Author: simondiv

Human beings are altruistic! We’re motivated by a lot more than money and success.

In today’s world, this claim may seem dubious. However, there’s overwhelming evidence – we are not just economic rationalists out to maximise our own personal wealth at any cost.

Frequently, this evidence shows we will happily ignore simple profitable activities – for example energy efficiency. A simple illustration – would you walk past a $50 note on the pavement and not pick it up? In our own homes, companies and organisations we do the equivalent of this all the time!

While that may sound like a double negative there’s plenty of collaborative evidence.

We often behave in ways that are in everyone’s interests rather than just our own. Looking after common resources is a good example. We cooperate to equitably share limited resources and protect supplies of these – it is not uncommon for human created fair sharing systems to be effective over decades and generations. This is well known – e.g. the Nobel prize winning work of Elinor Ostrom.

Perspectives on altruism, not seeing the realities in our world today, are to our detriment. Writing in the New York Times, David Brooks highlights this. He says “by assuming that people are selfish, by prioritizing arrangements based on selfishness, we have encouraged selfish frames of mind.”

“Maybe it’s time to build institutions that harness people’s natural longing to do good” he says. Fortunately we are seeing some of this – acting on our knowledge – for example, at the Paris Climate Change agreement.

Clearly there’s scope for more and to shift cultural views. These often seem to privilege the idea we’re always chasing money and power.

Supercharging clean technology innovation, to address climate change, is a high priority for many governments and our global society. Consequently, when a city – such as, San Borja, Lima Province, Peru – identifies over 50 billion tonnes (carbon dioxide equivalent) of potential greenhouse gas reductions we’re faced with a lavish range of enticing choices†.

At the same time, turning profitable carbon opportunities into high impact delivered solutions is often far more challenging than it appears at first sight. It is not just an innovation task, there are many systems, beliefs, cultural and mindset pieces that are inherently involved in success.

To assist San Borja an Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation Forum (APEC) low carbon policy review team (including myself) recommended an integrated framework for the city. Carbon abatement potential and cost are important considerations. Similarly, the city’s leadership, especially the San Borja mayor’s, passion and advocacy for change is of great importance. Visibility and enjoyment, awareness, community and business support are also significant factors. Ultimately, the low carbon transformation is likely to succeed when the people of the city regard sustainability practice as a norm.

This is, we think, the first published integral review and framework for low carbon city wide innovation. The review, available here from APEC, evaluates action using integral theory recognising human motivation (internal – what I and we care about) alongside objective measurement (external). Explicitly considering paradigms, personal motivation, world-views and cultural norms lead to far stronger outcomes, high innovation impact and competitive sustainable advantages.

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† Opportunities include:  Residential, commercial and municipal low carbon building design; renewable energy; community energy management systems; area energy; planning; waste; transport; urban planning and policy changes facilitating low carbon initiatives; walking, cycling and public transport use instead of private cars; avoiding waste, recycling, waste stream re-use; accessibility encouraging adoption of sustainable choices; Lowering the urban heat island impact; and, the likelihood of alternate travel, consumption and energy use choices. The APEC report lists the technical background from pages 1 to 13 and the integral framework and action opportunities from pages 14 to 70.

Image: Policy Review for APEC Low Carbon Model Town Phase 4 Final Report San Borja, Lima, Peru page 18 (pdf)

    Rhodora! If the sages ask thee why
    This charm is wasted on the earth and sky,
    Tell them, dear, that if eyes were made for seeing,
    Then Beauty is its own excuse for being. 

Some things just are: Too much carbon. The need for fast change. Low carbon business is profitable. We think we are motivated by money. We’re carbon change laggards.

David Suzuki, speaking at WOMADelaide, advocates answering these perplexing paradoxes by preferencing love.

David points our that love is a driving force of our species. “Our love of our kin, children and grandchildren, overrides economic pressure” he says.

That may sound limiting. Love and care. Is that all? Knowledge and understanding is equally important, if not more so?

If climate change represents the greatest challenge of our species and our greatest opportunity we surely want all the data possible.

Such hard data is necessary but not sufficient. The way we see the world, what our values are, determines how we are going to behave and act. Considering values and worldviews is important. It is a dominant focus for success in our interconnected world.

David highlights that a lot of environmental work didn’t shift the paradigm, we’re still stuck thinking about things in the old ways.

However, we’re motivated by love and care, connected and interconnected to nature. We will prioritise our family and kin. Similarly, the mother earth is our kin.

If this sounds a little too unscientific, some compelling and logical argument – on interconnection, the earth as our kin, love, the limitations of science and accepting what just is – from David’s Womadelaide talk is here.

Notes: The poem is an extract from The Rhodora by Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1847. Click here for David Suzuki’s WOMADelaide bio. More on David’s argument and what ‘just is’ follows in the next blog post.

Sometimes, frequently we can’t ‘solve‘ a problem without creating another one. Often we need to manage this, manage polarities, rather than trying to create a singular focused outcome.

Nature and nurture is a classic example. Freedom and responsibility is another one. So many sustainability issues need this type of both-and thinking and the following is a lovely summary of polarity from Seth Godin.

Freedom and Responsibility – Which do you want?

Freedom is the ability to set your schedule, to decide on the work you do, to make decisions.

Responsibility is being held accountable for your actions. It might involve figuring out how to get paid for your work, owning your mistakes or having others count on you.

Freedom without responsibility is certainly tempting, but there are few people who will give you that gig and take care of you and take responsibility for your work as well.

Responsibility without freedom is stressful. There are plenty of jobs in this line of work, just as there are countless jobs where you have neither freedom nor responsibility. These are good jobs to walk away from.

