Even without climate change there is a water crisis of global significance

The late 20^th and early 21^st century will undoubtedly be seen as the ‘tipping point’ in which human interference in, and demands from, the water cycle transformed it irreversibly. As a recent review of the ‘global water crisis’ points out:

‘For the first time in human history, human use and pollution of freshwater have reached a level where water scarcity will potentially limit food production, ecosystem function, and urban supply in the decades to come’.

These authors conclude that new forms of collective action are required which will probably demand a 'new global water ethic or some other system of incentives if collective action is to be effective'. The actions they point to include changes in dietary patterns, a conservation ethic and cooperative management of shared resources. Recognition of the need for cooperative management is consistent with investing in social learning as a new governance mechanism and as a set of practices that lead to concerted action in complex situations such as that of water management.

The recent example of water shipments for the city of Barcelona is further evidence of the water crisis that is now upon us. The situation is particularly severe in the Mediterranean.

In the state of Victoria, Australia it makes increasing sense to believe that climate change is already happening and that this presents particular challenges for the city of Melbourne. Some of these are described in this March 2007 article. Later in 2007 the Government, seemingly under pressure, decided to act. Their choice of mainly engineering solutions - a desalination plant and a pipeline from the inland Murray Darling Basin - to secure Melbourne's water future have subsequently come under critical scrutiny by the State Auditor General, who said:
'The government had used flawed processes and "inadequate levels of rigour" in preparing the $4.9 billion plan'.

The Victorian plans and the broader set of policies for the Murray Darling Basin have also come in for scrutiny and criticism from Ken Davidson in The Age. He describes the latter as:

'At present the policy seems to be straight out of La La Land. ........It is a policy based on the hope of a miracle disguised by a mirage in the form of the basin authority, which assumes that extra water can be be found by spending billions upgrading irrigation infrastructure to reduce leakage and evaporation.'

In an article entitled: 'The new reality is entirely unrealistic' he shows how little regard he has for the likely effectiveness of policies of water trading based on a water market. See also 'Great water gamble could sink us all' or, for a range of perspectives, this piece by Jo Chandler.

These articles and the critical scrutiny they evoke are all to the good. On a recent study tour to look at the social and institutional aspects of water management in Israel I was struck by the unintended consequences that can arise through committing to an engineered, as opposed to ecological, water future. What was soon apparent in Israel was how complex the organisational and institutional arrangements were for managing water ...even before one considered matters relating to their neighbours. To the average citizen (and probably many who work in the water sector) the situation in Australia is equally complex. That is why we need more open debate to enhance systemic understanding, and, hopefully, practices (and this requires good policies and investment decisions).

Take for example the outcomes of the recent COAG meeting which resolved that stand-off between the Australian States in what was once referred to as the 'Howard $10 billion water plan'. It is good that there has been agreement at last - and that a new spirit of Federalism exists ...for the moment!! Aided no doubt by the extra $1 billion dollars that Victoria will receive from the Commonwealth. But like all deals the devil is in the detail. The Memoranda of Understanding are being written at the moment, in readiness for the next COAG meeting (where the PM and State Premiers meet). My reading of the COAG report or more precisely the 'Murray-Darling Basin Reform Memorandum of Understanding of 26 March 2008, agreed in principle for consultation with stakeholders', raised the following issues :

1. Who will be doing the due diligence assessment on the Victorian Food Bowl Group allocation given the comments of the State Auditor? And how can the amount of money allocated be spent over the time frame indicated?
2. Eight principles for urban water reform are listed - what are they?
3. The report says that priority will always be given to critical human needs. What does the phrase 'critical human needs' mean - and how will it be deployed in practice?
4. There is nothing about organizational and institutional complexity - and the on-going role of CMAs (Catchment Management Authorities) and NHT (National Heritage Trust) money?
5. Point 33 says:
   
All Basin jurisdictions agree to examine the way in which environmental water recovery programs should be managed to ensure they are cost effective and maximise environmental outcomes.'This wording implies that there are objective criteria that can be established - and that the boundaries for cost- effectiveness can be readily established? I would contend that these are emergent properties and that they can only ever be delivered through deliberative processes. As we have articulated in our SLIM work we see sustainability as an emergent property of stakeholder processes.

