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Towards a new paradigm of social evolution

noreply@blogger.com (Rendt) — Fri, 08 Jan 2010 03:59:00 +0000

"What would be a whole-of-government approach to global development by the world's leading states?"

In early December 2009 – around the time of the infamous Copenhagen Conference – Olga Sorokina was prompted to give an answer to this question herself when Sara Staats, the Director of Policy Outreach at the Centre of Global Development, published an article entitled "Dear White House: All I Want for Christmas Is a Global Development Strategy."

Olga is not US citizen but lives in Israel. As a global citizen, she was also preoccupied with this question. She wrote that "I am striving for this as well. So are thousands of people all over the world as well and especially it is important for peoples in Israel." And she has good arguments for believing that the role of the USA in global development is particularly important.

Olga Sorokina is a marine biologist that studied for her PhD at the Russian Academy of Sciences and so naturally looks at complex issues with the eyes of a scientist trained in an evolutionary paradigm. This perspective can reveal refreshing insights into intractable social problems that political scientists and pundits will easily miss.

Not so long ago she moved from Moscow to Israel. This relocation gave her a closer look into a prism of social relations that we are all familiar with (although maybe at the same time not so knowledgeable about?): namely the Middle East. Before that, in Russia, she used to job for the World-Wide Fund for Nature and later for the Ecotourism Development Foundation. That institution was collaborating with many USAID projects and as well as programs of the UN Environmental Program. So her life experience and education made her reflect as a change leader and in terms of a 'Darwinian' evolution of social structures, leading her to compare and analyze human societies as an ecologist would study animal populations.

At the moment – due to personal circumstances – she has a lot OF time to read across different subjects. Since her interest had been draw to the bigger topics preoccupying many thinkers in the world, attracted by alarms of crisis over political, social, financial, ecological and environmental issues, Olga put her mind to work as a trained biologist. In particular she has been thinking and corresponding with others about the evolution of human societies, examining topics such as the 'clash of civilizations in the remade world'. As a result, the theme of global development had also been an on-going interest, for which she draws for analysis on various data sources accessible to her via the Internet.

Many prominent experts, such as Professor Peter Turchin from the University of Connecticut and Santa Fe Institute, William Halal, and other scholars, emphasize that the sensible analysis of global issues and the current situation would not be possible without applying a trans-disciplinary approach. So Olga was determined to frame an examination of the heart of global issues free from political influence with a multi-disciplinary approach.

In order to engage with topics of wider concern, rather than just adding another abstract academic reflection, she began by examining the work of public intellectuals who writing in the wider circulation media and who are participating at live events, lectures, and debates at the world's top universities, think tanks and conferences. Especially American intellectuals were of interest, since their ideas are closely related to public reflection and discussion over the role that the US could and maybe should take on the global scene.

So for instance, she carefully studied op-ed columnist like Mrs Brooks and Mr Friedman who are publishing regularly in the New York Times on the subject of the role of the US and the latest social changes in the word. Articles such as "The Next Culture War" and "Where did 'we' go" correspondingly were those that inspired her when she was writing up her ideas. Another well known thinker offering new perspectives is George Monbiot, writing in the UK Guardian International.

Her conclusions are provocative and offer a fresh perspective on what may seem a set of unsolvable problems the world is confronted with at the moment. Olga argues that the time for a paradigm change is upon us.

"Is there a need for a cultural revolution? A call for a new paradigm of social evolution" (press your browser's back button to return here)

Why Copenhagen had to fail: The misplaced expectations of science

noreply@blogger.com (Rendt) — Thu, 24 Dec 2009 02:24:00 +0000

Copenhagen produced poorly disguised disappointment for many interested parties that had invested energy and expectations in the process. As an international problem solving exercise it has spectacularly failed to either deliver answered questions or even answerable questions that can satisfy a heated public debate. Even if the debate is simplified by media into opposing camps of environmentalists and deniers, the politics of climate change are a critical test case for democracy and public deliberation in the 21^st Century.

