Postcard from China 3

Our Australian Water Culture Delegation was sponsored by the Australia-China Council, Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, Australia, through the project Linking Australia and China - a "Bridge of Water Culture". The hosting organizations were the Institute of Geographic Sciences and Natural Resources Research, Chinese Academy of Sciences (IGSNRR), the China Three Gorges Corporation (CTGPC) and the Shaanxi Normal University in Xi'an.  We had a packed but informative schedule. Our hosts received us with great warmth and hospitality at each venue.

The Three Gorges Dam is a mammoth undertaking and a major feat of engineering. It is the largest dam of its type in the world.  The Yangtze River, which once flowed at an average depth of 10m, now stands at 135 m at the dam wall.  The water backs up 650km to the city of Chongqing, one of the four provincial level cities in China (with Beijing, Tianjin and Shanghai). As is well known it is also highly controversial.  We were shown good evidence of significant flood control, at least 10 times in the period 2004-10, with significant downstream flooding averted particularly in 2010. 

The dam contains 33 turbines producing hydro-power.  The data for CO2 emission reductions  and tonnes of coal saved are impressive as are enhanced river transport efficiencies.  In other words the dam is clearly delivering certain social and economic benefits. Having met Academican Lu Youmei, one of the driving forces behind the dam, and the first CEO of CTGPC, I can appreciate that the dam was the outcome of a long political process within the Party.  When modernisation won out the dam was inevitable; it is symbolic of China's chosen pathway over the last 30 years. That said, Lu Youmei and current Vice Chairman Fan Qixiang, clearly appreciate the range of systemic difficulties that lay ahead.  I will turn to some of these in a moment.  What is not clear however, is whether having developed world's best expertise in what they do, CTGPC will follow the path of another engineering company that started by building dams, namely the Australian Snowy Mountains Engineering Corporation (SMEC).  Experience suggests that such companies actively pursue opportunities to conserve and further develop their existing expertise. They move from the work of building a system in response to a problem to looking for a problem to retain the system they have built! CTGPC is currently constructing further dams on the Jinsha River, an upstream tributary of the Yangtze.  They aim to have four new dams completed in 10 years. These will have double the current power generating capacity of the Three Gorges Dam. Around 300,000 people will be affected - many fewer than the 1.2-3 million affected by the Three Gorges Project.  Over lunch I learned that CTGPC were in discussions in over 30 countries about possible hydro opportunities.  I expect these include countries along the Mekong and in Burma.

On a cruise up the river from the dam some of the issues that confront CTGPC, as managers of the dam, became apparent.  The rise in water levels has, in places, undermined the steep walls of the valley.  We saw work actively trying to avoid landslips, and thus added siltation. After impoundment of water a number of seismic events were triggered.  There is substantial investment in seismic monitoring.  Water qualty is also clearly an issue.  A colleague counted hundreds of floating shoes and thongs on our relatively short boat journey.  But it is probably what cannot be seen that is more of a worry.  It was reported that water quality was generally level 2 or 3, but I failed to find out what this really meant.

Water quality is a much wider problem than that in the Three Gorges Dam.  In fact, along with water availability, it is probably the main environmental problem in China today.  The China Daily of October 15-16 reports that:
"China has only a quarter of the world's average in terms of fresh water resources, ranking 110th in the world. Among 600 Chinese cities, more than 400 suffer from an insufficiency of water, 110 seriously, including some along the Yangtze River, the country's longest river.  Worse the decades-long rapid economic growth means the country's limited water resources are increasingly threatened by pollution. Statistics show that more than 70 percent of China's rivers and 60 percent of its underground water resources are polluted to different degrees."

The complexities of the water issues facing China can be gleaned from the issues now facing CTGPC. These include the extensive diffuse pollution coming from agriculture (nitrogen and phosphorus mainly), sewage from the many upstream cities, towns and villages and of course, industrial pollution and acid rain.  Given the size of the overall river system upstream from the dam this is a massive issue with many siloed ministries involved, meaning that concerted action amongst the many stakeholders is difficult to achieve.  Algal blooms have increased in the dams. We heard little about other organisms and invertebrates in the river system other than some substantial breeding and preservation actions.  There is a Yangtze River Commission which in theory has oversight but in our various conversations the governance of rivers consistently emerged as a major issue - not only within river basins but between river basins. Clearly more systemic and adapative water governance is needed as CTGPC are finding - they now have to deal with 5-6 other "owners" of upstream dams and power generators i.e., they are not the sole provider on the Yangtze.

Having seen on my last visit the massive south-north canal that transfers water from the wetter south to the drier north, including Beijing, I was surprised to discover that it is not linked to the Three Gorges Dam, but another relatively minor tributary of the Yangtze which enters downstream of the dam (if there is any water left, that is!). China's second most important river, the Yellow River, only has one twentieth of the the water resources of the Yangtze.  Alarmingly much of the water in the Yellow and Hai River (further north) is used before they get to the sea i.e., current levels of demand are not sustainable.  Part of  China's predicament was explained by Lu Youmei.  The high rainfall period in the Yangtze is in the summer, and this is also the time of maximum flood risk - currently 950 million cubic m of run-off enters the sea from the Yangtze.  Unfortunatly, some view this as lost water!   At the moment, and for the forseeable future, there is unlikely to be enough storage capacity to save more water in the period of excess whilst at the same time fulfill flood mitigation responsibilities.  The corollary to this is that in winter, flows are low and power generation is generally well below peak capacity.  It is also dangerous for the Yangtze river itself, and associated river traffic, to transfer too much water in winter.  For example, the Yangtze currently has a very low flow so only 13 turbines were operating during our visit. 

