Limpopo Basin Curriculum Innovation Network

Limpopo Basin Curriculum Innovation Network

The Limpopo Basin Curriculum Innovation Network (LBCIN) is a network of partners from seven institutions of higher learning (IHLs) in South Africa and Mozambique, engaging around collaborative research into social ecological systems in the Limpopo Basin, and developing innovative curriculum related to this research.

Mission Statement:  The Limpopo Basin Curriculum Innovation Network is a platform for institutions of higher learning to share ideas and research outputs on climate change resilience in the Limpopo Basin in order to facilitate development, review and incorporation of innovative curriculum into the higher education system.

The LBCIN is supported by, and forms part of the RESILIM-O Project which is a USAID funded project implemented by the Association of Water and Rural Development (AWARD).

The overarching goal of RESILIM-O project is to reduce vulnerability to climate change through building improved transboundary water and biodiversity governance and management of the Olifants Basin through the adoption of science-based strategies that enhance the resilience of its people and ecosystems through systemic and social learning approaches.

This website is an e-learning platform, which serves as a space for sharing content on risks, activities, resilience building and intervention approaches to support higher education curriculum innovation in the Limpopo Basin. The intention is to facilitate collaborative research and curriculum development across the LBCIN within the following broad themes:

  • Approaches to Integrated Water Resources Management (IWRM) and Ecosystem and Environmental Management for Climate Change Adaptation & Resilience building
  • Resilience Assessment, Monitoring and Building
  • Multi-stakeholder governance within a social-ecological systems (SES) framework
  • Social learning and action for change within a social-ecological systems framework

The LBCIN consists of partners from University of Venda, University of Limpopo, Southern African Wildlife College, Universidade Eduardo Mondlane, Pedagogical University of Mozambique, University of Mpumalanga, Rhodes University’s Environmental Learning Research Centre, and the Association for Water and Rural Development.

Limpopo basin catchment area LBCIN

The Limpopo Basin

The Limpopo Basin is a highly productive, and highly threatened, river basin. It is home to rich areas of biodiversity and wide ranges of habitat types. It supports significant economic activities, including high concentrations of mines in the South African portion of the basin, commercial agriculture, as well as large numbers of people dependent on ecosystem services for their livelihoods. It is degraded both in quality and quantity, due to threats such as mining, urbanization, agriculture, afforestation and climate change.

The Olifants catchment

The Olifants catchment and its contributing waterways are critical for supporting life in the area, yet unchecked pollution, inappropriate land and resource use, weak and poorly enforced policies and regulations, as well as poor protection of habitats and biodiversity are degrading the Olifants at an alarming rate. The LBCIN is working together to respond to these many intertwining vulnerabilities through innovative learning and agency development in the catchment.

Conceptual Framework

The conceptual framework behind the Limpopo Basin Curriculum Innovation Network (LBCIN) has been developed collaboratively by partners from all of the participating Institutions of Higher Learning. It comprises:

  1. The social ecological system (SES) of complex interacting issues that constitute a system of risks, namely, water, land, climate, economic and governance. The conceptual framework will support IHLs to share knowledge of the interacting system risks, and to collectively analyse and understand the risks and their complexities. The conceptual framework will also include a focus on key activities associated with these sub-systems and link these to social learning, governance and wider knowledge management responses.
  2. The resilience building responses that are needed to tackle the issues that are being experienced and are likely to emerge in future. Some of the main conceptual tools being utilised to frame resilience building are: complexity and resilience thinking, systemic collaborative inquiry, expansive social learning, and transformational practices. The resultant intervention responses include: climate change adaptation, disaster risk management, integrated water resources management, natural resources management , climate smart agriculture and agroecology, ecosystem services and biodiversity conservation, green economy and renewable energy development, and multi-stakeholder governance of natural resources.
  3. The educational responses and processes of curriculum innovation, learning programme review and development, and the production of associated conceptual tools. The major thrust and added value of this IHL programme lies in curriculum innovation and transformative learning as an education response and process in the higher education sector, which is responsible for educating the next generation of leaders and managers in the catchment. The curriculum innovation and learning process will tap into a set of emerging principles.
Limpop Basin Curriculum Innovation Network

Academic Partners