Uusia työkaluja ympäristösovitteluun ja luonnonvarahallintaan

,

Kansainväliset opiskelijat hakivat tietoa ja käytännön kokemusta ympäristökonfliktien sovittelusta pohjoismaisen NOVA-yliopistoverkoston kurssilta.

– Meillä on paljon haasteita ympäristöpolitiikassa ja luonnonvarojen hallinnassa. Maa- ja metsätalouden on sopeuduttava ilmastonmuutokseen, ja myös sen vuoksi tarvitsemme uusia ympäristösovittelun työkaluja, osallistamisen menetelmiä ja vaikutuskeinoja, kertoo tohtoriopiskelija Estêvão Chambule kotimaansa Mosambikin tilanteesta.

Eduardo Mondlanen yliopistossa metsäteknologiaa opiskeleva Chambule haki uutta tietoa ja käytännön kokemusta ympäristöyhteistyöstä ja -sovittelusta pohjoismaisen NOVA-yliopistoverkoston kurssilta, joka pidettiin Itä-Suomen yliopiston Joensuun kampuksella 20.–24. elokuuta. Environmental collaboration and conflict resolution: The Crossroads of Forestry, Ecosystem Services and Wildlife -kurssin järjesti Itä-Suomen yliopisto yhteistyössä ALL-YOUTH- ja CORE-tutkimushankkeiden kanssa. Kurssille osallistui kolmisenkymmentä metsä- ja ympäristöalan perus- ja jatko-opiskelijaa 17 eri maasta.

NOVA-kurssin opiskelijat tulevat monenlaisista taustoista ja eri oppiaineista eri puolilta maailmaa. Tämä tuo haasteensa myös opettajille.

Kurssin opettajista professori Mara Hernández Meksikon CIDE-yliopistosta näkee vertaisoppimisen tärkeänä tapana jakaa tietoa ja käytännön kokemuksia ympäristösovittelusta moninaisen opiskelijaryhmän kesken. Olennaista on myös oppia yhdistämään teoriaa ja metodologisia tutkimusvälineitä todellisiin konfliktitilanteisiin.

Hernándezin mukaan merkittävät ympäristökonfliktit eri puolilla maailmaa liittyvät usein alueellisten ja paikallisten luonnonvarojen hyödyntämiseen kuten esimerkiksi öljyvaroihin Nigeriassa. Alueellisista haasteista ja konfliktien paikallisuudesta huolimatta sovittelukeinot voivat olla yhteisiä.

Lue koko artikkeli Itä-Suomen yliopiston sivulta!

New tools for environmental conflict resolution

,
asioiden yhteensovittaminen havinnollistettuna palapelin paloilla

In August 2018, a course on environmental collaboration and conflict resolution brought together 28 participants from 17 different countries at the University of Eastern Finland, Joensuu Campus. The course provided the participants with theory and practical skills in environmental collaboration and conflict resolution. 

One of the international teachers of the course, Professor Mara Hernández from the Centro de Investigación y Docencia Económicas (CIDE, Mexico), finds that peer leaning is an important way of exchanging knowledge and practical experiences of environmental conflict mediation within the diverse group of students. Moreover, it is essential to learn to integrate theory and methodological tools into real conflict situations.

According to Professor Hernández, major environmental conflicts all over the world are often related to the use of regional and local natural resources, such as oil resources in Nigeria, mining in Latin America or access to clean water worldwide.  Although challenges may be regional and conflicts local, similar tools to analyse the context and dynamics of conflict may apply, as well as certain attitudes and behaviours that favour understanding and integrating the diversity of needs and perspectives at play.

The course, entitled Environmental Collaboration and Conflict Resolution: The Crossroads of Forestry, Ecosystem Services and Wildlife, was organised by the School of Forest Sciences of the University of Eastern Finland in collaboration with the Department of Geographical and Historical Studies as well as the ALL-YOUTH and CORE research projects.

Read the whole article at the University of Eastern Finland website.

COREvents #2: Using collaborative knowledge practices in environmental planning and decision-making

,

How is trust in expertise generated and lost in environmental policy? How to overcome challenges in democratising environmental expertise? Why is joint fact-finding useful in complex planning and decision-making processes and how to apply it in practice?

The second COREvent explores the potential of inclusive knowledge practices to bridge the gap between science and environmental policy making and create a shared knowledge base that different actors consider relevant and reliable.

Three leading scholars, Prof. Susan Owens (Cambridge University, UK), Prof. Esther Turnhout (Wageningen University, the Netherlands) and Prof. Masahiro Matsuura (Meiji University, Japan) will share their insights on the ways to improve science-policy interface and broaden knowledge communities in environmental planning and policy-making context. You are warmly welcome to join the event!