Another major problem in China is groundwater depletion as well as contamination.  I was well aware of this from our prevous research visit spent on the North China Plain in Hebei Province around Lake Baiyangdian. In fact the long term scenario for water in this vital breadbasket of China is very worrying. A telling example of the issue became apparent in our visit to Xi'an.  One of the cultural and thus tourist landmarks is the Big Wild Goose Pagoda.  During our visit the guide advised us against climbing it as it had begun to lean, much as the Leaning Tower of Pisa, because of the falling water table under the city of Xi'an.  I hope the spectacular 'dancing water fountains', newly installed nearby, were not exacerbating the problem as they were clearly a great civic amenity. 

In the 12th Five Year Plan period (2011-15) China has vowed to address the water issues.  The report in the China Daily cited earlier describes this as a 'determination to bring the country's fast gowing economy onto a more sustainable and greener track'.  The governament is demanding that 'water usage for every 10,000 yuan-worth [of] GDP be reduced 50 percent by 2020 from the 2008 level and an additional 40 percent after 2020.'  In this same article Beijing is held up as an example that others might follow: 'Coupled with a considerable decline in energy intensity, the water consumption for every 10,000 yuan of GDP in the capital has declined considerably [how is not specified], decreasing to 24.9 cubic meters in 2010 from 49.5 cubic meters in 2005.'  These are policy developments that should be welcomed, but are they enough?  How will they be enforced?   The same article ends by stating that: ' To ensure the 100 percent realization of the national energy and water saving targets mapped out, the country should hold accountable officials whose regions fail to attain these targets and lay down a set of strict punishment measures'!  In future provinces that use more water than they are allocated will be penalised. 

The policy response by China is ambitious, but is it too much a captive of  concepts such as eco-efficieny? Improving the environmental performance of a single car ultimately achieves little if the rate in the overall growth of cars means that all gains per car are overwhelmed by gross outputs.  The same arguments can be applied to the metric of water savings per unit of GDP.  Already China appears to be approaching CO2 outputs per capita similar to the main developing countries.  Now is not the time for reform - change that makes the wrong strategy more efficient - rather it is time for transformation - invention that creates the right thing to do in the circumstances.

Postcard from China 2

One of the most inescapable features of this visit for me was the air pollution. Not only was it in Beijing with its 21 million people but also in Chengdu (14 million), and to a lesser extent Xi'an (7 million).  However the most disturbing experience was at the Three Gorges Dam and in the Yangtze River Valley upstream.  It also had its amusing side.  We were taken to the main viewing platform for the dam wall, but like all tourists that day there was no wall to be seen. The smog was too thick.  As ever technology saved us!  We left with an excellent photo of ourselves with the dam wall clearly visible in the background all thanks to photoshop (or some such similar program)! 

In the Global Times of the 3rd October a report entitled 'gloomy outlook for pollution targets' gives some background to what we were experiencing.  According to the article the first six months of this year had seen a 6.17% rise in nitrogen oxides released into the atmosphere compared with the previous year.  The official target is for a 1.5 percent reduction in 2011!  Of course this is an average - how was it calculated?  The article does not make that clear, but the rise is likely to have been much, much higher in some places.  As the article says "nitrogen emissions, which are a major cause of acid rain and smog, are harmful to the human respiratory system and can cause cardiovascular disease." 

Before leaving for China I had been writing up some of the history of my own family in Hackney and Bethnal Green, now suburbs of London.   London was the first mega city. It had major pollution problems which began in the 1830s and 1840s as industrialisation progressed.  The effects of pollution was probably one of the reasons my ancestors emigrated to Australia.  As we travelled through China I could not help but wonder when and how the Chinese will turn the corner on air pollution in the face of ever growing cities, increasing car numbers, industrial development and frequent inversion layers over cities.

A timely paper in the journal Ecological Economics makes apparent the situation in London that my ancestors had encountered. This figure (courtesy of David Pannell and the author) shows that London did not start to turn the corner, to reduce pollution, till about 1900.  There was an almost 80 year period before things started to get better. As the graph shows incidence of deaths due to bronchitis peaked at about the same time as pollution (total suspended particles).  The challenge for China is to devise strategies to turn the corner.  Nitrogen oxides come mainly from cars and coal-fired thermal power plants.  Apparently nitrogen oxides now excede sulfur dioxide as the major pollutant of air, and thus of acid rain.  This is a classic systemic problem as nitrogen oxide and ammonia (which comes mainly from animal waste and garbage) accumulate in the water which, according to the article 'is the most serious pollution problem in China'.

