Category — Resources

This special issue of Participatory Learning and Action focuses on recent approaches to climate change adaptation which are community-based and participatory, building on the priorities, knowledge, and capacities of local people. It discusses how community-based approaches to climate change have emerged, and the similarities and differences between CBA and other participatory development and disaster risk reduction approaches. It highlights innovative participatory methods which are developing to help communities analyse the causes and effects of climate change, integrate scientific and community knowledge of climate change, and plan adaptation measures. Whilst CBA is a relatively new field, some lessons and challenges are beginning to emerge, including how to integrate disaster risk reduction, livelihoods and climate change adaptation work, climate change knowledge gaps, issues around the type and quality of participation, and the need for policies and institutions that support CBA.

Full publication available at: http://www.iied.org/pubs/pdfs/14573IIED.pdf

Let’s Try Something Different

by Victor Galaz

What is adaptiveness and innovation in earth system governance? How do we define it, and why does it matter? The Stockholm Resilience launched a web-log designed exclusively to the Earth System Governance community and conference participants of the 2009 Amsterdam Conference.

http://adaptiveness.wordpress.com/

The blog includes interviews with prominent scholars in the field of earth system science and governance. They will all elaborate different aspects of adaptiveness and innovation in an era of global environmental change. [Read more →]

An updated framework for analysing complex systems has been presented by Prof Elinor Ostrom.

Source: ASUNews

Common framework would aid cumulation of isolated knowledge

The often-used one-size-fits-all approach to policies aimed at achieving sustainable social-ecological systems needs to be updated with a diagnostic tool to help scholars from multiple disciplines better frame the question and think through the variables, asserts social scientist and political economist Elinor Ostrom.

“Scholars have tended to develop simple theoretical models to analyze aspects of resource problems and to prescribe universal solutions,” Ostrom writes in a Perspective article appearing in the July 24 Science special section on complexity. [Read more →]

The Worldwide Governance Indicators (WGI) project reports aggregate and individual governance indicators for 212 countries and territories over the period 1996–2008, for six dimensions of governance:

• Voice and Accountability
• Political Stability and Absence of Violence
• Government Effectiveness
• Regulatory Quality
• Rule of Law
• Control of Corruption

[Read more →]

The International Institute for Sustainable Development – Reporting Services Division – provides a variety of multimedia informational resources for environment and sustainable development policymakers, including daily coverage of international negotiations, analyses and photos. Check it out at: http://www.iisd.ca/

wikiADAPT is a flexible, accessible, inclusive medium for enhancing the knowledge base of the climate adaptation community. The wiki is a collaborative project, and the idea is to have a community of contributors, not just users. For more information on wikiADAPT at:

http://weadapt.org.uk/wikiadapt/