Can Social Learning help facilitate Stormwater Management?

• Main Author: Larsson, Stephan
• Format: Others
• Language: English
• Published: Uppsala universitet, Institutionen för geovetenskaper 2015
• Subjects: Social Learning; Stormwater Management; Uppsala; Sweden; Sustainable Development
• Online Access: http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:uu:diva-254133

This thesis shows the effect social learning has on various stakeholders involved in a project aimed at tackling a stormwater challenge in the city of Uppsala in Sweden and if social learning is a useful tool to address such an issue. Due to the onset of climate change societies are having to deal with increasingly complex issues. Finding sustainable answers to these challenges is proving difficult so alternative methods such innovation competitions much like the one studied in this paper are becoming attractive alternatives to conventional climate change mitigations approaches. By using an active participation method, this thesis attempts to study whether or not social learning is taking place in the innovation competition and if it is having an impact on the innovation competition. The study found that social learning is in fact taking place during the meetings which were attended but whether or not the resulting knowledge created as a result of the social learning was being used to the advantage of the stakeholders was compounded by communication issues outside of the project meetings.