I cannot help but consider what might have happened for China, and the rest of the world, had Deng Xiaoping, the reformer who led China towards a market-based economy, and his contemporaries not bought in to the failing western economic model.  The environmental externalities of car-based economic development - in terms of pollution, congestion and the transformation of identity (consumerism and mobility) - were already well known when reforms began. This is not to say that China should have remained static - but another pathway was already apparent, and if pursued may have left us all in a better position.  That said it may be that China will pull something out of the hat and follow the trajectory achieved by London over a century ago.  If so we will all benefit.  At the moment I am not optimistic.

There have of course been both substantial critiques as well as champions of China's chosen pathway. Writing in 1997 Joshua Muldavin analyzed environmental degradation in rural China as structurally embedded in China's rapid economic growth in the post-Mao era. He wrote:

"A critical assessment of the Chinese hybrid economy challenges standard views of the reforms. The overall environmental problems of state socialist agriculture in China have been aggravated following the agrarian reforms of the current regime. Rather than mitigating negative trends, marketization and privatization have brought new, qualitatively different, environmental problems. Resource decline and its attendant social problems are not limited to aspects of transitional economy but are a fundamental part of the new hybrid system."

There are still about 860 million rural inhabitants of China.  What their fate is to be is uncertain.

In a remarkably frank interview in the same issue of Global Times, Huang Nbo, a business tycoon (China's 161st richest man) who has just purchased 300 square km of Iceland (and former official in the Publicity Department of the Communist Party of  China Central Committee), comments on business ethics and the current pathway. He said:

 " I think moral ambiguity is overwhelming...   ...I have a sense of guilt accumulated over the years over the inevitable immorality in business transactions, including the damage we cause to the environment and forcing people out of their homes to give way for real estate development.  We achieved development, but it was done through brutal means."

I felt pensive as I returned to Australia  - then saddened when flying into Tullamarine to be greeted by an inversion layer and a discernable smog haze over Melbourne.  Members of the Committee for Melbourne who advocate for a city of 10 million people ought to travel to China and learn from the situation there, before it is too late.

Postcard from China 1

As I write I am homeward bound having just finished a short study tour in China as part of an “Australian Water Culture Delegation” organised by the Australia China Centre on Water Resources Research (ACCWRR).  In this series of Postcards I reflect on various experiences and thoughts during the 9-day trip.  

Beijing

(i)                Back in Beijing for the second time.  It was the end of the National Holiday week and Tiananmen Square was well decorated with many local tourists on hand.  The amount of smog was my first impression – worse then in an earlier visit in May-June.  The air quality, as I outline below, was a recurring theme.  As a group of seven we became amiable fellow delegates.

(ii)              Apparently Mao’s portrait is renewed every holiday – if so we saw the fresh one!!

(iii)           The imperial Palace was as impressive as my first visit. The crowds interfered with the stronger virtual images I continue to hold of previous emperors and their courts gained from various movies. I expect it to be my last visit to the palace. 

 (iv)          As with last time a visit to the Lindang Hutung was a highlight. A short guided tour this time made it all the more interesting. It seems tragic to me that so much of the old has been lost from around central Beijing.

 (v)             An evening walk to the Birdsnest stadium and parts of the Olympic village reacquainted me with the creativity of the architecture.  The striking lighting of the key buildings created an eerie effect in the smog.  I sensed the complex was underused and undergoing further (re)development. Someone later told me it was.  The main activity was a rock band launch of the new Audi car!!  A celebration of consumerism! 

(vi)            Free hotel internet (all week) is a great boon.  Although I was unable to load this Blog all week though – no problems with the BBC or ABC.

 (vii)         A smoggy drive to the Great Wall on Sunday morning. My first visit. Now I have seen it and walked on it.  I pity the builders and soldiers who have manned it over the centuries.  I did not walk far – on the steep climb part I opted for caution, not wanting to expose my lungs to dragging in lots of smoggy air! As with most of our visit there were large numbers of local tourists – more than outsiders.

Simon Caulkin - insightful as ever

After his departure from the Observer/Guardian it took a little while for Simon to get back into what he does best: insightful, systemic journalism which unpacks the failures and successes of  management actions.  He now has a new website - you can subscribe for the latest aricles (highly recommended) or wait a while until they move into the public domain.  Below are links to some of his recent pieces.  For anyone interested in John Seddon's work (see my last post) I recommend the article 'Police Intelligence'.


Saving capitalism from itself   (This article is only available at present to paid-up members, as is)

It's management, stupid

Other recent articles include

Trust in organisations: who stole it, how can we get it back?

Recovery: you can't get there from here

The rules of power

Police intelligence

Suicide bomb at Wapping: family mansion in flames

John Seddon in Oz

I have made earlier postings about John Seddon's work   He is scheduled to be in Sydney and then Melbourne at the end of the month.  I recommend attendance if you can make it.   This column by Simon Caulkin is worth looking at in its own right as well as for getting a feel for the sort of change that Seddon and his colleagues facilitate.

