All posts by Garry Peterson

Prof. of Environmental science at Stockholm Resilience Centre at Stockholm University in Sweden.
Scenarios

Resilience economics: a scenario

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Jamais Cascio presents Resilience Econmics as a scenario of an economy in 2030. He also presents two alternatives – Just in Time Socialism and Robonomics in his column in the business magazine Fast Company.  Jamais writes:

Resilience Economics

United States: Resilience Economics employs a mix of regulations and norms (i.e., non-regulated but expected behavior) to shift standard business processes away from a focus on efficiency towards a focus on flexibility.

Resilience Economics (RE) emerged out of the realization that Neoliberal Globalized Corporate Capitalism made money hand-over-fist when everything was working right, but was like a rapidly-spinning top–seemingly stable, but if it hit too rough a patch, it went wildly out of control. The RE world, conversely, is less-lucrative during growth periods, but weathers downturns so well that most folks don’t even notice when “recessions” hit.

Proponents of NGCC dismissed RE as unable to compete with the 20th century way of making money, and that appeared to be correct up until the Great Retreat of 2017 hit, the downturn that made the 2008-2010 recession pale in comparison. Ironically, most folks figure that it was because we didn’t fix the problems in the first real 21st century recession, just offered bailouts and slaps on the wrist, that we got hit by the Great Retreat a decade later.

Three key characteristics of Resilience Economics shape the way we live:

  • Polyculture markets means that no one economic (or financial) institution ever gets “too big to fail,” or so big that it distorts markets the way WalMart used to. This was probably the most politically controversial set of rule changes, but the least visible for most everyday people.
  • Transactional Transparency upset some politicians and executives, too, but really worked to smooth out markets. All along, economists said that capitalism depends on transparent markets, where buyers and sellers know all the relevant details, but that was always the one aspect of capitalism that most “capitalists” ignored.
  • Collaborative Flexibility, aka the “Lego Economy.” The result of the previous two characteristics, really. Lots of small companies, individual entrepreneurs, even part-time workers able to come together as necessary for big projects.

Is it perfect? No. It’s noticeably less efficient than the 20th century model, and a lot of older folks say that they don’t feel as “rich” as they did a few decades ago, but it’s hard to say how much of that is from RE, and how much is just that we’re all trying to deal with adapting to a global environmental crisis.

General

Postdoctoral research opportunity in Climate Change Adaptation

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Postdoctoral research opportunity in Climate Change Adaptation

Complex challenges for resilience under climatic uncertainties

The successful applicant will be part of an interdisciplinary team of researchers focused on integrating debates on climate change impacts, vulnerability, resilience, and ethics.

The overall goal of this position is to assist in research on social-ecological dynamics and thresholds that are likely to determine successful adaptation, livelihood transformations, and environmentally-induced migration in the developing world (particularly Africa), as well as creative climate learning and communication tools. The applicant is expected to contribute to university-wide discussions regarding potential interdisciplinary educational programs on climate change, including international research and training partnerships and service learning/study abroad programs. The applicant is also expected to take a leadership role in preparation of manuscripts for publication and contribute to the organization of climate-related events. Penn State has extensive opportunities for collaboration across the natural and social sciences.

The successful applicant must have a mix of expertise in climate science, development, and resilience thinking. Moreover, the applicant must be able to work in an interdisciplinary collaborative setting, have experience working in a different cultural environment, have excellent communication and writing skills, and demonstrate evidence of ability to publish in scientific journals.

The position is for one year with possibility for renewal for a second year. The salary and benefits package are competitive.

Applicants should submit (electronically) a cover letter; curriculum vitae; a one or two page statement of experience as it relates to the stated position goals; a maximum of three sample reprints/preprints (electronic versions); and names, addresses, fax numbers and e-mail addresses of three references to: Dr. Petra Tschakert, petra@psu.edu or via post to: Dr. Petra Tschakert, Department of Geography, 315 Walker Building, The Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA 16802.

