From Polarisation to Multispecies Relationships: Re-Generation of the Commons in the Era of Mass Extinctions (Contemporary Systems Thinking) 9813368837, 9789813368835

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Contemporary Systems Thinking

Janet J. McIntyre-Mills Yvonne Corcoran-Nantes Editors

From Polarisation to Multispecies Relationships Re-Generation of the Commons in the Era of Mass Extinctions

Contemporary Systems Thinking Series Editor Robert L. Flood, Maastricht School of Management, Maastricht, The Netherlands

Contemporary Systems Thinking is a series of texts, each of which deals comparatively and/or critically with different aspects of holistic thinking at the frontiers of the discipline. Traditionally, writings by systems thinkers have been concerned with single theme propositions like General Systems Theory, Cybernetics, Operations Research, System Dynamics, Soft Systems Methodology and many others. Recently there have been attempts to fulfill a different yet equally important role by comparative analyses of viewpoints and approaches, each addressing disparate areas of study such as: modeling and simulation, measurement, management, ‘problem solving’ methods, international relations, social theory and last, but not exhaustively or least, philosophy. Bringing together many sources yields several achievements, among which is showing a great diversity of approaches, ideas and application areas that systems thinking contributes to (although, often with difficulties unresolved). There is a need for a series of books, each focusing in detail on the study areas mentioned above. While modeling and simulation are served well in the scientific literature, this is not the case for systems thinking in management, ‘problem solving’ methods, social theory, or philosophy to name a handful. Each book in this series makes a contribution by concentrating on one of these topics.

More information about this series at http://www.springer.com/series/5807

Janet J. McIntyre-Mills · Yvonne Corcoran-Nantes Editors

From Polarisation to Multispecies Relationships Re-Generation of the Commons in the Era of Mass Extinctions

Editors Janet J. McIntyre-Mills College of Business, Government and Law Flinders University Sturt, SA, Australia

Yvonne Corcoran-Nantes College of Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences Flinders University Adelaide, SA, Australia

ISSN 1568-2846 Contemporary Systems Thinking ISBN 978-981-33-6883-5 ISBN 978-981-33-6884-2 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-33-6884-2 © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2021, corrected publication 2021 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. This Springer imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. The registered company address is: 152 Beach Road, #21-01/04 Gateway East, Singapore 189721, Singapore

Alan Rayner (2020) featuring every major group of organic life forms currently resident on planet Earth and their watery evolutionary origin as fluid expressions, not fixed products of genetic code

“We shall awaken from our dullness and rise vigorously toward justice. If we fall in love with creation deeper and deeper, we will respond to its endangerment with passion.” Hildegard of Bingen1

1

https://quotestats.com/topic/quotes-about-hildegard-of-bingen/.

The book is dedicated to our colleague the late Dr. Joyce Karel who co-authored Chapter 28 of this volume and to the late son of Pat Lethole who drew attention to the rights of those in need of care. Pat co-authored Chapter 6 May their contributions help to achieve greater justice for all.

Acknowledgements

Each chapter and vignette in the volume can be read separately or they can be read as part of an overall argument, namely, that the wellbeing of living systems is determined by the well-being of the food web. It is thus an a priori argument about rights, buttressed by a posteriori indicators to support social, economic and environmental indicators of well-being that balance individual needs and the common good, because ‘A is better off when B is better off’, according to the cyberneticist, Von Foerster (1995). Our thanks to those who have made this edited volume possible through supporting visits to their universities and engaging with me to explore some of the pressing issues facing us today, namely food, water, the protection of diverse habitat and energy security. If academic enterprise is to have transformative potential it needs to be both rapid and relevant. The chapters2 in this volume include conference papers written for International Systems Sciences and earlier versions appear in the Proceedings of the 63rd Annual Meeting of the ISSS—2019 Corvallis, Oregon (OR), USA and the Proceedings of 2

Chapters 9 and 17 are versions of papers presented to ISSS , 2019 McIntyre-Mills, J. 2019. Social engagement to redress the banality of evil and the frontiers of justice: Limitations of the social contract to protect habitat and why an international law to prevent the crime of ecocide matters Proceedings of International Systems Sciences The 63rd Annual Meeting of ISSS, Oregon State University, Corvallis, Nature’s Enduring Patterns: A Path to Systems Literacy., 2nd-5th July. McIntyre-Mills, J. 2019. The potential of eco-facturing to re-generate rural-urban balance through eco-villages and city hubs: promoting social and environmental justice through vocational education and training hubs Proceedings of International Systems Sciences The 63rd Annual Meeting of ISSS, Oregon State University, Corvallis, Nature’s Enduring Patterns: A Path to Systems Literacy, 2nd–5th July. Chapter 37 draw on fieldwork supported by Universitas Padjadjaran and versions of papers presented as (1) Plenary Papers entitled: (1) ‘Voices from below for social and environmental justice : Sustainable Development goals and post national regional implications’ for the conference ‘Democratisation and social challenges in South East Asia’, Universitas Sultan Ageng Tirtayasa, Indonesia, 4th–5th September, 2019. (2) Plenary Paper: ‘Social engagement to protect multispecies habitat: implications for food security’. Food Security Conference, Universitas Sultan Ageng Tirtayasa, Indonesia, 8th–9th September, 2019. Chapter 15 is an extended version of this paper based on joint fieldwork and collaborative. xi

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the 62nd Annual Meeting of the ISSS—2018 Corvallis, OR, USA. An earlier version of the Plenary Paper: ‘Social engagement to protect multispecies habitat: implications for food security’ was presented at the Food Security Conference, Universitas Sultan Ageng Tirtayasa, Indonesia, 8th–9th September, 2019. The chapter has been extended based on collaborative research supported by the University of Padjadjaran and Universitas Sultan Ageng Tirtayasa. Chapter 28 entitled ‘Systemic Praxis: narratives on steps towards re-generation’, was possible as a result of in-kind support from the University of South Africa.3 The section on ‘Recognising our hybridity and interconnectedness’ is adapted from an interview for ‘Current Sociology’ as Sociologist of the Month as it addresses some of the core themes raised in this book.

3

It cites: Romm, NRA and McIntyre-Mills, J.J. 2019. ‘Systemic Thinking for Re-Generative Development’ in Cabrera, L, Cabrera, D and Midgley, G. (ed) Handbook of Systems Thinking. Routledge. London. Accepted. McIntyre-Mills, J, Romm, NRA, Karel, J and Arko-Achemfuor, A. 2019. ‘Efforts to inspire transformative research with farmers in a small town in the North West Province of South Africa’. International Journal for Transformative Research (IJTR), volume 6(1) pp. 10–19. DOI: https:// doi.org/10.1515/ijtr-2019-0003. One of 5 invited papers for special edition with Emeritus Professor Donna Mertens and Prof Sharlene Hesse Biber. ISSN 2332-3736.

Prologue: No Longer Top Predator

Introduction The composition Jaara Nyilamum by Dr. Lou Bennet (2020) accompanied by the Australian String Quartet evokes emotion and connection to country. Bennet sings of a child who was returned to country after decades in a museum. She explains in an interview (2019) the ancestral connection to the land and that language is rooted in country and that it ‘connects to health and wellbeing’. She stresses the need to learn language in country (or context) and to stay in relationship with our home. Bennet’s explanation resonates with what I had learned from my mentors in Alice Springs about extending kinship to organic and inorganic life (McIntyre-Mills, 2003, see also Hume, 2004). Indigenous cultures believe that organic and inorganic life are kin in one living system. The destruction of heritage (Yalata Oak Community and Matingley, 2012) and listed sites for mining have raised the point that heritage is the natural landscape where evidence of some of the earliest human culture remains. Field (2020) explains that the divide between the organic and inorganic is permeable: ‘In Gamilaraay culture, my Garruu taught me that when we die we may return. Perhaps not as a person but as a bird or fish or tree. Perhaps even as a river or watering hole. We may return perhaps not as a person but instead as a place. Here lies a fundamental barrier between Indigenous and non-Indigenous people: the line between animate and inanimate’. This blurring of taxonomic boundaries was explained to me by Olive Veverbrants an Arrernte elder in Alice Springs, (pers com, 2000; McIntyre-Mills, 2004) that when a pregnant woman feels her foetus move, she links the movement with a creature or feature in the landscape. It may be a bird, a lizard, a plant or a rock formation. This becomes a totem to which the child is related in her or his place. Totems are part of family and are not merely potential food items that need to be protected from overhunting or overgathering by declaring them sacred by some groups—to which they are affiliated and thus they refrain from eating them. Totems are also ways of binding people to a specific place and fostering an ethic of care or custodianship. In Western Culture we have categories that distinguish between the organic and

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inorganic, but in Indigenous cultures a relationship can be formed which transcends this divide (see Chapter 3 this volume for further discussion). This edited volume comprising nineteen contributors from Africa, Australia, Asia (Indonesia, Bangladesh, Vietnam), USA, UK and Europe (McIntyre-Mills et al., 2020) uses multi-methods, cross-cultural and cross-disciplinary approaches to follow strands of the food web and the destruction of diverse habitats in a series of essays and vignettes and the approach resonates with that of Tsing’s (2011, 2015), Midgley’s (2000, 2007) and Wadsworth’s (2010) systemic interventionism for living systems. Communication through sound, through dance, sharing chemical signals is widespread throughout living systems. Many species are able to communicate as highlighted by Meijer (2016) who stresses that bats sing, bees dance, domestic dogs, cats and horses read our behaviour and body language, parrots use language to achieve goals, primates have learned sign language and dolphins have specific sounds which are recognised by members of a group. Species-specific intelligence needs to be respected. Many species demonstrate a sense of self , if the mirror test is not used and instead species-specific intelligence is taken into account. Meijer (2016) explains that dogs can recognise their own urine smells and are less interested in this smell than the smell of other dogs, for example. This demonstrates a sense of self. The relevance to sociology is that human beings co-evolved with dogs as they were able to hunt more effectively and dogs were able to share the protein and their company around fires which enabled their mutual resilience. This needs to extend to appreciating the need to make kinship with many species (see Haraway, 2004, 2018) Meijer (2016: 74) also stresses that although a gorilla does not gaze at a mirror, this is because gazing at another would be regarded as aggressive. Similarly, she stresses that in some cultures, this is also regarded as impolite. Thus, the mirror test, developed by Western male academics should not be regarded as the basis for determining whether the subject has a sense of self. The species-specific intelligence of birds varies and responds to their environments (Ackerman, 2016). Some birds are able to remember where they have stashed supplies for the winter months and this develops particular pathways in their brains which other species may not need to develop (Ackerman, 2016: 210). But research has found that birds are capable of passing on new useful knowledge to others, such as how to open a food dispenser (Meijer, 2016: 72) that demonstrates the ability to convey information that is retained and passed on to the next generations living within the region long after the first birds had died. Thus, birds can communicate and create local cultures that help the survival of their group. Furthermore, turtles (Michelmore, 2020) and birds (Ackerman, 2016) are able to navigate across the seas and skies to return to breeding or feeding sites, they do not need a compass. Squirrels imported by colonisers along with the acorns oak saplings to the Cape, carry a mental map of where they have stashed their supply of winter acorns. It is now accepted by researchers that consciousness spans single to complex cells and many species (including plants) are able to ‘learn and remember’ (Gagliano et al., 2018). Their research demonstrates that plants communicate, make decisions and in some instances, for example, fungi share resources for the common good of plants within

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a shared habitat (Rayner, 2010). Rayner (2010: 100) a biologist who specialises in plants and specifically fungi, sums up a lesson on plant politics (and economics) which demonstrates that some plants have the capability to pool and redistribute resources. Hence the inescapable truth is that the ecological and evolutionary sustainability of natural life forms, from the cells and tissues in a human body to the trees in a forest depend upon close attunement with the diversity, complementary nature and changeability of all within their neighbourhood, to which they themselves contribute. When energy supplies become scarce, sustainable living systems pool and redistribute internal resources within integrated structures and survival capsules, they do not compete to proliferate faster on the dwindling supplies. Similarly, Peter Wohlleben (see Wohlleben, 2016) a forester and ecologists Suzanne Simard (see Wohlleben & Simard, 2016) and Camille Defrenne (see Simard & Defrenne, 2019) explain the ways trees support one another through communicating through a network that shares chemicals and through hybrid fungi that help to regulate and share nutrients. Living systems are indeed a continuum from organic to inorganic life. Human beings are animals who have close relatives with many species (from laboratory rats with whom we share 98% of our genes see Greenfield, 2000), to primates who can be taught to use sign language and who show empathy as do other species such as elephants and dogs with whom we are co-evolved (Haraway, 2003; De Waal, 2009). According to Kirksey et al. (2014: 1): Ethnographers are now exploring how ‘“the human’ has been formed and transformed amid encounters with multiple species of plants, animals, fungi, and microbes. Rather than simply celebrate multispecies mingling, ethnographers have begun to explore a central question: Who benefits, cui bono, when species meet?

The notion of what constitutes rights, relationships and responsibilities needs to be explored across cultures to understand human, plant and animal relationships. The eradication of species as a result of rapid urbanisation places humanity at risk. The issues raised by Rose Bird about the lack of kinship and love for other species (2010, 2011) need to be urgently faced by those who have lost their connection to nature, whilst acknowledging that totemism (kinship with nature) is still a norm in parts of South Africa and Australia (see Romm & Lethole, 2020; Romm, 2020, McIntyreMills, 2020, in this volume). Narrow anthropocentrism has focused on the stories of human beings at the expense of other species and the environment. Sociology needs to explore a priori norms, narratives and the re-framing of laws at the national and post-national level to ensure a posteriori consequences are implemented to protect multiple species. Institutional capacity and powers need to be strengthened to address the UN 2030 Sustainable Development Agenda but even more importantly the agenda needs to be extended to draw on local wisdom (Polanyi, 1966,1968)and to support UNDRIP (2007), in order to redeem our relationship with First Nations and the natural environment. Our fragile interdependence requires a recognition of ‘our hybridity and interconnectedness’ (McIntyre-Mills et al., 2017) within the web of life (Capra, 1996).

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Human beings have applied an exploitative approach that has commodified plants and animals and the result has been profitable for some at the expense of the majority of living systems. The ability to make political and or ethical decisions and the ability to communicate are not purely human characteristics. Thus, human beings should question their sense of dominion over other species. Animal behaviourists and interspecies researchers have stressed that the boundaries across species need to be rethought. This has implications for ethics, democracy and governance. As stressed above, the Belmont Report that guides human-ethics focuses on respect for person and beneficence (1979: 4). Respect and beneficence however, also needs to be extended to multiple species by human researchers, practitioners and members of the public. Human beings need to recognise our kinship with many species and our interdependency. Fuentes (2019) sums up the importance of kinship across-species by extending our sense of what it means to be family: For me, the most important contribution in this proposal is the broadening of the Belmont concept of ‘respect for persons’ to include other animals… The writer Armistead Maupin tells us that we live in a world filled with both biological kin and logical kin. He refers to those kinship relations that we are born into as biological, and those that we choose, construct, and nourish, as logical

Respect for multiple species needs to be based on recognition of our ‘hybridity and interconnectedness’ (McIntyre-Mills, 2020) informed by a sense of awe and supported by norms rooted in a belief in our precarious interdependency and the implications of dispossession (see Butler, 2011; Butler & Athanasiou, 2013). A moral compass to protect diversity needs to be buttressed by a Global Covenant (Held, 2004) and the Ecocide Law (Higgins et al., 2013. Higgins, 2018). The lack of gendered, non-anthropocentric emphasis on the way in which nature has been controlled and mastered needs to be remedied. Few (with the exception of Deborah Bird Rose, Donna Haraway and Anna Tsing) have spoken out about multispecies relations and fewer have stressed the need for a multispecies approach that honours the rights of all sentient beings to a habitat that makes life worth living, with perhaps the exception of Donaldson and Kymlicka in their work ‘Zoopolis’ in which they argue that habitat for all animals needs should be considered a right: from appropriate space for domesticated animals (such as pets and agricultural animals) to the liminal creatures that share our cities and gardens with us and the wild animals who have a right to their own habitat. Cochrane and Cooke (2016) also develop an argument for human intervention to protect animal rights. As stewards we have a responsibility to ensure their rights are met through passing and implementing laws to protect them. Many species demonstrate empathy and altruism, from bats who regurgitate food for members of their kinship group (Dawkins, 2019), to dolphins who help to push drowning human beings to the surface or zoo elephants who share their water to other neighbouring creatures (De Waal, 2009; Bates et al., 2008). Similarly, all species develop forms of communication which support their survival. Suzanne Simard explains that trees, for example, ‘communicate’ through their root systems in ‘a below ground web’ (Simard, 2016) that responds to chemicals. Consciousness

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has now been accepted along a wider continuum to include a range of both sentient beings and plants, it is not the preserve of human beings. We may never know what it means to be conscious as a member of another living system, but that does not mean that consciousness is not experienced by trees that release chemicals to indicate distress as a result of lack of nutrients or a threat. Species-specific consciousness was accepted as a possibility by Nagel (1974) who stressed that consciousness is more than brain function and cannot be reduced to a machine-like function. But more importantly, he stressed that being a bat or being a human being is about personal experience. We can never have access to the consciousness of another human being, but this does not mean that we deny that our parents, children or partners have consciousness, even if sometimes we do not understand them. For example, a Vampire Bat has species-specific consciousness, shares food and reciprocates favours, thereby ensuring their mutual survival, because bats remember that they are not always successful in finding food and they need to rely on one another (Dawkins, 2019: 245–6). Reciprocal altruism is not the preserve of human beings, the time to extend altruism to other sentient beings is overdue.

Habitat and Rights for Multiple Species The World Health Organisation declared a pandemic on 12th March 2020. As I write this chapter over 9 million people had been infected and by 21th July as I check the volume for publication, the statistic has risen to close to 15 million. The COVID19 pandemic represents the ‘worst crisis’ since World War II, according to the UN chief, Gutteres (2020) who emphasised that the human death toll, social and economic suffering is unprecedented In his Nelson Mandela Annual lecture he stressed that in order to address inequality we are only as strong as the weakest link and that the global community will stand or fall together.4 According to the UN the world faces famine as a result of morbidity and mortality associated with the pandemic which augments the challenges posed by droughts and other natural disasters, including locust plagues and displacements caused by conflicts. Trafficking and transportation of animals, confining them in conditions that undermine their capability to live a life worth living is one of the ‘Frontiers of Justice’ (Nussbaum, 2006) that is overdue for reform. The epidemics associated with abusing 4

See https://www.nelsonmandela.org/content/page/annual-lecture-2020. In his Nelson Mandela Guterres stressed that: “More than 70% of the world’s people are living with rising income and wealth inequality. The 26 richest people in the world hold as much wealth as half the global population,” …He added: “But income, pay and wealth are not the only measures of inequality. People’s chances in life depend on their gender, family and ethnic background, race, whether or not they have a disability and other factors. “Multiple inequalities intersect and reinforce each other across the generations. The lives and expectations of millions of people are largely determined by their circumstances at birth.” (Karrim, A, 2020 at https://www.news24.com/news24/SouthAfrica/News/un-secretary-general-lays-barethe-greed-of-elites-failures-of-government-to-address-inequality-20200719?isapp=true accessed 20/07/2020.

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farm animals through confining them have resulted in swine flu and avian flu, whilst mad cow disease was caused by feeding cows offal containing infected protein in food lots. The risks associated with ‘Frankenstein Food’, (Beck,1999: 48–49, 106) has escalated and Beck relates how The Daily Mirror took the British Government to task in the wake of the Bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE or mad cow disease) caused by feeding cattle offal (comprising diseased tissue) instead of allowing them to graze as herbivores. The COVID-19 pandemic has provided Goodall (2020)5 the platform to speak out about how cross-species infections are caused by the way human beings are encroaching on the habitat of wild animals such as pangolins and bats. Her stature as a leading primatologist and conservationist has enabled her to speak out about previous epidemics such as swine and avian flu and to highlight the treatment of farmed and trafficked animals. Enabling farm animals and wild animals ‘space for a life worth living’ would also protect us from illness. One of the positive aspects of the COVID-19 epidemic is that it has raised awareness of cross-species pathways for epidemics that can reach pandemic proportion as species are thrust into increasingly closer contact as urbanisation and habitat loss escalates. Gorbalenya et al. (2020) stress that corona viruses occur amongst many animals: In the midst of the global COVID-19 public health emergency, it is reasonable to wonder why the origins of the pandemic matter. Detailed understanding of how an animal virus jumped species boundaries to infect humans so productively will help in the prevention of future zoonotic events. The potential to jump across-species is caused by the way in which their freedom and habitat have been curtailed as they are farmed, transported, contained and marketed. Gorbalenya et al. (2020) suggest that many of these species would never normally come into contact with bats and pangolins. They have no immunity against the virus because they have never previously been in contact. It is only when they are kept together in close confines in wet markets with other displaced animals that they become cross-infected. The next step in the evolution of an epidemic is when human beings are in contact with a mutated virus that has become more adept at crossing species. Kirksey et al. (2014: 4) explain that Anna Tsing suggests that ‘human nature is an interspecies relationship’ which raises the question, what is the nature of this relationship? The answer is that it is a very mixed one, in the most part it is a relationship of exploitation, but paradoxically mixed with awe and a great deal of denial. The notion that as human animals we can own, commodify and exploit other species has brought us to 2020, a year of rising temperatures, bush fires, multispecies loss and a global pandemic. A ‘multispecies turn’ has been underlined as a result of COVID-19. Some may say it is the virus we had to have as it has made human beings pause and reflect on their place in the web of living systems. It has also highlighted the need to reconsider rights and responsibilities as we reflect on what the new normal 5

vpx.cnn.

https://www.cnn.com/videos/us/2020/03/19/coronavirus-jane-goodall-acfc-full-episode-

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will be as we move towards 2021 and beyond. Climate change, economic recessions and political instability are the current global challenges. How should we live our lives and why did we not anticipate that business as usual is unsustainable? One of the positive aspects of the Covid-19 epidemic is that it has raised awareness of cross-species pathways for epidemics that can reach pandemic proportion as species are thrust into increasingly closer contact as urbanisation and habitat loss escalates. The possibility that the emergence of this pandemic is the result of increasing proximity across-species is a core concern that needs to be addressed through changing the way in which we live our lives. The rapid governance re-actions globally to the virus shows that it could be possible to respond proactively to climate change and reduce carbon emissions and reduce the risks to forests and agricultural habitat. This will be vital, if biopolitical responses are to have a hope of averting future pandemics (Dulaney, 2020).

A Way Forward? Naess and Haukeland (2002) have stressed that transformation is not impossible: ethical living requires ‘doing small things in a big way’ on an everyday basis. Whereas, Abrahams (2020) stresses that the worldwide governance responses to the pandemic have resulted in a rapid adaptation and mitigation of ‘unlimited growth, unlimited travel, and unlimited consumption’. Mair (2020) reflects on the situation and sums up the challenge for the future, as follows: a centralised or decentralised response that either prioritises exchange values or the protection of life. Mair (2020) explains the four extreme options elegantly as: 1. 2. 3. 4.

State capitalism: centralised response, prioritising exchange value Barbarism: decentralised response prioritising exchange value State socialism: centralised response, prioritising the protection of life Mutual aid: decentralised response prioritising the protection of life.

The first two options prioritise economics and profit. The second two options prioritise people and the environment. This volume suggests a fifth option that fosters the protection of all living systems and that strives to balance individualism and collectivism. Society needs to face up to the implications of no longer being top predator and to learn from the implications of the COVID-19 pandemic that has required us to pause and to reflect on what we value and why. We could choose to maximise social and environmental factors and meaningful jobs, rather than focusing on business as usual, where a minority win at the expense of current and future generations of life. Clearly nation states need to pivot quickly to mitigate and adapt to the pandemic. Australia has demonstrated that society is capable of rapid transformation to flatten the curve of COVID-19, but it needs to apply this zeal to flattening our carbon footprint to minimise the

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risks of further loss of life through climate-related disasters that result death and displacement on an unprecedented scale. Perhaps a positive aspect of COVID-19 could be a rapid U-turn towards new form of governance that cares for people and supports partnerships to enable the common good. Clearly human beings have learned they are no longer the top predator, but sadly the positive impact on climate change caused by a slowing economy has reversed as the world economy begins to open up (Carrington & Kommenda, 2020). Bearing in mind these points, a new approach is suggested in this volume based on reconceptualisng the way in which we relate to other species in which the fourth governance option is stressed, namely, mutual aid. The lack of gendered, non-anthropocentric emphasis on the way in which nature has been controlled and mastered needs to be remedied. Few (with the exception of Deborah Bird Rose, Donna Haraway and Anna Tsing) have spoken out about multispecies relations and fewer have stressed the need for a multispecies approach that honours the rights of all sentient beings to a habitat that makes life worth living, with perhaps the exception of Donaldson and Kymlicka in their work ‘Zoopolis’ in which they argue that habitat for all animals needs should be considered a right: from appropriate space for domesticated animals (such as pets and agricultural animals) to the liminal creatures that share our cities and gardens with us and the wild animals who have a right to their own habitat. As stewards we have a responsibility to ensure their rights are met through passing and implementing laws to protect them.

Social, Economic and Environmental Transformation Needs to Occur at a Post National Level to Protect the Common Good The world’s poorest workers are involved in agriculture, it is hardly surprising that poverty (linked with climate change) is driving people into the cities. The rate at which world hunger is increasing has been highlighted in the Report by the SecretaryGeneral.6 Urbanisation has increased beyond expectations, according to a recent UN Report (2014) that stresses that by 2050 the majority of the world’s population will be in Asia and Africa. In these latter contexts unemployment in cities and social exclusion (as highlighted by the Sendai Risk Platform) will pose a human security risk. If nothing else, COVID-19 will underline the importance of facing up to the need to prevent and plan for pandemics. This requires the ability of post-national systems of governance to think about the relationship between human beings and the many

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https://sustainabledevelopment.un.org/sdg2. Report of the Secretary-General, Special edition: progress towards the Sustainable Development Goals: “An estimated 821 million people – approximately 1 in 9 people in the world – were undernourished in 2017, up from 784 million in 2015”.

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other species with which they share habitat and rethink ways to establish regenerative development. Sentient beings have rights simply because they are sentient. They depend on diverse habitats. The capability to live a life worth living depends on the protection of habitats of the multiple diverse species that make up a living system. All species are part of one food chain. Human beings (until very recently) have been the top predators able to shape the planet to suit their needs. Commodification of plants, animals and people was fostered by explorers who collected ‘so called’ specimens for museums, zoos and herbariums. The will to increase the productivity of nation states led to the increasing enclosure of open or shared landscapes and increased colonisation to extend their access to potential products.

Human Security and Resilience as Vulnerable Multispecies Relationships and Pathways Towards Well-being Industrialised agriculture and planning has increasingly displaced people, plants and creatures. Unwanted people are proletarianised, unwanted plants become weeds and unwanted creatures become pests. The so-called Green Revolution, however has arguably backfired as the clearance of natural habitat and the planting of single crops has left us less biologically diverse and open to disease. The arguments about the control of nature and the genetic control crops that do not self-seed have been presented by Vandana Shiva (2012), suffice to say profit before regeneration poses the threat of mass extinctions The notion that human beings have the right to commodify plants has been disputed by Vandana Shiva, whilst the notion that human beings have the right to commodify animals has been clearly challenged by Martha Nussbaum (2006) in her work on the need to extend the ‘Frontiers of Social Justice’ to protect voiceless sentient beings who live lives that are not worth living. She developed the capabilities approach that stresses the need for all animals to have a right to live lives in which they can express their species-specific capabilities to the full. Her contribution to an essentialist approach that stresses that sentient beings have a priori rights— simply because they exist—resonates, nevertheless sentience needs to be extended to many other species within living systems and the a posteriori responsibilities and consequences of development decisions need to be measured by social, economic and environmental indicators to protect all sentient beings. The central argument in this (and previous work to date) is that democracy and governance need to be underpinned by individual and collective norms and values supported by governance systems that enable the balancing of interests for current and future generations of living systems. Interspecies relationships to food, water and energy are central to life.

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The responsibility to ensure the rights of sentient beings to a life worth living is an area of research that is long overdue the right to produce food and the responsibility to protect shared habitat equally so. Underpinning the rights and responsibilities for all sentient beings is the need to protect habitat in terms of the Ecocide Law (Higgins et al., 2013) applied at both a national level and international level as stressed by Arthur Galston and Polly Higgins, respectively. The high road to morality is accepting our place as a strand within the web of living systems and respecting the rights of all species, especially sentient beings and their habitat. The low road to morality is understanding that the consequences of abusing sentient creatures are pain and suffering for all those who share the food chain. We look at the world through species-specific lenses. Our understanding of the world is also shaped by our cultural background, gender and the specific environment in which we live. For example, city dwellers have little understanding of nature if they are unable to connect with the natural environment and have little appreciation that we are dependent on nature for our survival. Perhaps this is why policymakers in power make foolish decisions about the destruction of habitat without realising the negative cascading effects on human security. The abuse of confined farm animals fed an inappropriate diet results in a range of cascading effects, not the least of which is antibiotic resistance, avian flu, swine flu and mad cow disease7 and it is hypothesised by the World Wild Life Society (2020) that the confinement of animals at wet markets led to cross-species infection and COVID-19. The abuse of animals is unacceptable and can be attributed to Descartes mistaken notion that human beings have feelings and other animals without a human mind lack both feelings and rights. The volume addresses this mistaken idea and makes a strong link between pandemics, industrialised farming and climate change. Alan Rayner’s (2010, 2012, 2017) notion of ‘natural inclusion’ developed as a result of his extensive research on fungi, root systems and interconnections beneath the surface. When we destroy trees, we disrupt entire habitats. The same is true when we disrupt the balance in all ecosystems, most importantly the ocean and waterways (Tuddenham, 2019, keynote address,8 UNESCO, 2017; Mannix, 2020). Shoshana Zuboff (2019) warns that the process of commodification has now moved beyond people, animals and nature. Our behavioural patterns and human engagement, mobility and interactions can and are used for marketing and control. The national interest continues to be put before post-national planetary concerns, that require digital citizenship and new forms of engagement and information that span conceptual and spatial boundaries. 7

https://www.wcs.org/get-involved/updates/a-primer-on-the-coronavirus The Wildlife Conservation Society (17th March, 2020) hypothesises that sick caged bats infected trafficked South African pangolins and that the virus was then transmitted to humans. The series of transmissions can occur in markets, such as the Wuhan markets. 8 https://isss2019corvallis.sched.com/event/RRml/presidents-address-peter-tuddenham-3633-nat ures-enduring-patterns-as-a-path-to-systems-literacy-menti-code-652634.

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New laws are needed to address the challenges as habitat disappears and multiple species are displaced, such as the ‘Ecocide Law’ (Higgens et al., 2013) to enable monitoring from above and below. The widespread use of insecticides is killing bees at an alarming rate and in his talk (Stamets, 2019) he stresses that more than 50% of bees are dying in the USA. The systemic interconnections discussed by Stamets between fungae and their ability to regenerate soil from polluted sites is also important as is the point that fungae create soil by removing calcium from rocks. Food security depends on multiple factors ranging from access to land, water and pollinators. Bees and other pollinators are central to food security which requires eliminating harmful pesticides and vocational education and training in regenerative, sustainable farming methods. The notion that reciprocal rights should only be given to citizens who are useful has been successfully critiqued by Nussbaum (2006) who stresses that the way it has been used does not follow the intention of Rawlsian philosophy based on the notion justice as a form of fairness based on the ‘veil of ignorance’ which helps us to make decisions by which we would be prepared to abide if they were applied to our own lives. This basic notion of compassion and fairness should be applied in all contexts if justice is to be achieved. Mahayana Buddhists believe in the necessity to show compassion to all sentient creatures who have been our mothers in past lives and who sustain us in our current lives. It is believed that ethical actions flow from mindfulness that compassionate actions ripen as karma, as do cruel actions. Both have consequences in this life and the next. The Dalai Lama (2005: 145) explains in the chapter ‘Towards a science of consciousness’ in which he discusses ‘The Mind and Life conference in Dharamsala’ (2004). Brain plasticity was discussed in relation to the Buddhist belief that meditation supports clarity of the mind. Presenters confirmed that those who meditate “have more activity in the left frontal lobe”. The consequence is that the emotions are managed and relationships with others improve as meditators focus on thinking about the consequences of their thoughts and actions. Allan Rayner, Peter Wohlleben (2016) a forester and ecologists Suzanne Simard (see Simard, 2016) and Camille Defrenne (2019) explain the ways trees support one another through communicating through a network that shares chemicals and how hybrid fungae help to regulate and share nutrients.

