Collaborative governance of the environment, Scandinavian style.

Collaborative governance is advocated as a solution for the most pressing environmental problem facing the country apart from climate change – the management of fresh water resources. The 2009 conference of the New Zealand Environmental Defense Society that just took place in Auckland, heard the government's Minister for the Environment, Dr Nick Smith, express backing for stakeholders to come together, determine solutions and initiate regulatory change. The concept has already been successfully developed in Scandinavia and involves key stakeholders getting around the table and coming up with an agreed way forward that government then implements. The recently constituted Land and Water Forum is a new kind of authority intended to bring together all the interests in freshwater management – iwi tribal authorities, irrigators, farmers, horticulturists, electricity generators, operators, canoeists, fishers, urban interests and environmental groups, according to the chair of the EDS, Gary Taylor. This is a first for New Zealand and potentially heralds the institution of further institutions of collaborative governance as a solution to conflicts over resource use.

The concern of the conference, entitled 'Reform in Paradise', was the on-going problems with first generation environmental institutions and legislation that have proved disappointing in performance and achievement since their inception over the past two decades. The Resource Management Act and the Fisheries Quota Management System, among others, had created much interest world-wide among reformers of the Rio Earth Summit era. New Zealand's regulatory innovations had raised attention and still do as a model to imitate (see e.g. this recent New York Times editorial Ocean Rescue), because they were ground breaking in adopting sustainability principles to resolve private and public interests. But with growing evidence that natural resources on land and in the sea continue to be in decline, and the conflicts that the existing institutions are embroiled in, enthusiasm has given way to disappointment.

The need for new ideas is in line with the newly elected government's emphasis on reform. While the government's priorities will, according to policy and media statements, lie with improving the country's economic capacity, the willingness to turn to collaborative approaches represents a step away from the emphasis on devolution of government to local authorities that accompanied the previous phase. This endeavour, with its accompanying economic orientation, is part of a wider reform process that the new government has begun, touching in radical ways on local government, infrastructure development and even international aid. The success of the environmental management reforms will to a large extent depend not only on getting stakeholders together, but on whether mutual appreciation and shared visions can emerge from such an encounter, outcomes which are fundamental to achieving effective collaborative governance.

Papers from the conference are available at www.edsconference.com

The decline of institutions and the rise of cooperation

The promised decline of print media and professional journalism is heralded by the rise of bloggers. At the push of a button, everybody can be an opinion leader. Alongside the haphazard browsing habits that are the undoing of the media institutions of the past generation, the statistics of bloggers and their readership seem to spell the inevitable doom of authoritative reporting.
But if this pattern is seen to reflect a general decline of institution that are expanded through cooerpative behaviour in the spirit of photo sharing sites or user initiated social support groups, then Clay Shirky sees the emergence of a promising period in social organisation. As a social probelm solving mechanism, cooperation has many advantages over old fashioned instutions. In an ever increasingly complex world, creativity may become more valuable than efficiency, something the old insitutiuonal management metaphors are much less well adapted for.

The cumulative crises of 2008 create a chance to rethink the basic principles of the ‘economy’ - what is it good for?

"In the West, there has been a wave of crises - food price crisis, fuel crisis, sub-prime lending crisis, and the big bad one: the financial crisis. These crises have exposed the foolhardiness of blind faith in the efficient functioning of unregulated markets, and the powerlessness of governments to effect a widely acceptable solution when the interests of capital and labour forcefully collide." writes Nitasha Kaul.
The 'free markets' are free in a very specific way: trading in certain sectors of the economy may be unregulated and unsupervised, which means that individuals who operate within those markets can make short term decisions that benefit them while imposing long term costs on others. Thus, whenever the market is free from government regulation, it is actually individuals in it that are free to be irresponsible (due to naivete or malice) if it is in their interests.
The idea of economy - or political economy as it was originally coined by Adam Smith - implies management of financial flows by a central government with authority within the national – and economic – boundaries. When that authority is eroded by globalisation, free market philosophy and a legitimacy deficit, then the ground is opening for a paradigm change.
For actors in public life whose roles as governors or bankers are integral to the predominant paradigm, it becomes impossible to reframe the problems and solutions with new conceptualisation. This presages a paradigm change that also implies a political change. A threatening but at the same time uplifting prospect.
When Kuhn described the increasing contradictions that accumulate when a way of thinking was unable to further explain, he termed that as a paradigm change. This process sees a shift in thinking from the periphery of established practices to become a new center. As revolutionary as that may be for a domain of science, there the shift in power is limited to funding streams and intellectual status. But rethinking 'economy' threatens to uproot power relationships and capitalist structures on a much larger scale. Any threat to that can expect organised resistance.

Why is the relationship of activism and government is shifting from thinking in terms of 'civil society partnership' to a resurgence of protest ?

The recent G20 protests in London, and in particular climate change activism, saw popular movements that were critically opposing government policy.The British government reacted with notable vigour to a series of what were essentially non-violent public actions and peaceful demonstrations over climate change.

According to Paul Rogers, it appears that a new generation committed to non-violent direct action is evolving the capacity and will to make its political masters respond to the global climate crisis. Government actions suggest this is recognised as a threat.

Over recent decades, the idea of 'state-civil society partnerships' was seen as a solution to increasingly complex problems that outstripped both the capacity and legitimacy of national governments to act. In consequnece civil society has grown accustomed to opportunities to influence government policy.

However, more recently, financial crises and an ever-present threat of violence from ill-defined terrorists, has undermined faith in government to manage economy and security in the interest of citizens. The news filling headlines at present may actually announce a change in the role of governments, for better and worse. In a globalised society facing complex environmental and political challenges, governments actually have diminishing ability to implement effective government. For policy makers that have increasingly relied on civil society to legitimise government actions, a non-compliant civil society may prove its undoing.

