| Sustainable Development Update Issue 1, Volume 4, 2004 The Sustainable Development Update (SDU) focuses on the links between ecology, society and the economy. It is produced by Albaeco, an independent non-profit organisation. SDU is produced with support from Sida, the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency, Environment Policy Division. Dr. Fredrik Moberg, Editor If you want to download the newsletter in pdf-format click on the miniature below: 
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| Editorial | ||
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| SDU - Feature | ||
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Systems thinking - a mental model for sustainable futures Systems thinking is about seeing the big picture. The opposite of not seeing the forest for all the trees. It is a mental framework for seeing interrelationships rather than things, and seeing patterns of change rather than static 'snapshots'. Today systems thinking is needed more than ever because we are becoming overwhelmed by change, complexity and information. Systems thinking is also about realising that our societies and economies are integrated parts of the global life-supporting ecosystem called the biosphere.  If you were to examine a poem by Edgar Allan Poe would you start by analysing the chemical composition of the ink that was used to print it? No, I didn't think so. There seems to be a bias, especially in the western culture, toward looking at things in a fragmented way. Much of western culture's scientific knowledge has been derived by breaking a problem into components, studying each part in isolation, and then drawing conclusions about the whole. Reductionism has indeed been key to the understanding of many natural phenomena. In fact, the word 'analysis' comes from the root meaning 'to break into constituent parts'. However, this traditional form of analysis "with its linear and mechanistic thinking is becoming increasingly ineffective to address modern problems", as put by international business guru and systems thinker Peter Senge. By contrast, systems thinking is a school of thought that recognises that the nature of the whole is always different from the mere sum of its parts. It is a framework for seeing wholes instead of getting lost in details, for seeing interrelationships rather than things, and seeing patterns of change rather than static 'snapshots'. Consequently, systems thinkers often draw different conclusions than those engaged in traditional forms of analysis. This is especially true when what is being studied involves multiple actors, is dynamic and complex and has a great deal of feedback from other sources, internal or external. All this applies to the modern complex problems related to poverty, the environment and sustainable development. Many systems thinkers are also interested in how human social systems relate to the larger ecological systems of our planet. Although systems thinking might sound complex, its goal is to create simple solutions to problems by making it possible to see wholes, recognize patterns, connectedness, context and relationships and learning how to structure those relationships in more effective and efficient ways. This kind of thinking has proven to be effective in order to deal with: • Complex problems where many actors need to see the "big picture" and not just their part of it • Returning problems or those that have been made worse by previous attempts to resolve them • Issues where an action influences (or is influenced by) the environment surrounding the issue, either the natural environment or the competitive environment Humans and nature as one system Systems thinking is also about realising that we are all a part of a larger biophysical system, the biosphere. Considering the human influence on the structure and functioning of Earth's ecosystems, nature cannot be understood without accounting for the strong, often dominant influence of humanity. Moreover, in spite of the immense technological development, our economies and societies still depend on life-supporting ecosystems that provide us with clothes, fibres, building material, food and so on. These ecosystems that we depend on, the forests, the lakes and the seas, all behave as complex adaptive systems (see this issue's "Sustainability School"). Fritjof Capra, American physicist and systems theorist, suggests that in order to sustain life in the future, the principles underlying our social institutions must be consistent with the organisation that nature has evolved to sustain the web of life. In several books he presents his plan for designing ecologically sustainable communities and demonstrates how the theoretical ideas of ecological science can be applied to several practical concerns of our time, including the management of human organisations, the challenges and dangers of economic globalisation, and the nature and problems of biotechnology. "Applying ecological knowledge requires systems thinking, or thinking in terms of relationships, connectedness, and context. Ecological literacy means seeing the world as an interconnected whole", as Capra puts it. Systems thinking and the realisation that humans and nature form integrated systems have also lead to the so-called ecosystem approach (see SDU 5/2002). It is a widely accepted framework that integrates ecological protection and restoration with human needs to strengthen the essential connection between economic prosperity and environmental well being. Instead of focusing on one dominant ecosystem good such as fish, or ecosystem service such as flood control, an ecosystem approach tries to include all possible ecosystem benefits so that trade-offs become efficient, transparent, and sustainable. It emphasises that ecosystems should be managed as whole entities, including linkages to adjacent ecosystems and across state or national borders when needed. Environment, development and poverty A worldview