A Way Forward: New Forms of Economics and Governance in Ecovillage Hubs Supporting Cities The patterns from above that are currently used to control should be balanced out by surveillance from below as detailed elsewhere (McIntyre-Mills, 2017) to support a so-called ‘eco-systemic’ approach to living with nature in ways that are regenerative, rather than exploitative. Pariser (2011) highlights the way in which algorithms are able to control us from above. We need to counter that by governing from below. We

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need to emulate the mycelia that create natures internet beneath the earth to nurture the common good and draw on local indigenous wisdom to achieve transformation (Cram & Mertens, 2015) and try to ensure that the internet is used to bring people together, rather than to alienate us from one another as we spend more and more time behind a screen, rather than connecting with one another and nature (Greenfield, 2008). The New Zealand Prime Minister, Jacinda Ardern’s support of the Maori notion of holistic well-being was upheld in the policy report, ‘Wellbeing an idea whose time has come’ (New Zealand Public Health, 2007) and extended by Ardern who has supported the notion of a ‘Wellbeing Budget’.9 Reframing rights, relationships and accountability requires rethinking who we are as a species in relationship to other species. It also requires a new form of economics based on protecting the well-being of living systems of which we are a strand. The eradication of species as a result of rapid urbanisation places humanity at risk. Narrow anthropocentrism has focused on the stories of human beings at the expense of other species and the environment. From Polarisation to Multispecies Relationships explores a priori norms, narratives and laws and a posteriori actions that include and protect multiple species, based on the maxim that all species should be free and diverse to the extent that they do not undermine the common good. Eco-villages (Shiva, 2020) need to support urban hubs to regenerate rural–urban balance and reverse the plantationocene (Mitman in conversation with Tsing and Haraway, 2019). The thesis developed is the need to protect appropriate habitat and to reverse current trends. One of the ways forward is by creating green enterprises based on Gunter Pauli’s (2010) concept that in nature there is no waste and that sources of abundance can be found by working with nature and through designs that mimic nature. The notion that the mantle of citizenship should only be given to those of voting age and with the right to cast a ballot is problematic. The environment on which we depend is also entirely controlled by the voting citizens of nation states. In ‘Frontiers of Justice’, Nussbaum (2006) develops an argument for extending the social contract to those sentient beings who are not protected. Her starting point is to stress the need for individual capabilities to be protected, in order to be able to live a life worth living. Her argument includes being able to live in an environment that supports a life in which capabilities can be achieved. Current debates hinge on whether cosmopolitan universal rights can be given to sentient beings as a whole or whether rights for human sentients and animal sentients should differ. Donaldson and Kymlicka (2011) link rights to habitat. Thus, the citizenship of domestic animals living in the household may be closer to the citizenship of human sentients. Existential risks are the result of not recognising our hybridity and interconnectedness. Dualist thinking pervades our consciousness and is reflected in socially unjust and environmentally unsustainable designs for society. Designs need to be supported by constitutions, based on a priori norms, and consequentialist or a posteriori approaches, based on testing out ideas within context and with future generations 9

https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2019/05/new-zealand-is-publishing-its-first-well-being-bud get/.

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in mind. Current forms of democracy, governance and economics need to be reframed by recognising that we are interdependent. This is as relevant to nation states and to the wider post-national regions of which they are a part. In an increasingly interdependent world, climate change results in the displacement of people in numbers greater than those displaced during the Second World War, according to António Guterres, the previous UN High Commissioner for Refugees (2017).

From Species Centrism to Multispecies Relationships The concept ‘species’ is a central concern in relation to the issue of categorisation, membership, displacement and decision-making (in terms of state sovereignty, territory, colonisation and its implications for human, animal and plant life). As urbanisation encroaches on the wild spaces and displaces other forms of life, relationships that are Anthropocentric need to be reframed to enable regeneration and sustainable living that is non-anthropocentric. The contributions made by Donaldson and Kymlicka (2011) to animal rights through exploring our relationships with other animals need to be given centre stage in redressing the current political impasse in animal rights. Frans De Waal (2009) stresses the need to recognise that we evolved not only through our ability to compete but through our ability to cooperate and to show empathy to others and a shared sense of cross-species community. Cross-species rights are necessary for transformation to a more ethical way of life and for our collective survival. For example, interspecies resilience to support bees as major pollinators is vital. What we define as food will need to be revised along with our notion of what it means to hold dominion over other life forms and other cultures. Reconsidering commodification and property rights is core to this argument (McIntyre-Mills, 2020) to protect habitat and prevent crossspecies infection linked to research, trafficking, containment and handling of wild animals such as bats and pangolins. It is likely, however, the virus has been mutating for a whilst and that the outbreak is not surprising, given the current destruction of habitat. In order to achieve a life worth living for both human beings and other sentient beings, a new approach to post-national governance is need to focus on food, energy and water security. The world’s poorest workers are involved in agriculture, it is hardly surprising that poverty (linked with climate change) is driving people into the cities. The rate at which world hunger is increasing has been highlighted in the Report by the SecretaryGeneral10 . Urbanisation has increased beyond expectations, according to a recent UN Report (2014) that stresses that by 2050 the majority of the world’s population will be in Asia and Africa. In these latter context’s unemployment in cities and social 10

https://sustainabledevelopment.un.org/sdg2. Report of the Secretary-General, Special edition: progress towards the Sustainable Development Goals: “An estimated 821 million people – approximately 1 in 9 people in the world – were undernourished in 2017, up from 784 million in 2015”.

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exclusion (as highlighted by the Sendai Risk Platform) will pose a human security risk. The Brookings Institute (2020) discussion highlights the way in which government departments need to maintain structures (Hill, 2020) that are capable of dealing with pandemics. But even more important is the need to ask why pandemics are occurring through considering social, economic and environmental aspects which have contributed to the pandemic, namely, unsustainable socio-economic growth at the expense of biodiversity. As Sen (1999) stressed, the birth rate decreases as the empowerment of women increases so they have agency at a personal and public level. If nothing else, COVID-19 will underline the importance of facing up to the need to prevent and plan for pandemics. This requires the ability of post-national systems of governance to think about the relationship between human beings and the many other species with which they share habitat and rethink ways to establish regenerative development. Sentient beings have rights simply because they are sentient . The capability to live a life worth living depends on the protection of habitats of the multiple diverse species that make up a living system. Ceballos et al. (2017) caution that population losses constitute a mass extinction in a paper presented at the Academy of Social Sciences. They stress that this is based on a misconception that human population growth is sustainable on a finite planet. The will to increase the productivity of nation states led to the increasing enclosure of open or shared landscapes and increased colonisation to extend their access to potential products. Eventually industrialised agriculture and planning has increasingly displaced people, plants and creatures. Unwanted people are proletarianised, unwanted plants become weeds and unwanted creatures become pests. The so-called Green Revolution, however, has backfired as the clearance of natural habitat and the planting of single crops has left us less biologically diverse and open to disease. The arguments about the control of nature and the genetically modified crops that do not self-seed have been presented by Vandana Shiva (2012a, 2012b), suffice to say profit before regeneration poses the threat of mass extinctions. The notion that human beings have the right to commodify plants has been disputed by Vandana Shiva, whilst the notion that human beings have the right to commodify animals has been clearly challenged by Martha Nussbaum (2006) in her work on the need to extend the ‘Frontiers of Social Justice’ to protect voiceless sentient beings who live lives that are not worth living. She developed the capabilities approach that stresses the need for all animals to have a right to live lives in which they can express their species-specific capabilities to the full. Social ecological engagement on food security, quality education and sustainable communities needs to be a focus of transformational sociological research. McIntyreMills et al. (2019, 2020) formed a community of practice network to enhance capabilities and human rights in Indonesia and South Africa. Given the foremost role of women in the community with respect to all these issues, gender is the central focus of this research (Kabeer, 1999, 2005). As such, it addresses SDG 5—gender equality. The aim is to enhance social and environmental justice outcomes in line with specific UN Sustainable Development Goals and Nussbaum’s (2011) ten capabilities

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to enhance human rights and the rights of sentient beings including the most vulnerable (such as women, children, the elderly and the disabled). The United Nations 2030 Agenda provides an opportunity for strengthening common regional platforms and mechanisms that give greater emphasis to the benefits of. Highly urbanised regions face food and water insecurity and are at risk of becoming food deserts (Crush & Riley, 2017) unless diverse habitats are protected and everyday strategies are explored with service users and providers to find better pathways to protect multiple species. This is one of the bitter lessons being learned during lock down in many parts of the world, such as South Africa where hunger is as much of a threat as the virus. Brown (2020) stressed that hungry children in Peddie gathered plants to supplement their diets and in the same article cites: the National Income Dynamics Study (NIDS) – Coronavirus Rapid Mobile Survey (NIDSCRAM) … found that 47% of respondents reported that their household ran out of money to buy food in April 2020. Before the lockdown, 21% of households reported that they ran out of money to buy food in the previous year.

Another bitter lesson, which will (hopefully) be learned from the second wave outbreak in Victoria, Australia is that insecure working conditions and profit represents not only ‘false economy’, but social injustice that will have cascading effects on the entire population. An enquiry has resulted in workers coming forward to share that they were hired by WhatsApp (sometimes only a day before their first shift) (Baker, 2020). Work insecurity is also faced paradoxically in the Australian government Centrelink call centre where some workers had to forego wages or apply for government relief, as a result of the transmission of the virus in the workplace (Sakkal, 2020).

Conclusion The volume makes an axiologically case for transformative research (Mertens, 2010, 2017) to protect multiple species and that cross-disciplinary, mixed methods research needs to take the ‘multispecies turn’ (Kirksey et al., 2014). Shiva (2011, 2020a, 2020b) stresses that ecocide and femicide have walked hand in hand and are a result of ‘ecological apartheid’ (Shiva, 2020) and cautions that we face desertification through land loss, the creation of large commercial farms and genetically modified interventions by big corporations that destroy seed diversity and regard the people and the plants that do not comply as weeds for eradication. If socio-political thinking is about who, gets what, when, why and to what effect, it is time to address bio-politics (Foucault, 2008) and cross-species engagement to ensure the balance of individual and collective needs. Scott (1998) in ‘Seeing like a State’ extends Foucault (2008) by giving detailed examples of the way in which the state has crushed diversity—from designing monocultures in forestry to ironing out diverse political opinions.

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If we accept the concept of the banality of evil (Arendt, 1963)—the notion that everyday decisions can collectively result in a normalisation and acceptance of evil— then we have to rethink many of the aspects of society that we take for granted today. An ecosystemic perspective that respects multi-species relationships (McIntyreMills & Romm, 2019; McIntyre-Mills, 2020) needs to acknowledge our interconnectedness, based on recognition and respect. The Ecocide Law (Higgins et al., 2013) is central to protect multiple species as the earth needs a good lawyer to disrupt the cycle of greed, over-exploitation, lack of distribution, poverty and conflict, in order to balance individual and collective needs for the common good. Evolution is the result of both competition for resources and the ability to cooperate (De Waal, 2009). The scales have tipped to far on the side of social, economic and environmental competition in the interests of the few at the expense of the majority of living systems in this generation and the next (IPPC, 2018; Shiva, 2020a, 2020b). Climate change and capitalism have destroyed vast tracks of the environment and the notion that ‘ownership’ of land or the right to licence or patent life needs to be challenged. The TRIPS11 agreement has provided minimal protection for Indigenous people as it removed the moral right of authors, according to Whimp and Busse (2000: 13). Kathy Whimp explains that the law allows the removal of legal rights, but then suggests that moral protection be provided, which seems a cynical option, because property rights are based on possession, creativity and discovery in Western Law. By invoking discovery as a right to dispossess others, colonial countries dismissed the different notion of relationships to kin and nature. Another aspect which was not emphasised is the notion of consumption and what constitutes the right to consume and the nature of consumption. The scale of destruction caused by consuming the planet (Urry, 2010; IPPC, 2018) to extinction (Bostrom, 2011) is part of the problem, the other is the growing size of the human population at the expense of other living systems on which we rely. The notion that the land is a resource for profit as opposed to sacred Pachamama, needs to be stressed. According to Gudynas (2011: 443) both Ecuador and Bolivia have recognised the intrinsic rights of the land, but despite this constitutional decree, the environment has been ‘sold out’ to market interests. For example, the critics of Prime Minister Morales have claimed that corruption by government representatives is widespread.12 It is suggested that the practice of governance and accountability is quite different from the rhetoric of care. Thus, care 11

According to Correa (2002: 1): “The Doha Declaration on the TRIPS Agreement and Public Health, adopted by the WTO Ministerial Conference in November 2001, which affirms that the TRIPS Agreement should be interpreted and implemented so as to protect public health and promote access to medicines for all, marked a watershed in international trade demonstrating that a rulesbased trading system should be compatible with public health interests. The Declaration enshrines the principle WHO has publicly advocated and advanced over the last four years, namely the reaffirmation of the right of WTO Members to make full use of the safeguard provisions of the TRIPS Agreement to protect public health and enhance access to medicines” ( my emphasis). 12 https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/nov/15/evo-morales-indigenous-leader-who-cha nged-bolivia-but-stayed-too-long.

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requires not only a priori norms, but also to monitor and govern in an open and transparent manner, based on a posteriori indicators of governance (McIntyre-Mills et al., 2014; McIntyre-Mills, 2017). The way forward is to give rights to multiple species and their habitat. This requires a new Ecocide Law. The human relationship with other species has varied from instrumental, to spiritual. Few have accorded constitutional rights, except for Ecuador that has attributed rights to the land. Individual species rights for animals are still a long way off. Europe has made a few tentative steps towards decent conditions for farm animals, but they cannot be regarded as enabling full capabilities for animals to express their functional and emotional lives. New Zealand has banned animal transportation. These are very small steps away from the dismal record of abuse of other sentient beings. Nussbaum’s capabilities for sentient beings (2011) are presented as a human development approach and are thus anthropocentric, but to her credit, she takes a step towards emphasising the rights of all sentient beings. Disability rights for the voiceless and frail have led to Judith Butler stressing the need for a recognition of human interdependency and care (see Butler and Taylor, 2010; Butler and Athenasiou, 2013). But we need to stop, pause and reconsider what this actually means. Animals and plants communicate. Communication per se does not require human voices. It can rely on text, signalling and symbols. Sounds, movements, chemicals can convey information and the whole realm of communication is opened up by Meier (2016) and Gaglioni et al. (2018) on animal and plant communications. We need to focus on a non-anthropocentric future. Janet J. McIntyre-Mills Honorary Professor, University of South Africa, College of Education, Tshwane, South Africa, Visiting Research Fellow, Adelaide University, College of Professions Main North Terrace, Adelaide, Australia, Adjunct Associate Professor, College of Business Government and Law, Flinders University, Sturt Campus Adelaide, Australia

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Kirksey, S. E., & Helmreich, S. (2010). The emergence of multispecies ethnography. Cultural Anthropology, 25(4), 545–576. Lim, M. (2019). Securing equitable and sustainable futures in the anthropocene—What role and challenges for environmental law? In M. Lim (Eds.) Charting Environmental law futures in the anthropocene. Singapore: Springer. Mair, S. (2020). https://theconversation.com/what-will-the-world-be-like-after-coronavirus-fourpossible-futures-134085. Mannix, L. (2020, May 16)—11.30pm https://www.smh.com.au/national/scientists-tried-to-pre dict-covid-19-here-s-why-they-missed-it-20200515-p54tgb.html. Maupin, A. (1987). significant others . New York: Harper & Row. ISBN: 0-06-096408-1. McIntyre-Mills, J. (2014). Systemic ethics and non-anthropocentric stewardship. New York: Springer. McIntyre-Mills, J. (2017). Planetary Passport. New York: Springer. McIntyre-Mills, J. (2017). Recognizing our hybridity and interconnectedness. Current Sociology, 1–24. 10.1177/0011392117715898. McIntyre-Mills, J. (2018). Policy design for non-anthropocentric pathways to protect biodiversity and regenerate the land. International Education Journal in South Africa. https://journals.co. za/content/journal/10520/EJC-117cea7615. McIntyre-Mills, J., De Vries, & Binchai, N. (2014). Transformation from wall street to wellbeing. New York: Springer. McIntyre-Mills, J., & Wirawan, R. (2017). Pathways to Wellbeing. In Balancing individualism and collectivism. London: Springer. McIntyre-Mills, J., Romm, N., & Corcoran-Nantes, Y. (Eds.), (2017). Balancing individualism and collectivism: Supporting social and environmental justice. New York: Springer. Meadows, D. H., et al. (1972). The Limits to growth a report for the club of rome’s project on the predicament of mankind. New York Universe Books. Meijer, E. (2016, translated, 2019). Animal Languages: the secret conversations of the living world. London: John Murray. Mertens, D. (2017). Transformative research: Personal and societal. International Journal for Transformative Research. https://doi.org/10.1515/ijtr-2017-0001. Mertens, D. M. (2010). Transformative mixed methods research. Qualitative Inquiry, 16(6), 469– 474. Michelmore, (2020). “Loggerhead turtle m ade…” a 37,000-kilometre swim across the Indian Ocean. https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-03-07/yoshi-turtle-journey-tracked-370 00km-from-cape-town-to-australia/12024088. Mitman, G. (2019, June 18). Reflections on the plantationocene: A conversation with Donna Haraway and Anna Tsing. Updated October 12, 2019. https://edgeeffects.net/haraway-tsingplantationocene/. Naess, A., & Haukeland, P. I. (2002). Life’s philosophy: Reason and feeling in a deeper world . R. Huntford, G. A. Athens (Eds), University of Georgia Press. translated. Nagel, T. (1974). What is it like to be a bat? The Philosophical Review, 83(4), 435–450. 10.2307/ 2183914. JSTOR 2183914. New Zealand, Public Health Advisory Committee. (2007). An idea whose time has come. https:// can.org.nz/system/files/an-idea-whose-time-has-come.pdf. Nussbaum, M. (2011). Creating capabilities: The human development approach. London: The Belknap Press Pariser, E, (2011). The filter bubble: how the personalised web is changing what we read and how we think. London: Penguin Books. Pauli, G. (2010). The blue economy: Report to the club of Rome. Paradigm Publications. Polanyi, M. (1966). The Tacit dimension. Chicago: Chicago University Press. Foreword by Amartya Sen, 2009. Polanyi, M. (1968). The great transformation: The political and economic origins of our time. New York: Renehart and Co.

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Raikhel, E. (2010). ‘Multispecies ethnography’ cultural anthropology, somatosphere. http//somato sphere.net/2010/10/ (Vol. 15). Rayner, A. (2012). What are natural systems, actually? Advances in System Science and Applicatio, 12, 328-347 Rayner, A. (2017). The origin of life patterns In the natural inclusion of space in flux . Berlin/Heidelberg: Springer. Rayner, A. D. M. (2010). Inclusionality and sustainability—attuning with the currency of natural energy flow and how this contrasts with abstract economic rationality. Environmental Economics, 1, 98–108. Rinpoche, Zopa. (2018). Lama Rinpoche. The method to transform a suffering life into happiness. Foundation for the preservation of mahayana tradition. Romm, N. (2017). Responsible research practice: Revisiting transformative paradigm in social research. New York: Springer. Romm, N. (2020). Responsibly and performatively researching multi-species relationality. In McIntyre-Mills, & Y. Corcoran-Nantes From polarisation to multispecies relationships: Regeneration of the commons in an era of mass extinctions, Cham: Springer. Romm, N. & Lethole, P. (2020). Prospects for sustainable living with focus on interrelatedness, interdependence and mutuality. In McIntyre-Mills, et al. From polarisation to multispecies relationships: Regeneration of the commons in an era of mass extinctions. Springer. Cham, forthcoming. Sakkal, P. (2020). Centrelink staff stood down, say social distancing pleas were ignored. https://www.theage.com.au/national/victoria/centrelink-staff-stood-down-say-socialdistancing-pleas-were-ignored-20200723-p55esg.html. Scott, J. (1998). Seeing like a state. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. Sen, A. (2005). Human rights and capabilities. Journal of Human Development, 6(2), 151–166. Sen, A. K. (1999). Development as freedom, New York, London: Oxford University Press. Shanor, K., & Kanwaal, J. (2009). Bats sing and mice giggle: revealing the secret lives of animals. London. icon. Shiva, V. (2011). Earth Democracy. Portland University. www.youtube.com/watch?v=UOfM7Q D7-kk/. Shiva, V. (2012). Making peace with the earth. Winnipeg: Fernwood Publishing. Shiva, V. (2012). Monocultures of the Mind. Penang: Third World Network. Shiva, V. (2020, March 25). Ecofeminism and the decolonization of women, nature and the future. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hVbbov9Rfjg. Uploaded by San Telmo Museoa. Shiva, V. (2020). Two paths to the future of food and farming—ecofarm Keynotehttps://www.you tube.com/watch?v=9vNPGwqR4TQ. Simard, & Defrenne, (2019). The secret language of trees—Camille Defrenne and Suzanne Simard . https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V4m9SefyRjg. Simard, S. (2016). How trees talk to each other. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Un2yBg IAxYs. Singer, P. (2002). One world: The ethics of globalization. London: Yale University Press. Stamets, P. (2019, March 7). Action on the bee crisis. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TZPkCo zuqM8&feature=youtu.be. Stamets, P. E., Naeger, N. L., Evans, J. D. Han, Jennifer, O., Hopkins, B. K. - Lopez, et al. (2018). Extracts of polypore mushroom mycelia reduce viruses in honey bees. Scientific Reports, 8 , 13936. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-018-32194-8. Stephens, A., Taket, A., and, Gagliano, M, (2019). Ecological justice for nature in critical systems thinking. System Research, 36, 3–19. https://doi.org/10.1002/sres.2532. Tsing, A. (2011). Arts of inclusion, or, how to love a mushroom (Anna Ting, for the matsutake worlds research group). Australian Humanities Review, (50). https://press-files.anu.edu.au/dow nloads/press/p111121/html/ch01.xhtml?referer=&page=2#toc-anchor. Tsing, A. L. (1995). Empowering nature, or: some gleanings in bee culture. In C. L. Lowery Delaney, S. J. Yanagisako, & American Anthropological Association. Meeting. (1992). San Francisco, California (1995). Naturalizing power: Essays in feminist cultural analysis. New York: Routledge.

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Contents

Part I 1

Rethinking Human Security and Resilience as Vulnerable Multispecies Relationships

Communication and Culture: A Multispecies Endeavour Recognising Kinship with Multiple Species. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Janet J. McIntyre-Mills

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Pandemic in South Africa: Some Reflections. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . K. Gottschalk

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From Old to New Taxonomies of Rights, Relationships and Responsibilities to Protect Habitat. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Janet J. McIntyre-Mills

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Vignette: Interview: Recognising our Hybridity and Interconnectedness. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Janet J. McIntyre-Mills

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Consciousness for Balancing Individualism and Collectivism. . . . . . . . Janet J. McIntyre-Mills

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Prospects for Sustainable Living with Focus on Interrelatedness, Interdependence and Mutuality: Some African Perspectives. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . N. R. A. Romm and P. V. Lethole

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Vignette: Habitat Loss and Near Extinction of Plants and Insects in South Africa. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 115 K. Gottschalk

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Stewardship: An Anthropocentric Misnomer? Rights, Responsibilties and Multispecies Relationships. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 119 Janet J. McIntyre-Mills

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Social Engagement to Redress the Banality of Evil and the Frontiers of Justice: Limitations of the Social Contract to Protect Habitat and Why an International Law to Prevent the Crime of Ecocide Matters. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 141 Janet J. McIntyre-Mills

10 From Polarisation to Multispecies Relationships: Re-Membering Narratives. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 173 Janet J. McIntyre-Mills 11 Why Thinking Matters: Constructivism, Relationships and the Performative Universe. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 213 Janet J. McIntyre-Mills 12 Responsibly and Performatively Researching Multi-species Relationality. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 223 Norma R. A. Romm 13 The Changing Face of City Life in Vietnam. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 261 Huong Nguyen, Y. Corcoran Nantes, and Janet J. McIntyre-Mills Part II

Reframing and Re-Claiming the Commons Through A Priori and A Posteriori Approaches

14 Social and Environmental Justice. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 283 Janet J. McIntyre-Mills and A. N. Christakis 15 Social Engagement to Protect Multispecies Habitat: Implications for Re-Generation and Food Security. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 309 Janet J. McIntyre-Mills, R. Wirawan, I. Widianingsih, and R. Riswanda 16 Educational Curriculum and Multispecies Relations. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 369 Pinkie Louisa Mabunda and Veronica McKay 17 The Potential of Eco-Facturing: Towards Social and Environmental Justice Through Vocational Education and Training. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 391 Janet J. McIntyre-Mills, Y. Corcoran-Nantes, R. J. Wirawan, and I. Widianingsih 18 From Education as Usual to a Post National Learning Community. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 425 Janet J. McIntyre-Mills and R. Wirawan 19 The Co-Laboratory of Democracy Archetypes: Engaging Stakeholders in Deliberative Democracy to Respond Proactively to Diversity. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 451 Jeff Diedrich and Alexander N. Christakis

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Part III Case Studies and Vignettes : Loss, Hope and Common Gound 20 The Greta Factor: Turning Point for Transformation. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 473 Janet J. McIntyre-Mills 21 Gender Quota in Local Government: Implications for Community-Climate Action in Bangladesh. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 485 Shajeda Aktar 22 Balancing the Interests of Wildlife and Humans Resulting in Sustainable Ecotourism: The Case of Boabeng-Fiema Monkeys’ Sanctuary, Ghana. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 519 Akwasi Arko-Achemfuor 23 Agent Orange, Women of the Resistance and Reproductive Rights: A Tale of Deliberate Human and Environmental Devastation in Vietnam. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 537 Yvonne Corcoran-Nantes 24 Reflections on the Changing Role of Women in a Post Disaster Environment, Central Sulawesi Indonesia. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 553 Harnida W. Adda, Yvonne Corcoran-Nantes, and Pricylia Chintya Dewi Buntuang 25 Vignette: At the Margins. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 569 Janet J. McIntyre-Mills 26 Biopolitics and Food Security to Protect Social and Environmental Justice. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 575 Janet J. McIntyre-Mills 27 Vignette: Cannibalising the South Pacific. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 603 Janet J. McIntyre-Mills 28 Systemic Praxis: Steps Towards Re-generation. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 615 Janet J. McIntyre-Mills, N. R. A. Romm, Akwasi Arko-Achemfuor, and J. Karel 29 Crisis! What Crisis?. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 645 Robert L. Flood 30 Vignette: Creating Common Ground. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 651 Janet J. McIntyre-Mills 31 Advancing a Modern Ethos for Oneness with All Life Through Archaic Story. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 659 T. Flanagan 32 Vignette: Relationships, Narrative and Memory. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 673 Janet J. McIntyre-Mills

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33 Vignette: Knackered ‘We are all Flesh’. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 683 Janet J. McIntyre-Mills 34 Vignette: Emergence Re-generation and Hope in the Context of Extinctions. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 687 Janet J. McIntyre-Mills 35 Objectifying Intersubjectivity Through Inclusion for a Scientific [R]Evolution: Avoiding Polarization by Engaging Stakeholders for Saliency, Priority and Trust. . . . . . . . . . 699 Alexander N. Christakis and Maria Kakoulaki 36 The Natural Inclusion of Diversity in Community: Swirls within Swirls and Variations around a Central Theme. . . . . . . . . . . . . . 729 A. Rayner 37 Executive Summary: Voices from Below in Every Region for Social and Environmental Justice. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 749 Janet J. McIntyre-Mills 38 Correction to: From Polarisation to Multispecies Relationships. . . . . Janet J. McIntyre-Mills and Yvonne Corcoran-Nantes

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Editors and Contributors

About the Editors Janet J. McIntyre-Mills (D.Litt et Phil, Sociology) is Honorary Professor at University of South Africa and Visiting Research Fellow at the Yunus Social Business Centre within the University of Adelaide Business School since Dec 2019. She is also Adjunct Associate Professor at Flinders University and holds affiliations with universities in Indonesia, such as the University of Indonesia and Universitas Padjadjaran where she is affiliated with the Centre for Research and Participatory Development Research. She has been nominated ‘Sociologist of the Month’ in August 2019 by the Current Sociology Journal in recognition of her paper: ‘Recognising our hybridity and Connectedness’. Her research focuses on systemic representation, accountability and regeneration applied to social and environmental justice concerns and include both edited and sole-authored volumes such as: Planetary Passport: Re-presentation, Accountability and Re-Generation and Systemic Ethics and non-anthropocentric stewardship Springer, New York, 270pp. Yvonne Corcoran-Nantes (Ph.D. Sociology) is an International Gender Consultant and a Principal Research Fellow in the Social Sciences and Adjunct Associate Professor at Flinders University. She is also an Associate of the Gender Consortium at Flinders University and Research Fellow, Centre for Research and Participatory Development Research, Universitas Padjadjaran, Indonesia. She engages with some of the major issues facing women globally and specialises in gender-specific research in non-western countries in the field of development and international politics, dealing with issues such as gender equality, human rights, gender-based violence, sustainable development, terrorism and conflict. She wrote a seminal work on Central Asian women entitled Lost Voices: Central Asian Women Confronting Transition which was published by Zed Books and is now in its 12th edition. She is presently working on a book about women resistance fighters in the American War in Vietnam.

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Contributors Akwasi Arko-Achemfuor University of South Africa, Pretoria, South Africa Harnida W. Adda Tadulako University, Palu, Indonesia Shajeda Aktar Department of Public Administration, University of Rajshahi, Rajshahi, Bangladesh Pricylia Chintya Dewi Buntuang Tadulako University, Palu, Indonesia Alexander N. Christakis Institute for 21st Century Agoras, Crete, Greece Y. Corcoran Nantes College of Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences, Flinders University, Adelaide, SA, Australia Yvonne Corcoran-Nantes College of Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences, Flinders University, Adelaide, SA, Australia Jeff Diedrich Institute for 21st Century Agoras, Crete, Greece T. Flanagan Wesleyan University, Middletown, CT, USA Robert L. Flood Norwegian University of Science and Technology, Trondheim, Norway K. Gottschalk University of the Western Cape, Cape Town, South Africa M. Kakoulaki Yale University, New Haven, CT, USA J. Karel University of South Africa, Pretoria, South Africa P. V. Lethole University of South Africa, Pretoria, South Africa Pinkie Louisa Mabunda College of Education, University of South Africa, Pretoria, South Africa Janet J. McIntyre-Mills University of South Africa in the College of Education, Tshwane, South Africa; Adelaide University, College of Professions Main North Terrace, Adelaid, Australia; College of Business, Government and Law, Flinders University, Sturt, SA, Australia Veronica McKay College of Education, University of South Africa, Pretoria, South Africa Huong Nguyen Gender and Women’s Studies, College of Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences, Flinders University, Adelaide, SA, Australia A. Rayner Bath and North East Somerset, Bathford, UK R. Riswanda Universitas Sultan Ageng Tirtayasa, Kota Serang, Indonesia Norma R. A. Romm University of South Africa, Pretoria, South Africa I. Widianingsih Universitas Padjadjaran, Bandung, Indonesia

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R. J. Wirawan College of Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences, Flinders University, Adelaide, SA, Australia

Part I

Rethinking Human Security and Resilience as Vulnerable Multispecies Relationships

Chapter 1

Communication and Culture: A Multispecies Endeavour Recognising Kinship with Multiple Species Janet J. McIntyre-Mills

Abstract This volume prompts us to re-think the categories human/animal/ organic/inorganic, human/machine and local/nonlocal, categories that Donna Haraway (1992) explored, because she stressed ‘we are the boundaries’. In other words, we construct these boundaries. In line with this mission the volume develops a new approach to rights and responsibilities that balance individual and collective needs spanning human animals along with biologically diverse species. It makes a case that respect for multiple species and the onus of beneficence should be applied to all living systems of which we are a strand. Human beings are not exceptional insofar as they are able to communicate, make decisions, demonstrate a sense of community, show empathy or to make political calculations. What does this mean for the way we live our lives? Respect for persons needs to include animals, plants and the earth. It is time to re-think rights and responsibilities to protect habitat. Goodall stresses that the loss of habitat leads to species that have never been in contact before (and thus without any resistance) coming into contact with one another. Keywords Re-thinking · Species · Boundaries · Living systems The permeability of boundaries between the organic and inorganic (Field, 2020, Veverbrants, 2000, pers comm.), between life and death (Adelaide Dlamini, 1982, pers comm) is evident in Indigenous wisdoms in South Africa and Australian, for example, as well as in Mahayana Buddhist philosophy (Thubten Dondrub, pers comm. 2020) Currently, the ethical frameworks guiding the increasingly neo-liberal way of life are inadequate (see McIntyre-Mills, 2014) as they are inherently anthropocentric and misplaced; humanity can only be protected by protecting the biodiversity in which J. J. McIntyre-Mills (B) University of South Africa in the College of Education, Tshwane, South Africa e-mail: [email protected]; [email protected] Adelaide University, College of Professions Main North Terrace, Adelaide, Australia College of Business, Government and Law, Flinders University, Sturt, SA, Australia © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2021 J. J. McIntyre-Mills and Y. Corcoran-Nantes (eds.), From Polarisation to Multispecies Relationships, Contemporary Systems Thinking, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-33-6884-2_1

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we are embedded. In frontiers of Justice, Nussbaum (2006) stresses the need for the right to a life worth living to be extended to all sentient beings. Nussbaum’s (2011) ten capabilities are directly concerned with wellbeing, a life worth living and the extent to which these can be addressed. These capabilities, include: “(1) living a life that is not cut short prematurely (2) bodily health, (3) bodily integrity, (4) sense, imagination, and thoughts, (5) emotions, (6) practical reason, (7) Affiliation, (8) links to other species, (9) Play, (10) Control over one’s environment. In Nussbaum’s version, the Capabilities approach focus on “the protection of areas of freedom so central that their removal makes a life not worthy of human dignity” (p. 31). Nussbaum, however, extends these capabilities to all sentient beings and thus a small step towards non-Anthropocentrism in terms of recognition of rights, but her focus is still on human development, not on the rights of animals and habitats. Nussbaum (2006) in ‘Frontiers for Justice’ stressed that the social contract should be extended to protect the capabilities of all sentient beings so that they can live a life worth living and so that they are able to achieve their capabilities.1 Kirksey et al (2014: 1) explain that: Ethnographers are now exploring how “the human” has been formed and transformed amid encounters with multiple species of plants, animals, fungi, and microbes. Rather than simply celebrate multispecies mingling, ethnographers have begun to explore a central question: Who benefits, cui bono, when species meet?

