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.

Categories
botany ecology

Ecology: Connected science

Kath Dickinson

The essence of ecology is that it is all around us.

Prof Kath Dickinson is a plant ecologist at the University of Otago. She has broad interests particularly in plant-animal interactions. We talk with her about the science of ecology, and the role of people in ecological systems.

Talking points

It’s always a good idea to be very grounded in getting your feet wet.

I’m very glad I started with geography – the breadth can lead you in multiple directions.

Ecology is the study of interactions.

Ecology is a complex science, but that doesn’t mean that we can’t try to understand it. For me, ecology is inclusive of people.

It is easy to think in the linear way, but complexity means thinking in a non-linear.

We can think of a community as a spider web, hugely complex and very strong in some directions, but easily disrupted in others – by fast and slow disruptions.

If we look at ecosystems, there aren’t boundaries, but considering scale helps, we can say whether we are talking at scale of tree, or forest, or country level, or ocean level.

Ecologists as a field tends to attract people who are attracted to complex thinking, who are able to multitask – thinking about things across scales and in a non-linear fashion.

The term ecology is being taken widely…as a sense of understanding interactions, with respect to can we discern some patterns, some sense out of it. And if we can’t…what is the role of chaos?

That in New Zealand and Australia people are considered separate to the system, even in Australasian ecological science, probably represents the colonisation history…despite the integrated worldview of the indigenous peoples. But now we are increasing working with a message of integration – from mountains to the sea.

Social ecology is a recognition of the role of people in the system.

I talk with students about a play on words: a part from the system – two words – and apart from the system, one word. The writings stemming from the colonial, Christian ethic uses one word: apart from the system. The writings of sustainability, resilience, adaption, the ecosystem services approach all show a move to a part of the system.

(Can we describe the essence of a functioning ecosystem in terms that can be reduced to money?) In some situations, its a tightrope we walk, what economic value does one put on beauty? what economic value does one put on spiritual enrichment? what economic value does one put on a Cromwell chafer beetle?

We are starting to recognise the value of ecosystems…wetlands for example.

(But does this reinforce idea that nature is there for us to exploit?) If we look at the whole planet as a system, Gaia and the moon landings…ecologists might want to talk about integrating ecology with economics

Scale…whether timescale or spatial scale, getting understanding…means understanding scale. Be very aware of what question I’m asking, match the question to the scale. Not one scale fits every problem?

(Does ecology have an inherent ethics?) As a science yes. But it doesn’t necessarily require a care ethic.

Ecology is a continuum to sustainability. A broad philosophical debate.

As humanity becomes increasingly urbanised, the connection to nature becomes more distant. So we need an appreciation of natural history, a positive relationship with nature, rather than a fear or a distance.

Climate change is the biggy, but there are very rapid changes in land cover and oceans.

The rapidity of change is of immediate concern, this is not to dismiss the important and complexity of climate change, but the very rapid phase shift with systems around the world, much like the spider’s web analogy – it easy to destroy a spiders web, but try building it back up again – it takes time, even if it is possible.

There are several elephants in the room: history (decades, centuries, evolutionary) and often we don’t know that, what we see is what we can measure – usually 20 years if we are lucky…the other elephants: market forces; how particular decisions are affected by literal downstream effects – we need integrated land policy.

(Activist?) Out there waving a board saying no to nuclear power? No, but there people who are proactive in the sense of caring about whether it is a hydroelectric dam, or dirty rivers, or the quality of our soils. But as a scientist its a tightrope over maintaining credibility as a scientist and being out there wanting to make a difference. So endeavoring to make a difference.

(Motivation?) Endeavouring to make a difference. If you gather a group of people together to solve a complex problem, and you want to make a difference, it’s not the collective IQ you have in the room, it is the diversity that you have in the room. So there’s a motivation in listening to different perspectives, and valuing perspectives, which isn’t to walk away from fact that decisions can be difficult to make, and not everybody might agree, but the chances are that the diversity will lead to a more robust outcome.

(Challenges?) New courses starting. Interesting challenges of funding.

(Advice?) As individuals we can pull together to make a difference.

Categories
water

Saving lakes and rivers

Limnologist Marc Schallenberg knows lakes. And rivers. He also knows the terrible state they are in. And why. And what we have to do about it. He tells us all these things on a fascinating session with Sustainable Lens.

Shane’s number of the week: 1,000,000,000,000. That is over $1 trillion in subsidies for areas ranging from fisheries to fertilisers and fossil fuels, wrote Achim Steiner, executive director of UNEP in the OECD’s Development Cooperation Report: Lessons in linking sustainability and development

Much of this money is actually fuelling environmental decay, such as climate change; engendering collapse of fish stocks and damage to coastal systems and aggravating social and economic challenges.

The report goes on to say that

Removing these distorting, environmentally harmful and socially under-performing subsidies would completely change the incentive structure, promoting sustainable consumption and production and freeing up to 1-2% of global GDP every year.”

The report published this week by the OECD says that green growth is the only way forward for rich and poor countries alike to achieve sustainable development because of tremendous economic and livelihood losses from severe climate change and the depletion of natural resources and that climate change is hitting the world’s poorest people the hardest.

What is striking though is the report is using language like “collosal” and “collision ‘and ‘alarming’. Angel Gurria, the OECD secretary General uses surprisingly strong words:

We are on a collision course with nature

(OCED 2012)

“It is time for a radical change. If we fail to transform our policies and behaviour now, the picture is more than grim, Our current demographic and economic trends, if left unchecked, will have alarming effects in four key areas of global concern – climate change, biodiversity, water and health. The costs and consequences of inaction would be colossal, both in economic and human terms.”

What is so frustrating – and when I say that I mean tear your hair out this is totally insane frustration – is that more and more organisations and groups are saying that we are on a path to utter disaster and yet our leaders do nothing…

So that is my number $1 trillion pa in subsidies to things that are actively destroying our world.


Development Co-operation Report 2012 | OECD Free preview | Powered by Keepeek Digital Asset Management Solution