Government that relies on a compliant civil society sector to introduce and deliver reform may not be a new but an out-dated phenomena.

Sustainability, fear and excitement: Change is in the air

You can't open your email anymore these days, or for that matter turn on the television, without an explicit or implicit invitation to talk about the state of the world and sustainability. Even politicians - campaigning for election on classic agendas of less taxes, smarter government and law and order - have to try hard not to be distracted from these 'voter priorities'. At a live leadership debate on New Zealand national television, WorldChanging.com New Zealand editor Craig Neilson used a question pre-recorded on YouTube to ask what vision was on offer as climate change was accelerating. The responses were ambivalent. The assurance that economic priorities could be balanced without undue sacrifices was perhaps reassuring for those in the audience that didn't want to hear the bad news. But in more and more forums, leadership is being called for.

A Swedish model for social change

Emails had been circulating to invite participation at a forum held at the Business School of the University of Auckland a few days later, on the 21st of October. It had brought nearly a hundred business leaders, government staff, academics and activists to hear and discuss if it could be possible to import proven ideas and models. One country that had managed to put climate change and sustainability at the top of the political agenda, and to reduce very high emission rates by finding collaborative approaches to do so with a national consensus, was Sweden. The parallels between New Zealand and Scandinavian countries nourished a belief that this may be possible here also. In spite of the geographic distance, both have relatively affluent economies by international standards, are well endowed with natural resources, share environmental traditions and have many commonalities in political governance systems. Parallels that made it possible to imagine a more sustainable future for New Zealand.

What is the Swedish model? The track record of Sweden and the neighbouring Scandinavian countries, a New Zealand government funded study showed, has been enviable in achieving stakeholder agreement, commitment to change and radical outcomes on environmental issues. Doing it 'Swedish style' means letting all stakeholders be involved right through the process, beginning with defining the problem and drafting the plans, and with the government agencies one among equals. This reverses an approach that New Zealand government agencies are too frequently accused of, taking finished plans out for 'consultation' with little intent to accommodate criticisms.

Common ground and common paradigms

Collaboration is more than just sitting together around a table and talking, it is about finding common ground. This common ground must come from shared understanding of problems and shared belief in the solutions, what is called a common paradigm. In science, a paradigm is a set of practices that define a discipline during a particular period of time. A paradigm is a mindset and body of assumptions shared by a professional community. And a paradigm shift is a major and often radical change in the way that experts and public leaders talk about a discipline, when enough unresolved questions have accumulated. It revolutionizes basic assumptions and ways of seeing the world. Ideas of them and us, important and negligible, ordinary and extraordinary are turned upside down. Einstein's relativity theory did that for Newtonian physics.

Discussing sustainability and development, the participants at the 'Swedish Style' forum were in agreement that problems and solutions needed to be redefined, and paradigms should be shifted, in ways that were relevant at both local and global levels. And that would have to begin with a better awareness of one's own neighbourhood in relation to linkages reaching all the way around the globe. Everything is interrelated. A culture shift towards a sustainable society recognizes this, was said, but how could that be achieved? The history of international development and sustainability can show some of the difficulties with such an ambitious goal.

The economics of sustainability

The term sustainability has inherited contradictions from a process rooted in historical ideals of economic development. During the 1970s the development of 'underdeveloped' countries had become the principal - and enthusiastic - goal of international aid. The common practice to assess development prospects was largely in terms of economic development, so stress tended to be on the rapid economic progress of 'Third World' countries. This really reflected a belief that economic development was a path shared by all nations and that it was a question of helping the stragglers catch up.

The political concept of sustainability was made known and popularized by the 1987 report "Our Common Future" of the World Commission on Environment and Development. In it, economic interests were 'married' with environmental concerns. Better known by the name of the well-respected Norwegian statesman that had been asked to lead the effort, the Brundtland Report was premised on the argument that poverty is caused by two processes: low levels of growth and inequity. Sustainable development would entail economic growth with a 'different content' from that prevalent at the time, that is, growth with improved equity and distribution and without degradation of the environment. In this way, environmental degradation would be decoupled from growth.

Sustainable development

By this time a paradigm change was also taking place in development practices. A more sober assessment of the development trends and prospects of these countries, and a better understanding of the need to focus on all dimensions of social development. The new development paradigm thought that development must be human-centred, coming from within. And rather than imposed from the outside, it must be built with collaboration.

In spite of the wide criticism of, and frequently imbalanced approaches to, sustainable development, the paradigm has underscored the understanding of environmental problems and the justification for development solutions addressing poverty as a cause of environmental degradation. But as in other fields of sustainable practices, progress has been disappointing on many fronts. Is the paradigm outdated, forum participants asked themselves? If so, what could take its place?

The 'Sustainable Development Strategy' that most major aid donors and many of their implementing partners have embraced, is characterized by four goals: 1. support equitable economic development; 2. support social development, with particular emphasis on people living in poverty; 3. support environment and natural resources management; and 4. support progress in democratic governance and human rights. But despite the prominent campaigns under the banner of sustainability, questions have not gone away.

The Millennium strategy

The concept was fundamental in discussions at the 1992 UN Conference on Environment and Development in Rio. In September 2000, the Millennium Summit took place, where 147 heads of state and Government adopted the Millennium Declaration, and made a commitment to work towards a world in which sustaining development and eliminating poverty would have the highest priority. This was reaffirmed in 2005 at the UN MDG World Summit. The Outcome Document refers to the "interdependent and mutually reinforcing pillars" of sustainable development as economic development, social development, and environmental protection. These are goals that were built on a reflective understanding of problems and pragmatic solutions. Some progress has been made.

In 2007 it was reported that - except for HIV/AIDS, and deforestation rates - there had on the whole been satisfactory progress towards all national MDG goals in the neighbourhood of New Zealand, the Asia/Pacific region - at least from the perspective of the Asian Development Bank. But in the same report it was also noted that rising inequality of income and MDG progress indicators within countries could not be ignored. National statistics notwithstanding, not everybody was on the development train, remembering that the goals of sustainable development as defined by Brundtland were to especially address both growth and inequity.

