The International Water Security Network is helping to organise an international symposium on benefit sharing, which takes place next week. The University of KwaZulu-Natal hosts the Benefit Sharing in Social-Ecological Systems: Policy and Practice event from 23-26 June.
The Insaka theme of ‘benefit sharing’ has its origin in a belief that progress toward sustainable use of the benefits we derive directly and indirectly from natural resources depends on how, when, to whom and by whom benefits are allocated. While we are familiar with sharing, our experience of this is commonly limited to sharing what we have among those who have the same interest. By contrast, sharing in large social-ecological systems is confounded by their complexity and variability in time and space. Society needs to learn collectively how to organise for, and adaptively manage equitable benefit sharing in such systems. The theme ‘Benefit sharing: policy and practice’ provides an opportunity for us to learn from experiences of those who have been mandated to share benefits in complex social-ecological systems and to deliberate on research that is required to improve performance.
For more information, see the Insaka 2015 Programme and Abstracts booklet.