The Sustainability Research Centre: Transforming Regions

1. The Sustainability Research Centre: Transforming Regions Dr Marcus Bussey mbussey@usc.edu.au Drivers and Barriers to Sustainable Development: An Historical-Futures Perspective (Case Study)

2. Context • South East Queensland – fastest growing region in Australia • Institutional responses to climate impacts that lead to sustainable development • Scaffold Learning to increase options • Ground learning in the decision maker’s reality • Historical ‘scenarios’ offer concrete representation of past not intangible speculative future • Search for practical lessons University of the Sunshiner Coast: 2011

3. The place of the report University of the Sunshiner Coast: 2011

4. 2011 Floods University of the Sunshiner Coast: 2011

5. Enhancing adaptive capacity • Focus often on: • Measuring and predicting biophyscial changes • Developing new technologies • Meaningless without understanding and enhancing adaptive capacity which can be defined as: • “The ability of a system to adjust to climate change … to moderate potential damages, to take advantage of opportunities, or to cope with the consequences” (IPCC, 2001, p. 881). University of the Sunshiner Coast: 2011

6. Vulnerability Assessment • Population grew significantly (19%) between 1996 and 2006Trends set to continue • The growing population, in particular increasing densities in high risk coastal urban areas is a cause of concern for climate change adaptation • Based on the medium series 2031 projections the SEQ region is expected to be home for 4,430,900 people an increase of 56.7% on the current estimated residential population of 2,827,566. • Projections also show a doubling of lone person households and couples without children households and an increase of at least 60% for one parent family households across the region. University of the Sunshiner Coast: 2011

7. Thinking about drivers and barriers • Nine determinants frame the context for drivers and barriers • complexity and leadership, • institutions and values, • technology and imagination, • information and knowledge, and • scale University of the Sunshiner Coast: 2011

8. The Pedagogy • Navigating the socio-ecological field • Information – Historical case studies • Conceptual tools – The scaffolding of case studies • Empowerment – From case study to scenario University of the Sunshiner Coast: 2011

9. Link between personal and social • David Gershon: • “Since social change requires people to participate, each element of the change strategy needs to be designed to attract people” (2009, p. 146) University of the Sunshiner Coast: 2011

10. Thinking about socio-ecological context across scale University of the Sunshiner Coast: 2011

11. University of the Sunshiner Coast: 2011

12. Empowerment: Practical Lessons • Move from reactive to proactive • Technology and Identity are linked   • Technology can foster a false sense of security • Social process can be represented across four quadrants thus ‘Practical’ is a shifting signifier • Adaptive leadership fosters adaptive institutions • Adaptive institutions emerge over time and only through collective effort University of the Sunshiner Coast: 2011

13. Scenarios challenge our thinking about the present • We need to couple imagination with social will, institutional creativity with empowered leadership and foster the desire for alternatives • Drivers and barriers lie in how complexity, leadership, knowledge, technology, institutions are framed University of the Sunshiner Coast: 2011

14. University of the Sunshiner Coast: 2011