April 2023

Rapid energy and material consumption reduction are needed for the ecological planetary systems to heal and hopefully regenerate. If the restoration of planetary boundaries is to occur, nothing in the global north can continue along in a colonial business-as-usual exponential growth fashion. Nevertheless, the status quo does continue – even in the Masters of Arts in Climate Action Leadership (MACAL) program.

Considering this context, this blog post aims to reflect on my learning to date critically; and demonstrate transdisciplinary thinking about complex concepts, issues, and ideas related to climate action leadership. In addition, I will reflect on my deepening thinking about climate risk assessment.

On the program web page, the Royal Roads University MACAL program invites learners to “create ground-breaking solutions through communication, changemaking and leadership” and “join an international movement of climate action leaders working to change the climate story from a tale of disaster to one of transformation.” The program description states that the climate emergency is our world’s most pressing challenge. It also identifies strong leadership; social, political, cultural and economic responses; and a low-carbon, socially just and climate-resilient future as some of the solutions. 

The transdisciplinary approach in the MACAL program is to ‘to respond to real-world problems and generate real-world solutions’ by ‘shifting underlying behaviour, beliefs and systemic issues that continue to fuel the climate crisis’.  Also, ‘by reducing vulnerability and increasing resilience in communities, systems and organisations’, sustainable futures can be co-created. 

Dr. Elizabeth Childs, a co-lead in the CALS 501 course, is fond of saying, “Courses are containers and invitations to explore particular areas. These are just starting points.” There has been space to explore a broader potential from what is offered. 

‘Cloud problems’ are a metaphor for dynamic and complex problems (Popper, 1966). They are endless and evolving with multiple nonlinear feedback loops that are both known and unknown. Cloud problems exist on a complexity scale. At the other end of the spectrum are ‘clock problems’.

Clock problems are complicated, (Popper, 1966) with fixes that experts can generally enact over a short period of time. Aspects of the problem can be taken apart, considered and fully understood. Problems are cause and effect – if this (x), then that (y). The systems are closed and circular. Targeted solutions are often low risk, incremental in their approach and maintain the status quo (business-as-usual). 

Some examples of cloud problems are polycrises, tipping points, biodiversity loss and the climate emergency. Undernutrition, overnutrition, and global food systems fall into this category, as does collective trauma and social collapse. These issues demand transformative changes. This means multiple solutions are contained in diverse worldviews that emerge over numerous time scales. Cloud problems can not be ‘fixed’, but they can be shifted and healed. 

Examples of clock problems include hunger, literacy, risk assessment process in its current form as designed to address local climate hazards, and climate science. These issues have solutions that do not change systems. 

Clock problems and cloud problems take very different approaches to solutions. In a learning module on complex problems and systems, the University of Waterloo Institute for Social Innovation and Resilience acknowledges that the types of problems being dealt with affects the types of approaches and the level of impact being applied.

Rob Ricigliano is the Director of World Affairs at the University of Wisconsin. He explains that harm may result when attempts to repair what needs healing, or beliefs in simple solutions from clock-type thinking, are used for cloud-like problems (Ricigliano, 2021). Using the proper strategies for these issues is a leadership challenge and a necessary competency of this historical era. 

The general goals of approaches that underlie the spectrum of complexity, from clock problems to cloud predicaments, range from a quick fix to holistic healing. The majority of courses in the first year of the MACAL program align with the goals of technical and adaptive approaches. 

Ricigliano’s 2022 Governance for Systems Change blog post unpacks these various approaches across the spectrum. Ricigliano also states that approaches demonstrate choices which become invitations for engagement. 

Targeted solutions necessitate a technological approach and rely upon best practices, skills and knowledge or a higher level of expertise. In addition, there is a need for certainty and control because uncertainty can become a barrier between the identified problem and the selected solution (Ricigliano, 2022). Targeted solutions might, for example, provide services and programs.

A moderate degree of certainty regarding the definition of the problem and its causes is necessary for an adaptive approach when considering solutions at scale. A decent level of certainty must be enough to navigate through remaining uncertainties to find the subsurface causes and probable solutions (Ricigliano, 2022), (e.g. a climate risk assessment process). A solution at scale might consider making a policy change.

Transdisciplinary approaches are holistic and complex problems focused in system innovations. Environmental, social, and health sciences are interwoven and go beyond their conventional bounds in a humanities context (Choi & Pak, 2006). A system innovation might change incentives to make long-term approaches more appealing.