that considers nature and humanity as one system is also central to resilience theory. Resilience is the capacity of a system to withstand shocks and surprises and then rebuild itself (something we have been pestering our readers with in several previous issues (e.g. SDU 2/2002 and 3/2002). Resilience theory represents a shift in how we view the relationship between environmental issues, economic development, and the health and well-being of human populations. It provides a new perspective on managing coupled systems of people and nature through building resilience and adaptive capacity within the system, rather than attempting to control for stable optimal production and short-term economic gain. Realising that poverty is multi-dimensional and related to so much more than money itself is also systems thinking. Being poor often means lack of basic material for a good life, freedom of choice, health, good social relations, and security. Most of these aspects can in fact be linked to the environment and the state of ecosystems. Hence, escalating human impacts on nature affect human well-being in many ways. This includes impacts on the supplies of food and other goods from ecosystems and the likelihood of conflict over declining resources, and other ecosystem changes that could influence the frequency and magnitude of floods, droughts, landslides, or other catastrophes. Hence, poor communities have an urgent stake in safeguarding their local environment at the same time as meeting their basic human needs. A systems approach also reveals that it is the wealthy that control access to a greater share of nature's goods and services than the poor. In addition the rich also consume more natural resources and are buffered from changes in the supply of ecosystem services by being able to replace them with substitutes. Take a river basin, for example. If it no longer purifies water effectively due to environmental degradation, the rich can pay for the building of water treatment facilities - but the poor cannot. So, for poor communities, losing the insurance supplied by healthy ecosystems can be a matter of life and death. Mark Malloch Brown, administrator of the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), is a systems thinker realising the links between the environment and human development: "The real key to a sustainable future is to remember that our efforts towards poverty reduction and conservation are mutually reinforcing. In other words, our programmes should focus on 'biodiversity for development' not 'biodiversity or development.'" /Fredrik Moberg More at: A site to start with to get the basic ideas of systems thinking: http://www.thesystemsthinker.com/ Fritjof Capra publications online: http://www.ecoliteracy.org/pages/publications.html#capra More about resilience theory: http://www.resalliance.org About the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment and its systems view of the consequences of ecosystem change for human well-being: http://www.millenniumassessment.org/
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| Sustainability School | ||
| Complex Adaptive Systems (CAS) are all around us. Companies, organisations, the weather, our immune systems, the economy, ecosystems, organisms, single cells and brains have all been given that label. In a CAS simple rules of cause and effect do not apply. A CAS is complex, unpredictable and constantly adapting to its environment. Hence, they are far from being machines that you can take apart and investigate the parts to understand the whole. The interaction between the parts or sub-systems allows the emergence of a system behaviour that would not be anticipated from the behaviour of components in isolation. A CAS can shift between several different stable states, and may even exhibit irreversible transitions between alternative states. It is characterised by non-linear relationships between the parts, complex feedbacks (specific causes are not easily linked to particular effects), time lags, and threshold effects. This makes planning and managing difficult as the agents (like plants and animals in an ecosystem or people in an organisation) interact and connect with each other in unpredictable ways. From these interactions patterns start to form that feed back on the interactions of the agents, but not necessarily controlling the system. For example in an ecosystem if a disease starts to deplete one species this results in a greater or lesser food supply for others in the system which affects their behaviour and their numbers. Integrated systems of people and nature also function as complex adaptive systems, sometimes called social-ecological systems. Recent research shows that managing complex adaptive ecosystems so that they continue to supply the goods and services human societies rely upon requires "adaptive management", that goes about by learning by doing. It is difficult to control all variation, change and uncertainty in nature in order to create trustworthy production systems in for example agriculture and fisheries. We need to ride change and make it work for us rather than forever battling to command and control it. /Fredrik Moberg More at: http://www.trojanmice.com/articles/complexadaptivesystems.htm | ||
| In Brief | ||
| "The poor will suffer most from global change"
