Sustainable adaptation and biomimicry for survival

Sustainable development can mean different things to different people.  Does it mean making sure that human civilisation can continue to expand indefinitely? Or that humans can indefinitely expand economic growth so that the nine billion forecast inhabitants of the planet by 2050 can be as rich as the top billion of today’s seven billion? Or that human population must mimic natural systems and become self-regulating in a steady-state relationship with the planet?

‘Sustainable’ clearly means indefinite maintenance of ‘development’, while development implies improvement to some better state.  This does not necessarily mean quantitative growth, but an increase in quality. Quality, of course, is itself a subjective term, but one simple definition is ‘fitness for purpose’. Evolution can be seen as ‘nature’s purpose’ within which the basic purpose of all species is survival and avoiding extinction. Basic survival is determined by natural selection which requires success in adapting to, or ‘being fit for’, survival in one’s environment. ‘Sustainable adaptation’ seems to be a better term than sustainable development. Development has too many associations with ‘growth’ that, at the current exponential rates, is rapidly exceeding the earth’s carrying capacity of both the products of human activity, and of human population.

Biological adaptation involves new combinations of genes that bring about innovation (mutagenesis) in the characteristics of the organism through the mechanism of mutation.  The equivalent process in human societies is innovation based on new ideas (or ‘memes’) that lead to adaptive change.  In biology only a small minority of mutations lead to successful sustainable adaptation and the majority of mutations (negative mutations) have maladaptive consequences in terms of fitness for survival. Other mutations are neutral and do not change the adaptive capacity of the organic system in relation to its external environment. Adaptation for survival has allowed the human species to flourish thanks to many successful innovations, but the exponential growth of human impact on the planet, to a large extent made possible by energy from fossil fuels, is now crossing planetary boundaries. The human innovations that have allowed the survival and rapid expansion of human population and its capacity to transform the planet and its resources are now themselves changing their status from the equivalent of positive to negative ‘mutations’. Put another way, beneficial ‘memes’ are now themselves transforming into negative maladaptive memes. This redefinition stems from unintended consequences of innovations that originally enhanced the material well-being of human societies, but now have resulted in ‘overshoot’ of planetary carrying capacity. The sources of the current socio-ecological predicament include: medical science; industrial chemically-based agriculture; the exploitation of coal, oil and natural gas; the replacement of natural ecosystems with managed ecosystems - all now driving exponential growth. They might now be considered as negative memes due to their unintended consequences that threaten the survival of many species, including our own.

Human creativity and innovation in the field of technology have fuelled economic growth, population expansion and impact on natural systems based on the assumption that exponential growth was unlimited.  The evolution of human societies cannot be infinite on a finite planet. In order to ensure survival, human innovations that develop human systems need to mimic the behaviour of natural systems that sustain themselves within the constraints of the nature and the planet’s carrying capacity. Biomimicry is an approach to design that mimics the natural forms, processes and ecosystems that have evolved over 3.8 billion years:

biomimicry is an innovation method that seeks sustainable solutions by emulating nature’s time-tested patterns and strategies, e.g., a solar cell inspired by a leaf. The goal is to create products, processes, and policies—new ways of living—that are well-adapted to life on earth over the long haul. [http://biomimicry.net/about/biomimicry/a-biomimicry-primer/]

If human innovations are the equivalent of biological mutations in the process of adaptation, then they need to be tested against their capacity for sustainable adaptation, not simply in producing short-term benefits. The assessment of the risk of unintended consequences of releasing innovations into human systems and their possible effects on natural systems needs to become a high priority. At present, market economics places no such constraints upon the innovation that is central to the ‘creative destruction’ that drives the capitalist system. There is a growing movement towards a fundamental rethink of economics for ecological sustainability, for example, the New Economics Foundation, Center for the Advancement of the Steady State Economy and the World Economics Association. ‘Circular’ (as opposed to growth) economics, in which renewable resource use and recycling mimic nature’s steady state, are central to the ‘new economics’. But these advocates currently have little influence on political life.  As for education, if the accelerating human predicament is to be seriously addressed, then a critical stance should be encouraged to woolly notions about sustainable development. Human systems should be designed based on self-regulating nature systems and biomimicry. Sustainable adaptation of humans to the constraints of nature and planetary boundaries should replace 'creative destruction' that assumes that the earth has an unlimited carrying capacity for the fruits of human creativitiy .

