border organisations as an adaptive water management response to climate change: the case of the Guadiana river basin

In this paper we analyse the role played by cross-border organisations in the Guadiana river basin in Iberia, and the extent to which new emerging institutional arrangements carry on adaptive management practice as a response to mounting climate change risks in the river basin. Particular attention is paid to the new transboundary agencies, as promoted by the EU INTERREG programmes, and their potential for mainstreaming climate change considerations into Guadiana river basin development strategies. Results indicate that the penetration of climate change concerns into regional development policies requires a better integration of different policies and improved connectivity and coordination between multiple actors operating across sectors, and at different spatial scales. We argue that the emergence of new transboundary agencies capable of performing these bridging functions is a vital ingredient for building climate adaptive capacity in these cross-border regions.

The Tous dam disaster of 1982 and the origins of integrated flood risk management in Spain

The failure of the Tous dam in 1982 caused one of the most important socio-natural disasters in Spain during the twentieth century. That event triggered a paradigm change in the way disaster risks were perceived and managed, not only locally, but also at multiple levels of governance. Fifteen interviews with relevant stakeholders, content analysis of scientific literature, and review of historical and media accounts indicate that the collapse of the Tous dam had the two major effects. First, it prompted a process of institutional development, which led to the growth, and increase in complexity of the organizations involved both in vertical and horizontal communication of disaster risk reduction. Second, actions taken and experiences gained in dealing with disaster risk reduction in the Tous area were used as a benchmark to develop new strategies, as well as new mechanisms for communication and planning in other territories and other risk domains in Spain. This paper also identified the three main stages in the evolution of disaster risk reduction planning in the area: (1) After the collapse of the Tous dam, disaster risk reduction strategies in Spain focused on improving preparedness in order to reduce short-term risks. (2) Disaster management in the 1990s was strongly influenced by international initiatives, which emphasized the contextualization of risk and the importance in long-term disaster risk reduction measures such as land-use planning. (3) The European Water Framework Directive (2000) and, more recently, the Floods Directive (2007) are exerting a strong influence on the development of a new Spanish flood policy that focuses on preventive measures. However, this process is far from complete and many issues still remain unresolved: dealing with different domains of risk action, integrating concepts of ecological resilience and climate change, and promoting public awareness and effective participation.

Conservation Theatre: Mirroring Experiences and Performing Stories in Community Management of Natural Resources

ABSTRACT Learning how to boost collective imagination and creativity is a key component in transformative processes supporting community-based natural resource management (CBNRM). The use of the arts in such contexts is becoming a prominent methodological approach in strategies aimed at opening new spaces for public dialogue and reflection. The arts play a decisive role in sense-making and especially in establishing meaningful and emotional connections between individuals and their broader socioecological systems. This article explores the contribution of “conservation theatre” to sustainability learning and to the integration and mobilization of multiple knowledge actors for CBNRM. We focus on an experience in a Mexican community using participatory theatre with young people. Our experience illustrates that conservation theatre helped raise awareness of local conservation issues and contributed to opening nonconventional, aesthetically rich spaces for new ways of social interaction, diversity recognition, and empathic dialogues. It also showed limitations suggesting the importance of further work.

Diversity, Civic Virtues and Ecological Austerity

A single global culture and a unique set of world institutional arrangements, based on an ever-increasing consumption of natural resources and environmental pollution is not sustainable nor can be sustained. In this paper some key ideological and moral components of the urgently required changes towards a culture of sustainability are examined, together with the implications, difficulties and requirements for its embodiment both in individual practices and in social institutions. In particular, it is argued that the values and attitudes which promote the protection and integration of diversity—both cultural and biological—and restrain the current trends in natural resource consumption and environmental pollution are to be developed by the citizenry if global societies are to survive. In the domains of political participation, rational dialogue and civic virtue, sustainability is akin to the inherited republican ideals of liberty, equality and fraternity. Sustainability must now become an indispensable fourth moral pillar in the structuration of society and, in particular, in the coming world republican polity, which will necessarily take account of the diversity of cultures and institutions. It is shown that, otherwise, the now developing unsustainable global society would otherwise cease to exist.

Transformative targets in sustainability policy making: the case of the 30% EU mitigation goal

This paper explores to what extent moving towards the 30% GHG emission reductions by 2020 with respect to 1990 in the EU can be considered a transformative target. To do so, we first define the concept of transformative targets from a complex systems perspective and show a novel approach and original results using an extended application of the GEM-E3 model. Traditional macroeconomic models cannot easily handle key synergetic system effects derived from green growth and sustainability policies, and thus require additional features. We analyse the role of semi-endogenous growth driven by learning-by-doing and low-carbon investment expectations following a long-term transformative trajectory.

Integrated Climate Governance (ICG) and Sustainable Development

The present paper introduces for the first time the concept of Integrated Climate Governance (ICG) and critically discusses its implications for EU research and policy on ‘sustainable development’. ICG is understood as a transition-oriented appraisal approach focused on the creation of assessment tools, policy instruments, and agent-based capacities aimed at dealing in an integrated way with multiple scales and domains related both with mitigation and adaptation. The goal of ICG is to support agent transformation for sustainable development. ICG constitutes both a descriptive and normative synthesis of a large corpus of literature and research within the fields of Integrated Assessment (IA), Integrated Sustainability Assessment (ISA; Rotmans et al. 2008), Social and Sustainability Learning (Pahl-Wostl et al. 2008), and research on the institutional dimensions of global environmental change (Young 2008).

Defining transformative climate science to address high-end climate change

High-end climate change requires transformative solutions, as conventional strategies and solutions will not be enough if major disruptions in social-ecological systems are to be avoided. However, conventional climate assessment approaches and methods show many limitations if they are to provide robust knowledge and support to the implementation of such solutions in practice. To this end, we define transformative climate science as the open-ended process of producing, structuring, and applying solutions-oriented knowledge to fast-link integrated adaptation and mitigation strategies to sustainable development. In particular, based on our experiences within regional cases in Central Asia, Europe, Iberia, Scotland, and Hungary, we have selected 12 dimensions that scientists and practitioners can use as a checklist to design transformative-oriented climate assessments. While it is possible to talk both about transformative adaptation and transformative mitigation, in this paper, we make the case that societal transformation does not depend on mitigation or adaptation policies and actions, mostly because they are related to sustainability innovations, which are endogenous developments derived from deliberate social learning