The paradox of sustainability

These and other problems can be, and have been, blamed on insufficient resources, lack of capacity and other reasons that justify – rightly so – the argument that more efforts have to be made. But comments are increasing that the ideal of sustainability has actually turned out to be unattainable, that "we assume that sustainability is an 'end-state' of a social system. [...] But in practice it is only an ideal of development efforts in a much more complex system," write Swedish researchers Bagheri and Hjorth.

The complexity and scale of the problem of sustainable development and achieving more sustainable societies is daunting. And if sustainability is packaged with economic development, to what extent can that transmit global concerns to, for instance, a no longer underdeveloped China? The sense of powerlessness, made some forum participants ask if efforts to stem the inevitable change may not prove hopeless and the only alternative would be isolationist responses of a 'safe walker' i.e. a lifeboat mentality – each for themselves. Arguably, that is already going on if the paltry contributions of international assistance are compared to, for instance, military expenditure.

Leading by example

But the idea of common ground and globally shared paradigms may offer an alternative. If New Zealand would export less agricultural products and more agricultural technology – the sustainable kind we are just trying to learn, that is - then that may prove a more realistic goal to achieve positive change, a forum participant argued. As far-fetched as that may seem, that is the same logic that New York Times columnist and best-selling author Thomas Friedman used to imagine an America that would lead the world again - this time by example. But the US is not seen as a popular model by everybody at the moment.

"Now it is our turn, you have had yours," he was told in China when he touched on the environmental impacts of rapid economic growth. "That's fine, we don't need to tell you what to do," he responded. "We'll be back when you need clean, efficient energy technology to sell to the world. Because clean, alternative energy will be the next boom that will replace the era of consumer electronics that we are in now," he responded. And he noted that it took only 30 seconds for that message to penetrate.

Potential for change

The prospect of an upcoming US government ready to invest massively in alternative energy technologies and the revolutionary implications this may have, is also dawning on bloggers in the financial investment scene (see www.altenergystocks.com). All it will take to ignite that change is determined leadership, Friedman said, just the kind of leadership that has been woken by the current financial crisis, animating European and North American statesmen to overturn previously immutable free market ideoligies.

What happened in Sweden, the Auckland forum had been told, was made possible by proactive leadership from government, business and civil society, not a difference in values held by the Swedish public. That made possible collaborative governance of well-informed citizens, which created a supportive climate for radical changes requiring many compromises and shared costs.

Leading change

It was leadership that was at stake at another election debate across the street that same evening. There, the debate between the current Minister for Trade Negotiations, Phil Goff, and the foreign affairs spokesperson from competing parties were also grappling with what sustainable development for New Zealand's neighbours should mean. The lecture hall full of people had come to hear the party representatives invited by Oxfam New Zealand explain what should be done about poverty and inequality. A debate clearly necessary but also limited by the prevalent paradigms of them and us, by talking within economic parameters.

These are indeed times of change, Rod Oram, said in his closing statement. It was a mix of fear and excitement that had brought people together that day to talk about sustainability, as a sense of imminent change is reaching a tipping point. But what could this new paradigm be called? The answer to the most pressing global environmental issues that Thomas Friedman suggests in his newest book "Hot, Flat and Crowded" is to move on from lost battles like whales, and instead focus on the notion of "regeneration" – a notion that can offer new paradigms of action.



Rendt Gorter is a PhD student at the University of Auckland ("Participation in Environmental Governance"), with ten years experience as project manager in international development aid.

An environmental crisis and nobody has the answers - Or why ideology still matters.

The word ideology has unfortunate connotations, but in a world with only a free-market ideology, the lack of alternatives leaves societies directionless.

In public life there are an increasing number of signs that acceptance of an approaching crisis is reaching a tipping point. Alarm over climate change, overpopulation, and peak oil are converging to threaten a maelstrom of Katrina-like hurricanes and financial meltdowns that erodes peoples joy of raising children and planning for retirement. This is the same urgency that imposes itself when a sailor looks up from re-painting the deck to see a line of dark clouds approaching. Without repeating the arguments, and by just simply assuming that this crisis is already taking place, how can effort and innovation be harnessed to shift course?

Why the alarm? Concepts such as climate change, overpopulation, and peak oil are 'significant' concepts - they have consequences. These are consequences that can be imagined through simple cause and effect reasoning from which they draw their power in the popular imagination. Clearly, peak oil must lead to less oil supply and increased fuel prices. That will have consequences, for instance, such as increased transportation costs for people and consumer goods which will lead to economic change and uncertainty. What is harder to imagine is the future contexts of these effects on personal lives and social institutions. Without any certainty of how peak oil, new technologies and other political priorities will coalesce, these imagined futures loose traction and slip into the too hard basket. That is why dialog is such so powerful for filling in the blanks in a way that adds meaning and understanding. Dialog achieves this by sharing knowledge and resolving doubt in a way that just one way communication cannot achieve.

Towards a 21^st century ideology

As diverse as societies and ecosystems are, so are the fruitful directions that can be explored. It is a discussion that is already in full swing and is only held back by a lack of confidence in choosing priorities. To animate such a discussion needs effective ways of thinking together and equally effective ways to apply that in everyday contexts. That means developing shared language and principles that will form frameworks for dialogue and action. Call these political party lines, philosophical attitudes or common sense reasoning, or simply a post-socialist and post-capitalist ideology.

Ideologies come in different flavours. In past times when limited knowledge of the worlds and crude political systems limited open thinking, before internet and television provided alternative perspectives, political ideologies became templates that were imposed by the few that had access to public platforms and communication. In modern, open societies, ideology is the structure of accepted truths that channel politics and media. Ideology in this sense refers to shared attitudes and common understanding.