Country is regarded as home and caring for country is regarded as vital and ought to be a primary concern for all economists and ecologists. Relationships between the First Australians and nature are based on a sense of kinship that extends as a continuum across the organic and inorganic. As Field (2020) explains the notion of life and death is understood very differently in Aboriginal culture as the living and their ancestors are closely connected in country. Stewardship is thus about ensuring that future generations learn to respect all living systems within the landscape, 1I

have critiqued aspects of her approach to property, but if you look at all her work (including Frontiers of Justice, 2006) she stresses that the social contract, as it currently stands is inadequate and needs to be extended to protect sentient beings and their habitat. She is an essentialist, and I argue that we also need to consider some contextual considerations, even if we do believe in essential rights for all sentient beings. I think she has made very valid points to address ‘the excluded’ spanning sentient beings, the voiceless, the disabled, asylum seekers and young people, all of whom have no protection from the state through the social contract. Furthermore, she is one of the first thinkers to group all these excluded beings and to link their capabilities with the need for a safe habitat. Her points about property are not as well thought through. Nussbaum (an idealist and essentialist). Amartya Sen (who is a pragmatist believes in both a priori ideals and also a posteriori measures) needs to be considered when discussing development and capabilities. Nussbaum also stresses the need for more collective responsibility through extending the social contract to protect all sentient beings. She goes further than Sen, in this respect. These are all important contributions to extend mainstream philosophy. Nussbaum stresses that sentient beings have rights (simply because they are sentient and not because they are useful or because of any other consequentialist argument. Nevertheless, Peter Singer (2002) has also made vital contributions, albeit from a pragmatic argument about rights for animals because they feel pain. But they feel so much more than pain, they have empathy, reciprocity, a sense of fairness, memory, problem solving skills and some would argue (such as Meijer, 2016) they also have the ability to work things out in groups and thus have a form of political ability.

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particularly those that are regarded as having particular significance for spiritual reasons. The short and obvious response to the question posed above by Kirksey et al. is that human beings (inspired by neoliberalism) have applied an exploitative approach that has commodified plants and animals and the result has been profit for some at the expense of the majority of living systems. Previously I have written about ‘recogising our hybridity and interconnectedness’(McIntyre-Mills, 2017) and in this edited volume we hope to show what we have in common with other species and how our interdependency is in itself a form of communication. The ability to make political and or ethical decisions and the ability to communicate are not purely human characteristics. Thus, human beings ought not to have dominion over other species. Animal behaviourists and inter-species researchers have stressed that the boundaries need to be re-thought. This has implications for ethics, democracy and governance. According to the Belmont Report, two aspects need to guide human ethics, respect for person and beneficence, (1979: 4): Respect for persons incorporates at least two ethical convictions: first, that individuals should be treated as autonomous agents, and second, that persons with diminished autonomy are entitled to protection. The principle of respect for persons thus divides into two separate moral requirements: the requirement to acknowledge autonomy and the requirement to protect those with diminished autonomy.

Belmont Report (1979: 5) continues that beneficence entails that: Persons are treated in an ethical manner not only by respecting their decisions and protecting them from harm, but also by making efforts to secure their well-being. Such treatment falls under the principle of beneficence. The term “beneficence” is often understood to cover acts of kindness or charity that go beyond strict obligation. In this document, beneficence is understood in a stronger sense, as an obligation. Two general rules have been formulated as complementary expressions of beneficent actions in this sense: (1) do not harm and (2) maximize possible benefits and minimize possible harms.

Fuentes (2020) stresses the importance of kinship across-species as follows: For me, the most important contribution in this proposal is the broadening of the Belmont concept of ‘respect for persons’ to include other animals. There are two anthropologically salient aspects that we should take under consideration here: a broadly construed notion of ‘kinship’ and the strong possibility that other animals can be, or should be, seen as persons. The writer Armistead Maupin tells us that we live in a world filled with both biological kin and logical kin. He refers to those kinship relations that we are born into as biological, and those that we choose, construct, and nourish, as logical.

The Belmont report (1979) only refers to human subjects. Ethical guidelines for human researchers, practitioners and members of the public need to recognise our biological kinship and interdependency. Respect for multiple species needs to be based by a sense of awe and supported by norms rooted in a belief in our precarious interdependency and the implications of dispossession (see Butler, 2011; Butler & Athanasiou, 2013). A moral compass to protect diversity needs to be buttressed by a Global Covenant(Held, 2004) and the Ecocide Law (Higgins et al., 2013; Higgins, 2018) could provide a positive step towards addressing ‘existential risks’(Bostrom,

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2011). The lack of gendered, non-anthropocentric emphasis on the way in which nature has been controlled and mastered needs to be remedied. Few (with the exception of Deborah Bird Rose, Donna Haraway and Anna Tsing) have spoken out about multispecies relations and fewer have stressed the need for a multispecies approach that honours the rights of all sentient beings to a habitat that makes life worth living, with perhaps the exception of Donaldson and Kymlicka in their work ‘Zoopolis’ in which they argue that habitat for all animals needs should be considered a right: from appropriate space for domesticated animals (such as pets and agricultural animals) to the liminal creatures that share our cities and gardens with us and the wild animals who have a right to their own habitat. As stewards we have a responsibility to ensure their rights are met through passing and implementing laws to protect them. Mahayana Buddhists stress that the path to enlightenment rests in compassion for all sentient beings who can be regarded “as our mothers” (Rinpoche, 2018). Indigenous people also recognising the land as ‘our mother’. Indigenous wisdom blurred the taxonomic categories across-species through of totemic worship as has discussed (See McIntyre-Mills, 2003, 2021, Chapter 10 this volume; Romm and Lethole, 2021, Chapter 6 this volume on African totemism with specific reference to Venda clans relationship to elephants). In both instances kinship is extended to other species both plant and animal to whom they claim allegiance and which fall under the mantle of their protection. In the Indigenous context features of the landscape can also be regarded as totems. In the pantheistic Peruvian culture, the Andes are worshipped as a god, the condor (a raptor) is worshipped as it soars above the earth and Pachamama is the goddess of fertility without which they believed we would not live. Indigenous cultures believe that organic and inorganic life are kin in one living system.2 The lack of gendered, non-anthropocentric emphasis on the way in which nature has been controlled and mastered needs to be remedied. Few with the exception of Deborah Bird Rose, Donna Haraway and Anna Tsing have spoken out about multispecies relations and fewer have stressed the need for a multispecies approach that honours the rights of all sentient beings to a habitat that makes life worth living, with perhaps the exception of Donaldson and Kymlicka in their work ‘Zoopolis’ in which they argue that habitat for all animals needs should be considered a right from appropriate space for domesticated animals such as pets to the liminal creatures that share our cities and gardens with us, the agricultural animals on farms and the wild animals who have a right to their own habitat. Many species are able to communicate as highlighted by Eva Meijer (2019) who stresses that bats sing, bees dance, domestic dogs, cats and horses read our behaviour and body language, parrots use language to achieve goals, primates have learned sign language and dolphins have specific sounds which equate to names. Species-specific intelligence needs to be respected. The notion that human beings should be called 2 For

example, as my mentor Olive Veverbrants (pers com 2000) explained to me in Alice Springs, when a pregnant woman feels her foetus move, she links the movement with a creature or feature in the landscape. It may be a bird, a lizard, a plant or a rock formation. This becomes a totem to which the child is related in her or his place.

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‘bird brained,’ if considered slow, is simply ill informed. Many species demonstrate a sense of self if the mirror test is not used and instead species-specific intelligence is taken into account. Meijer (2019) explains that dogs can recognise their own urine smells and are less interested in this smell than the smell of other dogs, for example. This demonstrates a sense of self. Meijer (2019: 74) also stresses that even if a gorilla does not gaze at a mirror, she stresses that this is because gazing at another would be regarded as aggressive. Similarly, she stresses that in some cultures, this is also regarded as impolite.3 Thus, the mirror test, developed by Western male academics should not be regarded as the basis for deciding on species intelligence or sense of self. The species-specific intelligence of birds varies with and responds to their environments (Ackerman, 2016). Some birds are able to remember where they have stashed supplies for the winter months and this develops particular pathways in their brains which other species may not need to develop (Ackerman, 2016: 210). But research has found that birds are capable of passing on new useful knowledge to others, such as how to open a food dispenser (Meijer, 2019: 72) that demonstrates the ability to convey information that is retained and passed on to future generations living within the region long after the first birds had died. Thus, birds can communicate and create local cultures that help the survival of their group. Turtles4 and birds are able to navigate across the seas and skies to return to breeding or feeding sites, they do not need a compass. Squirrels in Cape Town carry a map of where they have stashed their supply of winter acorns. They were imported by colonisers along with the oaks and although once considered non- indigenous they are now part of a changing and contested landscape. Tsing (1995, 2005; Mitmann, 2019) and Haraway (1991, 2011, 2016) have stressed that culture is a multispecies relationship. Human beings co-evolved in part because of their ability to domesticate dogs with whom they hunted and they used the sounds (like animals) at first to signal and then as they gained currency as a result of a regular trusted response they became accepted as symbols that were imitated and shared. Human beings are not exceptional. Other species communicate as well. Birds are known to develop shared language that is mutually understood as do a range of other creatures from squid to dolphins in the 3 In

South Africa, respectful behaviour, known as hlonipha in Xhosa requires lowering the eyes. This was explained to me by my mentor and key informant Adelaide Dlamini. It was important information as I needed to show respect when I met more traditional men and woman when doing research for my MA thesis in Cape Town and the Eastern Cape. When undertaking research in Alice Springs this was also explained as appropriate by my mentor Olive Veverbrants. In Aboriginal culture looking someone in the eye and holding eye contact is considered bold and impolite. So, when interviewing sitting alongside and not staring too intently is appropriate behaviour. 4 …loggerhead turtle made…” a 37,000-kilometre swim across the Indian Ocean to a turtle nesting site on Western Australia’s Pilbara coastline. Scientists, who began tracking her journey from Cape Town two years ago, believe Yoshi may have wanted to return to her original hatching site to breed and nest. Sabrina Fossette, a research scientist from WA’s Department of Biodiversity, Conservation and Attractions, said …: “This turtle spent 20 years in captivity and still, you put her in the water and she suddenly remembers she probably has something to do on the other side of the ocean and just starts crossing it.” https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-03-07/yoshi-turtle-journey-tracked-370 00km-from-cape-town-to-australia/12024088.

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sea, from crows who teach kith and kin to use tools, to laboratory rats who share 98 percent of their genes with human beings and primates, like and gorillas, bonobo, chimps who are our near relatives. What is more surprising (to those who have lost their connection with nature) is that plants also communicate and root fungi are able to share resources and to reciprocate (Rayner, 2010). Some would argue that the notion that decision making is a solely human characteristic is highly debatable. Thus, the notion of ethics and culture need to be re-considered as a more than human endeavour. Last week I received a video link from Keith Gottschalk (2021 a contributor to this volume) about a small group of people living in the Turkish mountains who emulate bird calls, so that they can communicate across distances.5 The vocabulary allows them to call for help, such as requesting bread or an extra bag to carry vegetables down from the mountain. The children at school are taught the bird language and it is now regarded as a heritage language to be protected. Urban soundscape shapes bird calls who imitate the loud urban sounds. As habitat is lost the birds move to the suburbs (Pinnock, 2020). The Hadada ibis makes much harsher sounds than previously, so that they are audible above the urban noise. If the urban green spaces are lost, we risk losing even more connections with other species. As we lose the trees in cities we will lose the birds. What will cities be like without shade and birdsong? Pinnock (2020) also suggests: The famous opening bars of Beethoven’s Symphony No. 5 is a direct crib from the whitebreasted wood wren and the beginning of his Violin Concerto in D, Opus 61, is from a blackbird. At the end of the second movement of his Pastoral Symphony, a clarinet does the perfect imitation of a cuckoo. In fact, his music is littered with birdsong.

Tsing’s (2017) approach resonates with this multi-methods, cross cultural and cross disciplinary volume (McIntyre-Mills, 2020) to follow strands of the food web and the destruction of diverse habitats in a series of essays and vignettes. In this paper the case is made that living systems are a continuum from organic to inorganic life. Human beings are animals who have close relatives with many species, from laboratory rats with whom we share 98% of our genes (Greenfield, 2000), to primates who can be taught to use sign language and who show empathy as do other species such as elephants and dogs with whom we are co-evolved (Haraway, 2003; De Waal, 2009) Allan Rayner,6 Peter Wohlleben (2016) a forester and ecologists Suzanne Simard (2019) and Camille Defrenne7 explain the ways trees support one another through communicating through a network that shares chemicals and through hybrid fungi that help to regulate and share nutrients.

5 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4ZIMpsJxrEk UNESCO: List of Intangible Cultural Heritage

in Need of Urgent Safeguarding—2017 URL: https://ich.unesco.org/en/USL/00658 Description: “Whistled language is a method of communication that uses whistling to stimulate and articulate words”. 6 Rayner, A. https://en.wikiversity.org/wiki/Natural_Inclusion. 7 The secret language of trees—Camille Defrenne and Suzanne Simard, https://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=V4m9SefyRjg.

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Reciprocal altruism is not the preserve of human beings. Many species demonstrate empathy and altruism, from bats who regurgitate food for members of their kinship group (Dawkins, 2019), to dolphins who help to push drowning human beings to the surface or zoo elephants who share their water to other neighbouring creatures (De Waal, 2009; Bates et al., 2008). Similarly, all species develop forms of communication which support their survival. Suzanne Simard explains that trees, for example, ‘communicate’ through their root systems in ‘a below ground web’8 that responds to chemicals. The notion that consciousness is a human preserve can be questioned. We may never know what it means to be conscious as a member of another living system, but that does not mean that consciousness is not experienced by trees that release chemicals to indicate distress as a result of lack of nutrients or a threat. Species-specific consciousness was accepted as a possibility by Nagel (1974) who stressed that consciousness is more than brain function and cannot be reduced to a machine-like function. But more importantly, he stressed that being a bat or being a human being is about personal experience. We can never have access to the consciousness of another human being, but this does not mean that we deny that family and friends have consciousness, even if sometimes we do not understand them. Similarly, a bat has species-specific consciousness that enables a Vampire Bat to share food and reciprocate favours when one bat has been more fortunate than another in searching for food, thereby ensuring their mutual survival, because bats remember that they are not always successful in finding food and they need to rely on one another (Dawkins, 2019: 245–246). Thus, the bats share blood with their less successful group members. Shanor and Kanwal (2009: 226) explain that Moustached Bats communicate using a range of whistling sounds: Close observations have shown that friendly bat whistles are frequently accompanied by a lot of touching and ‘kissing’ …Bats also hug each other with their folded wings. Kissing usually consists of a brief contact between the mouths of two bats and may be accompanied by a quick lick of the significant other’s lips as well. In contrast, the harsh broadband sounds are associated with boxing, nipping and aggressive biting….

Consciousness has now been accepted along a wider continuum to include a range of both sentient beings and plants. De Waal (2009) stressed that the characteristics of Empathy, Reciprocity and Fairness are demonstrated by several species, not just primates or elephants. Donaldson and Kymlicka stress that we need to consider rights for animals who share space with us as domestic pets and agricultural animals that are rely on us. They need a form of citizenship. Liminal creatures who live on the margins of our lives in gardens, on nature strips or on the edges of cities need denizen rights and wild creatures need to have the right to wild territory. Climate change and capitalism have destroyed vast tracks of the environment and the notion that ‘ownership’ of land or the right to license or patent life needs to be 8 https://www.ted.com/talks/suzanne_simard_how_trees_talk_to_each_other?language=mg.

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challenged. The TRIPS9 agreement has provided minimal protection for Indigenous people as it removed the moral right of authors, according to Whimp and Busse (2000: 13)10 Kathy Whimp explains that the law allows the removal of legal rights, but then suggests that moral protection be provided, which seems a cynical option, because property rights are based on possession, creativity and discovery in Western Law. By invoking discovery as a right to dispossess others, colonial countries dismissed the different notion of relationships to kin and nature. Whimp and Busse stress in their introduction to a seminar on ‘Protection of Intellectual, Biological and Property Rights in PNG’ that anthropologists have neglected the notion of property. Another aspect which was not emphasized is the notion of consumption and what constitutes the right to consume as well as the nature of consumption. The scale of destruction caused by consuming the planet (Urry, 2010; IPPC, 2018) to extinction (Bostrom, 2011) is part of the problem; the other is the growing size of the human population at the expense of other living systems on which we rely. The notion that the land is a resource for profit as opposed to sacred Pachamama, needs to be stressed. In conversation with Norma Romm in preparation of this volume she suggested I read an article on the philosophy of Buen Vivr which means living in community and with nature according to Gudynas (2011: 442): One of the most well-known approaches to Buen Vivir is the Ecuadorian concept of sumak kawsay, the kichwa wording for a fullness life in a community, together with other persons and Nature.

Gudynas goes on to explain that: While the Bolivian one is focused on BuenVivir as an ethical principle, that of Ecuador offers a stronger approach because the concept is conceived as a plural set of rights. The Bolivian formulation offers more options for cultural diversity than the Ecuadorian, but does not include Buen Vivir as a right. The Ecuadorian text clearly stated that development in line with BuenVivir is required to fulfil the rights of Nature or Pachamama (with a biocentric posture that recognizes intrinsic values in the environment). (Gudynas, 2011: 443) 9 According

to Correa (2002: 1): “The Doha Declaration on the TRIPS Agreement and Public Health, adopted by the WTO Ministerial Conference in November 2001, which affirms that the TRIPS Agreement should be interpreted and implemented so as to protect public health and promote access to medicines for all, marked a watershed in international trade demonstrating that a rulesbased trading system should be compatible with public health interests. The Declaration enshrines the principle WHO has publicly advocated and advanced over the last four years, namely the reaffirmation of the right of WTO Members to make full use of the safeguard provisions of the TRIPS Agreement to protect public health and enhance access to medicines” (my emphasis). 10 According to Whimp (2000) in her chapter (143–168) on ‘Access to genetic resources: legal and policy issues’ cites Gervails (1998: 78) with reference to TRIPS. She explains that the removal of the moral rights of authors from legal rights was a win for the Anglo-American legal system. She cites ‘Standards concerning the availability, scope and use of Intellectual Property Rights’: “Article 27 allows member states to prohibit the patenting of ‘plants and animals other than microorganisms, and essentially biological processes for the production of plants or animals other than non-biological or microbiological processes’. But Article 27 also states that ‘Members shall provide for the protection of plant varieties either by patents or by effective sui generis [special purpose] system or by any combination thereof”.

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But despite the rhetoric, the reality is somewhat different as the environment has been ‘sold out’ to market interests, where the critics of Prime Minister Morales have claimed that corruption by government representatives is widespread.11 It is suggested that the practice of governance and accountability is quite different from the rhetoric of care. Thus, care requires not only a priori norms, but also to monitor and govern in an open and transparent manner, based on a posteriori indicators of governance (McIntyre-Mills et al., 2014; McIntyre, 2017). The way forward is to give rights to multiple species and the land on which we depend. This requires a new Ecocide Law. The human relationship with other species has varied from instrumental, to spiritual; but few have accorded constitutional rights, except for Ecuador that has attributed rights to the land. Individual species rights to animals are still a long way off. Europe has made a few tentative steps towards decent conditions for farm animals, but they cannot be regarded as enabling full capabilities for animals to express their functional and emotional lives. New Zealand (to its credit) has banned animal transportation. These are very small steps away from the dismal record of abuse of other sentient beings. Nussbaum’s capabilities for sentient beings are presented as a human development approach and are thus anthropocentric, but to her credit, she takes a step towards emphasising the rights of all sentient beings. Disability rights for the voiceless and frail have led to Judith Butler stressing the need for a recognition of human interdependency and care (See Butler and Taylor, 2010; Butler and Athenasiou, 2013). But we do need to explore what this means in terms of demanding a paradigm shift. Animals and plants do communicate. Communication per se does not require human voices. It can rely on text, signalling and symbols. Sounds, movements, chemicals can convey information and the whole realm of communication is opened up in Meier’s (2016) research on the vast array of animal communication, whilst Monica Gagliano’s research (see 2018a, b) demonstrates the sentience of plants. This underlines the inadequacy of current paradigms and the need to respect many ways of knowing including the indigenous wisdoms that have long been denied and suppressed.

Habitat and Rights for Multiple Species The Covid-19 pandemic has provided Goodall (2020)12 the platform to speak out about how cross-species infections are caused by the way human beings are encroaching on the habitat of wild animals such as pangolins and bats. Her stature 11 https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/nov/15/evo-morales-indigenous-leader-who-cha

nged-bolivia-but-stayed-too-long. 12 https://www.cnn.com/videos/us/2020/03/19/coronavirus-jane-goodall-acfc-full-episodevpx.cnn.

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as a leading primatologist and conservationist has enabled her to speak out about previous epidemics such as swine and avian flu and to highlight the treatment of farmed and trafficked animals. Enabling farm animals and wild animals’ space for a life worth living would also protect us from illness. One of the positive aspects of the Covid-19 epidemic is that it has raised awareness of cross-species pathways for epidemics that can reach pandemic proportion as species are thrust into increasingly closer contact as urbanisation and habitat loss escalates. Gorbalenya et al. (2020) stress that corona viruses occur amongst many animals: In the midst of the global COVID-19 public-health emergency, it is reasonable to wonder why the origins of the pandemic matter. Detailed understanding of how an animal virus jumped species boundaries to infect humans so productively will help in the prevention of future zoonotic events.

The potential to jump across-species is caused by the way in which their freedom and habitat has been curtailed as they are farmed, transported, contained and marketed. Gorbalenya et al. (2020) suggest that many of these species would never normally come into contact such as bats and pangolins. They have no immunity against the virus because they have never previously been in contact. It is only when they are kept together in close confines in wet markets with other displaced animals that they become cross infected. The next step in the evolution of an epidemic is when human beings are in contact with a mutated virus that has become more adept at crossing species. Kirksey et al. (2014: 4) stress that Anna Tsing suggests that “human nature is an interspecies relationship” which raises the question, what is the nature of this relationship? The answer is that it is a very mixed one, in the most part it is a relationship of exploitation, but paradoxically mixed with awe and a great deal of denial. The notion that as human animals we can own, commodify and exploit other species has brought us to 2020, a year of rising temperatures, bush fires, multispecies loss and a global pandemic. This volume explores the way in which a ‘multispecies turn’ has been introduced as a result of Covid-19. Some may say it is the virus we had to have as it has made human beings pause and reflect on their place in the web of living systems. The recent research at the University of Florence and at the University of Western Australia on extending human capabilities to understand the way in which plants ‘talk to one another’ extends some of the points made earlier by Lyall Watson (1973) in his contentious work that explores the boundaries of science and folklore. A University of Western Australia news report13 explains that Monica Gagliano has teamed with colleagues Professor Daniel Robert at the University of Bristol (UK) and Professor Stefano Mancuso at the University of Florence.14 The team at Florence state in this video that they aim ‘to make use of the knowledge’ and that they are using cyborg simulations of plant behaviour as well as aiming to use plants as readers of a range of environmental signals that can together be decoded by sensors. 13 http://www.news.uwa.edu.au/201204034491/research/talking-plants. 14 Talking

plants—Futuris https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p75Jw7gkmuQ.

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The notion that plants can be used and are useful needs to be extended by also appreciating their spiritual significance, for instance as the Balinese wrap Fig trees in a simple cloth to signify their significance spiritually and by offering symbolic gifts to them. They regard plants such as bamboo, rice and figs with reverence. (Tsing, 2015). Rayner (2017: 468) explains natural inclusion as follows: We need to move on from viewing evolution in terms of abstract selection by an extrinsic arbiter, to understanding evolution as an intrinsic process of natural inclusion, i.e. the fluid dynamics, co-creative transformation of all through all in a receptive special neighbourhood. Underlying the move is a simple but fundamental shift in the way we perceive all natural, tangible phenomena, including ourselves, as local expressions of a mutually inclusive relationship between energy and space as distinctive informative and receptive presences…

Rayner (2017: 463) quotes C.S. Lewis as follows: “The whole Philosophy of Hell …rests on a recognition of the axiom that one thing is not another thing, and specifically, that one self is not another self. My good is my good and your good is yours…’ To be’ means to be in competition” (C.S. Lewis The Screwtape Letters)

Human capabilities can be extended through indigenous ways of knowing and being. These ways respect the interdependency of living systems, by expressing this relationship as family, spiritual connection and a sense of awe. According to Romm (2018): Harris and Wasilewski meanwhile refer more generally to Indigenous views, which they argue need to be strengthened and revitalized across the globe, including in Indigenous cultural settings. They define relationality by referring to the metaphor of a family. They state that “relationship” can be understood in the: … profound sense that we human beings are related, not only to each other, but to all things, animals, plants, rocks—in fact, to the very stuff the stars are made of. This relationship is a kinship relationship …. We thus live in a family that includes all creation. (2004: 492)

Our interdependency on living systems requires a rethinking of ethics, democracy and governance to protect the web of life. This requires an appreciation of the role of the mind in shaping the life chances of current and future generations. The focus on empiricism and materialism to the exclusion of the nature of consciousness is one that needs to be balanced by greater humility and appreciation of the many ways of knowing and an appreciation for the areas of convergence that could help us to protect multispecies relationships.

Vignette: Living with the Covid-19 Pandemic: Reflections from Lockdown The Covid-19 pandemic represents the ‘worst crisis’ since World War 11, according to the UN chief, Gutteres.15 The human death toll, social and 15 https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2020/04/chief-coronavirus-worst-crisis-wwii-live-updates-200

331233659496.html.

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economic suffering is unprecedented except during war. According to the UN the world faces famine as a result of morbidity and mortality associated with the pandemic which augments the challenges posed by droughts and other natural disasters, including locust plagues and displacements caused by conflicts.16 https://www.standard.co.uk/news/world/world-at-risk-of-famines-ofbiblical-proportions-due-to-coronavirus-pandemic-un-warns-a4420536.html. Abrahams (2020) stresses that prior to Covid-19, rising levels of carbon, rising sea levels and an increased number of bush fires, for example has led to minimal changes to our attitude towards climate change. We could use the opportunity to flatten the curve of infection, unemployment and carbon emissions by developing sustainable ways of living. As mentioned in Chapter 1 of this volume, Mair (2020) sums up the challenge for the future, namely: a centralised or decentralised response that either prioritises exchange values or the protection of life. Society could choose to maximise social and environmental factors and meaningful jobs, rather than focusing on business as usual, where a minority win at the expense of current and future generations of life. Clearly nation states that put people first, rather than the economy could demonstrate that society is capable of rapid transformation. Perhaps a positive aspect of Covid-19 could be a rapid U-turn towards new form of governance that cares for people and supports partnerships to enable the common good. Mair (2020) explains the four extreme options elegantly as follows: 1. 2. 3. 4.

“State capitalism: centralised response, prioritising exchange value Barbarism: decentralised response prioritising exchange value State socialism: centralised response, prioritising the protection of life Mutual aid: decentralised response prioritising the protection of life”. (17 )

The first two options prioritise economics and profit. The second two options priortise people and the environment. Abrahams (2020) stresses that the worldwide governance responses to the pandemic has resulted in a rapid adaptation and mitigation of “unlimited growth, unlimited travel, and unlimited consumption.” A long-term sustainable approach is needed. Increased welfare responses are positive short-term response, but this will be very inadequate to address the pain that will be experienced by many people in both developed and developing countries who wonder where the next meal will come from and whether they will have access to medical care. Despite the massive welfare interventions made by Australia more than 27% of the population are unemployed or underemployed as a result of Covid-19.18 16 Morrison, S. 2020 World at risk of famines’ of biblical proportions” due to coronavirus pandemic,

UN warns cited by Evening Standard, 22nd April, 2020, accessed 22 April, 2020. The article cites David Beasley who heads the World Food Programme. 17 https://theconversation.com/what-will-the-world-be-like-after-coronavirus-four-possible-fut ures-134085. 18 “Roy Morgan research found 1.4million Australians lost their jobs in the second half of March 2020. They calculated an unemployment level of 16.8 per cent—a level last suffered during the 1930s Great Depression Another 10.6 per cent of workers are getting too few shifts. That means 27.4 per cent of Australians are either unemployed or under-employed. This was

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Perhaps policy makers will put in place measures to support a new way of life and retain some of the more positive changes to governance that have been achieved, to date? The central aim of the book is to show how the convergent social, economic and environmental links with climate change create cascading risks, such as the loss of habitat and the displacement of species. More intensive forms of agriculture, mining and urbanisation at the expense of habitat poses an existential threat. The case is made that by pursuing profit human beings, other animals and plants have suffered as a result of high carbon emissions, rapid development, over exploitation and climate change. All sentient beings have a right to a life worth living. This requires access to habitat in which they can express their full capabilities (Nussbaum, 2011). The right for animals to live undisturbed lives requires recognising their rights, simply because they are sentient. The right for plants to exist in biodiverse habitats also needs to be recognised if living systems are to have a hope of surviving (Higgins, 2012; Stephens et al., 2018). Non-anthropocentric researchers have stressed the need to recognise that many animal sentient beings have empathy, reciprocity and a sense of fairness (De Waal, 2009). Other researchers go further arguing that all living systems have agency and communicate in some way, from one celled to the most complex organisms (Meijer, 2019; Rayner, 2016; Stephens et al., 2019). The boundaries need to be redrawn to recognise justice for plants. This has been stressed by both barrister Polly Higgins and physicist Vandana Shiva in making a plea for an Ecocide Law(Higgins et al., 2013) and a recognition of an Earth Charter. Whilst in ‘Transformation from Wall Street to Wellbeing’ a case was made for extending conceptual and spatial boundaries by drawing on West Churchman’s approach to design through unfolding values and sweeping in social, economic and environmental considerations (McIntyre-Mills et al., 2014). Just as the artificial human-animal barrier has been breached, so the artificial barrier between people and nature needs to be breached by recognising our hybridity and interconnectedness (McIntyre-Mills, 2018) and appreciating that systemic ethics (McIntyre-Mills, 2014) needs to underpin new non-anthropocentric forms of democracy and governance Wild habitat has been lost and the species that once lived in isolation (and have no immunity to viruses) are thrust into contact with one another. The domino effects of loss continues as agricultural land and liminal green spaces in and around cities disappear. Donaldson and Kymlicka (2001) argue that all animals should have political rights acknowledged, ranging from wild animals being accorded sovereign status in ‘selfgoverning communities’, liminal animals that share our cities or live alongside cultivated lands should be given some space and ‘denizen’ status – as they do not have their own land, whilst domesticated farm animals and pets need to be accorded citizenship status (Donaldson & Kymlicka; 2011; Meijer, 2019: 220). also more than double their 7.3 per cent figure for the first fortnight of March, before Prime Minister Scott Morrison ordered the closure of pubs, clubs, gyms, cinemas and dine-in restaurants.” https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8202859/Roy-Morgan-research-finds-27-4-centAustralians-unemployed-looking-work.html?ITO=applenews.

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The inescapable fact is that energy is continuous and that all the strands of living systems return to inorganic elements when they die and in turn provide the basis for new life. The notion that only human beings are sentient beings that have higher order feelings and dignity is anthropocentric. It could be argued that dignity can be attributed to all life. If we (appropriately and non-anthropocentrically) see ourselves as a strand in a web of life, it removes the notion that destruction of habitat can be justified in the name of ‘progress’ or ‘business as usual’ at the expense of the majority of living systems in this generation and the next. Animal researchers demonstrate (through citing a range of studies) that animals have empathy, are capable of reciprocity and a sense of fairness. Some species may be voiceless, but they are all able to communicate in their own way (Meijer, 2019) and may be able to deliberate and solve problems as a group. Language is not the only means to communicate. Covid-19 provides a lens for studying global society and demonstrating its interconnectedness: Andersen, executive director of the UN Environment Programme, said the immediate priority was to protect people from the coronavirus and prevent its spread…. “Never before have so many opportunities existed for pathogens to pass from wild and domestic animals to people,” she told the Guardian, explaining that 75% of all emerging infectious diseases come from wildlife. …But our long-term response must tackle habitat and biodiversity loss. (see Carrington, 2020; Andersen et al., 2020)

The virus spans human-animal species boundaries and needs to be understood not in terms of species- specific categories, but in terms of the way it spreads and the impact it has made on our lives. As it breaches spatial boundaries most societies retreat into lockdown, with the exception of a few who strive to achieve ‘herd immunity’, in the absence of a vaccine. Face masks19 and ventilators and access to digital media to communicate are central concerns as the pandemic causes morbidity amongst two million (and rising) and thousands of deaths worldwide. For instance, on the 5th April 64,675 people had died, whilst 1,201,443 cases20 had been recorded, by 4th June the number of recorded cases exceeded 6 million and to date (21/07/2020) the confirmed cases are 14,859,289.21 By 28th April, 2021 the WHO recorded as of 5:16pm CEST, 148,329,348 confirmed cases of COVID-19, including 3,128,962 deaths, reported to WHO.22 If politics is about who, gets what, when, why and to what effect, it is time to rethink politics as cross-species engagement to ensure the balance of individual and collective needs. A new politics needs to acknowledge our interconnectedness, based on recognition and respect. The Ecocide Law (Higgins et al., 201323 ) is central to 19 Ironically,

the western world is covering its face in a way that would have been unheard of previously. 20 https://www.worldometres.info, https://covid19.who.int/?gclid=CjwKCAjwtqj2BRBYEiwAq fzur838XKsBBxiJUxRm3yAjpZ0Z2sXKIbq-hJNGhm-a81Rmt7fr08KGSBoCgggQAvD_BwE. 21 https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/. 22 https://covid19.who.int/ 23 Higgins, P., Short, D., & South, N. 2013 Protecting the planet: a proposal for a law of ecocide. Crime Law Soc Change, 59, 251–266 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10611-013-9413-6.

