| 1. |
- Metelerkamp, Luke, et al.
(författare)
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Learning for transitions : a niche perspective
- 2020
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Ingår i: Ecology and Society. - 1708-3087. ; 25:1
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Roughly eight hundred million youth are projected to enter the African job market by 2050. This presents both an opportunity and a challenge for urgently needed sustainability transitions on the continent, because with appropriate training and skills this youth bulge could be instrumental in driving systemic change. By training the youth in new practices and approaches, they could be central to creating new systems and African futures that are more sustainable and just. We focus on the question of where the new skills and competencies needed to underpin such transitions could come from and, in turn, how youth might access these competencies. We investigate these questions by exploring an emerging sustainability niche around organic agriculture in the South African food system. We used a network and power-mapping tool, Net-Map, to map the key knowledge resources used by successful organic farmers, as well as to understand how actor learning networks develop and disseminate new skills and competencies. We found that although a substantial volume of knowledge has been generated and sophisticated informal learning networks exist within the niche we studied, knowledge is highly fragmented. The development and transfer of knowledge is impeded by the absence of teaching capacity and poor institutional alignment at a provincial and national level. Our findings suggest that state-led extension services and formal training institutions are of little help to niche pioneers and instead contribute toward the path-dependency of the current food regime. The substantial implications of these findings underscore the need for further studies to investigate whether similar patterns hold elsewhere on the continent, and for other niches. If they do, our findings imply that addressing the sustainability challenges on the African continent will require creative approaches and new models of learning that are capable of developing and transferring the knowledge and practices emerging in sustainability niches to the 90% of youth in Africa who will not progress to formal tertiary training but will be central to driving potential sustainability transitions.
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| 2. |
- Metelerkamp, Luke, et al.
(författare)
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We're ready, the system's not - youth perspectives on agricultural careers in South Africa
- 2019
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Ingår i: Agrekon. - : Informa UK Limited. - 0303-1853 .- 2078-0400. ; 58:2, s. 154-179
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- In light of rising levels of youth unemployment in South Africa, now at 50 per cent, research was undertaken to better understand the paradox of young people turning away from agricultural employment in spite of such high levels of unemployment in the country. The research brings to light new evidence of youth perspectives on contemporary attitudes, experiences and expectations of work in the agricultural sector in South Africa.The research took a narrative-based approach using SenseMaker as a tool for blended qualitative and quantitative data collection. A sample of 573 youth narratives was drawn from across three sites in the KwaZulu-Natal, Limpopo and Western Cape provinces of South Africa.Findings show that attitudes towards careers in agriculture vary greatly. While a set of negative perceptions emerged from the narratives as anticipated, approximately one third of the respondents expressed a clear interest in and passion for agriculture. This interest persisted in spite of a range of pervasive social norms and stigmas. However, these positive aspirations tended to be at odds with the kinds of jobs created by an increasingly corporatised food regime.The research addresses two key policy documents: The National Development Plan and the National Youth Policy, contributing toward the growing body of literature seeking to understand how agricultural policy based on principles of accumulation from below may be formulated. It also provides an empirical evidence base for activists, educators and policy-makers interested in the role of the agricultural sector in addressing youth unemployment in South Africa and elsewhere in Africa.
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| 3. |
- Moore, Michele-Lee, 1977-, et al.
(författare)
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Disrupting the opportunity narrative : navigating transformation in times of uncertainty and crisis
- 2023
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Ingår i: Sustainability Science. - 1862-4065 .- 1862-4057. ; 18:4, s. 1649-1665
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- COVID-19 posed threats for health and well-being directly, but it also revealed and exacerbated social–ecological inequalities, worsening hunger and poverty for millions. For those focused on transforming complex and problematic system dynamics, the question was whether such devastation could create a formative moment in which transformative change could become possible. Our study examines the experiences of change agents in six African countries engaged in efforts to create or support transformative change processes. To better understand the relationship between crisis, agency, and transformation, we explored how they navigated their changed conditions and the responses to COVID-19. We document three impacts: economic impacts, hunger, and gender-based violence and we examine how they (re)shaped the opportunity contexts for change. Finally, we identify four kinds of uncertainties that emerged as a result of policy responses, including uncertainty about the: (1) robustness of preparing a system to sustain a transformative trajectory, (2) sequencing and scaling of changes within and across systems, (3) hesitancy and exhaustion effects, and (4) long-term effects of surveillance, and we describe the associated change agent strategies. We suggest these uncertainties represent new theoretical ground for future transformations research.
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| 4. |
- Pereira, Laura, et al.
(författare)
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Leveraging the potential of wild food for healthy, sustainable, and equitable local food systems : learning from a transformation lab in the Western Cape region
- 2022
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Ingår i: Sustainability Science. - : Springer Science and Business Media LLC. - 1862-4065 .- 1862-4057.
