The Resilient World http://www.theresilientworld.com about resilience in social and ecological systems posterous.com Sun, 19 Feb 2012 03:53:00 -0800 "Reverse Peace Corps Volunteer" from Poland Builds Starter Kit for Civilization in Missouri http://www.theresilientworld.com/reverse-peace-corps-volunteer-from-poland-bui http://www.theresilientworld.com/reverse-peace-corps-volunteer-from-poland-bui
via vimeo.com

As one commentator said, McGyver w/out the mullet working on real world solutions.

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]]> http://files.posterous.com/user_profile_pics/1025447/john1.jpg http://posterous.com/users/he6SlKVvbNixY John Waugh John Waugh John Waugh Fri, 17 Feb 2012 13:57:00 -0800 Mobile protected areas http://www.theresilientworld.com/mobile-protected-areas http://www.theresilientworld.com/mobile-protected-areas

Back in 1997 at the AAAS meeting in Seattle, where I organized a workshop on large marine ecoystems in Africa with NOAA's Dr. Ken Sherman and UNIDO's Dr. Chide Ibe, I had a conversation at a reception with Elliott Norse, the founder and President of the Marine Conservation Biology Institute, where he left me gob-smacked when he suggested that we needed to have marine protected areas that moved with the eddies or "rings" spinning off major ocean currents.  These rings are meanders in the major ocean currents (e.g. the Gulf Stream, the Agulhas Current) that pinch and separate (in my mind, a bit like smoke rings, but I don't know if that's a fair analogy).  The rings, he said (as well as I can recall) created micro-habitats important for spawning aggregations of some pelagic fish species.  Trawlers would seek out these rings to capture the fish attracted to spawn [fry] or to prey (forgive me if I got this wrong - by this time I am sure I'd had several glasses of wine).  Anyway, I had a good laugh.  Spinning marine protected areas on the high seas outside national jurisdiction. Hoo boy.  

Rings-large

(image courtesy of NASA)

 

Well well well.  Today I read that there is a concrete proposal for doing just that at the 2012 AAAS meeting, in Vancouver.  The Province of Vancouver is reporting that the technology is in place and the time is right to precisely such a thing, according to scientists presenting at the Vancouver meeting.  The impossible future is around the corner.  So Elliott, if you ever read this, I want the world to know that you're an even bigger visionary than I thought; stay crazy.  And convince governments to support a regime to manage marine resources in areas outside national jurisdiction! Because there's an app for that.

 

 

 

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]]> http://files.posterous.com/user_profile_pics/1025447/john1.jpg http://posterous.com/users/he6SlKVvbNixY John Waugh John Waugh John Waugh Thu, 29 Sep 2011 19:23:00 -0700 BBC News - Police respond to Onion's Capitol hostage spoof http://www.theresilientworld.com/bbc-news-police-respond-to-onions-capitol-hos http://www.theresilientworld.com/bbc-news-police-respond-to-onions-capitol-hos

The Onion's fake story follows a standoff in Congress over a spending bill to avert government shutdown.


US police are investigating tweets by a satirical news website about a fake security alert at Washington DC's Capitol building.

The Onion said on its Twitter account that "screams and gunfire" had been heard inside the Capitol. It later said schoolchildren had been taken hostage. ....

The website posted a tweet on Thursday morning which said: "BREAKING: Witnesses reporting screams and gunfire heard inside Capitol building."

It later posted another tweet promoting a spoof news article, headlined Congress Takes Group Of Schoolchildren Hostage.

In one of a series of tweets that followed, it said Congress was demanding a $12tn (£7.7tn) ransom "or all the kids die".

The article - apparently poking fun at recent congressional budget showdowns - featured a mocked-up photo of Republican House Speaker John Boehner holding a gun to a girl's head....

The Onion's posts prompted a blizzard of responses on Twitter.

"@TheOnion You people are despicable", one tweeter wrote.

Another said: "@TheOnion Very poor taste."

 

For satire to work, half the target audience must be too dense to detect satire. And, there has to be just a tiny bit of plausibility. Where's Mencken when you need him?

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]]> http://files.posterous.com/user_profile_pics/1025447/john1.jpg http://posterous.com/users/he6SlKVvbNixY John Waugh John Waugh John Waugh Wed, 07 Sep 2011 10:37:00 -0700 fwd: Jesus Christ, Pirate http://www.theresilientworld.com/jesus-christ-pirate http://www.theresilientworld.com/jesus-christ-pirate

Things have gotten so bad that anarchists are beginning sound reasonable, or at least wickedly funny.  The allusion to Rome is not entirely inappropriate, either.

Lifted from the anarchist blog Center for a Stateless Society.