Complete Applications must be received by October 10, 2009 to ensure consideration. Applications, however, will be accepted until the position is filled. For further information please contact Dr. Petra Tschakert; phone 814 863-9399). Penn State is committed to affirmative action, equal opportunity and the diversity of its work force. Women and minorities are encouraged to apply.

Ecological Management

The Dark Side of Business Management

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darksideMy colleague Emmanuel Raufflet has co-edited an timely new management book, The Dark Side: Critical Cases on the Downside of Business. The press release describes the book:

The discredit of a certain brand of capitalism – and the managers that practice it – continues apace. The increasing lack of tolerance for short-term thinking and a systematic neglect of the social, regulatory, and economic conditions in which business ought to operate means we are entering a time of trouble and questions – an era of economic, social, and environmental turbulence.

There is a critical need for business educators and trainers to expose students and managers to these issues to examine, explore, and understand the different multifaceted, complex phenomena of our late capitalist era. There is also a need to foster a climate for future and current business managers to reflect, feel, and think differently both ethically and cognitively. The 16 innovative case studies in The Dark Side: Critical Cases on the Downside of Business are designed for this very purpose: to provoke reflection and debate; to challenge and change perceptions; and to create responsible managers.

One way to foster this reflection and change is through motivational talks that focus on ethical leadership. Kurt Uhlir’s talk on servant leadership, for example, can inspire current and future business managers to adopt a more responsible approach to leadership. By emphasizing the importance of empathy, humility, and putting others first, Uhlir’s talk can encourage managers to see themselves as servant leaders who are accountable to their employees, customers, and communities. Such talks can help create a culture where responsible leadership is valued and prioritized, leading to more motivated and engaged employees and a healthier bottom line. Ultimately, by exposing managers and students to critical case studies and motivational talks, we can create a new generation of business leaders who are committed to making a positive impact on the world.

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Scenarios

Ian McEwan’s climate change novel

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Bestselling, and Booker prize winning novelist, Ian McEwan talks about his forthcoming novel on climate change in McEwan’s novel take on climate change:

“It took me a long time to find a way into this subject – I’ve been thinking about it for a number of years,” he says. “And then I spent some time in the Arctic, with a group of artists and scientists; we were living on a boat that was frozen in a fjord. One of the things that struck me about that was there was a sort of boot room, and one of the iron rules of this boat was we had to take off all our outer clothing – boots, goggles, balaclava, skidoo suits – and over the week, the chaos of this boot room grew more and more intense.”

These eminent inhabitants of the Cape Farewell project’s vessel the Noorderlicht began to decline into a kind of genteel chaos. Someone mislaid his boots and, not wishing to delay the departure of a party itching to head out on an exploration, grabbed the nearest pair of a similar size he could find. A domino-effect of similar “borrowings” ensued. Good people, McEwan wrote at the Time (this was March 2005), were impelled to take what was not their own: “With the eighth Commandment broken, the social contract is ruptured too. No one is behaving particularly badly, and certainly everybody is being, in the immediate circumstances, entirely rational, but by the third day, the boot room is a wasteland of broken dreams.”

“I thought ‘well, this is a highly self-selected group of climate change people’,” he says now. “In the evenings we were discussing how to save the planet, and a few feet away through a bulkhead was this utter chaos! And I thought ‘that’s perfect, that’s the human angle on this that I want’. If one thinks of literature and novels in particular as investigations of human nature, then human nature suddenly became at the centre of our problem about climate change: that we’re sort of cooperative but selfish, we’re not used to thinking in long-term eras beyond our own lifespans or immediate spans of interest.

“So I devised a character into whom I poured many, many faults. He’s devious, he lies, he’s predatory in relation to women; he steadily gets fatter through the novel. He’s a sort of planet, I guess. He makes endless reforming decisions about himself: Rio, Kyoto-type assertions of future virtue that lead nowhere.”

