Creating Adaptive Policies Training Course – Winnipeg, MB

TRAINING COURSE: Creating Adaptive Policies

When: March 14-15, 2012
Where: Winnipeg, Manitoba
Cost: $550 CAD per person. Registration covers the training course (with lunch); materials, including a hardcover copy of the Creating Adaptive Policies book; a beta version of the new Adaptive Design and Assessment Policy Tool (ADAPT); and a one-year membership to the Canadian Sustainability Indicators Network (CSIN). Existing CSIN members can register at a 30% discount (cost is $385 CAD).

Registration: Space is limited. Registration open online. Deadline for registration is March 8th.

About the Training Course

Policies and programs that cannot perform effectively under today’s complex, dynamic and uncertain conditions run the risk of not achieving their intended purpose. Instead, they may actually hinder the ability of individuals, communities and businesses to cope with and adapt to change.

This two-day executive training course for policy-makers and analysts explains the importance of adaptive policy making and sustainability transition management in today’s complex, dynamic and uncertain world, and provides training in each of the seven guidelines presented in the Creating Adaptive Policies book. While specific case examples from water resources, agriculture management and climate change adaptation are presented, the course materials are relevant to any government sector. Participants in this workshop get hands-on experience in using the new ADAPT Tool by applying it to a policy or programme of their interest.

Course Agenda

Day 1: Is my policy adaptive?

• Understanding adaptive polices and how to assess them.
• Why are adaptive policies important?
• A process and framework for creating adaptive policies.
• Laying the foundation for an adaptive policy using participatory scenario planning.
• Using ADAPT to assess the level of adaptability of your selected policy.

Day 2: How do I make my policy more adaptive?

• A review of proven approaches to improving the design of policy instruments.
• Integrated analysis and multi-stakeholder deliberation—tools that help ensure that policy designers use all available information.
• Formal review and policy adjustment—functions that can be built into policy instruments to help the policy react to unforeseen events.
• Self-organization and decentralization—tools that enable stakeholders to respond to changing local circumstances.
• Variation—ways the policy-maker can encourage a diversity of approaches and make improvements based on lessons learned.

Course Materials: Creating Adaptive Policies: A Guide for Policy-Making in an Uncertain World. To purchase or view the book in a Google previewer, click here. To access the free e-book or to download the PDF version, click here.

• Comprehensive in scope and grounded in actual case studies, this new contribution to public policy management backed by three expert sustainability organizations is a ‘how-to’ guide wrapped in clear and thoughtful analytical insight. – David McLaughlin (President and CEO Canada’s National Round Table on the Environment and the Economy)
• A critically important read for policy-makers confronted with a ‘perfect storm’ of global economic, social and environmental crises. – Jim MacNeill (Secretary General of the World Commission on Environment and Development and President of MacNeill and Associates)
• This is an essential toolkit for those in the business of making, recommending, learning about or teaching sensible and sound policy. – Margaret Catley-Carlson (United Nations Secretary General Advisory Board on Water, Patron, Global Water Partnership, and Chair, World Economic Forum Global Agenda Council on Water Security)