Characterizing nature-based living labs from their seeds in the past

Nature-based living labs combine the elements of nature-based solution design with a living lab context to address social and environmental resilience challenges. There is a need to deepen insights on the characteristics of the emergent phenomenon of nature-based living labs, with respect to their predecessors. Accordingly, the paper first...

Introduction: Adaptive Urban Transformation in the Pearl River Delta, China.

Deltaic areas are amidst the most favourable territories around the globe. Their strategic location and superior quality of their soils are core factors supporting both human development and the rise of these regions as global economic hubs. At the same time, deltas are extremely vulnerable to multiple threats from both climate change and the...

"I stood by and watched": An autoethnography of stakeholder participation in a living lab

An emerging and innovative way of organizing projects in health technology and innovation is the so-called "living lab". Because of their characteristics, living labs may provide a solution to a very old problem: How to facilitate the meaningful participation of stakeholders in science and technology? In this article, I (we use a first-person...

Participatory Workshops as a Tool for Building Inclusivity in New Towns in Africa

Africa is currently the fastest-urbanizing continent in the world. As part of this rapid growth, New Towns are increasingly employed by private developers as a means of providing well-serviced urban environments to middle- and upper-income groups. These comprehensively-planned New Towns are often seen in contrast to the perceived ‘chaos’ and ...

The Role of Value Deliberation to Improve Stakeholder Participation in Issues of Water Governance

Stakeholder participation is a requirement for environmental decision-making in the European Union. Despite this, numerous instances can be seen in water governance in which stakeholders feel undervalued and unheard, thereby creating unfavourable procedural outcomes, resistance and conflict. In this article, we propose that a process of early...

Governance Experiments in Water Management: From Interests to Building Blocks

The management of water is a topic of great concern. Inadequate management may lead to water scarcity and ecological destruction, but also to an increase of catastrophic floods. With climate change, both water scarcity and the risk of flooding are likely to increase even further in the coming decades. This makes water management currently a...

Governance Experiments in Water Management: From Interests to Building Blocks

The management of water is a topic of great concern. Inadequate management may lead to water scarcity and ecological destruction, but also to an increase of catastrophic floods. With climate change, both water scarcity and the risk of flooding are likely to increase even further in the coming decades. This makes water management currently a...

The Princess in the Castle: Challenging Serious Game Play for Integrated Policy Analysis and Planning

What are the principles that make societal problems socio-technically complex? And, even more important, how can we support public policymaking in the wake of socio-technical complexity? In The Princess in the Castle, the author investigates if, why and how serious games and game-like simulations (SGs) can support integrated policy making and...

Implementing participatory water management: Recent advances in theory, practice, and evaluation

Many current water planning and management problems are riddled with high levels of complexity, uncertainty, and conflict, so-called “messes” or “wicked problems.” The realization that there is a need to consider a wide variety of values, knowledge, and perspectives in a collaborative decision making process has led to a multitude of new methods...

Implementing Participatory Water Management: Recent Advances in Theory, Practice, and Evaluation

Many current water planning and management problems are riddled with high levels of complexity, uncertainty, and conflict, so-called “messes” or “wicked problems.” The realization that there is a need to consider a wide variety of values, knowledge, and perspectives in a collaborative decision making process has led to a multitude of new methods...

Corporate participation in regional sustainability initiatives

Regional Sustainability Initiatives (RSIs) may play a significant role in promoting the cooperation of different stakeholders of society towards a more sustainable future. RSIs can often deal with a number of environmental and social problems more effectively and efficiently than international, national or local activities. RSIs are getting more...

Gaming as the method to integrate modeling participatory approaches in interactive water management

At the science - policy interface there are several reasons to combine models with the participatory process to facilitate the complex policy making process but the communication of the two sides is often too hard to generate any meaningful results. In this paper we argue that to close the communication gap the rationale of the Meta – rule of...

The Growing Importance of Social Learning in Water Resources Management and Sustainability Science

Guest Editorial, part of a Special Feature on Social Learning in Water Resources Management.