TIERS FOR FEARSEverybody wants to rule our world

Presentation by Daryl Taylor email taylor.daryl@yahoo.com.aupost

P.O. Box 247 Kinglake, 3673

Photographs by Ben Parker, Lucy Filor and Mountain Monthly

A BLACK SATURDAY PRESENTATION @ THE FIRE & RAIN CONFERENCE

PERIURBAN = VULNERABLE The Cheapest Land Close to Melbourne

Entry-Level Young First Home-Owner Families High Property Turnover, Continuous ‘new residents’ Transit Poor Super-Commuter Car Dependency Centrifugal Movements & Social Interactions Time Poverty & High Vulnerability to Economic Downturn

Linear ‘Ad Hoc’ Unplanned Development Sub-rural and Sub-urban – ‘no man’s land’ Fragmented, Outreach or Absent Services High Reported Family Stress High % of Single Parent Families High Rates of Domestic Violence

Absent or ‘Torrentially Leaky’ Local Economy Absence of Core Social & Physical Infrastructure Vulnerable Social Institutions & Remote ‘failed state’ LGA Small Leadership Base & Community Disengagement Stoicism, Conservativism, Parochialism, Inward Looking Geographic Isolation & Topographical Challenges

30 YEARS OF CLIMATE DISRUPTION

Average annual rainfall down from 2 metres to 1 metre Victorians are world’s highest per capita greenhouse gas emitters Our settlements are surrounded by national park & state forest Steep 70 degree forest escarpment south below 35km settled ridge

Extended el nino and record prolonged drought Unprecedented desiccation & brittleness of our forested ecosystem Increasing multi-national mining of our aquifers for bottled water Spring-fed creek system disruption and summer flow cessation November rainfall - vigorous spring forest understorey growth

31, 37, 42, 44, 43, 40, 36, 31, 31, 35, 35, 38, 48.8 degrees C A fortnight of unprecedented & unrelenting hot dry weather120 km per hour ++ gusting hot strong north-westerly winds Humidity 4%, Temperature 48.8 degrees

Electrical infrastructure maintenance failure sparks fire From Sunday Creek, bushfires burn to within 1 km of outer suburbs South-westerly wind change turns long fire flank into broad fire-front Large burning embers travelling up to 35 km in front of the main fire

CLIMATE & ECOSYSTEM TRAJECTORY

Higher frequency of extreme weather events Longer lasting and more intense droughts More extreme heat on summer & autumn days Increasing evaporation rates Reduced water availability More severe bushfires & mega-firestorms Less time available to do mosaic burning & back burning Decreased intervals between serious firestorms from one every 40 to 50 years to one every 10 to 12 years

Brittle Pyro-philic Highly Combustible Ecosystems

Increased fire frequency and decreasing rainfall will change the species mix composition of our plant communities, which will, in turn, alter the fire regime, producing further changes to the pattern of flammable vegetation cover, and to the suitability of the environment as habitat for our unique animal species.

Professor Ian Lowe, “Living in the Hothouse” 2005

WHAT IS A MEGA-FIRESTORM?

Black Saturday mega-firestorm unique in 3 ways

1. speed of ignition2. intensity of the flames

3. spread of fire in pulses

Mega-firestorms produce their own energy, create a self-sustaining fire system (the more fuel the mega-firestorm consumes, the more fuel it can consume)

Smoke plume = 5,200 km high White pyrocumulus cloud = 8,500 km above earth

Mass fire produced exploding fire balls, spiralling fire tornados, leaping flares, and it’s own weather - lightning, rain and snow Plume produced a sucking effect drawing more air into its base The Vacuum action pulls in thousands of surrounding spot fires

The increasing intensity and regularity of bushfires since the 1960’s is likely to be related to global climatic changes

Dr Kevin Tolhurst, Fire Ecology, University of Melbourne

“WE’RE IN UNCHARTED TERRITORY”

