All this quiet reflection...

...makes one a silent blogger.

Somehow got side-tracked by a spot of project management assignment completion. Finally, well into week 4, I have finally dispatched that wretched Winter School subject, just in time for Spring! I have a new found respect for real project managers and the power of Gantt charts although, quite frankly, I cannot see myself becoming a true believer! The highlight of the entire adventure was using all my risk analysis experience to write a  risk analysis and control plan for none other than a wedding planning business, although save a section on natural disaster management, climate change in particular and sustainability in general, didn't get a look in.

This semester is turning out to be quite a difference experience to last semester. Away from the methodical focus of the engineering type subjects, I have been introduced to the warmer, fuzzier, green glow of the humanities. All which lead to last week's reflection piece looking something like this...

"Labels, riots and religion – never a dull moment in sustainability! As we continue to debate about typologies and also learn the meaning of more obscure words, such as epistemological, the green hue of sustainability becomes murkier. The examination of the two national case studies – the Australian National Strategy for Ecological Sustainable Development as compared to the UK Sustainable Development Strategy was most striking given the widely reported civil unrest in the UK and the extreme volatility of the world money markets of this week. The semantics of seeking appropriate sustainability indicators appeared moot when parts of English society were rioting over an undefined number of issues. 
Away from the civil unrest, a very thought provoking tutorial discussion was had about sustainable development by inviting religion, culture and inevitably sex into the room. I sat bemused and thinking that we only need to throw in politics and we were breaking every rule I was ever taught about polite conversation in society.  In particular the discussion examined the strengths of taboos in prevention of environmental damage and the interdependence of marriage, children and status in many societies."

However as the week has rolled on I have wondered whether we are not breaking enough rules about polite conversation...

Climate Change - a wicked problem?

"Wicked" you ask? Don't panic, this is not a continuation of my previous post regarding whether as inanimate object such as coal could be evil per se and I definitely haven't picked up the parlance of the youth, despite my daily exposure to the young and impressionable.

"Wicked problem" is a phrase coined by Rittel and Webber in 1973 and was originally used to describe an issue in public or planning policy. Summarised below are characteristics of a "wicked problem";

• it is difficult to define
• it has interdependencies and is multi-causal
• attempts to address it may result in adverse unforeseen circumstances
• it is often not stable
• it often does not have a clear solution
• it is socially complex
• it hardly ever sits conveniently with the responsibility of any one organisation
• it involves changing behaviour
• it may sometimes be characterised by chronic policy failure.

Unsurprisingly the majority of issues in the environmental and the greater sustainability space may be described as "wicked". For the curious, the same authors labelled those problems which although difficult could be solved in a systematic and somewhat linear way as "tame". A wit in our class today noted that if you love a challenge, you'd want all your problems to be "wicked" in the other sense of the vernacular..

"Wicked problems" need multi-faceted treatment from the variety of stakeholders (the literature likes to throw around the term "actors" - but after the fuss Cate Blanchett accidentally achieved, perhaps not appropriate in this case) and on-going attention. You manage an evolving wicked problem rather than ever truly solve it. The key challenge is successfully convincing everyone to make the right behavioural changes to make that difference. 

If that could be achieved in my lifetime, that would be truly "wicked"!!

This week, upon reflection...

One of my new subjects requires us to submit a reflective piece at the end of semester, a vignette reflections for each week of the course put into perspective at the end. Being the studious swot that I am, I have followed the lecturer's advice and each week I have taken a little time to document my reflections. However, if this week's anything to go by, it may be the thoughts which are left out which may be more telling.

Today someone actually articulated that as coal was a gift from God (not sure which one or who's claiming responsibility), it could not be evil. Actually I was under the perhaps false impression that evil and inanimate objects tend to be mutually exclusive. Coal is lots of things but I'm pretty sure it's not too harsh to say it's soul-less, just the way I like my inanimate objects (blessed or not). That observation didn't make the reflective cut..

We danced around the edges of neo-liberalism and it seemed to be the pin-up for all that is wrong environmentally, socially and economically, yet we also seemed to struggle with the recognition that for many, the neo-liberal and liberal view best fits what we have known even if we recognize that its extremes will not serve our vision of the future.


However it was the probing question "Is Sustainable Development an oxymoron?" which appeared to leave the debate in tatters. Defining oxymoron was a highlight - picks of the examples were "giant shrimp" and "smart government". The discussion was informed by the tutorial reading - a synopsis on a book written giving the 30 year update on "The Limits to Growth" and really, the conclusions appeared to waiver from "barbed wire firmly puncturing the buttocks" to "it's probably too late".


So I ask myself, if we genuinely believe it is too late then what is the point of sustainability? Are we merely learning the dark arts of environmental and social pallative care disguised as solutions so as the world dies slowly, at least some of us will be comfortable....


So on that note, armed with the knowledge that population is the elephant in the room, I went off to visit one of the earth's newest citizens just up the road where both he and his mum are recovering from the trauma that is child birth. He was small, sleepy, content and totally convinced that he was in safe hands. Only time will tell...