After reportedly feeding a crowd of five thousand with five loaves and two fishes, Jesus Christ of Nazareth was recently served with formal legal notice from industry trade associations, demanding that he cease and desist from what they charge is an illegal food-sharing operation under the terms of the Miracle Millennium Anti-Replication Act (MMAA).

Miracle-working rabbis like Mr. Christ, and their alleged property rights infringements, have been the center of controversy in recent years.  They’re the subject of a public education campaign by the Foodstuffs Producers Association of Galilee and Judea.  Loaves and fishes producers argue that unauthorized replication of food, since it deprives them of revenues to which they are entitled, amounts to stealing. Sympathetic rabbis in synagogues throughout Palestine are reading FPAGJ public service announcements, aimed at countering public perceptions that “everybody does it” and “it’s just a little thing,” to their flocks:  “Don’t bakers and fishermen deserve to be paid?”  Many Torah schools have adopted FPAGJ “anti-foodlifting” curricula.

In related news, the Wine Industry Association of Palestine has complained amid surfacing reports that Jesus, in another alleged act of illegal sharing, also replicated wine at a wedding feast in Cana of Galilee.

Physicians’ licensing boards, likewise, point to alleged eyewitness accounts of Jesus practicing medicine without a license.  This unauthorized medical practice, according to widespread reports, has extended to lepers, the lame, the halt, the blind, a man with a palsied hand, a woman with an issue of blood, and assorted victims of demonic possession.  The medical industry denounces Jesus’ actions as unfair competition.  According to a spokesman for the Galilean Medical Association, “it’s unfair to expect a licensed physician who spent years as an apprentice and who has to cover the overhead from office space to compete with some carpenter who just waves his hands around and heals people for free.”

Although the Embalmers’ Guild has also complained of rumored resurrections of the dead, legal experts say there is no actual statute defining that particular activity as a criminal offense.

On the other side, a small but growing movement of gustatory property opponents takes issue with the “piracy” label. They argue that copying food, as an inherently non-rivalrous activity, isn’t theft; because the newly replicated food is created ex nihilo, nobody else’s stock of food is diminished.  Fisherman Simon Bar Jonah of Galilee and his brother Andrew agree. “Instead of trying to suppress competition, the fishing industry should replace its archaic business model. Opportunities are out there for anyone willing to innovate. We haven’t lost a denarius because of Jesus’ food-sharing.”

But authorities aren’t buying it. Pontius Pilate, Procurator of Judea, recently announced plans to crack down on gustatory property pirates like Jesus. “If you think I’m going to wash my hands of this Jesus guy, God love him, think again. Replicating loaves, fishes and wine is stealing, just the same as a smash-and-grab at Macy’s. This is a big effing deal.”

 

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]]> http://files.posterous.com/user_profile_pics/1025447/john1.jpg http://posterous.com/users/he6SlKVvbNixY John Waugh John Waugh John Waugh Wed, 07 Sep 2011 05:59:00 -0700 Strange behavior and earthquakes http://www.theresilientworld.com/strange-behavior-and-earthquakes http://www.theresilientworld.com/strange-behavior-and-earthquakes

 

Well, a short while after a week bracketed by an earthquake and a hurricane that broke the record heat wave and drought of this summer, people are beginning to reflect a bit on what just happened. Lesson 1- tweets are faster than tremors! People in NYC were actually getting tweets about the earthquake BEFORE the tremors hit. (Are apes and birds on Twitter?)  Lesson 2 - social networking trumps common sense! I was at the top of one of the "tall" buildings in Washington when the earthquake hit, and I have to say, tweeting was about the last thing on my mind.  What's up with that anyway - has social networking eroded any sense of self-preservation?

 

 

The following from All Shook Up: Mapping Earthquake News on Twitter from Virginia to Maine | SocialFlow Blog.  

 

"The proper response to an earthquake? Run, scream, take cover?… no wait, Tweet!

"On Tuesday, the denizens of the East Coast had exactly this choice, and they responded by flooding the interwebz with messages: startled, mundane, humorous, informational. And it happened fast. Seismic waves travel at 3-5 km/s, communication signals in fiber optic cables move at a speed of 200,000 km/s [as this XKCD cartoon brilliantly notes]. Tweets do take time to compose, but significantly less when you’re tweeting “EARTHQUAKE”!

"We thought you’d like to see some of the data behind it. The visualization below replays the spread of earthquake related Tweets across North America, from the moment the epicenter hit Mineral Virginia (1:51PM) on August 23rd through its spread across the East coast and the South."