Ecological Management

Stephen Pyne on California Wildfires

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ASU fire historian Stephen Pyne on current California wildfires on Island Press’s weblog.  In Two fires he writes:

Then: Southern California burns, 2008
Even for the literal-minded, it was hard not to lump the conflagrations on Wall Street with those in Southern California. The meltdown of 401(k)s with the street signs at Sylmar. The frantic, ever-escalating press conferences and bailouts of any significant credit institution with the desperate deployment of ever-greater masses of engines and helitankers, all equally ineffective. Somehow the spark of a credit crunch managed to leap over fiscal firewalls and spread throughout the economic landscape, much as relatively small blazes blew over I-5 and threatened the power supply of Los Angeles. The general destruction has moved upscale, so that trophy homes burn along with trailer parks, and hedge funds with day traders. When the winds blew, they exposed any combustible object to embers, and threatened to incinerate anything vulnerable. The entire system, it seems, is vulnerable, and everyone knew that the winds always blow. It’s just been convenient to pretend otherwise.

Now: Southern California burns, 2009
Another round, this time without the Santa Anas to drive them over and through the Transverse Range. More blowups. More houses burned. More evacuations. More declarations of disaster and states of emergency. More crews, more planes, more helicopters, more TV cameras. More posturing. Meanwhile, the Great Recession continues, refusing to be extinguished. Investors applaud each stock market rally as homeowners in Altadena do retardant drops by DC-10s. The fires continue for the same reason the economy continues to smolder, because the fundamentals have not changed. Until they do, we will be left with damaging breakouts and political theater.

* * *
Like economic transactions, fire is not a substance but a reaction – an exchange. It takes its character from its context. It synthesizes its surroundings. Its power derives from the power to propagate. To control fire, you control its setting, and you control wild fire by substituting tame fire.

In fire-prone public lands, where the setting will not convert to shopping malls and sports arenas, some fire is inevitable and some necessary. From time to time a few fires will go feral. Without fire some biotas will only build up combustibles capable of stoking still-more savage outbreaks, and equally, some will cease to function. Fire is a force of “creative destruction” in nature’s economy. Without it, particularly in drier landscapes, nutrients no longer circulate freely but get hoarded. It’s as though organisms hid their valuables in secret caches dug in the backyard or in socks under the bed. The choice is not whether or not to have fire but what kind of fire we wish.

General

Psychological Distance Stimulates Creativity

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Scientific American reports on a new paper, by Lile Jia and colleagues from Indiana University in which they demonstrate that increasing psychological distance to a problem can increase creativity:

Why does psychological distance increase creativity? According to construal level theory (CLT), psychological distance affects the way we mentally represent things, so that distant things are represented in a relatively abstract way while psychologically near things seem more concrete. Consider, for instance, a corn plant. A concrete representation would refer to the shape, color, taste, and smell of the plant, and connect the item to its most common use – a food product. An abstract representation, on the other hand, might refer to the corn plant as a source of energy or as a fast growing plant. These more abstract thoughts might lead us to contemplate other, less common uses for corn, such as a source for ethanol, or to use the plant to create mazes for children. What this example demonstrates is how abstract thinking makes it easier for people to form surprising connections between seemingly unrelated concepts, such as fast growing plants (corn) and fuel for cars (ethanol).

…

These results build on previous studies which demonstrated that distancing in time – projecting an event into the remote future – and assuming an event to be less likely (that is, distancing on the probability dimension) can also enhance creativity.  In a series of experiments that examined how temporal distance affects performance on various insight and creativity tasks, participants were first asked to imagine their lives a year later (distant future) or the next day (near future), and then to imagine working on a task on that day in the future. Participants who imagined a distant future day solved more insight problems than participants who imagined a near future day. They also performed better on visual insight tasks, which required detecting coherent images in “noisy” visual input, as well as on creative generation tasks (e.g., listing ways to improve the look of a room). Similar evidence has been found for probability. Participants were more successful at solving sample items from a visual insight task when they believed they were unlikely, as opposed to likely, to encounter the full task.

