Beyond Climategate

Emails true or not, let’s step beyond climategate.

Beyond the obfuscations.

Here is the reality check:

Achieving global sustainability and sustainable development is about more than “going green” and mitigating climate change. A successful transition toward a sustainable global future is a complex multi-variable problem that requires both innovation in science and technology, adaptive governance and broad-based changes in human behavior. It refers to the task of meeting basic human needs worldwide while preserving the life supporting ecosystems of the planet at the same time. There remains little doubt that we are currently failing at both. In general terms, an improvement in coupled social-ecological systems, that is, human–nature interactions and human-human relationships across global societies is necessary.

There will soon be 9 billion people here, far exceeding the capacity of the Earth’s natural resources to sustain everyone and, very likely, pushing ecosystems away from current life supporting configurations.    

As Tariq Banuri has suggested, let’s consider our home Earthland. We only have one.

EJ Wensing

USVI

ejwensing@ecosphere.net

Co-Creating a Sustainable Global Future

Achieving global sustainability and sustainable development refers to the difficult task of meeting fundamental human needs worldwide while preserving the life supporting ecosystems of the planet at the same time. There remains little doubt that we are currently failing at both. A successful transition toward global sustainable development is a complex multi-variable problem that requires both innovation in science and technology and broad-based changes in human behavior. In general terms, required changes include improvement in coupled social-ecological systems, that is, human–nature interactions and human-human relationships across global societies.

The various attempts to motivate people across global societies into actions more equitable with a sustainable future can be seen as currently occurring along three fronts: 1) Direct public education efforts such as through schools, corporations and the social media, 2) through the implementation of governance and policy for sustainable development, and 3) utilizing initiatives that seek to bridge knowledge and innovation in science and technology for sustainability and sustainable development into local action. Successes and difficulties have been experienced with each type of initiative such that collectively they have resulted in a limited amount of action across global societies toward a sustainable future. 

At Ecosphere Net we are currently developing a research based initiative that seeks to link and organize all three approaches into valid and effective collaborative action. Stay tuned to this blog for more details over the next months.

EJ Wensing

US Virgin Islands

ejwensing@ecosphere.net

Where Our Values Lead Us

The American Thanksgiving holiday is this week.

During this holiday many people in the U.S. reflect on what they are thankful for and what they truly value.

Perhaps that’s what all holidays are about in a way, a time for reflection on our values.

At Thanksgiving there are many things to be thankful for.

For instance, how it is possible through our hard work and through the many opportunities available to us to pursue and achieve our values in our privileged lives.

Opportunities that most people in the world don’t have, despite their willingness and ability to work hard for values most people in the world share.

Research has shown that values are fairly universal regardless of cultures or global society.

For example, we all value freedom, peace, human rights and a sustainable world we can all live in.

Those are values that require all of us to work together.

Our role is to relentlessly co-create the opportunities to make our shared values happen.

Our shared values around the world will lead us to a sustainable future.

EJ Wensing, US Virgin Islands

ejwensing@ecosphere.net

Our Presentation at AEA 2009 in Orlando

Ecosphere Net member Mallary Tytel, PhD, MBA, and I will be co-hosting a panel discussion/presentation this upcoming weekend in Orlando, Florida at the American Evaluation Association’s annual meeting.

In our presentation, entitled, “A Systems Approach toward Evaluating the Triple Bottom Line” we consider organizational leadership, organizational development and their role in evolving improvement in a company’s triple bottom line. Our perspective will be from that of a complex adaptive system (CAS).  Using tools and language from complexity science and the field of Human Systems Dynamics, we will focus on opportunities for effecting and measuring change in large and small ways. 

“Triple Bottom Line” refers to the objective of focusing not just on the single bottom line of profit, as has historically been the case, but rather on the more socially responsible – and inherently more profitable over the long-term – bottom line of people, planet and profit. 

Among other topics regarding CAS, we consider systems control v. emergence along supply chains from the local to the global.  Today’s management and organizational development leaders are realizing that the complexity of global supply chains precludes their full control. In fact, it’s often better to let organizational development and leadership emerge rather than to attempt to control it.

The challenge in organizational development is to know how much of each is just right in an evolving situtation. How much to let emerge and how much to control in organizational development; and how to optimize organizational leadership within that balance. That is where evaluation comes in. 

Mallary is interested in exploring self-organization in a CAS and its relationship to improving the triple bottom line.  Her focus is in developing simple tools to assist small- and medium-sized businesses and organizations in developing strategic and tactical approaches to sustainability. 

My own focus is on how to identify the characteristics and skills of the individual leaders that are best suited for this endeavor of working within an organization that sees itself, as more and more rightfully are, as a CAS. 

Through our work in research and developing the evaluation of leadership and organizations within the real world corporate context of complex adaptive systems, Mallary and I hope to help move our world closer to a sustainable global future.

More information on Mallary’s work can be found at her website Healthy Workplaces. 

EJ Wensing

US Virgin Islands

ejwensing@ecosphere.net

Saad Khan – Islamabad, Pakistan EN Member Profile

The world can seem like a big place, with problems that can be overwhelming in complexity, and that seem to further isolate us from each other.

Out of this complexity, however, regardless of religion or culture, age or gender and from within the midst of poverty, social and political unrest, and, often at some amount of personal risk, leaders are emerging.

They are adaptive network leaders, social entrepreneurs, positive deviants, leaders for world benefit, CSR leaders, boundary managers and transition managers.

What do these leaders all have in common?

They are all change agents for a better global future.

A future of sustainability and sustainable development for everyone.

They are in action at the community level, at the global level and busy linking those two together both directly and indirectly.

They are, as one author recently put it, engaged in “intentional behaviors that depart from the norms of a referent group in honorable ways”

They are the levers and drivers of cross-cultural positive individual and social change.

Saad Khan - Islamabad, Pakistan

Ecosphere Net (EN) member Saad Khan is exactly such a leader for positive change.

Saad was an integral part of the highly successful internet-based social science research initiative in Pakistan called Social Bridges that explored the interface between corporate social responsibility and sustainable development at both the domestic and international levels.

More recently he has started a blog called Socially Responsible Pakistan in which he continues to pursue a sustainable future for his country and our world.

Most recently Saad has begun writing for the Huffington Post in which he seeks to provide unique insights into the political and social forces emergent in Pakistan.

A sustainable global future is exactly that. A global future for us all.

One connected through a network of collaborative action communities and driven forward by powerful change leaders like Saad Khan.

EJ Wensing

USVI

ejwensing@ecosphere.net