 

 

 

 

 

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]]> http://files.posterous.com/user_profile_pics/1025447/john1.jpg http://posterous.com/users/he6SlKVvbNixY John Waugh John Waugh John Waugh Fri, 29 Jul 2011 07:14:00 -0700 Whitebark pine tree faces extinction threat, agency says - The Washington Post http://www.theresilientworld.com/whitebark-pine-tree-faces-extinction-threat-a http://www.theresilientworld.com/whitebark-pine-tree-faces-extinction-threat-a
Media_httpwwwwashingt_idabo
via washingtonpost.com

[I posted this a week ago but Amplify didn't autopost it to Posterous. So I'm reposting].

The Fish and Wildlife Service determined Monday that whitebark pine, a tree found atop mountains across the American West, faces an “imminent” risk of extinction because of factors including climate change.

The Post also reports that the FWS can't list the species in the Endangered Species List because it could not afford it. The House Appropriations Committee has eliminated funds for ESA listing from the budget.

File under "decline and fall".

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]]> http://files.posterous.com/user_profile_pics/1025447/john1.jpg http://posterous.com/users/he6SlKVvbNixY John Waugh John Waugh John Waugh Fri, 29 Jul 2011 06:42:00 -0700 Does the Arab Spring portend a hot African Summer? http://www.theresilientworld.com/dark-rumblings-by-ty-mccormick-foreign-policy http://www.theresilientworld.com/dark-rumblings-by-ty-mccormick-foreign-policy
Ty McCormick, writing in Foreign Policy online, sees growing signs of unrest in Sub-Saharan Africa:

Driving south from central Cairo along the corniche that hugs the east bank of the Nile, there's a giant billboard for Mercedes-Benz's newest toy. A gleaming, red, gullwing sports car -- which hovers ostentatiously above the dusty road, not a quarter mile from where beggars and street children mingle with haggard vendors hoping to pull in a few Egyptian pounds -- is framed by a simple, penetrating message: "Have it all or nothing." While many more Egyptians still have nothing today than have it all, things get substantially worse as you travel further south along the Nile, from the iconic heart of the Arab Spring into the heart of Africa.

In the last decade, give or take, the African continent has experienced tremendous economic expansion, clocking in at an average 5 percent annual growth in the 10 years before the 2008 economic meltdown. But as growth has accelerated, bestowing tremendous wealth on the fortunate -- and more often, the corrupt -- so has the gulf between those that drive fancy sports cars and those that must walk beneath them.

....

But robust growth and the conspicuous consumption that inevitably follows can be risky when there are few political safety valves. The result, as we have seen in Egypt and elsewhere, is that authoritarian regimes that have allowed their economies to open up have become ripe for revolution. As John Githongo, chief executive of Inuka Kenya Trust, argues in the New York Times, "inequality, unlike poverty, is far more easily politicized, ethnicized and militarized.... It is also far more combustible because it creates an identifiable enemy -- a class that benefits disproportionately because of its unfair access to those who wield power."

via foreignpolicy.com

There are always signs of unrest in Sub-Saharan Africa - is this time different? Where else are there clouds on the horizon?

Anthropologist Daniel Hoffman has studied the diamond miners of Liberia and Sierra Leone for the past decade and documents how casual labor can be exploited for political unrest. With elections looming in Liberia, the availability of cheap young underemployed muscle for campaign staff is a worry. (Check out Hoffman's new book The War Machines: Young Men and Violence in Sierra Leone and Liberia, coming in late August from Duke University Press).

In Mozambique, historic tensions between north (where the resources are) and the south (where the power is) continues to smolder. Some argue that the question is "when" rather than "if" an eruption will take place. For a nation that lost perhaps as much as 10% of its population in a brutal civil war, and displaced much of the remainder, one hopes that the national appetite for civil strife is small and that the answer to the question is "never". But could instability in Zimbabwe or South Africa tip the balance?

From a historic perspective, free Africa is still in the throws of a violent birth. Economic growth is not necessarily anodyne, as McCormick demonstrates.

Prof Calestous Juma, also writing in Foreign Policy online, takes a countervailing view. The conflicts described are evolutionary, not revolutionary, "offshoots of internal processes that have been underway for decades" and presumably part of the historical process leading to an African renaissance. Juma sees positive signs - "The prospect of joining larger economic trade areas already seems to be influencing the way countries resolve long-standing internal conflicts and embark on democratic transitions. In Burundi, for example, a decades-long civil war fueled by ethnic tension has been ended in part due to the country's aspirations to join an emerging East African Community (EAC) and embark on a new path of economic reconstruction. South Sudan, which has its own internal conflicts, plans to join the EAC as well, hopefully a move that will have a positive influence on political conduct in the new country."

The economic growth of Africa requires two contrary forces - order and freedom. Will African leaders be able to strike a balance between security and political freedom, or will the drive for security throttle both political opposition and political growth? The answer - yes.