Teaching the ‘big picture’ of human connectedness to nature

Thinking about the earth as a system of systems is far removed from the everyday experience of most people, whether young or old. For the young, the level of abstraction of such a concept is likely to require an unusual extension of their normal cognitive grasp. However the imaginative capacity of children is prodigious and it is often said that conventional schooling crushes out of them this capacity as they are tracked through a fragmented curriculum as they progress into secondary school and are subjected to the rigours of testing and exams that check their grasp of ‘school knowledge’. Over half of the earth’s human population now lives in urban centres.  Growing up in an urban environment separates children from nature despite the presence of parks and gardens. It also makes them less aware of the movement of the earth around the sun and of diurnal and seasonal rhythms as they are most of the time surrounded by the human-constructed environment and an electronic cocoon that, at least in the affluent countries, powers the gadgets and games that distract from direct contact with nature. These distractions limit the opportunity to develop a sense that we inhabit an orbiting planet which sustains us. They also work against an understanding that we are embedded in and sustained by a complex web of life that covers the earth’s surface and is powered by the sun.

So how might people, young and old, be helped to grasp the reality of our connectedness with the natural world upon which our existence depends?  The iconic ‘Earthrise’ picture taken from the spacecraft orbiting the moon in 1968 is a useful starting point.  The blue and white planet itself seems like a space craft from that distance, a beautiful object covered by life sustaining water in the form of seas and clouds that gave rise to organic life of which we are an evolved and highly complex form. Water can only exist in its liquid form on planets that are an optimal distance from the star that they orbit. The remarkable combination of factors that have led to the evolution of life on earth, providing the stability for over 3.5 billion years to allow life to evolve are now well understood.  BBC TV series such as those by Brian Cox and David Attenborough allow us to share this understanding. Prof. Cox’s Wonders of the Solar System is indeed well-named and can be comprehended and discussed by secondary school pupils. Such programmes provoke a real sense of wonder as well as what can be called ‘global consciousness’ – the big picture, at the scale of the planet, of why life exists at all and how it now coats the planet in a single complex global ecosystem of which we have evolved as a totally dependent part. Our conscious minds and capacity for complex thought and language have emerged only in very recent evolutionary time but have given us a remarkable capacity to modify the physical earth. Developing global consciousness is an essential step towards grasping the enormity of human impact on the planet that is now threatening to become unsustainable.

Human impact is illustrated by the Suomi satellite picture of a cloud-free western edge of Europe glowing with electric street lighting generated mainly from the release of energy stored in fossil fuels. What if we visualise instead, a picture of the earth with human created energy shut down and instead imagine the glow that would come from the breathing of living organisms busy transforming the energy from the sun into the material that makes up what nature builds, aided by the process of photosynthesis and respiration?  This is an exercise in visualisation that is used in a teacher education workshop at the Centre for Ecological and Environmental Education at the Silesia Botanical Garden in Poland. The Centre is engaged in developing ‘deep education for a sustainable future’, pioneering a pedagogy that combines storytelling, ritual, scientific investigation and creative imagination to connect learners and their teachers to the ‘big picture’ of global consciousness referred to above. The 3-hour workshop centred on the theme of ‘breathing’ takes the participants through three stages:

Story-telling – the archetypal myths relating to breathing such as the creation myth in which life was created by the breath of a universal creator and how breathing provides the basic rhythm of life and illustrates the mystery of existence.

A scientific experiment – that investigates the process of respiration using simple and affordable modern equipment.

Connecting to the big picture:

1.       Visualising the global glow of breath with which nature covers the planet.

2.       Making mind maps together of the many terms derived from the fundamental idea of breathing that provide multiple threads to many aspects of human experience.

3.       Discussing what the situation would be if our only means of understanding breathing was by means of conducting scientific experiments.

This exercise in holistic, inter-connected thinking transcends ‘school knowledge’ and illustrates the power of collaborative and generative learning that draws on all aspects of the learners’ life experience. Breathing is something we all do and experience and is something that we have in common with the rest of the complex web of life. Perhaps this example from a non-formal education setting will stimulate others to share their approaches to holistic learning for global consciousness and our proper place in nature.

