Abstract for: Grounding participatory systems approaches in multi-stakeholder collaboration in landscapes for enhancing equity and resilience

The project explores how participatory systems approaches (PSAs) can be used to support collaboration and effective knowledge brokerage in southern African landscapes. PSAs allow for exploration of relationships, feedbacks and dynamic change over time whilst supporting the emergence of different stakeholder knowledges, values and perceptions of the landscape. This can contribute to improved learning, reduced power inequality, and enhanced collaboration leading to the emergence of negotiated, systemic understandings of what is needed for more equitable and resilient landscapes. The peer-reviewed literature, case studies, and expert reflections will be used to develop a Best Practice Toolkit including a reflections podinar and how-to-do demonstration video series that makes components of these tools more accessible to non-modelling experts. We argue that to be transformational, emancipatory and equitable in multi-stakeholder collaboration we need to progress how we use PSAs and tools more effectively to break down the current barriers related to power differentials and epistemic injustice.