Category Archives: Big Back Loop

What Are Leaders Really For?

Posted on November 27, 2011 by Juan Carlos Rocha

A week ago I had an interesting discussion with Jon Norberg, a professor in Systems Ecology here at Stockholm University, about leadership.  Jon is working on, among other things, an agent based model about how leaders influence opinion change in … Continue reading →

Posted in Big Back Loop, Networks, Regime Shifts, Reorganization | Tagged , , , , , | 4 Comments

SFU Convocation Address – Global Resilience Requires Novelty

Posted on October 17, 2011 by Buzz Holling

[On Oct 7th, 2011 Buzz Holling was awarded a Honorary Doctorate of Science at Simon Fraser University, in Vancouver, Canada. Below is his convocation address - editor] Sixty years ago I was where you graduates are now, but graduating from … Continue reading →

Posted in Big Back Loop, General, Reorganization | Tagged | Leave a comment

Disaster and disaster – Junot Diaz on Haiti

Posted on June 30, 2011 by Garry Peterson

Junot Diaz, author of the fantastic novel The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, writes about Haiti’s earthquake in Apocalypse: What Disasters Reveal.  The experience of Port au Prince was quite difference from Lyttleton, New Zealand response to their own … Continue reading →

Posted in Big Back Loop, Cities, Inequality, Reorganization, Vulnerability | Tagged , , , , , , | 1 Comment

Resilience and Life in the Arctic

Posted on April 5, 2011 by Buzz Holling

On Thursday, March 10, 2011, the Resilience Alliance Board voted to accept Eddy Carmack as the new Program Research Director. Eddy is a climate oceanographer studying water and people from oceans to estuaries as scientific lead for the Canada’s Three … Continue reading →

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OECD global shock reports

Posted on January 25, 2011 by Garry Peterson

The OECD’s Risk Management project has commissioned a number of reports to examine possible future global shocks and how society can become resilient to them.  They write: The Project … recognises that shocks can provide opportunities for progress, not just … Continue reading →

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Global history: Ian Morris and the Great Divergence

Posted on December 7, 2010 by Garry Peterson

Two of the big questions of global history are why did the industrial revolution happen, and why did it happen in NW Europe? I’ve been partial to the explanation offered by historian Kenneth Pomeranz in his 2000 book The Great … Continue reading →

Posted in Big Back Loop, Reorganization | Tagged , , , , , , , , | 7 Comments

Planning for climate catastrophe

Posted on August 26, 2010 by Garry Peterson

Thomas Homer-Dixon, author of the Ingenuity Gap and other books on the social response to environmental change and now a professor of global systems at the Balsillie School of International Affairs at the University of Waterloo and Wilfred Laurier University, … Continue reading →

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Building civilizational memory

Posted on July 23, 2010 by Garry Peterson

Memory is an important part of resilience.  Alexander Rose writes about various ideas of creating a Manual for Civilization from the The Long Now Blog: Today we received another email about creating a record of humanity and technology that would … Continue reading →

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Critical Reflections on resilience thinking in the Transition Movement

Posted on June 22, 2010 by Garry Peterson

The Resilience Alliance website has pointed to an interesting working paper from Alex Haxeltine, and Gill Seyfang from the Tyndall Centre in the UK Transitions for the People: Theory and Practice of ‘Transition’ and ‘Resilience’ in the UK’s Transition Movement, … Continue reading →

Posted in Big Back Loop, Cities, Networks | Tagged , , , , | 5 Comments

Rob Hopkins and Neil Adger on transition towns and resilience

Posted on March 30, 2010 by Garry Peterson

Rob Hopkins founder of the Transition movement has a long interview with Neil Adger on resilience, peak oil, and climate adaptation on Transition Culture.  Neil Adger is a professor in Environmental Sciences at the University of East Anglia and a … Continue reading →

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