NEWS
Creating positive visions for southern Africa
Highlights: 1) There is a need for positive visions of the future to counteract the negative narratives that surround us every day and influence our actions 2) Based on "Seeds of Good Anthropocenes", a diverse mix of scientists, artists and changemakers created hopeful future scenarios for southern Africa at a creative visioning workshop held in Cape Town 3) Participants described the process as deeply transformative, and developed a set of radical scenarios with a strong emphasis on engaged citizenry, decentralized power and local, small-scale production systems The [...]
Resilience for Development colloquium
In collaboration with GRAID (Guidance for Resilience in the Anthropocene: Investments for Development, a collaborative project between the Stockholm Resilience Centre in Sweden, the CSIR and Centre for Complex Systems in Transition in Stellenbosch, and other international partners) SAPECS held its second colloquium in Johannesburg on the 8-10th of May 2017, focusing on ‘Resilience for Development’. The event brought together over 150 students, researchers and practitioners from South Africa, Africa, Sweden and elsewhere interested in resilience as an emerging approach towards sustainability. The colloquium was designed to maximize opportunities for [...]
‘Learning for Landscapes’: Insights on stewardship and collaboration from a recent knowledge co-production workshop
This article by SAPECS Researcher Jessica Cockburn reflects on a recent workshop held with practitioners working on collaborative landscape-scale stewardship initiatives across South Africa. We came from all different corners of South Africa to find common ground: ...all the way from the West Coast: fynbos vegetation, commercial potato farmers and precious estuaries... all the way from the Marico Bosveld: thorny country with precious water resources, fiercely proud locals and the ever-present threat of mining… all the way from the Midlands of KwaZulu-Natal: hard-working farmers and agricultural landscapes covered in plantation [...]
Colloquium on Resilience for Development, 8-10 May, Johannesburg
Colloquium on RESILIENCE FOR DEVELOPMENT Assessment Methods and Transformation Practices 08 - 10 May 2017, Johannesburg, South Africa We are thrilled to announce a colloquium on "Resilience for Development", hosted by SAPECS in collaboration with the GRAID (Guidance for Resilience in the Anthropocene: Investments for Development) initiative, and held on 8-10 May 2017 in Johannesburg. The colloquium focuses on methods and practices for integrating resilience as a core strategy of development actions across multiple sectors, scales and regions. Abstract submission is now open! The colloquium is designed to maximize opportunities for [...]
Research on bundles of human well-being in South Africa
Areas with high levels of direct ecosystem service use among households coincides with areas characterized by relatively low levels of human well-being Ecosystem services and human well-being are closely interlinked. After all, ecosystem services are benefits that nature provides to humans, and human well-being is dependent on natural provisions such as clean drinking water. While these two concepts clearly overlap, many questions remain unanswered. For example, do patterns of ecosystem service use in a landscape correspond with particular patterns in human well-being? A study by SAPECS researchers Maike Hamann, Oonsie Biggs and [...]
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PhD position on the role of global regimes in sustainability transitions
The Department of Environmental Social Sciences (ESS) is looking for a PhD candidate in the Innovation Studies group (Cirus) at Eawag, within the ETH Domain (Swiss Federal Institutes of Technology). Eawag conducts research, education and expert consulting to achieve the dual goals of meeting direct human needs for water and maintaining the function and integrity of aquatic ecosystems. The student will be supervised by Dr. Christian Binz and formally enrolled at the University of Neuchatel (Switzerland, Prof. Olivier Crevoisier) and Utrecht University (the Netherlands, Prof. Bernhard Truffer), where she/he will be able to profit from a high [...]
Free online course on resilience thinking for transforming development practice – starts April 30
With concerns about climate and global environmental changes, extreme events, and increases in social, economic, and political shocks, the concept of resilience is proving useful across a range of sectors as a way to understand and respond to a turbulent and often surprise-riddled world. Resilience thinking is more than a theory, more than a set of tools. It is a way of seeing the world, offering a new perspective of how change in the world happens. Resilience thinking provides a new approach for building understanding and taking action. The Sida [...]
PhD position with the Rhodes University Sustainable Land Management for Rural Resilience Project (RU-SLMRR)
The Rhodes University Sustainable Land Management for Rural Resilience Project (RU-SLMRR) that forms part of a broader Global Environment Facility 5 (GE5F) funded sustainable land management (SLM) project implemented in South Africa is seeking a PhD candidate to investigate barriers and enablers to community-driven natural resources governance in the Eastern Cape of South Africa. The study will be focussed at Macubeni and Baviaanskloof communal farmlands in the Eastern Cape, but may be upscaled to the other GEF5 SLM Project sites if time permits. The project period is from April 2018-April 2021. [...]
Open call for academic writing at the Rockefeller Foundation
The Bellagio Centre Residence Program at the Rockefeller Foundation offers a setting conducive to focused work, and the unparalleled opportunity to establish new connections with fellow residents from a stimulating array of disciplines and geographies during residencies of up to 4 weeks. There is a competition for academic writing which opens on March 1, 2018 with a final deadline for applications on May 1, 2018. Applicants accepted during this open call will be awarded residencies in 2019. For more information see the RF Bellagio Center Flyer 2018 and consult the Rockefeller Foundation Bellagio Centre website for additional [...]
Transdisciplinary PhD project in Germany
The Institute Helmholtz Centre for Polar and Marine Research (AWI) are inviting applicants for a three-year, full-time position as a PhD research fellow in the French-German project “A Sea of Connections: Contextualizing Fisheries in the South Pacific Region” (SOCPacific). Starting in May 2018, this interdisciplinary project (anthropology, geography and political ecology in dialogue with marine biology, ecology and geology) is based on synergies between the French National Research Institute for Development (IRD) and the Leibniz Center for Tropical Marine Research (ZMT) and is co-led by Dr. Elodie Fache (IRD, GRED) [...]