The gathering of representatives and political leaders from 193 countries was characterised by polemic and debate. Participating countries were caught up in political diplomacy, inconclusive debates and back room negotiations. In public forums, through the media and even out on the street, competing interpretations and opinions were argued. The subjects of these debates were a disputed science of climate change, and, more importantly, the cost and respective contribution for fixing the problem. Who pays and who benefits is fundamentally a political question. The drama of the last minute deal brokering only emphasized the inability of the world's science and political practitioners to deliver the leadership that the scale of the event imposed. Whether appropriate or not, the inability to restore order on board of a doomed ship uncomfortably evokes a Titanic comparison.

Beyond climate management, the perceived failure of the political elite so far to deliver sought after goals such as financial security, good health and environmental sustainability, does not bode well for public support in future decision making. But perhaps the reason for these disappointments lies much deeper than easy assumptions about the fallibility of politicians. An integral part of the contemporary model of political government is the enlightenment reliance on objective expertise. This idea of science as a non-political source of knowledge, dates back to the formative years of European culture at least, the positivist hey days of the 19^th century.

If science is examined as what it is made out to be in education and media, then a contradiction becomes apparent that can help explain in part the drama that took place in Copenhagen. Science is expected to be an objective informant of political debate and as such only a by-product of a greater project, which is the search for predictable knowledge. For science to fulfil such roles, it must conform to the positivist view of scientific work that has entered school curricula more or less directly from the technological and industrial revolution that began in earnest in the 19^th Century. The prowess of science that built railroads across continents and made electrical, medical, and cultural miracles possible, then followed in the 20^th Century by nuclear physics and the green revolution, must also be extendable to all remaining problems of the natural world. However, actual experience has caused many cracks in such an edifice of technological confidence.

Image via Wikipedia

Science cannot offer all the solutions, and so unsurprisingly an uncritical faith in technology was left behind in the oh-so-short post war boom years of the 1950s and 1960s. Scientists have been warning all along that the most critical problems confronting humanity – be that the risk of nuclear war or catastrophic environmental destruction – do not simply lie in the area of science and technology. For example, Garret Hardin, author of the now classic 1968 article The tragedy of the commons, the "population problem" is a prime member of the class of problems without a technical solution. And as Hardin showed in his often cited tract, in the face of inexorably growing population, the hope to find a fix that addresses the core issue of overpopulation without infringing on existing privileges and advantages is technologically impossible. And that is the heart of the paradox which poses impossible problems for science – i.e. to harness an objective science to simply assure more of the good life that has led to a population explosion in the first place is not possible without political decisions.

There are a number of assumptions that underlie the relationship of science and politics. Copenhagen has made these visible.

1. The unity of scientific method: A universal logic of inquiry that applies in all disciplines

Science has historically utilised very effective knowledge production methods, that have explained puzzling phenomena from lightning bolts to plant nutrition uptake, and it has done so in ways that made it possible to improve weather prediction and increase food production. But in all domains of research, the limits of simplistic models in complex situations has been shown to also limit the extent of predictability. A journey through the journals of many scholarly disciplines, not only touching on climate science and agricultural technology but equally for example on nuclear physics and political studies, can quickly collect critical reflections that warn of the limits of the classic scientific method of analytical methods and falsifiable hypotheses, especially in the human sciences where most important categories of description cannot be reduced to instrumental measurements.

Trying to apply the scientific method to the complexity of human-climate interaction with the expectation to deliver scientifically verifiable predictions can only deliver frustration. There are several reasons for this. A universal method assumes that any given problem situation can be reduced to a determinate number of variables which in complex systems is contradictory. And even if these variables can be isolated, a methodological universalism requires these variables to be measurable and 'interpret-able' in a meaningful way. To then link interpretations back to a real world context makes assumptions about the stability and autonomy of a situation under investigation. Climate processes on a global scale are an excellent example that show how futile that objective really is. Lastly, if science is asked to move beyond explicating relevant factors in complex processes to provide reference points for political decision making then it faces the impossible challenge of making abstract research results commensurable in decision making processes spanning multiple, interlocking domains of natural and social processes.