An emergent approach is needed in transformation. It considers the core drivers of predicaments that are mostly unknown or misunderstood. Also, the core drivers are generally unknown or unformed. So, systems transformation asks us to stay with ‘the trouble’. Shifts in consciousness and paradigms are required to transform patterns (power, narratives, resources, relationships) that would improve the health of that system (Ricigliano, 2022). 

There are different ways to apply technological and adaptive approaches when considering targeted solutions and solutions at scale. To whom or what are they in service? Do they support planetary healing? Do they regenerate essential relationships? Or, are they just propping up extractive business-as-usual RCP 8.5 climate scenarios?

The courses within the MACAL program appear to be misaligned if the purpose is to address the complexity of the current climate emergency predicament. The ‘clock’ end of the spectrum tends to be driven by anthropocentric information/ data and Western science-based, cannibal capitalism that results in fractured impacts and the continuation of the status quo. Moreover, urgency is absent. For example, CALS500 Climate Science Impacts and Services course design concentrated on delivering facts in a technical manner using the IPCC AR6 WG1 report. This may have value as a climate scientist, but provides little use for sector leaders who require a broader literacy in all three interrelated IPCC AR6 reports.

As we learned from Einstein, you can not solve problems at the same level of thinking that created them.

Systems change considers the root causes of predicaments using systems-level thinking and deep understanding. This is in contrast to surface-level change that only deals with the symptoms of an issue but will not alter the underlying causes. Systems transformation is a transition to a new and permanently altered state. 

The MACAL program competencies of adaptive leadership, innovative change-making, climate communications, adaptation and resilience, with systems and futures thinking, continue to be applicable. However, progressing past management and contemplating a complementary skill set that incorporates emergence and healing, whole-person learning, and life-centred design is warranted as first year foundational learning   if one considers the program description. Thoughts for my second year of  this program are now turning towards core elements that centre: relational     modes of knowing, being and acting; deep listening, humble inquiry,  co-creation and collaboration; social arts and humanities literacies, sense-making for better decision making; and ‘more-than-human’ (life-centred) rights and responsibilities. These are integral and broadly applicable leadership skills for what is now at stake. 

In the context of the UN’s IPCC Sixth Assessment Synthesis Report released earlier this month, and Antonio Guterres, Un Secretary General, stating: “This report is a clarion call to massively fast-track climate efforts by every country and every sector and on every timeframe. Our world needs climate action on all fronts: everything, everywhere, all at once.”; the future MACAL program has opportunities to make changes to meet this call with more than status-quo clock solution approaches.

References

Choi, B. C., & Pak, A. W. (2006, December 29). Multidisciplinarity, interdisciplinarity and transdisciplinarity in health research, services, education and policy: 1. Definitions, objectives, and evidence of effectiveness. Clin Invest Med, (6), 351-364. PMID: 17330451

Complex problems and systems | Waterloo Institute for Social Innovation and Resilience. (n.d.). University of Waterloo. Retrieved April 5, 2023, from https://uwaterloo.ca/waterloo-institute-for-social-innovation-and-resilience/education/learning-modules/complex-problems-and-systems

Cox, R., Niederer, S., Forssman, V., & Sikorski., L. (2020). Climate Adaptation Competency Framework. Adaptation Learning Network. Retrieved December 10, 2022, from https://can-adapt.ca/sites/weadapt.org/files/aln-competencyframework_2021_1.pdf

guide, s. (n.d.). Master of Arts in Climate Action Leadership. Royal Roads University. Retrieved April 5, 2023, from https://www.royalroads.ca/programs/master-arts-climate-action-leadership?tab=program-description

Popper, K. R. (1966). Of Clouds and Clocks: An Approach to the Problem of Rationality and the Freedom of Man. Washington University.

Ricigliano, R. (2021, September 27). The Complexity Spectrum. Medium. https://blog.kumu.io/the-complexity-spectrum-e12efae133b0

Ricigliano, R. (2022, February 21). Governance for System Change. The Complexity Spectrum. Medium. https://medium.com/in-too-deep/governance-for-system-change-c5652e398348Secretary-General Calls on States to Tackle Climate Change ‘Time Bomb’ through New Solidarity Pact, Acceleration Agenda, at Launch of Intergovernmental Panel Report | UN Press. (2023, March 20). UN Press. Retrieved April 5, 2023, from https://press.un.org/en/2023/sgsm21730.doc.htm

Considering within Canadian historical and constitutional place-based frameworks:

1. How might climate science, adaptation, and mitigation models, schemes and policies continue to reproduce and reinforce colonial relations of power systemically and culturally?

