A note from me

Hi Folks,
I’m writing this newsletter from back home in The Hague after returning from a brief trip to Singapore. Not surprisingly, I’m rather travel-weary and a little jet-lagged. It seems to take rather longer for me to bounce back now compared to when I was in my 20s! That would be some 40 years ago—coincidentally, around the first time I visited that powerhouse city-state.

I love Singapore.
I understand that, like everywhere else, there are fair reasons to criticise some things about it and some of the approaches taken by its government at times. However, I step back and consider its remarkable journey from being a deeply impoverished, slum-ridden, ethnically divided, mosquito-infested, post-colonial political maelstrom when it became independent 60 years ago. It could easily have descended into chaos and strife, but instead, it rose to become a beacon of peaceful urban prosperity and dynamism, envied across Asia and much of the rest of the world.

Visiting on average a couple of times per year since 1986, I’ve been privileged to witness two-thirds of that journey—and it is truly astonishing.

On this trip, I first met with a couple of ministries to discuss both the “polycrisis” the world is facing and the strategy for decarbonising the Singaporean economy over the coming decades.

Singapore is a small island that is already experiencing the early impacts of global climate change and, while its direct greenhouse gas emissions are relatively small on a global scale, its approaches and policy choices are influential models for much of Asia. I am championing a business-chain perspective (e.g. see this article), looking upstream from the end-user perspective—where costs of change are diluted and generally affordable—to the associated heavy industries in the supply chain, where the large investment requirements are concentrated. I feel that the insight to focus particularly on alignment mechanisms that bring revenue from where it is affordable in target business chains to where it needs to be concentrated was novel to many of the people I was speaking with and caught their attention. It will be fascinating to see if this now percolates into policymaking in the country.

I also spent two days at the National University of Singapore, facilitating sessions on strategic risk identification and assessment. This began with a workshop with NUS leadership on Scenario Consequences, fed by scenarios developed in the university around US-China tensions and their impact on higher education. These scenarios grew from sessions on scenario development I held at NUS some 18 months ago. If interested, you can find guidance on scenario development in the Dodo Club Online Course (see below).

I was also delighted to contribute to the 3rd Risk Advisory Panel Dialogue at NUS, and was pleased to recognise that many informed people see opportunities for NUS and Singapore in the midst of the current global turmoil, alongside the more obvious strategic risks. Nobody knows whether Singapore will continue to prosper over the next 50 years—that’s why we explore possibilities through scenario thinking—but I wouldn’t bet against it!

This newsletter continues to build on threads we have explored previously, aimed at helping you build a better life for yourself and the people around you, despite the current socio-political disruptions across the world. I hope you continue to find these newsletters enjoyable and that they help you enrich your own personal or organisational perspectives.

I am also pleased to remind you that the Dodo Club Online Course is now also available on the Udemy platform. The course covers scenario/systems thinking for grappling with uncertainty, an introduction to energy transitions, and the development of strategic character in leadership. My hope is to make it accessible for all those looking to take active steps to improve their personal understanding of these issues. You can find the link to access the course at the bottom of this newsletter or through the link attached below:

My Bi-Weekly Guide

The Complex Food-Energy-Water Stress Nexus (and Art)
Previous newsletters have highlighted the significance, for resilience, of grappling with complex interconnected systems (e.g. see Newsletter 30). While our bodies are actually examples of many such systems, evolution has not wired our brains to deal serenely with this task. Complexity—and the disruptive bursts of change that can arise from it—stress us out.

Well over a decade ago, when my team was working on food, water, and energy security and their connections, we developed the term “Stress Nexus”. For a period, this became quite a well-used phrase internationally.

As he struggled with considering the many interacting factors in the Stress Nexus, one of my colleagues used the phrase “existential angst” to describe how he was feeling. This reminded me of several paintings you may be familiar with. Probably the most iconic is The Scream by the Norwegian artist Edvard Munch.

This was painted in 1893. In fact, Munch created two versions in paint and two in pastels, as well as a lithograph stone from which several prints survive. His work became very influential in shaping the Expressionist movement in art.