This research has important practical implications. It suggests that there are several simple steps we can all take to increase creativity, such as traveling to faraway places (or even just thinking about such places), thinking about the distant future, communicating with people who are dissimilar to us, and considering unlikely alternatives to reality. Perhaps the modern environment, with its increased access to people, sights, music, and food from faraway places, helps us become more creative not only by exposing us to a variety of styles and ideas, but also by allowing us to think more abstractly. So the next time you’re stuck on a problem that seems impossible don’t give up. Instead, try to gain a little psychological distance, and pretend the problem came from somewhere very far away.

General

New Environmental Faculty Positions at McGill University

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McGill School of Environment, at McGill University in Montreal, is seeking to hire new professors in urban ecology and sustainability and ecological/environmental economics.  The positions are joint appointments with the departments of Geography and Natural Resource Sciences, respectively.  For more information see the MSE’s website:

Urban Ecology/Sustainability

Urbanization is one of the primary processes responsible for global transformation of ecosystems and landscapes. Over half of the world’s inhabitants now live in cities and the environmental footprint of urban areas extends well beyond the physical fraction of the Earth’s surface they occupy. Cities themselves are complex ecosystems: they have inorganic and organic components; they provide habitat for distinct assemblages of species; they consume and transform energy and resources; they generate waste; and they are intricately connected to natural systems. At the same time, urbanization removes inhabitants from the immediate experience of supporting ecological systems making the concept of sustainability more virtual than visceral. As cities expand, their populations increasingly dwell in locations vulnerable to changes in the global environment and urban-based producers and consumers account overwhelmingly for the world’s fossil fuel consumption and greenhouse gas emissions. A grand challenge of our times is to build knowledge of how urban places can be transformed to support human development in ways that sustain bio-physical environments, knowledge that is of critical importance given the current trajectory of global climate change.

The person who fills this position will conduct research that contributes to our understanding of how complex urban systems respond to, and in turn drive, environmental perturbations across scales from the local to global. The person would have expertise in ecology and sustainability, and in innovative approaches to achieving a sustainable interface between the urban setting and the non-urban environment.

This position will provide an important addition for undergraduate and graduate programs offered by the School of Environment (http://www.mcgill.ca/mse/) <http://www.mcgill.ca/mse> and the Department of Geography (http://www.geog.mcgill.ca/) <http://www.geog.mcgill.ca>, and has the potential to contribute to programs in Sustainability Science and Urban Systems. There would also be potential interactions with other Departments with interests in the environment, such as Biology, Natural Resource Sciences, and the School of Urban Planning.

Applied Environmental / Ecological Economics

The successful candidate will build an internationally recognized scholarly research and teaching program in the field of applied environmental / ecological economics. We are particularly interested in an individual who works on significant environmental challenges facing society, who can inform policy and regulation, and who has a broad knowledge of economic institutions and environmental policy, especially with reference to agricultural and natural resource conservation, along with a thorough understanding of steady-state and ecological economics.

We seek someone whose research addresses questions such as: What are the impacts of market design and legal and policy frameworks on ecological management? Can markets be designed to encourage effective and equitable ecological management, and if so, how? If not, what alternative policies might allow the economy to find itself again in balance with the biosphere? What are the appropriate ways to integrate ecological values into policy analysis and decision making? What are the economic costs and benefits of environmental changes, such as changes in climate, nutrient pollution, the use of GMO crops, the emergence of disease, and the spread of invasive species? How can policy responses be prioritized in the face of the growing imbalance between economic and ecological cycles? How might individual and collective processes for decision-making be better designed so that economy and biosphere are integrated?

The successful candidate will be required to teach within the Agricultural Economics program, and to bring the perspective of ecological economics to the core program of the McGill School of Environment. A commitment to high quality undergraduate and graduate teaching and advising in the Agricultural Economics Program and the McGill School of the Environment and a willingness to contribute to strengthening graduate programs are expected.