This openness has made a vast array of ideas and values accessible, from Eastern holism to Northern technologies, and from Western individualism to Southern resourcefulness. And as globalising effects have cross-fertilised cultures and economies from different ends of the world, the room for finding new common ground has also widened. A post-capitalist ideology or rather, a diversity of new post-industrial ideologies can create that space. But what are such ideological frameworks that are relevant to the lives and hopes of people living in a common society?

Cultivating a collective imagination

A 21st century ideology has to validate beliefs and identities of the people it is trying to engage with. Without becoming a homogenizing equalizer, it has to have understandable meaning that different lived experiences and learned knowledge can relate to. It also has to offer credible explanations and convincing guideposts to dissimilar communities of place or interest.

One example is the sustainable towns network who have evolved the notion of community resilience as an organising principle. In the language of these practitioners, it connects the mechanisms of diversity, modularity, adaptability, "tight feedbacks", complexity and self-organisation, with the social characteristics of self-reliance, self-sufficiency and locally-based. This is simply an example of how one movement has grown around a shared set of ideas that have been able to become relevant in the towns and cities that have been drawn into the network.

If the common attitudes and understanding of this network of disparate communities should be called an ideology, then that needs to recognise the history of ideas and experiments, of discussion and debate that are integral to any social response to shared problems and opportunity. Without any central leadership, the success of such a movement to develop a meaningful ideology must lie with a capacity for open dialog. Intelligent debate is not only necessary to validate ideas for change but also to build the commitment to adapt to changes. A collective imagination is a prerequisite to agree on a shared vision and ideology, to maintain direction in a directionless world. The alternative is a return to extremism and autocracy.

Dialog, principles and social realities

As grave as an environmental crisis may appear, the world is full of many other imperatives. Health, children, equality, and heritage are just some examples that represent values not to be neglected.

The scale of the environmental issues have pushed them out of reach of most people, leaving only traces of guilt for not having changed the light bulbs yet. Do-your-bit has little meaning until ownership of problems and solutions can come home. But ar home there are many more mundane problems to resolve. Food and income are a much more practical concern than saving the planet.

In practice, no issue is separable of the many other issues already present in homes and communities. Struggles over privileges, resources and rights have been unresolved for centuries. Conflict between communities and within society set the background for any new change initiative. In any group of people, and more so in communities and societies, there are many issues that have polarised opinions and alliances.

This political background has shaped the way societies are structured, and critically, how people have organised themselves. It unites communities against outsiders and nurtures a latent suspicion of any authority. Social change has to take place in this landscape and therefore must not only capture minds and hearts, but also political agendas and organised groups. As long as issues remain disconnected from the wider social context, disregard for lived realities and competing priorities is inevitable.

A closer examination of the sustainable towns movement will surely find that the values its ideology has embraced are compatible with the ideals that any town or community will want to aspire to. Adopting sustainable practices framed in such way requires no denial of cherished values and lived experience, but gives new energy to dreams of the good life.

What would be organising principles that could engage with other, existing communities of interest? Principles that could become the foundation of an ideological framework that could draw on the many ideas and examples already in circulation? Dialog is necessary to construct this shared understanding necessary.

 

Cervantes on Truth and Virtue: Cervantes' Tale of Inappropriate Curiosity Sends a Message Often Misconstrued

This piece argues for a non-standard interpretation of one of Cervantes' great parables.
View more »


 
Cervantes' heroes: Don Quixote and his squire Sancho Panza, Credit: Honore Daumier,Copyright: public domain

"... the Tale of Inappropriate Curiosity, does not condone intellectual laziness. Let us consider that, despite what the title pronounces, what was inappropriate about Armenio was not his curiosity, per se, but his conduct-conduct which did not merely investigate the world as he found it, but which shaped the world into which he was investigating."

A social news network that taps into collective wisdom

Share and read news that is relavant to you. Social|Median is a new site that helps you navigate the information avalanche.

Search engines and news aggregators use keyword filtering to add ever increasing numbers of news items to your inbox. What is needed is a human editor that selects quality stories. Traditionally, newspapers and broadcast services did this, but aimed at mass adiences without differentiating individual interests. But everybody is not the same.
Social median begins in the same way, although adding much more sophisticated filtering capabilities to search selected newsfeeds - from the New York Times to Treehuggers.com. These are feeds set up by users who specify the relavant newsfeed and add topic words to search for. Visting or subscribing to such a feed benefits from the judgement of others and produce focused article feeds much better qualified than Google News, for instance.
Where SocialMedian really comes into its own, is by allowing readers to clip stories, with the option to add a comment, and post these on their personal news feed at SocialMedian. Other users come and visit and can opt to follow these 'newsmakers' on their own home page or via email. This adds a layer of human filtering which greatly enhances the quality of stories you get to see. And significantly reduces the amount of headlines one has to scan to find the good stories.
Another feature that promises to break the boundaries of existing news aggregation technologies is the ability to clip stories from anywhere on the internet a little the way StumbleUpon collects interesting websites. In this way, relavant pages are added to a users list of clipped articles at SocialMedian and automatically shared with their 'Followers'.
Visit my page at SocialMedian.  To follow collected articles, sign up and 'follow' this feed. You can opt to receive email summaries.
To watch a video where the founders of SM explain their ideas, click here.
This review was also published online at Shvoong.

Learning about project management from people and nature

The Te Whaiti School Board is not a project management consultancy but teaches current and future project managers important lessons from a distinctly Maori perspective. A Living Systems framework for leading projects, can have its roots in tradition and push its growth into innovative heights.

