Nebraska Sustainability Leadership Workshop

NSLW Conversations Conferences

Nebraska is unique in its location and resources. Our relatively well-educated populace, our location over the second largest aquifer in the world, our enormous potential for producing food and renewable energy—all of these make Nebraska well-situated in a world that increasingly faces an uncertain energy future and growing shortages of water and other natural resources.

The first two years of the Nebraska Sustainability Leadership Workshops has planted seeds throughout the state to begin to find shared solutions to regional and statewide problems of sustainability. Two specific conclusions we’ve reached:

1.   Rural Nebraska and the metroplex in the eastern part of the state are necessarily dependent on one another and must work together to achieve a vital, sustainable future with and for each other. And, likewise, collaboration among various groups within a region of the state—schools and governing bodies, natural resources groups and cities and towns, counties—can contribute significantly to the sustainability of that region.

2.   Nebraska sits geographically and geologically in the middle of four of the most precious resources for the future of the state and the nation: water, land, food, and natural energy resources. We have a collective obligation and unique opportunities to further develop these four resources, as well as a fifth resource—materials, in sustainable ways in the future.

The state needs more, and more enlightened leaders if we are to become sustainable. During our travels, we’ve identified additional communities and groups who appear eager to learn about our workshops, join with previous workshop participants and speakers, to keep the momentum going.

The Conversations Conferences are aimed at these groups to help to create a stronger, more sustainable network of sustainability leaders in Nebraska.

Through the Conversations Conferences, we hope to expand the partnership project/forum with sustainability leaders to include original active partners as well as at least four academic institution partners, plus Natural Resource Districts partners, and public school teacher organizations throughout the state. Our plan is to enhance the growing sensibility among state and local leaders for the need to become actively involved in guiding growth on a regional base to protect environmental resources, preserve community cohesion and quality of life, enhance economic prospects and encourage good design that leads to smart, sustainable growth.

The four Conversations Conferences will take place in four regions of the state and will focus Nebraska’s unique responsibilities and opportunities related to its precious resources: water, land, food and renewable energy, as well as materials.

Each of the one-day conferences will be held at a college or university. These schools are partners in our Conversations Conferences: Creighton University, University of Nebraska–Lincoln, Central Nebraska Community College, and Western Nebraska Community College. Using the methods of participative social systems design, conference attendees will learn from one another and create new knowledge by participating in conversation events organized and facilitated by conference leaders. This approach to conscious, self-guided evolution of thought and action will inform not only the conference design, but also the conversations themselves among conference attendees who choose to explore their roles as leaders of transformative community and organizational change. Throughout the conference experience, participant-leaders will be introduced to processes that illustrate the principles of evolutionary consciousness and competence leading to the design of evolutionary guidance systems in the neighborhoods, communities and organizations of which they are a part.

Among topics for the Conversations Conferences are:

1)   Sustaining Nebraska: What does environmental sustainability mean to Nebraskans? Why does it matter? What can we do about it?

2)   Nebraska Resources: What do we need to know about Nebraska’s natural resources? What does it mean to be stewards of critical Nebraska resources—water, land, food, and renewable energy.

3)   Sustainability Indicators: Environmental, Socio-Cultural, Economic, Technological, and Public Policy. What can we learn from local leaders who have begun to initiate conversations needed to identify and adopt sustainability indicators for their communities leading to the development of a comprehensive plan, and implementation of strategies and actions needed to achieve measurable indications of progress?

4)   Being a Leader and Leadership Practices: Engaging others in meaningful conversations of change. What are we learning about practicing leadership with others? What have we been experimenting with to enhance our leadership effectiveness? Review holistic models of leadership orientation and practices.

5)   Nebraska Case Studies: What have we learned about what we know? What can we share with each other about the new things we are learning along the way? Case study break-out sessions around particular issues that came up in the NSLWs to include review of the issue, relating the issue to other communities whose leaders identified the same or similar issues, and approaches—approaches that leaders have begun to take to address the issues. Experts will be invited into the conversation circles in which participants become consultants to each other as they generate additional ideas and strategies to employ going forward.

6)   Action Action Action: Now what? Where do we begin? What is the next priority I must focus my attention on? How can we pick up the pace? Sustain momentum?