Presidio's MPA Program and Sacred Activism

Yesterday aI had an opportunity to speak to a terrific group of students from the Presidio Graduate School's Masters of Public Administration (MPA) in Sustainable Management program in San Francisco. What an amazing group that is studying ways to integrate sustainability policies with programs in government, NGO's and the private sector. These types of programs are at the vanguard of shifting the perspective for seeking effective initiatives that can make a different in people's lives. Our discussion turned towards what we can do as individuals and the importance of aligning our values with our work.

This brings me to the book by Andrew Harvey, The Hope: A Guide to Sacred Activism and the Institute for Sacred Activism and Networks of Grace. How to combine compassion and activism. The new institute lists a number of groups doing work in the sustainability field that embraces "compassion-in-action." What a great way to highlight grass roots efforts that are making positive changes by aligning ourselves with our purpose.

Bioneers and Beyond

Last weekend was the Bioneers conference in San Rafael, CA. For over 20 years the Bioneers conference has been spearheading the people and organizations leading the charge for environmental, social and economic change worldwide. Profiling the individuals and their work helps to ground these ideas with practical applications.

I participated in a new bioneers program titled, Backstage@Bioneers-- a live webcast interview program with host Terrence McNally. I was on the program with Sherry Boschert, founder of Plug In America which supports the expansion of electric cars. Our topic: climate change. Although neither Sherry and I are climatologists per se, it made it all the more relevant since we each covered how we became interested in sustainability topics and the role of climate change in our work. Since there are very few climate 'experts," we can each do our part to reduce greenhouse gasses by taking steps in our daily lives related to driving cars with cleaner emissions, conserving energy in our homes, supporting our local economy, etc.

I also had an opportunity to host a panel: "Unleashing the Entrepreneurial Spirit in the New Economy." The panelists included Michele McGeoy from Solar Richmond, which trains youth in installing solar panels, Adam Davis from Solano Partners, a conservation finance firm, and Jeff Marcus from Ecospan, a bioplastics company. As with the plenary sessions, getting to hear the stories of how these entrepreneurs launched their firms and handled the challenges in creating a successful organization was remarkable. These are their stories inspire and spark new ideas in our own work. The Q/A segment brought really interesting points and highlighted the tremendous experience of the attendees.

Bioneers is also adapting to the times and is now experimenting with a Bioneers conference in Europe-- the first one was in Holland and apparently went quite well. It is definitely time to scale up and mainstream these ideas. The TED conference began their scaling process a few years ago and appears to be very successful. Last summer on a flight to Boston, I saw videos of speakers from TED who were part of the airplane's media program. By offering its video of presenters for free, TED has shown its commitment to spreading these ideas far and wide-- A winning formula that others will likely follow soon. Bioneers and TED have provided a wonderful template for expanding their reach for the exchange of ideas and practices that are improving the world. Beaming Bioneers, with 20 worldwide sites this year and TED Global are important steps in that direction.

More on Resilience: Adapting to Change

The concept of resilience is back as a hot topic for the last several months. Yes! Magazine just completed its August issue focusing on resilience; Ode Magazine and other publications have also focused on this idea. After the recent massive floods in Pakistan and Ladakh, and other natural disasters, resilience comes to mind as a way to cope with these extreme disruptions. There's also the resilient aspect of managing the economic downturns and building economies that better withstand downward cycles.

Coming from a scientific roots resilience speaks to the notion of bouncing back. How to recover, adapt, create flexibility so that a system can change as it confronts adversity. Nature does it in how it recovers from wildfires, floods, droughts; species are resilient in how they adapt to cold temperatures, scarcity of food, water, etc. And when it comes to humans... how resilient are we?

At the personal level, our bodies are remarkably resilient in fighting disease, healing from trauma, and adapting to change. At a community level, the resiliency of our food, energy, water, infrastructure becomes more vulnerable. We become less dependent when we rely on a regional power grid, water systems that source water from long distances and food that travels thousands of miles on trucks running of fuel with price fluctuations. Perhaps resilience is closely related to localization: home grown skills from growing local food, local energy and water sources and building a strong social capital base that taps on the local labor, experience and expertise.

Resilience is also about awareness that change is a constant-- that challenge is how we adapt to change. Strength to cope with change comes from working with our neighbors and identifying the skill sets to become more flexible in, for example, insulating our homes, developing an efficient transit system or schools that are rooted in knowledge about their local communities.

All these factors balance place-making, community building and sharing social and natural capital.

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For more info. about resilience, check out:

Resilience Alliance.

The Resilience 2011 conference takes place March 11-16, 2011 at Arizona State University.

Resilience Thinking: Sustaining Ecosystems and People in A Changing World. by Brian Walker, David Salt and Walter Reid.

Slow Movement

I recently heard about the Slow Movement.