2. Explanations hold the power of foresight: If all variables are known, an event can be predicted.

Another assumption that is integral to a shared understanding of science is the relationship of explanation with prediction. The intuitive notion that knowledge makes prediction possible lies in contrast with the everyday experience of science as raising the number of possibilities rather than reducing possible answers. What science has proven most effective at is to identify new variables and alert to other possible futures. If the predictability of weather has only improved in a statistical measure of likely 'extreme weather events' then this disappoints an expectation for improved science to earmark sunny holidays well in advance.

There is of course another way to conceive of the increasing multiplicity of possibilities that universities of the 21^st Century are emitting like industrial smog. While on the one hand opening for the accusation of reducing levels of visibility for policy makers with unnecessary complexity, on the other the growing realm of hypothetical propositions can be seen as a necessary intermediate stage of an ever improving science. In reality, the inevitable uncertainty of the scientific method diminishes its authority in the political realm, but if that is so, then it was a false authority in the first place.

3. Theory, that is science, informs political decision making but must always remain objective and value-neutral.

The authority of science as basis for informed decision making rests on significant assumptions of infallibility that science cannot fulfil. While a range of issues can be reformulated as questions precise enough for scientific inquiry to deliver practical answers, this disguises the limits of science. Beyond the scope of delimited questions lies a world of interlocked processes that cannot be isolated in experiment or natural studies. Science becomes a profession of raising possibilities and politics then is about risk management. But does that reflect the relationship between science and politics?

Image by Getty Images via Daylife

In democratic societies, government is explicitly thought of as representing multiple interests of diverse citizenships. Representational politics relies on competing constituencies to use public forums of government to raise concerns and resolve conflicting claims. But scientists are citizens as well. Moreover, simply by choice of career path, scientists express respect for the significance of knowledge in social life. How can science be value neutral and assume to offer information as if would not touch on the lives of scientists themselves, or have critical insights relegated to a 'democratic' encyclopaedia sorted without value preference from a to z?

These points illustrate that the common perception of science as a vale-free, objective informant of democratic decision making is flawed. The reality in a complex world makes science a social endeavour that is placed at an objective distance from political governance at the risk of preserving out-dated institutions of public decision-making. Maybe the fault is not with a science unable to deliver its part but a politics which is unable to deliver in a world of increasing complexity.

The expectation for Copenhagen was to agree on a management plan for the climate. But in the face of climate complexity and unresolved political differences, this is a problem that is ill suited for a science based politics. What then are the alternatives? Firstly, the indeterminacy of the science of complex problems must be more fundamentally recognised and institutionalised. Politicians then, must turn to science not in expectation of definitive answers, but as one source of several, albeit a critical one, to highlight the risks and opportunities that alternative decisions open up. Seeing other view points not as potential obstacles, or in need of education, but as informants of potential obstacles, opens the canvas of possible pathways that must be mapped out. We live in a risk society, where increased technology has not so much reduced the threats of the unexpected, but rather has dramatically increased the scale of risks – be they in our financial systems or in our global climate systems. Proceed with caution, should be the maxim.

AFP: EU seeks way ahead after 'disastrous' UN climate talks

noreply@blogger.com (Rendt) — Tue, 22 Dec 2009 21:23:00 +0000

BRUSSELS — European environment ministers began Tuesday to plan a new strategy for tackling climate change after "disastrous" UN climate negotiations which the US and China did their best to undermine, the Swedish EU presidency said.
"I call this a disaster, it doesn't at all match the needs of the world and that is what we have to discuss," said Sweden's Environment Minister Andreas Carlgren, whose country holds the EU's rotating presidency until the end of the year.
AFP: EU seeks way ahead after 'disastrous' UN climate talks

The Chinese are not ready to take the blame and push this back to developed nations. China rejects climate allegation.

The Cubans had a similar view, stating that Copenhagen Was a Farce.

And also, Brazil blasts US performance at Copenhagen.

From an Indian perspective, it is less a question of blame and rather a Morning After effect. India wakes up to the implications of being graduated to the 'developed' class. What Copenhagen agreement really means to India

The Guardian attempts to get a more objectiove view by polling a range of commentators: Copenhagen climate deal: Spectacular failure - or a few important steps?

