A note from me

Hi Folks,

A lot has been going on over the past couple of weeks.  In the wider world, the U.S. has elected its next President and, equally uncomfortably for me, I have undergone an intrusive medical procedure!  

What does this bring to mind?

To be honest, many of the people in my extended ecosystem are disappointed – even appalled – at the election result, although I also know that some members of my US family will have voted for Donald Trump. These are good, honest people and we all need to respect and understand their sentiments, reflecting on what is needed from here onwards to encourage a better life for people with a healthy planet.  

In Edition 25 of the Dodo Newsletter – which you can find in the archive – I reflected on the self-reinforcing politics of fear and resentment. Reducing outbreaks of this corrosive dynamic requires continuous diligent attention to preventing the build-up of conditions in which it can flourish. Collectively, we have failed to do this in many of our societies. This is a lesson we need to learn.

I’m also reminded of a fascinating book I read years ago by urban planning activist and philosopher Jane Jacobs, called, Systems of Survival. Because we have two radically different ways of dealing with our needs in society, this describes two fundamental and distinct ethical systems - both valid and necessary. One system guides ‘guardians or stewards’ in society, while the other guides ‘merchants or traders’. The sacrifices and efforts of effective ‘guardians’ are rewarded with societal position and status, while those of effective ‘merchants’ are rewarded materially.  

According to Jacobs, conflicts and corruption inevitably occur when there are “monstrous moral hybrids” of these systems. For example, when guardians also target material rewards or merchants target societal status and position. This insight raises concerns as we consider the current selection of high-profile government leaders – supposedly ‘guardians’ – in the United States (and elsewhere).  

Will the U.S. Constitution prove resilient to this latest challenge, as it has for the past almost 250 years in the face of ever-changing circumstances? We shall soon learn.   

I guess this links with our current Newsletter series on Resilience, where the capacity to learn and adapt is also highlighted. We recently had another Dodo Club webinar on this topic, with Piet-Hein Daverveldt as a tremendous guest. You can find a recording of this on LinkedIn through this link: The Dodo Club Webinar.

It has been wonderful to see the audience for our webinar grow, but one lesson we have learned from these webinars is that far more people view the recording rather than join the session live. I guess this reflects the busyness of most of our lives and the need to be able to choose where and when we direct our attention.  

In response to this and our growing audience, therefore, we have decided to transition the live webinar into a formal, recorded Podcast! This will bring technical improvements and more flexibility while we continue to have engaging discussions around the energy transition, scenario thinking, climate change mitigation and much more.

So, while we put a pause on the webinars for now, stay tuned for the launch of The Dodo Club Podcast in January of next year. Watch this space!

I hope you find these materials enjoyable and that they help you build your resilience!

My Bi-Weekly Guide

Integrative Resilience (and Art)

Resilience has different layers that can be approached from different angles. By now, folks will be aware of my growing interest in the history of art so I’m, somewhat light-heartedly, throwing in references to the artistic angle in our Newsletters.  

Understanding more deeply the flourishing of the arts, sciences, ideas and societies in the Renaissance period has become a joy for me. Of course, one of the most celebrated artists of the time was Leonardo da Vinci. He is the archetypal “Renaissance man”; an artist, mathematician, inventor, writer, sculptor, architect, musician, and more besides. 

He was also a systems thinker, and this characteristic is closely related to the topic of Integrative Resilience covered in this Newsletter. 

This iconic drawing of Vitruvian Man - inspired by the writings of the ancient Roman architect Vitruvius - is a wonderful example of systems thinking because it represents much more than a sketch of human proportions; it’s a distillation of Da Vinci’s studies into anatomy, geometry, religion and philosophy. For example, many of the proportions in the figure correspond to the ‘Golden Ratio’. Subsequently, Da Vinci created the illustrations for, De Divina Proportione (On the Divine Proportion), a mathematics book written by Luca Pacioli. That book focused on proportions, such as the golden ratio it is named for, and their applications to art and architecture. 