Community and the Future

The Dali Lama, when asked what surprised him most about humanity, answered "Man.... Because he sacrifices his health in order to make money. Then he sacrifices money to recuperate his health. And then he is so anxious about the future that he does not enjoy the present; the result being that he does not live in the present or the future; he lives as if he is never going to die, and then dies having never really lived."

Margaret Wheatley is a community imagineer, author and fascinating specialist in engagement. She has worked in communities around the world, especially with aboriginal (First Nations) peoples, in helping them understand that "no one is coming to help them", but that have tremendous power "in and through community". She suspects that this applies to us all. 

Her newest book  - So Far from Home : Lost and Found in Our Brave New World  (Berrett-Koehler, San Francisco, 2012) - feels dark. When asked why, she quietly replies that "these are dark times". Her catalogue of shadows and curtains on our world including the sense that the problems we face are increasing and the solutions we try don't appear to work; we appear to have shrinking resources as we expand our presence on the planet, but no means of increasing our ability to supply food, water and energy equitably; individuals feel an increasing uncertainty about their identity and the meaning of their lives, yet they are better connected through technology with other voices than we have ever been; people report that they are "busy, busy, busy" and that they are overwhelmed and experience fear, anxiety and distress. All of this tends to focus our sense that we need leaders and leadership, but leadership and effective leaders seem to be in short supply. Its pretty bleak out there.

Yet there is something present that we tend to overlook and that is the power of community - real community, not a Facebook group or a Linkedin network. People caring about each other locally. Wheatley points out that "nothing living lives alone" and that "we are bundles of potential that manifests only in relationship". So as to create health and move to solutions, we need to make connections and build community. Given that, in her view, "no one else is coming", its critical to realize that, in the words of the Native American Hopi Elders, "we are the ones we have been waiting for". 

Rather than focus on the darkness within and around us, there is a need to focus on possibilities. These means that we need not confine ourselves to the preconceived possibilities for our future - we can "break out" and be "disruptive". Rather than ask "what's wrong and how do we fix it" we should ask "what's possible and who cares?". 

"We are [as individuals and as communities] bundles of potential that manifests only in relationships" - so we need to build community and explore possibilities. 

Wheatley draws attention to the prophecies of the Hopi Nation - an Arizona American First Nation. They suggest that the fourth world (our world) is about to end the fifth world is about to begin. This fifth world is one in which we stop the search for economic growth and focus instead on re-finding the balance between man and nature, between self and community and within self. This thinking is captured in this statement from the Hopi elders:

This could be a good time!

There is a river flowing now very fast.
It is so great and swift that there are those who will be afraid.
They will try to hold on to the shore.
They will feel they are being torn apart, and they will suffer greatly.
Know the river has its destination.

The elders say we must let go of the shore, push off into the middle of
the river, keep our eyes open, and our heads above the water.
See who is in there with you and celebrate.
At this time in history, we are to take nothing personally.
Least of all, ourselves.
For the moment that we do, our spiritual growth and journey comes to a halt.

The time of the lone wolf is over. Gather yourselves!
Banish the word struggle from your attitude and your vocabulary.
All that we do now must be done in a sacred manner and in celebration.
We are the ones we’ve been waiting for.

-The Elders, Oraibi, Arizona Hopi Nation

The question for us is simple: are we willing to push off into the middle of the river?

 

Stephen Murgatroyd

Learning Science - Key to A Sustainble Future

 Students and teachers are challenged to make sense of all the claims and counterclaims about our future, especially with respect to issues of sustainability. For example, virtual science based on computer modeling is the basis for most predictions and scenarios about climate change, extreme weather events and biodiversity. But we do not teach modeling as a scientific practice in schools, we teach science in terms of discrete disciplines (physics, biology, chemistry) rather than as the practice of model building. When students are confronted with skeptical scientists who base their skepticism on data and observation rather than models, they are unsure how to evaluate evidence.

A concrete example may assist in making clear the point. All eighteen computer models of ice formations in the Antarctic suggest that ice sheets should be experiencing continued decline.  Each shows a decrease in each month, with the greatest multi-model mean percentage monthly decline of 13.6% in February and the greatest absolute loss of ice in September. The models have very large differences in the rate and extent of loss over 1860 – 2005. However, data collected through satellite observations make clear that sea ice has been expanding , with the September 2012 extent of 19,1702 million square kilometers being amongst the largest extent ever recorded (see here for data). The models are clearly wrong, but it is the model data and their gloomy predictions that gets the press not the optimistic data from real observation.