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]]> http://files.posterous.com/user_profile_pics/1025447/john1.jpg http://posterous.com/users/he6SlKVvbNixY John Waugh John Waugh John Waugh Sat, 23 Apr 2011 16:26:00 -0700 The Vicious Circle http://www.theresilientworld.com/the-vicious-circle http://www.theresilientworld.com/the-vicious-circle

John Norris writes in Foreign Policy on April 13 about a Pentagon report on budget priorities, apparently written by two members of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.  The report says, in part:

By investing energy, talent, and dollars now in the education and training of young Americans -- the scientists, statesmen, industrialists, farmers, inventors, educators, clergy, artists, service members, and parents, of tomorrow -- we are truly investing in our ability to successfully compete in, and influence, the strategic environment of the future. Our first investment priority, then, is intellectual capital and a sustainable infrastructure of education, health and social services to provide for the continuing development and growth of America's youth.

To which Norris observes:  "Yet, it is investments in America's long-term human resources that have come under the fiercest attack in the current budget environment. As the United States tries to compete with China, India, and the European Union, does it make sense to have almost doubled the Pentagon budget in the last decade while slashing education budgets across the country? .... The United States has established an incentive system that just doesn't make any sense. It continues to pour tens of billions of dollars into agricultural and oil subsidies every single year even as these subsidies make the gravity of the environmental, health, and land-use problems the country faces in the future ever graver. As the report argues, America cannot truly practice the use of "smart power" until it practices "smart growth" at home. While some may be quick to argue that the Pentagon should not be considering issues like smart growth and investments in America's youth, this goes to another key point from the authors: America won't get its approach to policy right if it leaves foreign policy and domestic policy in tidy little silos that ignore the interconnection between the two."

The report goes on to say:

And yet with globalization, we seem to have developed a strange apprehension about the efficacy of our ability to apply the innovation and hard work necessary to successfully compete in a complex security and economic environment. Further, we have misunderstood interdependence as a weakness rather than recognizing it as a strength. The key to sustaining our competitive edge, at home or on the world stage, is credibility -- and credibility is a difficult capital to foster. It cannot be won through intimidation and threat, it cannot be sustained through protectionism or exclusion. Credibility requires engagement, strength, and reliability -- imaginatively applied through the national tools of development, diplomacy, and defense.

I'm reminded of Walter Lippmann's admonition in the New York Herald Tribune in 1944:

“If we fix our minds upon the fact that the capacity to produce is the nation's wealth, and upon the dislocation of that capacity as the supreme evil to be avoided, we shall, I believe, have hold of the saving truth.”
If, in this globalized world, our intellectual resources constitute the true wealth of the nation, and if servicing our debt means chronic underinvestment in human capital, then we are well and truly circling closer to the drain.  I predict the pundits to begin writing about the brain drain from America any day now.

Norris adds that the budget deal concluded a few days after this came out cut 8 billion dollars from diplomacy and international development, while leaving the defense budget intact.

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]]> http://files.posterous.com/user_profile_pics/1025447/john1.jpg http://posterous.com/users/he6SlKVvbNixY John Waugh John Waugh John Waugh Sun, 03 Apr 2011 01:07:00 -0700 Heat Stress Could Make Parts of the Planet Uninhabitable http://www.theresilientworld.com/heat-stress-could-make-parts-of-the-planet-un http://www.theresilientworld.com/heat-stress-could-make-parts-of-the-planet-un
I learned this week that according to some plausible scenarios, that half the inhabitable Earth could become uninhabitable in 300 years.  A sometimes overlooked aspect of climate change is the potential for heat stress on humans and other living things.  According to a new report*, heat stress imposes an "upper limit to adaptation", one that we will reach under some scenarios.  Temperatures in excess of 35 degrees Celsius induce hyperthermia in mammals. "While this never happens now, it would begin to occur with global-mean warming of about 7 °C, calling the habitability of some regions into question. With 11–12 °C warming, such regions would spread to encompass the majority of the human population as currently distributed. Eventual warmings of 12 °C are possible from fossil fuel burning. One implication is that recent estimates of the costs of unmitigated climate change are too low unless the range of possible warming can somehow be narrowed....a global-mean warming of roughly 7 °C would create small zones where metabolic heat dissipation would for the first time become impossible, calling into question their suitability for human habitation. A warming of 11–12 °C would expand these zones to encompass most of today’s human population.'

Of course when we all run to the other side of the boat we will encounter another tipping point.  

A number of questions arise relating to freedom and responsibility that will need to be addressed soon.  Left unchecked, could climate change mark the end of the American experiment with liberty?  At a minimum humanity  may be challenged to reframe ideas about liberty and progress.  

