MUSIC hosts September G3C meeting, furthering the global collaborative initiative
G3C Meeting September 15, 2008
The G3C meeting held September 15, 2008 at MIT continued discussions initiated at the March 2008 meeting.
The meeting was attended by:
Herman Karl (USGS/MIT)
Kirk Emerson (U.S. Institute for Environmental Conflict Resolution: now at the University of Arizona)
Charles Curtin (Environmental Policy Design)
Michael Davidson (University of Pretoria)
Clive Lipchin (Director, Arava Institute)
Olivier Barreteau (MUSIC Scholar-in-Residence from France)
Jan Adamowski (MIT postdoctoral fellow with the MIT Cyprus Institute)
Steve Light (Creighton University)
Marilyn ten Brink (MUSIC Scholar-in-Residence)
Paul Kirshen (Tufts University)
Mike Flaxman (MIT)
Juan Carlos Vargas-Moreno (MIT Postdoctoral Fellow with MUSIC)
Steve Light presented a synopsis of best practices of collaborative adaptive management from a short course that he and Lance Gunderson presented at the University of Nebraska.
Clive Lipchin presented an overview of the GLOWA project. We discussed strategies to move a component of the project forward as a G3C project. The project is now starting the stakeholder involvement phase. By combing resources, it might be possible to arrange for a MUSIC intern to spend a summer at the Arava Institute to help design the stakeholder participation phase of the project. We are exploring this possibility.
Kirk Emerson led a discussion on an evaluative framework for collaborative governance. The discussion included how to incorporate an evaluation of the ecological outcomes. We need to be able to test multiple working hypotheses and to evaluate substantive on-the-ground changes. We need to focus groups on the outcome and not just evaluate the process.
We discussed how to involve more EU nations in the G3C, which would open up more funding opportunities.
Mike Flaxman and Juan Carlos Vargas-Moreno presented a brief overview of the MUSIC Everglades project. The main goal of this project is to help the US Fish and Wildlife Service evaluate the impact of changing climate on the trust resources which they are responsible for managing. We are taking a stakeholder-based approach. The project is aligned with the mission of the G3C and we plan to apply the refined evaluation framework to it. It is a four-year project.
Paul Kirshen presented a brief overview of the MUSIC and G3C Urban Drainage project.
The meeting resulted in five action steps.
1. Develop a proposal to NATO to hold a conference on adaptation to climate change and/or development of an evaluation framework for collaborative governance. The deadline for submission is Juner 1, 2009. Clive Lipchin, Olivier Barreteau, and Neda Farahbakhshazad will lead this effort.
2. Develop a Scenario planning workshop for late December 2008 in collaboration with USGS.
3. Develop a framework for evaluating collaborative governance that can be applied across G3C (and MUSIC) projects to better enable cross-learning. Kirk Emerson, Steve Light, Charles Curtin, Marilyn ten Brink, Adriaan Slob, and Olivier Barreteau are the subcommittee members developing the framework.
4. We are going to apply the evaluation framework to the "Guidance Tools for Planning and Management of Urban Drainage Systems Under Changing Climate" project.
5. Compile a list of organizations to seek funding from and developing a strategy for fund raising. We need to establish funds to convene the G3C on a regular basis. We also need to develop a strategy to fund projects. We discussed the possibility of the G3C forming a team to advise/teach as a source of fund raising. for the group. Charles Curtin is leading this action step.
The meeting adjourned with the action items described above. A group led by Clive Lipchin is developing a proposal to submit to NATO to fund the next G3C conference.