The integrative resilience of an entity develops through its connections with other entities and how all these respond to changes and disruptions in an integrated way as connected systems. I believe it is useful to reflect on the following 5 features of integrative resilience:

1. Spatial Interactions and Scales: 

   We are directly connected to others locally, but our connections can stretch well beyond the local and also to the regional and global. As noted in the last Newsletter on Structural Resilience, the diversification of energy sources that enabled Japan to recover from the impact of the Fukushima disaster was largely through established relationships with regional/global markets for oil products and liquified natural gas. These extensive and locationally distributed connections had not been disrupted by the localised disaster.
   

2. Temporal Interactions and Scales:
   Impacts and responses take place ‘now’ but also play out across multiple time scales. Appreciating this and taking it into account enables better preparations for disruptions and the mitigation of potential impacts. For example, it is important to understand that heavy local rainfall can also be accompanied by rainfall elsewhere that may pose a threat from swollen rivers several hours or days ahead and also saturate the ground to raise the flooding threat from any new storms that could be weeks away. Systems thinking often highlights 3 time horizons: Immediate circumstances whose relevance is likely to decline over time; growing conditions that will become prominent before long but then also begin to fade; and emerging possibilities that are currently not significant but could eventually become dominant in the future.
   

3. Thresholds and Boundaries:
   The behaviour of systems is driven by the collective nature of interactions between component parts much more significantly than the detailed behaviour of those individual components. For example, we find both reinforcing loops and balancing loops within systems. The former drive exponential growth or collapse, while the latter drive reversion of a deviation back towards an equilibrium. The latter are associated with resilience but, as the former are also always present and bring dynamism, the weighting of both is significant. If balancing loops are weakened, or reinforcing loops strengthened, then eventually a point will be reached when the system “breaks” and changes significantly until new balancing loops become established and a new equilibrium state prevails. Looking at the history of our landscapes, for example, we have seen shifts of state in particular locations from forestry to savannah or grassland and, from there, further shifts into deserts or dust-bowls. Returning to the ‘old’ equilibrium is not possible – a boundary or threshold has been crossed.  Awareness of thresholds is very important in managing for resilience and this should highlight for all of us, for example, the importance of the under-appreciated scientific work on planetary boundaries. (Here is a link to a wonderful article on Planetary Boundaries by the Stockholm Resilience Centre.)
   

4. Reserves of Resources:
   When a crisis or disruptions occur, these are pressures at a given point in time.  The ability to cope with changing circumstances is hugely influenced by the flow of resources that can be drawn on at that moment. Some of these may come from elsewhere (see point 1 above) but a lot will depend on the “stock” of reserves that has been accumulated over time. These may be financial reserves that can be traded for all kinds of other resources, or they may be reserves of expertise or know-how (see also point 5 below).  A useful template for reflecting on the impact of a disruption is to consider two archetypal scenario pathways – ‘Room to Manoeuvre’ and ‘Trapped Transition’ ( see Shell’s 2013 New Lens Scenarios). From experience, the ability to follow the former pathway depends on the adequacy of relevant reserves of all kinds.

5. Social Capital:
   A particularly important subset of the Reserves highlighted above in point 4 is ‘Social Capital'. This may be built up from the know-how, expertise and determination of people within an organisation under pressure, or the degree of trust and positive relationships built up within an organisation or with relevant stakeholders outside.  Distinct from “financial capital”, this is referred to as ‘social capital’.  Building this up over time so it can be drawn on in periods of pressure or crisis may make the difference between resilience or collapse. Please refer also to Edition 24 of the Newsletter where 5 factors are identified for assessing and improving the quality of relationships between organisations or individuals.

An opportunity for you to do some more learning:

A free online conference focused on energy transitions and broader topics will take place on November 19 and 20, with recordings of sessions available until December 2^nd.  I’ll be making 3 contributions at this event, including a keynote address.  I know many of the people involved and am very confident that its various sessions will be both very practical and inspirational.

For more information and registration visit:

https://energy2024.org/

Question of The Fortnight

Every fortnight I’ll be asking a thought-provoking question in hopes of sparking interesting and enlightening discussion.

I’d love to hear your response! You can do so by simply responding to this email.

Today’s question is:

I have loved the contributions so far to this question, so I ask once again: Is resilience a characteristic of your personal life or your organisation that you think about and, if so, how do you approach enhancing it and the trade-offs this involves? 

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