Fire Danger Index: Kinglake = 300 (Black Friday 1939 = 100) 13 major bushfires breakout 352,686 hectares of land burnt (= combined area of Sydney & Melbourne) 28 Victorian Municipalities affected by fires (40% of the state’s LGAs)

Mega-firestorm is 5 x hotter than previous worst Bushfires Energy released equivalent to 1500 Hiroshima bombs Energy released enough to power our whole state for 2 years

Forced a re-calibration of mega-firestorm complex ferocity

173 Human Lives Lost > 2,000 houses destroyed > 1,000,000 wildlife casualties Untold ecosystem damage Widespread agricultural losses Extensive local business losses

“WE’RE IN UNCHARTED TERRITORY”

Fire Danger Index - Kinglake 300 (Black Friday 1939 = 100) 13 major bushfires breakout 352,686 hectares of land burnt (= combined area of Sydney & Melbourne) 28 Victorian Municipalities affected by fire (40% of state’s LGAs)

Mega-firestorm is 5 x hotter than previous worst Bushfire Energy released equivalent to 1500 Hiroshimas Energy released enough to power our whole state for 2 years

Forced re-calibration of mega-firestorm complex ferocity

173 Human Lives Lost > 2,000 houses destroyed > 1,000,000 wildlife casualties Untold ecosystem damage Widespread agricultural production losses Extensive local business losses

CONSERVATION OF RESOURCESBEFORE THE FIRES15 couples or families we regularly had dinner withNo family – our parents live 300km and 700km awayLucy had a full time job 1 hours drive awayI ran consultancy businesses and did contract project workPaying off our home – about to extend

AFTER THE FIRES4 neighbours lost their lives, many more in our townshipNeighbourhood obliterated – only 1 house in 4 streets survivedOnly 3 couples with relationship intact and still in Kinglake Lucy off on PTSD, Education Department didn’t hold positionMy office and all work resources completely destroyed in the firestormHomeless – our house and all building materials destroyedNo Transport – my car written off, Lucy’s car un-roadworthy

COMMUNITY DEVELOPMENT MAXIM

‘A wasted crisis is a catastrophe.’

OUR PRIME MINISTER & PREMIER

If only they’d said‘We will re-think & re-design’

instead of ‘We will re-build.’

For disaster survivors, a crisis becomes a catastrophe when the many opportunities to seriously re-imagine,

re-think, re-design and re-constitute our practices, roles, power and relationships are ignored, vanquished or forfeited

DISASTER RESPONSE REVIEWS

“In government departments a shameful institutional incompetence prevailed.”

Roger Franklin “Inferno - the Day Victoria Burned” 2009

“CFA professionals were imprisoned by their organisations mind-numbing bureaucratic rules. Conformity to rules was the enemy of judgement, common sense, moral responsibility and action.”

Robert Manne “Why We Weren’t Warned” The Monthly July 2009http://www.themonthly.com.au/monthly-essays-robert-manne-why-we-weren-t-warned-

victorian-bushfires-and-royal-commission-1780

Looking to Kinglake from Melbourne

Looking to Melbourne from Kinglake

NATIONAL RECOVERY PRINCIPLES

Disaster recovery is integral to emergency management, and includes the broader components of prevention, preparedness and response. Planning for recovery is integral to emergency preparation. Mitigation actions are often initiated during recovery periods.

Disaster recovery includes infrastructure, environmental and economic elements, as well as psychosocial wellbeing.

Disaster recovery provides an opportunity to improve all of these aspects beyond previous conditions, by enhancing social and natural environments, infrastructure and economies, by establishing more resilient communities.