Similar issues exist between models and data for such things as polar bear extent (with the exception of two specific communities, the polar bear population is actually growing and is very healthy), extreme weather events (no established connection to climate change according to the IPCC’s analysis and other studies) and other issues with environment and sustainability.

What then do we teach students? Students are generally being taught that the Antarctic ice is melting, that polar bears are in decline and that extreme weather events are linked to climate change. They are not being asked to look critically at the difference between different kinds of scientific inquiry and evidence – e.g. between virtual science, experimental science and natural observation.

They are also not generally taught the difference between evidence based policy, such as the war on DDT fought by Rachel Carlson with selective and biased evidence use and the evidence based policy approach, which uses a systematic and inclusive approach to evidence so as to reach a comprehensive understanding of the challenge. Cold hard looks at evidence for Carlson’s claims (see here and also here) suggest that she used a very flawed approach to science. The same can also be said of Lord Sterns’s review of the policy implications of climate change (see here).

We have similar challenges in biology and medicine. Claims are made about homeopathy, for example, which have no scientific basis whatsoever, yet various health systems promote and enable its practice (see here) and some schools and colleges actually teach homeopathy as “an alternative medicine” (sic). Claims are made about new treatments and discoveries which, when looked at critically and scientifically are problematic, as reviews by the Cochrane Collaboration make clear (see here for useful columns by Ben Goldacre describing some of these challenges).

How do we encourage students to look at such claims and to look at skeptical responses to them? How do we teach the basis of scientific inquiry and skeptical analysis in a systematic way so that the educational process is not simply “buying in” to a politically correct narrative, but is actually developing scientific and critical skills?

This is a real challenge for those who are committed to sustainability and development. Unless we fall into the trap of buying into the narrative that the future is one in which we are doomed in ways which are “inevitable” according to science, we need upcoming generations to be able to reason scientifically, understand evidence, be able to be critical of science (especially pseudo-science) and be able to practice the scientific methods. We also need them to see science as informing public policy not determining it and to recognize the difference between campaigning and scientific inquiry – lines which, after the work of Feyerabend (e.g. Against Method, 1975) , have become blurred.

Students need the skills to recognize “bad” science, polemics and campaigning science and the skills to be able to undertake critical scientific inquiry. I am not sure that our current teaching of science is achieving these intentions. A sustainable planet needs schools, colleges and universities to produce scientists that understand not just their discipline, but the philosophy and history of science. Otherwise, progress will be inhibited by bias and polemic.

Stephen Murgatroyd

WIcked Problem of Growth - Are Educators Responding?

 

Our blue planet earth is a self-renewing factory of life orbiting the sun from which all its energy is derived. One species in the complex web of life has acquired remarkable powers to change the earth with exponential (geometric progression, repeatedly doubling) growth of its own numbers and of its impact on the natural systems of the planet. Paul Ehrlich’s formula I = P x A x T summarizes this impact (I) as a function of three exponential trajectories: population (P) affluence (A) and technology (T). The force of this human impact is now so great that ‘business-as-usual’ seems unsustainable. The capacity of the earth is finite and the exponential growth in its finite space can only be sustained until that space becomes full. This is the ‘wicked problem’ now facing our world-changing species.

In the following diagram the horizontal line represents the finite limits; the curved line the exponential increase in P x A x T that applies to population growth, economic activity, resource use, pollution, loss of bio-diversity and all the other concerns about the limits to growth.

For more than four decades this schematic overshoot has been forecast, as it is a mathematical law and the globalization of economic activity has now raised the stakes to a planetary scale. When the problem becomes global it assumes a ‘wicked’, uncontrollable nature as there are no global institutions capable of dealing with the fundamental driver of exponential economic and technological growth. Although contradicted by the laws of both physics and ecology, conventional economic theory assumes that growth and capital accumulation can be unending as do the promises of most national leaders.