Also from the Gulf, a more measured assessment:
"The showdown between China and the United States has introduced for the first time at the highest political level moral questions about climate change. " No pact, but it's not the end of the world

CLIMATE CHANGE: "We're Not Finished Yet," Civil Society Warns - IPS ipsnews.net

noreply@blogger.com (Rendt) — Sun, 20 Dec 2009 23:10:00 +0000

The COP15 outcomes remain open for interpretation, and after the weekend has passed, positions are clarifying. CLIMATE CHANGE: "We're Not Finished Yet," Civil Society Warns - IPS ipsnews.net
"... the fact that negotiators at the Bella Center were unable to reach an agreement even within their own conception of how to address climate change is proof that it is a failed model. That's why it is very important to go forward and tell a different story of what happened here in Copenhagen. That story must be that their model reveals itself to be a spectacular failure even according to its own terms," Canadian journalist and researcher Naomi Klein said. "And because their model failed, it's our turn now. So don't allow yourselves to get depressed," she added.

Meanwhile NZ PM John Key has returned home and ecided there was a little good in the effort after all (remember, he had not wanted to go until days before the event because he had expected it to be a waste of time all along). PM: Climate accord process must change

Photo: Britain's Ed Miliband saved a deal he admits is 'by no means perfect'. / AP

The deal finally hammered out had been expected to commit countries to deep cuts in carbon emissions. In the end, it fell short.
Instead, a draft agreement put forward by China - and backed by Brazil, India and African nations - commits the world to the broad ambition of preventing global temperatures from rising above 2C.
Yesterday some delegates openly attacked China.Asked who was to blame for blocking the introduction of controlled emissions, the director-general of the Swedish Environmental Protection Agency, Lars-Erik Liljelund, replied: "China. China doesn't like numbers."
This was a huge step on from our work in Kyoto

John Prescott is more realistic about the outcome, given that his predictions hagve come true.

'The "test" for many journalists and NGOs was whether there'd be a legal agreement, which was never a possibility, just as we didn't get one at Kyoto. No. The real headline is that Copenhagen has become the first global agreement on climate change.'
Ed Miliband agrees, but is candid about where the problem. The road from Copenhagen

The talks were chaotic, at times farcical. But in the accord there were real gains we can build upon.
"this is one of the straws in the wind for the future: the old order of developed versus developing has been replaced by more interesting alliances." says Miliband.

The BBC offers a more clear-cut analysis: Climate deal: Key issues

Copenhagen deal underwhelms politicians, scientists

National Business Review - ‎The deal reached at global climate change talks in Copenhagen has disappointed politicians and scientists worldwide, while reaction has been mixed in New Zealand.

Chair of Group of Developing Nations Makes Angry Plea to Obama After Copenhagen

Press conference with Lumumba Stanislaus Di-Aping, the chairman of the G-77 group of developing countries at Copenhagen.

Copenhagen summit: China's quiet satisfaction at tough tactics and goalless draw

20 Dec 2009: Foreign minister, Yang Jiechi, describes outcome as 'significant and positive' despite accusations China had systematically wrecked the negotiating process.

A great step forward: Obama's verdict on climate change pact

20 Dec 2009: Talks an 'important breakthrough' says US president but decried as a waste of paper by critics on both sides of the debate.

In the end, maybe the NZ Youth Delegation offers the best interpretation available, writing from Copenhagen Sunday 20 December:
"Hope"nhagen? Or "Flop"enhagen?

On Saturday we made an urgent call for people to contact John Key tellikng him the Copenhagen Accord was insufficient.
Now, with the conference ended, the Copenhagen Accord is the only result. Many NGO's are incensed, some countries refused to accept it and news media are calling the conference a flop (see here) This Accord is not binding, so countries may choose whether or not they adopt it. Further, it sets no targets for how much countries need to reduce their emissions. It was produced by back-room negotiations, and provoked outrage from some countries - Sudan went as far as to make references to the Holocaust.
In the words of our youth delegate, Kirk Serpes "Voluntary reductions are like voluntary taxes."
However, we at NZYD still have some "Hope"enhagen. We have seen millions of people mobilised the world over. As we speak, NGO's world wide are launching a campaign reminding leaders that "We are not done yet." Most importantly, we saw a real desire from politicians to take action. 192 countries will always have difficulty agreeing, but in Copenhagen we saw genuine disappointment when the talks failed. Governments wanted a positive result, and that desire will be built on in the coming months.