*Stephen Sherwood and Matthew Huber, writing in the online edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science (http://www.pnas.org/content/107/21/9552.full?sid=d38fdf62-80df-4419-9ca7-01773e9a0827)

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]]> http://files.posterous.com/user_profile_pics/1025447/john1.jpg http://posterous.com/users/he6SlKVvbNixY John Waugh John Waugh John Waugh Thu, 24 Mar 2011 15:26:07 -0700 Removing tragedy from our lives infantilizes us http://www.theresilientworld.com/removing-tragedy-from-our-lives-infantilizes http://www.theresilientworld.com/removing-tragedy-from-our-lives-infantilizes Ben Kingsley speaks on tragedy in an interview on portraying Holocaust
history with National Public Radio's Scott Simon (aired March 19, 2011
on Weekend Edition Saturday:
http://www.npr.org/2011/03/19/134682388/Ben-Kingsley-On-Portraying-Holocaust-History)

"I think that the role of the actor  perhaps at its simplest and its
purest, is one of the tribal story teller, and if you were to
transport me back maybe 3000 years, I'd be sitting around the fire at
night with the little tribe, reassuring them about their past, hoping
that they will sleep through the night, comforting them about their
future, and trying to build those bridges of empathy, particularly
[about] those aspects of life that are baffling and frightening.

"It is important to embrace tragedy as a real part of our lives.  David
Mamet ... in his book Writing in Restaurants, defined ( let me
slightly paraphrase it and say western civilization ) “as a
civilization determined to outlaw tragedy.” If you remove the
interpretation and presentation of tragedy from the shaman sitting by
the bonfire, you're telling the tribe nothing of real life.  And  It
doesn't prepare us as adults. It infantilizes us. And it dodges an
enormous responsibility. All great mythology  that we love and respect
has included loss and tragedy as well as great moments of salvation.
It's braided in.  ... Through knowing each other, and holding onto
that tribal bonfire we'll be okay."

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]]> http://files.posterous.com/user_profile_pics/1025447/john1.jpg http://posterous.com/users/he6SlKVvbNixY John Waugh John Waugh John Waugh Mon, 21 Mar 2011 15:10:14 -0700 6 principles for resilient institutions http://www.theresilientworld.com/6-principles-for-resilient-institutions http://www.theresilientworld.com/6-principles-for-resilient-institutions

People and Place provides another winning post, this time reporting on a 2009 National Research Council document. The six principles for effective decision-support are also six good principles for building resilient institutions.

Amplify’d from www.peopleandplace.net

Informing Decisions in a Changing Climate is a 2009 U.S. National Research Council publication. At the core of the book are six principles for effective decision support. (This text is shortened, without ellipses.)

We found that the same core principles that characterize effective decision support in such areas as public health, natural resource management, and environmental risk management apply to informing decisions about responses to climate change: (1) begin with users’ needs; (2) give priority to process over products; (3) link information producers and users; (4) build connections across disciplines and organizations; (5) seek institutional stability; and (6) design processes for learning.

Read more at www.peopleandplace.net

See this Amp at http://bit.ly/gZ0omn
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]]> http://files.posterous.com/user_profile_pics/1025447/john1.jpg http://posterous.com/users/he6SlKVvbNixY John Waugh John Waugh John Waugh Wed, 16 Mar 2011 04:01:02 -0700 Razor blade manufacturers rejoice... http://www.theresilientworld.com/razor-blade-manufacturers-rejoice http://www.theresilientworld.com/razor-blade-manufacturers-rejoice

Popular Science reports the moon is closer to the Earth than any time in the past 19 years this weekend. Awooo! (See link below). And no, it is not supposed to cause any more earthquakes ... but I'm wearing garlic. I'm just saying...

Amplify’d from www.popsci.com

Past supermoons have coincided with natural disasters--the Indonesian earthquake in 2005, Australian flooding in 1954--but scientists note that those are unrelated, more likely than not. Says John Bellini, a geophysicist at the U.S. Geological Survey: "A lot of studies have been done on this kind of thing by USGS scientists and others. They haven't found anything significant at all." The tides will pull a bit higher, but earthquakes are almost completely unaffected and volcanoes are not likely to show unusual behavior. John Vidale, a seismologist at the University of Washington in Seattle, said "Practically speaking, you'll never see any effect of lunar perigee. It's somewhere between 'It has no effect' and 'It's so small you don't see any effect.'"

