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.

Congratulations Michael

Michael has just won the City of Vancouver book prize for "Vancouver Remembered".

See my link to Michael's OzBlog in my Blog roll.

A significant achievement against strong competition!

Social learning, systems practice and managing in situations of complexity and uncertainty

For the last 10 years or so my personal research has been concerned with developing better governance and practice arrangements for managing in complex, uncertain, contested and multiple stakeholder situations, particularly water or river catchments (called watersheds in North America). Our research has been funded by the EU and the Environment Agency of England & Wales.

The outcomes of the SLIM Project, which includes a set of easy to read Policy Briefings, and our follow-up work with the EA, is becoming more accessible and is, gratifyingly, of increasing interest to many practitioners and researchers in the area of 'water' and other fields of natural resource management.

For example, we have recently produced a special edition of the journal Environmental Science & Policy devoted to our SLIM work. There are also papers in a special issue of Ecology & Society. Mark Dent, who is based at the University of KwaZulu Natal in South Africa, writing in his Catchment Management Leadership Newsletter Number 69, recently had this to say about our SLIM research:

'I have been in many discussions in which participants have expressed some frustration at the term “sustainability”. They say it has been so abused and misunderstood that it has lost its real meaning. I sense that this view is widespread. I found the quote below, from the SLIM Report, was helpful to my understanding :-

“ …… it is very useful to view sustainability as an emergent property of stakeholder interaction, and not a technical property of the ecosystem.” Pg 6 Final Report http://slim.open.ac.uk

SLIM stands for Social Learning for the Integrated Management and Sustainable Use of Water at Catchment Scale. It is a multi-country research project funded by the European Commission (DG RESEARCH – 5^th Framework Programme for research and technological development, 1998–2002). Its main theme is the investigation of the socio-economic aspects of the sustainable use of water. Within this theme, its main focus of interest lies in understanding the application of social learning as a conceptual framework, an operational principle, a policy instrument and a process of systemic change.

Our 1998 NWA is hailed and respected internationally. I believe that such acclaim is justified. My opinion was reinforced last week when I read the SLIM final report. I commend this report to any serious student of these matters. It is a veritable basket of gems, which places much emphasis on appropriate platforms for stakeholder interaction. At these points in the report my pulse raced as I recognized the potential of our CMAs to function as ideal, stable platforms for stakeholder sector interaction. I am thinking particularly of the interaction between specialist advisors who align themselves behind sector interests in the ongoing social learning directed at integrated water management. Given its focus on healthy ongoing interaction the SLIM report spends much time analyzing the factors which either encourage or impede such healthy interaction. One of the key outcomes of healthy interaction is the enabling of early sensing, wise interpretation and timely responses, which are crucial to resilience. Factors which impede interaction reduce the resilience of communities and decrease their prospects of attaining sustainability in integrated water management.

The message for CMA leaders is clear. We must create the conditions for these interactions, communications, sensing and responding to take place between all stakeholders. This is the essence of what the CMA must be all about. The rest of the CMA structural trappings and their place in the overall arrangement of institutions are important, but they are merely the body, not the soul of the healthy CMA.

Our paper at the recent CAIWA conference, delivered by Kevin Collins, received very positive feedback and a subsequent presentation of Kevin's based on the same research has been blogged.

New 'Systems' course at the OU: 'Understanding systems: making sense of complexity' (T214)

If you are interested in developing your Systems Thinking skills then why not try this brand new course from the Open University (UK)?

As the course description says: 'You can’t always make sense of problems or issues by breaking them into parts. Systems thinkers instead pay attention to the connections and relationships between things, and to the different understandings and needs of the people involved in a situation. This course will introduce you to systems thinking and will help you to develop your understanding of some of the most important technological, environmental and social systems of our times. A systemic perspective focuses on different aspects of the situation in turn but within a framework that develops an awareness of interconnections and the effects these generate. This course will help you to make sense of complex situations, and develop your skills in understanding them as systems. When you consider the world in terms of systems, all sorts of connections and relationships are revealed, some of which go against common sense and accepted wisdom. You’ll learn simple techniques and ways of looking at things that will help you to explore your own understanding of complex issues and communicate your understanding to others.

In T214 you will develop your ability to think systemically by deepening your understanding of four different subject areas:

· communication systems and the internet

· earth systems and the environment

· social systems and organisations

· community systems and criminal justice.

