Partnership, engagement and participation - faith based communities and their engagement with the environment through long term plans
John Smith discussed some of the challenges in adapting the ESDinds approach to faith-based communities. Faith communities work with stories, and stories provide their data. They have proven sustainable longer than any other human institutions. They do not act quickly, but if they take something on, they will enshrine it. Organizations like the World Bank and UNDP have recognized their potential. In 2008, the Alliance of Religions and Conservation (ARC) and UNDP created a partnership to enable the major faith traditions world wide to develop long term plans for generational change for a living planet. In November 2009, thirty-one such plans were launched at Windsor Castle in the presence of the UN Secretary General and HRH Prince Philip (ARC's founder). The model created to enable this is a process of self-examination and stock taking leading to specific commitments to develop their own environmental programmes and to publicise not just what they do but why. The focus on generational change emphasizes the fact that faiths think and operate in generations.
European Union FP7 Opportunities for CSO Involvement in Research
Marie Harder replaced the EU representative to explain how the EU is encouraging Civil Society Organisations (CSOs) to be involved more in research, through several innovative and quite new funding mechanisms. She introduced some of them, including the Mobilisation and Mutual Learning Actions plan from the Science In Society (SIS) Work Programme, and opportunities for CSOs as research partners. Examples of past and current Calls of Funding were shown to indicate the EU’s commitment to this theme. She discussed the EU report on Science in Society, (the MASIS report), and its relationship to CSOs.
The role of moral leadership in transformation for sustainability
The far-reaching transformations that society needs to go through -- for example in the field of how knowledge is generated, shared and applied by individuals and organizations, the type of values which are driving individual action and manifested in societal visions, and the norms and rules (institutions) which permeate society -- require a new type of leadership. Onno Vinkhuyzen and Sylvia Karlsson-Vinkhuyzen explored the role of leadership for societal transformations towards sustainability, first describing the nature of the necessary transformations, then outlining some of the prevailing styles of leadership and how these present obstacles to transformation. They presented the framework of moral leadership developed by Eloy Anello and others at Núr University, Bolivia and used in a number of successful social and economic development projects. Within this framework a person who is exhibiting moral leadership is sufficiently committed to the values of social justice, equity and participation to inspire sustained efforts to bring about change, to assume the personal risks inherent in dealing with resistance to change. They then showed some of the core elements of this framework including a number of capabilities of special value to support transformation towards sustainable development. See powerpoint presentation (5.1mb).
The Growing Importance of CSO Partnerships: Lessons from CREPE Project
Les Levidow summarized 'Co-operative Research on Environmental Problems in Europe' (CREPE), a FP7 project that brought together CSOs and academics as partners to carry out research. The thematic focus was environmental issues of agricultural practices and innovations, in the context of EU policy for a Knowledge-Based Bio-Economy (KBBE). They observed that CSOs often seek more active engagement to define research questions, rather than just being recipients of research results. Joint projects between CSOs and research organisations require investment from both sides in order to understand each other’s context, jargon and culture. Co-operative research encourages partnerships between researchers and non-researchers on issues of common interest, and although those categories imply fixed roles, the distinction between researcher and non-researcher can be fluid: CSOs often carry out research, even if not formally recognised as such. For working with CSOs, academics may need to develop more diverse capacities and roles than in conventional research. See powerpoint presentation (651kb).
The DISCUSSION that followed raised a number of interesting points. There is the challenge of communicating between organizations and people. Networking organizations may send a flood of e-mails. The faiths are not arbiters of morals, but they engage in dialogue about moral questions.
In an era of information abundance, there is a mis-match between information flow and the time available. with a lack of time to reflect or to analyze critically. Media saturation may be a kind of mental anaesthetic, filling the void of answers to basic ethical and spiritual questions. Values may serve as an initial filter for information, both excluding information that clashes with our values or world view, and highlighting information that resonates with us. We tend to select media that reinforce our viewpoints.