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protect multiple species as the earth needs a good lawyer to disrupt the cycle of greed, over-exploitation, lack of distribution, poverty and conflict.24 But the legal perspective needs to be buttressed by a rights perspective to protect all sentient beings (simply because they are sentient) as well as their habitat. Alan Rayner (2010: 100) a biologist who specialises in plants and specifically fungi, sums up a lesson on plant politics (and economics) which demonstrates that plants pool and redistribute resources.25 Plants depend on one another to sustain a habitat. Rayner recognises that all living systems are based on a flow of energy and that sustainable living systems share resource. He succinctly sums up the lessons for multispecies relationships. Instead of polarising categories a new approach is developed in this volume based on a recognition of our fluidity and interconnectedness with living systems. Anyone who has divided up iris plants, ginger (or any other rhizome for that matter) understands that they are underground stems that store food. They can be subdivided, but in order to grow successfully they need to have a few growth nodes for re-generation, or better still a few roots. The categories “hierarchy” versus “networks” or “roots” versus “rhizomes” can be seen quite differently. The ‘both and’ approach underpins the approach used in this volume. The case is made that praxis needs to acknowledge the rootedness of rhizomes. We need to enter into a new respectful dialogue with nature and extend Martin Buber’s ‘I thou’ approach to multiple species. Shotter (2016) makes a plea for this mindset and this volume stresses that the process of being and becoming through communication and dialogue can be extended to include non-anthropocentric respect for the dignity of all life, based on the acceptance that language is not the only means to communicate.

24 http://thecodedoc.com/en/home/. 25 “Hence

the inescapable truth is that the ecological and evolutionary sustainability of natural life forms, from the cells and tissues in a human body to the trees in a forest depend upon close attunement with the diversity, complementary nature and changeability of all within their neighbourhood, to which they themselves contribute. When energy supplies become scarce, sustainable living systems pool and redistribute internal resources within integrated structures and survival capsules, they do not compete to proliferate faster on the dwindling supplies. Hence the inescapable truth is that the ecological and evolutionary sustainability of natural life forms, from the cells and tissues in a human body to the trees in a forest depend upon close attunement with the diversity, complementary nature and changeability of all within their neighbourhood, to which they themselves contribute. When supplies are abundant, they proliferate and differentiate (Rayner, 1997; Figure 1.) Moreover, as is beautifully illustrated by the exploratory patterns of some kinds of fungi, this ability to attune their capacity to differentiate and integrate activity in dynamic relationship with energy availability allows life forms to locate and sustain supplies in heterogeneous habitats with extraordinary efficiency.”( the italics are my own emphases, relevant for this volume).

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Box 1 COVID-19: Narratives From Diverse Places It is April 1, border guards and baggage handlers at Adelaide airport have been exposed to the virus, resulting in one hundred staff being stood down and flights being re-directed. Democracy and governance on the 31st March 2020 in Australia look different today26 The responses for bush fire victims was limited. But in the wake of the pandemic social democratic responses have been made in a 194 billion dollar27 stimulus package which will address a raft of measures to support businesses to survive and, for example to support tenants and landlords to work out ways to ensure that people do not lose a roof over their heads during the pandemic if they are unable to pay rents. It will in all likelihood result in intergenerational debt, according to Bagshaw and Wright (2020). It is likely to transform the way in which governments operate in Australia. Ironically, it has shown how governments can in fact work co-operatively across party political lines and with private sector and NGOs. Scott Morrison has also offered to help the private sector to pay wages in an unprecedented rescue package28 and 1.1 billion has been earmarked for mental health and the prevention of domestic violence.29 Fines of 11000 dollars or imprisonment will be issued in NSW to ensure that people stay at home and do not spread the virus. In Western Australia it has been suggested that people who are ordered to quarantine should be issued with electronic tags. It is March 26th 2020. Today I spent the morning gardening and thinking. I wondered whether the parents next door understood that lock down and early Easter holidays actually meant that children need to remain in their gardens and not out in the street. Then I heard them being called inside. When I turned on the Australian Broadcasting News at lunchtime the PM was announcing that parents would need to take responsibility for their supervision. Yesterday (25th April) I heard that all children in South Australia are encouraged to return to school. Some parents have expressed concerns for their children, whilst teachers have said they feel worried about their health. In early April when I checked emails I was reminded by a colleague in South Africa that my elderly parents, living in South Africa, could not go out to walk their 26 https://www.theguardian.com/business/2020/mar/22/scott-morrison-to-announce-66bn-sti

mulus-including-income-support-for-workers. E., & Wright, S. (2020). Government faces fiscal reckoning as taxes collapse and spending soars https://www.smh.com.au/politics/federal/government-faces-fiscal-reckoningas-taxes-collapse-and-spending-soars-20200331-p54fok.html “Prime Minister Scott Morrison has spent $194 billion on stimulus measures to fight the economic impact of the coronavirus, including a $130 billion wage subsidy package announced on Monday. Economists have generally welcomed the response but forecast the government’s plan to be net-debt free by 2030 is now highly unlikely, with some MPs resigned to dealing with an “inter-generational debt” transfer lasting decades.” 28 https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2020/mar/29/australia-open-to-uk-style-wage-sub sidy-to-ease-coronavirus-pain-cormann-says. 29 https://www.pm.gov.au/media/11-illion-support-more-mental-health-medicare-and-domesticviolence-services-0. 27 Bagshaw,

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dog. My parent’s confirmed they were well aware of this and were following the changing requirements for all citizens to remain at home. My 87-year-old mother shared today that she thought people had been arrested in Muizenberg for walking their dogs. She then shared the story that my grandfather as a small child living in Sea Point Cape Town in 1918 curiously visited a large tent with his friend. They lifted the tent flap and realised that it was being used as a temporary morgue. The reason they had been told not to leave their garden and to visit the common was because people were dying from the so-called Spanish Flu. Fortunately, they both survived. A WhatsApp message from a colleague shared a picture of an Indonesian funeral showing President Jokowi kneeling close to other mourners at his mother’s funeral. In South Africa, President Ramaphosa declared a state of war readiness against Covid-19 when he addressed the army who will supervise the 21-day lock down.30 All alcohol and cigarette buying has been banned so that people will be encouraged to buy food during the time when they are at home and unable to work. The virus is seen as the enemy to be defeated as South Africans take on a war footing to prevent the virus spreading to informal settlements where water is scarce and poverty so pervasive that access to cleaning products cannot be assumed. Regular handwashing31 is difficult for many people.32 The lock down declared from midnight Thursday 26th March33 has been ignored by many: Despite over 1,000 infections and 2 deaths, many are not taking the threat the virus poses seriously. Naledi Radebe, 29, summed up how she and many felt: “It was like, there’s this flu, that’s moving around in Asia, and killing old people. And on this side, there was a lot of “oh, it’s not going to affect Africans”.

Implementing social distancing is difficult where there is limited space between informal houses or long queues to collect groceries or many people using public transport. By the 30th March police have resorted to arrests and reports of them firing on people with rubber bullets and the use of whips to get people to observe the required distances in queues. This has led to rebukes by the opposition and calls for appropriate approaches (Le Roux, 2021). A flurry of emails from a friend in the UK stressed that she is singing in the choir using Zoom connection and that this is one way to keep her spirits up. She works from home as a lawyer. Another friend shared a Beatles’ song, “I wanna hold your hand”, with new words: ‘I wanna wash my hands!’ Whilst it struck the right note a few days ago in Australia, it would not be worth sharing with colleagues in South 30 https://news.sky.com/story/coronavirus-the-south-african-township-where-people-just-wont-fol

low-the-lockdown-rules-11965027. 31 https://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-51949125. 32 https://www.bbc.com/news/world-51929598. 33 https://www.foxnews.com/world/south-africans-stay-at-home-coronavirus-ignored

“Johannesburg’s Sandton district, often called the richest place in Africa, has been turned into a ghost town. The acknowledged epicentre, nearly all of the infections in South Africa are in people who have had the funds to recently travel abroad. But in Johannesburg’s main townships of Soweto and Alexandra, home to an estimated 6 million people, local television ENCA reported earlier it’s “business as usual.”

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Africa or Indonesia, where the challenge to wash hands is no laughing matter in informal housing areas. Daily news feeds from friends in these places have covered topics on the need to drink hot water and clean computer keyboards and phones with alcohol wipes (if they are still available). I suggested in my own communications that handwashing needed to be accompanied with keeping shoes for outdoors at the front door. Another friend from South Africa WhatsApped in a state of panic and sent calculations on the rate of spread of the virus. She wondered how people would cope in small spaces without access to sanitation and running water. The experience of being in ‘lockdown’ varies greatly.34 In the wake of Covid-19 the level of gang violence has decreased during the total lock down declared by Ramaphosa as a way to slow the spread of the virus. The presence of the military and the police tasked to maintain social distancing has ironically achieved what the pleas of the people for better policing had been unable to achieve in the past, and the lock downs have at least temporarily ‘disrupted’ the activities of gangs.35 But the level of domestic violence has escalated in the densely populated housing36 where food insecurity, lack of access to running water and sanitation would add to the challenges of unemployment. A friend (who has family and friends in many parts of Asia) is concerned about the racism towards Asian people. This is a concern as a friend who accompanied us to a bowls game in early February was asked whether he was from China by another friend who was so worried about the virus that he did not think about the implications of racial profiling. When he was assured that my friend lives in Australia, he relaxed, without realising how inappropriate this question had seemed. A Melbourne-based friend said she experienced people avoiding her in late February, because of her Asian appearance. But most poignantly two weeks ago a Chinese pharmacist (with whom I chat with regularly) said tearfully that she was ‘ashamed of the virus’ and that it was caused because of the way animals are treated. I saw the pain expressed on my friend’s face and felt sorry that she felt she needed to make this public statement and that she felt threatened by racial profiling. She stressed that she had been sent a video that she could barely watch on the way that baby mice were treated when preparing the ‘three-squeak dish’. I will not repeat it here, as it is shocking and it underlines the need to legislate the rights of sentient beings, simply because they are sentient. The rest of the people standing in the queue in the pharmacy (clutching hand sanitisers and other Covid-19 related goods) waited for me to respond. I gasped and expressed my shock, saying that I supposed these practices originated as a result of food scarcity and that people who do not experience hardship cannot judge. Her response for the benefit of everyone was as follows: 34 https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/apr/05/whether-in-the-uk-or-the-develo

ping-world-were-not-all-in-coronavirus-together. 35 https://issafrica.org/iss-today/how-might-the-covid-19-lockdown-affect-public-safety-in-sa. 36 https://issafrica.org/iss-today/how-might-the-covid-19-lockdown-affect-public-safety-in-sa

“Police Minister Bheki Cele on 5 April clarified to the media that the South African Police Service had received 2 320 complaints of gender-based violence during just the first week of the lockdown. This is 37% higher than the weekly average for the 87 290 gender-based violence cases reported during 2019. The national Gender-Based Violence Command Centre said they’d had triple the usual number of calls”. Accessed 13th/04/20202.

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“These are not poor people, they could eat many other things, nuts or fruit anything and not like that”. Her voice was shrill with the edge of tears. I agreed and said that as a vegetarian I sympathised with her. Clearly the daily media feeds that targeted Wuhan and China was making life very difficult for her. As the situation in Italy worsened, ‘flattening the curve’ became the policy focus in Australia. A visit to the supermarket showed empty shelves and the competition in some stores for lavatory paper made the news. My friend PT, who identifies with the Aboriginal community that raised him, summed up the situation saying, “this is mother nature fighting back,” and texted: “as the Great Mother regenerates, we marvel at her power” and summed up the “The human species are not caring enough of the Great Mother…” At the time he was worried that the prime minister had waited too long to ‘close the borders’ and explained that his relative had stressed the importance of closing the internal borders in Australia to protect remote communities. He also said that many of the fights over products in supermarkets were by people who were ‘not Australian.’ A downside of Covid-19 is that nationalism and identity politics is on the rise, but simultaneously many feel that all human beings need to think about how they live their lives. This sense of living with nature and understanding is clearly articulated by Libby et al. (2020) who stress that Australian cities are built on Aboriginal land and that the heritage of caring and sharing needs to be remembered. Settlers colonised and controlled the people and the land, and they need to acknowledge that their understanding of relationships with one another and the land need to change. The industrialised state has developed plantations where people, plants and animals become commodified. Similarly, the military complexes continuing to weaponize. This global pandemic underlines our global complicity. Blaming nations states or ‘the other’ will not help to address the problem. It requires changing the way in which we live our lives. As human beings retreat indoors and engage less in our usual daily lives our carbon emissions lower and animals are being reported roaming more freely in many cities across the world.37 But a great deal still needs to be done. As I reflect in this section on the 14th of April 2020 I am as horrified by trafficking, wet markets and the implications for the suffering of sentient beings, as detailed in this volume, as I am of the potential for national hostility. We need to be better than this and realise that the loss of habitat and the destruction of biodiversity are central to the problem: The solution is to have a much more respectful approach to nature, which includes dealing with climate change and all the rest, Lovejoy said.38

Most of us did not anticipate that mass extinctions would apply to human beings, not just other species that have been regarded as expendable. 37 https://www.sfgate.com/living-in-sf/article/Coyotes-are-being-seen-on-the-empty-streets-151

59105.php. 38 https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/apr/25/ourselves-scientist-says-human-intrusion-nat

ure-pandemic-aoe.

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The loss of life and upheaval to life as we know it is (to cite the overused phrase) ‘unprecedented’ but in fact it was predicted. The fear of a global pandemic was raised by Bill Gates39 who says his greatest regret was not being able to get this dire message across in a way that helped prevent or prepare for Covid-19. As I reflect on the 14th of May, Australia faces the challenges of returning to work whilst trying to retain social distancing. The new normal will require multiple changes in the way we live our lives. How will public transport function? Keeping 1.5 metres away on a bus or tram is not feasible. Workers who are on the front line, such as service providers (nurses, doctors, teachers, shop keepers and the host of people who deliver items or provide transport) are placing themselves at risk in ways that can be avoided by those who can manage their work using internet platforms. The return to work may need to take into account ways to honour and value those who place themselves at risk for the benefit of others. 9th June, 2020. Whilst in the process of concluding the volume, the Black Lives Matter rally for social justice which began as a result of the death of George Floyd illustrates that people were prepared to come out and march together in protest, despite social distancing regulations. It made the point that on line protests were not enough to underline the injustice felt by people in fear of police brutality. Protesters in Australia made the point that they were more afraid of social injustice than they are of the impact of the Covid-19 virus. The statistic of 434 deaths in custody was underlined by protesters.40 The availability of video footage showing police brutality on social media is the game changer for social justice from below. According to Bayles (2020): Police killed 7,663 people between 2013 and 2019. Only 101 of those deaths led to criminal charges against the officers involved, and 26 led to convictions. And though African Americans make up about 13% of the U.S. population, they accounted for 24% of deaths at the hands of police. A black suspect is three times more likely than a white suspect to be killed by a police officer, according to Mapping Police Violence.41

In Bristol, the infamous statue of Edward Colston, the slave trafficker was finally pulled down. It took widespread protests in the USA to give local residents in the

39 “The Microsoft co-founder has repeatedly warned of the dangers a pandemic like the coronavirus

poses to global health and the economy, describing it in previous years as the threat that keeps him up at night. “If anything kills over 10 million people over the next few decades, it’s most likely to be a highly infectious virus rather than a war. Not missiles, but microbes,” Gates said during a 2015 TED Talk. 40 Allam, L., & Wahlquist,C.Evershed, N. Sat 6 Jun 2020 08.05. https://www.theguardian.com/aus tralia-news/2020/jun/06/aboriginal-deaths-in-custody-434-have-died-since-1991-new-data-shows. 41 Bayles, C. 2020 Start To Floyd Case Hints At Why Cops Are Rarely Convicted June 7, 2020, 8:02 PM EDT https://www.law360.com/access-to-justice/articles/1280236/start-to-floyd-case-hints-atwhy-cops-are-rarely-convicted?nl_pk=9946b97d-b2db-4e14-975b-01fdd4492c66&utm_source= newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=access-to-justice.

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UK the courage to finally remove it.42 Let us hope that people will have the courage to demand both environmental and social justice as the economy opens. In South Africa Covid-19 continues to rise as lock down ends. The Western and Eastern Cape, along with Tshwane (Pretoria) are epicentres. Hunger, Health and Housing are the three policy pillars for which Chris Hani fought and they remain a challenge.43

References Abraham, S. (2020). Coronavirus: world’s response has slashed CO2 emissions—Here’s how to keep them down. https://theconversation.com/coronavirus-worlds-response-has-slashed-co-emi ssions-heres-how-to-keep-them-down-134094. Ackerman, J. (2016). The genius of birds. London: Scribe Adelaide‚ Dlamini. (1982, personal communication). This can be referenced as a foot note as follows: Adelaide Dlamini is cited in a Master of Social Anthropology thesis , University of Cape Town, awarded on the 24th June I which she was a key informant. The thesis is titled: ‘Health, Healing and Dis-ease in a South African Township’. Andersen, K.G., Rambaut, A., Lipkin, W.I Holmes , E.C. Garry, R.F. (2020). ‘The proximal origin of SARS-CoV-2’. Nature Medicine. 4.https://doi.org/10.1038/s41591-020-0820-9. Bagshaw, E., & Wright, S. (2020). Government faces fiscal reckoning as taxes collapse and spending soars. https://www.smh.com.au/politics/federal/government-faces-fiscal-reckoning-as-taxes-col lapse-and-spending-soars-20200331-p54fok.html. Bates, L. A., Lee, P. C., Njiraini, N., Poole, J. H., Sayialel, K., Moss, C. J., & Byrne, R. W. (2008). Do elephants show empathy?. Journal of Consciousness Studies, 15(10–11), 204–225. http:// www.ingentaconnect.com/content/imp/jcs/2008/00000015/f0020010/art00008. Bostrom, N. (2011). Existential risk prevention as the most important task for humanity. Faculty of Philosophy & Oxford Martin School University of Oxford. http://www.existential-risk.org/. Butler, J. (2011, May 28). Precarious life: The obligations of proximity. In The Neale Wheeler Watson Lecture. Nobel Museum, Svenska. Available at www.youtube.com/watch?v=KJT69A QtDtg. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Butler, J., & Taylor, S. (2010). Taylor, A. (Ed.), Examined life: Excursions with contemporary thinkers. London: The New Press. https://cjgl.cdrs.columbia.edu/article/performing-interdepende nce-judith-butler-and-sunaura-taylor-in-the-examined-life-2/. Butler, J., & Athanasiou, A. (2013). Dispossession: The performative in the political. Cambridge: Polity. Carrington, D. (2020). Nature is sending us a message. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/ mar/25/coronavirus-nature-is-sending-us-a-message-says-un-environment-chief. Dawkins, R. (2019). Outgrowing God: A beginners guide. Bantam. London. De Waal, F (2009). The age of empathy: Nature’s lessons for a kinder society. New York: Harmony Books. Donaldson, S.& Kymlicka, W. (2011). Zoopolis: A political theory of animal rights. Oxford University Press: Oxford.

42 https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-06-08/bristol-mayor-feels-no-sense-of-loss-over-edward-col

ston-statue/12333566. 43 https://www.iol.co.za/news/politics/opinion/sa-could-have-managed-covid-19-better-had-the-

anc-implemented-chris-hanis-triple-h-campaign-46639036.

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Field, J. (2020). Rio Tinto blasting a sacred Aboriginal site should make scientists ask ‘am I being a good ancestor?’ https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/jun/05/rio-tinto-blastinga-sacred-aboriginal-site-should-make-scientists-ask-am-i-being-a-good-ancestor. Fuentes, A. (2020). Commentary: Other animals as kin and persons worthy of increased ethical consideration. Cambridge Quarterly of Healthcare Ethics, 29(1), 38–41. https://doi.org/10.1017/ S0963180119000744. Gagliano, M. (2018). Inside the vegetal mind: On the cognitive abilities of plants. In F. Baluska, M. Gagliano, & G. Witzany (Eds.), Memory and learning in plants (pp. 215–220). Cham: Springer. Gagliano, M., Abramson, C. I., & Depczynski, M. (2018). Plants learn and remember: Let’s get used to it. Oecologia, 186, 29–31. https://doi.org/10.1007/s00442-017-4029-7. Goodall, J. (2020). https://www.cnn.com/videos/us/2020/03/19/coronavirus-jane-goodall-acfcfull-episode-vpx.cnn. Gorbalenya, A.E., Baker, S.C., Baric, R.S.et al. (2020). The species Severe acute respiratory syndrome-related coronavirus: Classifying 2019-nCoV and naming it SARS-CoV-2. Nat Microbiol 5, 536–544. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41564-020-0695-z. Gottschalk, K. (2021). Vignette: Habitat loss and near extinction of plants and insects in South Africa. Greenfield S. (2000). The Private Life of the Brain: Emotions, consciousness and the secret of the self . New York: Wiley. Gudynas, E. (2011). Buen Vivir: Today’s tomorrow. Development, 54, 441–447. https://doi.org/10. 1057/dev.2011.86. Haraway, D. (1991). Cyborgs, simians, and women: The reinvention of nature. London: Free Association Books. Haraway, D. J. (2003). The companion species manifesto: Dogs, people, and significant otherness. vol 1. Chicago: Prickly Paradigm Press. Haraway, D. (2011). Speculative fabulations for technoculture’s generations: Taking care of unexpected country. Australian Humanities Review—Issue, 50, 2011. Haraway, D. (2016). Anthropocene, capitalocene, chthulucene: Making string figures with biologies. Arts, Activisms—Aarhus University YouTube. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=CHwZA9 NGWg0. Held, D. (2004). Global covenant: The social democratic alternative to the Washington Consensus. Polity. Higgins, P. (2012). Ecocide, the 5th crime against peace. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Eu xYzQ65H4 see the link in this lecture to stop ccocide, change the law https://www.youtube.com/ channel/UCCYoIf880oaM419JO8XUhEA. Higgins, P. (2018). The 2018 Hague Freedom lecture by Polly Higgins. https://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=kQn8oA6e9To. Higgins, P., Short, D., & South, N. (2013) Protecting the planet: A proposal for a law of ecocide. Crime Law and Social Change, 59, 251–266. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10611-013-9413-6. IPPC. (2018). Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change IPCC) 2018 Global Warming at 1.5% http://www.ipcc.ch/pdf/specialreports/sr15/sr15_spm_final.pdf. Jackson-Barrett, E. M., & Lee-Hammond, L. (2018). Strengthening Identities and Involvement of Aboriginal Children through Learning On Country. Australian Journal of Teacher Education, 43(6). https://dx.doi.org/10.14221/ajte.2018v43n6.6. https://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-52047374. Kirksey, E., Schuetze, C., & Helmreich, S. (2014). Tactics of multispecies ethnography. In E. Kirksy (Ed), Multispecies salon. Durham: Duke University Press. Le Roux, C. (2021). Day four of our 21-day lockdown dawns after a restless first weekend saw several arrests and a rise in coronavirus cases. https://www.thesouthafrican.com/news/south-afr ica-news-today-monday-30-march-2020/. Mair, S. (2020). https://theconversation.com/what-will-the-world-be-like-after-coronavirus-fourpossible-futures-134085.

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McIntyre McIntyre-Mills, J. (2003). Critical systemic praxis for social and environmental justice. London Meijer: Springer. McIntyre-Mills, J. (2014). Systemic ethics and non-anthropocentric stewardship. New York: Springer. McIntyre-Mills, J. (2017a). Recognizing our hybridity and interconnectedness. Current Sociology, 1–24. https://doi.org/10.1177/0011392117715898. McIntyre-Mills, J. (2017b). Planetary passport. New York: Springer. McIntyre-Mills, J. (2018). Policy design for non-anthropocentric pathways to protect biodiversity and regenerate the land’. International Education Journal in South Africa. https://journals.co.za/ content/journal/10520/EJC-117cea7615. McIntyre-Mills, J., De Vries, D., & Binchai, N. (2014) Transformation from Wall Street to wellbeing. New York: Springer. McIntyre-Mills, J., Romm, N., & Corcoran-Nantes, Y. (Eds.). (2017). Balancing individualism and collectivism: Supporting social and environmental justice. New York: Springer. Meijer, E. (2016, translated, 2019). Animal Languages: the secret conversations of the living world John Murray. London. Mitman, G. (2019). Reflections on the plantationocene: A conversation with donna haraway and anna tsing. October 12, 2019. https://edgeeffects.net/haraway-tsing-plantationocene/. Nagel, T. (1974). ‘What Is It Like to Be a Bat?’. The Philosophical Review‚ 83(4): 435–450. https:// doi.org/10.2307/2183914. JSTOR 2183914 Nussbaum, M. (2006). Frontiers of justice: Disability, nationality, species membership. Cambridge, MA, London: Belknap Press. Nussbaum, M. (2011). Creating capabilities: The human development approach. London: The Belknap Press. Pinnock,D. (2020, May 25). Moments in time: Our debt to birdsong. https://www.dailymaverick. co.za/article/2020-05-25-our-debt-to-birdsong/. Rayner, A. (2010). Inclusionality and sustainability—Attuning with the currency of natural energy flow and how this contrasts with abstract economic rationality. Environmental Economics, 1(1), 98–108. Rayner, A. (2017). ‘Natural Inclusion’ in McIntyre-Mills, J. J. Romm, N. R. A. and CorcoranNantes, Y. Balancing Individualism and Collectivism: Social and Environmental Justice. London: Springer. pp 461–470. https://en.wikiversity.org/wiki/Natural_Inclusion. Rinpoche, Z. (2018). Lama Rinpoche on The method to transform a suffering life into happiness. Foundation for the Preservation of Mahayana Tradition. Romm, N. R. A. (2018). Responsible research practice. Cham: Springer. Shanor, K.‚ & Kanwaal, J. (2009). Bats sing and mice giggle: Revealing the secret lives of animals. London. Icon. Shotter, J. (2016). Towards a New Fluid’ Common-Sense Understanding of Relational Becomings. Farnhill. Everything is Connected Press. Simard & Defrenne (2019). The secret language of trees-Camille defrenne and suzanne simard. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V4m9SefyRjg. Stephens, A., Taket, A., & Gagliano, M. (2019). Ecological justice for nature in critical systems Thinking. Systems Research, 36, 3–19. https://doi.org/10.1002/sres.2532. The Belmont Report. (1979). Office of the secretary ethical principles and guidelines for the protection of human subjects of research the national commission for the protection of human subjects of biomedical and behavioral research. Tsing, A. L. (1995). Empowering nature, or: Some gleanings in bee culture. In C. L. Delaney, Lowery, & S. J. Yanagisako & American Anthropological Association. Meeting, (1992) San Francisco, California (1995). Naturalizing power: Essays in feminist cultural analysis. Routledge: New York. Tsing, A. L. (2015). The mushroom at the end of the world: On the possibility of life in capitalist ruins. Princeton University Press: Princeton. 352.

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Urry, J. (2010). Consuming the planet to excess. Theory, Culture and Society 27‚ 191–212.World Wild Life WWF. https://www.reuters.com/article/us-palmoil/palmoil-buyers-face-green-scorec ard-wwf-idUSTRE54B02T20090512. Veverbrants. (2000). Olive published the poem in McIntyre McIntyre-Mills, J. 2003, Critical Systemic Praxis for Social and Environmental Justice. London: Springer. Watson, L. (1973). Super Nature. New York: Anchor Press. Whimp, K. (2000). Access to genetic resources: Legal and policy issues 143–168 In K. Whimp & M. Busse (Eds.), Protection of intellectual, biological & cultural property in Papua New Guinea. https://press-files.anu.edu.au/downloads/press/p229831/pdf/book.pdf available as ebook in 2013. Whimp, K., & Busse, M (2000). Protection of intellectual, biological & cultural property in Papua New Guinea. https://press-files.anu.edu.au/downloads/press/p229831/pdf/book.pdf available as ebook in 2013. Wohlleben, P., & Simard, S. (2016). https://www.intelligent-trees.com/https://vimeo.com/ond emand/intelligenttrees.

Janet J. McIntyre-Mills is Honorary Professor in the College of Education at University of South Africa, Tshwane, South Africa; Visiting Research Fellow at Adelaide University in the College of Professions Main North Terrace; and Adjunct Associate Professor in College of Business Government and Law at Flinders University, Sturt Campus, Adelaide.

Chapter 2

Pandemic in South Africa: Some Reflections K. Gottschalk

Abstract The Covid-19 pandemic is the most serious for South Africa since the 1918 flu pandemic. In a developing country where, at the best of times, half the people live in poverty, the Government is under great pressure to relax the quarantine lockdown of business, and let employers re-open. Economics, epidemiology, and social welfare, each a complex system in itself, are intertwined in South Africa in 2020. Animals are also affected in diverse ways as well as humans. Keywords Pandemic · Covid-19 · South africa · Epidemiology · Food security South Africa has one living person who can remember in his childhood the 1918 flu epidemic, when 300, 000 South Africans died. Our Government is certainly treating Covid-19 as the most serious pandemic in one hundred and two years. The Government’s modelling indicates a death toll of 48, 000 if we maintain quarantine; between 87, 000 and 350, 000 deaths if nothing is done (Githahu, 2020). That is, with one-sixth of the US population, we will get half of their deaths on the most optimal figures. Simultaneously, shutting down business means workers and their families go hungry, notwithstanding an unprecedented extension of welfare payments. Our Government is caught between a rock and a hard place. One queue to get free food parcels had 8, 000 persons; another queue had 20, 000 persons, both in Gauteng Province. This is indeed one example of complex systems intertwined: economic, epidemiological, social. In one way we are more fortunate than the USA: three cabinet ministers are medical doctors, including the minister of health. The Coronavirus National Command Council, an inter-ministerial committee, takes evidence-based decisions. With a new strain of virus, and new facts emerging daily, one challenge is for Government to be nimble, and revise policies weekly: in the President’s words, ‘these are unchartered waters’. K. Gottschalk (B) University of the Western Cape, Cape Town, South Africa e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2021 J. J. McIntyre-Mills and Y. Corcoran-Nantes (eds.), From Polarisation to Multispecies Relationships, Contemporary Systems Thinking, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-33-6884-2_2

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Politics, of course, advances by contestation and disagreement. Some quarantine regulations on easing restrictions on what may and may not be sold were absurdly overdetailed, clearly drawn up by some bureaucrat, and carelessly rubber-stamped by his cabinet minister. These have drawn criticism and ridicule. A slew of litigation is now before the courts from opposition parties, NGOs, and business associations, to test if any quarantine procedures or prohibitions violate the Bill of Rights and the Constitution. Another challenge is the chasm between rational decisions and reality. The Government banned selling cigarettes during an epidemic of a respiratory disease. It also banned alcohol sales, as from Fridays to Saturdays the ICUs of all public hospitals overflow with the trauma victims of stabbings and shootings, most of whom have alcohol in their blood, as do their perpetrators. The Government wants ICU beds to be available for Covid patients struggling to breathe. But social historians of the catastrophe of the thirteen-year Prohibition in the USA; the four-decade prohibition on selling alcohol to Africans under the former white supremacist South Africa; not to mention the nine-decade criminalization of dagga (marijuana); will predict that the most important consequence of such bans will be merely massive escalation of the illegal market and its controlling armed gangs. Equally serious, it greatly expands a culture of lawlessness, as embodied in today’s minibus taxi industry, with its killings of business rivals. For the moment, the Minister of Police has claimed that murders have halved, rapes dropped to one-seventh, and assaults to one-ninth of their pre-lockdown levels. Housebreaking is down by one half. Animals are also affected in diverse ways by the pandemic. Unprecedented police roadblocks checking that everyone on the road has a quarantine travel permit, mean that cattle rustlers dare no longer steal livestock and remove them in a trailer or a lorry. Animal welfare shelters are appealing for EFT donations, as no one may visit them. Wild life parks and lodges, along with the rest of the tourism industry, remain closed, so they struggle to pay wages of their rangers. Simultaneously, hunger means a big jump in snares and poaching, as unemployed persons hunt for bush meat. There are no known cases of Covid-19 jumping from people to animals as new infections. Before the pandemic, South Africa’s welfare net had only old age pensions for those over 60 years of age, and child care grants for children up to 18 years old. Apart from the disabled, or those who had been in employment less than twelve months earlier, there was no dole. The closure of schools mean that school feeding stopped: nine million schoolchildren received free lunches. The Gauteng and Western Cape Provinces also used to issue free breakfast to learners. Food security became even more parlous. The Government’s emergency reforms included an increase in the child carers’ allowance. For two decades the South African Council of Churches and other NGOs have pleaded for a Basic Income Grant, a dole for the unemployed. Finally, the Government now issues a stipend of ZAR 350 per month to unemployed adults who receive no other grant. This is desperately needed, even though it is such a minimal ration for purchasing food. These stipend increases are announced as ending in September.