Lessons from the front line: What works and what doesn’t in UK public sector reform | Professor John Seddon 

Wednesday 31 August, 3pm to 5pm (followed by wine and canapés)
Dixon Room, State Library of NSW, Shakespeare Place Sydney (Mitchell Wing entrance)

Cost: $22 (NSW IPAA members) or $44 (non-members), includes canapés and drinks following the presentation.
RSVP here. Limited places so register now This event is being organised by CPD and IPPA, registrations are being coordinated by IPPA

Join the Centre for Policy Development & the Institute of Public Administration Australia (NSW) for a seminar with Professor John Seddon, providing insights into the UK government’s radical reforms of the public sector – with some lessons for Australia. Read John’s thoughts on Big Society here.


Through the Blair years John Seddon gained a reputation as a leading critic of public sector reform. His 2008 book, Systems Thinking in the Public Sector: the failure of the reform regime… and a manifesto for a better way, was read by Cameron’s policy team while in opposition and was thought to be ‘going too far’; but in some ways Cameron’s new coalition government has gone further. The target-setting regime is over and the Audit Commission is to close. On other fronts, Seddon remains a strident and informed voice against UK government policy, arguing that ministers seek policy-based evidence rather than evidence-based policy.

Seddon is as vociferous about what works. Those who follow his ideas achieve performance improvements that represent economic benchmarks. In this unique seminar John Seddon will talk about what works, what doesn’t work and he will offer up some clear advice for Australia:

• Why change should start with studying (no plan required)
• How studying can reveal counter-intuitive truths (e.g. managing costs drives costs up)
• How managing value drives costs out of public services while improving service delivery
• How conventional approaches to sharing services lead to massive and costly failure
• Why economy of scale is a myth
• Why targets and inspection/regulation make performance worse
• Three steps to sharing services that are guaranteed to maximise efficiency and improve service
• How to get knowledge; studying service organisations as systems, the prerequisite to effective and profound improvement
• The role of central government; constructive things to do and things to avoid
• An evidence-based view of current UK government initiatives, including the Big Society.

The seminar is being presented as part of CPD’s Public Service Research Program. To  download “The State of the Australian Public Service: An alternative report”, visit the program webpage. Be sure to sign up to our email list here [link] to get the latest updates.

About Professor John Seddon

John has received numerous academic awards for his contribution to management thinking. Originally an occupational psychologist, John was persuaded by Deming’s obvious truth, that we, mankind, invented management and we can change it. John has developed methods to help managers of service organisations change from a conventional command-and-control design to a systems design.

The State of the Australian Public Service: An Alternative Report

 
Today the Centre for Policy Development released The State of the Australian Public Service: An Alternative Report, as part of its Public Service program.

The report’s key findings include:

• a widening gap between the anti-public servant rhetoric of some politicians and commentators and the positive attitudes held by Australian citizens about public servants and the services they deliver and
• a decline in the ratio of public servants per capita in contrast to claims of public service ‘bloating’.

Shadow Treasurer Joe Hockey has declared the Coalition’s plans to slash public spending and axe at least 12,000 public servants’ jobs if they gain government at the next election in a rush to bring the budget to surplus. In recent days it has been revealed the Coalition plans to cut public spending by $70 billion, shutting down entire government departments.

The Australian Public Service (APS) employs approximately 160,000 people across 133 agencies, making it one of our largest employers and most significant investments. The staffing of the APS generates heated debate in the media as well as in Parliament. Views are polarised. But what do we really know about the APS? And does much of the rhetoric match up to the reality?

The State of the Australian Public Service analyses 20 years of opinion research on  the public service. The report finds evidence of a disconnect between frequent public service ‘bashing’ by politicians and commentators and generally positive views of the public sector in the general community.

Most Australians are willing to forego income to pay for public services. There’s a strong preference for services to be provided by the public sector: twice as many people support public over private provision of health and education for example.
Our research into long term staffing trends also contradicts the portrayal by some politicians and media commentators of a public sector that is ‘bloated’.

 “To return the ratio of APS staff to Australian citizens to 1991 levels would require increasing APS staffing to approximately 214,000, an increase of approximately 50,000 staff.”

Unless the community expects less of the public service or the APS is able to deliver its services with significantly fewer employees, the argument that we have a ‘bloated’ public service is baseless.
The report also finds that the APS is an increasingly top-heavy workforce that does not reflect the diversity of the Australian community, with Indigenous Australians and people with a disability under-represented, and women under-represented in the senior ranks.

Dr James Whelan, the report’s author and Director of CPD’s Public Service Program said, “British Prime Minister David Cameron’s ‘Big Society’ vision entails cutting the public sector budget by ₤80 billion, freezing wages and calling for tenders for most services. At a time when the public service is under attack in the UK, Canada, New Zealand and the US, Australian politicians who are tempted to follow suit should be aware of Australian voters’ strong support for the public sector.”

CPD’s  The State of the Australian Public Service offers an accessible handbook of all you need to know about attitudes toward the public service and staffing trends.

Climate skeptics and white conservative men

I recommend the articles on this site as an antidote to the climate skepticism being fostered by News International (see today's Herald Sun) and Australia's howler-in chief.

