LEAD Training

Leadership in Sustainable Development (LEAD) Training is a series of international training sessions implemented by the EEU in collaboration with LEAD Southern Africa and the Department of Social Development of South Africa. A one week intensive training course for participants from Southern Africa was facilitated in 2006, 2008 and 2009. The focus of this course was on the inter-relationships between population, environment, and development. Achieving poverty alleviation and sustainable development requires that these relationships are well understood and responded to. For instance:

• How do we build sustainable urban settlements with adequate housing, effective services, and healthy environments in the context of significant immigration into urban areas?
• How do we ensure food security in the long-term in the context of growing populations and increasing water stress due to climate change?
• What forms of governance will enable us to respond to complex social and environmental problems, possible conflict, rapid changes, or even disasters?

These and other questions were the subject of the course. Sessions began with an overview of each of the three key themes – population, environment, and development – and their inter-relationships. Regional trends in southern Africa were considered, with an emphasis on both challenges and effective means for finding and implementing solutions. The course then focussed more particularly on rural environments and natural resource management, followed by a focus on urban areas, including sustainable human settlements and urban environmental management. Dedicated sessions on food security and disaster mitigation were also included. The final sessions focussed on leadership and collaborative governance as important responses to the challenges created by the population-environment-development nexus.