Confronted with a problem-school threatened with imminent closure, members of this community deep in the Ureweras had responded in a way that resonated with Maori and ecological values. The achievement of the principal and trustees in turning the school around from an educational disaster to the top of its class, was widely acknowledged. Television New Zealand even produced a report when the entire school came out to lend their support to the Americas Cup challengers. “Team New Zealand has to overcome big obstacles. Just like us,” said a school pupil (no name given) who was interviewed on Princess Wharf in Auckland. “And we have overcome ours. So that means, they can too!” Back in Te Whaiti, the school principal Genevieve Doherty explained that key had been for the pupils and the community to overcome something that had appeared difficult to them. “That generates confidence. And success breeds more success.”

This approach to working together and resolving problems was distilled into an empowering framework for action. The story and the framework it inspired - Tipu Ake ki te Ora, "Growing ever upwards towards wellbeing" (www.tipuake.org.nz), set the theme for a two-day workshop led by Peter Goldsbury on applying project management lore in community development. The experience of a community organizing itself caught the interest of this qualified engineer and part-time AUT tutor who had specialised in collaborative project management. The story offered a rich repertoire for learning and teaching about project management. And as an old pupil of this school - he himself had grown up as a Pakeha member of this rainforest community - Peter could re-enter this familiar world bringing the respect it deserved.

The story draws its inspiration from the determination of its principal actors to lead change. Project management has developed its tools and terminology in the worlds of engineering and business, among other. But Te Whaiti demonstrated that it is not the language but the intent that matters. This strength can be traced back to the resolve held by the people involved. In a school video, Trevor Mallard is properly received to the school re-opening with a powhiri. Later, the Minister for Education comments on the school merger having being achieved by local people who themselves had decided how this school should be run. Or, as the former school board chairman explained to an AUT Media student interviewer: “I suppose we formed a circle, that’s sort of how we did it.”

A school is like other community projects which may be concerned with public health, vulnerable groups, or other social issues of shared concern. But real life is nothing like one would imagine a business initiative or an engineering project to be, where surely one can count on more predictable processes with better resources and above all more control. By reminding participants that organisational life in any setting is full of unreal assumptions and outdated simplifications, Peter Goldsbury from the outset tried to turn attention away from constraints that cannot be overcome, to focus on the essential. The Tipu Ake model encourages a team to turn inwards and concentrate on what can be achieved by harmonising individual motivation and efforts.

By embracing a project philosophy that grew out of an image of roots, trunk and branches – Putake, Tinana, Pua – it was only natural that ideas of katiakitanga, that is a sense of guardianship grew into an articulated relationship with the Whirinaki forest in which the school was set. The website www.kaitiakitanga.net shows how this relationship has given fresh meaning to this Maori concept not only by stimulating education projects but by creating networks of mutual support.

In a well-practiced manner, the veteran training consultant framed group discussion with diagrams and thought experiments drawn from a wide project management literature that he made digestible and applicable with the Tipu Ake model. The integral values of sharing and reflection also animated group discussion. To stimulate involvement, the participants elaborated imagined projects for Raglan and Great Barrier Island. Given the setting, a hypothetical proposal for a mataitai on the shores of the island, that is a locally managed marine park, provided an opportunity to act out roles that might be present in that particular community. Using a Tipu Ake framework to look beyond the obvious motivations of self-interest and institutional mandates, it was not too difficult to find other values held by the respective actors that aligned with different categories of the model. From that, it became possible to see pathways to creating a coherent momentum that could unite different factions in and around the community to rally behind a mataitai project.

Once such a pathway opens up, much work will remain to be done. The project management thinking reviewed in the workshop introduced different tools to organise groups, prioritise work and grow leadership. What would otherwise be an overwhelming list of powerful resources, was made much more approachable with a living systems metaphor. Its strength comes out of the meanings and arrangements it can give to elements present in a situation and the choices of solutions that a group can be confronted with. For a student of social change like myself, the workshop let me bring along my own ideas, put them to the test and walk away with new ways of thinking about the life cycle of social change projects in a world of living systems.

(To learn more about Te Whaiti and the Tipu Ake model, click on the link in the title.)

Rendt Gorter participated in the two day workshop Living Systems: Leading Projects and Innovation in your Organisation or Community, held in Devonport 16-17 April.

(article published in the newsletter of Nexus, The Auckland University Sustainability Group

The use of sustainability indicators to measure the ‘quality of life’ - Accounting for multiple perspectives

There is growing interest in sustainability indicators by a wide range of thinkers and practitioners. That much was evident from the introductions of participants at a one-day course convened by the Society for Sustainability Engineering and Science.

A need for better understanding about the application and reporting of indicators was stressed by council workers, the quality of indicators in environmental reporting was important to Ministry of Environment staff, researchers expressed interest in effective processes for developing indicators, and practising engineers and architects from the private sector talked of their role in improving sustainable practices and their encounters with divergent standards and languages of government partners. In response to such expectations the facilitators of the workshop – David Kettle and Dave Breuer of Anew NZ – presented an introduction to the complexities of using indicators for planning and administration of government policy. The workshop had been prepared to provide working knowledge of this subject and to stimulate debate. Sure enough, the discussion this generated showed some of the wider issues that the development of indicators must struggle with.

Policy development at the overlap of social, economic, environmental and cultural interests is subject to an array of influences. How problems are identified and understood is determined by which role one plays in this space. That the world of public administration and policy processes continues to undergo important changes which put established knowledge and practices in question has been described in diverse academic and popular writing . Approaching policy analysis only analytically will no longer produce unproblematic understanding. In practice, well-designed objectives and plans are contested politically, agreed through compromise and disappoint in implementation. This means that to produce, and then agree on, meaningful indicators cannot expect to apply textbook formulas but unavoidably requires a deliberative process that can never arrive at a final formulation, but can only aim at progressing in stages. To demonstrate this claim, one need only consider the requirements that the different perspectives present.

Download the complete article here. (pdf)
You can leave comments here by clicking on the link below.

