Local to global competencies for studying climate change: knowledge co-creation in the Berg-Breede catchment

Partnering Institute: African Climate and Development Initiative , 老虎机游戏_pt老虎机-平台*官网 of Cape Town 

Project lead: Prof Sheona Shackleton 

About the project: Amongst other research programmes, ACDI works in the Berg-Breede catchment area through several transdisciplinary research projects adopting a landscape approach to understanding climate-development nexus issues (Ziervogel et al. 2017). In this CoP, the ACDI will integrate lessons from its research into its formal and informal postgraduate teaching. It will also draw in lessons from national and regional transdisciplinary knowledge-sharing networks and partnerships addressing climate change to resource multi-dimensional capacity needs in the field across scales and sectors. These can help review formal and informal learning on climate-development nexus issues occurring at different scales, amongst agents of differing degrees of power and agency, and concerning different types of knowledges. Such a review would shed valuable insights into the competency needs of postgraduates entering the workplace and society, and hence would inform curricula change. ACDI’s transdisciplinary research and teaching practices offer an opportunity to critically review how different forms of knowledges across academia, policy, practice and society are valued, built and shared. These knowledges include the theoretical and technical knowledges of academia; the practical and tacit knowledges of working professionals in policy and practice; and the ‘common sense’, indigenous and local knowledges of civil society. These need to be reviewed for inclusion in curriculum innovations and transdisciplinary sustainable development actions and for their value in transformative social learning. The project will contribute to the theme on climate action.

The study will leverage off past, current and planned research projects using theBerg-Breede catchment as a case study. The study will bring together project leaders, students, lecturers, graduates and researchers to synthesise, review and reflect on their work and experiences in the catchment area in order to co-explore issues affecting the integration of ACDI postgraduate students in the site, and to identify lessons for curricula change. These projects include:

ARUA-CD: ACDI is the Secretariat in an African Research Universities. Alliance Centre of Excellence in Climate and Development, together with the 老虎机游戏_pt老虎机-平台*官网 of Nairobi and 老虎机游戏_pt老虎机-平台*官网 of Ghana. ‘Climate Resilient Landscapes’ is a pillar of the Centre’s research agenda. Landscapes, whether urban or rural, can be viewed as complex, place-based, social ecological systems that reflect history and are characterized by diverse and interconnected elements that range from different land-uses to less tangible, social dimensions such as cultural, symbolic, and spiritual values, as well as aspects of a sense of place and identity. Landscapes are effectively social constructs and the outcome of the interactions between people, land and ecosystems, institutions, values, and knowledge. The Centre recently was awarded a Worldwide Universities Network grant to expand this research theme, with long-term catchment scale ‘living’ landscape case study sites in South Africa, Ghana and Kenya for comparable work. The South African site is the Berg-Breede catchment.

Water-Energy-Food nexus: ACDI leads a research project funded by the Water Research Commission, “Exploring the Evidence of Water-Energy-Food Nexus Linkages to Sustainable Local Livelihoods and Wellbeing in South Africa”. The project uses three case study catchment areas in South Africa that span rural and urban communities, to explore how the WEF Nexus plays out 'on the ground' and mediates the livelihoods and wellbeing experienced by different actors at the local scale. This is being done by trialing a household resource modelling approach. One of these case studies is the Berg-Breede catchment.

Socio-Economic Benefits of Ecological Infrastructure (SEBEI): ACDI is a partner in a transdisciplinary research project exploring the links between investments in ecological infrastructures and socio-economic benefits at the household and community level, which uses two South African catchments as case studies. One of these is the Berg-Breede catchment. The project includes the development of a social learning network and twice yearly transdisciplinary workshops which bring together researchers and stakeholders drawn from government, NGOs, conservation agencies, private sector and communities involved in EI interventions with a strong representation of actors from all the research sites. The purpose of the transdisciplinary learning network and workshops is to ensure that the knowledge created in the project is solution-oriented, socially robust and transferable to societal practice. Each adopts principles of collaborative social learning and capacity development of different stakeholders: from policy-makers and practitioners learning through engagement activities, to youth development through a structured support programme. The task of the proposed research is to explore this learning and its relevance to formal curricula of post-graduate students in HE in courseware and research, and non-curricula training such as postgraduate summer schools on transdisciplinary research. Climate change teaching in higher education needs to account for diverse career trajectories of graduates entering different scales and sectors – to enable graduates to conduct high-quality and ethical transdisciplinary research, and to ultimately transcend paradigms that permeate particular contexts in order to facilitate integration and collaboration

 The proposed work has four main objectives:

• To map out different processes the projects are using to learning and knowledge co-production in the Berg-Breede catchment, including the multiple knowledge types and the challenges encountered, and hence, what lessons can be drawn;
  
  
• To engage with multi-actors operating at national and regional scales to explore how catchment scale processes of learning and knowledge cocreation relate to the multi-dimensional capacity needs in the field across scales and sectors;
  
  
• To collaboratively reflect on knowledge-in-context (how knowledges become valued or undervalued in different contexts); and 4. To collaboratively draw out lessons for graduate competencies, and how better to prepare postgraduates for transdisciplinary research, through formal and extra-curricular courses.

Methodology:

The study would used a mixed method approach:

• Workshop between researchers operating in project site, lecturers, supervisors and education experts to collaboratively refine research objectives, methodology and tools;
  
  
• Broad survey of all students, graduates, researchers, project managers and participating stakeholders integrated into the projects operating in the Berg-Breede catchment study site
  
  
• In-depth interviews with a sub-set of those surveyed to explore in more depth what they learned through the types of approaches used, challenges, as well as possible gaps;
  
  
• Observation at projects’ existing / planned workshops;
  
  
• Workshop with practitioners and policy-makers operating at national and regional scales via existing networks within ACDI;
  
  
• Workshop between lecturers, supervisors and education experts to review findings in light of graduate competency needs, and hence implications for formal and informal curricula.

It will contribute policy, as well as science and practice outcomes related to TD knowledge co-creation, competences and training programmes for climate action.

Professor Sheona Shackleton

Professor Sheona Shackleton is Deputy Director of the African Climate and Development Institute at the 老虎机游戏_pt老虎机-平台*官网 of Cape Town, a leading national and international centre for study of climate change and sustainable development. She is also directing the African Research Universities Association Cluster on Climate Research. She brings significant inter- and transdisciplinary expertise in catchment and landscape level climate change adaptation and social learning research. In this CoP she will undertake a meta-analysis of social learning and knowledge(s) interactions in the Berg-Breede catchment context, to surface implications for competences for maters level curriculum development and studies. She will therefore contribute to the theme on climate action, but also the theme on ecological infrastructure management in catchment context. Additionally she will strengthen extended networks of the CoP into the ARUA Climate Change cluster, facilitating co-learning between these networks.

The African Climate and Development Initiative,
老虎机游戏_pt老虎机-平台*官网 of Cape Town

The African Climate and Development Initiative (ACDI) at UCT supports collaborative research and teaching in climate change and development. ACDI convenes an interdisciplinary Masters degree in Climate Change and Sustainable Development, with the aim of producing next-generation graduates able to address climate challenges and SD needs in Africa.

Last Modified: Fri, 10 Sep 2021 16:28:19 SAST