partnership between World Wildlife Fund-Canada and the ESRC<\/a> that will examine the ways in which flood planning is taking place around the St. John River Basin, located in New Brunswick, Qu\u00e9bec and the American state of Maine.<\/p>\n\u201cThe research is exciting because it will make important contributions to scholarship on watershed-based governance and climate change adaptation planning, and it also has immediate relevance for those in the basin,\u201d says Baird.<\/p>\n
But, as Baird points out, the launch webinar also highlighted the pressing issue of a lack of co-ordination amongst stakeholders \u2014 an issue she believes requires urgent attention.<\/p>\n
\u201cWater governance and specific issues like flood planning are not usually highly co-ordinated across administrative boundaries, but water doesn\u2019t respect our administrative boundaries,\u201d Baird says. \u201cThere are benefits, including efficiency, innovation and greater effectiveness, if decision-making and direction-setting occur in co-ordination or collaboration with others in the watershed.\u201d<\/p>\n
Alongside her work on the St. John River Basin, Baird is engaged in another endeavour with colleagues from Brock to examine how and why people think about resilience when it comes to water resources.<\/p>\n
Early findings have shown that it is possible to \u201cpredict the extent to which individuals align with a resilience perspective based on some key differences, including age, empathy, openness and optimism about the future.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThis builds our understanding of how close \u2014 or far \u2014 those in society are to agreeing with and believing in the importance of governing using resilience principles, such as emphasizing broad participation in governance, supporting learning and experimentation, and recognizing the importance of connectivity,\u201d says Baird, noting that although this work began as a single project, it is expanding into its own program of research.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe argument is that we need a resilience perspective because it acknowledges how the world works \u2014 its complexity, its dynamic nature, and its uncertainty,\u201d Baird explains. \u201cWhen we view the world with this lens, new possibilities for how we govern it open up.\u201d<\/p>\n
Baird says that the work will soon move toward using the initial findings of the project to influence mindsets more broadly to encourage a resilience perspective.<\/p>\n
\u201cShifting mindsets is one of the most powerful levers we have for change,” says Baird. “I think there\u2019s a lot of potential for positive action as a result of this research.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Julia Baird, Assistant Professor in the Environmental Sustainability Research Centre and the Department of Geography and Tourism Studies, is the recipient of the 2020 Water\u2019s Next Award in the category of \u201cPeople: Academic Leader.\u201d <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":27,"featured_media":66848,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[7,1,4,38],"tags":[9223,703,5014,296,2262,4316,9225,9224],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/66847"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/27"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=66847"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/66847\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":66851,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/66847\/revisions\/66851"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/66848"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=66847"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=66847"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=66847"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}