Two summer trips

This summer I've been lucky enough to go on two trips. The first was to Vienna to the International Farming Systems Association conference. I haven't been to a conference for a while and it was good to get out and meet fellow researchers and to participate in some workshops and a fieldtrip to the Hungarian border, where we saw the grey horned cattle that have lived there forever, now owned by the National Park. We also met and talked there with a couple of farmers - interesting to hear of their experiences. I chose to focus on climate change in the conference through this workshop . There's a copy of my paper posted here. I also attended a lot of the sessions in this workshop.
The second trip was to mid-Wales for a break. Great place to go in August - green, quiet and quite splendidly scenic.

Our new books and courses

Our books for the new Open University Masters Programme: Systems Thinking in Practice are now all available. The books are:
(i) Blackmore, Chris (Ed.). (2010) Social Learning Systems and Communities of Practice. Springer: London.
(ii) Ison, Ray (2010) Systems Practice: How to Act in a Climate-Change World. Springer: London.
(iii) Ramage, Manus and Shipp, Karen (2009) Systems Thinkers. Springer: London.
(iv) Reynolds, Martin and Holwell, Sue Systems Approaches to Managing Change. Springer:London.

We have now completed the two core courses of our new Masters in Systems Thinking in Practice (STiP) one of which is already being studied by over 90 students. This first core module is " Thinking Strategically: systems tools for managing change" (OU code TU811).
The second core module, "Managing systemic change: inquiry, action, and interaction" (TU812) will be presented for the first time in November 2010.

iSpot

Interesting to see that 'iSpot' is now up and running. It's linked to the BBC radio series on 'Saving Species' - a collaboration between The Open University, BBC Radio 4 and the BBC Natural History Unit intended to highlight the challenges, successes and failures of conservation around the world. I like the way it looks like it values everyone's contributions as observers rather than just taking an expert-led approach. Not sure everyone will want to 'join a group' but an interesting gallery. Not always easy to identify some of the images. I'll be keeping an eye on it to see how it develops.

Too late to save the world?

I was looking at a blog I read from time to time, called How to save the world from the prolific Dave Pollard when a colleague alerted me to this article on James Lovelock's latest interview in which he is reported to be claiming that it's too late to try and save the planet. Two quite different perspectives on 'saving' our world. Pollard's is about searching for better ways to live and making a living and striving to understand how the world works. Lovelock talks of great uncertainty about the future of the planet and how little we can predict and control how we affect climate. I find both in their own ways are reminders of the complexity of life on this planet.

Whose technology? - not mine?

In the past week I've had to 'register' no less than six times to be able to interact with friends and colleagues in their preferred - different - online spaces. I'm reasonably skilled in using such spaces but nonetheless this takes up time I don't feel I can spare. I'm beginning to experience these so-called opportunities for sharing and learning as an imposition and very much about 'someone else's technology'. In parallel with this we've had lots of issues about group websites - losing a much-visited old one because of a server problem, one new one not being accepted within a working group though well accepted at the next level up, vice versa for the other new one. The time that is taken up in servicing such online communications before actually doing any interaction and the emerging issues of power and participation are I think verging on the unacceptable. Also in parallel I'm experiencing - through emailed instructions - many assumptions that academics should engage more and take more ownership of some aspects of collective activity. My difficulty with all this is that because no face-to-face conversations take place very little checking is done about whether we have the capacity to engage in the ways chosen by those initiating changes. So I'm thinking about what strategy I should adopt? Ignore? Opt in? Opt out? Muddle along? Challenge?

Musings about counter-intuition

Sitting this morning looking out across the Bay of Volos...aka the Paghasitikos Gulf. Like elsewhere in Europe it's unusually cold at present. Many shades of grey: cloud, sea, sky, smoke. The general mood in Greece is also rather gloomy at present with 'austerity measures' beginning and the price of fuel rising sharply in the past few days. I was just thinking how difficult it is to juggle actions that are counter-intuitive and how difficult it is to take a long term view. Intuition is an important part of knowing, difficult to ignore, however rational one claims to be. It's not possible for us humans (even scientists!) to just step outside our contexts, though using systems thinking can encourage us to consider our experiences in a broader context.

Three examples come to mind here today concerning: global warming, fish stocks and the economy.

