ecological literacy - a foundation for sustainability

Ecological LiteracyA Foundation for Sustainability

www.eco-labs.org

The world is a complex, interconnected, finite, ecological-social- psychological-economic system. We treat it as if it were not, as if it were divisible, separable, simple, and infinite. Our persistent, intractable, global problems arise directly from this mismatch.

Donella Meadows, 1982

Why? ContextPresently humanity’s ecological footprint exceeds its regenerative capacity by 30%. This global overshoot is growing and ecosystems are being run down as wastes (including greenhouse gases) accumulate in the air, land, and water. Climate change, resource depletion, pollution, loss of biodiversity, and other systemic environmental problems threaten to destroy the natural support systems on which we depend.

What? Systems, Networks, Values Problems cannot be understood in isolation but must be seen as interconnected and interdependent. We must learn to engage with complexity and think in terms of systems to address current ecological, social and economic problems. Images can be useful tools to help with this learning process.

How? Transformational LearningThe value / action gap permeates education for sustainability and is obvious in environmental coverage in the media. The gap between our ideas about what we value and what we are actually doing to address the problem is the notorious value / action gap. This project uses transformational learning to move from values to action. This approach is integrated into cycles of action research and practice based design work.

ReferencesFritjof Capra. The Hidden Connections. London: Flamingo. 2003Stephen Sterling. Whole Systems Thinking as a Basis for Paradigm Change in Education. University of Bath. 2003Stephen Sterling. Transformational Learning. Researching Transformational Learning. University of Gloucestershire. 2009

Ecological literacy - the understanding of the principles of organization that ecosystems have evolved to sustain the web of life - is the first step on the road to sustainability. The second step is the move towards ecodesign. We need to apply our ecological knowledge to the fundamental redesign of our technologies and social institutions, so as to bridge the current gap between human design and the

ecological sustainable systems of nature. Fritjof Capra, 2003

Levels of Learning & Engagement

1st: Education ABOUT SustainabilityContent and/or skills emphasis. Easily accommodatedinto existing system. Learning ABOUT change. ACCOMMODATIVE RESPONSE - maintenance.

2nd: Education FOR SustainabilityAdditional values emphasis. Greening of institutions. Deeper questioning and reform of purpose, policy and practice.Learning FOR change. REFORMATIVE RESPONSE - adaptive.

3rd: SUSTAINABLE EducationCapacity building and action emphasis. Experiential curriculum. Institutions as learning communities. Learning AS change. TRANSFORMATIVE RESPONSE - enactment.

Stephen Sterling, 2009

[email protected] | [email protected] poster can be downloaded on this website: www.eco-labs.org

Transformational Learning

Values, Knowledge, SkillsA: SEEING (Perception)

An expanded ethical sensibility or consciousness

B: KNOWING (Conception)A critical understanding of pattern,

consequence and connectivity

C: DOING (Action)The ability to design and act relationally,

integratively and wisely.


ECOLOGICAL

SOCIALECONOMIC

GOODDESIGN

The Visual Communication of Ecological LiteracyJody Joanna Boehnert - MPhil - School of Architecture and Design

Actions

Ideas / Theories

Norms / Assumptions

Beliefs / Values

Paradigm / Worldview

Metaphysics / Cosmology

ECOLOGICAL

SOCIALECONOMIC

We have to learn to see the world anew. Einstein

The world is a complex, interconnected,

finite, ecological-social-psychological-

economic system. We treat it as if it were

not, as if it were divisible, separable, simple,

and infinite. Our persistent, intractable,

global problems arise directly from this

mismatch.

Donella Meadows, 1982

We live in a profoundly relational world, but

our perceptual, intellectual and learning

tools are inadequate to properly see and

appreciate this reality, and to develop an

appropriate ‘systemic wisdom’.


Content

1. Context

2. Concept

3. Key ideas

4. History

5. Development

6. Practice

7. Learning

The volume of education has increased and

continues to increase, yet so do pollution,

exhaustion of resources, and the dangers

of ecological catastrophe. If still more

education is to save us, it would have to be

education of a different kind: education that

takes us into the depth of things.

Schumacher, 1974

1. Context

Springer-Verlag. The New Scientist.

Living Planet Report 2008. WWF

Living Planet Report 2006. WWF

Earth’s Natural Wealth: an Audit. The New Scientist

The Oil Age. Information design by Dave Menninger. 2006

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10

20

30

40

50

1930 1950 1970 1990 2010 2030 2050

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on

, G

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e/a

Non-con Gas

Gas

NGLs

Polar Oil

Deep Water

Heavy

Regular

Source: ASPO

billio

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els

Global production of oil and gas

The Oil CrunchSecuring the UK’s energy futureFirst report of the UK Industry Taskforce on Peak Oil & Energy Security (ITPOES)

The Oil Age. Information design by Dave Menninger. 2006

The Oil Crunch. The UK Industry Taskforce

on Peak Oil and Energy Security.