Read more at www.popsci.com

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]]> http://files.posterous.com/user_profile_pics/1025447/john1.jpg http://posterous.com/users/he6SlKVvbNixY John Waugh John Waugh John Waugh Tue, 15 Mar 2011 03:49:37 -0700 Great Awakening or Dark Ages http://www.theresilientworld.com/great-awakening-or-dark-ages http://www.theresilientworld.com/great-awakening-or-dark-ages
Looking beyond the immediate tragedy, the disaster in Japan*, a third major shock in a year affecting energy systems, brings us to a crossroads.  The BP disaster in the Gulf of Mexico and the rolling political upheavals in the Middle East drive home (perhaps an unfortunate choice of words) just how dependent and how vulnerable we are to.  Large-scale vulnerabilities can lead to the cascading system failures that disrupt and destroy civilizations.  We have, in other words, been warned.   In one direction is business as usual, business increasingly vulnerable to accidents and to political system disruptions.   In the other direction is a dramatic retooling of our economies and modes of production in favor of less vulnerable, if less efficient, energy sources.  

The die is cast for Japan. This country, which has rebuilt itself to withstand earthquakes, will not tolerate a third nuclear nightmare.  It will experience a renaissance as a leader in alternative energy development.  The disaster will give Japan an entire new raison d'etre.  The same cannot yet be said for the USA and the rest of the industrial "north".  Does it require a system shock of the magnitude of the Sendai Disaster to transform a society?  Or is there a softer path?  To be continued...

*It is regrettable that some people have further sensationalized the triple disaster unfolding in Japan as a glimpse of the future as a result of climate change.  However, it does give us a sense of what a major system disruption looks and feels like, and how one, arguably very resilient, society responds.  

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]]> http://files.posterous.com/user_profile_pics/1025447/john1.jpg http://posterous.com/users/he6SlKVvbNixY John Waugh John Waugh John Waugh Mon, 14 Mar 2011 06:47:00 -0700 A community bucket list http://www.theresilientworld.com/a-community-bucket-list http://www.theresilientworld.com/a-community-bucket-list
We know that communities have life-spans just as organisms do.  Resilient communities may live a lot longer.  We need to work to maintain the health and resilience of communities - they need exercise, fresh air, nutrition.  And to have a little fun.  What would you put on a bucket list for a community to do before it dies?

Here's my short list - which I hope will get a little longer with feedback from others:

 

  • Make a map collaboratively - show what YOU think is important, not what a geographer tells you is important
  • Create a park that reflects the values of your community
  • Don't take your amenities for granted - have backup plans for the necessities of life - water, energy, food, medicine.  Make a peak oil plan, for example
  • Do a community self-portrait
  • Go on vacation to see another community
  • Be pen pals with a community in another country
  • Have a workshop to make a community bucket list

Comments please!  What else should be on a community bucket list?

4BWJ5BS4DRKQ

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]]> http://files.posterous.com/user_profile_pics/1025447/john1.jpg http://posterous.com/users/he6SlKVvbNixY John Waugh John Waugh John Waugh Thu, 10 Mar 2011 05:31:20 -0800 Human Derivatives http://www.theresilientworld.com/human-derivatives http://www.theresilientworld.com/human-derivatives

The cost of slaves has fallen to an all time low, due to oversupply, according to a CNN article. (http://business.blogs.cnn.com/2011/03/07/cost-of-slaves-falls-to-historic-low/?hpt=C2). According to slavery expert Kevin Bales, there are 12-30 million slaves in the world today, mainly in Asia (although the United States is not exempt).

The Global Sociology Blog has a sardonic aside to Wall Street, quoted below. Guess what? They may have beat you to the draw. If slavery includes bonded workers who can't work off their debts, the case may be made that it is, after a form, even more common.

Amplify’d from globalsociology.com

Don’t let Wall Street know that humans are a cheap commodity, they might decide to come with some financial instrument to bundle them, sell them up in tranches, and then buy insurance to make a bundle when they die.

Read more at globalsociology.com

See this Amp at http://bit.ly/gkiu1N
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]]> http://files.posterous.com/user_profile_pics/1025447/john1.jpg http://posterous.com/users/he6SlKVvbNixY John Waugh John Waugh John Waugh Thu, 10 Mar 2011 04:01:01 -0800 Smart decline http://www.theresilientworld.com/smart-decline http://www.theresilientworld.com/smart-decline

Here's the concept of the day from the Sustainable Cities Collective.

Amplify’d from sustainablecitiescollective.com
"There's an extraordinary potential for 'sunburnt' cities to embrace the idea of smart decline" — doing more with less, whether it's fewer people, fewer home buyers or fewer jobs, says Justin Hollander, urban planning professor at Tufts University and author of Sunburnt Cities, which was published March 1.
Read more at sustainablecitiescollective.com

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]]> http://files.posterous.com/user_profile_pics/1025447/john1.jpg http://posterous.com/users/he6SlKVvbNixY John Waugh John Waugh John Waugh Wed, 09 Mar 2011 18:25:54 -0800 Graphic look at ocean acidification http://www.theresilientworld.com/graphic-look-at-ocean-acidification http://www.theresilientworld.com/graphic-look-at-ocean-acidification

Seawater is 30% more acidic than it was 150 years ago. Climate Central has this compelling graphic showing the decline in resilience and productivity of oceans as a result of elevated CO2. This of course takes a heavy toll on coastal communities, both in loss of livelihoods and food supplies, loss of ecosystem services from coral reefs and shellfish beds, and eventually in terms of sea defenses and coastal erosion. It also complicates food security for many countries heavily dependent upon fish as a source of animal protein. These same heavily stressed coastal communities will also have to bear the brunt of extreme weather in many places. There's serious work to be done to enhance the resilience of coastal communities worldwide.

