Abstract
Background: The Community Reforestation Research Programme is a joint initiative between eThekwini Municipality and the University of KwaZulu-Natal in South Africa. Addressing complex sustainable development issues requires collaboration across disciplines and between researchers, practitioners and policy-makers. Understanding how this occurs has the potential to inform and improve transitions to sustainability. Objectives: A summative evaluation of one project within the broader programme was commissioned to develop in-depth understandings into the underlying systemic influences or mechanisms that supported or hindered transdisciplinary research and practices. Method: A realist evaluation method informed the analysis of questionnaires, documents, interviews, focus group discussions and participation in programme reporting and planning processes. This approach supported the development of a contextual profile within which underlying mechanisms were identified. These mechanisms were considered in relation to the outcomes of the project. Results: The main mechanisms identified in the evaluation process related to orientations to research, orientations to education, orientations to value creation, orientations to environmental management and orientations to organisational leadership. These orientations either enabled or hindered particular outcomes in the research on, and environmental management of, community reforestation in the context of climate change. The mechanisms also had significant implications for understanding ‘what worked well for whom in what circumstances and how’. Conclusion: Transdisciplinary research and practice across institutional boundaries are enabled or hindered by underlying mechanisms. By identifying and understanding these mechanisms, insights were developed that have the potential to enhance transdisciplinary sustainability initiatives at the local level.
Highlights
Addressing complex sustainable development issues requires collaboration across disciplines and between researchers, practitioners and policy-makers
This article reports on a summative evaluation of a transdisciplinary research initiative that sought to support this kind of collaboration within a community reforestation project in an urban setting
By 2010, these capacity development endeavours had coalesced around an internship programme and a research partnership between eThekwini Municipality, the Environmental Planning and Climate Protection Department (EPCPD) and the University of KwaZulu-Natal (UKZN), the School of Biological and Conservation Sciences
Summary
Addressing complex sustainable development issues requires collaboration across disciplines and between researchers, practitioners and policy-makers. In addition to reporting on the outcomes of the project, the evaluation sought to understand how and why the transdisciplinary research project produced the outcomes that it did This required an identification of underlying mechanisms. By 2010, these capacity development endeavours had coalesced around an internship programme and a research partnership between eThekwini Municipality, the Environmental Planning and Climate Protection Department (EPCPD) and the UKZN, the School of Biological and Conservation Sciences. This partnership later became known as the D’RAP and acted as an umbrella under which a number of projects were developed and implemented. The intention of the CRRP was to ‘promote the knowledge base in the delivery of environmental management in an urban context, and to develop research capacity and expertise in this field’ (UKZN & eThekwini Municipality 2013)
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