Recently evidence has become available of how close some of earth’s systems are to finite limits or even overshoot. The Stockholm Resilience Centre (SRC) has identified nine ‘planetary boundaries’ three of which are already overshot. Human well-being and that of other species is at stake as global capital and credit move electronically around the world seeking to maintain the highest rate of profit and economic efficiency. Since the 2008 financial crisis it has become clear that credit-based ‘wealth’ is to a large extent illusory and increasingly concentrated in the hands of the rich and super-rich within and between nations. As wealth has accumulated it seems that social justice has not kept pace.

In February 2012 a wide-ranging  Oxfam Discussion Paper on sustainable development, the SRC visual representation of the nine ‘planetary boundaries’ was juxtaposed with eleven ‘social boundaries’, limits to human deprivation that threaten the well-being of a large proportion of people around the world to the point of social breakdown.  ‘A safe and just space for humanity’ lies between these environmental and social boundaries what they term ‘the doughnut’ framework. (See the report at: http://www.oxfam.org/sites/www.oxfam.org/files/dp-a-safe-and-just-space-for-humanity-130212-en.pdf)   Like many advocates of the ‘green’ and more equitable economy, the Oxfam framework implies that there can still be sustainable development or growth that stays within these boundaries, even though the SRC concludes that the planetary boundaries for greenhouse gases, nitrogen cycle and bio-diversity loss have already been overshot. The very idea of sustainable development is now being challenged.

The World Economic Association, is a group of scholars who radically oppose the assumptions and policy prescriptions of conventional classical economists and the prevalence of ‘free market ideology’. Their recent conference (http://sustainabilityconference2012.worldeconomicsassociation.org/)  included papers critical of the very concept of sustainable development. ‘Sustainable growth’ is seen as an oxymoron. Some papers see that the only way to stay within the laws of nature is a process of economic ‘de-growth’ towards a sustainable ‘steady state’ global economy. In brief, three distinctions are as made:

·         Sustainable growth – technological innovation greatly increases the efficiency in the use of natural resources, substitutes non-renewable with renewable resources and redistributes wealth to increase equity and eradicate poverty

·         Steady state – ‘development’ for a stable global population is seen as qualitative improvement without increasing the demands on the physical world, a ‘circular economy’ in which recycling of resources replaces most natural resources and large-scale redistribution of wealth is achieved

·         De-growth – slowing down and scaling down of human activity and a decline in global population to the point where relatively localised communities can enjoy ‘prosperity without growth’ and where global trading is largely curtailed

The so-called ‘ecological footprint’ of human activity on the planet is judged by some to indicate that since the 1980s humans have been consuming ‘natural capital’ equivalent to one and half earths’ supply. As one writer puts it, the sun-powered factory of the earth is now destroying the fabric from which it is made, in order to satisfy the insatiable demands of its ever-expanding population of consumers. If de-growth is to be viable as we add to the planet 1 billion extra humans every 14 years and double economic growth even faster, then we have a truly wicked problem on our hands. But are these wicked problems addressed adequately by educators around the world? And should they be?

Club of Reykjavik alliance with FutureTHINK Press – “Active Hope for a Sustainable Future”

Club of Reykjavik alliance with FutureTHINK Press –

“Active Hope for a Sustainable Future”

Background

This blog results from the coming together of an initiative within a European network for educational leaders with FutureTHINK Press, a Canadian-based publishing and knowledge enterprise. The sequence of events started in 1991 with the creation of ENIRDELM leading up to this blog’s initiation in the autumn of 2012:

ENIRDELM  ---> EL4SD ---> CoRk ---> CoRk/FTAlliance

·         (ENIRDELM) The European Network for Improving Research and Development in Educational leadership and Management was started in 1991 to bring together  practitioners, researchers and developers  across Europe – see its website www.enirdelm.org for a full history 

·         (EL4SD) The Educational Leadership for Sustainable Development Initiative ran within ENIRDELM from 2007 to 2011 conducting a comparative study of school leaders’ values. 

·         The Club of Reykjavik (CoRk) evolved from EL4SD following the September 2011 ENIRDELM Conference in Iceland as a wiki space forum – see the wiki space tab on the ENIRDELM website

·         (Cork/FTA) The CoRk/FutureTHINK Alliance was established following the first CoRk Symposium held in Silesia, Poland in July 2012.

Why this blog?

