Seminar and Discussion: Learning and change for reducing disasters and increasing adaptation - schools and organisations

As part of a double bill, VCCCAR visiting fellow Kate Lonsdale will give a talk entitled 'Learning for Adaptation – a reflection on organisational practice'.

It is a commonly held belief that learning is important for any kind of uncertain future, particularly for adaptation to a changing climate where there is little agreement as to what the problem is, let alone how you should respond. Despite this, organisations, even those professing to be ‘learning organisations’ often find it hard to articulate how this translates into practice - who should be learning what, why and how? This presentation explores some of these organisational constraints and offers some thoughts, with examples from practice, on what it means to be ‘learning well’.

Kate’s work focuses on understanding adaptation in practice including what it means to be well adapting, how you build adaptive capacity and what supports and constrains processes of adaptation. She has worked on adaptation as a researcher, trainer,facilitator, consultant, mentor, evaluator and in an advisory capacity for the last 16 years in both developed and developing country contexts. She has been working with the UK Climate Impacts Programme since 2008 and is also an associate of the Stockholm Environment Institute.

Briony Towers will also present on 'A critical pedagogy of risk: empowering children with the knowledge and skills for disaster risk reduction.

The event is sponsored by NCCARF Emergency Management Network, RMIT’s Centre for Risk and Community Safety, VCCCAR, and the Bushfire CRC