Conference session – Collaborative transformations toward ecosystem stewardship: A dialogue between theory and practice

This is a 1.5-hour topic-contributed session that Georgina Cundill, member of the Scientific Steering Committee of ecoSERVICES, will lead at the PECS 2015 Conference. The session will focus on highlighting the contributions whith insights from practice and transdisciplinary practice-research partnerships can make to developing a theory on collaborative transformations towards ecosystem stewardship.

Efforts to address global environmental change encounter complex, interlinked social-ecological challenges. The search for solutions to climate change, biodiversity loss, biosecurity risks and resource depletion is colliding with the need to address social justice, inequality and food insecurity, and the compound effects of highly uncertain but profound systemic connections among these issues. ‘Solutions’ to these challenges are invariably only solutions for some people, in some contexts, and can impose costs on others. Solutions at one scale can also create further environmental and/or social problems at other scales. Collaboration is potentially critical for transformations towards socially just ecosystem stewardship as a means of path generation that engages and respects multiple views, values and struggles to define what is “just”, and what constitutes “ecosystem stewardship”. Drawing on transdisciplinary research with partnerships in cases from a variety of developing and developed countries, this panel will reflect on the potential role of collaboration in assisting groups and networks to navigate these challenging issues in shifts toward ecosystem stewardship.

The session will thus aim to:

• Present a review paper that has been developed through a transdisciplinary engagement process;
• Reflect on the conceptual framework in light of case studies, and use these case studies to further develop the framework; and
• Create the basis of a special issue on the role of collaboration in transformations toward sustainability more broadly.

The event is co-organised by ecoSERVICES.

Programme of the PECS 2015 Conference here.