In particular take a look at the article by David Roberts called:"Stuff white people like: denying climate change". Here is an extract:

"There's a study running soon in the journal Global Environmental Change called "Cool dudes: The denial of climate change among conservative white males in the United States." It analyzes poll and survey data from the last 10 years and finds that ... are you sitting down? ... conservative white men are far more likely to deny the threat of climate change than other people.

OK, that's no surprise to anyone who's been awake over the last decade. But the paper goes beyond that to put forward some theories about why conservative white men (CWM) are so loathe to accept climate change. The explanation is some mix of the following, all of which overlap in various ways:

• First there's the "white male effect" -- generally speaking, white males are less concerned with a variety of risks. This probably has to do with the fact that they are less exposed to risk than other demographics, what with running things and all.
• Then, as Chris Mooney notes, there's the "social dominance orientation" of conservatives, who see social life as following the law of the jungle. One's choice is to dominate or be dominated; that is the natural order of things. Such folk are leery of climate change solutions premised on fairness or egalitarianism.
• Then there are the well-understood "system-justifying tendencies" of conservatives. The authors explain that conservatives ...
• ... strongly display tendencies to justify and defend the current social and economic system. Conservatives dislike change and uncertainty and attempt to simplify complexity. Further, conservative white males have disproportionately occupied positions of power within our economic system. Given the expansive challenge that climate change poses to the industrial capitalist economic system, it should not be surprising that conservative white males' strong system-justifying attitudes would be triggered to deny climate change."

I also recommend his follow up article: "How do you solve a problem like conservative white men?"  There are some good arguments here  which resonate with my own view that we have gotten ourselves into the wrong conversation.  It is not that climate change is not important it is just that it is the wrong framing of the issue.  We needs conversations of hope and transformation as well as ones that embrace the complexity of our situation - the intersections of loss of biodiversity, resource, particularly oil depletion, income inequality, urban congestion and city dysfunction and post carbon societies.

To Mr. and Mrs David Cameron from Nathaniel Tapley

Much has been written on the riots in Britain and no doubt there will be many theses produced in the coming few years.  Having spent May to July in Europe, much of it in England, I must admit to not being surprised that the riots have occurred, deplorable though all such acts are.   In the many pages of analysis look for those that address the systemic factors that  have given rise to the riots but perhaps more importantly look to the future and ask: starting from here how is the situation to be dealt with systemically?

For me one key issue to look at is the English schooling system and the very low percentage of students who go on to A levels.  In some ways aspects of  the schooling system are designed to  produce alienation - and this has nothing to do with teachers and the many well intentioned people who contribute to schooling.  It is a long-standing structural problem in my view - yet to be fully overcome despite recent innovations.

But this is only one aspect of a complex situation.  Natt Tapley points to another important facet - that is the role models that leaders provide, and in this respect his letter is a beauty. Nothing alienates more than those who cannot walk the talk - it is bad enough when those who do not know that that is what they do prognosticate but even worse when this behaviour is pursued knowingly.

REDD-plus at the crossroads in Papua New Guinea

Some of the politics and institutional complexity around REDD schemes are well analysed in this article by Colin Filer of ANU. The potential for systemic failure seems significant. As in so many other contexts Colin's conclusion that: "Programme and donors grow increasingly despondent about the prospects for effective institutional reform" highlights the domain in which so much systemic failure rests.

The Financial Crisis and the Systemic Failure of Academic Economics

A paper I have just been sent by a colleague seems to be highly germane and worth a read. Systemic failure indeed! It comes from a "one week of intense discussions within the working group on ‘Modeling of Financial Markets’ at the 98th Dahlem Workshop, 2008."  The abstract reads:

"The economics profession appears to have been unaware of the long build-up to the current worldwide financial crisis and to have significantly underestimated its dimensions once it started to unfold. In our view, this lack of understanding is due to a misallocation of research efforts in economics. We trace the deeper roots of this failure to the profession’s insistence on constructing models that, by design, disregard the key elements driving outcomes in real-world markets. The economics profession has failed in communicating the limitations, weaknesses, and even dangers of its preferred models to the public. This state of affairs makes clear the need for a major reorientation of focus in the research economists undertake, as well as for the establishment of an ethical code that would ask economists to understand and communicate the limitations and potential misuses of their models."

The corresponding author is from the University of Kiel, Department of Economics, Olshausenstraße 40 D-24118 Kiel. 

Scenarios for climate change adaptation

The research team working on the VCCCAR Scenarios for Climate Adaptation project have released the final set of resources developed during this project.

The aim of the Scenarios for Climate Adaptation project has been to strengthen knowledge about the most effective ways to develop and use scenario based strategies to improve climate change adaptation decision making. We have drawn on recent Victorian and Australian experience to produce a set of resources – including both a Guidebook for Practitioners and a Full Report – for Victorians involved in policy-making, engagement and planning for adaptation to climate change.

The following key project resources are available:

·         Scenarios for Climate Adaptation – Guidebook for Practitioners

·         Scenarios for Climate Adaptation – Policy Brief

·         Scenarios for Climate Adaptation – Full Report: Executive Summary

These resources as well  as the Scenarios for Climate Adaptation – Full Report and a range of additional project papers and materials are available on the project homepage.

