scholarly journals Stakeholders’ engagement platform to identify sustainable pathways for the development of multi-functional agroforestry in Guadeloupe, French West Indies

Author(s):  
Carla Barlagne ◽  
Marie Bézard ◽  
Emilie Drillet ◽  
Arnaud Larade ◽  
Jean-Louis Diman ◽  
...  

AbstractSocial innovation is critical in shaping human-forest relationships and how farmers and scientists engage with each other to design sustainability transitions. This paper reports on the outputs of a participatory stakeholders’ engagement platform that was designed to draw on local farmers’ knowledge and experience in identifying sustainable pathways for the development of multi-functional agroforestry in Guadeloupe. Two participatory workshops were organised that aimed to gain insights into the reality faced by farmers, in particular: (i) their vision of the future, needs and aspirations; (ii) their understanding of barriers and enablers in relation to the sustainability challenges they are confronted with and; (iii) their framing of human–environment relationships in socio-ecological systems. Outputs of the activities were synthetized by the research team and represented graphically for analysis. Results show that while farmers envision prosperous multifunctional forest farms in the future, they have to face complex challenges that require solutions at multiple scales and suggest different types of innovation: social, institutional, market-based and technical. Farmers saw themselves as being part of the socio-ecological system and as custodians of the natural environment. We discuss the implications of those results in the context of the absence of a system of innovation for agroforestry in Guadeloupe and highlight the opportunity for a innovation ecosystem thinking approach that integrates better the agricultural and forestry sectors, but also between actors and scales of governance. Implementation of a Stewardship status would enable farmers achieve their vision and embrace a custodian role vis-à-vis the agroforest. Embededment of the stakeholders’ engagement platform and its enabling processes in the innovation ecosystem is key to achieve those objectives.

Author(s):  
Kofi Akamani

Since the late 1980s the idea of sustainable development has been gaining widespread recognition as a guiding framework for policies on development and the environment. However, the concept of sustainable development has received a number of criticisms, including its over-emphasis on meeting human needs through economic growth, as well as its failure to recognize dynamic human-environment interactions. In response to these shortfalls, the concepts of resilience and adaptive governance have emerged as alternative perspectives for pursuing sustainable development. Resilience in social-ecological systems emphasizes the capacity of coupled human-environment systems to deal with change while continuing to develop. Adaptive governance relies on diverse and nested institutional mechanisms for connecting actors across multiple scales to manage conflicts and uncertainties in ecosystem management processes. However, the ethical dimensions of resilience and adaptive governance have not received enough attention. A promising ethical perspective for guiding policies on human-environment interactions is the philosophy of deep ecology which highlights the need for recognition of the intrinsic values of all living things, as well as the nurturing of ecological and cultural diversity. We argue that an integration of the principles of deep ecology and adaptive governance provides a complementary set of ethical principles and institutional attributes that offers better prospects for pursuing sustainable development in the era of the Anthropocene. The implications of this integrative agenda include: adoption of a holistic conception of dynamic human-environment interactions; recognition of diverse knowledge systems through an anti-reductionist approach to knowledge; promotion of long term sustainability through respect for ecological and cultural diversity; and embracing decentralization and local autonomy. We further illustrate this integrative agenda using the management of protected areas as a case study.


1994 ◽  
Vol 161 ◽  
pp. 385-400
Author(s):  
B.G. Marsden

Past surveys are described in the logical sequence of (1) comets visually, (2) asteroids visually, (3) asteroids photographically and (4) comets photographically. Plots show the evolution of asteroid surveys in terms of visual discovery magnitude and ecliptic latitude, and similarities and differences between surveys for the different types of body are discussed. The paper ends with a brief discussion of more recent discovery methods and some thoughts on the future.


Author(s):  
Anna Birney

AbstractMore and more people and organisations who are addressing complex sustainability challenges are turning to systems change practices. They are looking to get to grips with complexity and to better understand how to use their resources, position and influence to address the challenges. These people are working across civil society, philanthropy, business, international development, government and beyond. Many hope that adopting this emerging practice will give them the answers to the long held questions of – How do I know where to intervene? How do I know that what I am doing is the ‘right’ thing? Am I using my resources for their greatest effect? Once we have set ambitious goals around issues like inequality and climate change, how do I know I am creating impact?. In 1999 Donella Meadows wrote a paper entitled Leverage points: places to intervene in a system to help translate the work of systems dynamics into understanding where a small amount of energy might have a greater effect. Ever since, practitioners have been chasing these elusive leverage points trying to understand how this might be made useful and practical. There is, however, no silver bullet to changing a system. At Forum for the Future and through the School of System Change, we work on a number of different projects such as the Protein Challenge and Boundless Roots Community as well as collaborate on, coach and co-inquire with others such as the Marine CoLAB, Oneless, Lankelly Chase Foundation. In this paper we seek to build on systems change ideas and theories, using Forum for the Future experience of working with these ideas in practice, and offer actionable knowledge (Coghlan 2007) to other change makers who are grappling with these questions. This paper provides four qualities that help us understand the dynamics of a changing system, and how potential in these dynamics might be identified and be translated into strategy and interventions. I explore and illustrate these through cases and examples and raise the question about how change makers might value what we measure when understanding impact in the context of a changing system.


