Educating for action: Aligning skills with policies for sustainable development in the Danube river basin

Foster employability and fight social exclusion through the development of lifelong learning (LLL) key-competences: reviewing twenty years of LLL policies

Purpose

This study aims to provide an overview of the past two decades of lifelong learning (LLL) policies for enhancing employability and reduce social exclusion in young people of European countries through the development of the so-called LLL key-competences.

Design/methodology/approach

Built on a quasi-systematic review, this contribution explores traditional and new methods for promoting the LLL transition, and then employability, in young adults (e.g. apprenticeship, vocational training, e-learning, etc.).

Findings

It argues the need to identify all the possible approaches able to support policymakers, as they can differently impact key-competence development.

Originality/value

Finally, based on the consolidated EU policy experience, we propose a strategy of implementation of the LLL programmes that facilitates the institutions’ decision processes for policy-making through the use of decisional support system.

Capacity challenges in water quality monitoring: understanding the role of human development

Monitoring the qualitative status of freshwaters is an important goal of the international community, as stated in the Sustainable Development Goal (SDGs) indicator 6.3.2 on good ambient water quality. Monitoring data are, however, lacking in many countries, allegedly because of capacity challenges of less-developed countries. So far, however, the relationship between human development and capacity challenges for water quality monitoring have not been analysed systematically. This hinders the implementation of fine-tuned capacity development programmes for water quality monitoring. Against this background, this study takes a global perspective in analysing the link between human development and the capacity challenges countries face in their national water quality monitoring programmes. The analysis is based on the latest data on the human development index and an international online survey amongst experts from science and practice. Results provide evidence of a negative relationship between human development and the capacity challenges to meet SDG 6.3.2 monitoring requirements. This negative relationship increases along the course of the monitoring process, from defining the enabling environment, choosing parameters for the collection of field data, to the analytics and analysis of five commonly used parameters (DO, EC, pH, TP and TN). Our assessment can be used to help practitioners improve technical capacity development activities and to identify and target investment in capacity development for monitoring.

Empowering the Next Generation of Watershed Decision-Makers: A Pedagogical Design

Watershed management is the art and practice of understanding stakeholder values for ecosystem services within a watershed and instituting management practices that consider trade-offs to sustain these goods and services. Effective watershed management practices are hydrologically defined, ecosystem-based, inclusive, and integrate biophysical as well as socioeconomic decisions. The uncertainties and unpredictability of climate change create an ambiguous backdrop to the increasingly social problem of water resource management. Inequities in watershed decision-making processes often lead to the reinforcement of power and resource imbalances. Future watershed managers must be able to engage across socioeconomic and cultural boundaries to support decisions that advance water as a human right in an uncertain future. We offer a design for a graduate level, 15-week university course that uses publicly available resources to help emerging watershed leaders prepare for an uncertain future. The design is interactive and constructivist, engaging the refereed literature and leading to an increased understanding of ecosystem-based watershed management under climate scenarios, with special attention to vulnerable populations.

Outcomes of the hydromorphology integration in the Water Framework Directive: A review based on science mapping

The goal of our review was to evaluate scientific outcomes connected to hydromorphology and Water Framework Directive by synthesizing the main themes based on keywords, research domains, and the spatial coverage of high visibility publications. These data were integrated into a social network analysis to understand the structure of science related to our topic. Thus, we investigated 183 articles and conference proceedings from the Web of Science Core Collection. Among the 505 authors keywords, the central ones in our network were Water Framework Directive, hydromorphology, macroinvertebrates, ecological status, water quality, reference conditions, and river. The characteristics of the network of keywords indicated that information developed around a few key-concepts linked to numerous peripheral keywords, which highlighted some main themes of research. Hydromorphology appeared mostly in articles with macroinvertebrates and river restoration, suggesting the acceptance of environmental-based paradigm in water bodies' management. Consequently, we expected to count the majority of publications in Environmental Sciences & Ecology research domain. Issues related to the society (e.g. public participation, stakeholders) didn't appear in our analysis. Publications covered especially European Union member states, the network being dominated by Germany, Italy, and UK in terms of both study area and authorship. Besides traditional scientific relations between Western and Northern European states, we also noticed numerous comparisons between Danube countries. To comment the position of these publications in the scientific world, we used the Article Influence Score, which was below the average for the main research domain of Environmental Sciences & Ecology, probably as a consequence of the regional cover and concern of the Water Framework Directive. Further, we recommend more connections between environmental and social sciences, as well as between countries and we encourage funding for open access publications in order to increase the visibility and influence of the topic of hydromorphology and Water Framework Directive both bibliometrically and for decision and policy makers.