ECOLOGICAL

SOCIALECONOMIC

2. Concept

The interlocking global crises of unsustainability requires a far more fundamental social learning and educational response than environ-mental education, as a largely marginalized and contained body of thought and practice, has yet been able to effect.

Sterling, 2005

The development of ecological understanding

is not simply another subject to be learnt but

a fundamental change in the way we see the

world.

John Lyle, 1994

Ecological Literacypostmodern ecological worldview

shift from mechanistic metaphor and paradigm

towards an ecological metaphor and paradigm

The first step in our endeavor to build sustainable

communities must be to become ‘ecologically literate’,

i.e. to understand of the principles of organization,

common to all living systems, that ecosystems have

evolved to sustain the web of life…

Fritjof Capra, 2002

This systemic understanding of life allows us

to formulate a set of principles of organization

that may be identified as the basic principles

of ecology and used as guidelines for building

sustainable human communities...

We need to apply our ecological knowledge to

the fundamental redesign of our technologies

and social institutions, so as to bridge the current

gap between human design and the ecological

sustainable systems of nature.

Fritjof Capra, 2002

Systems thinking asserts that valid knowledge

and meaningful understanding comes from

building up whole pictures of phenomenon, not

by breaking them into parts.

3. Key Ideas

• shift thinking from objects to processes

• shift thinking about relationships from

hierarchies to networks

Whole Systems Thinking= systemism + ecologism

= systems thinking + ecological thought

•extensionofperception

•connectioninconceptualthinking

•integrationofplanningandaction

•Not all systems thinking is ecological.

•Not all ecological thinking is aware of systems

thinking.

Stephen Sterling

Paradigm

Thomas Kuhn

The Structure of Scientif ic Revolutions, 1962

A basic way of perceiving, thinking, valuing and

doing associated with a particular vision of reality.

Paradigm

A constellation of concepts, values, perceptions,

and practices shared by a community, which forms

a particuliar vision of reality that is the basis of the

whole the community organizes itself.

Capra, 1986

Implicit in the notion of paradigm is the relative

unawareness of deep assumptions.

Paradigms have a normative aspect – they

tell people what is important, legitimate and

reasonable.

Patton, 1990

Paradigms are the lens through which we look a

the world and it therefore determines what we

perceive. A paradigm is a set of beliefs or as-

sumptions we make about the world, normally

beneath the level of awareness and therefore

mostly never questioned.

Stacey, 1996

Three components of a paradigm

ethos - belief, imaginal, dimension - epistemology

eidos - dimension of ideas / concepts - ontology

praxis - reflective intention and action - methodology

Stephen Sterling









Actions

Ideas / Theories

Norms / Assumptions

Beliefs / Values



EpistemologyThe study of the nature of knowledge,

its origins, structure and validity.

- ‘how we know’

- epistemic learning = transformative learning

Challenge of unsustainability requires a deep

learning response, which may be termed

transformative or epistemic learning

Gregory Bateson suggested we suffer from

‘a fundamental epistemological error’

in Steps to an Ecology of Mind (1972).

4. History

Scientific revolution (17th century)

Radical change in epistemological position / paradigm

A: Shift away from Medieval Christianity

- end of the idea of a sacred world

B: Copernicus, Galileo & Issac Newton

- geocentric view of the world displaced by astronomy

C: Scientific method:

- Francis Bacon & Rene Descartes

- empiricism

- reductive thinking

- dualism:

subject & object

mind & body,

people & nature

- the whole was no more than the sum of the parts

- mechanical world- world as a machine metaphor

- facts and values are unrelated

- vision of the material world as a great machine.

- reductionism tries to gain understanding of a

phenomenon by breaking it into the component

parts. This works for study of computers and cars

but not natural systems.

Reductionist science is...at the root of the

growing ecological crisis, because it entails

a transformation of nature such that the

processes, regularities and regenerative capacity

of nature are destroyed.

Vandana Shiva, 1988

mechanistic, dualistic,

rationalist, objectivist,

and reductivist

Clash of paradigmsDominant worldview as flawed, dysfunctional

Mechanism

Objectivist

Reductionist, dualistic

Reductive

Ecological

Participative Holistic, integrative

Systemic


Crises of Perception

reductionist

objective

empirical

value driven

transdisciplinary

participatory

systemic

mechanical

wholistic

ecological

Seeing differently

Put simply, the case against the dominant

Western worldview is that it is no longer

constitutes an adequate model of reality -

particularly ecological reality. The map is wrong,

and moreover, we commonly confuse the map

(worldview) for the territory (reality).

Sterling, 1993

70s - Meadows, Bateson

80s - Capra, Harman, Clark

90s - Orr, Laszlo, Hawkins, Kortean, Berman+

00s - Sterling, 100s+

5. Development

Problems as symptoms of systemic failure, rather than random errors requiring fixes.