The so-called Howard plan has been reworked in the recent Australian Federal Budget:

'Rather than choosing to spend money on water saving measures on farms in the first year of the $12 billion plan for rural and urban water projects, the Government will move ahead to buy back farmers' water for the environment. In total there is $3.1 billion earmarked for buying back farmers' water over 10 years.

The Government will also start spending money on fixing up some of the main irrigation routes owned by irrigation companies and state governments. And it's already announced it will spend $1 billion on the Victorian Government's planned pipeline from the Goulbourn Valley to Melbourne. In total there is $5.8 billion earmarked for infrastructure projects across Australia over 10 years.'

It would have been more convincing if the new Government had emulated recent directives in the UK, where ministers have been told to factor in a carbon cost in all decisions relating to policy or investment. It would also be more convincing if energy and water policies could be 'joined -up' - perhaps through Covenants of Mayors.

In the UK a new strategy entitled ‘Future Water’ has recently been released. At least in the UK there is a national perspective.

CIWEM, the professional body of UK water managers has also recently produced a major report looking at water reuse in industry. Among their conclusions are:

'Water reuse should be an integral part of a suite of demand and supply measures that together can bring about more sustainable water management in the UK. To facilitate the uptake of industrial water reuse in the UK, the following issues will be critical:

1. The need for society to develop a greater appreciation of the anthropogenic influence on the water cycle
2. The need to develop fair pricing for all water resources reflecting their full economic and environmental costs and yet the short-term need for pump-priming financial support from government for sustainable water reuse projects
3. The need for a coherent government policy on water reuse (as CIWEM called for in it‟s 2002 Policy Position Statement) coupled with authoritative reclaimed water quality standards that are realistic and protect public health and the environment
4. The need for existing government programmes such as the Enhanced Capital Allowance Water Technology List and Envirowise business advisory service to be expanded to include water reuse technologies
5. The need for more research and development into low-carbon, economic water reuse solutions'

Water management and human intervention in the water cycle is a 'wicked problem'; it calls out for systems thinking and practice capability amongst those charged with developing policies, investments, institutions and stakeholder engagement.

Patterns that connect: new old narratives for contemporary circumstances?

Over the last two months I have had a number of experiences that taken together reveal some interesting questions - for me at least - about our taken-for-granted Western intellectual tradition. They are of interest I suggest for the very reason that our current ways of thinking and acting seem to have put us in a right mess!

My questions emerged from three particular experiences.

At dinner one evening the son of friends related how he was about to begin a politics course. They began, he said, with Plato's 'Republic'. I am not a politics scholar nor have I studied, in any systematic way, ancient history but I had been to the National Archaeological Museum in Athens a few weeks before. In what was an excellent set of displays I had become aware that the classical period of Athens, from which so much of Western Philosophy seems to derive, was only a very brief period. What impressed me more was the archaeological detail from the Cycladian civilisation that had existed in a ring of Island in the Mediterranean from about 3000 to 1100BC. Some of the artwork was deeply moving.

'Centered on the Cyclades islands, the Cycladic Civilisation is split up into three time periods. They are the Early Period (3000 – 2000 BC), the Middle Period (2000 – 1500 BC) and the Late Period (1500 – 1100 BC)'. .......'By the end of the Late Cycladic sequence (ca. 2000 BC) there was essential convergence between Cycladic and Minoan civilization.'

In comparison to the classical period these were 'sustainable civilisations' judged in terms of time. When these civilisations were destroyed, ultimately it is thought, by the massive eruption of Santorini (about 1520 BC) , the world in some ways regressed. Unlike the classical period little survives in written form. This is potent evidence of the power of the pen, so to speak - if one thinks of the power accorded in our intellectual traditions to the classical Greeks, followed by the Romans as well as Hebrew scholars.

