This paper considers how learning for transformation of water governance in the context of climate change adaptation can be designed for and supported, drawing examples from the international climate change adaptation and water governance project (CADWAGO). The project explicitly set out to design for governance learning in the sense of developing elements of social infrastructure such as workshops, performances and online media to bring stakeholders together and to facilitate co-learning of relevance to governance. CADWAGO drew on a variety of international cases from past and ongoing work of the project partners. It created a forum for dialogue among actors from different contexts working at different levels and scales. The range of opportunities and constraints encountered are discussed, including the principles and practicalities of working with distributed processes of design and leadership of events. A range of concepts, tools and techniques were used to consider and facilitate individual and collective learning processes and outcomes associated with water governance in the context of climate adaptation. Questions were addressed about how elements of past, present and future water governance thinking and practice are connected and how multi-level systemic change in governance can take place. Some reflections on the effectiveness of the design for learning process are included. The nature of the contribution that projects such as CADWAGO can make in learning for transformation of water governance practices is also critically considered.
Insufficient attention has been paid to how concepts of resilience can be operationalised in wicked, contested situations. Within the environmental sciences, the contemporary social-ecological resilience narrative is not geared to examining social dilemmas in illdefined problem contexts. These conditions require a different resilience narrative, one centred on epistemological and ontological considerations. This paper examines four resilience narratives (engineering, social-ecological, epistemic and intersubjective) in order to stimulate an improved awareness of the possibility of more deliberative choices for research and governance in the resilience domain. We argue that the resilience research community needs to be more cognizant of the diversity of resilience narratives in order to empower and learn from the perspectives and local practices of stakeholders, who will often express narratives better aligned to the wicked situation at hand. Ultimately, the resilience narratives of the research community can be little more than toolkits to support greater understanding of the diversity of people, perspectives and 'performances' jointly narrating the 'real' stories of our wicked and contested realities.
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