Momentous times, it must seem in Kopenhagen tonight.

noreply@blogger.com (Rendt) — Sat, 19 Dec 2009 06:02:00 +0000

Image by openDemocracy via Flickr

The email began dramatically:
"As we sit here at almost 5am Danish time we urge you to take positive action on climate change NOW. "The Copenhagen Accord" has just been released by China, US, India, South Africa and Brazil. It fails to provide the world with what we urgently need - a fair, ambitious and legally binding deal."

This moment in time will go down in history!

Look forward to the future,
The New Zealand Youth Delegation

This is bigger than climate change. It is a battle to redefine humanity | George Monbiot | Comment is free | The Guardian

noreply@blogger.com (Rendt) — Tue, 15 Dec 2009 07:21:00 +0000

Image via Wikipedia

"Today the battle lines are drawn between expanders and restrainers; those who believe that there should be no impediments and those who believe that we must live within limits."

Guardian Weekly columnist George Montbiot sees a profound opposition that goes well beyond old ideological divisions between left and right. That may well be, but it is still a fight between those who can and those who can't.

This is bigger than climate change. It is a battle to redefine humanity | George Monbiot | Comment is free | The Guardian

The Environmental Shakedown

noreply@blogger.com (Rendt) — Fri, 11 Dec 2009 07:46:00 +0000

There are ideological divisions at the bottom of the climate debate. Copenhagen is bringing that out explicitly. While the polemic at times may seem conservative or idealistic, there is a fundamental clash of world views. If this is not addressed then the ideological conflict will remain unresolved.

Pullitzer winning columnist Charles Krauthammer writing in the Washington Post makes it very explicit how he sees the political threats brewing in Copenhagen.

- "The raid on the Western treasuries is on again, but today with a new rationale to fit current ideological fashion. With socialism dead, the gigantic heist is now proposed as a sacred service of the newest religion: environmentalism. One of the major goals of the Copenhagen climate summit is another NIEO shakedown: the transfer of hundreds of billions from the industrial West to the Third World to save the planet by, for example, planting green industries in the tristes tropiques.
Politically it's an idea of genius, engaging at once every left-wing erogenous zone: rich man's guilt, post-colonial guilt, environmental guilt." (Read the rest here: The Environmental Shakedown)

Then, for the other side, compare this political analysis by Naomi Klein:

- "The big criticism of the movement the media insisted on calling “antiglobalization” was always that it had a laundry list of grievances and few concrete alternatives. The movement converging on Copenhagen, in contrast, is about a single issue—climate change—but it weaves a coherent narrative about its cause, and its cures, that incorporates virtually every issue on the planet. In this narrative, our climate is changing not simply because of particular polluting practices but because of the underlying logic of capitalism, which values short-term profit and perpetual growth above all else." (Read the full article here: Copenhagen: Seattle Grows Up)

BLOG : The extreme global warming debate | Weather Watch

noreply@blogger.com (Rendt) — Thu, 10 Dec 2009 08:33:00 +0000

Image by roberthuffstutter via Flickr

Writes WeatherWatch.co.nz head weather analyst Philip Duncan: - The other night I asked on Twitter "Why is it both sides of the global warming debate are SO extreme. Where are the moderates? The intelligent ponderers rubbing their beards?". (and no, I don't assume all scientists are men).

Image by Getty Images via Daylife

And, reflecting on the criticisms of CAP15 at Copenhagen, he added ..

- Once a topic becomes political it's hard to see the forest for the trees. Both sides throwing grenades at each other and hoping that when the dust settles the public now agrees with their point of view.

I had to agree,
- You are right to say that the most vocal in the discussions around climate change have been the extreme point of views. And these are driven by ideologies - or fear of ideologies.

