Re-configuring Local Governance for Community Resilience: social learning for flood adaptation under a changing climate

该项目旨在为社区提供一种更有效的方式，使其在面对与人为气候变化相关的不断变化的风险时具有复原力。它将重点关注德文郡农村社区的洪水问题，以此来探索社区成员、学术研究人员和当地机构之间利用“共同学习”的潜力，以了解与当前气候条件相关的洪水风险，以及这些风险和相关脆弱性如何因气候变化而发生变化。在这样做的过程中，该项目将致力于一个社区抗洪计划，该计划将寻求代表不同选区所展示的不同类型的知识。该项目有以下目标：1.采用一种审议和协作的方法，让一系列社区参与者参与对话，共同创造知识，以了解与河流和地表水洪水相关的风险；2.利用这一社会学习过程，促进地方州、环境机构和气候研究人员代表在自然科学和社会科学领域的非正式学习公众参与；3.使研究参与者能够就当前的洪灾复原力水平进行合作和共同商定的评估，并在人为气候变化的未来影响的背景下，制定以地点为基础的洪水风险管理策略；4.考虑在地方政府服务重组之际，这一方法在促进社区复原力方面可以发挥的作用。该项目将与两个主要合作伙伴合作开发。首先，德文县议会作为负责应急规划的协调地方当局，将为Crediton选定的案例研究社区提供知识、专业知识和进入社区洪水规划过程。第二，为了实现该项目的目标2，气候外联信息网将参与其中，以确保更广泛的政策和实践者群体能够从该项目所学到的知识中受益。这项计划亦包括法定机构(环境保护署和消防局)的贡献。计划将采用能力小组的方法，在社会上不同的持份者之间建立知识和信心，以制订一项抗洪计划。在为期六个月的时间里，将每隔两个月举行四次小组会议，参加会议的有来自克雷顿社区、德文县议会、环境局、德文郡消防和救援服务局的代表以及一小批物理和社会科学学者。这些会议将探讨目前对洪水风险和相关脆弱性的理解、这些脆弱性在未来将如何变化，以及使社区对未来洪水事件具有弹性的最有效方法。能力小组方法的目的是克服当前社区有效复原力方面的许多障碍，这往往受到自上而下、政府主导的政策制定和执行方法的框框，这种方法可能隐藏或扭曲关于风险和如何应对风险的重要当地知识。因此，该项目提供了一个机会，以探索重新配置风险治理的潜力，以重新平衡地方政府和公众之间的知识和决策。通过这种方式，该项目旨在探索关于环境危害的社会学习的潜在作用，以评估这种方法在重新配置地方政府、法定机构和社区之间的关系方面可能发挥的作用。通过这样做，该项目有可能证明以慎重和以知识为基础的方法处理一系列不断变化的脆弱性的价值。

This project aims to provide a more effective way for communities to become resilient in the face of changing risks associated with anthropogenic climate change. It will focus on the issue of flooding in a rural Devon community as a way of exploring the potential for using 'co-learning' between community members, academic researchers and local agencies to understand the flood risks associated with current climatic conditions and how those risks and associated vulnerabilities are shifting as a result of climate change. In so doing, the project will work towards a community flood resilience plan that will seek to represent the different types of knowledge demonstrated by the different constituencies.The project has the following objectives:1. To adopt a deliberative and collaborative approach for engaging a range of community participants in a dialogue for co-creating knowledge for understanding risks associated with fluvial and surface water flooding;2. To use this social learning process as a way of promoting informal learning about public engagement for representatives of the local state, environmental agencies and climate researchers across the physical and social sciences;3. To enable a collaborative and jointly agreed assessment of current levels of flood resilience between the research participants and to develop place-based strategies to flood risk management within the context of future impacts from anthropogenic climate change;4. To consider the role this methodology can play in promoting community resilience at a time of local government service re-structuring. The project will be developed in collaboration with two main partners. First, Devon County Council, as the co-ordinating local authority with responsibility for emergency planning, will provide knowledge, expertise and access to the community flood planning process for the selected case study community of Crediton. Second, in order to meet objective 2 of the project, the Climate Outreach Information Network (COIN) will participate to ensure that the wider policy and practitioner community can benefit from the learning gained by the project. The project will also include contributions from statutory agencies (Environment Ageny and Fire authority).The project will use a competency group approach to build knowledge and confidence amongst the different stakeholders in the community for developing a flood resilience plan. Over the course of six months four group meetings will be held at intervals of two months at which there will be representatives from the community of Crediton, Devon County Council, the Environment Agency, Devon and Somerset Fire and Rescue Service and a small group of physical and social science academics. These meetings will explore current understandings of flood risk and associated vulnerabilities, the ways in which such vulnerabilities will change in the future and the most effective way of making the community resilient to future flood events. The purpose of the competency group approach is to overcome many of the current barriers to effective community resilience, which is often framed by a top-down, government-led approach to policy making and implementation that can hide or distort vital local knowledges of risks and how to deal with them. The project therefore provides an opportunity to explore the potential for re-configuring risk governance that re-balances knowledge and decision-making between the local state and publics.In this way, the project aims to explore the potential role of social learning about an environmental hazard to assess the role such a methodology could play in re-configuring relations between the local state, statutory agencies and communities. In so doing, the project has the potential to demonstrate the value of a deliberative and knowledge-based approach to tackling a range of changing vulnerabilities.