Successful Community Recovery Depends

On:

understanding the context: Successful recovery is based on a thorough

understanding of the community, and its politico-cultural context.

recognising complexity: Successful recovery acknowledges the complex

and dynamic nature of both emergencies and communities.

using community-led approaches: Successful recovery is

responsive and flexible, engaging communities and empowering them to move forward.

ensuring coordination of all activities: Successful

recovery requires a planned, coordinated and adaptive approach, based on continuing evaluation.

employing effective communication: Successful recovery

is built on effective communication with affected communities and other key stakeholders.

acknowledging and building capacity: Successful

recovery recognises, supports and builds on local individual, organisational, and community capacity.

NATIONAL RECOVERY PRINCIPLES

COHERENT ACTIONThe spurious claim of emergency is that all procedures and all thinking must cease because the emergency requires that:1. An action must be taken 2. Action must be taken relatively quickly

The seduction against thinking in an emergency comes from three sources:2. A false opposition between thinking and acting3. A plausible, but false, opposition between thinking and rapid action4. Acts of thinking in emergencies are not recognised as thinking – this is because

we mis-represent our very well-honed survival habits as empty of thought

In all historical discourses on emergencies and disasters three distinct political descriptions of impacted populations recur:5. Immobilisation 2. Incoherent action 3.Coherent action

Coherent action based on knowledge, skills, preparedness and survival habits ‘habits of the heart’ and their codified counterparts, procedural pathways and legal rules, are compatible with the most rigorous forms of thinking. Far from being set aside, they need to be respected, revered and practiced regularly.

We know well drilled citizens respond remarkably in disaster situations. We need to reacquire our responsibility for our own governance.

Scarry, 2011

DISASTER RECOVERY CONSTITUTIONDisaster constitution and recovery initiation frames the relationships among, and roles of, the various actors who come together to partner in community recovery.

Government have responsibility to constitute disasters commensurate with scale.Black Saturday met all the criteria for constitution as a Natural Disaster.

A continuum of recovery initiation or recovery inception positions ranges from: Election and Media-cycle led, Government-mandated or Bureaucracy-driven, Professional Guild-dominated, Client-focused, Family-centred, through to Network-centric, Community-governed, Neighbourhood, and Place-based.

Where, and with whom, does authority to oversee, initiate, support, enable and evaluate disaster recovery sit, and from where is legitimacy derived?

That all positions in the continuum above are potentially at play, and often at odds, adds significantly to the complicated political and emotional nature of

the constitution and unfolding of disaster community recovery partnerships

PARTNERSHIP NOT DOMINATION

The new social change paradigm acknowledges ideas and practices grow out of practical experience, that how things are done is as important as

what is done. It’s respectful, fostering empowerment and responsibility.

As professionals we must accept that we cannot know what others want and experience. We have to ask! This paradigm challenges the canons of professionalism. We must interrogate our aspirations and objectivity.

The new paradigm recognises that individuals and communities have the capacity, the capability and the will to act. The professional’s role is not to

decide what’s best for others, but to share power and empower.

A discipline based professional practice, whatever the discipline, carves complex realities into specialisms, becoming a way of distancing one-self from the immediacy and messiness of place / community based reality. Such approaches severely limit learning, which is fundamental to change.

Elizabeth Reid in Labonte “Power, Participation & Partnerships for Health Promotion.” Victorian Health Promotion Foundation, 1999.

PARTNERSHIP NOT DEPENDENCY

a development - centred recovery conceived in

PARTNERSHIP

Super Competence = 25% vs.

Super Catatonia = 25% a welfare - centred recovery rooted in

DEPENDENCY

TIER UPON TIERFederal Government – Bushfire Recovery

State Government – Premier & Cabinet

Victorian Bushfire Reconstruction & Recovery Authority (VBRRA)

Murrindindi Shire Council

State Government - Murrindindi SC Bushfire Recovery Section 86 Committee

Bushfire Community Recovery Committees x 6

Bushfire Survivors

PARENT - CHILD DYNAMICSUnacknowledged are the conflicts inherent in the different positions taken (and world views advanced) by the various different actors:

government officials: managerial - strategichelping professionals: psychological -

therapeuticcommunity leaders: parochial -

representational

Central to such potential conflicts is the degree to which the primary actors identify with their role, authority, objectivity and their ‘rational parent’ professional status.