2. What geopolitical and intersectional contexts are and are not being considered in these spaces?

3. How might Indigenous communities (as well as black, people of colour and marginalized populations) be denied opportunities to be creators and lead their own solutions in these spaces?

It has been well documented that the impacts of planetary overshoot have been unevenly distributed along the lines of race, class, gender, ability and ethnicity. Imperialism, colonialism, and the resulting supremacy culture’s policies and economics have contributed greatly to planetary overshoot, resulting in massive climate disruptions that are being experienced today.  We are no longer in right-relations.

What we do not address we will continue to reproduce. Colonial regimes are still at play because they are built into foundational legal and constitutional structures which pre-date Canada (thanks to the British imperialists of yonder-year and the 1493 Catholic Church papal bull called the Doctrine of Discovery). As such, historical inequitable power relations (practically invisible now) established by imperial/colonial regimes have been upheld and reinforced through mechanisms such as research across multiple fields. 

In chapter 2 of Linda Tuhiwai Smith’s Decolonizing Methodologies, she notes that Britain (and all of the Commonwealth countries) have legal frameworks about what is and isn’t admissible evidence and valid research. This is supremacy culture (pg 48-49). She goes on to list how this supremacy culture shows up in what is preferenced in writing, language, rules, time, space, accountability, expertise, politics and media. It is coded into systems.

Context matters because beliefs that form world-views matter as much as the ‘facts’ behind them. This image is just one slice of the ‘mechanistic reductionist worldview’ pie and how the power dynamics are still ongoing and systematic. 

Image Credit: Rupa Marya, from 2018 keynote speech at Bioneers, with adaptation by Michelle Holiday

Dr. Rupa Marya is an author, Associate Professor of Medicine at the University of California, San Francisco, and a co-founder of the Do No Harm Coalition, a collective of health workers committed to addressing disease through structural change. I came to know her body of work through the intersections of supremacy, healthcare and soil-care/land use.  In her Bioneer speech she says “This slide shows also how we are all impacted by this violence — across all races, we are all being traumatized with black, brown and indigenous being affected more intensely.” 

Another author Max Liboiron, an activist, scientist, mentor and associate professor at Memorial University, works at the intersection of colonialism, environmentalism and research impacting Indigenous groups. It is pointed out in their book Pollution is Colonialism,  that ‘Colonialism, first and foremost, and always, is about Land,…’ (pg 10) and ‘Colonialism doesn’t come from asshat goons, though it certainly has a large share of such agents. Colonial land relations are inherited as common sense, even as good ideas.’ (pg 11-12).  

My thoughts are that risk assessment and management as well as its research are tied to lands and waters. Infrastructure interacts with land and waters, but this fundamental aspect easily gets lost in the complexity of the work and the structures of institutions.

A quote from Linda Tuhiwai Smith that resonates with me is “institutions never remember, communities never forget”. 

Risk assessment and management, like other fields in the climate arena needs to be planned with geography, land-use and social justice in mind. Climate impacts are increasing and severe impacts are here earlier than projected. So, I would think that this type of planning is also part of the work called adaptation.  

Those who have been most impacted (BIPOC & marginalized communities) have traditionally been the least centered and the least consulted in systems processes and assessments. In fact, according to the Cultural Rights of First Nations and Climate Change, Indigenous people are often considered as just another stakeholder by federal and provincial governments, when in fact they are rights-holders and nation-to-nation partners (BCAFN, 2020).

I’ve come to learn, over the last 10 years, that it isn’t enough to have an Indigenous Relations Coordinators. Yes, non-native communities and work spaces need guidance however, dismantling colonialism and supremacy culture is ongoing collective work. It begins with our awareness because these rivers run deep and wide. 

References: 

BC Assembly of First Nations. (2020). Cultural rights of First Nations and climate change

Liboiron, M. (2021) Pollution Is Colonialism, Duke University Press. 

Simons, N., & Brooks, C. (n.d.). Rupa Marya – Health and Justice: The Path of Liberation through Medicine. Bioneers. Retrieved January 8, 2023, from https://bioneers.org/rupa-marya-health-and-justice-the-path-of-liberation-through-medicine/ 

Tuhiwai Smith, L. (2012). Decolonizing methodologies – Research and Indigenous Peoples. 2nd Edition. Zed Books, pp. 256. Chapter 2 

Image Credit: Bridget McKenzie, 2022

In the late summer of 2022, I was trying to decide which brand of over-priced butter to purchase. In addition to the much higher prices than my previous grocery shopping excursion, the shelves were quite bare, and the selection was much more limited. 

