Reflecting on a collaborative approach to a regional sustainability transition: Dingle Peninsula 2030

Established in 2018, Dingle Peninsula 2030 is an exciting and innovative multi-partner initiative on the Dingle Peninsula, Co. Kerry.

MaREI approached this project with a collaborative mindset and in tandem with the project itself, a research paper and a learning brief have also been produced. 

By approaching research in this way and collaborating with the partners involved, the co-produced research outputs are scientifically rigorous, accessible, and beneficial to all stakeholders, ultimately making them more impactful. Combining peer-reviewed articles and learning briefs, the engaged research approach balances academic processes with practical learnings which can be shared with all stakeholders, informing the direction taken by different aspects of the overall initiative. 

The ‘Learning Briefs’ are short documents focusing on learnings from particular activities, projects or outcomes relating to the work of the partnership.

The process is co-ordinated by MaREI but the learning briefs themselves are co-created with all partners. The overall aim is to capture the learnings in a format that is accessible and useful to the participants involved and to other communities, researchers, organisations, and policy makers. The process of producing a learning brief involves collaborative reflection and deliberation, thereby providing a useful form of internal reflective learning and evaluation which helps inform future decisions and actions.

While the paper uses a reflective method to gather findings with relation to a collaborative governance approach for the sociotechnical transition to a low carbon society in a regional context.
The paper also outlines the networks, personal capacities, organisational capacities, benefits and challenges of collaborative governance partnerships for sustainable transitions from the perspective of individuals within a collaborative committee working on a regional transition project on the Dingle Peninsula, Co Kerry, Ireland.
Highlighted within this is the need for the incorporation of reflective practice within collaborative governance for the socio-technical transition to a low-carbon society.

Both the learning brief and the research paper can also be downloaded below.