John Lennon famously quipped that life was what happened when you were busy making other plans. A new book Dynamic Sustainabilities: Technology, Environment, Social Justice from the fantastic STEPS centre at the University of Sussex focuses on how much the same contradiction plays out in the global movements toward development, environmental sustainability and social justice. [...]
Archive for the ‘Resilience’ Category
What happens when you are busy making other plans
Posted in Climate change, Institutions, Knowledge and learning, Leadership, Public Policy, Reports and Studies, Resilience, Strategy on April 30, 2010 | Leave a Comment »
“There is no such thing as a natural disaster”: crises, complexity and the role of theory
Posted in Knowledge and learning, Natural disasters, Networks, Organisations, Public Policy, Reports and Studies, Resilience on February 3, 2010 | 3 Comments »
In the few weeks following the Haiti earthquake, much of our work at ALNAP has focused on getting key operational lessons from previous earthquakes into the hands and minds of operational agency staff, and briefing media representatives on a variety of issues related to the relief and recovery work. As the initial signs of some kind [...]
Coping with Complexity in Agricultural Water Management
Posted in Agriculture, Institutions, Reports and Studies, Resilience, Water on January 12, 2010 | 1 Comment »
An 2009 IFAD report highlights the importance of complexity for improving agricultural water management. It suggests that conventional project management approaches are not suitable for coping with complexity-oriented interventions, and also emphasises the importance of combining professional competence and complexity-related capabilities for achieving programmatic success. The paper is ‘geared towards promoting further discussions and reflections, [...]
Bank of England Director uses complexity theory to explain global financial crisis
Posted in Financial crisis, Networks, Public Policy, Resilience, Strategy on December 16, 2009 | 2 Comments »
Andrew Haldane, Executive Director of Financial Stability at the Bank of England gave a speech earlier this year which focused on the idea of the global financial system as a complex adaptive system. In his speech, Haldane focuses on applying the lessons from other network disciplines – such as ecology, epidemiology, biology and engineering – to [...]
An Equation for Copenhagen: Conformity + Rapid Change = Collapse
Posted in Climate change, Public Policy, Resilience, Strategy on December 1, 2009 | 1 Comment »
American scientists using agent-based modeling techniques have linked excessive conformity to societal collapse and even mass extinction. The implications for the Copenhagen negotiations next week seem stark. The researchers at Dalhousie University and the University of California-Davis have modeled how well different learning strategies work in different learning environments, and found that under certain circumstances societies can be [...]
From Architects to Gardeners
Posted in Organisations, Public Policy, Reports and Studies, Resilience, Strategy on November 16, 2009 | Leave a Comment »
Henry Kissinger held a party recently for his protege, Joshua Ramo Cooper. Speaking about Ramo Cooper’s new book to a New Yorker reporter, he said, “[it] has one basic theme that is a little difficult for me, which is that my generation is sort of a bunch of dodos.” The Age of the Unthinkable: Why the [...]
Is diversity the key to resilience in complex social-ecological systems?
Posted in Public Policy, Reports and Studies, Resilience, Strategy on November 11, 2009 | 3 Comments »
I am just reading Complexity Theory for a Sustainable Future, a 2008 book edited by Jon Norberg and Graeme S. Cumming. The chapter I have just finished ’Diversity and Resilience of Social-Ecological Systems’ is co-authored by Elinor Ostrom, who shared this years Nobel Prize in Economics. So far, it makes for fascinating reading. The authors provide an account of how complex [...]