So why does politics 101 start with Plato?

Some weeks later I found myself clambering over and amongst the remains of one of the many Nurarghi that can be found in Sardinia. These came from a civilisation, not unlike the Cycladian, which flourished from 1600 to 1000BC. I had seen these on an earlier visit but the patterns that connect were then outside my experience. The art and thus concerns of this civilisation had many features in common with the earlier Cycladians.

I must admit that some of the questions arising from my experiences were not entirely new. Some years before I had read drafts of what has just become 'Origins of Humanness in the Biology of Love' by Humberto Maturana Romesin & Gerda Verden-Zoller (ed. Pille Bunnell) so I was sensitised to these early European civilisations that seemed to flourish without the patriarchy that so typifies the much later Classical Greek and Hebrew traditions. As I understand it though, they suggest that the pre-patriarchal societies had started to wane by about 4500BC.

At this historical moment we need to re-examine and re-invent discourses more in keeping with our circumstances. Being open to different pasts can help in creating different futures. Let's find some different beginnings for politics 101.

Checkout the BBC World Service report on the Amazon Paradox

This excellent BBC report reveals many of the systemic issues that comprise the Amazon Paradox. They include human population growth, human livelihoods, climate impact, food production systems and global trade, technology and the need for new institutional arrangements that can pay for ecosystem services.

It is both difficult and dangerous to extract simple strategies for action from such a complex situation, but there is a need to act quickly. Future actions that seem warranted include:

1. Stopping the massive transfer of plant products to Europe for animal production (e.g. soya beans);
2. Reducing per capita meat consumption and reversing the social expectation that meat production rises with increases in income;
3. Develop new institutional arrangements that allow funds transfer to purchase ecosystem services in places like the Amazon and at the same time secure more sustainable livelihoods for local people;
4. Re-frame the whole conceptual edifice on which international trade talks are built.

New discipline of sustainable economics?

Check out where you stand with regard to the two contrasting paradigms depicted within this site dedicated to the new arena of 'sustainable economics'. As depicted here the current dominant paradigm is depicted with ecosystems subservient to the global economy and contrasted to that advocated by ecological and sustainable economists who see the economy as subservient (sub -systems) of ecosystems.

For some background see this article by Robert Gilman.

Can Senator Penny Wong head Australia in the right direction.....at last?

The whole world knows how irresponsible Australia was in dealing with its carbon footprint during the Howard years. This was also a period when the large coal and resources companies literally ran Australia's climate change policies - hence no ratification of Kyoto until the election of the Rudd Labor Government.

Now these same executives and their lobbyists are beating a path to the door of Penny Wong the minister responsible for developing Australia's climate change policies. She appears to be under intense pressure, but her own experience of trying to connect to Greenpower for her own home, is a telling example of why urgent action is needed to both reform the marketplace (i.e. carbon trading) and to introduce sweeping institutional reforms that favour changes in citizen behaviour and creates a wave of new investment in technologies other than coal - especially oxymoronic 'clean coal'! She needs help like that orchestrated by GetUp to resist and transform!

Some environmental NGOs seem less than helpful in this regard. Take WWF(Australia):

'Bourne [Director of WWF(Australia)] and his organisation have hitched their wagon, along with the Climate Institute, to the coal industry's strategy: that "clean coal" should be a key part of the Government's climate change policy. They are joined by the mining union.

The two environmental groups attracted intense heat from other green organisations for their policy switch earlier this year. The Greens senator Christine Milne believes "clean coal" technology will not be commercially feasible in time. She argues against using taxpayers' money to fund the technology. "It comes down to the 'polluter pays' principle," she says. "And if you believe the polluter should pay, the coal industry is the classic case because for the last 100 years it had made massive profits at the expense of the atmosphere and the climate and now is the time for them to pay for their own research."'