Read the story at Climate Central - link below.

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]]> http://files.posterous.com/user_profile_pics/1025447/john1.jpg http://posterous.com/users/he6SlKVvbNixY John Waugh John Waugh John Waugh Wed, 09 Mar 2011 18:11:25 -0800 Invasive species a toxic asset... http://www.theresilientworld.com/invasive-species-a-toxic-asset http://www.theresilientworld.com/invasive-species-a-toxic-asset

... or Little Lawn of Horrors. The Mortgage Finance Gazette (UK) reports that lenders may not give mortgages on properties with an invasive species, Japanese Knotweed. Knotweed is classified as a controlled waste in the UK. My friend John Peter Thompson at Invasive Notes (http://ipetrus.blogspot.com), who brought this to my attention, informs me that some US states had considered sanctions on property owners for invasive species infestations. It makes me wonder if this would clog the courts with suits and countersuits when a noxious weed spreads from one property to neighbors.

It does beg the question of how society can assign responsibility for managing the spread of harmful organisms. This is sure indication that prevention is the best cure. And yet, there are those in Congress who want to cut the Agricultural Research Service, a key component of our arsenal against noxious and pestilent organisms. Wicked problem indeed.

Amplify’d from www.mortgagefinancegazette.com

Japanese Knotweed could make homes unsaleable

People who have Japanese Knotweed growing in their garden, or even nearby, might find it difficult to sell as some lenders won’t grant a mortgage.

Hugh Greenhouse, a surveyor and founder of www.homebuyeronline.co.uk, said: "A number of main banks and building societies will not provide mortgages on property where Japanese knotweed is found. This comes as a huge shock to manhomeowners, that the weed may have made their home unsaleable."

Japanese knotweed was first introduced to the United Kingdom in the early 19th century as an ornamental plant and has now established itself across the country.

It is the most invasive species of plant in the country which can spread extremely quickly. It is very difficult to eradicate and can cause significant damage to buildings. Knotweed is now classed as controlled waste under the environmental protection act 1990.

Greenhouse says it is very important that Japanese Knotweed is identified before purchasing a property. Surveyors will be able to identify knotweed at a property in their Homebuyer Report and give appropriate advice.

Read more at www.mortgagefinancegazette.com

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]]> http://files.posterous.com/user_profile_pics/1025447/john1.jpg http://posterous.com/users/he6SlKVvbNixY John Waugh John Waugh John Waugh Tue, 08 Mar 2011 06:35:00 -0800 System disruption, netwar & development http://www.theresilientworld.com/system-disruption-netwar-development http://www.theresilientworld.com/system-disruption-netwar-development

BBC reports today of a caution issued by the UK's Royal Academy of Engineering that the country may be over-reliant on satnav systems. The failure of satellite navigation can result in system disruption because there are no backups. This has the potential to interrupt emergency services, law enforcement, and activities as mundane as stocking the grocery shelves (one of my favorite headlines of all time read "Nine Meals from Anarchy"*, from the Manchester Guardian concerning the challenges of stocking inner city grocery shelves during the blizzards of the winter of 2009-2010, an example of another kind of system disruption, from weather). Satnav systems could fail for reasons completely out of human control, such as solar flares.

This is an example of vulnerability in a critical control point in the distribution of information or materials in a tightly integrated system. Disruption at a control point can propagate throughout a system, causing cascading failure. This was the big concern of Y2K. Examples of the phenomenon include the great power outages of NE North America in 2003 and South America (Brazil and Paraguay) of 2009.

John Arquilla, a defense analyst with the US Naval Postgraduate School, coined with co-author David Ronfeldt, the term "netwar" to describe how networked cells (e.g., of insurgents) can disrupt and defeat much larger hierarchically organized forces, again by attacking critical control points and causing cascading failure. In response Arquilla argues persuasively for new tactical approaches based upon network design, with redundancy, mobility, autonomy of cells, and use of strategic communication to help create an enabling environment (public diplomacy to counter propaganda). He calls this formulation "outpost+outreach."