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However, since South Africa goes into a local government election during 2021, it will be politically impossible to cut off starving voters months before voting day. On a more personal note, the newspapers are full of news of a nurse who died of Covid-19 one day before she was due to retire. Also, news of police and prison warders who fell ill with it, as well as doctors and nurses. All shop workers and customers are now wearing masks. In early May I sought to enter a bank to pay two bills. I first had to queue outside the shopping mall, whose management was limiting the number of shoppers inside at any one time. Mercifully, a guard took pity on me as a geriatric, and brought me to the front of the queue, so I only had to queue for twenty minutes. When admitted, a mall guard squirted my hands with sanitiser. The guard led me across the corridor to where a bank guard sanitized my hands for the second time in 60 seconds, and put me in a cordoned-off chair in a row of six chairs. The bank admitted me, where I had to give my name, ID number, and phone number for tracing, before I could see a teller behind thick glass. My next shopping stop was a supermarket where my hands were sanitized a third time within an hour; and my last shopping call at a bakery saw my hands sanitized a fourth time in one hour. That should keep the virus at bay a bit longer. The following week, I had to visit two medical specialists, whose consulting rooms are in a private hospital. The usual entrance was locked, and I had to walk around the building to the main entrance. There was a one-metre-apart-queue where our temperature was taken and our hands squirted. The queue culminated in an interview through a plastic pane where we were asked for name, phone number, travel history, and symptoms. After that, I could walk to the specialists’ rooms. Both have removed the linen from their examination couches. The arthritis specialist puts out clean newsprint on the couch for each patient, after which it is discarded. The dermatologist sprays the couch with disinfectant between patients. The dermatologist has removed all upholstered chairs from her waiting room, exchanged for plastic chairs wiped down between each patient. The bank card machine had its buttons covered with a plastic sheet for you to type in your PIN code. That private hospital has eight Covid patients. One sample of the ratio between infections to the need for hospitalization and fatalities comes from one private medical scheme. Covering wealthy and middle-class patients, it had by the 21st May, 1, 733 of its members diagnosed with Covid-19. 412 required hospital admission, 70 admission to ICUs, of whom 39 patients required ventilators. 37 patients died. (Kahn, 2020) South African clinicians have refined their protocols. They have discovered that fewer patients need oxygen if they are “proned”, that is, made to lie on their side or stomachs, not their back. Initially, they followed international practice to intubate patients with ventilators early in their deterioration, but had almost 100% fatalities. Some clinicians now choose to use oxygen face masks instead of the invasive intubation procedure, and report a better survival rate (Wicks, 2020). In a developing country, where half the people live in poverty, the Government has no choice but to step down the restrictions on closing business at monthly intervals, even though grimly aware that the infection and fatality rates will rise by two orders of

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magnitude. Wearing masks and hand-washing can be maintained, and must contribute something to reducing the absolute number of infections. Schools are re-opening in phases. From international experience, South Africa must expect old age homes to be severely impacted sometime in the coming months. As this article goes to press, South Africa reports 20, 000 infections diagnosed, and 400 fatalities (Haffajee, 2020). Readers will be able to update these statistics of the grim reaper at the time you hold this book in your hands.

References Githahu, M. (2020). 40 000 will die by November. Cape Argus 21 May. p. 1. Haffajee, F. (2020). https://www.dailymaverick.co.za/article/2020-05-20-sa-infections-could-flareup-to-54000-by-end-of-may-death-rate-set-to-soar-too/. Accessed 20 May 2020. Kahn, T. (2020).Covid-19 costs eclipse hospital claims savings. Business Day, 21 May, pp. 1–2. Wicks, J. (2020). Last-minute rush to build ventilators. Sunday Times, 24 May, p. 2. https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/coronavirus-death-rate/. Accessed 20 May 2020.

Keith Gottschalk is a retired member of the Political Studies Department at the University of the Western Cape, South Africa. He was head of department 2004–2006, and a Fulbright Scholar in 2009–2010. His poetry and academic publications span political issues, peace keeping , space politics and energy supply.

Chapter 3

From Old to New Taxonomies of Rights, Relationships and Responsibilities to Protect Habitat Janet J. McIntyre-Mills

Abstract Living systems are defined as a continuum from organic to inorganic life. In some cultures, rocks and plants, as well as a range of creatures are seen as kin that need to be protected. The case for a new form of eco-systemic governance to protect sentient beings and their habitat is developed. ‘Ecocide Law’ is needed to protect the capabilities of all sentient beings, in order to address the systemic challenges that can together be called a ‘Risk Society’. Viruses have the potential to jump across species, because of the way in which many host species have lost their freedom and habitat. Diverse species (that are normally not in contact with one another) are thrust together when they are displaced farmed, transported, contained and marketed without considering their rights or our responsibility as stewards to balance and protect diverse species rights. Keywords Rights · Relationships · Multispecies habitat

Introduction Tsing’s (2017) approach resonates with this multi-methods, cross cultural and cross disciplinary volume to follow strands of the food web and the destruction of diverse habitats in a series of essays and vignettes. In this paper the case is made that living systems are a continuum from organic to inorganic life. Human beings are animals who have close relatives with many species, from laboratory rats with whom we share 98% of our genes (Greenfield, 2000), to primates who can be taught to use sign language and who show empathy as do other species such as elephants and dogs with whom we are co-evolved (Haraway, 2003; De Waal, 2009) Allan J. J. McIntyre-Mills (B) University of South Africa in the College of Education, Tshwane, South Africa e-mail: [email protected]; [email protected] Adelaide University, College of Professions Main North Terrace, Adelaide, Australia College of Business, Government and Law, Flinders University, Sturt, SA, Australia © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2021 J. J. McIntyre-Mills and Y. Corcoran-Nantes (eds.), From Polarisation to Multispecies Relationships, Contemporary Systems Thinking, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-33-6884-2_3

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Rayner,1 Peter Wohlleben (2016) a forester and ecologists Suzanne Simard (2019) and Camille Defrenne2 explain the ways trees support one another through communicating through a network that shares chemicals and through hybrid fungi that help to regulate and share nutrients. Indigenous cultures believe that organic and inorganic life are kin in one living system. For example, as my mentor Olive Veverbrants explained to me in Alice Springs, when a pregnant woman feels her foetus move, she links the movement with a creature or feature in the landscape. It may be a bird, a lizard, a plant or a rock formation. This becomes a totem to which the child is related in her or his place. Totems are part of family and are not merely potential food items that need to be protected from over hunting or over gathering by declaring them sacred by some groups—to which they are affiliated and thus refrain from eating them. Totems are also ways of binding people to a specific place and fostering an ethic of care or custodianship. In Western Culture we have categories that distinguish between the organic and inorganic, but in Indigenous cultures a relationship can be formed which transcends this divide. Harris and Wasilewsk (2004) stress the need for “the four R’s (relationship, responsibility, reciprocity, redistribution) vs. two P’s (power and profit)”. This will become increasingly important to address risk. Ulrich Beck (see Beck, 1999, 2009) developed the concept of ‘World Risk Society’ to refer to the paradox of industrialised, profit-oriented society that has resulted in climate change, nuclear risks associated with the storage of waste, accidents and war and the need to develop a new green economy (Beck, 2010) and a more cosmopolitan research agenda (Beck & Sznaider, 2006). The extensive divides between rich and poor have escalated the risks associated with poverty and conflict, whilst the risks associated with ‘Frankenstein Food’ (Beck, 1999: 106), has escalated. The Daily Mirror took the British Government to task in the wake of the Bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE or mad cow disease) caused by feeding cattle offal (comprising diseased tissue) instead of allowing them to graze as herbivores. The lack of gendered, non-anthropocentric emphasis on the way in which nature has been controlled and mastered needs to be remedied. Few with the exception of Deborah Bird Rose, Donna Haraway and Anna Tsing have spoken out about multispecies relations and fewer have stressed the need for a multispecies approach that honours the rights of all sentient beings to a habitat that makes life worth living, with perhaps the exception of Donaldson and Kymlicka in their work ‘Zoopolis’ in which they argue that habitat for all animals needs should be considered a right from appropriate space for domesticated animals such as pets to the liminal creatures that share our cities and gardens with us, the agricultural animals on farms and the wild animals who have a right to their own habitat. Nussbaum (2006) in ‘Frontiers for Justice’ stressed that the social contract should be extended to protect the capabilities of all sentient beings so that they can live a life worth living and so that they are able to achieve their capabilities. The Covid-19 1 Rayner,

A. https://en.wikiversity.org/wiki/Natural_Inclusion. of trees—Camille Defrenne and Suzanne Simard, https://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=V4m9SefyRjg. 2 The secret language

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pandemic has provided Goodall (2020)3 the platform to speak out about how crossspecies infections are caused by the way human beings are encroaching on the habitat of wild animals such as pangolins and bats. Her stature as a leading primatologist and conservationist has enabled her to speak out about previous epidemics such as swine and avian flu and to highlight the treatment of farmed and trafficked animals. Enabling farm animals and wild animals’ space for a life worth living would also protect us from illness. One of the positive aspects of the Covid-19 epidemic is that it has raised awareness of cross-species pathways for epidemics that can reach pandemic proportion as species are thrust into increasingly closer contact as urbanisation and habitat loss escalates. Gorbalenya et al. (2020)4 stress that corona viruses occur amongst many animals: In the midst of the global COVID-19 public-health emergency, it is reasonable to wonder why the origins of the pandemic matter. Detailed understanding of how an animal virus jumped species boundaries to infect humans so productively will help in the prevention of future zoonotic events.

The possibility that the emergence of this pandemic is the result of increasing proximity across-species is a core concern that needs to be addressed through changing the way in which we live our lives. The rapid governance re-actions globally to the virus shows that it could be possible to respond proactively to climate change and reduce carbon emissions and reduce the risks to forests and agricultural habitat. Blaming one nation state versus another for the treatment of animals and specifically for the Covid-19 virus is part of the problem. The plantations, traffickers markets and laboratories of the military—the industrialised state per se is responsible, not an individual nation. Shifting blame and empowering one group at the expense of the other is a discourse which leads to denial, rather than facing up to the root of the problem, namely that human beings need to recognise their place in the web of living systems.5 Blame and conspiracy theories will not solve the problem. Previously human beings were the top predator, but since February 2020, the corona virus, Covid-19 has asserted itself. Access to meat in the United States is no longer taken for granted as supply chains grind to a halt as workers become sick (Bronner, 2020).6 Perhaps it is time to realise that we need to diversify our diet by striving towards veganism. Relying on alternative sources of protein by eating more 3 https://www.cnn.com/videos/us/2020/03/19/coronavirus-jane-goodall-acfc-full-episode-vpx.cnn. 4 The

potential to jump across-species is caused by the way in which their freedom and habitat has been curtailed as they are farmed, transported, contained and marketed. Gorbalenya et al. (2020) suggest that many of these species would never normally come into contact such as bats and pangolins. They have no immunity against the virus because they have never previously been in contact. It is only when they are kept together in close confines in wet markets with other displaced animals that they become cross infected. The next step in the evolution of an epidemic is when human beings are in contact with a mutated virus that has become more adept at crossing species. 5 See Capra., F. 1996. The web of life: A new synthesis of mind and matter. New York: Harper Collins. 6 Bronner, D. 2020 Meat plants are shutting down as workers get sick https://edition.cnn. com/2020/04/08/business/meat-plant-closures-coronavirus/index.html. Updated 1957 GMT (0357 HKT) April 8, 2020.

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lentils, beans, green vegetables is one step. The next step is including insects and processed algae7 instead of persisting in the perverse preference for meat. Human beings do not need to be carnivores, we evolved to eat diverse foods and we could successfully evolve away from meat eating by being more creative in the way we harvest and process food. The alternative forms of protein agenda was the topic of some of the papers presented recently at Food Security Conference at Universitas Sultan Ageng Tirtayasa in Indonesia on the 8th–9th September, 2019 at which a range of options were discussed, including an innovative option to produce and harvest algae.

Social, Economic and Environmental Transformation Needs to Occur at a Post National Level to Protect the Common Good The COVID-19 virus has sent the world into panic as a novel virus threatens to add vast numbers to the annual influenza casualties. The World Health Organisation declared a pandemic on March 12th, 2020. Trafficking and transportation of animals, confining them in conditions that undermine their capability to live a life worth living is one of the ‘Frontiers of Justice’ (Nussbaum, 2006) that is overdue for reform. The epidemics associated with abusing farm animals through confining them has resulted in swine flu and avian flu, whilst mad cow disease8 was caused by feeding cows offal containing infected protein in food lots.9 The origin of so-called ‘mad cow disease’ or Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease was at first denied by the Health Minister: The moment in May, 1990, when the Agricultural Minister, John Gummer MP, publicly fed his daughter with potentially contaminated meat was—I believe—the moment when the public lost their faith in the governance of this country”, argues UK artist Roger Hiorns. Now he has curated one of six sections of an exhibition called History is Now: 7 Artists Take On Britain. By investigating what tabloid newspapers termed mad cow disease, he reveals the systems and structures within which government and scientific advisors operate.10

Let us not forget that on social media posts the COVID-19 pandemic has been attributed, in a range of conspiracy theories, blaming a range of nations intentions around laboratory research and has also been linked to the cruel trafficking, containment and handling of wild animals such as bats and pangolins. The truth is likely to be that the virus has been mutating for a while and that the outbreak is not surprising, given current praxis. In order to have any hope of achieving a life worth living 7 https://www.theguardian.com/food/shortcuts/2019/nov/13/the-vegan-revolution-why-the-latest-

meat-is-made-entirely-from-thin-air. 8 https://www.ninds.nih.gov/Disorders/Patient-Caregiver-Education/Fact-Sheets/CreutzfeldtJakob-Disease-Fact-Sheet#1. 9 https://www.inspection.gc.ca/animal-health/terrestrial-animals/diseases/reportable/bse/eng/132 3991831668/1323991912972. 10 https://www.thelancet.com/action/showPdf?pii = S1474-4422%2815%2900003-4.

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for both human beings and other sentient beings, a new approach to post national governance which focuses on food, energy and water security. The world’s poorest workers are involved in agriculture, it is hardly surprising that poverty (linked with climate change) is driving people into the cities. The rate at which world hunger is increasing has been highlighted in the Report by the Secretary- General.11 Urbanization has increased beyond expectations, according to a recent UN Report (2014) that stresses that by 2050 the majority of the world’s population will be in Asia and Africa. In these latter context’s unemployment in cities and social exclusion (as highlighted by the Sendai Risk Platform) will pose a human security risk. The Brookings Institute (2020) discussion highlights the way in which government departments need to maintain structures12 that are capable of dealing with pandemics. But even more important than facing up to pandemics is the need to ask why pandemics are occurring. If nothing else, Covid-19 will underline the importance of facing up to the need to prevent and plan for pandemics. This requires the ability of post national systems of governance to think about the relationship between human beings and the many other species with which they share habitat. Sentient beings have rights simply because they are sentient. They depend on diverse habitats. The capability to live a life worth living depends on the protection of habitats of the multiple diverse species that make up a living system. Caballos et al. (2017) caution that population losses constitute a mass extinction in a paper presented at the Academy of Social Sciences. They stress that this is based on a misconception that human population growth is sustainable on a finite planet. As stressed previously, all species are part of one food chain. Human beings (until 11 https://sustainabledevelopment.un.org/sdg2

Report of the Secretary-General, Special edition: progress towards the Sustainable Development Goals: “An estimated 821 million people—approximately 1 in 9 people in the world—were undernourished in 2017, up from 784 million in 2015. This represents a worrying rise in world hunger for a third consecutive year after a prolonged decline. Africa remains the continent with the highest prevalence of undernourishment, affecting one fifth of its population (more than 256 million people). Consistent with the continued growth in undernourishment, 770 million people faced severe food insecurity in 2017. Stunting has been decreasing in nearly every region since 2000. Still, more than 1 in 5 children under 5 years of age (149 million) were stunted in 2018. Globally, 49 million children under 5 were affected by wasting and another 40 million were overweight in 2018. Strengthening the resilience and adaptive capacity of small-scale and family farmers, whose productivity is systematically lower than all other food producers, is critical to reversing the trend of the rise in hunger. The share of small-scale food producers in terms of all food producers in countries in Africa, Asia and Latin America ranges from 40 to 85 per cent, compared with fewer than 10 per cent in Europe. Government spending on agriculture compared to agriculture’s contribution to the total economy has declined by 37 per cent; the ratio fell from 0.42 in 2001 to 0.26 worldwide in 2017. In addition, aid to agriculture in developing countries fell from nearly 25 per cent of all donors’ sector-allocable aid in the mid-1980s to only 5 per cent in 2017, representing a decrease of $12.6 billion. A continuous downward trend has been observed in export subsidy outlays reported to the World Trade Organization (WTO). The total outlays fell from close to $500 million in 2010 to around $120 million in 2016. This reduction in export subsidies by Governments is leading to lower distortions in agricultural markets.” 12 https://www.brookings.edu/podcast-episode/fiona-hill-on-the-role-of-expertise-and-public-ser vants-in-a-time-of-crisis/, https://www.politico.com/news/2020/03/16/trump-inauguration-war ning-scenario-pandemic-132797.

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very recently) have been the top predators able to shape the planet to suit their needs. Commodification of plants, animals and people was fostered by explorers who collected ‘so called’ specimens for museums, zoos and herbariums. The will to increase the productivity of nation states led to the increasing enclosure of open or shared landscapes and increased colonisation to extend their access to potential products. Eventually industrialised agriculture and planning has increasingly displaced people, plants and creatures. Unwanted people are proletarianized, unwanted plants become weeds and unwanted creatures become pests. The so-called Green Revolution, however has arguably backfired as the clearance of natural habitat and the planting of single crops has left us less biologically diverse and open to disease. The arguments about the control of nature and the genetic control of crops that do not self-seed has been presented by Vandana Shiva (2012a,b) and will be addressed in more detail within the volume, suffice to say that Monsanto has considered profit before sustainability. The notion that human beings have the right to commodify plants has been disputed by Vandana Shiva, whilst the notion that human beings have the right to commodify animals has been clearly challenged by Martha Nussbaum (2006) in her work on the need to extend the ‘Frontiers of Social Justice’ to protect voiceless sentient beings who live lives that are not worth living. She developed the capabilities approach that stresses the need for all animals to have a right to live lives in which they can express their species-specific capabilities to the full. Her contribution to an essentialist approach that stresses that sentient beings have a priori rights—simply because they exist—resonates with the contributors to this volume, nevertheless the a posteriori responsibilities and consequences of development decisions need to be measured by social, economic and environmental indicators to protect all sentient beings. The central argument in this (and previous work to date) is that democracy and governance need to be underpinned by individual and collective norms and values supported by governance systems that enable the balancing of interests for current and future generations of living systems. Interspecies relationships to food, water and energy are central to life. The right to eat certain species and the responsibility to ensure the rights of sentient beings to a life worth living is an area of research that is overdue. The right to produce food and the responsibility to protect shared habitat is also overdue. The idealist, Martha Nussbaum (2006) and the pragmatist Peter Singer have both underscored the rights of animals, albeit from different perspectives. Nussbaum stresses rights, simply because beings are sentient, and Singer (2002) accentuates the consequences of not treating animals well and the need to prevent pain and suffering. The guidance of norms to underpin capabilities for all animals ranging from domestic to farmed to wild animals needs to be developed in a charter for the rights of animals. The consequences of not protecting sentient beings need to be upheld by sanctions written into laws that protect the voiceless. Underpinning the rights and responsibilities for all sentient beings is the need to protect habitat in terms of the Ecocide Law (Higgins, 2013) applied at both a

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national level and international level as stressed by Arthur Galston and Polly Higgins, respectively. The high road to morality is accepting our place as a strand within the web of living systems and respecting the rights of all species, especially sentient beings and their habitat. The low road to morality is understanding that the consequences of abusing sentient creatures is pain and suffering for all those who share the food chain. The abuse of confined farm animals fed an inappropriate diet results in a range of cascading effects, not the least of which is antibiotic resistance, avian flu, swine flu and mad cow disease13 and it is hypothesised that the confinement of animals led to cross-species infection and Covid-19. The abuse of animals is unacceptable and can be attributed to Descartes mistaken notion that human beings have feelings and other animals without a human mind are without feelings and rights. The volume addresses this mistaken idea and makes a strong link between pandemics, industrialised farming, and climate change. Many species are able to communicate as highlighted by Meijer (2019) who stresses that bats sing, bees dance, domestic dogs, cats and horses read our behaviour and body language, parrots use language to achieve goals, primates have learned sign language and dolphins have specific sounds which equate to names. Species-specific intelligence needs to be respected. The notion that human beings should be called ‘bird brained,’ if considered slow, is simply ill informed. Many species demonstrate a sense of self if the mirror test is not used and instead species-specific intelligence is taken into account. Meijer (2019) explains that dogs can recognise their own urine smells and are less interested in this smell than the smell of other dogs, for example. This demonstrates a sense of self. Meijer (2019: 74) also stresses that even if a gorilla does not gaze at a mirror, she stresses that this is because gazing at another would be regarded as aggressive. Similarly, she stresses that in some cultures, this is also regarded as impolite.14 Thus, the mirror test, developed by western male academics should not be regarded as the basis for deciding on species intelligence or sense of self. The species-specific intelligence of birds varies with and responds to their environments (Ackerman, 2016). Some birds are able to remember where they have stashed supplies for the winter months and this develops particular pathways in their brains which other species may not need to develop (Ackerman, 2016: 210). But research 13 https://www.wcs.org/get-involved/updates/a-primer-on-the-coronavirus. The Wildlife Conserva-

tion Society (17th March, 2020) hypothesises that sick caged bats infected trafficked South African pangolins and that the virus was then transmitted to humans. The series of transmissions can occur in markets, such as the Wuhan markets. Wet markets are responsible for stacking live animals together and this allows the transmission of disease. 14 In South Africa, respectful behaviour, known as hlonipha in Xhosa requires lowering the eyes. This was explained to me by my mentor and key informant Adelaide Dlamini. It was important information as I needed to show respect when I met more traditional men and woman when doing research for my MA thesis in Cape Town and the Eastern Cape. When undertaking research in Alice Springs this was also explained as appropriate by my mentor Olive Veverbrants. In Aboriginal culture looking someone in the eye and holding eye contact is considered bold and impolite. So, when interviewing sitting alongside and not staring too intently is appropriate behaviour.

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has found that birds are capable of passing on new useful knowledge to others, such as how to open a food dispenser (Meijer, 2019: 72) that demonstrates the ability to convey information that is retained and passed on to future generations living within the region long after the first birds had died. Thus, birds can communicate and create local cultures that help the survival of their group. Turtles15 and birds are able to navigate across the seas and skies to return to breeding or feeding sites, they do not need a compass.16 Reciprocal altruism is not the preserve of human beings. Many species demonstrate empathy and altruism, from bats who regurgitate food for members of their kinship group (Dawkins, 2020), to dolphins who help to push drowning human beings to the surface or zoo elephants who share their water to other neighbouring creatures (De Waal, 2009; Bates et al., 2008). Similarly, all species develop forms of communication which support their survival. Suzanne Simard explains that trees, for example, ‘communicate’ through their root systems in ‘a below ground web’17 that responds to chemicals. The notion that consciousness is a human preserve can be questioned. We may never know what it means to be conscious as a member of another living system, but that does not mean that consciousness is not experienced by trees that release chemicals to indicate distress as a result of lack of nutrients or a threat. Species-specific consciousness was accepted as a possibility by Nagel (1974) who stressed that consciousness is more than brain function and cannot be reduced to a machine like function. But more importantly, he stressed that being a bat or being a human being is about personal experience. We can never have access to the consciousness of another human being, but this does not mean that we deny that our parents, children or partners have consciousness, even if sometimes we do not understand them. Similarly, consciousness has now been accepted along a wider continuum to include a range of both sentient beings including plants, as stressed in Chapter 1 of this volume.

15 …loggerhead turtle made…” a 37,000-kilometre swim across the Indian Ocean to a turtle nesting site on Western Australia’s Pilbara coastline. Scientists, who began tracking her journey from Cape Town two years ago, believe Yoshi may have wanted to return to her original hatching site to breed and nest. Sabrina Fossette, a research scientist from WA’s Department of Biodiversity, Conservation and Attractions, said …: “This turtle spent 20 years in captivity and still, you put her in the water and she suddenly remembers she probably has something to do on the other side of the ocean and just starts crossing it,” https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-03-07/yoshi-turtle-journey-tracked-370 00km-from-cape-town-to-australia/12024088. 16 Squirrels in Cape Town carry a map of where they have stashed their supply of winter acorns. It is time to listen and learn from other species. They were imported by colonisers along with the oaks and although once considered non indigenous they are now part of a changing and contested landscape. 17 https://www.ted.com/talks/suzanne_simard_how_trees_talk_to_each_other?language=mg.

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Human Security and Resilience as Vulnerable Multispecies Relationships and Pathways Towards Wellbeing We look at the world through species-specific lenses. Our understanding of the world is also shaped by our cultural background, gender and the specific environment in which we live. For example, city dwellers have little understanding of nature if they are unable to connect with the natural environment and little appreciation that we are dependent on nature for our survival. Perhaps this is why policy makers in power make foolish decisions about the destruction of habitat without realising the negative cascading effects on human security.18 Alan Rayner’s notion of ‘natural inclusion’ developed as a result of his extensive research on fungi, roots systems and interconnections beneath the surface. When we destroy trees, we disrupt entire habitats. The same is true when we disrupt the balance in all ecosystems, most importantly the ocean and waterways (Tuddenham, 2019; keynote address,19 UNESCO, 2017). The role of gender and power in our attitude towards nature is clearly illustrated by the ethnographic approach to research (Whitehead, 1995). Whilst it is interesting to note that in Papua New Guinea the drab male bower bird is assumed to be female, because it is a patriarchal society. The rich case study serves as a reminder that we see the world through cultural lenses. Shoshana Zuboff (2019) warns that the process of commodification has now moved beyond people, animals and nature. Our behavioural patterns and human engagement, mobility and interactions can and are used for marketing and control. The national interest20 continues to be put before post national planetary concerns, that require digital citizenship and new forms of engagement and information that span conceptual and spatial boundaries. New laws are needed to address the challenges as habitat disappears and multiple species are displaced. This book lobbies for laws such as the Ecocide Law and post national regions that address ‘existential risk’. This book continues to make the case that rights and responsibilities (as currently framed) are inadequate. The false sense of superiority of anthropocentrism is being challenged by the Covid-19 virus. The survival of humanity is dependent on the survival of multiple species. Without pollinators for food, without seed and plant diversity we face hunger. In Australia (and many other parts of the world) droughts, rising temperatures fires, floods and rising sea levels are part of the same process of climate change. As we recover from one risk, another occurs in the next state or the next season. There is another way forward, namely monitoring from below—local people need to voice their concerns, tell their stories and grow the movement for change. The 18 https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/mar/18/tip-of-the-iceberg-is-our-destruction-

of-nature-responsible-for-covid-19-aoe. 19 https://isss2019corvallis.sched.com/event/RRml/presidents-address-peter-tuddenham-3633-nat ures-enduring-patterns-as-a-path-to-systems-literacy-menti-code-652634. 20 John Pilger stresses that Julian Assange has upheld freedom of speech and that he deserves justice not prison for life https://newmatilda.com/2020/02/18/julian-assange-must-be-freed-not-betrayedjohn-pilger/.

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patterns from above that are currently used to control should be balanced out by surveillance from below as detailed in Planetary Passport (2017), Transformation from Wall Street to Wellbeing (McIntyre-Mills et al., 2014) and in ‘Democracy and Governance for Resourcing the Commons: Theory and Practice on Rural-Urban Balance’ (McIntyre-Mills & Romm, 2019). In 2019 Scott Morrison attended the Pacific Island Forum and although he stressed a sense that these island nations are more than neighbours and went as far as saying they are part of Australia’s family and would be welcome to find work or to move to Australia, he did not agree to cut carbon emissions, despite the pleas made by the Fijian Prime Minister Frank Bainimarama and the graphic portrayal in a scale model of how rising sea water would impact Tuvalu. Enele Sopoaga, the prime minister of Tuvalu explained that climate change risked not only a place, but also the culture of his people. Moving would not be the solution. The New Zealand Prime Minister, Jacinda Ardern stressed that she sided with the Pacific Islanders.21 The Maori notion of holistic wellbeing was supported in the policy report, “Wellbeing an idea whose time has come” (2007)22 and extended by Ardern who has supported the notion of a Wellbeing Budget23 : Based on the idea that gauging the long-term impact of policies on the quality of people’s lives is better than focusing on short-term output measures, the initiative has five priorities for 2019: aiding the transition to a sustainable and low-emissions economy, supporting a thriving nation in the digital age, lifting Maori ¯ and Pacific incomes, skills and opportunities, reducing child poverty, and supporting mental health for all New Zealanders. We’re embedding that notion of making decisions that aren’t just about growth for growth’s sake, but how are our people faring?” Ardern said. “How is their overall well-being and their mental health? How is our environment doing? These are the measures that will give us a true measure of our success”

Reframing rights, relationships and accountability requires rethinking who we are as a species in relationship to other species. It also requires a new form of economics based on protecting the wellbeing of living systems of which we are a strand. The eradication of species as a result of rapid urbanisation places humanity at risk.24 21 “I

appeal to Australia to do everything possible to achieve a rapid transition from coal to energy sources that do not contribute to climate change,” he said, adding that coal posed an “existential threat” to Pacific countries. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/aug/18/our-people-aredying-australias-climate-confrontation-in-the-pacific. 22 New Zealand, Public Health Advisory Committee. (2007). An idea whose time has come. https:// can.org.nz/system/files/an-idea-whose-time-has-come.pdf. 23 https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2019/05/new-zealand-is-publishing-its-first-well-being-bud get/. 24 I read a copy of Armistead Maupin’s ‘Significant Others’ published in 1987 as I returned to Australia from an International Systems Sciences Conference in Corvallis on ‘nature’s enduring patterns’. One of the enduring patterns is the cycle of creation, death, and re-birth (if the species does not become extinct). The Anthropocene is an era in which developed societies have encroached on and eroded the habit of others. As the displaced populations in the world try to find footholds, the developed nations resist assistance, using the final frontier of citizenship and species membership to protect some at the expense of many others. It reminded me of the points made recently by Donna Haraway in ‘Staying with the trouble’ (2016) which focuses on taxonomies, rights, relationships.

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Donna Haraway (2018) stresses in a response to a review by Heise (2018) of her book ‘Staying with the Trouble’—in which Haraway uses the slogan ‘Make Kin Not Babies’ as follows: “As Heise demands, my slogan ‘Make Kin Not Babies’ must move from long footnotes to the central story in a feminist, ecological, anti-racist, register, in SF, with all the risks that brings”.

Narrow anthropocentrism has focused on the stories of human beings at the expense of other species and the environment. This volume will explore a priori norms, narratives and laws a posteriori actions that include and protect multiple species, based on the maxim that all species should be free and diverse to the extent that they do not undermine the common good. Taxonomies of rights, relationships and responsibilities need to be explored across cultures to understand human, plant and animal relationships. The eradication of species as a result of rapid urbanisation places humanity at risk. Narrow anthropocentrism has focused on the stories of human beings at the expense of other species and the environment. This volume aims to explore a priori norms, narratives and laws as well as a posteriori actions that include and protect multiple species. It suggests that strengthening institutional capacity and powers to address the UN 2030 Sustainable Development The agenda needs to draw on local wisdom. Our fragile interdependence requires a recognition of our hybridity and interconnectedness within the web of life. A re-framed regional social policy could contribute to achieving the sustainable development goals within and beyond the nation state by drawing on local wisdom to support living systems of which we are a strand. Part of this agenda is telling new stories and remembering old narratives about how human beings relate to other species. The chapter tells stories from the dreaming which remind people of their kinship with the natural environment.

A Way Forward: Ecovillage Hubs Supporting Cities The research proposes eco-villages supporting urban hubs to re-generate rural-urban balance and reverse the plantationocene (Tsing & Haraway, 2019). The thesis developed in this book is the need to protect habitat and to reverse current trends. One of the ways forward is by creating green enterprises based on Gunter Pauli’s (2010) concept that in nature there is no waste. Nussbaum (2006) stresses that the social contract does not go far enough. She discusses the current limitations of social contract theory to protect young people, the dispaced, the disabled, voiceless and non human sentient beings. Her article (2018) stresses that she felt she needed to go further in not only regarding all species as kin but in stressing that the overpopulation of the human species could be addressed through caring for the children that have already been born. This could help to bring about the population transition as fewer children are born. People could be fulfilled by extending the solidarity of care to all sentient beings and the habitat on which we all depend for our survival. If we accepted that significant others need not be heterosexual marriage partners this would enable nurturing and caring more widely. Haraway (2018: 105) stresses that she needs to go further:

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The notion that the mantle of citizenship should only be given to those of voting age and with the right to cast a ballot is problematic. The environment on which we depend is also entirely controlled by the voting citizens of nation states. In ‘Frontiers of Justice’, Nussbaum (2006) develops an argument for extending the social contract to those sentient beings who are not protected. Her starting point is to stress the need for individual capabilities to be protected, in order to be able to live a life worth living. Her argument includes being able to live in an environment that supports a life in which capabilities can be achieved. Current debates hinge on whether cosmopolitan universal rights can be given to sentient beings as a whole or whether rights for human sentients and animal sentients should differ. Donaldson and Kymlicka (2011) link rights to habitat. Thus, the citizenship of domestic animals living in the household may be closer to the citizenship of human sentients. Existential risks are the result of not recognizing our hybridity and interconnectedness. Dualist thinking pervades our consciousness and is reflected in socially unjust and environmentally unsustainable designs for society. Designs need to be supported by constitutions, based on a priori norms, and consequentialist or a posteriori approaches, based on testing out ideas within context and with future generations in mind. Current forms of democracy, governance and economics need to be re-framed by recognizing that we are interdependent. This is as relevant to nation states and to the wider post national regions of which they are a part. In an increasingly interdependent world, climate change results in the displacement of people in numbers greater than those displaced during the Second World War, according to António Guterres, the previous UN High Commissioner for Refugees (2017). McLeman (2018: 150) stresses that climate change will result in rising sea levels and it: …raises the spectre of trapped populations: large numbers of people unable to move away from areas that should be abandoned …These people will include the rural and urban poor, especially single-parent households, and people who are elderly, infirm, unwell, or lack mobility. … entire sovereign nations may one day physically cease to be habitable is a situation for which there is no precedent in modern history.

According to Cochrane and Cooke (2016: 113): …cosmopolitans regard ultimate moral value as residing in individuals and their basic rights. By recognising that sentient animals also share this value and also share these basic rights, we are essentially extending the shared moral community to include all sentient creatures. In other words, it is sentient individuals who have ultimate value – not the collective institutions and associations that have been built around them.

Balancing individual and collective species rights is one of the central challenges for democracy and governance. Learning to read and write requires learning the letters of the alphabet and the shared system of numbers that has enabled the development of the arts, humanities, sciences and mathematics. Learning critical systemic literacy requires many ways of knowing as suggested by Gregory Bateson (1972) in his book the ‘ecology of mind’. Many different intelligences can be employed to make sense of our world. Howard Gardner (2008) stresses the need to draw on diverse forms of human intelligence

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including: “bodily, linguistic, musical, mathematical or logical, naturalistic, spatial, interpersonal and intrapersonal”. But this does not go far enough. The kinds of intelligence of different animal species has been under recognized. Ackerman (2016) gives examples of the way in which species of birds solve problems, use and make tools and teach their young how to find food. This is a form of cultural transmission, based upon communication that goes way beyond mere signaling.

