Collaboration and modelling – tools for integration in the Motueka catchment, New Zealand

A conceptual model of integrated catchment management (ICM) is presented in which ICM is defined as a process to achieve both ecosystem resilience and community resilience. It requires not only biophysical knowledge developed by hydrologists and other environmental scientists, but an active partnership with catchment communities and stakeholders to break the ‘paradigm lock’ described by the UNESCO-HELP programme.This paper reports observations from ICM research in the Motueka HELP demonstration basin in the upper South Island of New Zealand. The Motueka occupies 2 170 km2 of land yet the river effects are felt on the seabed more than 50 km2 offshore, so the true ‘catchment’ is larger. A hydrologically temperate mountainous catchment with horticultural, agricultural, plantation forestry and conservation land uses, the Motueka also hosts an internationally recognised brown trout fishery. Land and water management issues driving ICM research include water allocation conflicts between instream and irrigation water uses, impacts on water quality of runoff from intensifying land uses, catchment impacts on coastal productivity and aquaculture, and how to manage catchment processes in an integrated way that addresses cumulative effects of development.Collaboration with catchment stakeholders can be viewed as having two primary purposes:• Building knowledge and commitment of resource users towards sustainable resource management (collaborative learning)• Stakeholder involvement in resource management itself (governance).Examples are presented of a Collaborative Learning Group on Sediment learning of their differing perspectives on fine sediment impacts, and a Catchment Landcare Group working with scientists to improve water quality in their river. Success factors for water user committees making decisions about water resource management include creating opportunities to communicate and build trust, share scientific knowledge on the issue, and willingness to compromise. Functioning catchment groups have potential to take on delegated governance responsibility for meeting agreed water quality and other community goals.Finally a scenario modelling framework IDEAS (Integrated Dynamic Environmental Assessment System) is presented, in which environmental indicators such as nutrient fluxes are simulated alongside socio-economic indicators such as job numbers and catchment GDP for a range of land and marine use options.Keywords: integrated catchment management (ICM), resilience, HELP, UNESCO, water governance, Landcare, scenario modelling, collaborative learning, water allocation, water user committees, catchment groups, watershed managemen

Systems Thinking in Practice: Participatory Modeling as a Foundation for Integrated Approaches to Health

One Health (OH), EcoHealth (EH), and Planetary Health (PH) share an interest in transdisciplinary efforts that bring together scientists, citizens, government and private sectors to implement contextualized actions that promote adaptive health management across human, animal and ecosystem interfaces. A key operational element underlying these Integrated Approaches to Health (IAH) is use of Systems Thinking as a set of tools for integration. In this paper we discuss the origins and epistemology of systems thinking and argue that participatory modeling, informed by both systems theory and expertise in facilitating engagement and social learning, can help ground IAH theoretically and support its development. Participatory modeling is iterative and adaptive, which is necessary to deal with complexity in practice. Participatory modeling (PM) methods actively involve affected interests and stakeholders to ground the field of inquiry in a specific social-ecological context. Furthermore, PM processes act to reconcile the diverse understandings of the empirical world that stem from divergent discipline and community viewpoints. In this perspective article, we argue that PM can support systems thinking in practice and is essential for IAH implementation. Accordingly we invite PH, OH, and EH practitioners to systematically incorporate specialists in systems science and social engagement and facilitation. This will enable the appropriate contextualization of research practice and interventions, and ensure a balanced representation of the roles and relationships of medical, biological, mathematical, and social disciplines. For completeness, funding schemes supporting IAH need to follow the same iterative, adaptive, and participative processes to accompany IAH projects throughout their implementation

