Learning from Regional Sustainable Development in The Netherlands: Explorations from a Learning History

Sietske Smulders-Dane, Toine Smits, Glen Fielding, Yvonne Chang and Kirsten Kuipers
Additional contact information
Sietske Smulders-Dane: Fontys University of Applied Sciences, Rachelsmolen 1, P.O. Box 347, Eindhoven 5600 AH, The Netherlands
Toine Smits: Van HallLarenstein University of Applied Sciences, Velp 6882 CT, The Netherlands
Glen Fielding: Glen Fielding Consulting, Portland, OR 97229-7584, USA
Yvonne Chang: Yvonne Chang Consulting, Portland, OR 97212-0231, USA
Kirsten Kuipers: Groene Hart Groesbeek, Groesbeek 6562ZT11, The Netherlands

Sustainability, 2016, vol. 8, issue 6, 1-17

Abstract: This case report is about a regional land-use planning project in the Netherlands. Initiated by the province of Gelderland and Radboud University (RU), the project aimed to create “Communities of Ownership” (CoO’s), local associations of townspeople who would engage in collaborative vision-building related to sustainable land development. The guiding conceptual model was “The Natural Step” (TNS), a systems-level approach to sustainability. We describe the land-use project and the learning history we constructed to help project managers and facilitators learn from the different perspectives that project actors conveyed. The learning history indicated that the project had limited success. We discuss four factors shaping the project’s results and the lessons learned related to those factors. The first lesson concerns the importance of a shared vision for sustainability among stakeholder groups. The second focuses on the preconditions necessary to work with The Natural Step effectively in certain contexts. Lesson three is about what it takes for a learning history to serve as a catalyst for collective learning and project improvement. Lesson four sheds light on the importance of respecting differences in stakeholders’ levels of sustainability awareness. We speculate that these differences may have shared characteristics with the kind of developmental differences that constructivist stage theorists of human development have articulated. Finally, we discuss the implications of our analysis for the leadership of sustainability initiatives.

Keywords: The Natural Step; sustainability; leadership; developmental levels; awareness; action research (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q Q0 Q2 Q3 Q5 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2016
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

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