Transcript TIERS FOR FEARS Everybody wants to rule our world A BLACK SATURDAY PRESENTATION @ THE FIRE & RAIN CONFERENCE Presentation by Daryl Taylor.

TIERS FOR FEARS
Everybody wants to rule our world
A BLACK SATURDAY PRESENTATION @ THE FIRE & RAIN CONFERENCE
Presentation by Daryl Taylor email [email protected]
post P.O. Box 247 Kinglake, 3673
Photographs by Ben Parker, Lucy Filor and Mountain Monthly
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 weather
120 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
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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 ignition
2. 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 RESOURCES
BEFORE THE FIRES
15 couples or families we regularly had dinner with
No family – our parents live 300km and 700km away
Lucy had a full time job 1 hours drive away
I ran consultancy businesses and did contract project work
Paying off our home – about to extend
AFTER THE FIRES
4 neighbours lost their lives, many more in our township
Neighbourhood obliterated – only 1 house in 4 streets survived
Only 3 couples with relationship intact and still in Kinglake
Lucy off on PTSD, Education Department didn’t hold position
My office and all work resources completely destroyed in the firestorm
Homeless – our house and all building materials destroyed
No 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 2009
http://www.themonthly.com.au/monthly-essays-robert-manne-why-we-weren-t-warnedvictorian-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.
NATIONAL RECOVERY PRINCIPLES
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.
COHERENT ACTION
The 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:
1. A false opposition between thinking and acting
2. A plausible, but false, opposition between thinking and rapid action
3. 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:
1. 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 CONSTITUTION
Disaster 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 TIER
Federal 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 DYNAMICS
Unacknowledged are the conflicts inherent in the different positions
taken (and world views advanced) by the various different actors:
government officials: managerial - strategic
helping professionals: psychological - therapeutic
community 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
MOVING FROM PUSH TO PULL
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 publicsector 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 TO PEER TO PEER
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
Community Emergence
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Self-Organising Proactive Adaptive Human Systems
Community Fireguard
• The Royals Rule
Bush Mechanics
• Supermarket Forklift Adept
Welfare Entrepreneurs
• 1020 Material Aid
Animal Logistics
• CB Radio Requisitions
AEC Community Ballot
• The KRRG Election
The Western Front
• Uniting Church Hall Hub
Local Trauma Care
• Chinese / Complimentary
Community Dining
• Share a Meal & Help Heal
Women’s Weekends Away • Pampering & Networking
Plugging the Gaps
• Kinglake PS Youth Group
Grand Finalists
• The AFL & Football/Netball
Land-Use Planning & Design • Our Heritage & Our Futures
New Social Enterprises
• Meeting Fundamental Needs
EMERGENCE DISCOURSES
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
Governmental Strategy
Other-Organising Reactive Defensive Inhumane System
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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
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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
STRATEGIC DISCOURSES
Orientation = CONTROL & SPECIALISATION
Centralise Power & Decision-Making
Minimise Government Exposure to Risk
Reinforce Professional Guilds
Under-Resource Community
Undertake Superficial Consultation
Homogenise - One Size Fits All
Stay the Course - Promote Attrition
Deploy Public Relations - Ubiquitous Spin
RELENTLESS RECOVERY REALITIES
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”
in, and as, Complex Adapting Community
12 CD Principles & Associated Questions
1. People Support What They Create
Q. Are we engaging all those who have a stake in the issue/s?
2. People Act Most Responsibly When They Care
Q. 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 Together
Q. 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 Conversation
Q. 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 ANYWHERE
Q. When and how often have we been surprised about who stepped forward as an
informal or formal community leader?
6. Focusing On What's Working Gives Us Energy and Creativity
Q. When have you been most energised by your own work?
(Ask What's Possible, Not What's Wrong!)