Lacunae in the body politic

Barbara Kingsolver's novel  'The Lacuna' is a story, even metaphor, for our times.  It brings vividly to attention a complex web of injustices, wrong turns taken, pettinesses and the creation of institutions in our governance that drives out compassion, the legitmacy of others. These are the lacunae of our times. Given this interpretation it seems to me that Maureen Corrigan's review misses the point.

The basic storyline can be gleaned from this excellent review.  I concur with Schillinger's observation that:

'“The Lacuna” can be enjoyed sheerly for the music of its passages on nature, archaeology, food and friendship; or for its portraits of real and invented people; or for its harmonious choir of voices. But the fuller value of Kingsolver’s novel lies in its call to conscience and connection.'

There are some wonderful lines:

p.207 " "But newspapers have a duty to truth," Van said.  Lev clicked his tongue. "They tell the truth only as the exception.  Zola wrote that the mendacity of the press could be divided into two groups: the yellow press lies every day without hesitating. But others, like the Times, speak the truth on all inconsequential occasions, so they can deceive the public with the requisite authority when it becomes necessary". 

p.321 ""But people desire fair governmant. You say that constantly."   "They want to believe in heroes, also. And villains. Especially when very frightened.  It's less taxing than the truth.""

p.429 "Politics here now resemble a pillow fight. Lacking the unifying slogan (Win the War), our opposing parties sling absurd pronouncements back and forth, which everyone pretends carry real weight. How the feathers fly.  The newsmen leap on anything, though its all on the order of "Four out of five shoppers know this is the better dill pickle", assertions that can't be proven but sway opinion. "Dance for the crowd" is the new order, with newsmen leading the politicians like bears on the leash. Real convictions would be a hindrance.  The radio is at the root of the evil, their rule is: No silence, ever.  When anything happens, the commentator has to speak without a moment's pause for gathering wisdom.  Falsehood and inanity are preferable to silence.  You can't imagine the effect of this.  The talkers rising above the thinkers."

p.633 "Universal declaration of rights of the howlers:

Article 1: All human beings are endowed with the god-given right to make firewood from the fallen tree.
Article 2: Any tree will do. If it is tall, it should be cut down.  The quality of the wood is no matter, the tree asked for it by growing tall.  A decent public will cheer to see it toppled.
Article 3: Rules of normal kindness do not extend to the celebrated person.
Article 4: All persons may hope to become celebrated.
Article 5: It is more important to speak than to think.
Article 6. A howler must choose one course or the other: lie routinely, or do so only on important occasions, to be more convincing (The Trotsky tenet)."

Handing over conscience and control

In todays Sunday Age, Guy Rundle, in an insightful article 'Attack of the Hacks'  makes the following point worthy of further consideration:

 "The trouble is that big organisations headed by a personalty cult (and News Corpoation is surely that) work by turning people into the opposite of human beings, into gaining meaning in their lives by handing over conscience and control to the organisation, a process that occurs across News's global organisation"

 Bruce Guthrie, who has insider knowledge of Australia's News Corp, says in the same edition:

"I can save [Senator Bob Brown] and his colleagues a lot of trouble, particularly on the question of media concentration: not only is Murdoch's dominance of the print media here inappropriate, it's downright undemocratic. The Brits have been having conniptions last week over his control of 40 per cent of their newspapers. If it was 70 per cent [as in Australia], they'd be tearing down Big Ben. And, of course, they're outraged by News's trashing of journalistic ethics."

My point exactly.  
 
Not only does Rundle's point apply to News Corp - take the Federal Opposition in Australia and the specific case of  Greg Hunt, the coalition spokesperson on the environment.  I have been to hear Hunt speak when Malcolm Turnbull was still leader of the opposition. He spoke with wit, authority and authenticity about.....hang on...exactly the opposite position to that he and the coalition now espouse.  The old cliche of lying straight in bed at night comes to mind.  To make matters worse we are being exposed to his now carping and inane comments.  Around 6am this morning on ABC News Radio listeners were subjected to his now poverty-stricken arguments.  What lousy interviewing as well.

To paraphrase Guy Rundle: all politicians lose their humanity and integrity when they succumb to the cult of personality and attempts to gain power at any cost.  The Opposition, and Hunt in particular, have built an egotistical disdain for the moral and practical framework Australia has to build to exist in a post-carbon future.

Adam Curtis: Revise and Resubmit

Controversial British film maker Adam Curtis has created another thought provoking television trilogy: All Watched Over by Machines of Loving Grace, which was screened on  BBC2  beginning on Monday May 23rd.  As with his former series, The Trap, he touches on systems and cybernetics and gives them a strong critique - some justified but much intellectually spurious.  However, let me say from the outset that it is good that these programmes are made.  I only wish there was more TV that engaged with the important themes that preoccupy Curtis.  That said, television is problematic as a medium for material that purports to be intellectually serious.   Had these programmes been academic papers submitted for publication I would have recommended 'revise and resubmit'!

