{"id":2258,"date":"2013-04-27T10:02:28","date_gmt":"2013-04-27T14:02:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.synapse9.com\/signals\/?p=2258"},"modified":"2013-09-11T09:45:55","modified_gmt":"2013-09-11T14:45:55","slug":"missing-ecological-thinking","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/synapse9.com\/signals\/missing-ecological-thinking\/","title":{"rendered":"Missing Principles of Ecological Thinking – in plans for the Earth"},"content":{"rendered":"

The following list of 12 principles of\u00a0ecological\u00a0thinking <\/strong><\/em>seemed\u00a0missing from consideration in the comments of UN member nation delegates and others at recent meetings led by the UN, in its major effort obtain a consensus on sustainable development goals (SDG\u2019s) for 1) eliminating widespread poverty, 2) responding to climate change and 3) maintaining\u00a0steady economic growth for all\u2026 for framing the UN Post2015 development plans. \u00a0The good reception I got mentioning couple of these to some of the experts at the meetings prompted me to send them an email with this longer list.<\/em><\/p>\n

The changes needed in the world economy are SO\u00a0massive, eliminating endemic cultures of poverty for 1\/8 of humankind, doubling the size of the world economy while cutting fossil fuel use back to ~1960 levels, in ~30 or so years, is \u201ca very full plate\u201d agenda.\u00a0 One might see it as more of a full emergency<\/em> <\/em>global economic rebuilding, to save the earth.<\/em><\/p>\n

The UN leadership prepares extensively\u00a0for such meetings, providing briefing documents and inviting very expert speakers, generally all show clear efforts to consider the true complexity of intervening in cultural\/economic\/environmental systems for making such big changes. \u00a0The UN doesn\u2019t make a real effort to educate the\u00a0delegates\u00a0or other participants as systems thinkers, though, to understand and be able to discuss the real nature of the complex problems we face in proposing to\u00a0rearrange\u00a0the human ecosystem.<\/em><\/p>\n

Feeding but not directing the\u00a0thinking\u00a0of others, does mark a conservative approach to intervening in the social and political cultures the UN serves, though, and is quite traditional at the UN. \u00a0I think today ecological thinking has advanced some, and the problem we face has changed a lot.\u00a0 So now that conservative approach comes at some real cost. \u00a0It allows\u00a0a low level recognition of our real problems by world decision makers to persist, and important false directions to go unchecked. Everyone seems to agree we have little time to discover the errors we\u2019re making in our use of the earth and getting them\u00a0straightened\u00a0out. \u00a0ed 4\/30\/13<\/em><\/p>\n

______<\/p>\n

Colleagues, <\/span>I was delighted to get positive reactions from thought leaders as you each are, at the UN OWG-2 meetings last week, to my pointing out key principles of natural systems not being considered by the delegates.\u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0I thought I\u2019d summarize a list of 11 of them, from my notes on the meetings while the week is fresh in our minds.\u00a0\u00a0 I represent the Commons Cluster in the NGO Major Group, and this is part of my own work in that group.<\/span><\/p>\n

I first noticed the first five this week, while carefully listening for the questions the delegates were consistently not asking.\u00a0 \u00a0The other six are one\u2019s I\u2019ve studied carefully for decades.\u00a0 \u00a0They\u2019re mostly very logical, perhaps even obvious, but missed by people tending to think and talk in terms of our own social purposes, ethics and values.\u00a0 So asking what choices are on \u201cnature\u2019s menu\u201d of options is honestly just overlooked.<\/p>\n

