Hurry slowly. When I heard that phrase during the learning-intensive in June 2021, I wrote it on a blue sticky note and stuck it on my wall, where it has remained throughout the year. Unlike the other sticky notes that inspire me to persevere or remind me to take out the garbage, “hurry slowly” is a paradox that I have spent the last year trying to untangle.
Since the MACAL program began, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) released three reports covering climate impacts, mitigation, and adaptation. Together these reports tell a scary story – we have ten years to take dramatic action to curtail emissions and reduce exposures, especially for vulnerable communities. And with each passing minute, that timeline gets shorter.
What we have learned over the past year, however, is that the social, economic, and political systems that drive decision-making and action are incredibly complex. As Tad Homer Dixon argues, these systems are so complex that we cannot dismantle them to understand how to solve problems like climate change (Homer Dixon, 2011). Instead, we need to accept that climate change is a wicked problem that is a symptom of other systemic challenges such as colonial power, and there are good or bad responses but not necessarily right or wrong. Navigating this complexity requires going slow.
And therein lies the paradox of climate action, which I have divided into three distinct sections:
Hurry Up and Slowly Down – As mentioned above, we need to move quickly to respond within the next ten years, and the complex systems that underlie society force us to move slowly, particularly regarding decolonization and reconciliation (Whyte, 2019).
Global and Local Action – Climate change is a global issue that requires ambitious collective action by all countries. Yet the underlying systemic problems that make communities vulnerable are experienced locally and can be lost with only top-down problem solving. Climate action needs to happen at all scales – global, national, regional, and local- simultaneously (Ayers, 2010).
Incremental and Transformative Change – With each term of a government, there are opportunities to lock in climate action through policies and programs. But this incremental change fails to bring the benefits of transformative change that can realize more permanent solutions that reform socio-ecological interactions and relationships (Fedele et al., 2019).
Throughout the academic year, I have found myself returning to the same question – how do we lead in (and through) this paradox? Finnish researcher Esko Kilpi (2019) writes about the need to break out of the traditional decision-making process of “or” and embrace the creativity and transformative nature of “and.” In other words, the old decision-making approach forced a choice between two options – we would either hurry up or go slow. Living with a paradox, Kilpi argues, requires embracing the fact that both sides of the contradiction are true and therefore connected. Breaking the connection by choosing incremental over transformative change means destroying the essence of the problem we are trying to solve (Kilpi, 2019).
We cannot choose to hurry up or move slowly. We need to develop solutions for local communities and for all Canadians. We need to take every required incremental step while pushing for the transformative change that will radically reform society. And this tension of conflicting ideas, Kilp (2019) argues, drives the creativity needed to solve the wicked problem of climate change.
Looking back over the past year, I can see how the MACAL Program prepares us to be leaders in the climate action paradox. Each reading, lecture, assignment, and the year-long Design Thinking Assignment showed us not just the complexity of adapting to climate change but also encouraged us to think outside the conventional approaches to problem-solving and challenge the status quo. We are learning to embrace the paradox instead of fighting it and use the creative tension to find new solutions.
As a privileged white cis gendered woman who understands the threat of climate change, I thought it was my job to make sure we hurry to solve the climate crisis. As a result of the past year’s lessons, I understand that it is not “hurry or go slow”; it is “hurry and go slow.”
References
Ayers, J. (2010). Understanding the Adaptation Paradox: Can Global Climate Change Adaptation Policy be Locally Inclusive?,( Unpublished doctoral dissertation thesis). London School of Economics, London England.
Fedele, G., Donatti, C. I., Harvey, C. A., Hannah, L., & Hole, D. G. (2019). Transformative adaptation to climate change for sustainable social-ecological systems. Environmental Science and Policy, 101, 116–125.
Homer Dixon, T., (January, 2011),Complexity Science, Oxford Leadership Journal, Volume 2, Issue 1, p 1-15.
Kilpi, E., (January, 2019). Living With Paradoxes, Medium, https://medium.com/@EskoKilpi/living-with-paradoxes-d66e4a2ac00d
Whyte, K. (2019, October 23). Too late for indigenous climate justice: Ecological and relational tipping points. Wiley Online Library. https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/wcc.603.