In this context, a parent-child dynamic, or a ‘politics of dominance’ ensues (often despite the very best of intentions), or is instituted, when what’s really needed is peer to peer or ‘partnership practices’ that are mutually supportive, enabling, participatory & co-creative

The Power of Pull is the mechanism which allows each of us to find and access people and resources when we need them, while attracting to us the people and resources that are relevant and valuable, even if we were not even aware before that they existed. Entrepreneurial companies and government departments are developing new approaches to talent development that harness loosely coupled business, professional and social networks to provide scale without inertia.

The Power of Pull puts each of us, individually and together, in a position to collaborate in a complete re-imagination of our biggest private-and public-sector institutions, one that may eventually remake society as a whole.

The Power of Pull reinstates the central role of socially embedded practice and networks in enabling and driving knowledge creation, resource acquisition and performance improvement. Companies and Governments need to refocus technology innovation on providing tools to amplify the efforts of communities and communities of practice to enable flourishing.

Hagel et al, 2010

MOVING FROM PUSH TO PULL

No society or civilisation survives through the exclusive reliance on any one mode of organisation or governance – Hierarchy, Markets and Networks always co-exist.

Different modes of civilisation are, however, dominated by a particular mode, and this particular mode will put its mark on all others, molding them on its own image.

In Tribal life, the gift economy, was based on reciprocity, i.e. Equality Matching.

The Agrarian mode was mostly based on feudalism, i.e. Authority Ranking

Industrial Capitalism was the society where Market Pricing becomes dominant.

The emerging Peer to Peer Era, will be dominated by Communal Shareholding, i.e. the institutional form of the Commons will become that which is central.

Bauman, 2006

MOVING TO PEER TO PEER

Community Emergence Self-Organising Proactive Adaptive Human Systems

• Community Fireguard• Bush Mechanics• Welfare Entrepreneurs• Animal Logistics• AEC Community Ballot• The Western Front• Local Trauma Care• Community Dining• Women’s Weekends Away• Plugging the Gaps• Grand Finalists• Land-Use Planning & Design• New Social Enterprises

• The Royals Rule• Supermarket Forklift Adept• 1020 Material Aid• CB Radio Requisitions• The KRRG Election• Uniting Church Hall Hub• Chinese / Complimentary• Share a Meal & Help Heal• Pampering & Networking• Kinglake PS Youth Group • The AFL & Football/Netball• Our Heritage & Our Futures• Meeting Fundamental Needs

Orientation = CARE & INTERCONNECTEDNESS

Democratise Power & Decision-Making Reinforce the Dignity of Risk & Caring for Others Value Local Knowledge & Local Culture Subsidiarity - Participatory Local Processes Creatively Make Do - Learn Our Way Through Joined-up Practical ‘Win-Win-Win’ Solutions Integrated Community & Place-Based Stewardship Candid, Direct & Passionate Communication

EMERGENCE DISCOURSES

Governmental Strategy Other-Organising Reactive Defensive Inhumane System

• Emergency Response• No ‘State of Emergency’• Premier & Cabinet• ‘Community - Led’ Myth• Human Services• External Expertise• Army Dismissed• GROCON Contracted• VBRRA Bureaucracy• National Principles• Local Government• Section 86• CRCs

• Manifold Systems Failure• Federal Leadership Not Sought• Corporate Neo-Liberalism• Centralised - Professional• Embeds Individual Welfare• Recovery ‘Psychologised’• Our “Go to Guys” Gone • Community Rebuild Agency Lost• Not Empowered to Compel• The VBRRA Minimalist Model • Failed State - Catatonia/Defiance• Now 5 Layers of Government• Granted ‘Advisory Status’ Only