Because they don\u2019t automatically connect to social values, yet at least, lots of people also respond as if these natural principles are just \u201ctoo far out to consider\u201d.\u00a0 \u00a0So these may seem \u00a0\u201ca little far out\u201d.\u00a0 \u00a0I think are quite accurate descriptions what\u2019s on nature\u2019s menu of options and rather relevant to our work, though.<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. We talk about \u201cnot crossing planetary boundaries\u201d in the future,<\/span> with world resource prices rising for a decade, problems emerging of increasingly unmanageable complexity, and conflicting interests tying our hands with indecision, all indicating we crossed the boundary well in the past.<\/li>\n
  2. We want both \u201csustainable development\u201d and \u201ceconomic development\u201d overlooking the conflict<\/span>, one being for cultures learning to create wealth with their own resources, and the other for cultures learning to create wealth with growing amounts of other people\u2019s resources.<\/li>\n
  3. We talk about growth for \u201ccuring poverty\u201d when it\u2019s now causing it and worsening debt crises<\/span>, with growing competition for limited resources that takes limited supplies from lower profit sectors to give to higher profit sectors, visibly accelerating as supplies hit more severe limits.<\/li>\n
  4. We talk of poverty and hunger as policy failures, when they\u2019re really cultural failures,<\/span> gaps in \u00a0transmitting a reliable ladder of success and method of taking care of themselves to younger generations, for less adaptive cultures in a changing world and outside \u2018help\u2019 often misguided.<\/li>\n
  5. We want unified SDG (goals) and SDI (investments), when only able cultural choices do that<\/span>.\u00a0 It calls for enhanced cultural learning more than policy interventions, a commons approach, to learn quite new ways to make profitable choices, in an increasingly unsustainable world.<\/li>\n
  6. In designing complex systems\u2026 it\u2019s the parts that fit themselves together<\/span> both in nature and by people.\u00a0 Getting parts to find their own roles is how communities, ecologies and business cultures all develop and work.\u00a0 It\u2019s how theories are pieced together and technologies.<\/li>\n
  7. Even systems of very responsive parts can\u2019t respond to ever faster changing conditions<\/span>, as growth naturally produces. \u00a0So local solutions to the \u201cstruggle\u201d don\u2019t solve it, but indicate having crossed the boundary to being \u201covergrown\u201d, and creating changes the parts can\u2019t respond to.<\/li>\n
  8. We don\u2019t notice the growth imperative and its growing impacts exist by popular demand<\/span>, not just the greed of the rich but everyone\u2019s.\u00a0 Investors take a share but maximize other people\u2019s growing returns too, trying to serve society\u2019s desire for ever more money without work!<\/li>\n
  9. Resources are first valued for growth, building new systems, then for making them sustainable,<\/span> for maintaining themselves and their environments.\u00a0 The investment value switches from growth to sustainability, as easily as turning from a struggle to grow to become comfortable and secure.<\/li>\n
  10. We talk of resources and money having inherent value, when their value is in how they\u2019re used<\/span>, so ownership or sharing have value as properties of cultural know-how, for how to use what is owned or shared, and for whether in the end it enriches the whole.<\/li>\n
  11. Money choices include their hidden impacts, at about equal shares of the world total per dollar.<\/span> It\u2019s because money follows chains of businesses to pay millions of people for their end consumption to work in your service, each dollar having about \u201caverage\u201d material impacts while serving individual purposes. \u00a0So for material impacts, it\u2019s largely scale<\/span> that matters.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

     <\/p>\n

    I\u2019ve tried to suggest social values to attach to these principles, but given that they are not yet understood culturally, it\u2019s difficult.\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0I need help bringing them into discussions where they can gain social values.<\/p>\n

    A quite curious extension of that is how it even applies to most scientific communities.\u00a0 Scientists also generally don\u2019t recognize natural system design principles as connecting with scientific values.\u00a0 So they may readily agree with them and then also show no interest in finding how to use them.\u00a0 Not understanding quite where they come from they also often don\u2019t see \u00a0how they connect to traditional science!\u00a0 \u2026 very curious.<\/p>\n

    My scientific method for studying them is a quite direct extension of traditional scientific methods, for asking a somewhat new set of questions.\u00a0 \u00a0For myself it\u2019s become a quite effective way to study natural systems as behaving like individual organisms: growing, adapting and responding to their environments.<\/p>\n