Date: 4 September, 2018, 15:00-18:00

Place: Auditorium Laulujoutsen, 1st floor, The Finnish Environment Institute (SYKE), Mechelininkatu 34a, Helsinki

Programme

Prof. Susan Owens: Trust in Expertise for Environmental Policy

Prof. Esther Turnhout: Democratising environmental expertise: challenges and opportunities at the science-policy-society interface

Prof Masahiro Matsuura: Linking contested expert knowledge to collaborative governance: joint fact-finding

Discussion

Susan Owens is Emeritus Professor of Environment and Policy and Fellow Emerita of Newnham College, University of Cambridge. She has researched and published widely in the field of environmental governance. Her current projects are concerned with relations between science and politics, and with the role of argument, evidence, ideas and advice in policy formation and change. She has also worked extensively on interpretations of sustainable development in theory and practice, and has theorised connections between environmental planning conflicts (especially those concerned with contentious technologies and infrastructures) and developments in wider domains of public policy.

Esther Turnhout is Full Professor at the Forest and Nature Conservation Policy Group of Wageningen University, the Netherlands. Her research program The Politics of Environmental Knowledge includes research into the different roles experts play at the science policy interface, the political implications of policy relevant knowledge, and the participation of citizens in environmental knowledge making, also known as citizen science. Current research focuses on the UN Intergovernmental Platform for Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES), wildlife management and invasive species, auditing practices in forest management and the production of transparency and traceability in global value chains.

Masahiro Matsuura is Professor at the Graduate School of Governance Studies, Meiji University, Japan. He is also the head of Democracy Design Lab, a non-profit organization for promoting democratic engagements in Japan, and one of the co-founders of Consensus Building in Asia, a network of practitioners and scholars interested in collaborative processes in Asia. His research interests include the theory and practice of consensus building, negotiation and deliberative democracy in the urban and environmental planning sectors.

No registration is needed. If you are on Facebook, you can pick the event to your Facebook calendar.

You can see the video of the event online here.

During the event you can post comments and questions for the lecturers in Twitter with hashtag #corestn. 

COREvents is a series of open discussions, lectures and workshops organised by CORE project, funded by the Strategic Research Council at the Academy of Finland. CORE explores the potential of collaborative approaches to environmental planning and decision-making, with the mission to facilitate a collaborative turn in Finland. Welcome to discuss with us in Twitter with hashtags #corestn, #yhteishallinta and #strateginentutkimus!

COREvents #1 provided international insights in why collaboration and conflict resolution is needed and what makes it work. See the video here!

YHYS Colloquium – Call for papers: renewable energy, experiments and interventions

,

Are you researching energy-related issues e.g. regulation, support policies, energy democracy, citizen energy, or energy politics more widely? Or are you working with experiments and interventions in environmental social science? If yes, the 23th annual colloquium of the Finnish Society for Environmental Social Sciences has something special for you!

We have the pleasure to invite you to a workshop over struggles in renewable energy as well as to a collective reflection on experiments and interventions. The workshops take place at the colloquium under the theme Naturecultures:

NATURECULTURES  – Finnish Society for Environmental Social Sciences YHYS Colloquium November 22–23, 2018
VENUE: University of Lapland, Rovaniemi, Lapland, Sápmi, Finland
PROGRAMME: Keynote speeches, panel discussions, workshops and a pre-conference early career researcher meeting
WHAT TO DO NEXT: Send short proposals by September 3, 2018 – read more below

Workshop: Struggle over Renewable Energy

Energy is the lifeblood of economic activity and social welfare, while simultaneously being at the core of many of the most significant environmental problems. Stronger policy actions have been demanded in order to move the world onto a more sustainable energy path. Without doubt, this will not happen without rigorous resistance of those in the most powerful positions of current energy-related structures. Concerning renewable energy, solar and wind power have gained the biggest investments globally, Denmark and Germany, for instance, being massive investors. In Finland, while in recent years the operational environment has altered and the energy sector have gone through some significant changes, such as implementation of feed-in tariff in 2011 and wind power production being at the verge of becoming market competitive without subsidies, the power wielding in the sector seems to have changed little. For instance, the supported industrial scale production has kept citizen and community energy in the margins.

This workshop examines whether the ongoing changes have meant a redistribution of power in the energy sector or do the old power structures still persist. The session is structured as a workshop with no conventional presentations, but 5 minute pitch talk/presenter and a facilitated joint discussion. We invite researchers from multiple fields (academics from projects and incentives from Finland and around the world) to submit discussion papers as a preliminary material for attendees. We welcome papers dealing with various energy-related issues e.g. regulation, support policies, energy democracy and citizen energy, as well as papers operating with a more extensive perspective on the complex totality of energy politics.

