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Strategic bridging functions performed by three voluntary, multi-stakeholder bridging organizations engaged in environmental governance and management in the Calgary Region of Alberta, Canada, are examined. Structured interviews revealed how the bridging organizations influenced an increase in municipal participation in regional-scale environmental governance and management activities. Bridging organizations connect stakeholders who would otherwise not be connected. They identify shared values and issues of concern, build trusting relationships, co-create knowledge, resolve conflict, and contribute to social learning processes. Social network structure is made visible through social network graphs. The legitimacy of natural resource management plans co-created through strategic bridging processes is also addressed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The authors are involved in regional land use planning and water management in the Calgary region of Southwestern Alberta in Western Canada. Calgary exists in a semi-arid temperate region with significant water availability constraints. Over the last three years we have been involved in a growth management- focused regional land use policy and planning process for the Calgary region. Our involvement has been related to regional hydrologic cycle management and the link between regional water use and land use policy. We have an ongoing research relationship with the 'Calgary Regional Partnership' a voluntary municipal government organization. The paper addresses both the social-spatial dimensions of ecological infrastructure and a theoretical interdisciplinary framework for resilience assessment and adaptive ecological governance. Our theoretical framework is informed by the recent literature in integrative theory, social learning theory, resilience theory, ecohydrology theory, cascade theory, social-ecological systems theory, complexity theory, network theory, political ecology theory, landscape ecology theory, decision-making theory, spatial planning theory and scale theory. This work has been selected and synthesized in the context of our practice experience and research applications interests in the Calgary region. The methodological challenges facing the implementation of sustainable development goals and objectives include the need to effectively deal with complex human-ecological process interconnections involving uncontrolled variables operating across multiple spatial and temporal scales. This relationship between landscape pattern and socio-ecological process is important in both the natural and social sciences (Wu, Jones, Li and Louks, 2006). The kind of social-ecological research necessary to support urban regional land and water use planning and policy must be capable of spatially linking long term ecosystem behaviour with human activity systems. In this 'real world' context of applied ecology, practitioners and theorists both need to understand the behaviour of large scale socio-ecological systems. We use the term 'ecological infrastructure' to represent the characteristic spatial landscape patterns and processes that structurally and functionally enable the delivery of ecological goods and services (such as water) in a social-ecological system context. In this sense, ecological infrastructure is analogous to municipal (local government) engineered infrastructure services which spatially distribute energy, water and wastewater, material goods and communications within the built human environment. By analogy, ecological systems distribute a variety of biotic and abiotic processes including the flow of water, energy, nutrients and biotic organisms though structural, functional and spatial networks in the regional landscape. While the fiscal concept of 'infrastructure debt' is well understood by municipal governments, there is a greater risk of 'ecological infrastructure debt' unless the importance of ecological goods and services is explicitly incorporated into long term regional land use planning and development policies and practices. Unfortunately, unlike municipal infrastructure debt, money is not a solution to or substitute for ecological debt. Once ecological function is lost, it cannot be replaced by money and money cannot substitute for ecological processes. We use the term 'ecological governance' to represent the formal and informal institutional, private and community partnerships involved in the management of regional ecological infrastructure and the land use planning and policy frameworks which affect the regional delivery of ecological goods and services such as water. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article the author discusses aspects related to projected goal of biosocial systems or environmental management by 2010. She cites that the goal of environmental management in 2010 is to manage the synthesis of resilience, social learning, and integrative research. She notes that the management of the above synthesis will need the cooperation between academics and non-academics for a resilient biosocial systems framework. Studies related to environmental management are also mentioned.

Gitksan and Wet'suwet'en tribal groups in northwestern British Columbia are an example of aboriginal peoples involved in the practice of sacred or spiritual stewardship in their ancestral homelands. All aspects of tribal organization and function are infused with spiritual expression including the use of dreams, visions, teachings from the myths of oral tradition, and the symbolic representation of their tribal worldview (including both earthly and supernatural elements) in language, material culture, social and geographic organization, art, dance, and song. The practice of spiritual stewardship involves the ritual taking and use of natural resources according to cultural protocols established in tribal mythology and validated within a cosmology that views human beings as part of an interacting life force continuum that includes animals and spirit beings. Animals and fish are viewed as intelligent societies having the power to influence events and, as such, they must be treated with respect using instructions encoded in the myths and teachings of the people's oral tradition. In the context of this cosmological framework and its associated sacred geography, sociocultural resource management practices are based on a body of heuristic and phenomenological aboriginal knowledge. Spiritual stewardship represents a cosmic sanctioning of ethics that ensures the continued future supply of strategic life-supporting resources and thereby ensures the future of the people who depend on them for cultural and physical survival. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]