Orientation = CONTROL & SPECIALISATION

Centralise Power & Decision-Making Minimise Government Exposure to RiskReinforce Professional GuildsUnder-Resource CommunityUndertake Superficial ConsultationHomogenise - One Size Fits AllStay the Course - Promote AttritionDeploy Public Relations - Ubiquitous Spin

STRATEGIC DISCOURSES

Recovery Year One - Disaster Capitalism - prepare for and combat “Shock and Awe”

Recovery Year Two - The Matrix

- prepare for and combat “Capture by The Machine”

Recovery Year Three - The Road - prepare for and combat “Overwhelm and Exhaustion”

RELENTLESS RECOVERY REALITIES

12 CD Principles & Associated Questions

1. People Support What They CreateQ. Are we engaging all those who have a stake in the issue/s?2. People Act Most Responsibly When They CareQ. Are we working on issues that people truly care about? Q. How do we know they care?3. Conversations Are The Way Humans Have Always Thought TogetherQ. When and how do we use conversation to establish shared meaning?Q. Where do such conversations naturally occur or emerge in our community?4. To Change The Conversation, Change Who Is In The ConversationQ. Are we stuck in this conversation? Q. Do our conversations go round and round and lead nowhere? Q. What new people can we invite into the conversation?5. Expect Community Leadership To Come From ANYWHEREQ. When and how often have we been surprised about who stepped forward as an informal or formal community leader?

Talking, Working & Being Togetherin, and as, Complex Adapting Community

6. Focusing On What's Working Gives Us Energy and CreativityQ. When have you been most energised by your own work? (Ask What's Possible, Not What's Wrong!)7. The Wisdom Resides Within UsQ. Do we first look inside our community expecting to find the answers there?8. Everything Is Going To Fail In The MiddleQ. How do we react to failures when we see our progress suddenly disappear? Q. Do we blame, deny, or gather to learn?9. Learning Is The Way We Change, Grow and Become Resilient Q. How often do we take the time to learn from our experiences? Q. Can we view our work as experiments that teach us how to succeed?10. Meaningful Work Is An Incredibly Powerful Human MotivatorQ. How often do we talk about and remember the deeper purpose that called us to our work?11. We Can Handle Anything As Long As We Are TOGETHERQ. Are we paying attention to our relationships? Are we supporting each other? Q. Are we ignoring each other? How often do we gossip, judge or scapegoat?12. Generosity, Forgiveness and Love Are The Most Important Elements of Community Building (and Community Rebuilding)Q. If people were observing you (in Your Community) what would they see?

Meg Wheatley & Nancy Marguolis 2009, Berkana Institute

Valuing the Ecological - CD Principles1. Holism - connectedness, systems, networks, ripples2. Sustainability - renewable, regenerative, responsible3. Diversity - poly-cultural, inclusive, richness, dynamic4. Organic Development - tending, nurturing complexity5. Balanced Development - equilibrium, linked, integrated

Valuing the Social - CD Principles6. Structures of Disadvantage - the personal = the political7. Discourses of Disadvantage - counter-hegemonic vision 8. Empowerment - enablement, self-determination, control 9. Rights - human, civil, political, economic, social, cultural10. Needs Definition - dialogical needs, aspirations, futures

COMMUNITY DEVELOPMENT (CD)

COMMUNITY DEVELOPMENT (CD)

Valuing the Local - CD Principles 11. Local Knowledge - identify, validate contextual expertise 12. Local Culture - participatory traditions, rituals, identities 13. Local Resources - self-reliance, resilience, autonomous 14. Local Skills - identify, value, utilise, share, exchange, learn 15. Local Processes - grounded, sensitive, emergent, adaptive 16. Local Participation - up-skill, enable broad opportunities

Valuing the Process - CD Principles 17. Process & Outcomes - immediate goals, ultimate visions 18. The Integrity of Process - non-manipulative, just, viable 19. Consciousness Raising - linking experiences to actions 20. Cooperation & Consensus - structures, decision-making