In their words:

"This website supports a growing cultural shift towards slowing down. On this site we discuss how we have lost connection to most aspects of our life and to the natural world and rhythms around us, and how we can reconnect – how we can live a connected life. The Slow Movement is a worldwide movement to recapture Meaningful Connection this state of connectedness. The movement is gaining momentum, as more and more people recognise their discomfort at the fast pace and disconnected nature of their lives."

There is also a book, In Praise of Slowness: How a worldwide movement is challenging the cult of speed, by Carl Honore on this topic of slowing down.

Our choices include how much technology that often speeds life up do we want to interact with?Making these choices gives us more time to digest, incubate and respond after evaluating the options presented. Also, what are the priorities on what to focus? Being more in tune with the natural rhythms (be it seasons, day, growth and decay) would seem to be an approach into slowness.

Resilience: Personal and Community Levels

The term resilience seems to be coming up frequently in my readings, dialogues and in literature about sustainability and preparing for climate change, etc. With roots in the scientific community, the science of resilience has a systems perspective that gives it a valuable framework. In daily life, we can think about how we make our communities, our networks and ourselves more resilient to navigate the challenges ahead.

Since change is inevitable, resilience deals with how we can adapt and regroup from changes--natural disturbances may include fires and floods. Nature responds to these changes by adapting and evolving--- examples include the eruption of Mt. St. Helens in Washington State, the fires at Yellowstone National Park, and the coastline destruction from Hurricane Katrina; other disturbances to natural resources include scarcity of water, food, or energy.

What about our social networks? How do we increase our resiliency and effectively respond to disasters and shortages in our communities? During Hurricane Katrina, for example, the Vietnamese community fared remarkably well because of their close community relations--- neighbors knowing their neighbors and helping each other. At the social level resiliency begins with education about the source of our water, food, energy and economic vitality. Then, we extend this knowledge to acting on behalf of our community-- instilling a sense of ownership-- caring about what keeps our communities thriving.

At a personal level, resilience involves what I describe in the final "S" of the SPIRALS Framework in my book, Thriving Beyond Sustainability, namely, Self-care. We "bounce back" and adapt to change by recognizing what nourishes us-- it may be exercise, hobbies, connecting with friends... There's also an element of re-examining our belief system and questioning our assumptions so that we are open and resilient to change.

For more info about resiliency, check out:

Resilience Thinking, by Brian Walker (People and Place (Vol. 1 Issue 2, 2008)

Resilience Alliance

LBL, Wood Stoves and Ethiopia

I just received a really interesting link to a piece about a new wood stove design developed at Lawrence Berkeley Lab in Berkeley, California that's having a positive impact for Ethiopians in reducing deforestation and pollution.

Full article:

http://newscenter.lbl.gov/feature-stories/2010/06/29/berkeley-lab-makes-cookstoves-for-ethiopia/

Excerpt:

What does the European Climate Exchange in London have to do with the rural Yaya Gulelle district in Ethiopia?

Everything—if all goes well in some test chambers at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory this summer.

Ethiopia has experienced severe deforestation in the last century. Its natural forest cover has plummeted from 35 percent at the start of the 20th century to just 3 percent today. While agricultural practices, including coffee production, are one of the main causes, collecting wood for cooking fuel is also a major contributing factor. About 80 percent of the population still uses traditional three-stone fires to prepare meals, a highly inefficient and polluting method of cooking. The average household uses 11 kg of wood-equivalent per day, or 4 metric tons annually, according to World Vision. And Ethiopia is hardly unique in this regard: according to the Partnership for Clean Indoor Air, more than half the world’s population—or about 3 billion people—cooks with open fires or rudimentary stoves.

Sustainability Across the Curriculum Workshop

Last week I attended "Sustainability Across the Curriculum for Campus Leaders" workshop offered by AASHE (Association for the Advancement of Sustainability in Higher Education). There were 35 of us including attendees from Iceland, Tasmania, and United Arab Emirates. Led by Geoff Chase and Peggy Barlett, (editors of Sustainability on Campus), the stories from this gathering gave a great insider's view of the challenges and opportunities of incorporating sustainability education in college and university courses.

From the two days we spent at San Diego State University, I take away the importance of giving the "stakeholders" (i.e., professors, staff, and students) the tools for developing their own materials, rather than feeling compelled to provide content expertise. Many of the exercises we did both individually and as a group delved into gaining new perspectives on sustainability topics and the importance of place as a way to provide context for sustainability topics. Another key aspect is the importance of reflection-- to have the time to digest new information and to "incubate" ideas for later implementation. In working with colleges and universities to develop sustainability plans, timing and pacing are essential in order for initiatives to be received and eventually implemented.

This is a great workshop for those interested in exploring ways of incorporating sustainability education into courses and to explore ways of establishing alliances both on campus and with external organizations.