From Species to Multispecies Relationships The concept ‘species’ is a central concern in relation to the issue of categorization, membership, displacement and decision-making (in terms of state sovereignty, territory, colonization and its implications for human, animal and plant life). As urbanisation encroaches on the wild spaces and displaces other forms of life, relationships that are Anthropocentric need to be re-framed to enable re-generation and sustainable living that is non-anthropocentric. The contributions made by Donaldson and Kymlicka (2011) to animal rights through exploring our relationships with other animals need to be given centre stage in redressing current political impasse in animal rights. Frans De Waal (2009) stresses the need to recognise that we evolved not only through our ability to compete but through our ability to cooperate and to show empathy to others and a shared sense of cross-speciescommunity. Cross-species rights are necessary for transformation to a more ethical way of life and for our collective survival. For example, interspecies resilience to support bees as major pollinators is vital. Food security depends on multiple factors ranging from access to land, water and pollinators. Tsing (1995) discusses the way in which African bees have been described as ‘Killer Bees’ in America. If they had been left in their natural habitat, rather than imported and placed in an environment that is ill suited to the way they had evolved, they would not be regarded as pests. Thus, working with species within their own habitat in which they have evolved and to which they have adapted is vital. So called ‘Killer bees’ are the result of the displacement of bees and a loss of habitat. Bees (and other pollinators) are central to food security which requires eliminating harmful pesticides and vocational education and training in regenerative, sustainable farming methods. By securing the production and consumption cycle of honey the resilience of the food chain can be enhanced and the likelihood of honey being diluted with sugar syrups can be reduced. The exploration of the potential for better protection of the environment is the focus of pilots in Australia, South Africa and Indonesia mentioned in Chapters 15, 17, 27. Shanor and Kanwaal (2009) and Sharpe (2005) have also shown that animals are capable of showing compassion within and across species. Unfortunately Huxley, Darwin’s colleague emphasised competition not co-operation when he discussed Darwin’s research. Humans evolved from primates and we share the capacity for empathy, reciprocity and fairness. In fact, we evolved through our ability to cooperate and not only to compete (De Waal, 2009).

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Thus, the emphasis is on developing a new basis for the way in which we live. The emphasis needs to be on what we all share in common, namely the need for food, energy, water, safety and the capabilities to live a good life. The social contract extends rights and expects responsibilities to be fulfilled in return. However, what about those who are voiceless, disabled, too young or without citizenship rights (displaced, asylum seekers or refugees)? The notion that reciprocal rights should only be given to citizens who are useful has been successfully critiqued by Nussbaum (2006) who stresses that the way it has been used does not follow the intention of Rawlsian philosophy based on the notion justice as a form of fairness based on the ‘veil of ignorance’ which helps us to make decisions by which we would be prepared to abide if they were applied to our own lives. This basic notion of fairness should be applied in all contexts if justice is to be achieved.

Convergent Challenges Provide New Regional Opportunities Social, eonomic and environmental challenges are convergent. Some argue that the demographic dividend in Australia and Asia will enable them to achieve their development goals. But the rising rate of urbanisation and the high growth in population could be a liability unless appropriate vocational education and training agendas underpin the potential for re-generation of the environment to ensure food, energy and water security. Effective regional mechanisms need to initiate regional social policy pathways across a wide range of sectors. Building on this success, could they play an enhanced role in achieving the 2030 Sustainable Development Agenda, with its focus on cross-border challenges intertwined across the social, environmental and economic spheres? (UNRISD, 2017). This volume addresses the potential and opportunities for regional organizations to contribute to the SDGs and identifies priorities for action that can also empower the most marginalised in regional and rural areas. Regional initiatives need to address food security expand to regional “road maps for social development more generally” (UNRSID, 2017). Best practice regional social policy needs to underpin the UN Sustainable Development goals and is no longer confined to economic development. This is increasingly important for protecting the most vulnerable such as women, children, the elderly and the disabled.25 25 Regional social policy is the means by which key public policy goals and development outcomes

can be implemented. Regional social policy can enable a more effective set of responses to pressing social policy issues than governments acting alone. The cross-border nature of social, economic and environmental challenges arising from global interdependence means that collective action on a national and post national regional scale is increasingly relevant (McIntyre-Mills & De Vries, 2011; McIntyre-Mills, 2017a) as a way of addressing these challenges. The research explores the suitability of pathways to wellbeing software (McIntyre-Mills et al., 2014; Wirawan & McIntyre, 2019) to address the UN Sustainable Development Goals through providing an interactive approach that enables mapping complex social, economic and environmental indicators of wellbeing. The potential of pathways to wellbeing was presented to President Joko Widodo’s chief of staff, Mr.

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The volume explores pathways to wellbeing, in order to implement regional sustainable development goals while contributing to eco-systemic living through engagement and partnering to enhance capabilities and human rights of persons with disabilities. The project addresses social ecological engagement on food security, quality education and sustainable communities through partnering to enhance capabilities and human rights of persons with disabilities. Given the foremost role of women in the community with respect to all these issues, gender is the central focus of this research. As such, it would meet an important remit explicitly outlined in SDG 5—gender equality. The aim is to enhance social and environmental justice outcomes in line with specific UN Sustainable Development Goals and Nussbaum’s 10 capabilities to enhance human rights and the rights of sentient beings. The United Nations 2030 Agenda provides an opportunity for Australia to share its experience at home with partners around the world to address challenges internationally and in the IndoPacific region. Regional associations of governments need to stimulate and actively support inclusive participation in national and regional policy making. Unless they can promote multi stakeholder engagement, the achievement of inclusive development will be stalled. Strengthening common regional platforms and mechanisms that give greater emphasis to the benefits of cooperation in the social sector and building robust means to access social participation without discrimination or exception would be a start. Participatory regional social policy making would strengthen regional mandates and facilitate SDG-focused inclusive social development strategies. Highly urbanised regions face food and water insecurity and are at risk of becoming food deserts,26 unless diverse habitats are protected and everyday strategies are explored with service users and providers to find better pathways to resilience and wellbeing for the most vulnerable members of the population. ● What potential pathways can promote opportunities and redress the food and water insecurity associated with a growing population of vulnerable people in highly urbanised regions? Moeldoko on the 27th of July as one of three selected projects to support eco-tourism, training and the creation of employment. The selection entails developing vocational education and training sites across Indonesia, building on an existing pilot in Kediri. 26 We face desertification through genetically modified interventions by big corporations that destroy seed diversity and regard the people and the plants that do not comply as weeds for eradication. (Scott, 1998; Shiva, 2011). By enclosing the commons through bio, piracy committed by the market with the support of the state civil society is disempowered. Haraway has already stressed that the voiceless become the objects of power and experimentation, ranging from laboratories that test rats and primates to testing human beings. Nor can we deny that collective responsibility goes hand in hand with collective rights and that democracy has provided rights without enough emphasis Developing community social enterprises based on caring need to be supported through extending skills through Vocational Educational Training that can support all the elements espoused in Barton’s (2005) model spanning: Social, economic and environmental factors to protect the commons. By lowering the size of a local carbon footprint communities can contribute to mitigating climate change and adapting to the challenges of food, water and energy security. By enabling ecological citizenship through supporting the community with communication technology and basic computing skills young people, women and their families are empowered to have a say and to ensure that their products can be marketed in ways that add value and that the marketing can be tracked.

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● What can Australia contribute with Partner Organisations to mitigate the displacement of multiple species and maximise plausible pathways to resilience and wellbeing? A key priority is to develop interspecies ethnography and to strengthen institutional capabilities to respect multiple species through schools, public and private organisations. The volume aims to raise awareness of a sense of local, national and international leadership responsibility. The principal objective is to assess the extent to which attendant action could be achieved in accordance with specific UN Sustainable Development goals and values and thus to provide a way to translate ideas into action The volume aims to address the pressing regional and global problems, including efforts to meet the Sustainable Development Goals as detailed in the Australian Foreign Policy White Paper (2017: 25) Non-state actors, such as multinational companies, civil society groups and private foundations, are also able to mobilise resources and communities of interest globally. They are increasingly able to shape international responses to issues as diverse as climate change, sustainable development, education and health standards.

The following boxed insert discusses some of the events pertaining to post national regional connections that will be increasingly important to flatten the unemployment curve and potentially address climate change: Inherent policy lessons for the Indo-Pacific Region are the increased urbanisation rates that are compounding socio-economic problems associated with diverse needs. The issues of unemployment of the 15–24-year age group in South Africa is a key concern in the North West Province which has one of the highest rates of unemployment. The rising level of unemployment and the increased reliance on the informal sector in metropolitan regions of Indonesia poses a similar threat. Similarly, in Australia, the high rate of unemployment amongst Aboriginal Australians remains a key challenge that will be addressed in this project. President Jakowi’s visit to Australia to promote trade with Indonesia in February 2020 enhances the potential for regional development. His focus is on employment creation and promoting better opportunities through enabling Indonesians to travel to Australia and obtain visas on arrival. This would mirror the arrangement already provided to Australians. The sympathy and concern expressed by Jokowi about the recent bushfires underlines his policy to support re-forestation in Indonesia and to move away from unsustainable approaches. (Hodge, 2020)27 Nevertheless, the visit is timed in the context of the prospect of deforestation, the destruction of even more forest habitat in Indonesia if the capital is moved from Jakarta to East Kalimantan (see Chapters 15, 16 and 20 of this volume). In South Africa the unemployment rate overall is close to 40%, according to Fogel (2020)28 and according to SA news reports it is around 50% for young people in many 27 Trade

pact can only further cement close bond with Indonesia. Inquirer Weekend Australian pages 15–16. 28 Fogel, B. ‘Future of the left in South Africa. What left?’ Mail and Guardian 2020 January 3rd, pages 20–21.

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parts of South Africa if not higher, as many give up trying to seek employment. Fogel makes the vital point that the political centre has collapsed internationally and that there is little direction from leaders (to the right and the left) as they follow the wrong economic approach. The volume attempts to fill the vacuum by building on Kabeer’s (1999, 2015) approach to institutional power dynamics by extending the learning organisation and learning community approach. Local emergence can be achieved based on the capabilities approach (Nussbaum, 2011) and fostering development through gender mainstreaming and caring for sentient beings and diverse habitats (Donaldson & Kymlicka, 2011). This volume strives to suggest pathways to regional wellbeing. To what extent can ‘decentralisation, transparency, equality and accountability’ be addressed and play a role in limiting top down approaches to human rights and the abuse of power through surveillance ‘from below’? Case studies using comparative social policy methods (cross-national, crosssectoral) are needed, to build up a strong evidence base to inform policy analysis and policy making. Nationalism is one of the greatest barriers to address climate change (Stokols, 2018: 245) and that international networks supported by coalitions across municipalities could help to compensate for the short-sightedness of nation states. Despite Trump’s attitude to dismissing climate change some municipal, state, and corporate organisations are making a difference by changing policies towards managing resources and transforming thinking and practice towards eco systemic living. With the advent of Covid-19 the USA will be required to plan better to avoid future pandemics. This will entail addressing climate change as part of the cascading risks leading to loss of habitat and the resultant impact on multiple species health and wellbeing. A new approach to transformation is advocated through learning communities that support Nussbaum’s capability approach (2011) to enhance quality of life for human beings within living systems. On the 18th of December 2019 the Australian Broadcasting Association announced that crop production had decreased, and farmers were on average 70, 000 dollars poorer per year. But some farmers have not produced crops in 3 years, so this is probably an underestimate. Furthermore, the SA government is in dispute with NSW government which has confirmed it cannot deliver the promised water allocation to the river Murray. The salinity levels are rising and this impacts on irrigation and the viability of farming in the Riverland region.29 An informal conversation with members of the Australian Conservation Foundation raised concerns about the mental health of farmers who face living with debt on a daily basis.

29 https://www.mdba.gov.au/managing-water/drought-murray-darling-basin/murray-darling-basin-

drought-update.

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City dwellers in Adelaide swelter as a result of so-called heat islands30 created in treeless suburbs, lack of green ground cover and concrete.31 As the temperatures soar the people on lowest incomes suffer as do farm animals, liminal creatures living in city environments and wild animals losing their habitat. Images of Koalas suffering death as their habitat burns have raised awareness of the wide-ranging impact of climate change. More than a thousand bats have died from the rising temperatures in Botanic Park on the 18th and 19th of December 2019. This is indeed the era of mass extinctions32 a concept discussed by Deborah Bird Rose33 (2011) in relation to a range of Australian species.

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Janet J. McIntyre-Mills is Honorary Professor in the College of Education at University of South Africa, Tshwane, South Africa; Visiting Research Fellow at Adelaide University in the College of Professions Main North Terrace; and Adjunct Associate Professor in College of Business Government and Law at Flinders University, Sturt Campus, Adelaide.

Chapter 4

Vignette: Interview: Recognising our Hybridity and Interconnectedness Janet J. McIntyre-Mills

Abstract The interview with the editor of Current Sociology reflects on values and the factors that shape a non-anthropocentric research agenda. The chapter draws on an interview and questions posed by the editor of Current Sociology, an International Sociological Association publication as part of their Sociologist of the Month series. A link to the original interview can be found On facebook: http://www.facebook. com/CurrentSociology and a link to the article can be found here: Recognizing our hybridity and interconnectedness: Implications for social and environmental justice, July 2017, Current Sociology 66(2):001139211771589, https://doi.org/10.1177/001 1392117715898. Keyword Lived experience · Multis-species context · Relationships

Could You Please Tell Us About Yourself? I was born in Bulawayo, Zimbabwe in what was then colonial Rhodesia. My parents were based there whilst my farther worked on an architectural contract. As a child I spent some of my holidays on a Karoo farm in South Africa where I took long walks with my cousins. I experienced living alongside domestic pets, dogs, cats and horses along with farm animals, such as sheep and cattle as well as wild creatures, such as a variety of buck, baboons, monkeys, birds and reptiles. I learned the ‘magic’ of transformation by watching tadpoles in a river bed and learning how silk worms evolve into moths that spin webs of silk. These spiritual lessons were learned from my grandfather and by observing nature. I questioned why people treated pets differently from farm animals and wild animals and became a vegetarian as soon as I could. J. J. McIntyre-Mills (B) University of South Africa in the College of Education, Tshwane, South Africa e-mail: [email protected]; [email protected] Adelaide University, College of Professions Main North Terrace, Adelaide, Australia College of Business, Government and Law, Flinders University, Sturt, SA, Australia © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2021 J. J. McIntyre-Mills and Y. Corcoran-Nantes (eds.), From Polarisation to Multispecies Relationships, Contemporary Systems Thinking, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-33-6884-2_4

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My mother’s great grandfather was a politician in the old Cape Parliament and as a child I read ‘Travels in Southern Africa’ by his grandfather who had supported freedom of the press and who campaigned for social justice in the early days of South Africa. I was fascinated by the two volumes of ethnography he wrote as a result of his exploration (on horseback) on behalf of the London Geographical Society. My inspiration comes from the Xhosa people in the Eastern and Western Cape whilst growing up and whilst doing research for my Master’s thesis at the University of Cape Town; those who mentored my doctoral research on the border of Swaziland and Mozambique; the Arrernte and Ngarrindjeri in the Northern Territory and South Australia—and recently connections with Sundanese mentors in West Java. From these teachers I learned about interconnectedness and interdependency. During the last 17 years (prior to my retirement in 2018) I supervised more than 36 Ph.D. students on a range of topics pertaining to social and environmental justice in a range of social, economic and environmental contexts. This has also prompted my interest in interdisciplinary and comparative research. Over the years membership of the International Society for Sociology and International Systems Sciences helped me to hone my research interests in: (a) (b) (c) (d)

complex health, housing and social inclusion needs mitigation and adaptation to climate change at the local level cascading social, economic and environmental risks and scaling up social engagement to address areas of shared concern.

How Did You Come to the Field of Sociology? Initially I wanted to become a lawyer, so I studied Latin at school and enrolled at the University of Cape Town where my father had studied. But during orientation week I heard the introductory social anthropology lectures by Prof Martin West and then the philosophy lectures by Professor Hughes followed by lectures by Professors Michael Savage and Johann Maree and Neville Alexander about the nature of society and was drawn to study sociology. I was thrilled to create an intellectual home spanning these disciplines. As a first year as a sociology student, I realised that to read the literature I wanted to read, required my handing over my identity document in the library and entering a locked section of so-called ‘banned books’. I have told my students that nothing inspires retention and thirst for knowledge as the realisation that my note taking was a political act! The next political step was the realisation that I had to register to work in the so-called townships before I could do research in Guguletu Sect. 2 on poverty and social exclusion. My first sociology research project was at the request of a psychiatrist, who approached the Head of Sociology requesting the help of a graduate student. My research involved following the healing pathways and networks of patients who attended Valkenburg outpatients. This enabled me to obtain some insight into the poverty in rural areas forcing men to seek work in the cities, separating them from

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families, exposing them to the risk of casual relationships and becoming HIV positive with the tuberculosis virus that was endemic in overcrowded townships. I learned of the living conditions in the ‘match box houses’ (51/B houses built to a standard design) and in the migrant hostels.

What Prompted You to Research the Area of Your Article “Recognizing Our Hybridity and Interconnectedness: Implications for Social and Environmental Justice”? I learned about the notion ubuntu—we are people through other people and through our connection to the land around us—from Adelaide Dlamini, mentor for my MA research at the University of Cape Town. This was demonstrated in her everyday practice as an indigenous healer. She explained how health and illness are a result of balance versus imbalance (and that the healing process she facilitated in her network) helped to connect people who were in need—by restoring and re-generating relationships. Mentorship on interconnectedness continued in Alice Springs through Olive Veverbrants who shared how she was named by her mother for Olive Pink, the ethnographer, social rights activist and botanist who devoted her life to the desert people and their environment. Her poem, “My place” is the preface to ‘Systemic Praxis for Social and Environmental Justice’ (McIntyre-Mills, 2003) [see link to poem]. Alice Springs is called ‘Mpantwe’ or ‘Caterpillar dreaming’. The caterpillar is the shape of the McDonald Ranges and it symbolizes the cycle of transformation and rebirth. Olive explained that ‘Broken Promise Drive’ is the Aboriginal name for Cromwell Drive, the road that cut through a sacred space where the caterpillars hatch in a gum tree grove. She explained that spirituality is a sense of connection and an appreciation of the sacred every day. The landscape itself can be seen as a ‘library’ and that we write our history on the landscape and it can be used for re-membering: Indigenous people are all about place…land is our mother. This is not a metaphor. The natural world is in constant dialogue with us, although we do not always listen or respond …’ (Walker cites Manulania Meyer, 2013:3061 ) We are the land. Our history and choices are written in the landscape. (prologue to Planetary Passport, 2017)

I draw on ‘Systemic Ethics’ (McIntyre-Mills, 2014: xi) to explain some of the research that underpinned the paper and that I understand that the potential for evolution is based on the interconnectedness of inorganic and organic systems. Webs of relationships are fostered across all forms of inorganic and organic life as recognized in physics (Turok, 2012). The notion that consciousness is a continuum is a core tenet of Buddhism. Energy flows across all living systems—organic and inorganic—consciousness is not the preserve of human beings. 1 Walker,

P. 2013. Research in relationship with humans, the spirit world, and the natural world. In Indigenous Pathways into Social Research, ed. Mertens, D, F. Cram, and B. Chilisa. Left Coast Press, Inc. .

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What Do You See as the Key Findings of Your Article? In policy terms it responds to the ‘concept of existential risk’ by explaining that anthropocentric values need to be questioned as they pose a risk to living systems: The focus on anthropocentric humanism and human rights has led to an unethical divide or boundary between the human and the animal (Irvine, 2007; Stanescu, 2012). The human being is seen as the controller of nature. But the divided nature of control and compete is only one part of the story. The continuum of relationships with nature and with animals needs to be seen as co-evolving. Cooperation and nurturing are the other side of the story. … If animals can understand fairness and unfairness and are capable of empathy, then surely it is time to rethink the social contract, which is far too narrowly defined. The social contract extends rights and expects responsibilities to be fulfilled in return. But what about those who are voiceless, disabled, too young or without citizenship rights? (McIntyre-Mills, 2017: 2)

In ‘Frontiers of Justice’, Nussbaum (2006) develops an argument for extending the social contract to those sentient beings who are not protected. Her starting point is to stress the need for individual capabilities to be protected, in order to be able to live a life worth living. Her argument includes being able to live in an environment that supports a life in which capabilities can be achieved. ‘Planetary Passport’ (McIntyre-Mills, 2017) begins where the paper ‘Recognising out hybridity and interconnectedness’ ends (McIntyre-Mills, 2017: 19): New architecture for democracy and governance needs to extend solidarity and protection to all forms of life within a region …Sociology needs to support intersectional understanding that human beings are part of a living system and that decisions that undermine life chances will result in violence that poses an ‘existential risk’. (Bostrom, 2011)

What Are the Wider Social Implications of Your Research? How Do You Think Things Will Change in the Future? In an increasingly interdependent world, climate change results in the displacement of people in numbers greater than those displaced during the Second World War, according to António Guterres, the previous UN High Commissioner for Refugees (2017). McLeman (2018: 150) stresses that climate change will result in rising sea levels and it: …raises the spectre of trapped populations: large numbers of people unable to move away from areas that should be abandoned … entire sovereign nations may one day physically cease to be habitable is a situation for which there is no precedent in modern history.

Citizenship (as it is currently applied) does not protect the rights of all sentient beings unless they are of voting age and they are recognised by the state as citizens. Just as democracy evolved from the ancient Greek version that excluded women and slaves, democracy needs to evolve to include the rights of those who are currently excluded by the social contract. To what extent can current structures be considered

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to support the ‘banality of evil? (Arendt, 1963; Burdon et al., 2014)2 associated with every day decisions that undermine living systems and cause pain and suffering? Valuing other species is a starting point for addressing the critical systemic risks that we currently face. The new policy document provided by the Department of Home Affairs (2019) ‘Profiling Australia’s Vulnerability: the interconnected causes and cascading effects of systemic disaster risk’ that frames the need for a ‘conversation about vulnerability’. Balancing individual and collective rights could be supported through international law on ‘ecocide’ to criminalise actions against the environment (Gauger et al., Human Rights Consortium, 2013). The participatory action research described in ‘Transformation from Wall Street to Wellbeing’ (McIntyre-Mills et al., 2014) grasps the nettle to respond to the challenge posed by the Earth Charter (Hayden, 2010) Designs need to be supported by constitutions and laws, based on a priori norms, and consequentialist or a posteriori approaches, based on testing out ideas within context and with future generations in mind. The circle of democracy requires respect for the balance between the individual and the collective which in turn requires ongoing adjustments through thinking about who gets what when why, how and to what effect in order to make better decisions.

Are There Areas of Future Research that Could Be Built on? Is it possible for groups to be held responsible in the same way that an individual can be held responsible? Arendt (1963) makes the case that collective responsibility is upheld when each individual engages critically with their everyday decisions. Some researchers argue it is indeed possible to engage large groups to foster collective decision making for the common good (see Flanagan and Christakis, 2010, Dryzek et al., 2019, McIntyre-Mills et al., 2014). An early prototype (McIntyre-Mills et al., 2014) to enable this process has been developed and piloted. The aim is to extend the research, in order to find out in what contexts online monitoring could help to protect habitats for diverse species in this digital era (Stokols, 2018). Could critical engagement be assisted through enabling people to think through the implications of their everyday choices, rather than making rash decisions (Kahneman, 2 Hanna Arendt (1963) stresses that critical thought is core to upholding justice. This is not the same

as a post humanist approach, because it assumes the individual and collective role of responsible human beings. But what is missing in Arendt’s work is an understanding of our ecological interconnectedness. This comes through drawing on the work of Donna Haraway (1984, 1991, 1992, 2010) who understands that ‘we are the boundaries’ and that all knowledge is situated. To address the ethical risks associated with partial knowledge we need to think about our thinking and we need to take action as ecological citizens (Shiva, 2012). Another critical systemic thinker who has extended our ways of knowing and included the environmental context is Gregory Bateson (1972) who stressed the importance of level 1, 2 and 3 learning to include those who take on board the need to apply thinking to practice in a responsible manner that addresses both social and environmental justice.

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2011) as a result of narcissism, polarization or group think (Rosenburg, 2002; Greenfield, 2015)? Could multi-level engagement provide a means by which to re-generate local bio regions and to operationalize some of Elinor Ostrom’s (2008, 2010) ideas? The need for democracy to re-engage with critical thinking is vital. Stokols (2018: 302) argues that change can occur if there is transformation in personal values (as Boulding, 1966 suggests), and he also acknowledges that change can occur through behavioural modification and that when many people change their norms it leads to others following. The three patterns (Alexander, 1977) of engagement that could perhaps foster the human stewardship of habitat are: ● Recognition of the interdependency of living systems ● Making (ongoing) policy adjustments in context. In policy terms this requires new forms of organizational relationships that redress power imbalances that result in social, economic and environmental injustice and ‘existential risk’ (Bostrom, 2011). ● Appreciation of cycles for re-generation in designs that sustain living systems. This requires rural-urban balance to protect habitat for domestic, farm and wildlife based on the requisite variety (Ashby, 1956) that spans multiple species. The barriers to achieving these three pattern goals include power imbalances within and across-species which requires an intersectional understanding of the way in which species membership, gender, race, culture and abilities shape the power dynamics that underpin social and environmental injustice. A way forward is perhaps to focus on what matters within and across many species, namely a safe, inclusive local habitat, water to drink, food to eat, being able to keep cool or warm enough to sustain life and a sense of fulfilled purpose. Q. Could engagement in careful decision making about how people live their lives lead to decisions that encourage others to make social, economic and environmental decisions that are supportive of environmental concerns that go beyond the rhetoric of the UN 2030 Sustainable Development Agenda and the Sendai Risk Platform (2015–2030)? An early prototype needs development that could be scaled up and tested through participating organisations such as vocational education and training hubs in Indonesian villages that follow the ‘one village, many enterprises policy’. It currently has the facility to display spread sheets in EXCEL that could enable daily snap shots on social, economic and environmental indicators of multispecies wellbeing. My interest is in exploring social engagement for the stewardship of diverse species habitats and finding a way to foster ecological citizenship through using a combination of critical heuristics and factual data to inform people of the implications of their choices for themselves, their family and grandchildren. The air is acrid with smoke. The big male roo grazes languidly on the lawn. For more than three years he has made our garden his home.

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He has brought his mate and her joey And now there are three. The little joey Roobecca has bright eyes and alert ears. She eats daisies, not only grass. Her mother Roobertha is relaxed and rests in her dust bed. Roodolf spreads himself out on the lawn and sleeps with a paw over his eyes. But now he watches me as I clip away the dry Watsonia leaves. They are not indigenous, but they remind me of the Western Cape. The roos have names, because they are no longer just ‘wild roos’ They enjoy the daily supply of fresh water in the garden Their routine is established. And so is ours. They are now companions We share the space with them and they give us joy But also, it is a sign of the times Bush fires Habitat loss And drought.

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Meanwhile Kenny (who was passing through) stayed to rehydrate and fortunately found the right gum tree in the garden. The blue tongues, stubby lizards and skinks rely on the habitat of dry-stone walls and the ready water supply from the rain tanks and hose. The introduced species, Brer fox is a very occasional visitor at night, but the possum clans are raucous at night defending their small grove of trees. Who would think a small suburban garden could make such a difference? 26th Dec The number of kangaroos has grown to 6 as another two females and a joey seek sanctuary.

Janet J. McIntyre-Mills is Honorary Professor in the College of Education at University of South Africa, Tshwane, South Africa; Visiting Research Fellow at Adelaide University in the College of Professions Main North Terrace; and Adjunct Associate Professor in College of Business Government and Law at Flinders University, Sturt Campus, Adelaide.

Chapter 5

Consciousness for Balancing Individualism and Collectivism Janet J. McIntyre-Mills

Abstract Balancing individual rights and collective responsibility to this generation of life and the next requires a new form of democracy and governance to protect the common good. This requires considering the consequences of decisions whilst preserving the right to voice and agency to the extent that it does not undermine the rights of the majority in this generation and the next. The case is made that liberalism has progressed too far in undermining collective responsibility. The result is a form of state control and governance that is more closely linked with the market than with civil society. Minzberg stresses that radical renewal requires rebalancing society, so that rights of the minority do not override the interests of the majority in this generation and the next. Keywords Representation · Accountability · Re-generation of living systems

Introduction Representation, accountability and re-generation are the three major challenges of the day. How can we improve the way we live our lives? As Whitehead (2018) stresses in ‘living theory’ we need to learn from experience and all experience is situated. How can we address cross boundary regionalist approaches to the big issues of the day, namely poverty and climate change? These problems require drawing on the lived experiences (Polanyi, 1966, 1968) and situated knowledges (Haraway, 1992) of many people plus a deep ecological awareness that draws on the consciousness of all living systems of which we are a strand. Watson a biologist and zoologist was a keen observer. He could be said to embody what Whitehead (2018) calls Living Theory Research. In his case he applied all his J. J. McIntyre-Mills (B) University of South Africa in the College of Education, Tshwane, South Africa e-mail: [email protected]; [email protected] Adelaide University, College of Professions Main North Terrace, Adelaide, Australia College of Business, Government and Law, Flinders University, Sturt, SA, Australia © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2021 J. J. McIntyre-Mills and Y. Corcoran-Nantes (eds.), From Polarisation to Multispecies Relationships, Contemporary Systems Thinking, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-33-6884-2_5

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energy to studying ecology, by drawing together many ways of knowing including ethnography, auto-ethnography, botany, physics, zoology and metaphysics. In his carefully described ethnography of life on the island of Bali turns the lens onto science and the nature of knowledge and the process of knowing. According to Watson (1976: 15) dolphins forage in the rivers of the Amazon during high tide: During this time in the trees, the dolphins must be able to form and retain detailed topographic maps of the areas in which they forage. When the waters recede they often do so very rapidly, and the dolphins have to make their way back to the river through as much as a hundred miles of tricky territory in a short time. There is no time for following the flow or trusting to trial and error. Fish that do that get trapped…

He stresses that: ….we are all the eyes and ears of the world; and we think the world’s thoughts. (Watson, 1976: 36)

The new quantum physics acknowledges that the states of nature are in a process of being and becoming and that the observer changes the situation. Watson (1976: 43) makes the point that formal education can lead to our losing our sense of connection with the rest of the living system of which we are a strand. Recognizing sacred spaces and places can help to re-connect with nature (198). He discussed the way in which Aboriginal Australians (138) understand the earth as a giant organism and this is increasingly recognized as an appropriate way in which to see ourselves in relation to the earth. We are all part of one large organism and interdependent. The skills of the dowser or the diviner in recognizing water or powerful energy is discussed at length and that this recognition can be retuned or returned through contemplation and stillness. Just as a hologram has enfolded many spaces in each part of it, so the sacred space can help us tap into a sense of our place in the whole system. Consciousness is about making connections—it is what makes us alive. The pathways in the brain that connect the neurons help to achieve life, but consciousness and awareness can be spread across many cells as Candace Pert (1999) recognized in her book, ‘the molecules of emotion’. Watson shared the experience of a fisherman who could ‘hear’ under water through feeling the vibrations of the fish and also the changes in the current. His sensitivity saved their lives as they managed to leave the area before a very large wave system developed that would have crashed their small boat into a reef. A new non-anthropocentric approach to democracy and governance is needed to enable monitoring from below and above to ensure that those who are elected are held to account so that they fulfil their role to act as agents of the people and that collective responsibility is indeed taken to protect both People and the Planet. One of the issues that needs to be faced is that too much power has been given to those who have been voted into power. Once elected they ‘forget’ that democratically elected leaders ought to be agents of the people and that the environment is of primary concern, not their personal political careers. Two potential approaches offer ways to

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improve democracy and governance. These are Structured Dialogue (SD) and block chain pathways1 to wellbeing (PW) informed by the same logic employed by SD which inspired the development of PW (see Chapters 14, 19 and 35). We propose that we adopt an approach guided by systemic ethics and supported by block chain pathways (see Chapter 10). The pragmatism of considering ‘if then’ scenarios before making decisions aims to: ● Address the complex needs of the most vulnerable and the interconnections across resilience, food, water and the innovation opportunity for social inclusion in line with the UN Sustainable Development Goals. ● Makes the case that critical agency is vital to understand, monitor and evaluate everyday social, economic and environmental strategies that enable sentient functioning (Nussbaum, 2011). Liberalism has progressed too far in undermining collective responsibility. The result is a form of state control and governance that is more closely linked with the market than with civil society. Minzberg (2014) stresses that radical renewal requires rebalancing society, Each voter has the right and the responsibility to think about the consequences of their daily choices for their neighbourhood, province and the wider region to which they are inextricably linked. The ‘banality of evil’ is associated with denying the pain and suffering caused by taking decisions that rode the planet and prevent the re-generation of living systems. I would argue that critical systemic intervention by residents living in local regions is needed on a daily basis to achieve ecological citizenship. The Aarhus Convention (1998) provides three policy pillars to enable this everyday engagement to occur. The policy pillars include: ● The right of all residents in the EU to access information ● The right to be heard and the right to take the areas of concern to the European Parliament and then to the European Court if the issues are not satisfactorily addressed. As Florini (2003) stresses the policy provides a valuable potential platform for extending democratic rights to residents within and beyond a nation state so that social and environmental justice concerns can be addressed at a post-national regional level. The Paris Agenda (2015)—whilst hailed as a breakthrough for global security— does not go far enough, according to many of the latest estimates (Ricke et al., 2018; IPPC, 2018). Rolling back adherence to this international agenda is worrying and is evident in the way that food, energy and water security are seen as issues that can be addressed through nation states, rather than as post national coalitions working in share biospheres. According to the UN the majority of the world’s population will be in Africa and Indonesia. A recent United Nations report projects that by 2050 1 While much has already been written about block chain applications in an industrial context, little

research has been undertaken to explore the extent to which user-centric governance and democracy can be enabled through alternative pathways.

