Foundations for Sustainability Brian D. Fath & Dan Fiscus Professor, Towson University, Maryland, USA Senior Research Scholar, International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis, Austria Visiting Professor, Masaryk University, Brno, Czech Republic Chapter 1: To solve a difficult problem, enlarge it •Your reaction: 1)What is, in your opinion, the main message of Chapter 1? 2) 2)What part was most confusing or most difficult to understand? Evidence of crisis 1)Unprecedented land use change and conversion of natural habitat to human dominated landscapes 2)Rates of species extinctions on par with the five mass extinctions of all time 3)Soil loss and degradation 4)Plateau of food production and increasing vulnerability of the food supply 5)Disruption of the global nitrogen cycle 6)Pressure related to fossil-fuel dependency (including conflicts over pipelines, fracking, and more) 7)Global climate disruption 8) Sea level rise and impacts on coastal areas with dense human population 9)Ocean acidification and related disruption to coral reefs and ecosystems 10) Water pollution and shortages in many areas 11) Persistent and bioaccumulating toxins and solid waste such as plastic and microplastics Environmental Challenges Sea level rise Soil erosion Water pollution emerge from our core way of knowing Toxins and waste a new paradigm Reality of win-win •Switch from a paradigm that see a fragmented and antagonistic relation between life and environment, and humans and environment •To one that recognizes that ecosystem interdependencies promote mutualism and synergism • •The fundamental, net human-environment relationship is mutualism or win-win Applied-theory science 1)Balances and synergizes holism with reductionism; 2)Equally emphasizes internalist and self-referential as well as objectivist perspectives; 3)Is anticipatory and accelerates the pace and process of paradigm shifts; and 4)Is consciously, intentionally, and transparently value-based centered on the value of life. All education is environmental education •By what is included or excluded students are taught that they are part of or apart from ecological systems – disciplines separate people from nature Getting the metaphor right •Switching from a machine view •To ecosystem/web/network view •More on this later Reverence for life •Schweitzer •Leopold •Ulanowicz •Chapter 2 • http://autocww.colorado.edu/%7Etoldy3/E64ContentFiles/VirusesMoneransAndProtists/Protista.jpg A single cell possesses all the necessary aspects to be alive What is life? https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/f9/Loxodonta_africana_-_old_bull_%28Ngorongoro,_20 09%29.jpg A single organism possesses all the necessary aspects to be alive What is life? Mental models and outcomes Real impacts of choice of system boundaries Life Environment Tragedy of the Commons Humans win, environment degrades davinci-man-sepia earth 002 Figures by Dan Fiscus •Inherent in this paradigm, life is separate from environment in mind and action •Once fragmented, it is possible and likely that the value of environment is seen and treated as less than the value of life • •Environment is consumed and degraded as manifest in many symptoms of ecological crisis Art work of Jan Heath, entitled “food chain” Ecosystem is full of Interconnections and Interdependencies •Contrary to the dominant mainstream view, the basis of all current biology and life science education, it now is becoming clear that life is not only (or even primarily) an organismal property. • •In the view actively emerging, life is not centered on or emanating from organisms, nor is it primarily a localized, objectified or material phenomenon. • •Life is inherently relational, distributed, and non-localized A bottom up re-visioning is vital: A new holistic paradigm for life https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/f9/Loxodonta_africana_-_old_bull_%28Ngorongoro,_20 09%29.jpg A single organism possesses all the necessary aspects to be alive http://www.bostonbakesforbreastcancer.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/03/sun.jpg Rain Cloud Clip Art http://www.cityfarmer.info/wp-content/uploads/2008/08/soil.jpg Environmental and ecological interactions http://t0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcRJjKUkHB6gIOngBao_fcpDbgu_RIESE5qVbRcAMNPToWb6yep-bRiTohCA jg Interacting ecological community and its environment is an ecosystem An ecosystem possesses all the necessary aspects to sustain life 1)Life and environment are best understood and modeled as unified as a single “Life–Environment” system. Recursive nature of nature Fiscus D, Fath BD, Goerner S. 2012. E:CO 14(3), 44–88. Bounty of the Commons Humans win, environment improves Three unit models of Life: Organism Ecosystem Environment Artwork by McManus Sustained life depends on death •In an energy economy appropriate to the use of biological energy, all bodies, plant and animal and human, are joined in a kind of energy community. . . . • •They are indissolubly linked in complex patterns of energy exchange. They die into each other’s life, live into each other’s death. (Berry 1977, p. 90) Sustainers and Transcenders Are there environmental limits? Are both sides aware of them? Break barriers Innovate Change themselves/lifestyle Work with nature grid Egalitarian/Fragile Individualist/Durable Fatalist/Capricious Hierarchist/Reasonable within limits group Hermit Cultural Theory Solidarities (Thompson 1997) sustainers transcenders Why sustainers and transcenders need to work together •We need to know how to take the life support with us •NASA has programs to recycle biological and other wastes of astronauts •But not yet to recycle astronauts themselves… Deep truths •Are statements in which the opposite also contains a deep truth • •Complementarity of discrete life and sustained life • •Meadow’s leverage points –Power to transcend paradigms Image result for transcend paradigm What if we are wrong? What if this is all wrong? Key message: Avoid fragmentation object Environment Object is inseparably part of its environment H Input Environment Output Environment This is wrong! Avoid fragmentation •The concept of country, homeland, dwelling place becomes simplified as ‘the environment’—that is, what surrounds us. Once we see our place, our part of the world, as surrounding us, we have already made a profound division between it and ourselves. •We have given up the understanding—dropped it out of our language and so out of our thought—that we and our country create one another, depend on one another, are literally part of one another; •that our land passes in and out of our bodies just as our bodies pass in and out of our land; that as we and our land are part of one another, so all who are living as neighbors here, human and plant and animal, are part of one another, and so cannot possibly flourish alone; •our culture must be our response to our place, our culture and our place are images of each other and inseparably from each other, and so neither can be better than the other. Berry (1977, p. 24). Avoiding the word “solutions”, we look for New patterns and processes that.. 1)Build and aggrade soils and increase fertility; 2)A compromise similar to E.O. Wilson’s “Saving Half the Earth” is reached; 3)Rates of species extinctions in line with historical rates between mass extinctions; 4)Improved food production and resilience, sustainability, affordability, and health of the food supply and its beneficiaries; 5)Stable global nitrogen cycle including an end to dead zones in estuaries and gulfs; 6)Broken addiction with fossil fuels with most energy from renewable sources; 7)Stable global climate similar to the Holocene; no net increase in GHG concentrations or temperature; 8)Sea levels follow natural patterns and more secure coastal areas with human populations; 9)An end to increased ocean acidification and regeneration of coral reefs and ecosystems; 10) Abundant, affordable clean water sufficient for human needs and for wild nature; and 11) Great reduction in environmental toxins/waste; emissions within rates of recycling or decontamination. Naïve or possible? Discussion questions •https://vimeo.com/212281432 • •What does the title of the chapter have to do with the content? • •Why don’t biology textbooks teach about two kinds of life (discrete and sustained)? –Can this be changed? How? • •How to tap into the existing forces of the system to create change? i.e., work alongside transcenders not against them. Discussion questions •A lot of the discussion comes back to scale – short term versus long term or global versus local. How to instill more long term, holistic approaches in a “present-oriented” society? • •We propose that when you avoid fragmentation that: The fundamental, net human-environment relationship is mutualism or win-win –Is there evidence for this? – •Other questions?