Please send short (max 200 words) proposals by September 3, 2018 to Session Conveners:

Tapio Litmanen, tapio.litmanen (@jyu.fi), University of Jyväskylä
Miikka Salo, miikka.o.salo (@jyu.fi), University of Jyväskylä
Riikka Aro riikka.aro (@jyu.fi), University of Jyväskylä

Workshop: Collective reflection on experiments, experimentation and interventions in environmental social science

Experiments and interventions are being increasingly called upon to test and invent solutions to sustainability problems. They are encouraged as dynamic means to develop new technologies, practices, institutional designs or governance arrangements, but also to invite new actors to their invention. Experimental designs have a long tradition in laboratory sciences. In social sciences action research has applied interventions as a means to address wicked social problems. Lately, in transition studies experiments have been highlighted as an engine for sustainability transitions. Science and Technology Studies remind that experimentation should keep as attentive for new imaginaries. All these various methodological approaches evoke rather different imaginaries for experiments, interventions and their outcomes.

In this working group we want to encourage discussion on the varying uses, motives and outcomes of experiments and interventions in environmental social science. We invite reflections on 1) varying experimental settings, tools, methods and concepts; 2) their different societal outcomes; 3) experiments and interventions as means to mobilize and create new imaginaries and collectives; 4) the changing role of research/ers in experimental settings and in interventions; 5) ethics of experimentation and intervention research.

The working group is organized around reflective talks followed by a collective discussion. Each participant is welcomed to give a reflection on their uses and outcomes of experiments, experimental research or interventions. The reflections can be based upon practical experience or theoretical elaborations. Creative ways to give the talk are welcome. We devote most of the time in the working group to joint discussions.

Please send short synopsis of your argument (max 250 words) to the conveners by September 3, 2018. We aim to compile a commentary on the joint discussion to the versuslehti.fi.

Session Conveners:
Maija Faehnle (@ymparisto.fi), University of Tampere, Finnish Environment Institute (SYKE)
Juha Hiedanpää (@luke.fi), Natural Resource Institute, Luke
Minna Kaljonen (@ymparisto.fi), Finnish Environment Institute (SYKE)
Helena Leino (@uta.fi), University of Tampere
Taru Peltola (@ymparisto.fi), Finnish Environment Institute (SYKE)

Check out the other workshops and read more on the YHYS Colloqvium website.

COREvents #1: Collaboration and conflict resolution in environmental decision-making – why is it needed and what makes it work?

,

How could today’s complex and controversial problems such as those related to land use, energy or use of natural resources be solved wisely and fairly?

In this first COREvent, two world class experts on collaboration, prof. Pieter Glasbergen (Netherlands) and prof. Michael Brown (Canada), will share their knowledge on how good results have been achieved by adoption of specific collaborative approaches to planning and decision-making.

In Finland, the potential of such approaches is underused. What could we learn from international practice? Welcome to get inspired by the lectures and join the discussion! 

Date: 29 May, 2018, 13:00-16:00

Place: The Swedish School of Economics (Hanken), Auditorium Futurum, Arkadiankatu 22, Helsinki

Programme

Prof. Michael Brown, Consensus Building Institute: Mediation and Collaborative Dialogue: Tools to Address Natural Resource Disputes

Prof. Pieter Glasbergen, Utrecht University and the Netherlands Open University: Foundations of the Partnership Paradigm and Beyond

Discussion

Michael Brown is Director of the Consensus Building Institute’s Canada Practice, Professor of Practice in Natural Resource Conflict Mediation at McGill University, and former Senior Mediation Expert in Natural Resource and Land Conflicts for the United Nations Standby Mediation Team. For more than 25 years, he has worked on conflict prevention, mediation, and stakeholder engagement regarding natural resources, land, environmental issues, and matters involving local or indigenous communities. He works on projects and disputes, institutional capacity, systems design, and policy. He has lived and worked internationally for many years, and held numerous leadership and senior advisory positions with the United Nations and other international organizations. His work is focused largely on international and Canadian projects.

Pieter Glasbergen is emeritus Professor of Environmental Studies; Policy and Management at Utrecht University and the Netherlands Open University. Since 2011 he is honorary professor Governance for Sustainable Development at Maastricht University. His research focus is on governance for sustainable development. The articles, reports, and books that he published include both theoretical studies on policy and governance and applied policy research. His main research is on global cross-sector partnerships for sustainable development. He was the first professor of environmental policy in the Netherlands. He chairs the Maastricht-Utrecht-Nijmegen Program on Partnerships (www.munpop.nl) and is the founder of several teaching programmes and research program Governance for Sustainable Development at Utrecht University. Besides academic positions he has experience as a council member and vice-mayor in the city of Culemborg.

No registration is needed. If you are on Facebook, you can pick the event to your Facebook calendar.

Welcome!

You can also follow the event online and see the video afterwards here.

Join the discussion in social media:

#corestn
#yhteishallinta
#strateginentutkimus

COREvents is a series of open discussions, lectures and workshops organised by CORE project, funded by the Strategic Research Council at the Academy of Finland. CORE explores the potential of collaborative approaches to environmental planning and decision-making, with the mission to facilitate a collaborative turn in Finland.