COMMUNITY DEVELOPMENT (CD)

21. Pace of Development - slower, takes as long as it takes

22. Peace & Non-Violence - restorative & liberatory means23. Inclusiveness - diverse, non-competitive processes 24. Community Building - togetherness, interdependence

Valuing the Glocalist - CD Principles25. Linking Global & Local - via grassroots movements26. Anti-Colonialist Practice - listen, learn, critically reflect

Tesoriero & Ife, 2010

COMMUNITY ECONOMY DEVELOPMENT (CED)• CED is the community based, human-scale, sustainable, living systems, value-added production and

distribution of goods and services for flourishing everyday life and community living

• Community may be seen as groups and networks of up to 2000 localised people

• This size group of communities can generate a minimum of ¾ of all employment and ½ of all goods and services required by community members for everyday living

• CED is generally largely expressed in the informal economy, which in Australia is the same size as the formal economy.

• Make no mistake about it CED can be much maligned by the Tax Office and Politicians

• The CED economy is a bush mechanics or folk society it respects techne (hand wisdom) and reuses, repairs and refocuses before recycling. Respect for craft is reconstituted in CED

• There are two formal economies – the financial economy only the physical economy (in CED the former enables the latter - not obliterates it - as in our globalised system)

• The physical economy is utterly crucial for our understanding the big picture of what little CED is and what its sustainable, human scale, value-adding products and services are.

• So in summary, we have an apple cut two ways horizontally gives us the formal and informal economies and vertically gives us the financial and physical economies

Wildman, 2011

.

Local Finance

Intra + InterCommunity Trading

Skills Develop

Facilitative Regulation

Local Market ClustersSmall &

Medium Enterprises

Inter-community trading

Import Replacement

Track Record New Potential

Community Economy Development (C.E.D.) +Social Enterprises (S.E.)

- CED & SE Site Plan - Management Hub - Relocalisation Plan

Adapted from Wildman, 2011

CED – 4 Sector Model• :

$Manufacturing HospitalAccounting firm

Home Economy Bush MechanicsPermaculture

LETS

Wildman, 2011

PhysicalFinancial

Formal

Informal

CED

Community economy development approaches/MO’s/MOdalities

CED Modality Medical Modality Economic Modality CED Modality Examples

Allopathic Treating other (illness/invader) with other by death.

Corporatist: Laissez Faire - markets unleashed, regulation of SME’s & citizens, initiative last, with local fitting in to the global or being eliminated, imperialism

. IMF, WTO, Wbank, decisions reduce or kill off local production and investment; . Conventional training . Public sector job creation i.e. through direct public expenditure [US]

Naturopathic Treating other (illness/invader) with ‘natural other’ different other to mitigate illness/invader.

Catalyist: initiative first, regulation last, with the local ‘doing its own thing’ loosely aligned with the global.

. Some Corporate Social Responsibility

. Triple Bottom Line accounting

. Just tax laws

. Enforcing anti monopoly and anti price fixing laws. Community Ethics [Europe]

Homeopathic Treating other (illness/invader) with the same but lesser other, in order to boost the host’s capacity and immune system

Regionalist: discrete regions administratively independent, yet strategically dependent.

. Conventional Regional Economics often sees the local as the large writ small i.e.. small scale globalisation [Australia]

Heteropathic Treating other (illness/invader) with its rebalancing counterpoint

Localist: local identity and culture, with the global fitting in to the local.

. NIMBY’s (Not In My Back Yard)Local $ . Taxation . Goods & service flows . Adult & Community Education. Bricolleur . Resilience . Transition Towns . Animateur [France]

Preventative Treating other before it becomes other (illness/invader)

Glocalist: marriage as in a negotiated relationship between Global and the Local.