A middle-aged woman picking through the yogourts advised me to stock up. She also predicted dire food shortages due to severe droughts and a looming train strike in the USA. This stranger immediately asserted, “It won’t affect me. I’ll be taken up by the rapture.” At that moment, the thoughts in my head did not mirror the polite response that left my mouth.

One person’s idea of hope can be another person’s idea of delusion, denial, escapism and/or myopic-mindedness. In the same way, one person’s idea of realism can be another person’s idea of doomerism, alarmism and/or pessimism. It is interesting how deep narratives play unconscious roles in climate perceptions and communications (Moser, 2014). We need to acknowledge the subjectivities—including our own—that affect the perception of climate science, as opposed to being the carriers of a single, objective truth (Howorth et al., 2020). There are unexpressed and unexamined fears embedded in how reactions play out in these settings. 

Open discourse can quickly shut down, and the lingering impacts of such occurrences add to the challenges of climate communication. Avoiding the emotional discomfort of unwanted or insinuated labels becomes the priority rather than the full exploration and reflection on novel concepts and ideas. The first thought isn’t ‘what do I think’ but ‘what should I say’, producing carefully curated statements within the safe palette of vanilla. Or alternatively, nothing is contributed at all. Ironically this situation is fertile ground for normalising self-policing, under-reporting and fostering cynicism – which all work in favour of fossil fuel interests.

Unlike misinformation campaigns paid for with a fire hose of fossil-fuel profits, climate communication does not have well-funded single-minded global propaganda machines accelerating its goals. At best, it is a coalition of splintered interests (multi-level governments, community organisations, private interests, activists) trying to find common ground to gather and move forward. Developing skills and competencies that identify and eliminate unhealthy organisational dynamics while concurrently creating space for diversity and emergence, seems paramount. Burnout, trauma (collective and individual) and climate emotions are rife in these networks, adding additional layers of difficulty to an already Herculean effort. 

Climate communication can be viewed as the art and science of dodging cultural landmines while maintaining intellectual integrity and accuracy on a financially unequal playing field with intentions of nurturing engagement while starving climate cynicism. Piece of cake.

Image Credit: Virpi Oinonen

Building resilient patterns with people, groups, and communities using the tools of climate communication allows for the possibility of responding well in uncertain times and circumstances. Subsequently, the concept of adaptive capacity comes to mind. Adaptive capacity is the ability of systems, institutions, people, and other creatures to readjust in the face of impending harm, seize opportunities, or react to outcomes (IPCC, 2014).

Adaptive capacity & action would be called sisu in my culture. Sisu is a continual way of being. It is a philosophy, mindset and inner strength that is drawn upon, which feeds courage, resilience and determination to move through significant adversities in life. Emilia Lahti elaborates upon this in her 18-minute 2014 TEDx Talk: Sisu — transforming barriers into frontiers | Emilia Lahti | TEDxTurku   

*Note: glorifying resilience rather than calling for the dismantling of oppressive structures that force people to be resilient in the first place is a form of climate oppression.

I’m interested in finding a way to live ‘the questions’ together, knowing that we will never all agree on the ‘right’ answers and ‘solutions’ to our current predicament. In addition, I want to avoid being captured by narratives of absolutes and be nimble enough to hold space for emergent possibilities. I also want to apply a playful approach to the work of contending with extinction-level impacts should the ‘business as usual’ pathway not be relinquished in the coming decades because ‘being taken by the rapture’ isn’t one of my options.

References

Howarth, C., Parsons, L., & Thew, H. (2020). Effectively Communicating Climate Science beyond Academia: Harnessing the Heterogeneity of Climate Knowledge. One Earth, 2(4), 320-324. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.oneear.2020.04.001

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. (2014). IPCC, 2014: AR5 Climate Change 2014: Impacts, Adaptation and Vulnerability Report. IPCC. Retrieved September 28, 2022, from https://www.ipcc.ch/report/ar5/wg2/

Moser, S. (2014). Communicating adaptation to climate change: the art and science of public engagement when climate change comes home. WIREs Climate Change. https://doi.org/10.1002/wcc.276