As someone who served on the programme Committee of WWF(UK) for a number of years I find the stance of the Australian office on clean coal to be ill-considered. Their rationale just does not stack up, especially in a country where the resources for new investment are not so great. Resources available to Government deserve to go anywhere but 'clean coal' and associated sequestration technologies.

It is of note that at last the shareholders of Exxon, one of the main funders of climate sceptics, have at last begun to speak out about the company's policies. These include members of the Rockefeller family, descendants of the company's founder. It is to be hoped that these moves by shareholders take effect at Board level. If they do not they will be yet another example of how too many current institutional arrangements stand in the way of transformations in business practices in a climate change world.

Academics speak out at last …but will it change things?

A group of 34 British Academics under the banner of ‘The Weston Manner Group’ have produced a manifesto calling for major changes in how Universities assess their students. It will be a great triumph if their efforts re-orientate current assessment fashions characterised by an ‘obsession with marks and grades to one which puts more emphasis on developing effectiveness for learning, rather than assessment of what sometimes passes as learning. The main points from their ‘Assessment standards: a manifesto for change’ were:

• "Put more emphasis "on assessment for learning rather than assessment of learning";
• Move beyond systems focused on marks and grades towards assessment of the achievement of programme outcomes;
• Recognise that standards may be difficult to articulate explicitly;
• Develop assessment and feedback processes that engage staff and students in dialogue about standards;
• Make discussion of standards between staff and students an integral part of course design and the learning process;
• Establish forums for the development and sharing of standards within and between disciplinary and professional communities".

Sassari, hidden gems amongst an eclectic, sometimes Stalinist, architecture

I have just spent a week in Sassari, the second city of Sardinia. Compared to other Italian cities I have experienced it feels somewhat forgotten. This is typified by all the building activity at the moment in which the city authorities are making a valiant attempt to resurrect the many medieval and 19^th century gems that are scattered through the city. But compared to neighbouring Alghero, or say Montpelier, which has a similar medieval centre, they have been slow starting and there is much still to be done. The Piazza D’ Italia with its fine surround of 18 and 19^th century buildings looks excellent but does not yet seem to have been embraced in the daily living of the citizens – there are no cafes with chairs sprawling out into the piazza, for example.

The flurry of current redevelopment effort seems the first since the 1960s when there was clearly another development boom. At that time the city authorities turned their back on Sassari’s heritage and the legacy of that move is some of the ugliest 1960’s building I have seen anywhere! At times it is almost possible to believe that one is in some former Eastern Block city.

Once away from the haphazard peri-urban development around Sassari the countryside is very scenic; the island is one of the few in the Mediterranean that has more stored surface water than demand. On the other hand there are problems with aquifer depletion and contamination due to poor sewage and household water management.

Sardinia is an attractive place to visit; I was delighted to be invited to be a visiting professor at the University of Sassari.

The International Assessment of Agricultural Science and Technology for Development (IAASTD) has reported ....and exposed significant systemic issues

I drew attention to the activities of IAASTD in a posting last year. The panel recently finalised its report in Johannesburg, but not before a walk-out by representatives of the biotechnology industries. Two pieces in New Scientist present the perspectives of the main competing interest groups .

John Vidal in the Guardian provides a good summary of the main outcomes of the assessment:

'Bio-energy. The report says biofuels compete for land and water with food crops and are inefficient. They can cause deforestation and damage soils and water.

Biotechnology. The use of GM crops, where the technology is not contained, is contentious, the UN says. Data on some crops indicate highly variable yield gains in some places and declines in others.

Climate change. While modest temperature rises may increase food yields in some areas, a general warming risks damaging all regions of the globe. There will be serious potential for conflict over habitable land.

Trade and markets. Subsidies distort the use of resources and benefit industrialised nations at the expense of developing countries.'

