Category: social-ecological transformation

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economics innovation oil politics social-ecological transformation

Transforming industrial society

Staffan Laestadius

If you take climate change seriously, you also have to discuss how to transform society, not just industry but also
transforming life in society so that it will keep providing welfare.

Samuel Mann with Staffan Laestadius [ 59:13 ] Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Staffan Laestadius is Professor of Industrial Dynamics. He says his work starts where Climate Change research finishes. He tells us how industrial and societal transformation are inextricably linked. He also tells us that such transformation is possible – a path to emission reduction without miracles.

Talking points

Silent Spring, for me, and many of my generation…that was the first step into sustainability.

Limits to Growth…widely discussed, heavily criticised not least by economists, but also by people who thought this book was something that was telling the the rest of the world now the northern part of the world have got their lifestyle, there is no time, no space for the others to catch up. I think that was the wrong conclusion – I think the Limits to Growth book got too bad a reputation, but many of the forecasts have turned out to be relatively true now.

Industrial transformation…how analyse and understand processes of industrial change.

It isn’t enough to put new fuels in old cars.

The energy transformation required is huge…the elephant in the room, so huge, dramatic and challenging we don’t want to talk about it

We don’t want to talk about what do we have to do to take climate change seriously..but I try to do that.

I try to show it is possible to change

Industrial processes and social change

In Northern Europe we have developed a welfare state, a process modality, people believe that they have got all their welfare, their technology, their cars, and you will not convince people to leave all that to leave all that to go into a stone age economy just to preserve the climate.

You have to show that instead of man as master of nature…to a more circular system that provides a similar or comparable standard of living..that it is the challenge.

Show it is possible without decline in welfare….welfare based on a new sustainability based industrial system

The standard reaction…new technological solutions but from old thinking, linear thinking.

We could have fixed it with these old solutions 50 years ago, but now those solutions are not there any more, we have to be more humble and look to more sustainable solutions.

Now it needs a new way of thinking

There are limits to what we can do

Accepting the planetary boundaries work, my contribution is “What are the consequences for industrial and social transformation?”.

You can’t get people to accept transformation promising that everything will be worse – whether you continue on the same path or accept a sustainable path – so you must find a path of achieving transformation that can provide welfare for society – that is sustainable.

It is easy to fall back to “we’re too small, nothing I do matters”…but a message is the snowball effect – somebody has to go ahead.

We have to show that is possible to transform, increase competitiveness and welfare

To show it is possible we have to break down the enormous task…4 dimensions. 1 half of reductions…2. you should reduce activity levels first, then efficiency…3. it is possible to start, you don’t have to do everything now…4. 4% per year as long as we have growth, intensity is of no interest to nature…so absolute reductions.

We should focus first on doing less of carbon intensive processes

It is possible, but it is tough, because time is running out.

Reduce activity, increase efficiency, then substitution. This is the logical order, but of course they can be worked on together.

This is not a technology revolution…technology is there already…

For the coming years – at least until 2030 we have the technology, it is a political problem to calibrate the system so it becomes politically and socially attractive to join the solution.

Fossil fuels have been so successful, so cheap because externalities ignored

The basic training of economists, externalities so small we don’t have to worry about them. But now we see the basic problem is externalities.

We need to leave 2/3rd of fossil fuel in the ground

Sometimes when I go to sleep I think this is too tough but I think it is worth fighting for

We need to find a pricing model that makes it rational to transform

We need to transform the economy but also to keep the welfare model

(Will the transformation come anyhow?) Stakeholders in old regime…people know more, we have to get politicians to coordinate.
Political leadership is not just doing what they believe the electorate wants, they have to lead in the right direction…climate change a real challenge to traditional left wing/right wing…..we have to find political alliances

(a gentle revolution?) I think this may be necessary in a few years as the climate situation gets worse.

(New book Triple Challenges for Europe) Triple challenges…climate change, economic development, governance.

End austerity politics with investment in green solutions

(Success) not sucess or failure…returning to the synthesis of sustainability in my personal view and work… integrating industrial and social change…a coherent view

Instead of narrowing focus on details of technical transformation, widening scope go more into debate and how to get impact and work with transformation

(Activist) The third task for academics – societal influence – mine is impact on transforming our industrial society. Not an activist. Was when young, but basically I’m an academic.

