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
6th Edition of the Liphe4 Summer School held in Timisoara, Romania, in
2008.
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.
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