    The usual scientific method treats natural systems somewhat the opposite, defining them as the theories we invent, and so not acknowledging the physical systems have their own working parts.\u00a0\u00a0 If people were curious, I could show them how the methods can quite productively connect.<\/p>\n

    Thanks so much for your time and response!<\/p>\n

    JLH<\/p>\n

    _____________<\/p>\n

     <\/p>\n

    12. \u00a0Not having in mind any real <\/span><\/span>method of ecological intervention<\/span><\/span>, and needs serious professional help designing one.<\/span><\/p>\n

    What I came to yesterday is a realization that where these great omissions in ecological thinking come from, is the UN simply not following any method of ecological intervention at all… ! \u00a0 prompting the following note to advocates of a commons approach.<\/em><\/p>\n

    What\u00a0I’ve\u00a0been observing, going to a number of high level meetings at the UN, and reading everyone\u2019s proposals, is lots of very caring people responding to symptoms they don\u2019t really understand with solutions they don\u2019t really understand\u2026 as if a\u00a0crap-shoot\u00a0for saving the earth is what they recommend.<\/span><\/p>\n

    That was really brought home at this week\u2019s ECOSOC meetings, strongly advocating highly unrealistic and culturally ignorant and inconsiderate plans to solve world poverty with massive technology infusions.\u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0That long list of critical omissions from the ecological thinking evident at the UN is a really serious matter.<\/p>\n

    So: …<\/p>\n

    A basic outline of one:<\/p>\n

    12.\u00a0 A practical method of sustainable ecological intervention<\/span><\/em> would start by dividing the task between setting goals (SDG\u2019s) and choosing investments (SDI\u2019s).\u00a0 Each would need professional certification and also provide for accountability<\/em> <\/em>before<\/em> <\/em>political commitments are made.<\/em><\/p>\n

    The professions involved would include appropriate analytical science and economic experts.\u00a0 Still more important is the inclusion of appropriate ecologists, having expertise in natural, cultural, industrial and general systems ecological thinking.\u00a0 That\u2019s because it\u2019s the systems thinking that is most missing from present UN deliberations.<\/em><\/p>\n

    Having professional guidance to help evaluate and guide \u201cgood ideas\u201d is needed to help decision makers understand how intervening in environments both will and will not change how they work, and the kinds of mid-course corrections bound to be needed. <\/em><\/p>\n

    Having sound professional guidance, on how to intervene in our cultural, economic and general ecological systems, would help somewhat the same way as an architect helps people realize the visions they have for buildings. \u00a0\u00a0The professional team could help define the paths that are possible to take to get from dreams to realities.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

     <\/p>\n

    I guess it\u2019s just because redesigning how a planet works is \u201ca new job for mankind\u201d, that getting appropriate professional help with making decisions seems to be something of a \u201cnew idea\u201d too\u2026\u00a0 ;-)<\/p>\n

    JLH<\/p>\n


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    The following list of 12 principles of\u00a0ecological\u00a0thinking seemed\u00a0missing from consideration in the comments of UN member nation delegates and others at recent meetings led by the UN, in its major effort obtain a consensus on sustainable development goals (SDG\u2019s) for 1) eliminating widespread poverty, 2) responding to climate change and 3) maintaining\u00a0steady economic growth for … Continue reading Missing Principles of Ecological Thinking – in plans for the Earth<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_crdt_document":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[7,8,9,12,16],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2258","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-econn","category-theory","category-policy","category-scitheory","category-whattodo"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/synapse9.com\/signals\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2258","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/synapse9.com\/signals\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/synapse9.com\/signals\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/synapse9.com\/signals\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/synapse9.com\/signals\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2258"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/synapse9.com\/signals\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2258\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2411,"href":"https:\/\/synapse9.com\/signals\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2258\/revisions\/2411"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/synapse9.com\/signals\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2258"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/synapse9.com\/signals\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2258"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/synapse9.com\/signals\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2258"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}