Actions

Ideas/theories

Norms/assumptions

Beliefs/values

Paradigm/worldview

Metaphysics/cosmology

Stephen Sterling on transition from beliefs to actions: ‘Levels of Knowing’, 2009

What we already ‘know’ frames what we see,

and what we see frames what we understand.

The things we make are an extension of the

manner in which we think.

6. Practicefootprinting

lifecyle analysis

cradle to cradle

One Planet Living

biomimicry

embodied energy

rebound effect

energy descent

general systems

theory

wicked problems

tipping points

resilience

technology lock-in

carrying capacity

dematerialisation

ecosystem services

externality costs

Values lead to what we design

& designers subconsiously embed values in to

what we make.

But our value system presently does not

acknowledge our dependence on ecological

support systems.

Some lessons from ecological systems for

design of human systems.

1. Diversity

2. Feedbacks

3. Resilience

4. Non-linear thresholds

5. Emergence

How? Transformational LearningThe value / action gap permeates education for sustainability and is obvious in environmental coverage in the media. The gap between our ideas about what we value and what we are actually doing to address the problem is the notorious value / action gap. This project uses transformational learning to move from values to action. This approach is integrated into cycles of action research and practice based design work.

7. Learning









Actions

Ideas / Theories

Norms / Assumptions

Beliefs / Values



A sufficient and whole learning response -

at personal, organisational and social levels -

requires shifts in the three interrelated areas of

human knowing and experience:

perception (Seeing – affective dimension)

conception (Knowing – cognitive dimension)

action (Doing – intentional dimension)


10 Assumptions of Reductionist Thinking

1 ‘To every problem, there’s a solution’

2 ‘We can understand something by breaking it down into its component parts’

3 ‘The whole (of something) is no more than the sum of its parts’

4 ‘Most processes are linear’

5 ‘Most issues and events are can be understood by examining the components.

6 ‘It is acceptable to draw your circle of attention or concern quite tightly, as in ”that’s not my concern’

7 ‘We can define or value something by distinguishing it from what it is not, or from its opposite’

8 ‘Objectivity is both possible and necessary to understand issues‘

9 ‘We can understand things best through a rational response. Any other approach is irrational’

10 ‘If we know what the state of something is now, we can usually predict future outcomes’

Stephen Sterling 2009

10 Assumptions of Reductionist Thinking

•problem-solving

• analysis

• reductionism

• cause-effect

• atomism

•narrow boundaries

•objectivism

•dualism

• rationalism

•determinism

An emerging ecological (relational/systemic)

paradigm presents a sane and hopeful

evolutionary pathway, necessary to the

conditions we now face, with the power

to transcend the disintegrative effects of

modernism and the disempowering relativism of

deconstructive postmodernism.


Problem-solvingAnalysis Reductionism Closed cause-effectAtomism/segregativeNarrow boundaries Objectivism Dualism Rationalism Determinism

Reframing /alleviationSynthesis Holism Multiple influencesIntegrative Extension of boundariesCritical subjectivity Pluralism / dualityRational / non-rational Uncertainty, ambiguity

To simplify, two ways of thinking...

Metaphor

Epistemology

Ontology

Methodology

Mechanism

Objectivist

Reductionist, dualistic

Reductive

Ecology/living systems

Participative

Holistic, integrative

Systemic

Key cultural worldviews

Educationalparadigm

Positivist Interpretivist;Constructivist

Critical; radical

Poststructural Participative

Role of educator

Instruction Facilitation Critical pedagogytransformative

Deconstruct- ion

Mediation, mentoring/ ‘invitational’

Curriculum Prescribed Constructivist; Issues based Pluralist Indicative, emergent

Pedagogy Delivery Learner centeredTransactional

Critical pedagogy

Deconstructive Co-inquiry

Educational paradigm

Cultural worldview/metaphorMechanistic..............modernist…………….Postmodern….........Ecological…

Our machines, our value systems, our educational systems will all have to be informed by (the) switch, from the machine age when we tried to design schools to be like factories, to an ecological age, when we want to design schools, and families and social institutions in terms of maintaining the quality of life not just for our species, but for the whole planet. Mary Catherine Bateson, 1997

Last thoughts...

‘It is better to do the right thing wrongly, than

the wrong thing better and better…’

Russell Ackoff

We can’t solve problems by using the same

kind of thinking we used when we created them.

Albert Einstein

www.eco-labs.orghttp://teach-in.ning.com

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SOCIALECONOMIC

Further Reading:

Capra, Fritjof. 2002. The Hidden Connections. London: Flamingo, 2003.

Orr, David. Ecological Literacy. Albany: State of New York Press, 1992.

Stephen Sterling. Whole Systems Thinking as a Basis for Paradigm Change in Education. University of Bath. 2003