There is now a burgeoning discourse about the future of human impact on nature under the general, but confusing use of the term ‘sustainability’.  In what is now called the ‘Anthropocene Era’ in which human activity has an exponentially increasing impact on the global environment, the term ‘sustainable growth’ is frequently used by economists and politicians, but many see this as an oxymoron. The earth is a finite ‘Space Station’ on which our species has evolved and the laws of physics do not allow for infinite exponential growth in a finite space.  

Climate change concerns have received great publicity and have created much controversy, as have other issues such as population growth, the instability of the global financial system, the depletion of many resources, sources of energy in particular, in addition to the destruction of ecosystems and biodiversity. While these are all areas of inquiry, they are also areas for political action, serious discourse and challenge. Education for a Sustainable Future (ESF) is concerned with exploring such issues that have universal relevance across all cultures and countries.

We are seeking to bring together highly-informed opinion-makers to produce readable and inspiring short blogs, with the aim of changing thinking about education’s role in promoting active hope and action for a sustainable future.  These regular blogs from a variety of perspectives will be spread through notices on Facebook, Linked-in and Twitter and other social networks. They may become the basis for published anthologies as they accumulate. FutureTHINK Press has the editorial capacity to support the CoRk initiative with both print and e-book publications. The annual international ENIRDELM conference workshop will provide each September, a face-to-face meeting space for participants and for further disseminating its future-oriented thinking. 

Strategy for 2012-2013

FutureTHINK	FutureSHARE	FutureACT
·         25 international bloggers (825 words x 50 per year) ·         Open access commentaries (registered and monitored)	·         Regular web-logs and commentaries from many perspectives  ·         Wiki space for dialogue and ‘can-do’ resource catalogues	·         Published anthologies ·         Local seminars with international links ·         Annual CoRk workshop at ENIRDELM Conference

Some key phrases = ‘grand challenges’ or ‘wicked problems’, global and local’; ‘resilient human and natural systems in harmony’; ’tackling educational inertia’; ‘adaptation’ and ‘innovation’ for a ‘sustainable future’; ‘maintaining both change and active hope’; ‘multi-perspective dialogue’

Who Will Be the Bloggers?

This initial list of invited contributors will be added to as the initiative spreads:

Blogger and Location	Perspective
Mike Bottery, UK	Professor of education with many years of scholarship and many publications about values relating to ESF and educational leadership
David James, Bristol, UK	A free thinker and contrarian, currently working in higher education, and having a particular interest in economics, psychology and culture
Jon Torfi Jonasson, Iceland	Professor of education, proposing educational policy to take action to overcome inertia to reforms addressing  future ‘grand challenges’
Jaroslav Kalous, Czech Republic	A futurologist who is innovating with educational leadership programmes in Charles University
Pawel Kojs, Poland	Director of Silesia Botanical Garden where an innovative environmentally-based holistic approach to ESF has been developed and implemented
Jan Moeller, Germany	Teacher and INQUIRE Project member practically engaged in implementing ESF in botanical gardens
Leigh Morris, Scotland	‘Hands on’ Director of Learning at the Royal Botanic Garden, Edinburgh managing a shift to ESF
Stephen Murgatroyd, Canada	A future-oriented educator, consultant, blogger, publisher  and journalist experienced in applying  social networking to the dissemination of ideas
Pasi Sahlberg, Finland	Critic of the Global Educational Reform Movement (GERM) and proponent of cooperative learning  based on Finnish educational success
Julia Willison, London, UK	Director of Education for Botanical Gardens Conservation International , heading a world-wide network for education in botanical gardens

Who Will Be Our Readers?

Our audience is intended to be those who are passionate about a mindful and active education for a sustainable future. These can be those engaged in both formal and non-formal education of young people, committed life-long learning professionals, organizations committed to a sustainable future with concerns about education, students and their parents and partners, or others who have policy responsibility or are concerned citizens. They can comment, react and share. They can also be invited to contribute. We see the blog as a learning space for those committed to change and development.

We are also interested in sharing stories of educational leadership and action – of specific activities intended to promote active hope for a sustainable future. Examples of educational innovation which demonstrate a commitment to this purpose will be shared in this space.

What Happens Now?

Sign up to receive updates from this site and begin to share the ideas and respond. Let us develop an active international CoRk community.