These are presented in four blocks:

Block 1: Understanding the Internet: Communication Systems

This block introduces the concepts of emergence, self-organisation, complexity and networks through an examination of the internet as a system to connect physically remote intellects. You will learn to use network analysis, internet research and your own notes and reflections to make sense of this topic.

Block 2: Understanding the Environment: Earth Systems

This block focuses on systems concepts such as non-linearity and feedback. You will study the relationship between social and environmental systems, considering how different physical systems interact with human society to produce the present and future environment. The concepts of feedback, hierarchy and equifinality will be used to examine the dynamics of climactic change. The skills focus is on appreciating non-linear dynamics; producing multiple cause diagrams, sign graphs and indicators; and the basics of communication with others.

Block 3: Understanding Organisations: Social Systems

This block shifts the focus of the course from ‘hard’ to ‘soft’ systems. It introduces the concepts of perspective, purpose and boundary through an appreciation of organisations as systems. You’ll be introduced to the practice of critiquing boundaries and purpose through the techniques of producing systems maps and stakeholder analysis. You’ll comment on other students’ work and report on the difference between your own perspective and that reached by others.

Block 4: Understanding Communities: Criminal Justice Systems

The final block returns to the analytical themes of the course and relates them to the central concept of the system. It focuses on a local context: crime in the community. You will undertake a group project, but a large part of the block comprises preparation for your individual end-of-course assessment (ECA). The ECA draws in the analytical and practical skills taught through the rest of the course, and gives students an opportunity to critically compare the application of different concepts and systems approaches.

Systems thinking entails a new way of looking at the world, and this shift in thinking can be challenging. Almost everyone finds it easier to learn by using the techniques, and by exchanging ideas and experiences with other students. So study time is set aside to interact with other students, and together to learn more about systems.

This is made possible through the T214 web pages, which provide conferencing facilities and interactive activities where you can post questions and tips about the course and about systems thinking in general. At the end of the first three blocks, this interaction will feed into the development of your tutor-marked assignment (TMA). During the final part of the course, you’ll use the skills that you have developed to analyse a situation of your own choice in an ECA project.'

Fiscal conservatism or perpetuating systemic failure?

Only days before new OZ PM, Kevin Rudd announced his on-going commitment to fiscal conservatism, my cousin, living in regional Queensland experienced first hand, and in traumatic ways, the systemic failure of the hospital system. Diagnosed with breast cancer she entered the local base hospital for her surgery, proceeded to go through all stages of the prep, including shower, change into gown etc, to then be told that she had to go to the private hospital in another part of town to have certain procedures done before the operation could proceed. Was she whisked off by ambulance, or even taxi? No! Her partner was forced to drive her in their own car in a city that is still unfamiliar and where they had a habit of getting lost!

Eventually they made it back to the base hospital and the operation began. By this stage she was both furious and traumatized! I am not sure what this says for hygiene management! To cap it all off, the next morning one doctor arrived and ordered the removal of lymph drainage tubes, followed half an hour later by her surgeon, who was, by accounts, furious that they had been removed! Soon after she was sent home!

My cousin lives in one of the electorates in North Queensland in which there was a strong swing to Labor. I doubt these electors will be impressed by the PM's re-commitment to fiscal conservatism if this means that there is no investment to break out of the systemic failing of regional health systems across the nation.

The systemic problems with 'biofuels' expansion begin to be headlined at last!

In a new report the UK's Royal Society suggests current EU and UK policy for biofuels may not deliver the much touted benefits and unless well understood may deliver unintended consequences. In Brussels 'Europe's environment chief has admitted that the EU did not foresee the problems raised by its policy to get 10% of Europe's road fuels from plants' and the EU is now revising its policies.

In another complex situation there is continuing European opposition to GM food imports. There is strong political will in Europe to maintain this position. In the end the US and places like the state of Victoria (Australia) may have to concede this issue because at the end of the day Europe is a bigger market than the US.

It is good that there are people who take a stand on these issues and that new, systemic understandings, are emerging. That said, if the policy developers had engaged in a systemic inquiry from the start some of these unintended consequences could have been appreciated!

'Memo new president: let's end some fear'

Madeleine Albright's Opinion piece in yesterday's Age is well worth a read. Let's hope it is a harbinger of things to come regardless of who wins the next US election.

She observes that 'one manifestation of fear is an unwillingness to think seriously about alternative perspectives' and thus axiomatically the Bush and Howard eras in their respective countries have created environments inimical to systems thinking and practice which depend on acknowledging, surfacing and valuing multiple partial perspectives in complex situations.