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Food insecurity and diet-related diseases do not only have detrimental effects to human health, but are also underpinned by food systems that are environmentally unsustainable and culturally disconnected. Ensuring access to a healthy, affordable, and sustainable diet is one of the greatest challenges facing many low- and middle-income countries such as South Africa. These challenges in accessing a diverse diet often persist despite biocultural richness. For example, South Africa is globally recognised for its rich biodiversity, an ecologically unrivalled coastline, and a rich body of traditional knowledge amongst wild-food users. In this paper, we explore the potential that coastal wild foods as neglected and underutilised species (NUS) can play in local food systems in South Africa's Western Cape Province. Following a previously established transformation lab (T-Lab) method, here we report the observations and outcomes emerging from a two-day workshop held in May 2019 with a group of 40 actors involved in the local food system in diverse ways. Farmers, small-scale fishers, indigenous knowledge holders, representatives from non-profit organisations, chefs, bartenders, academics, activists, conservationists, and government officials were brought together with the aim of strengthening an emerging coalition of coastal wild food actors. Findings highlighted the existence of a fledgling economy for coastal wild foods, driven by high-end chefs. The T-Lab was essentially a tool of knowledge co-production around food system transformation and helped to surface deeply embedded issues on land, race, history, and culture that warrant engagement if a better food system is to emerge. In a country that is drought prone and vulnerable to climate change, a more resilient and sustainable food system is a necessity. But defining alternative governance systems to shift towards a healthier, more sustainable, and more equitable food system will require concerted effort across all stakeholders.
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| 5. |
- Pereira, Laura M., et al.
(författare)
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Food System Transformation : Integrating a Political-Economy and Social-Ecological Approach to Regime Shifts
- 2020
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Ingår i: International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health. - : MDPI AG. - 1661-7827 .- 1660-4601. ; 17:4
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Sustainably achieving the goal of global food security is one of the greatest challenges of the 21st century. The current food system is failing to meet the needs of people, and at the same time, is having far-reaching impacts on the environment and undermining human well-being in other important ways. It is increasingly apparent that a deep transformation in the way we produce and consume food is needed in order to ensure a more just and sustainable future. This paper uses the concept of regime shifts to understand key drivers and innovations underlying past disruptions in the food system and to explore how they may help us think about desirable future changes and how we might leverage them. We combine two perspectives on regime shifts-one derived from natural sciences and the other from social sciences-to propose an interpretation of food regimes that draws on innovation theory. We use this conceptualization to discuss three examples of innovations that we argue helped enable critical regime shifts in the global food system in the past: the Haber-Bosch process of nitrogen fixation, the rise of the supermarket, and the call for more transparency in the food system to reconnect consumers with their food. This paper concludes with an exploration of why this combination of conceptual understandings is important across the Global North/ Global South divide, and proposes a new sustainability regime where transformative change is spearheaded by a variety of social-ecological innovations.
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| 6. |
- Pereira, Laura, et al.
(författare)
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Transformative spaces in the making : key lessons from nine cases in the Global South
- 2020
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Ingår i: Sustainability Science. - : Springer Science and Business Media LLC. - 1862-4065 .- 1862-4057. ; 15:1, s. 161-178
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Creating a just and sustainable planet will require not only small changes, but also systemic transformations in how humans relate to the planet and to each other, i.e., social-ecological transformations. We suggest there is a need for collaborative environments where experimentation with new configurations of social-ecological systems can occur, and we refer to these as transformative spaces. In this paper, we seek a better understanding of how to design and enable the creation of transformative spaces in a development context. We analyse nine case studies from a previous special issue on Designing Transformative Spaces that aimed to collect examples of cutting-edge action-oriented research on transformations from the Global South. The analysis showed five design phases as being essential: Problem Definition Phase; Operationalisation Phase; Tactical Phase; Outcome Phase; and Reflection Phase. From this synthesis, we distilled five key messages that should be considered when designing research, including: (a) there are ethical dilemmas associated with creating a transformative space in a system; (b) it is important to assess the readiness of the system for change before engaging in it; (c) there is a need to balance between 'safe' and 'safe-enough' spaces for transformation; (d) convening a transformative space requires an assemblage of diverse methodological frameworks and tools; and (e) transformative spaces can act as a starting point for institutionalising transformative change. Many researchers are now engaging in transdisciplinary transformations research, and are finding themselves at the knowledge-action interface contributing to transformative space-making. We hope that by analysing experiences from across different geographies we can contribute towards better understanding of how to navigate the processes needed for the urgent global transformations that are being called for to create a more equitable and sustainable planet Earth.
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