Building a community of practice for sustainability: Strengthening learning and collective action of Canadian biosphere reserves through a national partnership Maureen G. Reed a, * ,H  el  ene Godmaire a, 1 , Paivi Abernethy b, 2 , Marc-Andr  e Guertin c, 3 a School of Environment and Sustainability,117 Science Place, University of Saskatchewan, Saskatoon, SK Canada S7N 5C8 b Environment and Resource Studies, University of Waterloo, Waterloo, Ontario, Canada N2L 3G1 c Centre universitaire de formation en environnement, Universit e de Sherbrooke, 481 rue Forest, Mont-Saint-Hilaire, QC, Canada J3H 5L4 article info Article history: Received 3 January 2014 Received in revised form 12 June 2014 Accepted 30 June 2014 Available online Keywords: Sustainability Social learning Collective action Biosphere reserve Community of practice Partnership abstract Deliberation, dialogue and systematic learning are now considered attributes of good practice for or- ganizations seeking to advance sustainability. Yet we do not know whether organizations that span spatial scales and governance responsibilities can establish effective communities of practice to facilitate learning and action. The purpose of this paper is to generate a framework that specifies actions and processes of a community of practice designed to instill collective learning and action strategies across a multi-level, multi-partner network. The framework is then used to describe and analyze a partnership among practitioners of Canada's 16 UNESCO biosphere reserves, and additional researchers and gov- ernment representatives from across Canada. The framework is a cycle of seven action steps, beginning and ending with reflecting on and evaluating present practice. It is supported by seven characteristics of collaborative environmental management that are used to gauge the success of the partnership. Our results show that the partnership successfully built trust, established shared norms and common in- terest, created incentives to participate, generated value in information sharing and willingness to engage, demonstrated effective flow of information, and provided leadership and facilitation. Key to success was the presence of a multi-lingual facilitator who could bridge cultural differences across re- gions and academia-practitioner expectations. The project succeeded in establishing common goals, setting mutual expectations and building relations of trust and respect, and co-creating knowledge. It is too soon to determine whether changes in practices that support sustainability will be maintained over the long term and without the help of an outside facilitator. © 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. 1. Introduction Deliberation, dialogue and systematic learning through reflec- tion, evaluation and feedback have become significant attributes of good practice for organizations advancing sustainability (Berkes, 2010; Cundill, 2010; Cundill and Rodela, 2012; Diduck, 2010a,b; Plummer and Armitage, 2010; Wildemeersch, 2007). Yet, while “the value of learning as a normative goal and process is recognized … greater specificity with respect to learning goals, approaches and outcomes is needed” (Armitage et al., 2008: 87). Cundill and Rodela's (2012) literature review revealed that social learning requires establishing a trusting environment in which sustained interaction among participants, on-going deliberation and knowledge sharing can take place. To date, documented cases of learning in sustainability organizations have focused on smaller- scale case studies (for examples, see Armitage et al., 2008; Cundill, 2010). There has been relatively less attention given to partnerships in which social groups span spatial scales, governance re- sponsibilities and scales of influence. Furthermore, communities of practice have been identified as potentially valuable components of social learning and action processes, but how to build them to facilitate learning and action across a network of organizations has not been described. No one has fully addressed the challenge of how to intentionally build network-level capacity using collective * Corresponding author. Tel.: þ1 306 966 5630, þ1 306 227 1688 (mobile). E-mail addresses: m.reed@usask.ca (M.G. Reed), h.godmaire@videotron.ca (H. Godmaire), pkaberne@uwaterloo.ca (P. Abernethy), guertinmarcandre@gmail. com (M.-A. Guertin). 1 Tel.: þ1 450 467 6921. 2 Tel.: þ1 647 293 7070. 3 Tel.: þ1 438 887 5662. Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Journal of Environmental Management journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/jenvman http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jenvman.2014.06.030 0301-4797/© 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. Journal of Environmental Management 145 (2014) 230e239