I wouldn’t say that I’m an activist, but I would say I’m not scared to take a position that is solidly based.

If you take climate change seriously, then you have to work with a transformation…this is the magnitude of the challenge
(Motivation) – I still think I have a lot to do

I have a broader interest…too many things…I work with social, industrial and technology…it keeps me engaged in the debate

(Challenges) Swedish government could agree on transformation of our carbon dependence, way to achieve 4% per annum, and show the world that it is possible.

It will get worse before it gets better.

Maybe we have to face some more disasters and then we can mobilise a transformation

I think it is possible for all of us on an individual level to make the first half…it is possible…the rest will be dificult

I have reduced my car travel to less than half without any problem at all.

I have to do more, and we all have to do more in future, but it is possible to reduce by half with no suffering.

Categories
social-ecological transformation transition towns values

Values-based change agent

Pella Thiel

When you appeal to the rational economic man, you strengthen those values, prime those values, and the intrinsic ones become weaker. If I tell you that installing these solar panels will be cheaper, then you become less interested in unity with nature, social justice – a beautiful world. And what we know is that a beautiful world, thinking and action for a sustainable future rests on those intrinsic values.

Samuel Mann with Pella Thiel [ 59:04 ] Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Pella Thiel an ecologist and change agent who chairs the board of the Transition Network Sweden, Omställningsnätverket, and is also working with values for transition within the Common Cause network. She is also facilitating End Ecocide Sweden.

Pella works to create meeting places that build the trust in the possibility of the big changes necessary for a sustainable, just and meaningful world.

Talking points

Addressing ecocide is a prerequisite – we can’t have thriving local communities if we don’t put an end to the destruction being done as an everyday thing.

Our current system…we think it’s OK to destroy living systems

What makes a success is when people devote time to themselves – how they are, how they work, how they interact with each other. If you can create a healthy group where people actually want to be there becasue it is fun and people support each other, that is a success factor.

Be welcoming of lots of different actors, a space holder for change to happen.

Being positive without closing eyes to severity of the situation we are in.

Transition, most horrible things and most beautiful things happen at the same time….when we actually say this has to change. if you are an addict, it is not until you realise I can be alive and I can be dead, and this is the choice I have to make.

Do we have to convince everybody? This is a stress – “we have to reach everybody, we have to be palatable enough for the middle class, everybody needs to be in this change”, which is true to a certain degree, but from what we know about big shifts in complex systems, they don’t happen that way – that suddenly many people do something different, on the contrary, they happen because a small amount of individuals do things from a very different logic. Maybe 5%, maybe even less because we are so interconnected – if a few people can spread a message that many other people resonate with…maybe even fewer than 5% to tip the system.

This path we are on is not going to take us any further, so we get to choose the path we want. So then the question is options for change – mostly the transition message that we can deal with this together.

We can deal with this together, if we do it together it’s not that scary, it can be fun, meaningful and connecting.

We have invested heavily in the current picture, and it will be difficult to leave…but we can make money frmo other things, and that money will be serving us better. Serving the complex we live in much better, much healthier, less stressful and less lonely than we are today.

Ecocide is mass damage and destruction of ecosystems where people and other organisms live. And what we’re working on…international law against ecocide.

The movement is to have Ecocide recognised by the Rome Statute…the most severe crimes – crimes against humanity, genocide, war crimes…they are tried in the international court.

This will have to be a process as we find out together, what do we accept and not accept. Today as a society we do accept mass damage of nature – and we know where that is taking us, we’re well into the 6th mass extinction.

Our collective actions are taking us to a place that doesn’t benefit any of us. We have to change that, and that’s not easy, but if we don’t begin…

Common Cause…the role of values in how we act and think, and how that relates to sustainability. Values provide guiding principles, that tell us what’s desirable, what’s normal and what’s important.

Values change and shift all the time. If we what change, we need to be conscious of values.

Values influence everything we do, but we are usually unaware of them. We don’t usually notice societal values, what values are strengthened in our society – what is perceived as desirable, normal and important in a society

Extrinsic values: if you get a reward for what you do, how people see you, material wealth, status, power…and then there are intrinsic values- they are more related to the context you are in: relationship to nature, friends and family, social justice, equality, and things such as creativity.

