IFIs undertake financing when their environmental and social quality criteria are met

The main content of this article is to describe “climate finance” and “green finance” in detail, as implemented by International Financial Institutions (IFIs) and their pertinent environmental and social project quality criteria. The approach of this article is to perceive and understand environment-related activities of international financial institutions (IFIs) as part of a societal learning process, and consequently to describe their “environmental and social project quality criteria” as an expression of such ongoing societal learning processes. What can our readership, related to global finance, profit from such a comparison? Against the expectation of many, IFIs already implemented efficient rules for redirecting global funds to climate and environmental projects — and have thus performed a successful “act of societal learning”. The “environmental and social project quality criteria” have played a crucial role in convincing economic and administrative actors (i. e., learners in our context) to behave in a climatecompatible manner. Thus, the lesson can be drawn from the domain of “societal learning” to the domain of “individual learning” that clear and transparent criteria sets are decisive for a rule-based societal transformation. This article shows that a criteriabased selection process provides the best results for long-term societal interest; in this case climate protection.

Die Corona-Pandemie II

The ongoing COVID-19 pandemic has confronted us with constantly new challenges. We need to browse new inventories of scientific knowledge to reflect on previous experiences and thus facilitate societal learning. In line with the first volume on the COVID-19 pandemic in this series, contributions from different disciplines and fields of practice create an awareness of the complexity of this crisis and help us to understand the diversity of challenges it poses. The first part focuses on philosophical, sociological and psychological problem diagnoses, the second on reactive strategies in the fields of medicine, nursing care, the economy and law. After taking a look at religious contexts and fields of practice, leading experts from the healthcare sector share their experiences of the COVID-19 pandemic. With contributions by Mahmoud Abdallah, Désirée Amschl-Strablegg, Cornelia Baptist-Kröpfl, Herbert Beiglböck, Ulrike Berdnik, Alois Birklbauer, Anneliese Derkits, Reinhold Esterbauer, Franziska Grossschädl, Katharina Heimerl, Andreas Heller, Marie-Christin Hinteregger, Hartmann Jörg Hohensinner, Elisabeth Horvath, Isabella Jonveaux, Anna-Christina Kainradl, Ulla Kriebernegg, Wolfgang Kröll, Ulrike Kylianek, Martin M. Lintner, Saskia Löser, Christa Lohrmann, Sandra Müller, Gerold Muhri, Manfred Novak, Sabine Petritsch, Eva Peyker, Michaela Pfadenhauer, Barbara Pichler, Johann Platzer, Lisa Pongratz, Maria Puntigam, Elisabeth Reitinger, Hans-Walter Ruckenbauer, Hellmut Samonigg, Walter Schaupp, Georg Tafner, Christa Tax, Wolfgang Toller and Jürgen Wallner.

nr="17"Klimakrise und gesellschaftliches Lernen

Zusammenfassung: Der Beitrag fragt zunächst in einem Rückblick in historische Kontexte nach dem Verhältnis von Bildung und gesellschaftlichem Lernen und nach Gründen für ihren internen Zusammenhang, der sich insbesondere im Begriff der Mündigkeit zeigen lässt. Nach einem Blick auf die Geschichte des Themas Klimawandel/Klimakrise in öffentlicher Wahrnehmung und politischem Handeln geht der Beitrag den Gründen für die so offenkundige Differenz von Wissen und Handeln nach. Die wichtigsten dieser Gründe, so zeigt sich, lassen sich im Begriff der imperialen Lebensweise bündeln und als solche für Lernprozesse reflektieren. Im nächsten Schritt begründen die Autoren, warum sie statt einer ,,ökologischen Modernisierung“ eine ,,sozialökologische Transformation“ für den richtigeren Weg der Krisenbearbeitung halten, und sie legen dar, welche Imperative sich für eine sozialökologische Transformation angeben lassen. Abschließend führt der Beitrag die in allen Schritten der Argumentation präsenten Blicke auf gesellschaftliches Lernen unter dem Aspekt einer Wiederaneignung gesellschaftlicher Zukunft zusammen.Abstract: Looking back at historical contexts, the article first asks about the relationship between education and societal learning processes, as well as the reasons behind their internal connection which can be shown in the idea of autonomy. After taking a look at the history of climate change/climate crisis in public perception and political action, the article explores the reasons for the obvious difference between knowledge and action. The most important of these, it turns out, can be analysed as imperial way of living and as such critically reflected for learning processes. Next, the authors explain why they consider a “socio-ecological transformation” rather than an “ecological modernization” to be the better way of dealing with the crisis and list the imperatives for a socio-ecological transformation. Finally, the article unites various views of social learning at all steps of the argument under the banner of re-appropriation of the future of society.