In recent years, both painted versions have themselves inspired much societal stress and angst, as they were independently stolen from the galleries in which they were being displayed. Fortunately, both were subsequently recovered with relatively little damage from their collisions with criminality.

In a different style of art—Romanticism/Realism—French artist Gustave Courbet, in his painting The Desperate Man from the 1840s, captured perhaps a closer impression of my colleague tearing his hair out as he considered the Stress Nexus!

Our network of subject-matter specialists on individual food, water, and energy systems initially identified 300 important factors in the food-water-energy security nexus but, with a bit of clustering, this was brought down to about 100. This still gives around 10,000 potential connections, although on inspection, only around 1,000 seemed significant. Nevertheless, this is still hugely complex.

Fortunately, we were aided by a complexity scientist who could use tuned software to indicate the influence of different nodes in the network on the behaviour of the network as a whole. Through analysing the number and nature of connections, as illustrated below, the most influential nodes could be identified in the same way that the analysis of the Conclave for electing the new Pope was presented in the last newsletter.

From this analysis, five major influential groups of factors in the food-energy-water security stress nexus became highlighted:

1. Smart & Sustainable Design
One of the two most influential factors in the whole network is the quality of urban development (actually the large central node in the illustration above). After all, we are currently over halfway through what will possibly become known as “the century of the city”, when most of the world becomes urbanised, and how this continues to occur will massively influence future resource requirements.

This insight inspired city-centred scenario work, which I’ll come back to in future newsletters. Related to this are the efficiency of integrated infrastructure development and material use, and the quality of education and informed consumer/citizen choices. In rural system design, the efficiency of the food supply chain is particularly highlighted, along with sustainable agriculture and land-use trade-offs.

2. Policy & Pricing
Effectively, this refers to the quality of alignment mechanisms for addressing climate pressures and shaping the efficiency of resource use. For example, the regulation and pricing of greenhouse gas emissions. In addition, there is the pricing of freshwater consumption and fossil energy to improve efficiency in its use and stimulate the development of more efficient technologies.

3. Technological Innovations
As renewable energy technologies like power from solar and wind are already becoming established, two particular new technological approaches were highlighted by the analysis. The first of these was carbon dioxide capture and storage, again to reduce growing climate pressures. The second was waste conversion to energy.

4. Natural Resource Nationalism & Other Constraints
Of course, limitations on supplying key resources to others for political or economic reasons have a direct impact on security. This may be, for example, through acts like damming rivers or limiting the availability of phosphorus for fertilisers or rare metals for battery production.

5. Population & Prosperity Growth
The underlying pressure on food, energy, and water security stems from the extent of human activity, and this is driven by the number of people on the planet and the amount of economic activity required to achieve at least a decent quality of life.

At about 8 billion, there are already more than three times as many people in the world as when I was born, and this is generally expected to rise to around 11 billion by the end of the century. Nevertheless, we could still act to reduce population pressures over that longer term by around 30–40% through better educating girls and young women and empowering them to manage their reproductive choices. See, for example, the article “Want a healthy planet? Unleash women!”.

An opportunity to learn more:

If you would like to learn more about the kinds of topics covered in these Newsletters, then please consider signing up to the introductory Dodo Club Online Course. This covers scenario/systems thinking for grappling with uncertainty, an introduction to energy transitions, and the development of strategic character in leadership.

In the interest of avoiding the fate of that unfortunate bird, the Dodo, this course aims to help us secure our own personal legacies within a changing world and the energy transition - and to leave a healthier planet for future generations. You can access the course through Udemy using the link below!

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:

How concerned are you about food, energy and water security, and why?

The Dodo Club Online Course

The Dodo Club is Waiting!

The Dodo Club is my online course which has been built for collaboration, learning and mutual support.

In the interest of avoiding the fate of that unfortunate bird, the Dodo, this course aims to help us secure our own personal legacies within scenario planning and the energy transition - and to leave a healthier planet for future generations.

You can access the course through Udemy using the link below!

You can also follow me on LinkedIn where I host webinars, Q&A sessions and provide weekly posts discussing some of the most pressing issues of today.

To be a part of the discussion and to have your voice heard, please do follow along below!