For us to be able to act on bigger than self issues, we have to act on intrinsic values – so they have to be the strong ones.

I caution against good and bad values, but its normative in the way that if want to move in the direction that is more collective – and just people, but also taking into account the interests of other beings, even landscapes, then we have to be focussing on the intrinsic values. –

Selfish, rational economic man…that’s really strange thinking, that we could build a society that is good for all based on the interests of individuals that don’t care about that whole society. That’s a sad picture of people being very very small – and we aren’t that small. We’re big, we have big hearts if we can believe in those big hearts.

When you appeal to the rational economic man, you strengthen those values, prime those values, and the intrinsic ones become weaker. If I tell you that installing these solar panels will be cheaper, then you become less interested in unity with nature, social justice – a beautiful world. And what we know is that a beautiful world, thinking and action for a sustainable future rests on those intrinsic values.

Transition needs a whole shift in thinking, and by appealing to your economic gain from that, you will undermine and cause collateral damage to those intrinsic values and weaken your ability to participate in the transition.

We need to go even deeper than an overthrow of capitalism. Using money as a measurement is really shallow.

We measure money, but that’s not the interesting stuff – people are interested in healthy relationships with politicians, neighbours, their children’s teachers, healthy food, beautiful setting – those are the things we should strive for.

The best things in life, money can’t buy. We know that, so why do we keep focussing on money?

How can we strengthen each other by sharing the strengths we have?

In an ecosystem it is many relationships that builds resilience and it is the same in our communities.

We can’t sustain the system we are living in now, and I don’t think that we should, so sustainability is not really very interesting, what is interesting is transition to resilience, perhaps a regenerative sustainability.

We shouldn’t have sustainable business, we should aim to have regenerative business.

If you work with values, and talk about the values you want to strengthen, then you do a lot of good, even if you don’t explain things very much. People don’t act on information, people act on values.

We need to give people a reason to act based on values.

(Success) The awareness of Ecocide law.

(Activist) Yes. I actively do things for something I believe in.

(Motivation) How important these things are to me – the living systems of the earth, the future of my children, it hit my heart how much I care for those things, and it goes a long way

(Challenges) Microscale…on the farm where I live, a healthy community, that trusts and cooperates to provide our food.

(Miracle) That all people started to believe in their own power to create good communities for themselves and for others, that they would believe in their own roles as change agents.

(Advice) Believe in your own power to create the change that you want to see in the world. And take some time to reflect on what is important to you, then manifest that in some way – draw it, write it down, tell someone else.

This interview was recorded in early September 2015.

Categories
social-ecological transformation

Nurturing social-ecological transformation

Albert Norstrom

How do we nurture and scale up the seeds of the better Anthropocene?


Dr Albert Norström of the Stockholm Resilience Centre is Executive Director of the Programme on Ecosystem Change and Society (PECS). We talk about the role of ecosystem services, our social-ecological systems and how we can scale up the seeds of the good anthropocene.

Talking points

The Millennium Assessment was a great success…but after that there was an effort to identify key knowledge gaps…how regime shifts can affect ecosystem services, how management and governance of ecosystem services should be designed to get the best outcomes in both the social and ecological arena….so a ten year programme to try to address these key gaps…the programme on ecosystem change and society was born.

Social-ecological system are systems in which scientists address both the social and ecological aspects of a specific place and trying to get positive outcomes in both of these arenas.

Regime shifts…events where things are looking pretty good in the ecosystem you are trying to manage, then all of a sudden things go crazy, and teh ecosystem shifts to something completely different to what it was before.

We need to move beyond seeing nature as nature and social systems as social systems, but seeing an holistic interconnected social-ecological system.

I’ve always been interested in issues of equity and justice and all things political.

It was a purposeful evolution in my career: in the beginning I focussed on the ecological dimension, (but as my career has progressed) , I’ve been trying to bring the social dimension into the ecological dimension.

One of the big challenges we have, if we’re going to If we’re going to solve some of the big sustainability problems of the world is to make it easier for the next generation of scholars to wear this transdisciplinary hat… that can very comfortably switch between paradigms and disciplines or work in teams of researchers representing different disciplines.

Current academic structures are silo-disciplinary.

But if you get thrown into this transdisciplinary ocean at the beginning, the risk is that you get washed away because you have no real platform to stand upon.