Curtis's meta-theme is compelling: that theoretical positions and associated narratives are taken up and institutionalised in uncritical ways - and in the process we have been seduced into believing we have no agency for creating purposeful change.  These theories, or explanations, become the new orthodoxies of the times and the understandings that arise shape technological designs, the ambitions of the designers, generate new research programmes and create adherants and prosletysers.  Although he does not say it in these terms explanations if accepted change who we are.  Curtis's example in his third programme, The Monkey In The Machine and the Machine in the Monkey, about Armand Denis's films that told the world about Africa particularly his 'fanciful stories about Rwanda's Tutsis being a noble ruling elite originally from Egypt, whereas the Hutus were a peasant race', is a compelling example of how explanations are taken up and become institutionalised in our practices with, as in this case, appalling unintended consequences.

Similarly Curtis' example of the ecosystem concept explored in his second programme, The Use and Abuse of Vegetational Concepts is a fascinating story except that the surrounding scholarship is shoddy and, from my perspective, leads Curtis himself into proferring explanations as worthy of critique as those in his spotlight.  


As I outline in a recently published essay, there is "replete within the academic literature confusion over the concept ‘system’ and whether ‘system’ is an epistemological device, a way of knowing about the world and thus a choice to be made in context sensitive ways, or an ontological claim i.e. a claim that systems are ‘real’ and thus describable objectively.  This confusion extends to the concept ‘ecosystem’ itself.  The term ecosystem was coined in 1930 by Roy Clapham to mean the combined physical and biological components of an environment. British ecologist Arthur Tansley (1935) later refined the term, describing it as "the whole system, … including not only the organism-complex, but also the whole complex of physical factors forming what we call the environment". Tansley regarded ecosystems not simply as natural units, but as mental isolates.  In Tansley’s original conception ‘ecosystem’ was a neologism coined to work as a conceptual or epistemological device, and which, like all systems involves boundary judgments – a bringing forth – by an observer.  However, over time the concept ecosystem has come to be reified as existing independently of those who make the boundary judgments that distinguish any system of interest."  In pursuing the common practice of making concepts real we deny our own capacity for learning and change, and thus agency.

Curtis' scholarship breaks down because he fails to see how explanations and their reification operate in social systems - through institutions and social and artifactual technologies.  He is also somewhat out of date in his critique of systems and cybernetics, as are many others.   Perhaps it is the demands of TV that  consistently takes Curtis into profering conspiracies or conspiracy-like scenarios.  Like Curtis I deplore many of the explanations that we have conserved, sometimes over decades if not centuries, and that plague contemporary life and our abilities to be political in a small 'p' sense.  Curtis's own strategies for resistance (his films aside) are rarely made entirely clear and the inklings we are offered hardly seem inspired.  His own theoretical, epistemological, possibly theological, and ideological  commitments are never clearly articulated.  Hence the ground on which he chooses to stand to offer his critique is  hidden from view except that he rails, in a limited way, against the failure to take power into account, to believe that we can make the world a better place and do politics. 


An up-to-date enagement with systems scholarship, as exemplified say through the OU's new MSc in Systems Thinking in Practice, would reveal for Curtis that other pathways to resistance (in the Foucauldian sense) are possible - and in my view more productive than framing all possibilities through a limited lens on power.  Curtis reminds me of some current and former academics I have known who in their concerns about power consistently enact the very theories that concern them: the world seen through a narrow lens of power predisposes practices that are all about power games rather than say cooperation, mutual concern and accommodation of difference. 

From my perspective Curtis would do better to highlight the lack of epistemological and systemic awareness and pluralism that creates a perverse scientism - as exemplified by Dawkins et al - and the lack of reflexivity in just about all that we do.  These limitations also apply in the systems and cybernetics fields, as I outline in my recent book.  For that reason members of the systems and cybernetics communities would do well to view Curtis's latest offering and use it as a trigger for reflection on what it is they do when they do what they do!

Fancy a Conference in Vienna?

5th International Heinz von Foerster Congress.

Again, the University of Vienna will be the venue of discussions on the efforts as well as the effects of Heinz von Foerster's work and life.

It is only one of the special aims of this year's conference to celebrate von Foerster's 100th birthday. As to celebrating his work, we deem it appropriate to start with implications of Heinz von Foerster's early works, as represented by his early quantum-physical interpretation of memory and by his seminal work on self-organizing systems in the early 1960ies. Accordingly, this year's conference moves along two quite different and  nevertheless  related tracks
 
•    Emergent Quantum Mechanics (primarily targeted audience: physicists); convened by Gerhard Grössing
 
•    Emergence and self organisation in the worlds of society and nature (primarily targeted audience: specialists in sciences and humanities, and a general audience); convened by Albert Müller and Karl H. Müller

There is a conference web-site online (to be updated permanently throughout the next months)

The conference will take place at the main building of the University of Vienna from 10th to 13th November 2011. There will be special seminars before and after the conference, and a series of documentary films on topics related to cybernetics to be seen at a Viennese cinema.

Registration is possible from now onwards. To register as a participant of the conference, please send an informal e-mail to hvf11.zeitgeschichte@univie.ac.at using 'registration' as a subject line. There is no registration or entrance fee.