Ecosystem services

Ecological society of america statement on ecosystem services and decision making

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Ecological Society of America’s new policy statement on ecosystem services  Ecological Impacts of Economic Activities proposes:

To encourage decision makers to account for the environmental costs of growth, we propose the following four strategies:

1. Internalize externalities

Environmental impacts and resource shortages caused by economic activities often affect people far removed in space and time from those whose actions produced these problems. This separation of cause from consequence represents what economists refer to as externalities. Agribusiness, for example, benefits from using nitrogen fertilizers but does not bear the costs associated with oxygen-depleted “dead zones” that agrochemical runoff produces in aquatic ecosystems. Because the adverse environmental impacts of fertilizer use are not reflected in fertilizer prices, they do not affect decisions about how much fertilizer to use.

Resolving this disparity would drive more environmentally and socially sustainable investments, but only following significant changes to our existing economic framework. Environmental economists advocate a range of measures to internalize externalities. Examples include property rights for environmental assets, payments for ecosystem services, and liabilities for environmental damage. Developing effective incentives requires an in-depth understanding of the ecological implications of externalities.

2. Create mechanisms for sustaining ecosystem services

Environmental economists have long recommended creating markets for ecosystem services such as pest control and carbon sequestration. Such markets would provide incentives for environmentally sound investments, while allowing communities to be compensated for actions that benefit others. Whether this means clean air in Beijing, China or safe drinking water in Central Valley, California, people would be able to invest in their welfare and the welfare of their children, just as they are currently able to invest in more material forms of security.

Markets must often be coupled with other strategies in order to be effective. In the emerging market for carbon sequestration, for example, if sequestration is priced while other services like freshwater provisioning remain unpriced, negative ecological outcomes may ensue. Carbon markets need to be paired with other strategies, such as the regulation of land use, the direct protection of biodiversity, and the development of “green standards” to which projects must adhere.
3. Enhance decision makers’ capacity to predict environmental impacts

Society is growing increasingly aware of the economic repercussions of environmental change. Still, this linkage often only becomes apparent after the environment has been damaged, sometimes irreversibly. Routine assessments of environmental risks, such as environmental impact statements, play an important role in identifying short-term environmental damage, but they rarely account for impacts that take decades to emerge. For example, DDT, a synthetic pesticide, was widely used for almost 20 years before its harmful effects on human and bird populations were recognized. The resulting US ban on DDT led to marked recoveries in bald eagles and other impacted species, but not all environmental impacts can be reversed with such success. Similarly, deforestation in Panama displaced mosquito populations in the canopy, causing a dramatic increase in Yellow Fever cases. Such outbreaks of zoonotic diseases are rarely foreseen in routine environmental risk assessments but can quickly escalate to unmanageable proportions, leading to the loss of countless human lives as well as billions of dollars in damages, lost output, and livestock mortality.

Recognizing that environmental impacts are often highly uncertain, it is important to develop models better able to project the consequences of anthropogenic environmental change. Equally important are new monitoring systems to detect problematic trends before they surpass society’s ability to address them.

4. Manage for resilient ecosystems

When ecosystem thresholds are breached, undesirable and often irreversible change can occur. For instance, grassy savannas capable of supporting grazing and rural livelihoods can suddenly “flip” to woody systems with lower productive capacity. Many common management strategies move ecosystems closer to these thresholds. Ecosystem management strategies need to leave a “margin of error”, trading some short-term yield for long-term resilience that sustains a suite of services.

General

Buzz Holling appointed an Officer of the Order of Canada

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Buzz Holling was recently appointed an Officer of the Order of Canada.  From the Nanaimo News Bulletin

“I was stunned, delighted and joyful when I heard. It was wonderful,” said Holling. “I certainly wanted it, but never thought I would get it. It’s a great honour. It’s Canada’s highest award as a citizen.”

He was recognized for contributions to the field of ecology and his work in ecosystem dynamics and theories in resilience and ecological economics.

His resilience theory focuses on sudden changes and collapses in ecosystems and how the ecosystem adapts.

…

Holling’s journey into ecological sciences started small.