Surviving the information glut or why knowledge management can lead to chaos

Knowledge makes the world go round. But taking a very personal view of strategies of knowledge management in a time when the internet age has fuelled an information glut, can help understand why important assumptions about knowledge have led to many social and political ambitions falling a long way short of what was achievable. As the attached article shows, going right to the heart of the information revolution can help explain why many other idea-driven projects from a free-market panacea for global ills to biodiveristy conservation as bullwark against an inevitable ecological transformation, are fundamentally flawed from the outset.

There is a lot of relavant information that work, interests and simple curiosity will lead to. Passively receiving this incessant data stream is mentally numbing and ineffective for achieving personal and professional satisfaction. But organising information with bookmarks, tags, notes and reviews requires more than hierarchies. Analytical organisation fails to reflect the complexity of the world and the everyday cognitive approaches actually used to abstracting relavant knowledge. Some mental strategies are called for that should be reflected in the tools used.

For a person exposed to and active in a knowledge driven world - and that excludes nobody today, acquiring knowledge is a fundamental skill. It is a process that involves scanning, understanding, reflecting on, acquiring and applying information. But interests, emotions, expectations and needs drive this process in different directions. To channel knowledge management efforts requires the application of conscious strategies to overcome inherent tendency towards chaos.

Strategies for personal knowledge management should draw on semantic content but must be purpose oriented. Purposes can be divided into categories including immediate tasks, on-going projects with definable outcomes, general domains of activity such as study, work, home and family as well as maintaining reference information, general resources and tools to do the work.

Mental resistance to this effort can come from a lack of discipline manifested as unclarity, complacency, procrastination, and plain laziness. The result is ambiguous organisation and incomplete tasks. Ambitious and unrealistic goals, that is, not well thought out approaches contribute to this. But just intellectual rigour is not enough.

Thinking that refrains from risk taking and creativity, that conforms to old habits and conservative approaches will inevitably lack comprehensiveness and innovation. This must be countered with lateral thinking and an openness to ideas.

Writing for an audience is one way to structure and evaluate knowledge management. As long as it can avoid constraining the organsation of information just to social norms and expectations, it offers a constructive motivation. But it shoud be one of several outputs.

Distinguishing research tasks with clear questions - ranging from 'Where should I go on holiday?' and 'What should I do once I am there?', to 'What would be a good book to give as gift to continue a previous conversation?' - can also be effective, especially if they are accompanied by some explicit reflection.

Another way is to formulate general interests into important, focussing questions. Who should I vote for? What is my opinion on what society should do about global warming? Why should this author be read at this time? Where can I find relavant and authoritative news for my interests? Implicit in all these questions is the ability to be able to justify the answer towards others. This contributes towards what Habermas calls a communicative rationality.

Getting Things Done has become a popular tactic as a way of organising to-do lists. In spite of its ephemeral appeal, it reflects an action orientation that people have always resorted to when stress threatens with overload. By focussing on action from the outset - always keep your inbox empty - it provides a simple, generic strategy relavant to information organisation as much as to project management. Coupled with an awareness of categories of purpose, the relavant domains and tasks and one's experience of resources needed to achieve these, information can be tagged, labelled, bookmarked, noted and reviewed accordingly.

Whether hierarchies of knowledge are adequate or not, it is the underlying purpose that must not be lost in the avalanche of information that internet and media have unleashed on us. But where does action purpose come from? By the time information moves from the personal to the social, it is transformed from addressing personal needs - be they physical or emotional - to constructing social goals. These must reflect shared worldviews. This is where shared goals are formed, common understanding becomes assumptions and knowledge is diluted in misdirected projects. Technical solutions end up masking polical philosophies that frame humans as thinking and behaving like simple rational agents without acknowledging the richness of the human experience. If information is distilled to logical hierarchies eliminating ambiguity, audience expectations and personal questions then the information glut only risks washing over us into a world of increasing knowledge chaos and risks diminuishing a shared communicative ratinality.

For a very interesting reflection on fallacious thinking about what knowledge really is and how this can create white elephants, the internet domain offers the story of the much-hyped semantic net, a doomed project that will stumble over its own assumptions. To learn why, read The Semantic Web, Syllogism, and Worldview. Personal and social knowledge management as an intellectual project risks stumbling in the same hole.

The unfulfilled promise of the ‘Development Project’

Perplexity and extreme dissatisfaction with business-as-usual and standard development rhetoric and practice, and disillusionment with alternative development are keynotes of this [critical] perspective. Development is rejected because it is the 'new religion of the West', it is the imposition of science as power, it does not work, it means cultural Westernisation and homogenisation and it brings environmental destruction. It is rejected not merely on account of its results but because of its intentions, its world-view and mindset. The economic mindset implies a reductionist view of existence. Thus, according to Sachs, 'it is not the failure of development which has to be feared, but its success'. (Pieterse in "After Post Development")

It is more than 30 years since the developed world made a promise to transfer 0.7% of GDP in development assistance, and only a small handful of nations have ever achieved that target. The Millennium Declaration was ratified in September 2000 by 189 heads of state at the United Nations Millennium Summit. The Millennium Development Goals aimed to ... "Eradicate extreme poverty and hunger, Achieve universal primary education, Promote gender equality and empower women, Reduce child mortality, Improve maternal health, Combat HIV/AIDS, malaria, and other diseases, Ensure environmental sustainability, and to Develop a global partnership for development." On present trends the commitment promised will not be realised, and the MDGs only be inconsistently achieved.

A sense of disappointment with the unfulfilled promise of the 'Development Project' (1) has not only accompanied the continued efforts to reform aid strategies, adapt approaches and improve effectiveness, but also contributed to a growing criticism of the underlying approach adapted since development was put on the international agenda following the Second World War. But as Pieterse points out in the quote above, this criticism not only stems from an evaluation of failed achievements, but of a suspicion of the economic mindset that 'steers a Western-led caravan on the path to modernity'.

