Speaker
Description
Climate change poses an unprecedented variety of challenges to societies. This requires integrative approaches to climate adaptation that address multiple challenges simultaneously and combine knowledges of both science and practice. Spatial planning plays a crucial role in understanding and advancing climate adaptation strategies that bridge sectoral divides and incorporate diverse knowledge systems. However, efforts to integrate multiple dimensions of environmental challenges are often hindered by conflicting priorities, governance complexities, and differing stakeholder perspectives. This study explores the dimensions of wickedness that actors face when attempting to collaborate across sectoral borders in order to design integrative approaches for addressing environmental challenges, particularly in the domains of flood risk adaptation and nature conservation.
Drawing on the case of a Community of Practice (CoP) on flood protection and nature conservation in the Netherlands, we investigate the challenges and opportunities associated with integrating dike reinforcement projects with nature conservation efforts. The study adopts a wickedness perspective to analyze the diverse and often conflicting viewpoints that emerge in such attempts to collaboration and integration. A key focus is how CoP members successfully navigate institutional barriers, disciplinary silos, governance constraints, and demotivation. By engaging with plural forms of knowledge, this study acknowledges social and political processes required for achieving just transformations in addressing environmental challenges.
The results highlight the potential for bridging gaps between sectors, disciplines, and the realms of science, policy, and practice. The CoP functioned as a transformative tool. It provided a valuable platform for knowledge exchange, allowing stakeholders to collectively explore the complexities of environmental governance, legislation, knowledge co-production, and cross-sectoral collaboration. The CoP-members find validation in their common ground of shared integrative ambitions among the complex and contested ambitions of flood risk adaptation and nature conservation. The results highlight how participatory action research can help bridge gaps between science, policy, and practice.
Ultimately, this study underscores how institutional capacities, flexible financial mechanisms, and enabling governance conditions effectively support integration of approaches to environmental challenges. Through the emphasis on shared learning, co-production of knowledge, and cross-sectoral collaboration, a CoP can drive transformative action. It is such action that ensures climate resilience while promoting the broader framework of just spatial transformations, e.g. a just balance between ecological and societal interests.
| Keywords | Flood risk adaptation; nature conservation; Community of Practice |
|---|---|
| Best Congress Paper Award | No |
