Multi-Loop Social Learning for Sustainable Land and Water Governance: Towards a Research Agenda on the Potential of Virtual Learning Platforms

Abstract

Managing social-ecological systems and human well being in a sustainable way requires knowledge of these systems in their full complexity. Multi-loop social learning is recognized as a crucial element to sustainable decision-making for land and water resources management involving a process of managing change where the central methodological concern is with effectively engaging the necessary participation of system members in contributing to the collective knowledge of the system. Ensuring the inclusion of the community of concern may help to ensure robust knowledge, the necessary plurality of views, responsibility sharing and trust enhancement. This will also provide more dynamic lines of input to problem solving: local and changing forms of knowledge, emerging concerns and constraints all feed into an ongoing decision-making process. This conceptual paper is focused specifically on identifying the key drivers and conditions that facilitate multi-loop social learning and the untapped potential of virtual learning platforms in this context. The hyper-connectivity that characterizes digitally mediated networks opens up significant possibilities for information exchange, knowledge creation, feedback, debate, learning and innovation, social networking, and so on. This paper provides a thorough literature review of the conditions and affordances that are conducive to multi-loop social learning in the context of sustainable land and water governance. The insights from this review confirm the potential of a 'learning ecology' or virtual learning platform for knowledge co-production, trust building, sense making, critical self-reflection, vertical and horizontal collaboration, and conflict resolution, while serving as a facilitating platform between different levels of governance, and across resource and knowledge systems. To conclude this paper, a developmental research agenda is proposed to refine and improve understanding of multi-loop social learning processes and their effective facilitation through virtual learning platforms.

Exploring the Potential Impact of Serious Games on Social Learning and Stakeholder Collaborations for Transboundary Watershed Management of the St. Lawrence River Basin

“…Such boundaries not only involve physical boundaries (e.g., between surface and groundwater, water quantity and quality, freshwater and coastal waters, water resources and land resources, different geographical scales) or jurisdictional boundaries (e.g., between different countries, government levels, policy sectors), but also boundaries of a social (between different social and economic groups, and between these groups and government) as well as a cognitive nature (between different disciplines and expertise). Social learning is recognized as a mechanism to support the facilitation of collaboration and interaction between stakeholders across these boundaries [8,12,13]. While there is not one stakeholder that carries all legal competencies, funds, information and other required resources to manage water issues, it is important for these parties to pool resources and "learn together to manage together" [8].…”

“…Mostert et al [8] takes a broader perspective on social learning than Reed et al [11] by recognizing mutual dependence and trust as prerequisites, while conceptualizing stakeholder interactions, the sharing of problem perceptions, and the development of alternative solutions as actions indicative of underlying social learning processes. Collaborative decision-making processes and the joint implementation of agreed actions are both prerequisites to, and potential desirable outputs of, social learning processes [12,13]. The value of this broader perspective is that, while assessing the extent to which internal change in understanding has taken place is complex and difficult to measure, external factors such as the extent of interaction and the degree to which problem perspectives are shared offer more tangible substitutes.…”

“…Such challenges require novel tools and methods to encourage dialogue, facilitate learning and enable systemic institutional change, so that decisions can be made from a position of shared knowledge and understanding. Serious games offer innovative solutions for enhancing learning and collaborations to overcome governance challenges [8,12,13]. These types of games combine computer simulation with role-play as an integrated method for complex policy making while triggering discussion and learning among stakeholders [14].…”

The guiding logics and principles for designing emergent transdisciplinary research processes: learning experiences and reflections from a transdisciplinary urban case study in Enkanini informal settlement, South Africa

“…The underlying ideas on multi-loop learning were particularly useful (Bateson 1972;Medema et al 2014;Tosey et al 2012) in this regard of making sense of the continuous flow of experiences, reflections, ideas, theorising and actions in the context of Enkanini.…”

Sustainability science as a transformative social learning process

“…Platforms for analytic deliberation to deal with value confl icts are required (Dietz et al, 2003;Ison et al, 2007 ). Social learning focuses on the relation of learning across different scales of social organization: individual, group, organizational, or societal ( Medema et al, 2014 ;Wals et al, 2014 ). Building on this research, learning is conceived of in this book as a process of developing enriched understandings and repertoires of action on complex problems as a result of open and iterative cycles of experimentation, observation, analysis, and judgment of results.…”