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most of the global urban population is expected to be located in Asia (52 per cent) and Africa (21 per cent) (United Nations, 2014: 11). These selected examples take significance from the predictions made in this UN report and are directly relevant for the case made in this paper that current forms of democracy and governance are no longer relevant. According to the previous United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, Guterres (UNHCR, 2014), for the first time since the Second World War, the global figure for displaced persons has now passed 50 million and, by 2050, this figure could be as high as 150 million (Rusbridger, 2015, 13). The report stressed that currently more people are displaced than during the Second World War. The recent movement of a caravan of displaced people escaping the violent gangs of Honduras and making their way to Mexico and then onwards to USA underline the regionality of social and environmental justice concerns that have continued to escalate since 20092 from (Amnesty international, 2018)3 as a result of corrupt state institutions and gang violence. This has escalated as a result of the recent protests against a corrupt election process.4 This represents a 597% increase in the number of people ‘fleeing for their lives’, according to Amnesty International (2018). The mass displacements of people from North Africa to Europe and the displacement of Rohingya from Bangladesh underline the regionalist challenges posed by famine, floods and conflict. According to the UN fact-finding mission on5 : Suu Kyi, the Nobel peace prize laureate and former political prisoner who now leads Myanmar’s civilian government, “is in total denial” about accusations that the military in Buddhist-majority Myanmar raped, murdered and tortured Rohingya and burned their villages, sending about 700,000 fleeing to Bangladesh since last August…. Suu Kyi’s government has rejected independent international investigations into the alleged abuses and has commissioned its own probe. The government has also rejected the report by the mission led by Darusman, which said some top military leaders should be prosecuted for war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide against the Rohingya during the crackdown.

Climate change impacts environments leading to displacement of plants, animals and people as cities encroach or droughts, floods, fires render areas unable to provide a liveable environment. This has profound ethical implications for everyday living choices. According to the Nuccitelli (2018 who cites Ricke) and correctly emphasizes that as a warm country it is in its interests to address global warming and climate change. Ricke et al. (2018: 1) explain: Following the recommendations of the recent report by the US “National Academies, we executed our calculations of the social cost of carbon through a process with four distinct components8:a socio-economic module wherein the future evolution of the economy, which includes the projected emissions of CO2, is characterized without the impact of climate change; a climate module wherein the earth system responds to emissions of CO2 and other anthropogenic forcing; a damages module, wherein the economy’s response to changes in 2 https://www.theguardian.com/world/2010/nov/13/honduras-maras-gangs-deaths-kids. 3 https://www.amnesty.org/download/Documents/AMR0148652016ENGLISH.PDF. 4 https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/jan/02/us-silent-as-honduras-protesters-killed-in-post-

election-violence. 5 https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/oct/24/rohingya-genocide-is-still-going-on-says-topun-investigator.

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the Earth system are quantified; and a discounting module, wherein a time series of future damages is compressed into a single present value. In our analysis, we explored uncertainties associated with each module at the global and country level. We focused only on climate impacts and did not carry out a fully-fledged cost–benefit analysis, which would require modelling mitigation costs.

Critical Thinking and Agency Is Core to Social and Environmental Justice The argument made by Arendt in ‘the banality of evil’ is that all Germans were equally responsible for the evil perpetrated and that Eichmann, was not a lone monster responsible for the holocaust and the inequities acted upon human beings in camp hospitals. We face the inconvenient truth that we have normalised every day decisions that can be regarded as evil, because we are consuming resources in excess and we extend the mantle of the social contract to some whilst excluding the rights of non-citizens. Two potential approaches offer hope for the future as detailed in Chapter 14 These are Structured Dialogue (SD) and block chain pathways to wellbeing (PW) informed by the same logic employed by SD which inspired the development of PW. New architectures to democracy and governance need to be underpinned by systemic ethics, guided by structured dialogue and supported by block chain pathways. The pragmatism of considering ‘if then’ scenarios before making decisions is important. This paper aims to: ● Address the complex needs of the most vulnerable and the interconnections across resilience, food, water and the innovation opportunity for social inclusion in line with the UN Sustainable Development Goals. ● Makes the case that critical agency is vital to understand, monitor and evaluate everyday social, economic and environmental strategies that enable sentient functioning (Nussbaum, 2011). The critical heuristics approach is vital to address the banality of evil which now passes as commonplace governance. Today the markets are open but conceptual and spatial (geographical) borders are closed. This is the paradox that goes UN named in the name of ‘good governance and border protection’. In situations where children can be wrested from the arms of their parents in the name of a neo-liberal economy is problematic. More people are displaced today than during the Second World War. More animals and plants have been displaced than ever. According to the previous United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, Guterres (UNHCR, 2014), for the first time since the Second World War, the global figure for displaced persons has now passed 50 million and, by 2050, this figure could be as high as 150 million (Rusbridger, 2015, 13). Highly urbanised, environmentally affected regions have been selected as socalled ‘canary cases’ to address the projected 2050 scenario when most of the global urban population is expected to be located in Asia (52 per cent) and Africa (21 per

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cent) (United Nations, 2014: 11). The study areas selected take significance from the predictions made in this UN report. They are also the primary focus of this paper and the recent volumes on which it draws, because they face substantial environmental change. These two architectures for participation and scaling up governance will be detailed in Chapter 14 of this volume:

The Legacy of Structured Dialogue and Potential of Block Chain Pathways for Monitoring from Below SD was developed by Alexander Christakis with insights from West Churchman and John Warfield. The process involves people sharing their areas of concern and developing a triggering question which can be explored face to face or through online engagement processes. It is suited to addressing very complex challenges in order to inform policy decisions. The process involves enabling participants to think through the implications of one option versus another and to vote on the option. Their choices then form part of a decision-making process that enables participants to decide between options in a process of structured dialogue. (see Chapter 35 this volume for more details), to cite Jeff Dietrich who draws on Flanagan and Christakis (2010): Suppose we were able to make progress in addressing: (Idea X) will this help SIGNIFICANTLY in meeting: (Idea Y) in the context of successful outcomes of the triggering question?

Structured dialogue/ pathways to wellbeing/other approaches that draw on SD rely on enabling people to think through options by pairing potential factors and considering the implications of the choice, through using ‘if then scenarios’. The radical potential of this approach is that it enables people to make sense of complexity and to reframe their options. It is constructivist and provides some hope as a way to balance individual and collective needs. Groups of people concerned about issues meet to brainstorm and to develop a triggering question that they are all interested in working on. Then ideas are generated by writing them up on a board or post it stickers on the wall. Then ideas are grouped, and participants can then decide to vote on which combination of ideas is best suited to address their concern. Participants are asked to think through options using ‘if then scenarios’. These ideas begin to show areas of divergence and convergence and patterns begin to emerge. The areas of overlap on shared notions of core factors for social, economic and environmental wellbeing are caring for people and their environment on which they depend and of which they are a strand in a web of living systems. The political potential of scaling up the Aarhus Convention (1998) which requires that all members of the EU have access to information and the right to speak out on issues that have a bearing on the environment be heard, has been discussed (Florini,

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2003) and extended in ‘Planetary Passport’ (as a critical heuristic step toward a new form of governance and democracy based on discussing ways in which already existing policy and small pilots of alternative forms of engagement can be extended and applied). Monitoring from above and below can be achieved using a combination of structured dialogue in local learning communities and pathways to wellbeing to explore decision making at a personal level in order to achieve everyday decision making to meet the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals. Dialogic design science has been developed with the intent to enable participation, in order to construct better social, economic and environmental solutions. It helped to inspire the pathways to wellbeing approach. These new architectures for democracy and governance use readily available tools and software (refs and websites). The policies that could make this approach possible already exist (Florini, 2003; McIntyre-Mills, 2014, 2017):

Source McIntyre-Mills, 2017: 313 The structure and policy at different levels for nation states in post national regions could be brought together to bear on the area of concern—namely poverty, climate change and displacement of people and destruction of habitat. The approach used by Stiglitz et al. (2010) to wellbeing stocks could be supported by enabling people to ‘be the change’ on a daily basis through the way they choose to live their lives. Their footprint can be monitored locally, and they can generate transformation locally. The potential success of this approach is detailed in a chapter on the cascading risks of climate change and the way in which the management of risks was achieved through a transparent water management application that succeeded in getting people to change their water usage in a very short period of time through a combination of shame and the wish to ‘do the right thing’ and to share resources in order to prevent ‘day zero’, the day when taps would run dry and the residents of Cape Town would need to stand in queues at approximately 200 proposed water collection points. The problem was

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caused by the high cost of implementing a desalination plant along with reservations about the appropriateness of such an option (despite the rising rate of in-migration to the Cape). A further issue was the associated political friction between levels of government with different party-political affiliations. The use of structured dialogic design across political interest groups has been shown to be both appropriate and successful (Christakis, 2006; Kakoulaki and Christakis, 2017). The monitoring from below approach achieved re-generation of control by the people of a scarce resource. The potential for further monitoring by means of pathways to wellbeing software to achieve social, economic and environmental outcomes for social and environmental justice can be achieved. This is a way to achieve re-generation with people in and beyond the usual structures of governance. The approach extends the social contract to ecological citizens who can log on to a new post national form of governance and democracy. It includes those who are currently excluded from citizenship—the young and the displaced.

Pathways to Wellbeing This application of the logic used in SD extends the UN Local Agenda 21 which requires that socio-cultural, economic and environmental accounting and accountability (triple bottom line) be applied. This would enable local residents and members of a wider post national region to have a say in matters that impact on social and environmental justice. Representation, accountability and re-generation are the three major challenges of the day that need to be addressed by means of a cross boundary regionalist approach to address the big issues of the day, namely poverty and climate change. They require a new approach to democracy and governance to enable monitoring from below and above to ensure that those who are elected are held to account and that collective responsibility is indeed taken to protect the Planet.

Liberalism: The Market Has Prevailed Over the State and Civil Society Capitalism has delivered an apparent rise in living standards for many and the narrative that we believe is that the current way of life today is better. This is true for the elite and still true for increasingly squeezed middle classes. But it is not true for the majority of the world’s population. They do not appear in news media and many are silenced through fear. Statistics show that the gap between the rich and poor is wider than ever before, and the rich are richer than ever before. The size of companies is larger than ever before. Miller’s (2010: 57) paper stresses that Foucault’s lectures on the birth of bio politics should really have referred more explicitly to neo-liberalism:

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Dominant in world thought for three decades, neoliberalism was nothing less arrogant than ‘a whole way of being and thinking’, an attempt to create ‘an enterprise society’ through the pretence that the latter was a natural (but never achieved) state of affairs, even as competition was imposed as a framework of regulating everyday life in the most subtly comprehensive statism imaginable. (pp. 145, 147, 218)

Hannah Arendt stressed that in Germany the state normalised evil. Obedience to the state, resulted in disregard for the rights of many human beings. The notion that Kantian ethics or ‘the moral law’ could be misinterpreted to mean—the Führer’s law was the result of the loss of all critical engagement by the public. Unless it is possible to hold organisations to account, states can act with impunity. The big issues of the day, namely poverty and climate change cannot be addressed without collective responsibility. Hence, the argument that new architectures for democracy and governance are needed based on: A priori norms—that ecological citizenship ought to protect current and future generations of living systems. A posteriori - measures of the extent to which UN Sustainable Development goals are upheld and the Sendai Risk Platform addressed. Both these UN documents are based on the notion that individuals and organisations need to act in concert to address the goals across national boundaries.

According to Judith Butler (2011: 1): By writing about Eichmann, Arendt (1963) was trying to understand… a crime against humanity, one that would acknowledge the destruction of Jews, Gypsies, gay people, communists, the disabled and the ill. Just as the failure to think was a failure to take into account the necessity and value that makes thinking possible, so the destruction and displacement of whole populations was an attack not only on those specific groups, but on humanity itself. As a result, Arendt objected to a specific nation- state conducting a trial of Eichmann exclusively in the name of its own population.

The nation state per se is part of the problem. It is one of the boundaries that need to be addressed. If we agree with Arendt that “the consequences of non-thinking are genocidal, or certainly can be…” (Butler, 2011: 2) then we need to teach critical thinking skills as a basis for democratic engagement. ‘The will to power’ and total control by Hitler who took the Nietzschean project (to question the need to manage personal will and to eliminate the notion of God) to the ultimate extreme—the management of populations and the eradication of diversity in order to create his vision of a purified and strengthened Aryan Race. The Total or Final Solution was the basis for Nazism as expressed in the ideology of National Socialism. Collective responsibility for evil needed to be acknowledged, not merely the guilt of Eichmann. The German population ceased to think critically and to engage with the state or to raise questions as why factories should be powered by the death camps. So, what has ‘the banality of evil’ got to do with strategic decision making, bio politics and food security, is the obvious question? The answer is that biopolitics refers to neoliberal notions of freedom. Balancing individual and collective responsibility require critical thought and engagement by people on an everyday basis to

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prevent the banality of evil from recurring. In this paper, I explore why social and environmental justice needs to be served by systemic ethics (McIntyre-Mills, 2014) supported by systemic intervention. This requires agency to ensure that individual needs and collective responsibly are balanced. The case is made that liberalism has progressed too far in undermining collective responsibility. The result is a form of state control and governance that is more closely linked with the market than with civil society. Minzberg (2014) stresses that radical renewal requires rebalancing society, I would argue that power politics need to be addressed and that Foucault’s approach to critical theory is vital. But one ingredient is missing and that is the ability to draw the line based on critical systemic intervention. The critical heuristics approach is vital to address the banality of evil which now passes as commonplace governance. Today the markets are open but conceptual and spatial (geographical) borders are closed. This is the paradox that goes UN named in the name of ‘good governance and border protection’. In situations where children can be wrested from the arms of their parents in the name of a neo-liberal economy is problematic. The social and environment challenges have been exploited by people traffickers in Africa, for example where slavery has become more visible than ever in Libya as desperate people fall into the hands of traffickers who sell them, ‘like goats’ in the market place.6 The notion that sentient beings have rights is not even on the horizon in some socio-political contexts. In line with the Paris Declaration (1997), public administration needs to be framed together with co-researchers with local lived experience. A multisite symposium (McIntyre–Mills et al. 2018a, b) in Adelaide, South Australia and Bandung, West Java explored the challenge of increased urbanization and movement towards cities and the implications it has for the life chances of unemployed women who become increasingly vulnerable to trafficking as the natural environment deteriorates (Finn, 2016). In Indonesia the rate of urbanization is faster than other Asian countries: According to the World Bank: “Indonesia is undergoing a historic transformation from a rural to an urban economy. The country’s cities are growing faster than in other Asian countries at a rate of 4.1% per year. By 2025–in less than 10 years— Indonesia can expect to have 68% of its population living in cities”. http://www.wor ldbank.org/en/news/feature/2016/06/14/indonesia-urban-story. The UN 2030 Agenda7 is: the new global framework to help eradicate poverty and achieve sustainable development by 2030. It includes an ambitious set of 17 Sustainable Development Goals…. The 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development sets out the global framework to eradicate poverty and achieve sustainable development by 2030.

A critical reading of the capabilities approach could stress that Nussbaum’s (2011) approach does not take into account power dynamics or the institutional power wielded by a minority (McIntyre-Mills et al., 2018) who use the state, the legal system and the market to protect their own interests at the expense of others 6 http://www.aljazeera.com/news/2017/12/outrageous-reality-libya-171201085605212.html. 7 http://europa.eu/rapid/press-release_MEMO-15-5709_en.htm.

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Nussbaum (2006, 2011) is an essentialist who stresses the basic conditions for a life worth living for all sentient beings.8 She stresses that sentient beings have rights simply because they are sentient. These capabilities provide a priori guidelines for ethical decision making. But Amartya Sen (2000, 2009) and Churchman (1971, 1979) stress that we need to also consider the pragmatic consequences of our decisions. The challenge is to change governance and to ‘enhance the couplings between nature and society’ (Stokols, 2018: 243) in positive, not negative ways. Stokols (2018: 271) goes on to stress that: The adaptive capacity of the human environment system depends on ecological resilience, or adaptive coupling between society and nature.

This is as much an intellectual as a spiritual journey: either way it requires both a behavioural and a value change. The Pathways to Wellbeing project proposes a new architecture for democracy and governance to protect the commons and has been piloted as a proof of concept with NGO and Local Government and discussed as a wider post national approach that extends Nussbaum’s human rights approach from human dignity to instead consider the importance of enabling sentient beings to live a life worth living. She thus extends the social contract to include sentient beings and stresses that we need to be able to enjoy and connect with nature. According dignity and respect to all living systems is however overdue. Churchman’s questioning approach (Design of Inquiring Systems’ or DIS) is an approach based on critical heuristics or ‘what if questions’ that can be extended by means of scenarios to enhance engagement in decision making, in order to test out ideas with those who have lived experience. Openness to the ideas of others is important for democracy as is the need to continuously revise and adjust the way in which we live our lives in relation to one another and the environment. The axiom to guide transformative research is that we can be free and diverse to the extent that our freedom and diversity does not undermine the rights of others. But we also need to accept that limiting carbon emissions will require a dramatic adaptation to reduce the harmful effects of climate change (Meadows & Randers, 1992; IPCC, 2018). To ‘rescue enlightenment from itself’ (McIntyre-Mills & Van Gigch, 2006), we need to realize that there are many ways of knowing. Logic, empiricism, idealism, dialectic and pragmatism (as West Churchman suggested) are some of the ways in which we can know the world. But these ways of knowing are situated (in the sense used by Donna Haraway).

8 Trafficking

human beings and transportation of animals, confining them in conditions that undermine their capability to live a life worth living. This is one of the Frontiers to Justice (Nussbaum, 2006) that need to be addressed. The epidemics associated with mal treating farm animals through confining them has resulted in swine flu and avian flu, whilst mad cow disease was caused by feeding cows offal in food lots. The COVID-19 pandemic was caused by trafficking wild animals such as bats and pangolins from South Africa.

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Churchman discussed many ways of knowing9 but these need to be extended if we are to ‘rescue the enlightenment from itself’ (McIntyre-Mills, 2006). An appreciation of animal knowing, plant knowing, the value of the arts and being able to appreciate ‘art in nature’ is a starting point for extending the hierarchy of knowledge that Kenneth Boulding alluded to in his ‘Skeleton of Knowledge’ (1956). Transformation of values from individual human knowing to appreciation of collective knowledge and responsibility and then the leap to appreciation that anthropocentric knowing is far too limited and non-anthropocentrism requires ecological knowing. The work of systemic thinkers who have extended our ways of knowing to take into account Bateson’s (1972) level 1, 2 and 3 learning include those who take on board the need to apply thinking to practice in a responsible manner that addresses both social and environmental justice.

Transformative Research Transformative research is both ‘personal and societal’ (Mertens, 2017). The argument set out in this paper is based on a critical heuristics approach that strives to make policy decisions based on enhancing critical agency. It upholds the axiom of the rights of sentient beings as a priori and normative. Transformative research begins with an assumption that social and environmental justice requires upholding the right to a life worth living and to ensure that sentient beings are not commodified and abused. The Paris Agenda (2015)—whilst hailed as a breakthrough for global security— does not go far enough, according to many of the latest estimates (Ricke et al. 2018; IPPC, 2018). Rolling back adherence to this international agenda is worrying and is evident in the way that food, energy and water security are seen as issues that can be addressed through nation states, rather than as post national coalitions working in share biospheres. The political potential of scaling up the Aarhus Convention (1998) which requires that all members of the EU have access to information and the right to speak out on issues that have a bearing on the environment be heard, has been discussed (Florini, 2003) and extended in ‘Planetary Passport’ (as a critical heuristic step toward a new form of governance and democracy based on discussing ways in which already existing policy and small pilots of alternative forms of engagement can be extended and applied). 9 Churchman had great insight, but our thinking and practice is always limited by our embodied selves and by our experiences. Churchman stressed the need to ‘think about our thinking’ and to engage with others through questioning our design of inquiry. This is a good start as is his emphasis on striving for ideals (shaped by norms) but also being open to testing out ideas by considering the lived experiences of others. He could also have explicitly talked about gendered knowing, species knowing and also about the way in which the ecology of mind is extended by thinking about the consequences of decisions for this generation of living systems and the next. Churchman stressed that the systems approach is not only about making holistic, universal maps of the world. It is also about appreciating diversity.

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This paper combines the insights detailed by Florini (2003) with a more widely applied architecture of local governance as detailed by UN Local Agenda 21 which requires that socio-cultural, economic and environmental accounting and accountability (triple bottom line) be applied. This would enable local residents and members of a wider post national region to have a say in matters that impact on social and environmental justice. Food security requires thinking about bio politics. Hanna Arendt stresses that critical thought is core to upholding justice. This is not the same as a post humanist approach, because it assumes the individual and collective role of responsible human beings. But what is missing in Arendt’s work is an understanding of our ecological interconnectedness. This comes through drawing on the work of Donna Haraway (1984, 1991, 1992, 2010) who understands that ‘we are the boundaries’ and that all knowledge is situated. To address the ethical risks associated with partial knowledge we need to think about our thinking, and we need to take action as ecological citizens10 (Shiva, 2012). Neoliberalism has delivered freedom within democracies for some citizens, namely the elite with power and capital as well as the fully employed who have some job security. For non-citizens, those too young to vote and the 99% who do not have the freedoms enjoyed by the elites, the notion of rights and responsibilities needs to be unpacked (Stiglitz, 2011). The right to make decisions that are in the interests of the minority and at the expense of the majority needs to be explored. Voting in a democratically elected government requires ensuring that the right to a life worth living is secured within the state and its region. The notion that decisions about carbon emissions is one that a single nationally elected government can make decisions that impact the life chances of all living systems needs to be addressed. Supporting lower carbon emissions as required for human security necessitates working across national boundaries and with the support of the public, private and civil society sectors.11 10 Another

critical systemic thinker who has extended our ways of knowing and included the environmental context is Gregory Bateson (1972) who stressed the importance of level 1, 2 and 3 learning to include those who take on board the need to apply thinking to practice in a responsible manner that addresses both social and environmental justice. The paper traces the way in which market capitalism has played out through the role of trade, supported by the creation of state apparatus that evolved in tandem with the expanding market system and the risks that it poses for living systems. The will to know and the will to power, paradoxically underpin the market incentive. The ‘freedoms’ to control people, other animals and nature have a price for living systems of which we are a strand. 11 Researchers need to consider the social, economic and environmental aspects of their proposed area of concern and to consider to what extent different stakeholders have different ideas about what constitutes good governance. At this point, I introduce the importance of ensuring that areas of concern are not gender blind or blind to ageism, or racism or a range of disabilities, for example. The application of simple sets of questions to enable exploring the intersectional challenges (Crenshaw, 1991) facing women and children would be a first step to designing pathways to wellbeing for children and their families in Limpopo, South Africa, for example. The immigrant in a new environment is regarded with antipathy. Without support the isolated mother is more likely to give up her child and to view the child (if sickly or ill as a liability) (Cimric, 2010). This sort of behaviour

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Rebalancing Rights and Responsibilities The notion of extending a sense of ‘ecological citizenship’ (McIntyre-Mills, 2017) could foster awareness of the need for democracy to revitalize the balance between the right to consume the planet to extinction and the responsibility to presence the common good.12 Rights need to be reframed as do responsibilities so that the economy and the market are seen not as an eternality but as part of the global commons on which this generation and the nest depends. We can redefine these boundaries because we are the boundaries—according to Haraway. The only problem is that some have more power to decide than others. The responsibility to protect children wrested from the arms of their parents at the Mexican border lies not with the children or their parents, but with the voters—the public and civil society who need to defend the rights of those who are outside the mantle of the social contract. The responsibility to protect animals subjected to transportation as part of the so-called live meat trade lies with voters who need to redraw the boundaries of what is acceptable decent treatment of animals and what constitutes unacceptable commodification of sentient beings. Scott (1998) in ‘Seeing like a State’ takes the approach at which Foucault hints by giving detailed examples of the way in which the state has crushed diversity—from designing monocultures in forestry to ironing out diverse political opinions. I argue that if we accept the concept of the banality of evil—the notion that everyday decisions by many can collectively result in a normalization and acceptance of evil—then we have to re-think many of the aspects of governance and democracy that we take for granted today. If the German population as a whole (and their collaborators) were guilty of collective evil through being unable to think critically (and simply accepting what they were told to accept) what does that mean for current democracy and governance? If we can now accept that collective responsibility can be ascribed and that many nations can together be collectively responsible for evil—such as Germany and her collaborators, for example— or perhaps nations that refuse to take responsibility for the impact of their emissions on their neighbours—then we need to think about what that means for current forms of governance. If we can accept that climate, change is the result of collective decisions that constitute a normalization of living beyond our limits what does that mean for democracy and governance? If we can accept that more people than ever before have been displaced, what does that mean for human ethics and the nation that neoliberal governments should close borders? If we can accept that it is now scientifically proven that genetically human is seen in populations that are reduced to unliveable conditions and the rise in witchcraft accusations is an indicator of people living belong the ability to cope. 12 Minzberg (2014: ii) is correct in stressing the need for re-balancing rights and responsibilities, but he naively suggested ‘extending an American revolution’—when in fact American capitalism is problematic. The notion of “instituting greater checks on private sector activities that have run out of control” is however a good idea “in order to balance power across all the sectors … each of us has to believe in something greater than our persons and our possessions if we are to protect our progeny and our planet.” (Minzberg, 2014: 24).

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beings share 98% of their genes with a lab rat and even more with the primates that are experimented on—how can we justify inflicting pain or denying rights to human beings and other sentient animals? If we can accept that the boundaries between people are constructed on the basis of will and power, then we can accept that people have the right and the responsibility to do something about injustice, because ‘we are the boundaries ‘as Haraway (1992) stresses. The need for democracy to re-engage with critical thinking is vital. Is it possible for groups to be held responsible in the same way that an individual can be held responsible? Arendt’s notion that collective responsibility is upheld when each individual engages critically with the everyday decisions about who gets what when why, how and to what effect?

Conclusion: Rescuing the Enlightenment from Itself Through Recognition of Our Interconnectedness and Human Agency ‘Rescuing the enlightenment from itself’ (McIntyre-Mills, 2006), discussed the potential for critical thinking to enable people to think through their rights and responsibilities. Critical reflection is the only thing that will enable people to avoid stepping back from their responsibilities to engage actively as citizens (not only of nation states, but as citizens of the world) who care about what is going on across the border. In the ‘Banality of Evil’, Hannah Arendt stresses that this is the only faculty that will prevent other occurrences of collective evil—that resulted in death camps where prisoners were processed under factory like conditions in Nazi Germany. The issue of responsibility was collectively shared and the right to deny responsibly, because of following orders was set aside as an unacceptable conclusion in the summing up by Hannah Arendt at Eichmann’s Trial. She blamed Eichmann but also the system that enabled him to operate with impunity. But she did not leave it as a reified system, she talked about the collective responsibility of the entire German nation. In ‘Frontiers of Justice’ (Nussbaum, 2006) outlines these points, but does not develop an argument to support the safe passage of all living systems from one generation of stewards to the next. So, this paper strives to extend her argument. Safe passage for human and other animals in the wake of disasters (social and natural) will become increasingly commonplace and can be regarded as the so-called ‘new normal’. To ‘rescue enlightenment from itself’, we need to realize that there are many ways of knowing, but to protect food security ethical decision making is essential. Nussbaum’s capability approach is core to human agency for food security along with respect and stewardship of voiceless sentient beings. Her work dovetails quite well with Donaldson and Kymlicka (2011) in Zoopolis. Protecting habitat for human

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animals and other living systems is the logical next step to prevent existential risks to all. Safe passage across habitats in post national regions flows from this argument on new forms of architecture for governance. Ways of knowing as listed by Churchman such as logic, empiricism, idealism, dialectic and pragmatism need to be extended to include other ways of knowing by drawing on nature to inspire biomimicry. Wadsworth (2010: xxvii) poses the question as to: “What would a more life-enhancing system of research and evaluation look like?”

Wadsworth then goes on to say: Although still dimly perceived by many, some of it ironically reflects some very ancient wisdom, now converging with some breath-taking new knowledge from physics, biology, mathematics, engineering, psychology and sociology in a transdisciplinary picture that may promise to give not just hitherto elites but all of us a whole new way of thinking about ‘how we can be with each other’ and our worlds…. (xxvii) By taking a magnifying glass to ‘ the system, we begin to detect a vast web of energized micro-interactions between us (and everything else); including all the daily familiar highly interpersonal and environmental inquiry interactions – what we notice, pick up on, see and hear and say to each other, all our inner and outer conversations to make sense of it all, how we feel, what we conclude from our experiences, what we remember, what we think and don’t think, what we know, believe, value, expect and not expect, what we speak up about, what we remain silent about, how we draw conclusions and reach new ones, and then calculate, decide, plan and try out the new implications: what we actually do next, and where we go, who with and why…Indeed’ the system’ appears to turn out, in important ways, to comprise what seems like the highly ‘ individual and personal’ in the here and now – but which gets writ larger and constituted as the patterns of social activities of groups, organisations and ‘ the collective. And these in turn get writ larger still as communities, institutions, societies, international global ties, epochs, the cosmos and history.

The recent research at the University of Florence and at the University of Western Australia by on extending human capabilities to understand the way in which plants ‘talk to one another’ extends some of the points made earlier by Lyall Watson (1972) in his contentious work that explores the boundaries of science and folklore. A University of Western Australia news report13 explains that Dr. Monica Gagliano has teamed with colleagues Professor Daniel Robert at the University of Bristol (UK) and Professor Stefano Mancuso at the University of Florence.14 As such systemic ethics needs to be applied to all living systems based on the a priori right to a life worth living and the a posteriori responsibility to consider the consequences of their actions for other living systems as stewards. This is linked with human rights and has been stressed by deep ecologists, eco systemic thinkers such as Haraway (1992), Shiva (2012) and Wadsworth (2010) and critical thinkers such as West Churchman (1972).

13 http://www.news.uwa.edu.au/201204034491/research/talking-plants. 14 Talking

plants—Futuris https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p75Jw7gkmuQ.

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McIntyre-Mills, J. (2014). Systemic ethics and non-anthropocentric stewardship. New York: Springer. McIntyre-Mills, J. (2017). Planetary passport. New York: Springer. McIntyre-Mills, J. (2017a). Planetary passport for representation, accountability and re-generation. Contemporary systems series. Cham, Switzerland: Springer. McIntyre-Mills, J. (2017b). Recognising our hybridity and interconnectedness: Implications for social and environmental justice. Current Sociology. https://uk.sagepub.com/en-gb/journals-per missions. McIntyre-Mills, J. (2018a). Policy design for non-anthropocentric pathways to protect biodiversity and regenerate the land. International Journal of Educational Development in Africa. https://doi. org/10.25159/2312-3540/2865. McIntyre-Mills, J. (2018b). Cascading risks of climate change political and policy dynamics of water crisis : Consequences of modernity: Implications for transformative praxis. In J. McIntyre-Mills, Romm, Y. Corcoran-Nantes (Eds.), Democracy and Governance for resourcing the commons: Theory and practice on rural-urban balance. Cham: Springer. McIntyre-Mills & Van Gigch. (2006). Wisdom, knowledge and management. London: Springer. Minzberg, H. (2015). Rebalancing society: Radical renewal beyond left, right, and center. Oakland: Berrett-Koehler Publishers, Inc. Nir Kshetri. (2017). Will blockchain emerge as a tool to break the poverty chain in the Global South’? Third World Quarterly, 38 (8), 1710–1732. http://doi.org/10.1080/01436597.2017.129 8438. Nuccitelli, D. (2018). New study finds incredibly high carbon pollution costs—Especially for the US and India: As a wealthy, warm country, the US would benefit from implementing a carbon tax to slow global warming. The Guardian. https://www.theguardian.com/environment/climateconsensus-97-per-cent/2018/oct/01/new-study-finds-incredibly-high-carbon-pollution-costs-esp ecially-for-the-us-and-india. Nussbaum, M. (2006). Frontiers of justice. London: Harvard University Press. Nussbaum, M. (2011). Creating capabilities: The human development approach. Cambridge: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press. Pert, C. (1999). The molecules of emotion: Why you feel the way you feel. New York: Simon and. Polanyi, M. (1966). The tacit dimension. Chicago: Chicago University Press. Foreword by Amartya Sen, 2009. Polanyi, M. (1968). The great transformation: The political and economic origins of our time. New York: Renehart and Co. Rayner, A. https://en.wikiversity.org/wiki/Natural_Inclusion. Ricke, K., Drouet, L. 3, Caldeira, K., & Tavoni, M. (2018). Country-level social cost of carbon. Nature Climate Change. www.nature.com/natureclimatechange Published: 24 September 2018. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41558-018-0282-y. Scott J. (1998). Seeing like a state. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. Sen, A. (2000). Development as freedom. New York: Knopf. Sen, A. (2009). The idea of justice. Cambridge: The Belknap Press. Stiglitz, J. J. (2011). Of the 1%, by the 1%, for the 1%. https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2011/05/ top-one-percent-201105. Stiglitz, J., Sen, A., & Fitoussi, J. P. (2010). Mis-measuring our lives: Why the GDP doesn’t add up. New York: The New Press. Stokols, D. (2018). Social ecology in the digital age: Solving complex problems in a globalized world. London: Academic Press. United Nations. (2014). World Urbanisation Prospects: The 2014 Revision https://esa.un.org/unpd/ wup/publications/files/wup2014-highlights.Pdf. United Nations Paris Climate Change Agenda. (2015). Conference of the Parties Twenty-first session Paris, 30 November to 11 December 2015. https://unfccc.int/resource/docs/2015/cop21/eng/l09 r01.pdf.