Building capacity for social learning in environmental management

This thesis focuses on the increasingly recognised problem of how to build capacity for social learning into environmental management initiatives that address complex multistakeholder issues. It examines the proposition that participatory and development (P & D) forms of evaluation, when integrated into environmental management initiatives, can be a useful vehicle for building this capacity. In doing so it addresses three specific challenges. The first concerns the competing definitions and purposes of the concept of social learning in the current academic and practice literature. Social learning has emerged as an important concept in the discourse around addressing complex environmental management issues. However, the multiple venues in which social learning appears have led to divergence in terminology, and difficulties for the theoretical and practical development of the concept. The thesis responds to this with an analysis of literature and a synthesis of ideas into a proposed framework for translating this normative concept into practice. This involves four interlinked areas for focusing awareness and developing practice in complex-problemsolving situations: 1. How to managing group participation and interaction 2. How to work with and improve the social and institutional conditions for complex problem solving 3. How to improve the learning of individuals, groups and organisations 4. How to enable systems thinking and the integration of different information The literature also reveals more has been written about the meaning of social learning, or whether social learning has occurred in any given situation, than about the ‘how to’ of social learning, suggesting the relationship between practice and theory is incoherent. While new approaches in evaluation offer mechanisms by which the ideas of social learning can become a basis for practice, the second challenge addressed in this thesis is an absence of established connection between social learning and evaluation. The thesis responds to this with an examination of the theoretical and practice literature on P & D evaluation and a proposed match with specific social learning capacity development needs of environmental initiatives. This involves four arenas in which (P & D) evaluation approaches and social learning can intersect: 1. Scoping the environmental-management-problem situation 2. Supporting the capacity to enquire and problem solve 3. Supporting the management of programmes or interventions in the problem situation 4. Research and development that facilitates the growth of theoretical and practical knowledge about addressing complex-environmental-management situations The third challenge is the limited availability of case history and practical experience of building capacity for social learning in environmental management contexts, or using P & D evaluation to contribute to improving environmental management initiatives. This thesis examines the practical experience of using P & D evaluation to support social learning through four case stories from the Collaborative Learning for Environmental Management group (CLEM) based at Landcare Research. As these cases were concurrent with this thesis they represented an opportunity to put new ideas about social learning into practice. The cases highlight three factors important to the pragmatic potential of using P & D evaluation to support the social learning capacity of a given situation :(i) the evaluator, their skill, values, and role; (ii) the mandate and location of the evaluation; and (iii) organisational disposition to learning and change. Further guidelines for working with P & D evaluation to support social learning are to (i) find champions who are interested, willing, and able to make change happen within their organisation; (ii) review the social learning challenges of the situation; and (iii) use this contextual analysis to design an appropriate response that can take forward some aspect of the social learning potential of the situation. Skills, understanding and motivation to work in the field of building capacity for social learning remain a limiting factor in the New Zealand environmental management sector. In conclusion I propose a reconsideration of what is currently regarded as core expertise in environmental management, rejecting the primacy of biophysical science, and planning, and rather seeking proficiency in integration, facilitation, systems thinking and knowledge brokerage. Furthermore, social learning is a sophisticated concept of high practical value. However, to be a conscious framework of use to resolving resource use and environmental management dilemmas there must be greater literacy about the core elements of social learning and their relationship to the problem situation and its practical application requires rigorous attention that is responsive to the individual conditions of the situation

Multiple use management of New Zealand's indigenous forests; a rose by any other name...

Multiple use forest management was a concept imported to New Zealand from the United States in response to competing demands upon the state owned indigenous forests resource. It was later abandoned in favour of management under single objectives, and the Department of Conservation assumed control of the majority of the indigenous forest estate. In this report the concept of 'multiple use' and the reasons for its abandonment are reconsidered, to ascertain any contribution it may make to management of the indigenous forest resource today. The context, in terms of historic influences and attitudes, in which multiple use was interpreted, is identified as being as important as the theoretical base of the concept itself. An examination of current environmental attitudes and ethical directions reveals a mix of values and the emergence of sustainability as a reconciling concept. An analysis of the Department of Conservation as the organisation with principal responsibility for interpreting national policy on the indigenous forests, reveals some internal inconsistencies as a symptom of the dichotomy in environmental attitudes and suggests some blockages to the Department embracing a broad definition of sustainability. In light of these findings a deconstruction of the concept of multiple use offers a possible intermediary link between sustainability and the Department of Conservation's management of the state owned indigenous forests

Participatory modelling with an influence matrix and the calculation of whole-of-system sustainability values

This paper documents the results of a participatory modelling trial involving an influence matrix with a group of researchers and community members in the Motueka Catchment of New Zealand. In this trail, the influence matrix was used to calculate whole-of-system sustainability-values used to: (i) guide system dynamic model development, (ii) build understanding about the functional role of system factors, and (iii) contribute to method and theory development in a sustainability research context. This paper provides: (i) an historical account of the theoretical development of the influence matrix, (ii) theoretical justification for the use of this tool in the estimation of whole-of-system sustainability values, and (iii) a stepwise account of how the method has been trialled in a New Zealand case study, including an evaluation of its limitations and areas where future research is needed.cross impact; Frederic Vester; influence matrix; integrated catchment management; matrix forecasting; Motueka Catchment; New Zealand; participatory modelling; sustainability values; whole-of-system; sustainable development; system dynamics.

Changing consumption patterns with respect to the transport sector in New Zealand: A recipe for society crumble: RESM Group project

Agenda 21, the principle document emerging from the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development in 1992, highlights amongst other issues the need for an investigation into the unsustainable consumption patterns of the developed world. Titls report makes a contribution to the debate regarding the consumption patterns of New Zealand by investigating the transport sector in particular as a major component of New Zealand's consumption patterns. The situation in Christchurch regarding road transport is considered, from which emerges some principle barriers to a change of consumption patterns. These include institutional fragmentation and lack of coordination in planning and decision making; lack of political will and substantial investment in the status quo; the dominance of one particular economic paradigm; and a social and psychological dependence on current transport systems that, coupled with the complexity of the transport issues, results in a failure to see transport as a consumption problem. The insights gained from looking at transport as an issue of consumption can be transferred to consumption patterns in general. It becomes obvious that whilst institutional change is a desirable step in the pathway to more sustainable consumption this cannot occur in isolation of social value change. This value change is part of a cyclic interaction between the public and the state and can be stimulated in a number of ways using education, the media and greater public participation in decision making