1. What is the earth system? It is the physical, chemical and biological parts of the earth. The living part of the planet, including all animals, is part of the earth system. All these parts interact and they do so on a global scale. The whole environment behaves like a single system. We wouldn't have said so 15-20 years ago. But the composition of the atmosphere is very different because we have life on the planet. 2. What kind of global changes are most evident? There are some very clear ones: The composition of the atmosphere. The obvious change is carbon dioxide, but there are other ones too, methane, nitrous oxide, ozone and particles. The land cover of Earth. Almost every part of the world has been shaped by humans except for Antarctica. The changing structure of marine ecosystems. There is good evidence that many of the world's fisheries are fully exploited and some of them are dropping of. The hydrological cycle. About half of all the fresh water that is accessible is now being used by humans in some way or another. And if you look at the large rivers of the world most of them are dammed. Nitrogen cycle. We now fix more nitrogen from the atmosphere than all terrestrial processes together. The danger is that we treat them all individually, but they are all related. One example is biodiversity loss, which so far is most driven by land cover change. If you look at projections for the second half of this century climate may take over as being the most important driver. But they will interact. Species will try to move if the climate changes but when they hit a landscape that has been converted by humans they can't move. You have an intersection of biodiversity issues, land cover issues and climate issues. We need a more comprehensive strategy for looking after the world's environment. 3. Which parts of the world will be worst off? There you need to take a vulnerability approach. The countries that will be worst off are mainly in Africa, mainly around the tropical and subtropical belt. And those are the countries that are already poor, that already have poor sanitation and food supplies that are not very secure. They are very vulnerable to small changes. To solve this we will need a very different approach to the global economic systems. Right now poor people can't buy food on the global market. And it takes a disaster before food aid goes to people that are starving. 4. What aspect of global change is most difficult to communicate? Two coupled things. The risk/uncertainty issue, the fact that people want predictions and we cannot give predictions. But we can understand systems to the point where we can identify risks and give some idea of the probability. That suite of issues is difficult and is coupled to the time scale issue. On the earth system time scale centuries are a short period of time, but for us humans a century is about all you can conceive. 5. Which part of global change worries you the most? Two of them: one of them is what I call the biological fabric. How the biological part of the planet interacts with the rest. We are changing that very rapidly. We don't know how robust the biological fabric is. It could be pretty robust; we could strip it down to a few important species and it would still operate. But we don't know and I think that big unknown is potentially a dangerous one. The second one is climate. We live in this atmospheric milieu and we are so attuned to it in many ways that we don't think of. If that changes at a rate that we can't cope with that will be extremely difficult. That's a tipping point we have to think about: when the cost of adaptation becomes so high that it begins to dominate and run down the economy. And then there is one nagging thing in the back of my mind - the earth is full of surprises. The ozone hole is one good example, no one identified it as a risk. And what's out there that were not thinking about? By definition we don't know what that is. More at: http://www.igbp.kva.se/booklaunch/ AIDS has become an environmental issue Over 65 million people have already been infected by HIV/AIDS and some 28 million people have died from the virus. Over 90% of the carriers can be found in the poor countries. That is all well known. But did you know that environmental issues and HIV/AIDS are linked in several ways? This is shown in a new publication from Sida. AIDS has been around for more than two decades now. The number of people infected by HIV/AIDS is comparable to the population sizes of France or Britain and over 90% of the carriers can be found in poor countries. Hence, the AIDS epidemic is no longer not just an isolated health problem; it has become a general development issue and a hindrance to efforts to increase public health and alleviate poverty in many countries. This is especially true for Sub-Saharan Africa where over 70 % of all the people who have been infected or have developed AIDS are to be found. Downward spiral of AIDS, poverty and the environment In many rural areas the epidemic has resulted in massive losses of labour and knowledge of local conditions for farming and management of natural resources. When it is the male head of the family who dies the living conditions of surviving widows and children is often ruined, as women are not entitled to land in the same way as men. The effects of AIDS might also affect attitudes so that long-term sustainable use of the environment and natural resources is abandoned for short-term exploitation of readily accessible common property resources. Moreover, environmental degradation and poor natural resource management affect the general health status through a number of mechanisms (see SDU 5/2002). Hence, when environmental conditions are poor people tend to be more vulnerable to HIV/AIDS due to a low general health status. People suffering from both malnutrition and HIV/AIDS also become more susceptible to diseases such as malaria and cholera. Malnutrition in turn shortens the period of HIV infection without symptoms, hastens the onset of AIDS and ultimately death, and may also increase the risk of HIV transmission from mothers to babies. The Sida publication concludes that both national governments and donors must better understand the relationships between the environment, natural resources and HIV/AIDS, if sustainable agricultural and rural development is to be achieved. A new FAO study suggests several measures along the same line to help improve the situation with food security and AIDS in Africa: AIDS-specific advanced training for agricultural extension workers, building public awareness of the interconnections