1. Experiencing the coldest winter in parts of Europe for several decades, inevitably makes it harder to think about the climate warming - changing yes, but how hard it is to think of heat when feeling cold or drought when in a flood or vice versa. As humans are we actually able to tune into climate rather than weather?
2. The Bay in front of me is very nearly fished out at present. Yet off the coast nearby are protected reserves and in the years we have been coming here we've experienced times when fish numbers have risen and fallen. Although it's obvious that if left alone fish stocks will recover and quite quickly, for those in the small boats fishing the Bay, instinct seems to say 'fish today' because by tomorrow someone else will have taken the fish. How can all be encouraged to hold off and let fish stocks recover when so much else pushes in the opposite direction?
3. As far as the economy is concerned, most people here seem to think that wages cuts and tax and price rises of the kind now being imposed in Greece will not alleviate the country's economic problems but will have the opposite effect. What kind of interventions would really help improve this situation?

In their different ways each one of these examples is about a need to go against intuition. Is there therefore a link between knowledge that influences our behaviour that comes from intuition and short termism?

Snowdrops in the snow

I've been snowdrop viewing at this time of year for quite a few years now and usually blog about it - see here for example. This year the good old Great British Gardens snowdrop page led me to Evenley wood garden near Brackley. A delightful garden and because there was snow on the ground I got a reduced entrance fee, even though the snowdrops were out. Must remember to visit this garden again later in the Spring, the gallery looks promising. It's the first time for a long time that I remember seeing snowdrops in the snow.

Year of the tiger

To mark the start of the Chinese Year of the Tiger the BBC has put up some lovely clips of tigers. I saw a wild tiger in the wild just once - a young one. We were in Corbet National Park in the foothills of the Himalayas, out on elephant back. The monkeys with their alarm calls alerted us to it. We waited...and eventually a young tiger darted across our path - lithe and beautiful, just a flash of movement and colour. Yesterday I visited the National History museum's Wildlife Photographer of the Year exhibition - quite a few of the big cats photographed there -lovely to see. You can browse some of the pictures here.

New blog - Fee Romein in Sierra Leone

Great new blog just starting here from Fee Romein who has just arrived in Sierra Leone to spend a while with the Environmental Foundation for Africa. I'm looking forward to hearing more. It's quite a while now since I lived in Sierra Leone myself but it's great to hear about the work of this consortium of NGOs and universities, which according to their webpage is as follows:

The Environmental Foundation for Africa (EFA) aims to protect and restore the environment in West Africa. For over 15 years, EFA has:
- led environmental education (EE) and awareness raising campaigns;
- restored degraded lands and conserved pristine forests;
- minimized the impacts of civil war on the environment and its inhabitants and;
- equipped thousands of people with sustainable livelihood skills such as agroforestry.

Big picture - frozen Britain

....and while on the subject of 'bigger pictures' - I love this one of frozen Britain taken by Nasa'a Terra satellite on 7th January.

The bigger picture of below average temperatures

Interesting to see the Met Office's plotting of how some places around the glode are experiencing warmer as well as colder weather. I'm also reminded how difficult it is to imagine temperatures very different from those experienced at the time. So I don't find it unduly surprising that this cold snap in Europe is being seen by some as evidence against global warming as reported here by Leo Hickman and George Monbiot. (I was interested to see the diversity of perspectives in the discussion following this article also.)

How do we break a system?

This is the question George Monbiot asks about 'consumer hell' which he claims is a system we have internalised. I think systems thinking could help here in recognising what and whose systems of interest are in view and would add something to Monbiot's insightful analysis of how the system he refers to currently functions. Bringing about change of the kind he calls for requires social learning and would rely on multi-level concerted action by many stakeholders. But could we have the processes and motivation to work together to do that? The individualism that Monbiot refers to suggests not.

Monbiot's question about breaking a system is contextualised in some of his other comments in the same article:

How do we pursue happiness and well-being rather than growth? I came back from the climate talks Copenhagen depressed for several reasons, but above all because, listening to the discussions at the citizens’ summit, it struck me that we no longer have movements; we have thousands of people each clamouring to have their own visions adopted. We might come together for occasional rallies and marches, but as soon as we start discussing alternatives, solidarity is shattered by possessive individualism. Consumerism has changed all of us.

Michael Maniates analysis of individualisation provides some further useful insights here. I've found some interesting links between Monbiot's and Maniates' viewpoints before - see here.

Happy New Year!

Happy New Year! A new year, new decade, feels like a new start. We've been out walking in the countryside and thinking about the year ahead. I've really enjoyed the bright cold days. Just now been looking at some of my pictures from late December.