Methods for assessing current and future coastal vulnerability to climate change Dr. Francesca...

Methods for assessing current and future coastal vulnerability to climate change

Dr. Francesca Santoro Università Ca’ Foscari and Euro-Mediterranean Centre for Climate Change

Issues for implementing a transdisciplinary approach to

coastal planning

Copenhagen, 27-28 October 2010



Presentation outline:• Why implementing a transdisciplinary

approach to coastal planning• Issues• Discussion



Coastal zone and coastal zone management

• Coastal areas as emblematic example of complex systems:– Multiple agents– Conflicts of resources uses– Complex natural processes– Land-ocean interactions– Emergent properties



Integrated Coastal Zone Management

• Communication from the Commission to the Council and the European Parliament (2000, for the preparation of a Recommendation adopted on 30 May 2002)– “ICZM is a process that implies a new style of

governance, a style that involves and is in partnership with all of the segments of civil society. ICZM solicits the collaboration of all coastal zone stakeholders in the conception and implementation of a development model that is in their mutual interest”



Notwithstanding this 30 years history of ICZM:

‘ICZM has not yet fully demonstrate its potential’

(World Bank 2003)



Two levels:• Institutional and governance issues

– International, national, and local levels– Sectorial agencies– Coastal users

• Epistemological issues– Natural sciences– Social sciences



• Transdisciplinary approach:– Communicative and collaborative

planning to integrate different perspectives, and preferences of the different agents

– Researchers, stakeholders, and decision-makers cooperate in the research process

– The legitimate setting is provided by the concept of governance



Governance

• A more cooperative process of governing, policy-making, and decision-making, so different from the hierarchical model in which state authorities exterted sovereign control over groups and citizens that make up the civil society (Van Bueren and ten Heuvelhof, 2005)



The emergence of transdisciplinarity

Mode-2 (Gibbons et al. 1994) Mode-1 Science Mode-2 Science

Academic Academic and socialMono-disciplinary Trans- and

interdisciplinaryTechnocratic ParticipativeCertain UncertainPredictive Explorative



The emergence of transdisciplinarity

• Post-normal science (Funtowicz and Ravezt 1993)



CoAST (Collaborative Assessment Support Tools)



SOCIO-ECOLOGICAL SYSTEM

Stakeholders

Decision-makersPolicy-makers

EcosystemStructure

&Processes

Values Views

Operational objectives

Coastal zoneplanning

Coastal zonemanagement

EcosystemGoods &Services

Planning and management alternatives

Scenarios

OngoingAdaptiveManagement

Governance

Monitoring Management

Public participation

EvaluationThrough

selected indicators

DESIGN PHASEDECISION

PHASE

INTELLIGENCE PHASE



Discussion (1)• Processes of structuring and taking decisions in

complex environments– Normative and prescriptive decision-theory– Development of a framework for knowledge

sharing and knowledge co-production– Involvement of all social actors– Scientists needs insights and scientists need to

communicate their results– Learning process



Discussion (2)



Strengths and weaknesses of transdisciplinarity

– discussion of transdisciplinarity as a guiding idea in integrated resource management and environmental policy

– a discussion of examples of successful cooperation between scientists, resource managers and resource user groups

– general epistemological discussion of the concept and its variants



Reflections• A growing debate on the role of science in

contemporary knowledge societies. • A key tenet of most of these debates is that

science and society are ever more strongly intertwined.

• Techno-scientific knowledge and products have become crucial to a broad range of economic, social activities

• Knowledge production is no longer restrained to the classical spaces and places of science, but rather society as an extended ‘laboratory’ in which experimental knowledge is produced in close proximity to and interaction with life-world



Open questions (1)• Research objects and questions negotiated

and developed in transdisciplinary research

• Different and partly contradictory time regimes structure these investigations

• Role of the language and communication play in the generation and dissemination of transdisciplinary knowledge



Open questions (2)• Spaces and places of

transdisciplinary knowledge production and how they frame the knowledge produced

• Forms of collaboration are produced, performed and negotiated in such heterogeneous contexts



Thank you for your attention!

[email protected]

Methods for assessing current and future coastal vulnerability to climate change Dr. Francesca...

Documents

Transcript of Methods for assessing current and future coastal vulnerability to climate change Dr. Francesca...