2021 ◽  
pp. 875697282199534
Author(s):  
Natalya Sergeeva ◽  
Graham M. Winch

This article develops a framework for applying organizational narrative theory to understand project narratives that potentially perform and change the future. Project narratives are temporal but often get repeated throughout the project life cycle to stabilize meaning, and could be about project mission, vision, identity, value creation, and so forth. Project narratives have important implications for organizational identity and image crafting. This article differentiates among different types of project narratives in relation to a project life cycle, providing case studies of project narratives on three major UK rail projects. We then set out the future research agenda into project narrative work.


2001 ◽  
Vol 101 (1) ◽  
pp. 19-31 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gerard Goggin ◽  
Catherine Griff

Much of the present debate about content on the internet revolves around how to control the distribution of different sorts of harmful or undesirable material. Yet there are considerable issues about whether sufficient sorts of desired cultural content will be available, such as ‘national’, ‘Australian’ content. In traditional broadcasting, regulation has been devised to encourage or mandate different types of content, where it is believed that the market will not do so by itself. At present, such regulatory arrangements are under threat in television, as the Productivity Commission Broadcasting Inquiry final report has noted. But what of the future for certain types of content on the internet? Do we need specific regulation and policy to promote the availability of content on the internet? Or is such a project simply irrelevant in the context of gradual but inexorable media convergence? Is regulating for content just as quixotic and fraught with peril as regulating of content from a censorship perspective often appears to be? In this article, we consider the case of Australian content for broadband technologies, especially in relation to film and video, and make some preliminary observations on the promotion and regulation of internet content.


2021 ◽  
Vol 103 (3) ◽  
pp. 54-57
Author(s):  
Carol D. Lee

If schools are to prepare students to participate more productively in civic life, schools will need to ensure that they have opportunities to practice the skills of civic reasoning, argues Carol Lee. Yet schools are challenged by the limits in the curriculum and the difficulty of addressing the different types of prior knowledge that students bring to the classroom. Lee suggests that when schools build their content and pedagogy on current understandings of human learning, they will be better able to enable students from all backgrounds to practice building the understandings they need, now and in the future.


2021 ◽  
Vol ahead-of-print (ahead-of-print) ◽  
Author(s):  
Duygu Turker ◽  
Y. Serkan Ozmen

PurposeThis study aims to analyze how corporate social responsibility (CSR) initiatives address sustainability challenges by focusing on the congruence between process and outcome variables of CSR.Design/methodology/approachFollowing a theory-driven model, a content analysis was conducted on 63 award-winning social responsibility projects.FindingsThe study reveals that the adoption of a proactive approach during environmental assessment, which manifests itself in a focus on emerging sustainability challenges with a deeper interest, affects the centrality of social responsibility initiative by increasing its learning and partnership potential and leads organizations to produce radical innovations.Practical implicationsThe findings provide a valuable understanding for practitioners on organizing the decision making process of CSR initiatives in order to unlock its learning potentials.Social implicationsRadically innovative projects with their higher levels of proactivity, centrality and generalizability are better than incremental ones at transferring and integrating company resources and capabilities to address emergent sustainability challenges.Originality/valueThe impact of CSR on society and nature has been a neglected area of literature. To reduce this gap, this study analyzes how the configuration of process variables shapes the outcomes of socially responsible initiatives on sustainability. It also provides a new typology on the relevance of CSR initiatives to company mission/model that can show how CSR can unlock organizational learning and innovation potentials.


Author(s):  
Feras K. Alfosail ◽  
Amal Z. Hajjaj ◽  
Mohammad I. Younis

We investigate theoretically and experimentally the two-to-one internal resonance in micromachined arch beams, which are electrothermally tuned and electrostatically driven. By applying an electrothermal voltage across the arch, the ratio between its first two symmetric modes is tuned to two. We model the nonlinear response of the arch beam during the two-to-one internal resonance using the multiple scales perturbation method. The perturbation solution is expanded up to three orders considering the influence of the quadratic nonlinearities, cubic nonlinearities, and the two simultaneous excitations at higher AC voltages. The perturbation solutions are compared to those obtained from a multimode Galerkin procedure and to experimental data based on deliberately fabricated Silicon arch beam. Good agreement is found among the results. Results indicate that the system exhibits different types of bifurcations, such as saddle node and Hopf bifurcations, which can lead to quasi-periodic and potentially chaotic motions.


2010 ◽  
pp. 254-264 ◽  
Author(s):  
Eckhard Schulze-Fielitz
Keyword(s):  

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