It is significant that the US, UK, Australia and Canada have not yet endorsed the report because it seems 'the authors said GM technology was not a quick fix to feed the world's poor and argued that growing biofuel crops for automobiles threatened to increase worldwide malnutrition'.

Inconcievably Australian authorities are reported as saying 'they have not signed off on a new global vision for agriculture because it focuses too much on economics and not enough on biotechnology'.

Great article about working across borders to manage water

In an article entitled 'Eco-warrior for peace' Jewel Topsfield has written an absorbing portrait of someone who breaks the stereotypes associated with the complexities of the Middle East. This is an inspiring case of water management and the much needed collaboration and cooperation between Jordan, the Palestinian territories and Israel.

Geoffrey Vickers Archives now available on-line

A new on-line catalogue of the Geoffrey Vickers papers is now available from the OU Archive web pages.

The catalogue is also available from the Archives Hub website. The Archives Hub is a national gateway to descriptions of archives within UK universities and colleges. As part of the Hub, the Vickers catalogue is now cross-searchable with hundreds of other collections.

For further information or to arrange a visit to consult the Geoffrey Vickers collection, contact Ruth Cammies, the Open University Archivist, at library-archive@open.ac.uk or on +44 1908 653378.

To learn more about Vicker's scholarship see this special edition of Systems Research & Behavioral Science or look at the OU/BBC website 'Systems practice: managing complexity'.

Explore your political compass

This site is designed to break out of the trap in our language and thinking associated with 'the old one-dimensional categories of 'right' and 'left', established for the seating arrangement of the French National Assembly of 1789'. The site's authors argue that these categories ' are overly simplistic for today's complex political landscape'.

I found this exercise revealing. Do systems thinkers, I wonder, tend to occupy a particular place on the grid? I suspect not - but this exercise in itself might go along way to explain some of the divisions within the so-called systems community!

Professor of Systems Sciences, The Faculty of Environmental, Regional and Educational Sciences, University of Graz, Austria

Applications for this post close on 21st April 2008. It is good to see new Chairs in Systems being advertised.

Research and teaching duties include:

Coordination and direction of activities in research and teaching related to systems sciences, in particular of those activities related to the interdisciplinary study programme in environmental systems sciences. This programme is unique in Austria.

Particular focus needs to be placed on the following areas of competence:

(a) Strong ability to integrate the methods and subject areas of a very diverse range of disciplines, in particular those of the social, natural, and environmental sciences. This includes the ability to break out of and overcome individual disciplinary paradigms.

(b) Internationally recognized research and the ability to initiate applied research based on interdisciplinary systems sciences.

(c) Advanced ability to deal with and, in research and teaching, apply methods from a wide spectrum of systems science methods.

(d) Application of research guided teaching (in German and English) in a study programme which is popular among students.

Changing some boundary conditions seems to offer possibilities on an intractable issue

The means to provide effective education to Australian Aboriginal children in an environment of community safety has been a long-term intractable problem. Two innovations which broaden the boundary around community - a shared residential facility with some parental access and an education that promotes aboriginal 'ways of being' seem to offer some new hope.

Now Indigenous Affairs Minister Jenny Macklin is being congratulated on 'developing dormitory-style accommodation attached to some remote community schools and a residential facility at Weipa, near Cape York. It is claimed that her:

'observation that there is growing support for children to go to school outside of communities, and an understanding that there is "a world of difference" between removing children under past practices and giving them better opportunities in boarding colleges and hostels is soundly based'.

'Residential education is not the solution, and should not be used, as was pointed out at the September roundtable, to "let governments off the hook" of their responsibility to provide P-12 schooling in remote communities. For many indigenous young people, however, and in the short term, it is the only way to access quality education in a safe, supportive environment.

At the same time, boarding school education must be provided in the context of celebrating Aboriginality (encouraging pride, banishing shame) and promoting Aboriginal culture and ways of being.'