Conceptualising Quality in Spatial Planning

Quality discourses help to legitimate professions. This article therefore addresses the crucial question of how quality can be framed in spatial planning. Based on the context of spatial planning in Austria, this article introduces a normative framework for quality in spatial planning that considers the four dimensions of content, planning methodology, planning process and legal compliance, and shows howthese four dimensions are interlinked. Furthermore, it discusses how quality can be enhanced by concerted governmental action and further education for planners. It is argued that planners might need to adopt a new role as 'teachers' in planning processes to facilitate societal learning processes in order to raise the quality of planning. Finally, it is concluded that the quality debate in spatial planning can be useful to calibrate expectations of planners and society to directly influence sustainable spatial development through spatial planning, to communicate achievements in planning, to raise awareness for sustainable spatial development, and to improve legal frameworks, planning methodology, and planners' training and further education.

Preventing International Crises through Consensus Projects

This article presents a theoretical description highlighting how consensus can constructed to avoid international crises. Perspectives onto reality are the elemental units of our world. They are changed through learning processes. Societal learning can enlarge and approximate spaces of understanding. Social spaces are a type of “social capital”. Design of learning procedures refers to the design of structures in time, space and in the space of opinions that facilitates multi-perspectivist and multidisciplinary understanding of involved stakeholders. In a series of cases for learning settings, especially dialogic intercultural learning is identified as a key path to a harmonious development of nations. The following section of this case dwells on several cases of cooperative learning through dialogue: the UniNet network in Kyrgyzstan and Nepal, Global Studies, the ESD forum, the Environmental Systems Analysis Curriculum USW, and the European Union Twinning tool applied in Slovakia, Slovenia, Armenia, Georgia and Azerbaijan. Keywords: Perspectives, Constructivist, Consensus, Approximation, Training, Twinning, Interdisciplinary, Intercultural.

Dutch Delta Resiliency by Societal Learning Introducing the Intertwined Process of Daily Practice and Theory Development

The Wester coastal Delta zone of the Netherlands is the relatively more crowded area of the country where ten of the seventeen million people live. The governmental prognosis is that this number of people will increase steadily in the coming decennia, unless the threat of climate-change seawater level rising. This is the picture in more Delta zones globally what makes the topic of resiliency for these delta-areas of importance. Approaches of resiliency are often dominated by governmental rescue planning and believe in technology solutions, while in the process the behaviour of people can make the difference in overcoming climate-change impact disasters. In the struggle against high water storming and flooding, the Dutch people prove this by developing societal resilient behaviour in a broad spectrum of activities. Post-PhD research on Dutch resilient behaviour in the in 1016-flooded Zaanstreek-Waterland area near the city of Amsterdam confirms that. Recently research by questionnaire among citizens in this region shows that people have favour for shared responsibility with government and related professional organizations. The Dutch examples of societal resiliency carried by people also show a action-learning perspective intertwined with governmental contingency planning. Therewith the Dutch practice shows a positive cross-fertilization of practice and knowledge development.

Introduction

The introduction presents the two-fold purpose of this book: (a) to demonstrate that the self is not determined by society as an outside cause but shaping society in its own self-organization and (b) to investigate the extent to which the self is democratically organized. The presented positioning theory provides an alternative to both Antony Greenwald’s totalitarian ego and Marvin Minsky’s depiction of the self as a bureaucratic organization. As an analogy to Amartya’s conception of democracy as a societal learning process, the democratic self is described as an internal learning process in which parts of the self (so-called I-positions) are continuously organized and reorganized in fields of tension between dialogue and social power. The presented theory is characterized as a “bridging theory” that explores the links between theories from different disciplines with the intention to develop a theory of a self that is continuously involved in processes of positioning, counter-positioning, and repositioning. The content of the 8 chapters of the book are summarized.

‘Rewriting sociality’ – sociographicity as a concept for comprehending emancipatory practice and social change

The aim of the paper is to highlight the capacity of social actors, groups and communities to critically reflect on sociality and the question of how the spaces we live in together are created and constructed. In doing so, the contribution explores the interplay between individual and collective modes of learning. The author argues in this context that theories dealing with the dialectical relationship between structures and subjects somewhat overlook the relevance of civil spheres. Drawing on empirical research of social movements, emancipatory practices and social change, the author developed a theoretical tool which allows mapping processes of ‘rewriting sociality’ and its relation to biographical learning as well as community and societal learning. The article reviews biographicity as a rich and generative concept and will pay particular attention to questions of intersubjectivity and the social world as a relational sphere. Finally, the paper focuses on aspects of social movement practices and questions concerning the reproduction and transformation of social conventions and normative assumptions.