This is not an argument to abandon addressing poverty and the huge inequalities that are continuing to grow. But something is not working, and to find out why, it is necessary to spend a moment of critical reflection and question old assumptions.

With the new millennium, the globalisation project is gaining prominence and carries forward the promise of the development project. Is this only the latest reincarnation of an exploitative system in favour of the Western world that "has seen the perpetuation of dependencies created during colonial times and institutionalised through late 19^th century imperialist doctrines"?

In his book Rethinking Development Geographies, Marcus Power challenges the reader, writing "How can we begin to dismantle and think beyond the western idea of development remedies? One fundamental starting point is to accept that the global apothecaries of development medicines, potions, remedies and drugs developed a 'licence' to dispense their prescriptions as a direct result of histories of western imperialism and Cold War geopolitics."

The history of the Development Project

Historically, it was the Portuguese who followed the endless coasts stretching into the South in sight of Gibraltar and who set off the race for 'unclaimed' resources that eventually saw the profit-minded European principalities and their merchant classes conquer rich empires stretching the globe.

By the late 19^th centuries the one-way resource extraction of colonialism, had grown into sophisticated imperial administrations, which were developing markets for their rapidly growing industries. For instance, the British were at that time pro-actively cultivating markets for textile products in their Indian colonies by manipulating economic regulations in their colonies. Or, to use terminology more familiar to 21^st century readers, the development of captive global markets was the strategy that European empires were pursuing when the First World War interrupted.

The war brought with the ascension to power of the communist party in Russia, and the beginning of a new and large-scale social experiment. The central planning approach in the socialist republics was later echoed with another social experiment in the West, when Keynesian theories justified state regulation and intervention in market-based economies.

The social upheaval of the Great War was further fuelled by the Great Depression of the 1930s and the violent geopolitics of the Second World War that followed. By the time this was over, the idea of the nation state that had arisen out of the ashes of the Great War, became the marshalling call for the colonies seeking equal ranks with their former masters.

To propel these new nations onto the road to the western ideal, the Development Project was begun. This was signalled by the landmark inauguration speech of newly elected U.S. President Harry Truman in 1949. "We must embark on a bold new program for … the improvement of underdeveloped areas." Implicit in Truman's speech was the unconditional belief in the concept of progress and in the 'makeability' of society
(2) for the part of the world thus labelled underdeveloped.

Overcoming disappointments

However, development advances proved hard to achieve and a sense of disappointment set in. By the nineties, the discourse of development studies was more and more self-critical with development alternatives failing to pass examination of a growing criticism that was putting in question the underlying paradigms (3). Increasing scrutiny followed in the wake of continuing set-backs with the achievement of development efforts. From the side of the beneficiary states, the credibility of development strategies was deteriorating and commitment to goals requiring painful sacrifices was eroded. Focus shifted to short term benefits that could be scooped of bilateral development assistance. And more importantly, there was a growing awareness that the Western conception of what a good life and good change constitutes is different and at times incompatible with those of the women and men themselves that are deemed in need of development.

As the development project accelerated from industrialisation, then economic capacity improvement to health and education for all, the challenges refused to disappear. By the 1990s, the most appropriate targets appeared to be good governance, participatory approaches, gender focused practice, civil society development and constructing partnerships with southern collaborators. The concepts employed by international non-governmental organisations, were matched by institutional and bilateral donors with calls for sustainable development, poverty eradication and market-orientated development.

But the promise was perhaps unrealistic from the outset. The development medicine that Power refers has proved insufficient so far. The obstacles that development has to navigate are substantial and include unfair trade by developed countries, undemocratic international organisations, capital flight, brain drain, poor governance, technological change, incessant conflicts, to name just a few.

The return to economic language as promulgated by the World Bank, confirms the analysis of the development vision as dominated by economic priorities (1) masking a neo-liberal agenda. This analysis regards with suspicion the growing number of states and international bodies that are promoting the successor to the Development Project, the Globalisation Project. Still, the tag of 'underdeveloped' country remains in place, although the viability of nation states on the path to economic growth is more and more undermined.

While developmentalism continues to redefine itself, other –isms are also thriving: Environmentalism, feminism, communitarianism, emancipation and rights-based approaches ... What then will be the discourses that will come to shape the futures of the "underdeveloped"?

Rendt Gorter is a PhD student at the University of Auckland ("Participation in Environmental Governance"), with ten years experience as project manager in international development aid.

Bibliography

Pieterse 2000 "After Post Development"

(1) McMichael 2000 Development and social change: a global perspective, p 24

(2) Schuurmann 2000 Paradigms lost, paradigms regained? Development studies in the twenty-first century

(3) Sachs 2000 The rise and decline of an ideal, Wuppertal Papers Nr 108

The Coral Coast on the edge: Re-inventing governance in Fiji

Pacific Ecologist (in press)

Uncertain times: Why interest in coral reefs is transforming traditional communities

When political uncertainty gripped the Fiji Islands with the military takeover in December last year, another ideological struggle was already taking place on the Coral Coast of Vitu Levu. With much less drama, but also important consequences, alternatives to established leadership are forming in response to changing values. Balancing on the edge between traditional identity and modern development are communities also changing from within. Old ideas about governance need to be re-examined as ecologists, community activists and developers are promoting introduced ideologies. The thinking and language that accompanies this is re-defining the boundaries of communities and provoking traditional chiefs as well as emerging leaders to integrate new ideas. Dormant challenges to the old order, unsatisfied expectations and a reawakened sense of identity shape the ground where these fresh ideas are being planted.

The iconic coral reefs, threatened by increasing human impacts, are a sought after resource where conflicting visions are clashing. How these visions subtly but critically re-position ‘the others’ around shared notions of nature conservation changes from one point of view to another. Developers want to see economic benefits disperse in return for a welcoming and natural environment for international visitors. Conservation minded agencies see a sustainable future where traditional communities, commercial interests and ecological values can co-exist. For Fijian activists that emphasize indigenous identity, economic development and environmental protection must not be achieved at the expense of traditional culture and values. In the middle are village communities that despite rapid change are pro-actively involved in re-shaping the social and political landscape that they share with more and more newcomers.

