Posts Tagged ‘complex adaptive systems’

29 Oct

Welcome to the Anthropocene

Posted by michaelschoon in Uncategorized. Tagged: , , , , .

It’s the time of year when the academic calendar starts to get long in the tooth, and I only occasionally have time to peek out from behind the curtain of campus.  When I did this recently, I realized that there were a few phrases that I use regularly in my teaching and research that seem commonplace to me, but my friends outside of academia had no idea what I was talking about.  This concerned me both because I was so out of touch but also because these seem, to my mind, to be crucially important concepts for today’s society.  The two phrases were the Anthropocene and the Great Acceleration.  I remember having similar feelings several years ago when I referred to global climate change, and I was met with either blank stares or a “you mean global warming” question.  Happily, I generally hear global climate change today.  I hope that soon I won’t encounter blank stares when I mention the Anthropocene.

To begin, the Anthropocene captures the idea that human society has so fundamentally altered the planet that we are no longer in the geological epoch known as the Holocene but now in a new human-dominated epoch, the Anthropocene.  This is introduced by Will Steffen and others in a wonderful paper in Ambio in December 2007 (Steffen, W., Crutzen, P. J., & McNeill, J. R. (2007). The Anthropocene: are humans now overwhelming the great forces of nature. Ambio: A Journal of the Human Environment, 36(8), 614-621.). [Note:  there are references to the Anthropocene going back several more years to 2000, but this article is 1) one of the most highly cited and 2) a really good read.]

The basic idea is that in the Pre-Anthropocene period, humans didn’t have the capacity or the technological means to dominate nature (the Earth Systems).  This started to change in the Industrial Era (Stage 1 of the Anthropocene) from around 1800-1945.  With the onset of industrialization, the expansion of the use of fossil fuels, and the advancements of technology, we began to transform the earth on a global scale.  This shift from local effects to global was the key change.

Stage 2 of the Anthropocene (1945-present) is when things really started changing.  This is known as the Great Acceleration.  Pressure on the global environment intensified.  Often people talk about exponential growth in population or the global economy, but the Great Acceleration goes far beyond that, as shown in the figure below.

4-1

The figure is from the very informative website:  http://anthropocene.info/en/home.  This website explains these ideas in much more detail with great references for further, more specific questions.  This is interesting for a number of reasons.  Of importance to me are a number of questions about the ramifications for social-ecological systems and what this means for changing how we govern and collectively make decisions in such an environment – in a world being altered at an accelerating pace, with increasing connectivity around the global between people and their aggregate actions.  Ultimately, if humans are shaping the world in entirely new directions, can we also collectively decide the type of world that we want to live in and make decisions to get there.

I’ll end with one final comment.  There is a proposal to formally adopt the Anthopocene as a geological epoch.  It is currently under review with the International Commission on Stratigraphy, with a current target decision date of 2016.  The question is whether geologic formations would show a distinct demarcation for when the Anthropocene began.

8 Oct

Linking Complexity and Indigenous Knowledge

Posted by michaelschoon in Uncategorized. Tagged: , , , , , .

Let me begin by saying that I’m treading on ground that I’m only beginning to explore.  However, I find it fascinating to think about linking cutting edge science with traditional knowledge systems.  In a similar fashion to how ultra-conservative politicians often sounding like left-wingers and hyper-liberals sounding like John Birchers, it’s interesting to explore recent work in complex adaptive systems with very different ways of understanding the world.

Last week in my undergraduate course, Systems Thinking, my TA, Edward Dee, spoke about the Navajo knowledge system in which he was raised, and he began to clarify his own thinking about how many commonalities exist between complex adaptive systems and the Diné concept of hozho or the broader elements of Sa’ah Naagháí Bik’eh Hózh==n. (SNBH), which is often translated as “one’s journey of striving to live a long, harmonious life.”  Edward noted common features of these two world views – in taking a holistic perspective, linking the social and ecological as a single entity, seeing emergent behavior (as in the example of the Red Ant Way in Diné tradition or how individual interactions lead to a collective behavior unpredicted by the individual actions in complexity jargon), and drawing on multiple ways of understanding.

In following up on his class, I came across a blog posting on hozho that clearly explains what I was trying to comprehend in a straightforward layperson’s account.  The website is at resilience.org, which surprised me as I consider myself a scholar of Resilience Thinking.  The website draws on the academic literature of resilience but does so in the pursuit of “resilient communities” as part of the Post Carbon Institute.  I know very little about this organization at this point, but I did find the post on hozho to be very nice.  Click here to see the article:  http://www.resilience.org/stories/2011-02-14/desperately-seeking-hozho

Enjoy.  I’ll post more as I learn more about the topic.

10 Dec

The Problem with Public Policy Schools?

Posted by michaelschoon in Uncategorized. Tagged: , , , .

I want to thank John Hulsey for posting this editorial from the Washington Post (http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/the-problem-with-public-policy-schools/2013/12/06/40d13c10-57ba-11e3-835d-e7173847c7cc_story.html).  I would have otherwise missed it.

I had a number of quick thoughts and wish that I had the benefit of discussing with Roger Parks and other colleagues and advisors from Indiana University’s School of Public and Environmental Affairs before jotting down my ideas.

It’s worthwhile to first note that the authors are thinktank leaders and longstanding critics of the academy.  However, they raise a number of points worth considering.  Others have started targeting a number of critical flaws in the article (not fully understanding the enterprise of science, pushing a specific political agenda, etc).  I don’t want to continue dissecting the weaknesses of the article, but I would like to focus on a few of the key points that they have (perhaps unwittingly) raised.  Many of these challenges facing policy schools are the very same challenges that have been leveled at business schools for decades as well, and b-schools, in spite of their high profile, still struggle with their role in the academy around these issues.

First, the field of study is so broad, how does a school focus to the level needed to provide its students the depth of understanding required for future success?  At the same time, how does a school provide the broad perspective required for systems-level thinking and understanding.  Where should a program direct its efforts?  Should it directly them topically (environmental policy, public finance, etc) or around core skills needed by all MPA/MPP graduates?  How do the schools develop a common core curriculum?

Second, how does the faculty balance basic and applied research?  Should the work be predominantly applied and focused on real-world solutions and deliverables?  Should it be focused more on traditional science?  (And yes, I understand that science and application may not be in opposition).  If the focus is on more traditional academia outputs, how do professors balance their research with the solutions-oriented training and needs of their (mostly) professional students?

Third, and related to the previous questions, how do policy schools balance different disciplinary perspectives?  Is the program truly interdisciplinary?  Is it dominated by particular perspectives (hard-core quant, case-driven, environmental science labs,…) or disciplines (economics, political science, policy analysts)?

I noted earlier that public policy schools and business schools share in many of these dilemmas.  The same can be said for environmental studies programs and schools of sustainability.  At ASU’s School of Sustainability, we struggle with these issues a great deal.  We orient our program toward use-inspired  research and providing real-world solutions.  However, it remains a perpetual challenge to balance the world of academia with this approach.  We focus on an interdisciplinary approach oriented around skill development and sustainability competencies defined by the faculty as a whole (see Wiek, Arnim, Lauren Withycombe, and Charles L. Redman. “Key competencies in sustainability: a reference framework for academic program development.” Sustainability Science 6.2 (2011): 203-218.).  Much of this revolves around a more holistic approach to science and draws on research in complex adaptive systems.  If that sounds further and further from direct application, I need to explain what this means.  But that’s a topic for another day.

9 Sep

Video of Water/Climate Briefing

Posted by michaelschoon in Uncategorized. Tagged: , , .

Last week, along with Jonathan Koppell, the dean of ASU’s College of Public Programs and Doug Toy, the city of Chandler’s Water Regulatory Affairs Manager, I participated as a panelist for the first of this year’s Water/Climate Briefings for ASU’s Decision Center for a Desert City.  The discussion was on “The Challenges of Communicating Sustainability in Complex Systems for Public Policy”.  For those interested, here is a link to the video: http://dcdc.asu.edu/outreach/waterclimate-briefings/

Enjoy!

21 Sep

Upcoming Paper on Ecosystem Services and Resilience

Posted by michaelschoon in Uncategorized. Tagged: , , .

Another collaborative paper now available is entitled “Toward Principles for Enhancing the Resilience of Ecosystem Services” (see full citation at the bottom).  This is a paper (the wonderful Oonsie Biggs as lead author) that the Resilience Alliance Young Scholars network has had accepted to the Annual Review of Environment and Resources to be in print in November.  It’s currently available via the Annual Review’s online service.

The paper provides a great overview of key concepts inherent to resilience thinking and working toward sustainability.  For those interested in the academic literature on the resilience of social-ecological systems, this provides an easy entry point to learn about several key components of resilience – the need for diversity (social and ecological), the importance of slow variables (and what that means), taking a complex adaptive systems approach (and what that means), and several others.

It also provides a nice means of taking a first look at ecosystem services and what these are.  The paper avoids direct discussions of trade-offs among ecosystem services (like agriculture for food vs. biofuels or setting aside land for conservation vs. for provision), but these conflicts are outlined in detailed in another paper (“The Importance of Social Drivers in the Resilient Provision of Ecosystem Services” in Global Environmental Change).  

The full citation is Biggs, R. et al. 2012. “Toward Principles for Enhancing the Resilience of Ecosystem Services”, Annual Review of Environment and Resources 37:3.1-28.