between AIDS and agriculture, improving the food situation of affected households, and securing women's property rights. On the governmental level, the FAO study proposes multi-sectoral cooperation and integration of AIDS into development agendas as important objectives. /Fredrik Moberg Source: "The Environment, Natural Resources and HIV/AIDS". Sida 2003. Can be downloaded at: http://www.sida.se/publications More at: HIV/AIDS and agriculture: Impacts and responses. FAO, 2003: ftp://ftp.fao.org/sd/SDW/SDWW/ip_summary_2003-webversion.pdf New great source on the links between biodiversity and development What does biodiversity have to do with poverty and development? This question is raised by the Science and Development Network (SciDev.Net) in their new dossier on biodiversity. It is a great source of information where you can find fresh perspectives on why biodiversity matters to development. Did you know that in developing countries medicines based on natural products provide the primary healthcare needs for up to 80 per cent of people? Did you know that wild resources and non-timber forest products provide more than 20 per cent of rural household incomes in Vietnam, up to 35 per cent in Zimbabwe, and more than 50 per cent in Senegal? This and much more information on the role of ecosystems and their biodiversity for the poor can be found in the new biodiversity dossier from the Science and Development Network (SciDev.Net). This is important reading as protecting biodiversity while promoting social and economic development, particularly in the developing world, is one of the biggest challenges for the future. This challenge implies promoting development policies that simultaneously preserve biodiversity and enrich the livelihoods of those societies in close contact with it. SciDev.Net's new biodiversity dossier aims at assisting those involved in this troublesome but important task. It includes policy briefs, opinion articles, a directory of key documents, links to organisations and events, a basic glossary of definitions, and articles covering the latest developments in the biodiversity-development field. Among many other things you will find an extremely interesting debate revolving around two contrasting viewpoints: "The conservation of biodiversity should be seen as a 'driver' for poverty alleviation, not just as an end in itself," argues Mark Malloch Brown, head of the United Nations Development Programme. But Reginald Victor, professor of biology at Sultan Qaboos University in Oman, asserts that "the conservation of biodiversity can only succeed when it is given priority over development." /Fredrik Moberg More at: http://www.scidev.net/biodiversity Climate change and food production: - There might be enough food, but who will own it? The latest issue of the scientific journal Global Environmental Change contains some unique climate change scenarios. Whereas earlier models have mostly assumed 'business-as-usual' and ignored the human ability to adapt, these new reports have incorporated different socio-economic scenarios into the picture. The results are both frightening and comforting: The future lies in our hands. The good news is that the world might still be able to produce enough food to feed its population, even when facing climate change. But the food will be produced mainly in the developed countries, at a higher price than today. Consequently, the gaps between rich and poor will increase more than previously thought. This is concluded in a new scientific article in Global Environmental Change. Trying to find out who and how many will be at risk of hunger due to climate change, researchers from the Netherlands and England have combined scenarios from UN's panel of climate experts (IPCC) with a range of other scenarios and information. Biophysical effects on crop yields and socio-economic responses to these effects, such as price changes, have been combined with population and income scenarios and a model of world trade. An important insight is how different population and income levels affect vulnerability and resilience to climate change. Crop yields increase and decrease Earlier climate scenarios have shown that low latitude countries are at higher risk than high latitude countries. According to the new scenario the difference might become even larger than previously supposed. Since CO2 in itself has a positive impact on growth of most agricultural plants, the emissions can even increase yields as long as there are enough nutrients and water. The problem is that increased temperatures also increase the number of drought events. In countries that are already hot and dry, the positive effects of CO2 have no chance of balancing the negative impacts of climate change. In addition, the potential interactions between CO2, nutrients, water, weeds, pest insects and other stresses are unknown. In the worst scenario, world crop yields decline with 22%. But most scenarios show a slight negative impact of 0-5%, and one of them even show a slight increase. Another insight from the study is that it seems like a more globalised world will have greater reduction in world crop yields than a more regionalized world. The authors stress that the most important insight is regional uncertainties are high. We need not only to avoid a warmer world, but also adapt to a more uncertain world where the risk of crop failure on a year-to-year basis is likely to increase. The challenges have never been larger. /Lisen Schultz Source: Parry ML, Rosenzweig C, Iglesias A, Livermore M, Fischer G 2004: Effects of climate change on global food production under SRES emissions and socio-economic scenarios. Global Environmental Change 14:53-67 Voices of the anti-globalisationists in Mumbai Under the slogan "Another World is Possible", the fourth World Social Forum (WSF) was held in Mumbai, India between January16-21. The forum coincided with the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, and was intended to highlight the paradox of big businesses thriving alongside widespread human despair.  