7. The Wisdom Resides Within Us
Q. Do we first look inside our community expecting to find the answers there?
8. Everything Is Going To Fail In The Middle
Q. 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 Motivator
Q. 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 TOGETHER
Q. 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
COMMUNITY DEVELOPMENT (CD)
Valuing the Ecological - CD Principles
1. Holism - connectedness, systems, networks, ripples
2. Sustainability - renewable, regenerative, responsible
3. Diversity - poly-cultural, inclusive, richness, dynamic
4. Organic Development - tending, nurturing complexity
5. Balanced Development - equilibrium, linked, integrated
Valuing the Social - CD Principles
6. Structures of Disadvantage - the personal = the political
7. Discourses of Disadvantage - counter-hegemonic
vision
8. Empowerment - enablement, self-determination, control
9. Rights - human, civil, political, economic, social, cultural
10. Needs Definition - dialogical needs, aspirations, futures
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 means
23. Inclusiveness - diverse, non-competitive processes
24. Community Building - togetherness, interdependence
Valuing the Glocalist - CD Principles
25. Linking Global & Local - via grassroots movements
26. Anti-Colonialist Practice - listen, learn, critically reflect
Tesoriero & Ife, 2010
COMMUNITY ECONOMY DEVELOPMENT (CED)
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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
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Community may be seen as groups and networks of up to 2000 localised people
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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
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CED is generally largely expressed in the informal economy, which in Australia is the same size as
the formal economy.
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Make no mistake about it CED can be much maligned by the Tax Office and Politicians
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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
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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)
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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.
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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
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Small &
Medium
Enterprises
Local
Market
Clusters
Facilitative
Regulation
Community Economy
Development (C.E.D.) +
Social Enterprises (S.E.)
Skills
Develop
- CED & SE Site Plan
- Management Hub
- Relocalisation Plan
Track Record
New Potential
InterImport
community
Replacement
trading
Local
Finance
Intra + Inter
Community
Trading
Adapted from Wildman, 2011
CED – 4 Sector Model
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Formal
Manufacturing
Hospital
Accounting firm
$
Physical
Financial
CED
LETS
Home Economy
Bush Mechanics
Permaculture
Informal
Wildman, 2011
CED Modality
Allopathic
Medical Modality
Economic Modality
CED Modality Examples
Treating other (illness/invader) with Corporatist: Laissez Faire . IMF, WTO, Wbank, decisions reduce or kill
Community
economy development
approaches/MO’s/MOdalities
other by death.
markets unleashed, regulation
off local production and investment;
of SME’s & citizens, initiative
last, with local fitting in to the
global or being eliminated,
imperialism
. 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
LEADERSHIP CONTEXTS
Leadership Action Hierarchies
SCR = Sense - Categorise - Respond
SAR = Sense - Analyse - Respond
PSR = Probe - Sense - Respond
ASR = Act - Sense - Respond
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.
Snowden (2002)
LEADERSHIP LOGIC
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
MEGA-COMMUNITY
NGOs &
Business &
Civil Society
Corporations
Impacted
Community
Government &
Bureaucracy
Adapted from Gerencser, Van Lee, Napolitano & Kelly “Megacommunities” 2008
WHAT IS A MEGA-COMMUNITY
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 many
emerging complex and wicked problems of the 21st Century.
PROSPECTIVE RESILIENCE
concurrent inter-dependent panarchical cycles
social
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economic
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ecological
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cosmological
Resilience Alliance (2008) / Gunderson & Holling (2002)
RESILIENCE CYCLE (PANARCHY)
widespread clear fell harvesting
innovations and possibilities constrained
by closed ‘tier-upon-tier’ decision-making
conservation-oriented policy
the mega firestorm event
Adapted from Resilience Alliance (2009)
NESTED COMMUNITY RESILIENCE
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
RESISTANCE IS FUTILE
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
REDUNDANT REDUNDANCY
Design 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 selfreliance 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 PRINCIPLES
Design
 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 Design
Designs 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 PREPAREDNESS
Core focus - identifying preparedness ‘blind spots’ at all levels and
overcoming our systemic and structural vulnerabilities and deficits as:
Individuals
Households
Neighbourhoods
Community Groups
Community Structures
Local Government
Emergency Management Authorities
Non-Government Organisations & Peak Bodies
Corporations, Businesses & Industry
State & 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)
INSIDIOUS MOMENTUM
Things are getting better and better …
and worse and worse … faster and faster
Robert Theobald, 1999.
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.
HAVOC IS THE NEW NORMAL
Our shared challenge and opportunity
is 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 above
the rising waters of
unprecedentedly rapid
whole systems change
Hold on tight!