But I continued to claim that there was still hope. Read the full texts here: BLOG : The extreme global warming debate | Weather Watch

Beyond Copenhagen: Backup plan on global warming needed

noreply@blogger.com (Rendt) — Thu, 03 Dec 2009 19:08:00 +0000

Climate change is here. The focus of media attention and the public imagination has so far been on emissions reduction as a way to prevent a climate disaster. Somehow, the frequency of climatic extremes would remain within 'normal' parameters if CO2 emissions are limited. The issue that debates have been preoccupied is whether real change is taking place and if that can or cannot be attributed to human impact. By implication then, humans should make some sacrifices to prevent a climate catastrophe.
That is a debate that will soon lose interest. Not because one side will win the argument but simply because the effects of climate change will steal the focus. However with that comes the need to think more about mitigation and give up the myth of prevention.

California governor: Backup plan on global warming needed

Copenhagen: Getting Past the Urgency Trap | Cognitive Policy Works

noreply@blogger.com (Rendt) — Fri, 27 Nov 2009 01:26:00 +0000

Copenhagen’s still three weeks away, but climate activists are already voicing their enormous disappointment about everything that’s not going to get done there. The heat is rising, and we’re all feeling the overwhelming urgency to get a strong global agreement that will get the laggards off their butts and launch the structural reformations most of us know we need to fix the problem. A lot of us, it seems, loaded all our highest hopes onto this one conference, wanting desperately to believe that this would finally be the moment the long-awaited Grand Transformation would occur.

But the hard truth of the matter is this: change of this magnitude never happens with a single conference, a single treaty, or even a single disaster.

Nov 19th, 2009 by Sara Robinson. In "Cognitive Policy Works" The article continues here

Also read my comments and Sara's response.

What is intimate journalism? What does it mean to write in this style?

noreply@blogger.com (Rendt) — Tue, 13 Oct 2009 04:37:00 +0000

When a writer seeks out the point of view of actors in the story, this is called intimate journalism. This style builds a story in scenes with telling details of the subjective experience allowing the reader to becomes temporarily
immersed in the lives of the subjects. By mixing direct quotes and interior monologue, intimate journalism borrows openly from fiction writing. Also the development of a narrative along a time line which exposes a problem, the dilemma facing the actors and the ensuing tension - within a quite credible situation - are like in a fiction story brought to a resolution leading to a dramatic change. (Read more in Intimate Journalism: The Art and Craft of Reporting Everyday life
by Walt Harrington)

Collaborative governance of the environment, Scandinavian style.

noreply@blogger.com (Rendt) — Wed, 17 Jun 2009 12:59:00 +0000

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

noreply@blogger.com (Rendt) — Sun, 10 May 2009 02:54:00 +0000

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?

noreply@blogger.com (Rendt) — Sat, 02 May 2009 05:13:00 +0000

"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 ?

noreply@blogger.com (Rendt) — Sat, 02 May 2009 05:08:00 +0000

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

noreply@blogger.com (Rendt) — Tue, 28 Oct 2008 06:50:00 +0000

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.

noreply@blogger.com (Rendt) — Fri, 03 Oct 2008 06:44:00 +0000

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

noreply@blogger.com (Rendt) — Mon, 29 Sep 2008 03:14:00 +0000

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

noreply@blogger.com (Rendt) — Sat, 20 Sep 2008 23:00:00 +0000

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

noreply@blogger.com (Rendt) — Thu, 19 Jun 2008 19:11:00 +0000

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

noreply@blogger.com (Rendt) — Thu, 05 Jun 2008 00:05:00 +0000

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.

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

noreply@blogger.com (Rendt) — Tue, 01 Jan 2008 17:00:00 +0000

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’

noreply@blogger.com (Rendt) — Tue, 23 Oct 2007 03:54:00 +0000

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

noreply@blogger.com (Rendt) — Mon, 03 Sep 2007 16:05:00 +0000

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

noreply@blogger.com (Rendt) — Sun, 26 Aug 2007 18:31:00 +0000

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.