The WSF began as an alternative to the World Economic Forum. It is the world's largest gathering of anti-globalisationists. According to its Charter of Principles, The WSF is against the effects of neo-liberal economics, standing "in opposition to a process of globalisation commanded by large multinational corporations and by the governments and international institutions at the service of those corporations' interests, with the complicity of national governments." This years' WSF had 100,000 participants from 130 countries representing women, environmentalists, monks, Dalits (untouchables), tribal groups, peasants, workers and other movements with diverse intellectual and political backgrounds. There were protest marches against war, the arms trade, child labour, violence against women and there were marches in favour of peace, disarmament, and protection of the environment and food security. Nobel economics laureate, Joseph Stiglitz, spoke about the need for a more humane and regulated capitalism; the Iranian human rights worker and 2003 year's Nobel Peace prizewinner, and Shirin Ebadi, called for the resignation of Iran's President Mohammad Khatami. Other speakers included: Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, Brazil's newly elected President, and José Bové, the sheep-farmer who became famous when he demolished a half-built McDonald's in France in 1999. Now he travels the world lecturing about the evils of globalisation and genetically modified crops. The organisers of the forum had not accepted any donations from any sources associated with the transnational corporations. Hence, the forum's information needs were met with the free Linux operating system and the participants' nutritional needs were met by freshly squeezed orange and sugar-cane juice, local bottled water and locally made potato burgers. There are many who criticize the WSF for being a too large, unorganised event, but the forum is meant to be a place to protest. A place where ideas and experiences can be exchanged. It is a place - perhaps the only place - where the poor and disenfranchised of the world can find a voice. /Caroline von Post Carlsson More at: http://www.wsfindia.org/anotherworld.php http://www.choike.org/nuevo_eng/eventos/1.html Diversity of rice, soybeans and corals matters to the poor How is it possible for a single, seemingly insignificant species to halt entire development projects? Can conservation of endangered species be more important than starving or homeless people? At a recent seminar at the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences in Stockholm a scientific trio talked about biodiversity for long-term survival in low-income countries. At first glance there seems to be many things that are more important for the poor than conservation of biodiversity, such as a good economy and a certain degree of development - in other words, biodiversity is a luxury. During a recent Stockholm Seminar arranged in co-operation with SwedBio (Swedish International Biodiversity Programme) several convincing examples of the opposite were put forward; that the poor often depend on biodiversity for social and economic development. David Obura presented the work of CORDIO (Coral Reef Degradation in the Indian Ocean) that focus on the prosperity of local fishing communities along the Indian Ocean shores. After the coral "bleaching event" (see SDU 6/2002) in 1998 these societies are struggling to survive in their intimate relation to the more and more sensitive and degraded coral reef ecosystems. CORDIO investigates both the ecological and socio-economic impacts of degradation and the long-term prospects for recovery. Further, the project identifies measures for more flexible uses of coral reefs and investigates the prospects of reef restoration for ecological and economic recovery. All of these aspects are directly or indirectly related to biodiversity, from genetic and species richness within coral reefs to a diversity of reef types more or less connected to each other in networks, said David Obura. From 100,000 rice varieties to eight Neth Dano from the Philippines talked about preserving genetic biodiversity of rice in the shadows of the green revolution. There used to be more than 100,000 varieties of rice across Asia at the turn of the 20th century. In the Philippines, there used to be more than 3,500 different varieties of rice in the 1950s, and nowadays, after the green revolution, there are only eight varieties in use, explained Dano. This loss of genetic biodiversity means decreased capacity to adapt to the local environment, increased sensitivity to pests and loss of local agricultural and ecological knowledge. According to FAO there has been an 11 per cent increase of hungry people in SE Asia since the green revolution, despite new chemicals and Genetically Modified (GM) rice varieties like the golden rice, continued Dano. She works within SEARICE (Southeast Asian Regional Institute for Community Education) that focuses on community-based conservation, agricultural biodiversity, biotechnology, property rights and access to genetic resources. Maria-José Guazelli from Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil, is also active within the fields of agriculture and biodiversity. She described the informal introduction of GM-soybeans in Brazil. It's illegal but there are no active sanctions of growing or selling these soybeans. The development in Brazil means loss of biodiversity in soybeans resulting in dependence of seed producing companies like Monsanto, and also an increased land use change in the Amazon rainforest, threatening one of the greatest biodiversity hotspots in the world. /Sara Borgström More information: SwedBio: http://www.swedbio.com CORDIO: http://www.cordio.org SEARICE: http://www.searice.org.ph
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