Bringing people into the mix makes ecosystems much more complex, a necessary step, but it is impossible to improve the functioning of an ecosystem if you don’t understand the livelihoods of the people that live there, how they value nature, their culture, their norms, power dynamics in communities, the myriad of legislative requirements – all of these things influence how people act, or can’t act, and all of these things are extremely difficult to start uncovering.

Academic careers are heavy on rewarding a certain type of CV, heavy to reward quick publications, slow to recognise running courses, or working in transition groups, or other activities that have a long term tangible impact on society.

Understanding range of interconnections that exist in our planet today.

The anthropocene – an era where human activity is now the biggest driver of change on the planet.

Characteristics of the anthropocene include the increasing speed and scale of things.

The real challenge is understanding connections – how a region in the south of Sweden is connected to a place in the Amazon.

We’re still struggling to understand scale… how locales and regions are connected to one another.

How can we design sustainable management policy that is resilient in the face of this big connected human enterprise that is the anthropocene, and at the same time work at the local level.

The anthropocene describes the age of human,s but is is a very small proportion of human species that have shuffled us into the current situation that we’re in, perhaps it should be the capitalcene, or the technocene.

The anthropocene is not totally doomsday, the term gives us the potential to explore the potential of the human species to adapt and transform, to use innovation as a positive force – a potential good anthropocene.

We are all ultimately dependent on the biosphere, dependent on ecosystems to keep producing these goods and services. So the anthropocene means that it is up to us as the human species to become stewards of the biosphere.

I believe that things can definitely get better, there’s a plethora of different initiatives…transition towns are super-inspiring.

Within civil society, within research, government and business, there’s a shift towards interdisciplinarity, towards an acknowledgment that we are so dependent on the biosphere for our future. It’s matter of taking those small initiatives – the seeds, trying to nurture them. we need to understand how to scale up these initiatives – things such as transition towns, urban gardening, guerilla gardening, popping up in different guises around the world – how do we take these, understand these, how they can be scaled up, blended with other similar initiatives to realign the ship towards a better anthropocene.

A problem is the scaremongering focus on doomsday scenario of the anthropocene, the Mad Max approach, is that a lot of these good stories, the seeds , get lost in the reporting.

We can’t go back to pristine, setting conservation targets that have that at the target is nonsensical – we’ve locked these systems into trajectories where we can’t go back. But ecosystems are surprisingly resilient…novel ecosystems, but they still require adaptive responsive management in to order to shuffle them along a pathway where they stay reasonably healthy,

Reasonably healthy systems that aren’t optimised to produce single things…and constant change, not the status quo.

How do we provide tools to social-ecological systems to cope with change?

Ecosystem services have been somewhat hijacked into monetary value, this speaks the value of business, but it forgets the intangible or invisible aspects.

A better anthropocene is one where equity issues are addressed, power issues are addressed, democracy issues are addressed.

Scenarios…thinking about how the social and ecological systems work together, including a long hard think about who the stakeholders are, invite them into the process, participatory stories about the future.

Participatory visioning process, thinking about common futures

Globally we need acceptance of multiple narratives, global sustainability needs to embrace pluraism, multiple pathways expressing similar values.

How do we nurture and scale up the seeds of the better anthropocene?

We will have to embrace diversity to form a global narrative. he dominant narrative is broken: growth, wealth concentration, inequality is broken.

How do we grow small scale innovation into something bigger – a global transformation?

(Success) The sustainable development goals. It is acccepted and acknowledged that we depend on ecosystems and biosphere are a fundament for social development. A a social-ecological perspective has gone from being a tiny area of academia to an integrated part of the biggest global agreement around sustainable development.

(Activist) Yes. I’ve always harboured that streak. It is difficult to set aside, to split yourself up between being a researcher and an activist. In many cases you are both at the same time. I think that is inevitable.

(Motivation) It’s quite simple, I have two daughters, we have to make sure the world is a better place for them.

(Challenges) PECS conference

(Miracle) We would be in the good anthropocene now

(The smallest thing that would make the biggest difference towards this miracle?) Continuing dialogue with people, especially those who don’t share the same views as me.

(Advice) Spread knowledge that in doing this work you are not an isolated speck in the ocean. There’s a lot of activity at different levels, different scales to try to make the world a better place.