The beauty of April snow is welcome relief from mismatch between rhetoric and reality of UK government.

Having been back in the UK all of four weeks it has not taken me long to experience the mismatch between what is espoused by the UK government - especially with respect to climate change mitigation and adaptation - and what it does. The budget was a case in point. The continuing commitment to airport expansion at Heathrow (despite the recent systemic failures associated with the opening of Terminal 5) is another example. Targets are still rampant - and their distorting effects. Small incidents on the motorways create gridlock - and the train system is fragile (the west coast line will close on weekends for much of the summer).

But the landscape this morning lifted my spirits.

Well worth a read - 198 reasons why we're in a mess

Simon Caulkin has published another column that is well worth a read. See it via John Naughton's blog.

The National Programme for IT: Agitation by Computing and Systems academics justified

The work of my colleagues who have been spearheading the activities of the original group of 24 (now sadly 23) academics who wrote a public letter calling for an independent inquiry into the NHS National Programme for IT (NPfIT; see my earlier postings on this matter) seems justified in the light of recent disclosures by the NHS Chief Executive. Without pressure in the face of the madness - sustained from a number of sources - it is perhaps unlikely that this about face would have occurred, except that time continued to reveal the flaws inherent in the original conception.

"NHS chief executive David Nicholson says the NHS IT programme had become too centralised to support the move to a health service based on plurality and far more locally-based decision making by clinicians and patients. Speaking at the World Healthcare Congress in Berlin on
Monday Nicholson explained why the introuduction of the NHS National Programme for IT (NPfIT) Local Ownership Programme had become necessary to support the future structure and achieve a far more integrated and devolved health service, in which services are "wrapped around patients". Nicholson said: "It felt we'd reached a position where the balance was not in the right place". The challenge he said was extremely difficult, "How does a very central system
adapt to becoming a very local one." The NHS chief executive said that as a result of listening to the views of clinicians and patients the NHS IT programme was being reviewed and reshaped. "We are working through that now." . . . Despite difficulties and changes to the programme now underway, Nicholson said the health service's IT programme had achieved significant benefit, already saved 400 lives. It also highlighted efficiency savings saying a quarter of a million paper prescriptions had so far been eliminated. "We are already seeing real benefits and real problems as well."

Event's of the last weeks make a sham of the British Government's commitments to climate change mitigation.....unless

Has the British Government the courage to say no to the third runway at Heathrow? I suspect not. Explore the reasons why. Or go to George Monbiot's blog for further disturbing evidence in that he highlights (i) how much Brown is ignoring Stern's main recommendations; (ii) how conceptually flawed Stern's analysis was - in the Ackoffian sense his methodology is a further commitment to doing the wrong thing righter, rather than doing the right thing!

The case study in our course, 'Environmental Decision Making. A Systems Approach' demonstrates why airport expansion in the South East of England does not exemplify systemic environmental decision making! It also highlights how government decision making gives rise to the conditions for systemic failure.

The Australian Public Service Commission notes in a paper entitled:

Tackling Wicked Problems : A Public Policy Perspective

‘It is important, as a first step, that wicked problems be recognised as such. Successfully tackling wicked problems requires a broad recognition and understanding, including from governments and Ministers, that there are no quick fixes and simple solutions.'

Are ministers in the UK heeding this advice? It remains to be seen if the decision making can be claimed to be 'environmental decision making, yet alone systemic environmental decision making!!!

No salmon fishing in Yemen!.......

But the architecture and the souk of Sana'a are among the most fascinating I have encountered. Sana'a has to be one of the best preserved medieval cities in the world.

Parts of Yemen quite literally take your breath away! I was pleased to not have to test my stamina at over 2,500 meters a.s.l. on my visit to Thulla - I was already breathless when we arrived at the gate house only to find that the gatekeeper had gone to Sana'a for the day.

See examples of the excellent, but challenging work being done by my hosts in Yemen on the Socotra and Care Yemen web sites.