. CED Site Plan

. Community Economy Development

. CED Action Learning Circles

. Community Economic Capability

. Community Self - Reliance

.[Cuba]

LADDER OF PARTICIPATION

Sherry Arnstein, 1969

Snowden (2002)

Cynefin (left) is a leadership and decision making model to best address problems across differing contexts, situations and systems.

Cynefin is an old Welsh word, that translates into English as ‘context’, 'habitat' or 'place.’

Cynefin conveys that we all inhabit multiple nested

contexts: cosmological, cultural, tribal religious, and geographic and simple, complicated, complex and

chaotic.

LEADERSHIP CONTEXTSLeadership Action HierarchiesSCR = Sense - Categorise - RespondSAR = Sense - Analyse - RespondPSR = Probe - Sense - RespondASR = Act - Sense - Respond

Opportunist - Wins any way possible: Good salesman.

Diplomat - Avoids overt conflict: Good negotiators.

Expert - Rules by logic and expertise: Good contributor.

Achiever - Meets strategic goals: Good managers.

Individualist - Interweaves personal and company logics: Good consultants.

Strategist - Generates organisational and personal transformations: Great leaders.

Alchemist - Generates society-wide transformations: Extraordinary Leaders.

Leadership Logic The way you interpret your context and react when your power or safety is challenged.

Torbet, 2004

LEADERSHIP LOGIC

MEGA-COMMUNITY

NGOs & Civil Society

Government & Bureaucracy

Business & Corporations

Impacted Community

Adapted from Gerencser, Van Lee, Napolitano & Kelly “Megacommunities” 2008

An open socio-economic environment, in which business,government and civil society collaborate according to their common interests, while maintaining their unique properties.

Critical in mega-community approaches is that institutions and professionals come to mega-disaster impacted place - based communities from a stance of learning and not knowing, and hence a position of humility and not hubris.

The profound opportunity lies in learning to co-monitor conditions and dynamics with communities and also to co-produce strategies and projects with communities

Mega-communities provide for a new approach to leadership in a globally interdependent networked environment and develop multi-faceted, self-reinforcing solutions to the manyemerging complex and wicked problems of the 21st Century.

WHAT IS A MEGA-COMMUNITY

PROSPECTIVE RESILIENCE

Resilience Alliance (2008) / Gunderson & Holling (2002)

concurrent inter-dependent panarchical cycles

social - economic - ecological - cosmological

RESILIENCE CYCLE (PANARCHY)

Adapted from Resilience Alliance (2009)

innovations and possibilities constrained by closed ‘tier-upon-tier’ decision-making

the mega firestorm event

conservation-oriented policywidespread clear fell harvesting

ECONOMIC RESILIENCE - SOCIAL RESILIENCE - ECOLOGICAL RESILIENCE

Resilience is a nested characteristic of ecosystems and sustainable low energy societies and economies that are subject to periodic and erratic stresses.

Resilience emerges from proactive wholistic anticipatory action learning (from participatory foresight oriented experiential and observational individual and social processes) and consequent evolutionary living systems actions and design characteristics, and not just from our reactive responses, after the fact.

Resilient systems tend to be composed of diverse subsystems and elements that are loosely connected, but exhibit a high degree of localised function, subsidiarity and autonomy.

Resilient systems have “designed redundancy”, the capacity for ‘back-up.’

Adapted from David Holmgren, 2009 / Yoland Wadsworth, 2010

NESTED COMMUNITY RESILIENCE

Highly structured and micro-managed industrialised neo-liberal societies and their economies have used fossil-fuelled technology to build resistance (rather than resilience) to stresses from both natural and man-made disasters.

Awareness of the likely impacts of the emerging emergencies of Climate Disruption and Peak Oil, Population Explosion and Ecological Overshoot and consequent inevitable Economic Contraction has highlighted the strong, but very brittle nature of industrial societies and their formalised mainstream systems.

