OUTSTEPS of the Usual Path: Building a Regional Research Network focused on just sustainability and community resilience in the Lower Great Lakes.

Keywords: Resilience, Sustainability, stakeholders, Indigenous Right-holders, network
Session Type: Virtual Paper Abstract
Day: Sunday
Session Start / End Time: 2/27/2022 08:00 AM (Eastern Time (US & Canada)) - 2/27/2022 09:20 AM (Eastern Time (US & Canada))
Room: Virtual 32

Abstract

The OUTSTEPS community platform supports a dynamic growing network of organizations designed to support and enhance more integrated interactions between practitioners, community stakeholders, right-holders and researchers from urban, rural and Indigenous communities in watersheds and coastlines along Lake Erie and Lake Ontario. People, places, natural, infrastructure, organizational and living systems in the Lower Great Lakes Region - both Lakes, the Saint Clair, Niagara and Upper Saint Lawrence Rivers and all of the streams and creeks in their watersheds - face new sustainability and resilience challenges due to changes in physical, climate and socioeconomic conditions, climate, land use, and population migration. Cascading effects can impact other changes creating sustainability and resilience challenges for the diverse groups of stakeholders and Indigenous rights-holders residing in the region. The OUTSTEPS Partners acknowledge that the Lower Great Lakes Region includes land territories of the Seneca Nation, Haudenosaunee/Six Nations Confederacy, covered by the dish with One Spoon Treaty of Peace and Friendship as well as the 1794 Treaty of Canandaigua. This created the need to built a Sustainable Regional Systems Research Network to develop the knowledge and a platform to successfully built interdisciplinary teams to tackle these challenges with community partners. Since the initial conference funded by NSF in 2019, the OUTSTEPS network has addressed this need. The OUTSTEPS Network was founded on the ideas of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (UN SDGs) and the PEOPLES Resilience Framework to more effectively and efficiently engage holistically with stakeholders, Indigenous rights-holders and academics.