Tools for Social Learning
Across Ecotrust programs, we seek to illuminate and integrate the human dimensions of ecosystem management. This work has led to the development of a suite of tools, methods and analyses through which we work to combine scientific rigor with social pragmatism.
Ecotrust’s toolkits feature site-specific analyses, informed by local and stakeholder knowledge. We assess the social and economic values of nature’s services; and we support decision making through integrated models and open-forum scenarios. We strive to imbue all tools and methods with an adaptive spirit of inquiry.
Ecotrust embraces an open development philosophy. We utilize open data standards, publish writings under a Creative Commons license, and publish code under open source licenses. Dedicated to knowledge transfer, we support the adoption of tools and methods among partner organizations.
With these social learning toolkits, we seek to:
- Build transparency and data parity into ecosystem management
- Foster data transparency and standardization across institutional and international boundaries (OCEAN, Salmon Inventory Mapper)
- Develop tools, methods and analyses that incorporate local knowledge into ecosystem management (OCEAN)
- Empower resource-dependent communities to perform spatial ecosystem management (OCEAN, TREES)
- Advance a shared understanding of best management practices
- Enable landowners, decision-makers and communities to quantify values for ecosystem services such as carbon, habitat, or water quality and to visualize the benefits of management that maximizes those values (TREES, SEEDS)
- Enable landowners, decision-makers and communities to visualize and weigh potential social and ecological benefits and costs of alternative marine and landscape management scenarios (OCEAN, SEEDS, My Local Foodshed)
- Connect markets for regional and sustainable products
- Bolster the capacities of farmers, ranchers, fishermen, and forestland owners to market their products to consumers of regional and sustainable products (FoodHub)
- Promote transparency about green certification systems (MSC Certification Mapper)
- Facilitate inquiry into social-ecological relationships
- Foster opportunities for dialog about ecosystem management as well as about actions, assumptions and values that support social and ecological resilience more broadly (People and Place, OCEAN, My Local Foodshed)
An introduction to the toolkits:
OCEAN – For stakeholder engagement, decision support and participatory monitoring in the marine environment. One OCEAN component, Open OceanMap, was awarded a 2008 Mellon Award for Technology Collaboration.
TREES – For forest management planning, including modeling forest growth, timber harvest and carbon storage as well as projecting timber and carbon revenues based on site-specific practices, operating costs and potential prices.
SEEDS – For assessing the capacity for alternative crop strategies to produce a variety of agricultural goods and ecosystem services at the site and landscape scales. (www.inforain.org/posters/seeds_poster.html)
FoodHub – An online marketplace for wholesale-direct trade in regional foods.
Salmon Inventory Mapper and MSC Certification Mapper – Two tools developed by State of the Salmon, a joint program of Ecotrust and Wild Salmon Center. The Inventory Mapper brings together salmon monitoring data from across the Pacific Rim, and the Certification Mapper enables at-a-glance review of the assessments made under the Marine Stewardship Council (MSC) certification program.
My Local Foodshed – A proposal to incorporate the SEEDS analyses into an interactive tool for game play, scenario visualization and hosted dialog. Download a one-page introduction (34kb pdf).
People and Place – Hosts an inquiry on ideas that connect us and pathways to a more reliable prosperity.