We need to develop greater adaptive capacity - more flexibility and resilience, foresight and response - ability (personal and collective), preparedness and perseverance and embed these capacities and capabilities in our communities, economies, landscapes, ecosystems and worldviews.

Adapted from David Holmgren, 2009

RESISTANCE IS FUTILE

REDUNDANT REDUNDANCYDesign redundancy is a systems engineering term meaning ‘back up’ or ‘diversity of response-ability’ that became debased in common usage to mean ‘useless’ or ‘unnecessary.’

This reversal of meaning reflects the economic obsession with the ideology of “just in time” efficiency at the cost of and to the detriment of resilience.

As our nation developed professional and centralised bushfire fighting capacity, an assumption was made that the household self-reliance and communal self-reliance and community resilience of yesteryear was now “redundant.”

However, our success has, paradoxically, made us more vulnerable due our soft underbelly of dependence on centralised, professional and technological systems.

Using this debased thinking, the ideas of a fully bushfire ready community might be considered as a waste of resources compared with the imagined “efficiency” of trained fire fighting services that focus 100% on the task, leaving the rest of us to have an afternoon nap or watch TV with the air conditioner on, on fire ban days.

Household self-reliance and communal self-reliance are critical examples of design redundancy (back up) to increase societal capacity in the face of bushfire.

David Holmgren, 2009

POST-SUSTAINABILITY PRINCIPLES

PATTERN DYNAMICS

SLOW DESIGN PRINCIPLESDesign to slow human, economic and resource use metabolisms to reposition focus on nested and inter-dependent individual, socio-cultural and environmental wellbeing to celebrate slowness, diversity and pluralism to encourage and foster a long view to deal with the “continuous 200 year present” as counter-balance to the “fastness” (speed) of the current industrial and consumer-focused design paradigm

Fuad-Luke, 2004

Ontological DesignDesigns go on designing … our behaviours, relationships, gardens, exchanges, lifestyles, livelihoods, landscapes, environments, civilisations.

Tony Fry, 2001

DESIGN 4 SUSTAINABILITY

DEEDS CORE PRINCIPLES – “SCALES”

Special Skills 1 - Holistic Systems Orientation

Special Skills 2 - Eco-efficiency & De-materialisation

Special Skills 3 - Communication & Leadership

Creative Change Agents - Context, Perception, Aspirations

Awareness - Context, Feedback, Choice & Responsibility

Learning Together - transdisciplinary, mutual learning, P-2-P

Ethics & Values - first do no harm, empowering, experiential

Synergy & Co-creation - participatory, clusters, collaboration

COMMUNITY PREPAREDNESSCore focus - identifying preparedness ‘blind spots’ at all levels and

overcoming our systemic and structural vulnerabilities and deficits as:IndividualsHouseholdsNeighbourhoodsCommunity GroupsCommunity StructuresLocal GovernmentEmergency Management AuthoritiesNon-Government Organisations & Peak

BodiesCorporations, Businesses & IndustryState & Federal Governments

Complementarity - multi-layered, networked, dynamic, interactive partnerships, operating at, and across, every level above, and with every level resourced to succeed, ie, build subsidiary structures and platforms (capacity), and the ability to respond and act (capability)

Recent discoveries by scientists and economists suggest momentum exerts a far stronger influence

on our world than we previously assumed – and momentums impact is compounding, exponential.

The integration of communications, technologies and markets has accelerated the velocity at which inter-dependent events unfold, generating positive and negative momentum on a massive scale.

These new dynamics are re-shaping and re-tooling our world.

INSIDIOUS MOMENTUM

Things are getting better and better … and worse and worse … faster and faster

Robert Theobald, 1999.

Our shared challenge and opportunityis to learn how to collectively

identify the signs,connect the currents,

ride the winds, scour the storms,fan the flames,

surf the tsunamis and keep our heads abovethe rising waters of

unprecedentedly rapid whole systems change

Hold on tight!

HAVOC IS THE NEW NORMAL