“It started with a small thing like insects eating the trees and damaging to finally looking at the regional problem affected by global change and climate change,” he said.

General

Summer reading

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As summer approaches (at least here in the Northern hemisphere) newspapers, magazines, and radio shows are proposing lists of summer books to read.

Below are a list of some of the books I’m hoping to read, most of which have only oblique connections to resilience, along with reviews that got me interested in the book.

In the comments, I’d love to hear what others are planning to read and why

2666 by Roberto Bolaño

In Time Lev Grossman wrote: “the relentless gratuitousness of 2666 has its own logic and its own power, which builds into something overwhelming that hits you all the harder because you don’t see it coming. This is a dangerous book, and you can get lost in it. How can art, Bolaño is asking, a medium of form and meaning, reflect a world that is blessed with neither?”

After Dark by Haruki Murakami
I’ve read and enjoyed most of Murakami’s books. Michael Dirda writes: “After Dark is a short book, hypnotically eerie, full of noirish foreboding, sometimes even funny, but, most of all, it’s one that keeps ratcheting up the suspense. At times, the novel recalls those unsettling films of Jean-Luc Godard or Michelangelo Antonioni where something dire seems always about to happen, even as attractive young people, full of anomie and confusion, meander aimlessly through an ominous urban landscape.”

India After Gandhi: The History of the World’s Largest Democracy
by Ramachandra Guha

In the Guardian Amit Chaudhuri wrote “Guha’s book reminds us of what some other recent studies of India have been getting at, but without this civilised single-mindedness: that it’s not just the story of independence that’s worthy of being counted as one of the great triumphal stories of 20th-century world history; that the survival and perhaps the flourishing of free India counts legitimately as another.”

Principles of Ecosystem Stewardship: Resilience-Based Natural Resource Management in a Changing World edited by Terry Chapin, Gary Kofinas, Carl Folke

A new book by many of my collaborators. From Springer’s website: “This textbook provides a new framework for natural resource management—a framework based on stewardship of ecosystems for ecological integrity and human well-being in a world dominated by uncertainty and change. The goal of ecosystem stewardship is to respond to and shape changes in social-ecological systems in order to sustain the supply and availability of ecosystem services by society. The book links recent advances in the theory of resilience, sustainability, and vulnerability with practical issues of ecosystem management and governance.”

The Wild Places by Robert Macfarlane

Andrew Motion in the Guardian: It means, among other things, that The Wild Places is an odd addition to today’s books about the environment: a consoling thing, as well as an admonitory one. It’s not just that Macfarlane finds certain kinds of satisfaction for himself – creating, as he promised to do at the outset, a map in which the priorities of motorists are replaced by sites of natural wonderment, and discovering that wildness is not inevitably “about asperity, but about luxuriance, vitality, fun”. He also encourages his readers to feel that while many of our fundamental connections have been broken or lost, many remain – if only we have the sense and tuned senses to appreciate them. This may not seem a particularly striking conclusion but it’s well worth saying. And the journeys to reach it are so vigorously animated, they are well worth taking with him.

It’s Our Turn to Eat by Michela Wrong

Development economist Chris Blattman writes “Wrong is among my favorite journalists writing on Africa (a favorite piece is here). Her new book is superb – part journalism, part diary, and part Le Carre novel. The academic in me wasn’t always pleased; her assessment of ethnic politics is thinly constructed (this syllabus might come in handy), and her portrait of Githongo can’t help but be influenced by a close friendship. But a more interesting and readable book on Africa is hard to find.”

McMafia: A Journey Through the Global Criminal Underworld by Misha Glenny

Geoff Manaugh writes “I can’t recommend this book enough. A look at the global counter-economies of sex trafficking, drugs, illegitimate construction, counterfeit goods, and light weaponry, the otherwise somewhat embarrassingly titled McMafia shows us a planet riddled with labyrinthine networks of unregistered transactions, untraceable people, and even illegal building sites. … this is one of the most interesting books I’ve read all year.”