The 5th International Heinz von Foerster Conference is sponsored by the Austrian Ministry of Science and Research, the City of Vienna, and Blaha Büromöbel. Co-organizers are the Heinz von Foerster Society, WISDOM, Dept. of Contemporary History, University of Vienna, Austrian Institute for Nonlinear Studies in cooperation with the American Society for Cybernetics.

We ask you to distribute this information among your respective communities

Gerhard Grössing
Albert Müller
Karl H. Müller

Emergent Interest in Cybernetics ...or?

The American Society of Cybernetics recently received the following request.  Does this represent an upsurge in interest or further uncritical pursuit of all things cybernetic as with Adam Curtis?  Any offers?

"My name is Claire Perrier and I am currently working with the filmmaker Philippe Borrel who is directing a 90 minute documentary about the convergent technologies revolution for the French and German cultural channel Arte TV. I am in charge of the research and collecting of the archive video footage. The film is produced by the French production company Cinétévé and will be broadcasted in 2012.

The filmmaker will talk in his film about the beginning and the history of the cybernetic sciences and researches. I am looking for some archival footage that would tell this story : interviews from the first cybernetic scientists like Norbert Wiener, the Macy conferences, other meetings, researches, interviews, archival news, etc... Anything that would allow us to tell this story and show how the cybernetics started. We are looking for archival footage, but if none existed, we would also be interested in archival photographies.

I would be very grateful to you if you could tell me who I should contact for this research or where I could find such archives.

Thanks a lot for your answer and please do not hesitate to contact me if you need any further information regarding this project.

Best regards,

Claire

Claire Perrier de la Bâthie
Archive footage researcher
Cinétévé
4, Quai des Célestins
75004 Paris - France

Insightful Analysis of how Murdoch Operates

Thanks to the Daily Telegraph's Chief Political Correspondent it is possible to gain useful insight's into how Rupert Murdoch and News Corp have operated so successfully within the realm of  political power.   My thanks to Roy Madron for drawing it to my attention.

Simon Caulkin adds additonal useful insights (see Suicide bomb at Wapping: family mansion in flames).  Simon asks whether the challenge to democracy that News Corp has come to be could have been exposed if a newspaper chain that operated as a Trust (rather than as a fully private business intent on maximising shareholder return) did not exist?  It was after all the Guardian and particularly Guardian journalist Nick Davies who have done the most to bring about this expose.

I have been back in Australia all of a week and the Murdoch press is appalling.  There is no balance and they, with Abbot, cultivate a climate of fear that is ethically indefensible.  As Julia Gillard implied yesterday much of what is published is crap!  Under the circumstances it makes a mockery of
John Hartigan, chairman and chief executive of News Limited, claims that "at a time when “disturbing events continue to unfold in London”, it was “offensive and wrong” to connect the behaviour of the UK arm with the Australian newspaper titles."  I disagree. This is exactly what should be done.  And the last people to check what has or has not happened is News Corp itself, as the evidence from senior management in the UK only too clearly shows.

ANZAM Conference in Wellington NZ

Bob Cavana writes: 'Just a short note to let you know that our deadline for papers, posters, workshops etc for the ANZAM conference (in Wellington on 7-9 December 2011) has now been extended until 21 July 2011.

Please visit  www.anzamconference.org for full paper and workshop submission information.

We are also hoping to have a meeting at the ANZAM conference of professionals/practitioners & academics interested in systems & complexity methods and applications in management.

We look forward to seeing you all at the ANZAM conference in Wellington in December.

Patrick Leigh Fermor touched the heart

I have generous and perceptive in-laws who realised that like them, the writings of Patrick Leigh Fermor, who has just died aged 96, could touch the heart. I am grateful for their gifts.  In her Observer obituary Jan Morris says 'Leigh Fermor made of the genre [travel writing] a lovely instrument of grace, humour and reflection'......'travelling with him was like simultaineously travelling through several ages'  .....'a complex soul, but with a stillness at the heart of him'.   I detect in his passing a shift of an era, or perhaps that is merely my sense of loss for a talent capable through his writing of  changing one's appreciative setting (to quote Geoffrey Vickers) in ways that I now mourn.

In a piece in yesterdays Guardian, Artemis Cooper, his biographer is quoted as saying that the long anticipated final book of his travel trilogy, begining with 'A Time of Gifts' (1977) followed by 'Between the Woods and the Water' (1987) will be forthcoming.  I hope so.

New Book on Murray Darling Basin Plan

The book “Basin Futures: Water Reform in the Murray-Darling Basin” has just been published electronically by ANU E Press. You can  access the book here or order a hard copy.  For those interested Phil Wallis and I have the following chapter in the book:

Ison, R.L. & Wallis, P. (2011) Planning as Performance. The Murray-Darling Basin Plan. In Grafton Q & Connell, D. eds. Basin Futures: Water reform in the Murray-Darling Basin, ANU ePress, Canberra.


The official launch of "Basin Futures: Water reform in the Murray-Darling Basin" will be  by Senator Nick Xenophon, Independent Senator from South Australia at Parliament House (Canberra) on Tuesday 21 June at 10:00 am.