When in doubt, when you’re stuck, when you’re seeking more freedom, the surest long-term route is to take more responsibility.

Freedom and responsibility aren’t given, they’re taken.

In the environmental field, for example, we wish people to be responsible, to be held responsible for impacts. However, we also want to encourage innovation, change and progressive solutions – the types of creativity that are often assisted by freedom.

Quite often the debate is polarised – today’s problems and our future sustainability and environmental repair requires both.

Over more than 20 years we have been trying to put in place a meaningful climate change agreement. Extraordinarily, in Paris 196 countries just managed this. Or did they?

The scale of what has been achieved is immense.  For example, the Climate Institute’s CEO, John Connor says this agreement “signals to communities, investors and companies around the world that the shift to clean energy is now unstoppable”.

By the numbers, the world and Australia made a significant step with more than 100 countries banding together as the “High Ambition Coalition” to call on limiting warming to 1.5 degrees in addition to the 2 degree target.

There is, however, plenty of realism. George Monbiot points out “with 2C of warming, large parts of the world’s surface will become less habitable… wilder extremes: worse droughts in some places, worse floods in others, greater storms… Islands and coastal districts in many parts of the world are in danger of disappearing beneath the waves.”

James Hansen is more direct: “It’s a fraud really, a fake,” he says, rubbing his head. “It’s just bullshit for them to say: ‘We’ll have a 2C warming target and then try to do a little better every five years.’

So is it a fraud? This agreement features pledges for action? There may be 3 very well validated principles at play.

Climate change is a dilemma – the sort of problem where there can be a ‘tragedy of the commons‘ in which high emitting countries damage the world’s ability to provide resources and life support services for us all. However, Nobel prize-winning research, led by Elinor Ostrom and many others, discovered this tragedy is only valid in very limited special circumstances. Three conditions are necessary, but not sufficient, for effective answers. Firstly, the resource must be important and prominent enough for the users to create new managing institutions. Secondly, the users must not be constrained  from creating and setting their own rules. Thirdly, at least some of the users must be able to communicate with each other and bargain.

These conditions appear to be some of what the Paris agreement enables – multiple different centres of action pledging reductions, reviewing and communicating about implementation and holding ourselves to account.

We have an adaptive agreement – one in which action can change (and will need to) as knowledge about the impacts increases. A 2C target, for example, does not provide certainty. Rather, it is a level at which a range of dangerous outcomes are less likely to occur. Encouragingly, the agreement seems to mirror human experience backed by decades of research. Our societies can and have answered very similar, albeit smaller issues, under the right conditions.

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Pic: Climate Insititute. For background and references on commons dilemmas see Common pool resources, A climate for change: An exploration towards Integral Action Loops to apply our knowledge for sustainability success. Chapter 5, The University of Adelaide.

Developing and implementing successful sustainability interventions to tackle pressing environmental and society challenges is of paramount importance but complex.

I have worked in this field for decades and the challenge – to comprehend sustainability and change – led me to a PhD. I’m delighted to say I completed this last year and have just received the 2014 University of Adelaide’s “Doctoral Research Medal for outstanding research at a PhD level“.

In my thesis, I argue it requires understanding the many different ways in which people make sense of the problems, working with, and designing for, current circumstances and opportunities, while simultaneously seeking to enable desirable futures.

To manage across the complexity of sustainability, the investigation explores meta-theory and a particular type of it, integral theory. It does this to navigate through multiple theory lenses. These represent perspectives commonly applied to interpret circumstances and implement successful interventions. Furthermore, the examination of multiple theories is tested empirically against two multinational companies that are regarded as sustainability leaders. In doing this, several powerful lenses are looked at in some detail. These include action logics to examine how individuals make sense of sustainability. Additionally, principles associated with centuries of successful community protection of common pool resources, plus organisational stages that mirror a person’s action logic, are correlated with effective sustainability outcomes.

A new framework, called Integral Action Loops, was the ultimate outcome from analysing these lenses and many others. It offers an evolutionary approach to consider the subjective and objective facets of sustainability and multiple theories of change, filtered through a single, double and triple loop learning scheme. Integral Action Loops promise a way to dynamically steer towards sustainability, facilitate more effective interventions, and holistically engage and value the input of many for sustainable, flourishing futures. Beyond this, the framework may assist across other fields of progressive human endeavour.

A climate for change: An exploration towards Integral Action Loops to apply our knowledge for sustainability success is available here (and through The University of Adelaide).

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A couple of pointers that are hopefully useful (by way of orientation) for anyone reading the whole thesis. I’m very aware that this is written for an academic audience.  If you’ve not spent the last 7 years reading this type of writing there are, I hope, a couple of more accessible points.

• The reviewers do a fabulous job summarising the research and extending into potential for it. The reviews are here>>>

As a guide around the thesis:

• The first chapter says what I intend to research and why.
• The last chapter (nine) is relatively short. A fair bit of this last chapter provides the back story about why I thought I wanted to write and research sustainability. It should give you some context before the deeper parts.
• The sustainability action logics chapter (four) almost stands alone. If you’re familiar with stages or action logics it’s probably a reasonable entry point after 1 and 9.
• Similarly, the common pool resources chapter (five) is relatively self contained. If you are reading this one you’re possibly interested in voluntary collaborations (there are lots of them) that successfully answer society challenges and dilemmas. These have often delivered outstanding results protecting the environment for centuries. Many of the principles that describe success in such situations are seen in business sustainability efforts today.
• If you would like a longer summary of each chapter this summary is at the end of chapter one.

This is the text from my keynote, yesterday, for The University of Adelaide’s MBA opening dinner: