Is Resilience Enough?

Transcription

1 Is Resilience Enough? Anthony Hodgson F.R.S.A Decision Integrity Limited International Futures Forum D I L Thursday March 8 th 2011 Glasgow Centre for Population Health The Lighthouse, Glasgow IFF 1

2 Why is Resilience Important? Topics The Real Challenge of Disruptive Change Who s s Taking It Seriously? What Resilience Teaches Us The Lesser Risk and The Greater Risk Resilience Cuts Across Everything Grasping the Whole the IFF World Model Engaging with the Whole The IFF World Game Guiding Principles for Resilience 2.0 2

3 The Real Challenge of Disruptive Synchronous Failure Change In coming years, our societies won t t face one or two major challenges at once.they ll face an alarming variety of problems all at the same time Thomas Homer-Dixon The Upside of Down The Canyon The job of the Transition Generation is to get humanity through the canyon with as little mayhem as possible into what we hope will be smoother water beyond. James Martin The Meaning of the 21 st Century Beyond Control The complexity of the world considerably outweighs human response capacity. Professor Raoul Escpeco Address at the UK Systems Society

4 The Risks of a Brittle Society Disruption of highly interconnected infrastructure just in time becomes right out of stuff Emergency services become the biggest emergency People expect the authorities to fix the impossible Society rapidly runs out of options 4

5 Who s s Taking It Seriously? Civil Contingency Planning UK Civil Contingencies Act 2004:- Duty to assess, plan and advise Keeping of a risk register Help local businesses with continuity Manage role of media 5

6 Who s s Taking It Seriously? Transition Movement Grass Roots Movements The idea behind transition towns is simple: if you have no faith that governments will take meaningful action on climate change and "peak oil", then you can come together as a community to do something about it. Relocalisation Relocalisation is a complementary alternative to globalisation which provides us with the means to choose which aspects of our lives we will source locally and which parts we feel confident nt to trust to multi-national commerce. Relocalisation is both a protection from the fragility of globalisation and an opportunity to create robust and diverse local economies. 6

7 Who s s Taking It Seriously? The US Council on Competitiveness It is undeniable that the world has gotten more risky. Businesses now function in a global economy characterized by increasing uncertainty, complexity, connectivity and speed....- a challenge that demands resilience: the capability to survive, adapt, evolve and grow in the face of change. 7

8 Who s s Taking It Seriously? The Asian Cities Climate Change Resilience Network Aims to catalyze attention, funding, and action on building climate change resilience for poor and vulnerable people by creating robust models and methodologies for assessing and addressing risk through active engagement and analysis of various cities. 8

9 Fundamental Problems Hierarchy and Silos Monocultures Brittle Economic Models Inappropriate Infrastructure Stuck in a Pattern 9

10 Hierarchies and Silos CLIMATE CHANGE SCIENCE ECONOMICS POLITICS Divide and conquer the brain The Lord in His wisdom did not divide the Universe into faculties 10

11 City planning as usual City planning as desired Anthony Hodgson

12 Monocultures Destroy Resilience Remove diversity and variety Control and reduce variability Centralise and homogenise Get rid of redundancy Pursue economics of scale 12

13 Economics Destroys Rebound Capacity (Bernard Lietar) 13

14 The Problem of Stuckness Recover Adapt Transform 14

15 Introducing Resilience Thinking (Walker and Salt) Whole systems perspective Attention to dynamic feedback loops Sustaining requisite variety (diversity) Ecological wisdom one planet living Social capital it s s people not institutions Appreciation of critical slow variables 15

16 What Resilience Thinking Teaches Us WIDE NARROW Crisis is Opportunity Panarchy - Buzz Holling 16

17 The Lesser Risk In the face of disruption we are trying to get back to normal but we can t t because: Continued domination of the economics of brittleness Civil contingencies can t t cope they also suffer Dominant control hierarchy imposes police state which continues to fail impossible to deliver Failure of systems which are deeply interlocked and interdependent push back 17

18 The Greater Risk We get temporarily succeed in getting back to normal only to find it quickly fails and leaves us worse off: Runaway positive feedback loops dominate Climate change discontinuities Economic collapse Resource scarcity peak everything Psychological and health instability Selfish brutality trumps co-operative operative kindness 18

19 Resilience Cuts Across Everything ecology systems science sociology culture change DESIGN RESILIENCE SYNERGY design science engineering politics and policy economics health and wellbeing 19

20 Can we Design for Transformational Resilience? We need a design revolution Only integrity going to count Synergy takes over the lead from analysis Continuous learning as the foundation of strategy and policy Operating within the Gaian System becomes the new ethical imperative 20

21 The Illustration of Planetary Boundaries Can we design everything within these limits? A safe operating space for humanity Johan Rockström, et al Nature 461, (24 September 2009) 21

22 The Illustration of human capacity limits Can we navigate through this complexity? 22

23 Grasping the Whole - The IFF World Model 12 Dimensions 66 LINKS 23

24 World Impact of Climate Change WORLD IMPACT OF CLIMATE CHANGE Mass migration; increasing dependency on aid organisations People s world views unable to accommodate the real nature of climate crisis Worldview Community 1 Spread of new bug; post catastrophe diseases due to failed infrastructure Wellbeing Crop failure; desertification; food security and food wars Governance Climate effects and disasters rendering some regions ungovernable. Wealth Habitat Accelerating costs of adaptation from failure in in long term investment in in solutions Inundation due to sea rise; collapse of infrastructure Water IFF World Model 2007 Anthony Hodgson 7 6 Biosphere Water scarcity; Flood pollution of fresh water; shrinking of glacier melt Food Energy Trade Climate Changes in in climate affect the feedback systems of Gaia and lead to unexpected bio shocks Trade disruption through super- storms; infrastructure breakdown Failure to curb energy demand and use of dirty fuels accelerates climate change Gradualist mitigation fails to stop cascading tipping points Planet Earth We Have a Problem 24

25 Understanding Glasgow Can we monitor indicators that truly tell us whether we are making it? 25

26 An Example of Process The IFF World Game Act 1 The World of Concerns In which we explore the 12 crucial areas for a resilient society Act 2 The Possible Futures In which we anticipate challenges and opportunities arising from interconnection Act 3 The Wisdom Council Speaks In which we tune into our collective intelligence to a shared motivating vision 26

27 A Saving the Cities Game Future impacts on European cities Ricochet scenarios of synchronous failures Wisdom Council advising Mayors on farsighted priorities 27

28 Principles of Resilience Design from Cybernetics and Systems Thinking Keep the whole in view Encourage self-organisation Design with multiple levels in mind Connectedness not too little and not too much Allow for emergent properties The designer is inseparable from the design Ethical integrity is inseparable from the designer 28

29 Implications for Social Health We have created a brittle society with massive large scale unhealthy interdependence It is increasingly vulnerable to synchronous failure Making things safer in the old paradigm generally makes them increasingly unsafe Our short term keep it safe, simple and cheap mentality inhibits transformational vision This is false cheapness that steals the resilience premium as profit and so destroys a viable future Designing for transformational resilience within planetary and human limits is our best risk reduction policy and least costly for future generations 29

30 Bounce Back or Bounce Beyond? From Resilience 1.0 to Resilience

31 We need not just resilience but transformative resilience! 31

32 Thank You D I L IFF 32