The Sustainability Research Centre: Transforming Regions
Drivers and Barriers to Sustainable Development:
An Historical-Futures Perspective (Case Study)
Dr Marcus Bussey
[email protected]
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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
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• 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).
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Population grew significantly (19%) between 1996 and 2006 Trends
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.
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Nine determinants frame the context for drivers and
barriers
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complexity and leadership,
institutions and values,
technology and imagination,
information and knowledge, and
scale
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Navigating the socio-ecological field
Information – Historical case studies
 Conceptual tools – The scaffolding of case
studies
 Empowerment – From case study to scenario
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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)
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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
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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
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