I can see many parallels here with other threads in the debate about the future. These threads share the characteristic of eschewing linearity, exemplified by hierarchical "command and control" structures in favor of networks of autonomous units.**

The "good governance" narrative, for example, predicated on public participation, and promoting access to information, transparency in decision-making processes, and involvement of all stakeholders in decisions. The "information and communications technology revolution" narrative revels in the evolution of communication from "one to one" and and "one to many" to "many to many" through social networking. Social networking, it would appear, is antithetical to command and control systems, such that despotic regimes are now faced with a stark choice - to share power or turn off the lights.

Over coming days, I want to consider ways in which the network approach applies to international development. Is the war on poverty being left behind - a vestige of linear thinking in a networked world? Is it evolving in ways that the old school doesn't recognize? Or is the netwar on poverty in full swing? In other words, what can we learn from the warning of the Royal Academy of Engineering about vulnerability of key control points, and how can we apply that to processes like certification.

* The expression was coined earlier by Lord Cameron of Dillington, a farmer and first head of the UK Countryside Commission, according to the Daily Mail.

**  In the United States, my home country, the tension between "command and control" and autonomous units, was present at the founding of the nation. The correct balance of local control and national authority remains a hotly debated topic.


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Amplify’d from www.bbc.co.uk

The UK may have become dangerously over-reliant on satellite-navigation signals, according to a report from the Royal Academy of Engineering.

Use of space-borne positioning and timing data is now widespread, in everything from freight movement to synchronisation of computer networks.

The academy fears that too many applications have little or no back-up were these signals to go down.

Dr Martyn Thomas, who chaired the group that wrote the report, told BBC News: "We're not saying that the sky is about to fall in; we're not saying there's a calamity around the corner.

"What we're saying is that there is a growing interdependence between systems that people think are backing each other up. And it might well be that if a number these systems fail simultaneously, it will cause commercial damage or just conceivably loss of life. This is wholly avoidable."

Read more at www.bbc.co.uk

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]]> http://files.posterous.com/user_profile_pics/1025447/john1.jpg http://posterous.com/users/he6SlKVvbNixY John Waugh John Waugh John Waugh Mon, 07 Mar 2011 07:04:00 -0800 Does invasion confer resilience? http://www.theresilientworld.com/does-invasion-confer-resilience-0 http://www.theresilientworld.com/does-invasion-confer-resilience-0

Yet another in the tiresome recent spate of posts on "good" invasives. Economic arguments for benefit suffer in at least two ways.  First they tend to be linear approaches to complex systems, and are the product of availability bias (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Availability_heuristic) that gives a greater weighting to those facts that support individual experience (in this case economic activity) - in other words it's a form of "convenient fact".  So one out of one hundred biological invaders has some economic benefit, and according to the cognitive bias [stop the presses!] it "balances" otherwise overwhelming evidence to the contrary.  

But, you know, I'm not a nativist.  I accept that many non-native species are beneficial, and do not advocate that all non-native species be extirpated (I do enjoy my flowers and my vegetables, ahem).  Foes of invasive species are sometimes motivated for perverse reasons - romantic notions of a antediluvian state of nature that we would enjoy if it weren't for the corruption of the modern world.  As if the world could be frozen in time.  As if you could "restore" nature to some previous (ideal) form.   

So, we have Brave New World on one hand and Paradise Lost on the other.  The world of novel ecosystems for the heck of it, and the world of lost innocence.  And neither one of them works for me.  Part of our problem is in trying to conform the complexity of nature to the human experience, and understanding biological invasions as beneficial or harmful, good or bad.  Nature doesn't care.  

Ecosystems adapt to external conditions.  Biological exchange is part of that process. Biological invasions have not generally resulted in "failure to thrive" for Homo sapiens*.  We are masters at adaptation.  But there is a range of factors at play that are reducing our resilience - our capacity for destruction abetted by technology, our growth, and our undermining of natural systems (see other posts below on agriculture and climate change, for example).  The effects are cumulative. Biological invasion could be a component of cascading system failure resulting in famine for example.  Ecological adaptation does not necessarily have to favor H. sapiens.  I don't believe that the evidence will show that in general, biological invasion enhances ecological resilience either - I suspect that there are too many examples of collapse of tropic levels and simplification of ecosystems, resulting in loss of diversity and thus loss of adaptive capacity.  

The thing that bothers me most about talking about good invasive species is that I know of no method for determining a priori which species confer benefits that outweigh the costs.  Inevitably, this argument will get twisted around by some such that the possibility of benefit militates against precaution, and the costs outweigh the benefits of prevention.  Nature doesn't "care".  Full stop.  We're resilient, or we are not resilient. 

* there are notable exceptions in the microbiological world, like Yersinia pestis, plus its rodent vector.  

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