2nd Liphe4 Summer School 2005
2nd Summer School on Developing
Toolkits on Integrated and Participatory Analyses of Sustainability
July 17th-23rd, 2005, CEMACAM Torre Guil,
Sangonera la Verde, Murcia, Spain
With the special
support from CEMACAM Torre Guil
Objectives of the school
The purpose of the summer school was to provide a reference point on the
state of the art in the field of Integrated Analysis of Sustainability to young
researchers and students. In particular, the school presented a complete
overview, both theoretical and applied, of recent analytical and participatory
approaches for promoting sustainable development. Resources draw from the fields
of Integrated Assessment, Social Multi-Criteria Evaluation, Participatory
Approaches, as well as Spatial and Biophysical Analysis. Students experienced an
intense level of interaction with peers and senior researchers during the 5-day
residential course.
Structure and Organisation
The school offered a one week programme, from Monday to Friday. We arranged
for the participants to arrive during the previous week-end. The participants
arrived to the centre on Saturday 16th and Sunday 17th and we had a general
welcoming meeting on Sunday evening.
The courses went from 18th to 22nd of July, at the CEMACAM facilities in
Sangonera la Verde, Murcia (Spain). The school had the following structure:
Lectures were given from 9.00h to 13.00h. Then a long lunch break allowed
students to absorb what was taught in the morning and to interact among them.
The afternoon sessions were organised in order to help students implement what
they learnt in the morning. The participants formed four different Working
Groups, each of them dealing with an environmental problem in a particular
region of a country agreed upon on the first day. This case study oriented
approach allowed the participants to immediately make use of the concepts and
methodology presented in the morning sessions and to deal with data from
international data bases.
- Case study for Romania (on tourism development)
- Case study for the Slovak Republic (development
alternatives in a post-disaster area)
- Case study for Spain (water management options in
Southern Spain)
- Case study for Colombia (food security issues)
The work in groups proved to be of great importance in allowing students to
see how real sustainability problems must be tackled applying a holistic
perspective. Each working group counted with the (passive) presence of one of
the resource persons, who was intervening only to avoid the discussion and work
to be stuck. The rest of the resource persons were available upon request. This
structure, offering a high degree of freedom to the students, was key to the
success of their work. All Working Groups carried out an Integrated Assessment
of Sustainability, that is all case studies integrated environmental, economic,
and social issues, as well as participatory aspects involving the perspective of
relevant social actors. The main goal of the groups was that of define a
research plan aimed at evaluating some development options, by incorporating the
methodologies presented in the teaching oriented sessions. The group work was
concluded with a series of presentations offering concrete insights about
sustainability challenges in the case study regions.
The Programme during the five days
Day 1: Morning: Lectures on Multi-Scale Integrated analysis of
Societal Metabolism
Afternoon: Working Groups were organised, four regions and sustainability
problems in the regions were selected for the case studies (Romania, Slovak
Republic, Spain, and Colombia). The issues tackled were tourism development in
Romania, alternatives for development in a post-disaster area in Slovak
Republic, water management options in South-eastern Spain, and food security in
Colombia.
Day 2: Morning: Lectures on applications of multi-scale integrated
analysis of social metabolism at the national level, as well as Societal
Multi-Criteria Evaluation, and Participatory techniques.
Afternoon: Working Groups were framing the problem, establishing the research
question, identified the relevant social actors involved, as well as the
institutional and political setting.
Day 3: Morning: Lectures on Biophysical constraints, and Land-Time
Budget analysis
Afternoon: Excursion.
Day 4: Morning: Lectures on GIS and sustainability analysis.
Afternoon: Working Groups further discussed which indicators to be used in
the evaluation, what kind of data is therefore needed, as well as which
methodologies to apply.
Evening: WG prepared presentations of their work for Friday morning.
Day 5: Morning: Antonio Gómez, Director of CEMACAM gave a presentation
on the activities of CAM in regard to the environment.
Morning: Working Groups presented their results, and discussed among them.
Afternoon: Lecturers and participants discussed conclusions to be drawn from
the experiences with the case studies.
