A year-long process of joint problem framing
Christian Pohl1, Philipp Lischer1, Tim Geiges2, Silvia Tobias2
1ETH Zürich, Switzerland; 2WSL, Switzerland
The project “Juarpark Aargau as a Real-world lab for Sustainable Development” is funded by ETH domain to strengthen engagement and dialogue of ETH domain researchers with partners from civil society, the private and the public sector. The project’s aim is that residents of Jurapark Aargau and ETH domain researchers jointly identify sustainability challenges and explore measures to address them in real-world experiments. We understand “experiments” in a broad sense as “jointly developing and exploring measures to strengthen sustainable development of the Jurapark region”.
The Jurapark Aargau is a regional nature park in a peri-urban and rural area. Regional nature parks must balance nature conservation and regional economic development. In the Jurapark Aargau, 55’000 residents live on an area of 299 km2, organised in 31 municipalities. Municipali-ties become members of the Jurapark by public vote.
We used the first year of the three-year project exclusively for joint problem framing. The first challenge was to identify topics to start with. Suitable topics had to match (a) ETH domain’s ex-pertise, (b) the strategic planning of Jurapark and (c) Jurapark residents’ interest. Based on Ju-rapark’s survey among community mayors, intensive discussions in the project team and with the project’s Steering Board, we selected “Water management”, “Climate adaptation”, “Sus-tainable development of municipalities” and “Circular economy” as starting topics.
For each topic, we have used our approach to joint problem framing. It takes residents and re-searchers in three workshops of 2h over a period of 4-6 months from the first encounter to teams that want to explore real-world experiments. Workshops usually bring together 15-25 participants, a mix of researchers and municipal councils, farmers, local companies, NGO repre-sentatives, and cantonal authorities. To make residents feel safe, we schedule the workshops on workdays between 16-18h after work and before dinner and in local facilities. We offer coffee and cake for those who come early and end the workshop with an Apéro with regional products. In the workshops we combine methods of soft systems methodology, design thinking and knowledge co-production. The first workshop served to develop rich pictures of the current situation and to identify points to intervene within the pictures. In the second workshop these points for interventions were developed into concrete measures, which were then ranked. In the third workshop, highly ranked measures were developed to real-world experiments.
We will present and discuss (a) the design of the overall problem framing approach and of the three workshops, (b) pathways that topics took over the process and (c) our underlying theory of change and our measures of success. Furthermore, we will link the pathways that the topics took over the process of problem framing with the expertise and interest of researchers and residents who worked on them.
Following the Giants in Kütralkura UNESCO Park: a project of integration of knowledge, actors and disciplines
Sofía Vargas - Payera1, Carolina Geoffroy2, Maria Contreras3
1University of Chile, Chile.; 2Xterrae, Chile; 3Sernaegomin
Geological events such as eruptions are natural phenomena that occur as a result of the Earth's activity. Chile has unique geological conditions, which include the Los Andes mountain range that runs almost the entire length of the country, 90 active volcanoes, and a millennia-long history of numerous volcanic eruptions. The impact of these eruptions on communities living near volcanoes is influenced not only by natural conditions, but also by social, gender, political and economic factors. This scenario requires a process of knowledge integration to address the challenges of risk reduction and the integration of different types of disciplines, perceptions and attitudes to promote a more resilient society.
This presentation describes the results of the project 'Following the Giants in Kütralkura UNESCO Park'. It is based on the idea that disasters are not natural and that women and girls are more impacted by socio-natural disasters than men due to social norms, gender roles, and socio-economic differences. The project aims to make visible the diverse knowledge of women living around the six active volcanoes, which are referred to as 'the giants'. The motivation behind this project was to increase awareness of volcanic hazards and to highlight several types of knowledge, including scientific and indigenous knowledge of the Mapuche people, who have historically inhabited the area.
The project was developed over a period of 15 months, from 2023 to 2024. The participants were 63 women, including geologists, public school students, teachers, communicators, psychologists, and traditional teachers from the indigenous community. The project comprises nine workshops and a four-day field trip.
This project is inspired by a transdisciplinary approach, integrating co-creating knowledge activities and spaces. The result of this process has been materialised in a book, which allow to reflect about the intersection between art and science. This applied project offers an opportunity to discuss the challenges of integrating empirical and risk information with social perceptions into scientific knowledge. It also involves social actors, such as young people and the elderly, in the process.
Transdisciplinary cartographic practices: the landscape-architect as facilitator in climate action processes
Violaine Forsberg Mussault
Arkitektur og Designhøgskolen i Oslo - the Oslo school of Architecture and Design - Institute for Landscape and Urbanism, Norway
Hazardous cultural landscapes are complex sites where natural and cultural agencies are interwoven.
As we see an occurrence of natural hazards due to climate change, a wholesome management of these landscapes depends on comprehensive and integrated adaptation strategies based on site-specific knowledge. This means that natural processes need to be understood in their complexity, along with the cultural practices and communities that are part of the landscape. By doing so, solutions can be developed that are not monofunctional or generic, but that address the specific complexities of a particular site.
It has been widely acknowledged that climate action should depend on collaboration across multiple levels and sectors, and transdisciplinary approaches. Nevertheless, siloed infrastructural approaches to climate risk remain dominant in Norway, especially within the geo-engineering disciplines. In order to properly respond to the pressing challenges presented to us by Norwegian landscapes, I want to highlight the critical role landscape-architects can play in connecting different disciplines. The increasing complexity of hazardous cultural landscapes demands that professionals are equipped with new methods to engage with scientific knowledge from earth sciences. I argue novel ways of describing and acknowledging the intricacies of these landscapes are needed.
This contribution is based on landscape architectural practice and site exploration of a hazardous pastoral valley in Norway and aims to contribute to this issue. My practice-based research experiments with novel cartographic methods and seeks to collate and communicate data from different disciplines to unravel complex landscape agencies.
Based on posthuman theories, the work relies on recent anthropological concepts that can foster new professional landscape-architecture methods and renew natural entities' status as potential actors. I weave scientific datasets (collected through interdisciplinary fieldwork, interviews, and surveys) with local knowledge and my own site experience to draw interpretative cartographies. These various types of knowledge are combined, incorporated and visually translated with the help of various cartographic data in an overlay drawing process. These empathetic cartographies highlight nonhuman agencies' unseen or unknown behaviors, revealing hidden features beneath the landscape's surface.
By visualizing living processes that are absent from our traditional maps and thought patterns, I reveal and address tensions between humans and nonhuman actors. In a transdisciplinary endeavor that combines science, drawing, and speculation on future climate, my hybrid approach provides tools to mediate between communities and their rapidly changing landscapes. The research aims to make explicit the landscape-architect's transdisciplinary weaving skills and their role as a mediator in climate action.
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