Read full article here ...

The Seven Da Vincian Principles

Curiosita: An insatiably curious approach to life and an unrelenting quest for continuous learning.

Dimostrazione: A commitment to test knowledge through experience, persistance, and a willingness to learn from mistakes.

Sensazione: The continual refinement of the senses, especially sight, as the means to enliven experience.

Sfumato: (Literally "Going up in smoke")A willingness to embrace ambiguity, paradox, and uncertainty.

Arte/Scienza: The development of the balance between science and art, logic and imagination."Whole-Brain" thinking.

Corporalita: The cultivation of grace, ambidexterity, fitness, and poise.

Connessione: A recognition of and appreciation for the interconnectedness of all things and phenomena. Systems thinking.

A PhD Research Project: Expanding networks of environmental governance in New Zealand and Fiji - Negotiating knowledges and explanations”

Expanding networks of environmental governance in New Zealand and Fiji:
Negotiating knowledges and explanations” A PhD Research Project

INFORMATION SHEET

What factors shape agreement and disagreement over policy, planning and management of natural resources? How does the negotiation of knowledges frame choice of effective governing instruments and legitimate governing action? How does this create opportunities for the formation of social capital?

Summary

To understand what factors have an effect on negotiations and expectations in networks of environmental governance, case studies in different settings are compared, in New Zealand and in Fiji. The themes emerging from these contexts are suggesting intriguing insights into the socio-political conditions that are being created by changes in governance approaches, widening the involvement of increasing parts of civil society in governance traditionally located in centralised authorities. This research is interested in how evolving perspectives for management of natural resources are changing the relationships between governing actors and the environment, and how these are represented in collaborative planning instruments. The aim is to reveal the potential to extract social capital from the different social and environmental explanations shaping these contests and negotiations.

These studies will trace and compare the negotiation of governance actions with respect to common pool resources, in particular as represented by the elaboration of collaborative planning instruments. Special attention will be paid to the role of ideas and knowledge, rather than simply the narrow interests of stakeholders.

The research design and methodology utilises a structural analysis of the relevant transactions which underpin relationships and define the networks of actors. The points of entry into the networks of interest are the actors involved in the negotiation of collaborative planning instruments.

This work aims to compare the role of environmental knowledges and explanations in shaping governance networks and social capital in Fiji and New Zealand. In Fiji, this will be interested in the changing institutional relationships linked to the governance of particular traditional fishing grounds in the Coral Coast area. An initial scoping visit to Fiji in September/October 2005 identified relevant issues.

In Aotearoa New Zealand, relevant discourses of environmental governance are being developed by a range of social actors in response to central and local government positions. To situate these actors, a set of unique circumstances can be explored in the Auckland region. Nature relations are being redefined on the margins of more dominating social priorities in the urban setting of New Zealand’s largest metropolis. A related subject are the contested fisheries in the country’s coastal waters and the shifting networks that are becoming visible in negotiations between government and fishing interests over proportional fisheries allocation.

To analyse the discourses that shape the links between actors in the networks surrounding resource governance, a qualitative study methodology with a series of semi-structured interviews will be adapted. This data will allow the analysis of social contest, governance and collaborative practices not simply in terms of policy outcomes but also more broadly in terms of the restructuring of the policy networks, the emergence of social capital, collective learning, and altered capacity for innovation. These broader reflections on social responses to change processes will be very valuable.

Read full project document here

Peace, Justice and Reconciliation in the Asia-Pacific Region, Brisbane April 2005

DevNet Magazine May 2005 (The Development Centre, NZ)

"To merely describe the world as it is, does not assist in making it better. We need intellectual effort that maps the path of positive peace."

With this quote from an unnamed regional scholar, Greg Urwin began his speech at the formal opening of the “Peace, Justice and Reconciliation in the Asia-Pacific Region Conference” in Brisbane 31 March. And with that he set the theme that the conference picked up - of making peace and conflict resolution theory relevant in the reality of the region today. Greg Urwin is the Secretary General of the Pacific Islands Forum Secretariat who clearly articulated an invitation for intellectual support not only in dealing with existing issues but also to help shape the “Pacific Plan” for closer regional cooperation and deeper regional integration that is currently being formulated.

Read full article here

To the Mauritanians land is like the sea

Several years ago a certain progressive aid agency arrived with European bilateral aid funds at the village of Guelbet Nour, somewhere in the transition zone between the Sahara and the Senegal River in southern Mauritania .

The participative assessment concluded that the critical obstacle to sustainable livelihoods was inadequate water supply. With a dam it would be possible to harvest enough water to allow crop irrigation. Adopting a capacity building approach, the dam was built with local labour rewarded with food stuffs and a management committee was formed and trained with the involvement of traditional tribal leaders and government representatives.

In due course the dam was commissioned, newly reclaimed land was allocated through consensual and democratic processes and the aid agency was completing final reports about what had seemed to be a successful season of operation.

Read full article here

Conflict Resolution And Resource Management In A Development Setting - A Preliminary Genealogy

International Development Studies Conference, Auckland 3-5 Dec 2004

Paper presented by Rendt Gorter,
School of Geography and Environmental Science, University of Auckland

Abstract

This paper examines the various origins of discourses and practices of 'conflict resolution' as they are applied to resource management in development settings. It reviews the various bodies of knowledge, fields of expertise and management practices brought to resource management through the discourse of 'conflict resolution'. The paper represents the first stage in a PhD project that will examine approaches to the collaborative management of public commons and, in particular, marine resources.

Read article here

Village Governance in Fiji - in collaboration with the University of the South Pacific

read document here