Conclusions: How to integrate the different methodologies.
Feed-back of the School and Closing.
Curriculum
The Curriculum of the Summer School was oriented to give an overview of
methodologies that can be used when performing an Integrated Analysis of
Sustainability. Taking into account the different background of the students,
the emphasis was put on explaining the potentialities of such methodologies, as
well as the integration of all of them into a tool-kit for analysing
sustainability scenarios (past and future).
Therefore, the particular curriculum included Integrated Assessment of
Sustainability, a general overview; Multi-Scale Integrated Analysis of Societal
Metabolism; Methods for biophysical analysis: MFA, Land-time budget analysis to
identify sustainable options; Social Multi-Criteria Evaluation and Participatory
Approaches; and Geographic Information Systems (GIS) applied to Integrated
Analysis of Sustainability.
The concepts and methodologies presented as well as the case study
applications were oriented towards providing information and decision support
for politicians, decision makers and administrative units.
Participants
23 students from very different background, origin, and age attended the
summer school. This heterogeneous group proved, however, to be able to work
closely together, and to develop a spontaneous common language to communicate.
This is usually a big challenge in projects regarding sustainability, since most
of scientists are not used to work in such an inter-disciplinary environment.
Part of the success of the school was the high educational level of the
students, as well as their heterogeneity, in all terms. We are glad to have had
the opportunity to work together with these very well prepared young people who
for sure will be in top positions in the academia in the coming years.
To give some basic information on them, we had 1 student from Turkey, 1 from
Romania, 3 from the United States, 3 from Spain, 2 from the Slovak Republic, 1
from the Czech Republic, 1 from Italy, 1 from Indonesia, 1 from Ecuador, 1 from
Colombia, and 8 from Austria. Regarding the gender distribution, 11 were women,
and 12 men.
Regarding their background, we had 4 Lecturers (Columbia University, USA; RPI,
USA), and several PhD and Master Students in different Universities in Europe
and USA (University of Texas, USA; Autonomous University of Barcelona, Spain;
Leeds University, UK; Slovak Academy of Sciences, Slovak Republic; Technical
University of Vienna, Austria), University of Natural Resources and Applied Life
Sciences (BOKU), Vienna, Austria; Charles University Prague, Czech Republic,
University of Pisa, Italy; IFF-Social Ecology, University of Klagenfurt,
Austria. Their background was also very diverse, including economists,
micro-biologists, mathematicians, urban planners, sociologists, anthropologists,
and environmental scientists.
Outcomes
The summer school provided to the participants a week of intensive academic
interaction with the resource persons and among each other. It yielded four case
study presentations of high quality and contributed to a new understanding of
the participants on how to organise and implement transdisciplinary research
efforts for supporting sustainability policies. It created a network of young
academics who will stay in contact after the termination of the school and will
use the concepts and methodologies presented in their future academic and
applied work. CEMACAM will remain in the memory of the participants as an
excellent place to host such experiences.
Feed-back
At the end of the school a formal feedback process took place which gave very
positive feedback to the resource persons about the content of the school and
the setting in which the learning took place. It gave the CEMACAM excellent
notes on the facility.
List of resource persons
(i) Mario Giampietro (Complex Systems)
(ii) Jesus Ramos Martin (Ecological Economics)
(iii) Heinz Schandl (Social Ecology)
(iv) Clemens M. Grünbühel (Ecological Anthropology)
(v) Fernanda Zermoglio (GIS, geography)
(vi) Begüm Özkaynak (Participatory Approaches)
The School was endorsed by the following
institutions:
Please follow
this link to go to the Pics section
Please, follow
this link to go to the
5th Edition of the Liphe4 Summer School held in Barcelona, Spain, in 2008.
Please, follow
this link to go to the
4th Edition of the Liphe4 Summer School held in Khon Kaen, Thailand, in 2007.
Please, follow
this link to go to the
3rd Edition of the Liphe4 Summer School held in Sangonera la Verde, Murcia, Spain, in
2006.
Please, follow
this link to go to the
1st Edition of the Liphe4 Summer School held in Deutschlandsberg, Austria, in
2004.