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Wadsworth, Y. (2010). Building in research and evaluation. Human inquiry for living systems. Sydney: Allen and Unwin. Watson, L. (1973). Super nature. New York: Anchor Press. Whitehead, J. (2018). Living theory research as a way of life. Brown Dog books.

Janet J. McIntyre-Mills is Honorary Professor in the College of Education at University of South Africa, Tshwane, South Africa; Visiting Research Fellow of the College of Professions Main North Terrace at Adelaide University; and Adjunct Associate Professor in the College of Business Government and Law at Flinders University, Sturt Campus, Adelaide.

Chapter 6

Prospects for Sustainable Living with Focus on Interrelatedness, Interdependence and Mutuality: Some African Perspectives N. R. A. Romm and P. V. Lethole Abstract In this chapter we endorse the concept of multispecies relationality by explicating African worldviews which emphasize the importance of the practice in African culture (as in other Indigenous traditions) of having a totem in which a human soul is given to animals, plants and nature. For example, the clan totem called Ndou in Venda means persons have characteristics of the elephant, which forms part of their identity. Some clans are not allowed to cut a tree called Mutavhatsindi because they are Vhatavhatsindi (people associated with the tree) and this can bring bad omens. Rivers and caves can also function as totems. We can interpret the symbolism of totemism as implying that humans and non-humans become separated analytically only by creating the categories of “human” and “non-human”, which are (often) recognized to create an arbitrary boundary. In our considering further the symbolism of totems in this chapter, we confirm that we can draw out, and extend, the ethical implications of African cultural traditions which suggest that we are all (and can become better) embedded in a community, which includes “all that exists”, including past, present, and future generations. Some authors emphasize that the African concept of Ubuntu intimates that humans need to care for other humans as well as animals, trees and rivers (as the biophysical world). We point out how this interpretation of Ubuntu, which implies a (spiritual) orientation towards furthering “cosmic harmony”, is tied to a moral standpoint to create more connectivity in seeking regenerative sustainability. Keywords Co-existence · Multispecies relationality · Non-anthropocentric living · Regenerative sustainability · Totemism · Ubuntu

N. R. A. Romm (B) · P. V. Lethole University of South Africa, Pretoria, South Africa © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2021 J. J. McIntyre-Mills and Y. Corcoran-Nantes (eds.), From Polarisation to Multispecies Relationships, Contemporary Systems Thinking, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-33-6884-2_6

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Introduction In this chapter we elaborate on some African perspectives regarding eco-systemic living grounded in a sense of connectedness, whereby people experience themselves as existing “in relation” and recognize that they are part of a web of relations, including all living and non-living things, as well as the past and future. Chilisa explains that this kind of worldview is held by many Indigenous people worldwide “in the colonized and former colonized societies” (2020: 24). In terms of this worldview, “people are beings with many relations and many connections. They have connections with the living and the non-living, with land, with the earth, with animals and with other beings” (2020: 24). She indicates that among the Bantu people of Southern Africa, this principle [of connectedness] is “captured under the philosophy of Ubuntu”. She points out that on the social level there is an emphasis on the I/we relationship, which is summarized by Goduka (2000) in English as “I am because we are” (Chilisa, 2020: 24). She goes on to note that the concept of (and practices associated with) relationality also encompasses a specific epistemology, where systems of knowledge (and processes of knowing) are “built on relationships”—including relations with “all of creation” (p. 24). Furthermore, the axiology too is relational, in that the appeal is that people should act in view of their relationality with others. The injunction is to put effort into building relationships. In the African context, while the word Ubuntu is derived from the Nguni languages (a group of Bantu languages spoken in Southern Africa), the philosophy is not exclusive to Southern Africa. We can suggest that Ubuntu as a term encapsulates numerous sets of values that have their roots in various African cultures. Chiba (2013) argues that most traditional cultures in Africa emphasize “a number of moral duties” that could be “bundled up into Ubuntu” (https://www.brandsouthafrica.com/people-culture/people/ubuntuis-about-relationships). In line with the theme of this book on multi-species relationality (and indeed being careful of creating rigid distinctions between different species), we point to a growing number of African scholars explicating African worldviews, who emphasize practices in African culture (as in other Indigenous perspectives) related to totemism (see, for instance, Chilisa, 2020; Goduka, 2000; Moguvera, 2017; Ntseane, 2012; Zimunya & Gwara, 2018). As an example, the clan totem called Ndou in Venda means persons have characteristics of the elephant and they have a responsibility to respect and conserve this animal, and cannot eat its meat, because it forms part of their identity. Furthermore, the (analytic) distinction between “human” and “nonhuman” is rendered fuzzy as animals (in this case the elephant) are seen to possess the same life force as humans who belong to this clan, and vice versa, these humans partake of the characteristic of the elephant, recognising that they share the same soul. Thus the “boundary” between human and non-human life is recognized to be an arbitrary boundary. The implication here, which we spell out in this chapter, is that there is moral justification to avoid harming non-human animals. In addition, also speaking about this (Venda) cultural heritage, plant life is also revered. Some clans are not allowed to cut a tree called Mutavhatsindi: the people in

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the clan are symbolically associated/identified with it and are called Vhatavhatsindi, which also forms their cultural identity. If any of Vhatavhatsindi cuts this tree, their belief is that it can bring bad omens to that person. That is, the tree is regarded as sacred and there is an injunction to care for the tree. Likewise, a sense of connection with all living and non-living things (again where this boundary is not fixed) can be fostered. Ashiedu, speaking from her perspective on the Igbo people of Nigeria, suggests that actions which “pollute the land … could bring the wrath of the Earth Goddess to the offenders” (2014: 108). This confirms to us that we can draw out, and further cultivate, the ethical implications of African cultural traditions which suggest that we all are (and can become better) embedded in a community, which includes “all that exists” and extends also to the past, present, and future generations. What we draw out in this chapter, by referring to literature from Indigenous scholars and also to Patricia Lethole’s experiential knowledge of African cultural traditions, is that as far as we see it, Ubuntu intimates—or can be interpreted as intimating—that humans need to care for other humans as well as animals, trees and rivers (as the biophysical world). It is in this sense that individuals (seen as selves-inrelation) depend on communities to authenticate their own existence. This systemic worldview is tied to a moral standpoint to create more connectivity in our practices. However, we recognize that many questions remain that have created contention between authors writing about Ubuntu and its implications for our ways of living. In this chapter we take a further look at such questions. Before we continue, we should note that in terms of the racialized categorizations forcibly used by the South African apartheid state when it came to power in 1948, Patricia is regarded as Black and Norma as White. However, we recognize that, thanks to the democracy introduced in 1994, we have more opportunities to learn from each other across our cultural heritages and we realize that indeed we share a concern for forwarding Ubuntu as a philosophy of relationality. Le Grange notes that this concept (Ubuntu) has become “part of the conversations of many South Africans” and he suggests furthermore that it can and should be “harnessed and restored as an ecophilo-sophy that can contribute to greater environmental consciousness on the part of (South) Africans” (2012a: 64). It is in this spirit that we have embarked on this chapter, exploring together what might be meant by going beyond polarity in human-to-human relationships and indeed in all relationships (with all that exists). To offer readers a sense of our deliberations around questions posed by the concept of Ubuntu, we refer below to a dialogue held via email exchanges as we started to construct this chapter. This shows readers where each of us is “coming from” and how we are considering together via this chapter ways of interpreting and extending Ubuntu. The reconstruction of the dialogue below (with some adjustments for the benefit of readers) should orient readers to appreciate or make more sense of our deliberations which we detail in the following sections. This chapter is structured largely around the issues mooted in our starting dialogue. In the course of the chapter, we offer our views on beliefs associated with taboos, which many Western anthropologists (especially culturally-insensitive ones) have dubbed as “superstition” (as noted critically by Adyanga, 2012: 601). We also offer some thoughts on individualism and collectivism and note that the individualism typically associated with Western

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cultures tends to draw sharp boundaries between the “self” (seen as an “entity”) and others (that which is not “the self”)—as explained also by Gergen (2009). We indicate how we might consider communal life in relation to ecosystemic living, with some reference to examples taken from Patricia’s “insider” experiences of Venda practices, and our joint deliberations around these (also with reference to literature, some of which Patricia read and cited, and some of which Norma read and cited—in a story that reflects both of our initial perspectives and our joint learning as we wrote this chapter).

Our Starting Dialogue In this section we take more or less verbatim some of the exchanges that we had when preparing this chapter. Norma’s contribution to the dialogue below is N and Patricia’s is P. N:

P:

N:

N continued:

I see you mentioned in the text you sent me about a collectivist orientation in African Indigenous ways of living. When you say that “the human action reflects collectivism because it was aimed at benefiting the group or tribe”, can it be more than that by going beyond a particular group (to a wider social community)? I am wondering if there are different interpretations of how far the collectivism goes—for example, it could also extend maybe to the Pan African goal. Pan Africanism does not consider that any group can be separated from other groups/nations, etc. and maybe not even in the whole world. What do you think? As far as collectivism goes, I believe that, for instance, what is happening now during Corona Virus pandemic is going beyond individualism to collectivism as many people are recognizing that we need to act internationally. What the World Health Organization (WHO) is doing to all nations and the role it is playing in this time of Corona virus catastrophe can be considered as “universal” Ubuntu. But the animal kingdom is hardly mentioned and that we need to take care of them. Meanwhile, I agree with your submission regarding Pan Africanism as a goal and your addition regarding Pan-Africanism. Yes, I know what you mean about the animal kingdom. Janet [McIntyreMills] sent me an interesting talk by Jane Goodall, which appeared on CNN and which traces Corona virus to our ill-treatment of animals, for example, animal trafficking and mistreating animals on the wet markets, with no concern for their welfare or their rights. The video can be found at: https://www.cnn.com/videos/us/2020/03/19/coronavirus-jane-goodallacfc-full-episode-vpx.cnn. Hopefully, this video will mean that the animal kingdom becomes treated with more care. This is an important point you have made. So far this has hardly been mentioned in talk about Corona. I have another question for you, which I think you have answered above, but I will still ask it for clarity: When you perhaps see yourself as Venda, do you still regard yourself as linked to other groups—a sense of connection? And do you see yourself as linked to other groups in Africa and even beyond?

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P: N:

P:

N:

P:

N:

It goes beyond Vhavenda to all Africans and even beyond that to other nations. And if your totem is an elephant—I know you said to me you are an elephant—are all Venda people identifying with elephants or are there various totems even in the Venda community? There are many totems including baboon, crocodile, buffalo, snakes, lake Fundudzi, warthog, etc. Implicitly you respect other animals because each clan needs to respect their animal totem. The clan is part of community which respects different animals. This implies each clan has been given a mandate of looking after certain animals and natural resources like caves, lakes etc. It is unclear whether a clan was able to respect their totem animal only or even other animals too. The answer is not definite because taboo and myth were used to control both the non-living and the living and there are no written rules and regulation. O, this is an interesting point you make about the culture being open to interpretation and not being clear-cut because it is not written down. Yes, and I would say this applies to all cultures—they should not be treated as if the “rules” are experienced and followed in the same way by everyone. I saw an interesting article by Schoonenboom (2019) recently, where she offers this view (citing an earlier author): “Culture is not shared, but it is participated in (Aberle, 1960)”. She suggests that we can look at a culture as “characterized by diversity” (diverse ways of experiencing the cultural symbols) (p. 289). She argues that it is problematic to assume that everyone shares the same understandings and ways of acting. Now by your pointing out that there is no definite answer to how people will regard animals other than their totem (and that the approach to animals as a whole can be felt differently by different people) we do not need to take the starting point in our discussion that “the culture” or “cultural traditions” offer clear-cut recipes for thought or behavior. There is a lot of contention, as you have also expressed, between those who suggest that totems mean that (all) animals are respected as a matter of course and those who say that this is not the case. I read another very nice chapter in a book called Africa and her Animals, where the authors say that we should draw out the aspect of totemism which allows us to develop an “ethics that incorporates nonhuman creatures” (Zimunya & Gwara, 2018: 29). This would tie in with your point about being concerned about “the animal kingdom” as a whole, which is the interpretation you want to highlight (and which we plan to do in the rest of the chapter). I want to mention too that in my interpretation, the caring of animals or forests is to give animals freedom in their natural environment and also not to build or mine and even cut a tree where there is sacred forests or lake. It is a taboo to domesticate wild animals and if you do so you may be regarded as a witch. This is the positive side of sanctioning those who try to domesticate wild animals rather than leaving the animals to be free in their habitat. (The negative side can be that sometimes people could become identified as witches by others who suggest they have been involved with such animals even if they have not; and it may be difficult to defend themselves against the accusation. But I can see how you are regarding that people should refrain from trying to domesticate wild animals as a matter of ethics.) And I see you refer to not building or creating mines or even cutting a tree in

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P: N:

areas regarded as sacred. Do you think this implies that people generally feel a sense of spiritual connection with the animal and/or plant world? I would say generally it is more of spiritual connection but the implication is that in the process non -living and living were managed. So this would account for the controversies I have noticed in the literature, where some people writing about Indigenous African wisdom and ways of connecting with the environment see it more as conservation strategy (e.g., Mutshinyalo & Siebert, 2010: 151, seem to take this line), whereas for others it is more about spiritually connecting with the rest of the natural world and having a spiritual quality to our lives when we live in terms of multi-species relationality (e.g., Ntseane, 2012: 279)

Indigenous Knowledge Systems, Including Taboos and Myths/Stories Many African scholars have tried to explicate how African perspectives regarding ecosystemic living are embedded in their (traditional) belief systems—which include taboos and myths (or what we may call stories) barring human action that may have negative consequences to the environment and the community. As noted by Adyanga, indigenous knowledge—whether in Africa or elsewhere—in the world refers to a multidimensional body of understandings that have, especially since the beginnings of the European scientific revolution of the 17th and 18th centuries, been viewed by European culture as inferior, superstitious, and primitive. (2012: 601)

Adyanga argues, citing Purcell (1998), that seen from the perspectives of indigenous people from North America, Australia, New Zealand, Africa, Asia, Oceania, and parts of Europe, indigenous knowledge is a lived world, a form of reason that informs and sustains people who make their homes in a local area. From their perspectives, indigenous knowledge is a bridge between human beings and their environments. It is the body of historically constituted knowledge that is instrumental in the long-term adaptation of human groups to the biophysical environment (Purcell, 1998). (Adyanga, 2012: 601)

Adyanga (2012: 601) makes the point that instead of people across the globe subscribing to dominant views of what counts as “knowledge”, which often leads to denigrating Indigenous ways of knowing, we should recognize Indigenous Knowledge Systems (IKS) as “a complex accumulation of local context relevant knowledge that, inter alia, embraces the essence of ancestral knowing” (that is, knowledge bequeathed by ancestors). He summarizes that “to indigenous communities, indigenous knowledge is a viable tool for reclaiming their context-relevant ways of knowing” (p. 601). Adyanga thus explicates the relevance of IKS and how these systems of knowing embracing multiple ways of accumulating knowledge that has served indigenous communities in their human-to-human relationships and human-to-the-rest-of-nature relationships. Constant and Tshisikhawe likewise note that:

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Indigenous and local communities have devised cultural practices embedded in cultural and religious values that have maintained species and habitats of biocultural importance through indigenous and local knowledge systems. Indigenous and Local Knowledge (ILK) consist of a body of knowledge shaped by cultural practices, institutions and worldviews forming a nested ‘knowledge-practice-belief’ complex that provide insights into ways of knowing and governing social-ecological systems (SESs) for contemporary biodiversity management and conservation. (2018: 57)

In a similar vein, many other African scholars have pointed out how African perspectives and ways of knowing offer prospects for sustainable living through a multi-faceted approach to nature which includes specific cultural practices and values. As we noted in our starting dialogue, there may be different emphases as located by such scholars. Mutshinyalo and Siebert (2010: 151) explicate that taboos were used to manage the natural environment by barring human action that may have negative consequences to the environment and community. As Magdoff and Williams note, before processes of colonization—which were premised on and fuelled by treating “nature” (non-human nature) as a resource to be exploited and controlled, with no concern with the degradation of the environment—“the overriding human story [of Indigenous people across the globe] is one of survival and regeneration” (2017: 169). Magdoff and Williams place the emphasis here on how the relationship between “the environment” and “culture” was on the whole one of “continual exchanges and feedback”—so that there was “mutual determination between people and the environment” (2017: 168). But while Magdoff and Williams focus on worldviews that supported environmental regeneration as cultures were developed that embraced ecological sensitivity, other scholars highlight a sense of spiritual connectedness which is felt, which includes human beings, animals, plants, mountains, rivers, stones etc. The connection between humans and all living and non-living things (which are as such not things but full of life force) means that everything is regarded as part of the community. This is the line that Chilisa takes when she states that “people are beings with many relations and many connections” (2020: 24). Magill (2018) likewise underscores that this sense of spiritual connection implies a “reverence of nature” (p. 5). He argues that this reverence is linked to “traditional environmental ethics”, which includes an injunction to show “respect for the Earth” (2018: 5). Magill suggests that the reason for the degradation of the environment in many parts of Africa today (albeit in a relatively restricted amount as compared with the rest of the world) can be traced, in part, to the “tendency to neglect traditional environmental ethics” (p. 5)—that is, to the decline of the hold of this ethic and the attendant sense of spiritual requirement to create “cosmic harmony” (p. 5). To solve the problem of climate devastation on a world-wide scale, he pleads for an “interreligious ecological ethics”, which includes Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism, and Indigenous traditions (p. 4). And he makes the point that “science” and “religion” need not be considered as separate. Both can be geared to incorporate attitudes which show respect for nature—rather than trying to master and control her, as when she became mathematicized via Westernoriented science to forward the industrial and post-industrial revolutions (with the

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consequent devastation of the environment, seen as separate from humans, contrary to Indigenous perspectives). With this background in mind, we can now turn to the role that myth and taboo can be seen as playing in traditional African worldviews. We start with Patricia’s “insider” account of the African perspective embedded in the Vhavenda tribe who are situated in the far north of Limpopo. The Vhavenda comprises many clans who have a range of beliefs, taboos and myths which are associated with the ecological system within their local context. One of the clans is Vhatavhatsindi who value a sacred tree called Mutavhatsindi as explained further below. The recognition of the tree as sacred can be seen to reflect Ubuntu which means Umuntu ngumuntu ngabantu (isizulu) Muthu ndi muthu nga vhanwe vhathu (Tshivenda) Motho ke motho ka batho (Sesotho). Some of the literature on Ubuntu (upon which we elaborate in a later section) indicates that Ubuntu is meant for both living and non-living beings with a continuum between them. Le Grange (2012b), when discussing his interpretation of the meaning of Ubuntu (or meaning that can be drawn out) states that there is evidence that Ubuntu insinuates that humans need to care for self, other human beings, including animals, trees and rivers which comprise the biophysical world (2012b: 333). He indicates that Africans have totems that relate humans to animals and to plant life and other forms of existence, thus creating an essential connectivity. In other words, he states that taboos and myths associated with totems endorse interrelatedness and interdependence between what we call the human species and non-human creation (seen as inextricably linked) as discussed below. We start with a discussion of the sacredness of the Mutavhatsindi tree, as reflected in taboos and orally-transmitted beliefs.

Mutavhatsindi Tree (Brackenridgea Zanguebarica) This tree is found in the far north of Limpopo province within the Vhavenda tribe. It is regarded as a sacred tree that is also revered for medicinal use (Tshisikhawe & Van Rooyen, 2012: 5748). To sustain its existence, it is permissible that only dedicated persons are allowed to cut its bark. The person needs to be naked when cutting parts of the tree. The traditional belief is that an undedicated man who digs up a tree for any reason will become sterile (Netshiungani & Van Wyk, 1980: 89) and sexually inactive (Mutshinyalo & Siebert, 2010: 163) whilst the woman who does the same will menstruate non-stop (Mutshinyalo & Siebert, 2010: 154) and she will also become infertile. The chief of the clan is responsible to choose dedicated persons to take care of the sacred tree. This implies that the group as a whole has a relationship with the tree and they also have a responsibility to take care of it and to live harmoniously with the tree. The suggestion is also that a mutual benefit arises through this relationship, as both so-to-speak care for each other: Mother nature cares for us as (and if) we care for her. The Muthathavhanna is supposed not to be used for firewood, in order to avoid bad omen for the users or families (Mutshinyalo & Siebert, 2010: 163). Patricia’s dad

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always told the family that it is a taboo to uproot the fruit tree because it can claim somebody’s life; if it happens, the tree needs to be planted somewhere to continue bearing fruits. Patricia herself witnessed a family that during the rightsizing of the stand size of different households, the family uprooted five mango trees. Five family members died mysteriously within a short span of time. Chilisa notes that although within Western science observational evidence is sought via experimental trails, there are other ways of knowing, built on the experiences of people (2012: 63) and based on the sharing of stories across generations. Wangari Maathai, based on her experiences in Kenya refers to a similar story of a fig tree, which to her points to the importance of holding nature in awe, rather than regarding nature as a resource to be exploited. For example, she recounts that: I also learned that someone had acquired the piece of land where the fig tree I was in awe of as a child had stood. The new owner perceived the tree to be a nuisance because it took up too much space and he felled it to make room to grow tea. By then I understood the connection between the tree and water [with the tree root system serving to hold the water], so it did not surprise me that when the fig tree was cut down, the stream where I had played with the tadpoles dried up. … . Ironically, the area where the fig tree of my childhood once stood always remained a patch of bare ground where nothing grew. It was as if the land rejected anything but the fig tree itself. (2006: 121–122).

This story (along with others told) also serves the function of reminding us that we need to put in place structures to conserve the ecological system and that we need to revitalize the traditional Indigenous views of the land as to be respected. (See also Romm, 2018: 292–293.) Returning to the Vhavenda traditions, we can say that they enable people to experience the interrelatedness and interdependence with a concern for biodiversity or ecosystemic living, partially by creating myths and taboos that will safeguard the environment for future generations (as an ethical commitment). The implication is that, although the preservation of nature is often based on myth and taboo, the IKS also harbors knowledge (such as the medicinal value of certain trees and also their importance for ecological regeneration)—see also Constant and Tshisikhawe (2018: 70). The IKS ensures sustainability of the plants and the wellbeing of humans, including future generations. Apart from the Mutavhatsindi tree, many trees have traditionally been safeguarded in this manner to avoid exploitation. Some trees like the Securidaca longipedunculata are considered as helpful for enabling the erection of older men (Mupesu), the Spirostachys Africana, is regarded as dispersing insects from the barn (Muonze) and Heteromorpha trifoliate is also helpful for erectile dysfunction for impotent older men. Most of the literature indicates that African people have countless myths and beliefs that influence their everyday life and at the same time have a positive effect in terms of human relationships with the rest of nature (Mafukata, 2015: 836). What is important is the general ethical principle— which Magill (2018) considers as harboured in African environmental ethics—that we need to seek “cosmic harmony” rather than having a destructive attitude to nature as something to be exploited with no regard for her wellbeing. As we noted in our starting dialogue, though, we cannot say whether the taboos and myths always and for everyone imply the adoption of an ethical approach such

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as the one described by Magill (2018) or pleaded for by Maathai (2006), or by us! It is possible that some people stick to the taboos (to some extent insofar as they accept them) more out of a fear of the wrath of nature than out of a deep-seated respect and care for her. In other words, it is not clear, as Patricia notes in our starting dialogue, how the unwritten rules will be interpreted and experienced by different people— some may have what is called an anthropocentric view that implies that we must care for the non-human being (and all that exists) only because in not doing so we will suffer, rather than out of a genuine care or feeling of compassion/connection. It is for this reason that Magill (2018: 5) pleads for us to adopt/nurture an ethic of altruism and care as the grounding of what we would call multispecies relationality. The idea within a non-anthropocentric approach (McIntyre-Mills, 2014a, 2017) is also not to place human being (and our welfare) as the centre of our discourses—but rather to decentre humans in the narratives that we create, to consciously incorporate a more inclusive wellbeing, where the wellbeing of nature is sought not for the benefit of humanity but for her own sake. This is the argument currently being propounded by the Global Alliance for the Rights of Nature (GRAN) as a worldwide movement. The GRAN approach is aimed at “creating a system of jurisprudence across the globe that treats nature and Mother Earth as a rights bearing entity” (in concert with Indigenous wisdom), which “respects the equal rights of [non-human] nature” (https://therights ofnature.org/ron-systemic-change-ny/). We now turn to consider further some perspectives on the function of totems in African worldviews.

Totems Some research indicates that the African veneration of totems has a social function of people developing a sense of identity reflecting a bond between people associated with the totem from generation to generation. In making this point, Letseka (2012: 54) explicates that he grew up in an African homestead in Lesotho which identified itself as the Bafokeng, “a totem associated with the rabbit”. He was taught to “proudly assert my identity” and to praise this totem group. In this way the totem acclaim “is an oral historical recitation of one’s family which is conceded from one generation to the next generation” (2012: 54). Thus, here the totem refers to the attributes of a clan in a long period of time and the totem binds the clan together. The bond of the clan is stronger than the surname which a person may have, because you can have same surname but not related; but having the same totem means that you are part of the clan and related. In his account of the importance of the totem, Letseka concentrates on how the totem is linked to a social relation. This does not mean that he considers that only those belonging to the clan (with the totem as signifier of identity) evidence social bonding. Indeed, he argues that Ubuntu is a moral value which calls upon all people to “express compassion, justice, reciprocity, dignity, harmony and humanity” (2012:

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54). Furthermore, he makes the point that this does not mean that we exclude “difference” when embracing the value of Ubuntu. Instead, he sites Sindane (1994) as suggesting that “Ubuntu inspires us to expose ourselves to others, to encounter the difference of their humanness so as to enrich their own” (2012: 54). In his account of Ubuntu, Letseka argues that the moral values of Ubuntu are implicit in the South African constitution, where the requirement is to “produce harmony and reduce discord” (2012: 54). We will return later to Letseka’s and others’ interpretations of Ubuntu including some divergences with those who stress that Ubuntu should be interpreted as encompassing also a quest for (wider) harmony with “all that exists” (which is the interpretation given by, for example, Chilisa). Reviewed literature reveals that we can treat totems not only as a signifier of social identity (as stressed by Letseka) but also as a signifier of a closely felt connection with the animals, birds, plants or other things, such as water bodies/lakes and caves, signified by the totem. As an example, totems prevalent in Vhavenda are closely associated with animals, whilst others are closely with other biodiversity like water bodies and birds (Le Grange, 2012a: 62; Mafukata, 2015: 841). The inference that we draw from this is that human beings experience themselves as interrelated with the ecosystem and taboos and myths have been put in place to sustain the biodiversity, for future generations to benefit too. Junod makes the point in regard to totemism in Bantu worldviews that: Totemism shows well … the strong tendency to give a human soul to animals, to plants, to nature as such, a tendency which is at the very root of the most beautiful blossoms of poetry, a feeling that there is a community of substance between various forms of life. (1939: 112)

Junod’s recounting of the significance of the totem in Bantu lifeworlds (as he interprets this) is consistent with recent anthropological accounts named as “multispecies ethnography”, which Kirksey and Helmreich (2010) note can be considered as a new genre of writing and mode of research where … creatures previously appearing on the margins of anthropology – as part of the landscape, as food for humans, as symbols – have been pressed into the foreground in recent ethnographies. Animals, plants, fungi, … started to appear alongside humans in the bios [the web of life]. (2010: 545).

This is a way of decentring “humans” (defined as distinct from the rest of nature) while also considering what Kirksey and Helmreich call “the host of organisms whose lives and deaths are linked to human social worlds….—multispecies ethnography centers on how a multitude of organisms’ livelihoods shape and are shaped by political, economic, and cultural forces” (2010: 545). The focus then is on the interrelationship between the so-called “non-human” and the human”, which is “felt” (by those associating with a totem) not only as a socially binding force but as an interdependence between clans and totems of animals, plants, and other life forms (such as waters and caves, where the distinction between organic and inorganic life is also no longer clear-cut). In Vhavenda, totems which are closely associated with animals are Vhadau which is associated with lion, and Ndou associated with elephant, Singo associated with elephant tusk, and caves associate with Rambuda clan (Mafukata, 2015: 841).

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Now on the question of how the livelihoods of the “multitude of ‘species’” become shaped by political, economic and cultural forces, we can say, as we intimated in our Introduction, that totems can become a symbol which enables us as humans to become conscious of our duty not to destroy the biodiverse world and to try to conserve “all that exists” in its diversity rather than seeing these as “objects” existing only for human benefit—either material or symbolic benefit. As far as the animal rights discourse in Africa is concerned, this is the position taken by Zimunya and Gwara (2018: 22). Zimunya and Gwara argue that in the Ubuntu discourse, apart from a few exceptions, “there is no reference to non-human creatures” (2018: 27). They argue that Ubuntu implies an essentially anthropocentric attitude in that Ubuntu postulates “love for fellow humanity and mutual obligations for the welfare of fellow human beings” (2018: 27). They argue that the majority of people in Africa “do not consider animals and the environment to be morally significant entities” (2018: 27). And they point out that “Ubuntu has no hard and fast imperatives regarding conduct towards animals”. This is the point made by Patricia in our starting dialogue, that there are no clear-cut rules/feelings in this regard, that is, regarding how “non-human” life is to be treated. Mutwa (1996: 11) argues that most traditionally-oriented Africans reject the biblical view (as interpreted by Mutwa) that “man is superior to all other things on earth” and that humans were created to be “overlord and custodian of all things, animate and inanimate”. He avers that traditional African perceptions generally embrace the view that “creation is one great and beautiful whole, one revolving sphere … and to be viewed from all sides as one thing instead of a number of shattered fragments” (1996: 13). Mutwa suggests that in order not to “take a spiritual step backwards” it is important to revive this view (p. 13). Horsthemke (2018: 5) does not agree with Mutwa’s view that in general African people have a “deep love and respect for animals”. He points to the fact (admitted by Mutwa) that, for instance, “battery hens are regarded as soulless, lifeless creatures because they lay eggs which have not been blessed by the seed of the cock and are sterile” (Mutwa, 1966: 61, as cited in Horsthemke, 2018: 5). Horsthemke points to other examples too of Africans regarding animals with respect only insofar as they offer value to human life—such as by providing food or insofar as their bones are valuable in bone transplants (2018: 5). Horsthemke thus disagrees with Mutwa’s interpretation of “ancient” as well as “modern” African worldviews. Taking into account disputes as to how to interpret “African” worldviews and recognizing that there is no one interpretation (especially as different Africans may take different stances), Zimunya and Gwara argue that amongst many Africans today, “Western theories” which point to “animal welfare and rights” are likely to be viewed with suspicion as introducing “foreign values” not domain to Africa. In this context, they propose (2018: 27) that we can seek and draw out African “cultural elements that might help advance recognition of animals as deserving of rights” (and likewise other creatures and life forms). They see the location of these cultural elements in the customs and traditions of totemism. As they explain: One feature of African custom and tradition is African veneration of animals and environmental features in the form of totems. Although totemism is not uniquely African, it occupies an eminent place in African beliefs and customs. It is our conviction that this

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aspect of African tradition can be used as a reference point for our proposed amendment of the theory of Ubuntu. (2018: 28)

They point out that the totem is considered to be a collective progenitor of the tribe or clan, its spiritual protector from harm and a supplier of blessings. In return for enjoying these benefits, members of the clan are under a binding compulsion not to bring harm of any sort to, or consume the meat of, their totem. (2018: 28)

They make the point, also made by other authors whom we have cited above, that … there seems to be a metaphysical relationship postulated between a human being and his/her totem. The identification of oneself with one’s totem shows a familial relationship with the totem, more or less like the familial relationship that exists between a human being and his/her brothers and sisters and other relatives. (2018: 28–29)

Zimuya and Gwara assert that although totemism can be regarded as a celebrated aspect of African culture, “few scholars have examined its possible role in the development of an ethics that incorporates non-human creatures”. According to them, an understanding of totemism offers a route to “extend moral considerations to non-human animals and the environment in Africa” (2018: 29, our emphasis). This, of course, would mean adopting a non-anthropocentric view, where people do not respect totems only because of the social and other benefits that these may afford them as humans, but because they are respected in their own right (as deserving of moral consideration). This would also mean that, for instance, the “love of animals and the rest of non-human nature” is extended not only to the love of or feelings of association with one’s totem, but to a more general love (as noted by Patricia in our starting dialogue). It would also mean that, for instance, the practice of keeping battery hens would be regarded as cruelty, as indeed the maltreatment of any animal, and also the lack of reverence for the rest of nature, treated as “valuable” only insofar as it serves human needs and worse, the need/quest for profit at any cost, no matter the cost to animals or the rest of nature. Horsthemke (2018) notes that although Mutwa (1996: 17) refers to totemism as implying a “love and respect” for the animals that become totems, it does not extend to all animals or to all creatures. As pointed out by Patricia, there is a lack of clarity in the cultural symbolism, which is open to interpretation. Even though Africans may feel affinity and identity with their totem, it is unclear whether this is extended to a general concern for all non-human animals and a sense of care for the environment too. Zimunya and Gwara see hope in what they call an “adapted” form of totemism, which they suggest could assist us (those concerned) in achieving the end of forwarding a non-anthropocentric ethic. At present they note that “totemism in its traditional sense does not forbid or make it taboo for a person belonging to one totem group to eat or otherwise harm another group’s totem”. In view hereof, they suggest an extension: Prohibitions on harming one’s own totem can be extended to other totems, with the justification that harming another person’s totem is akin to harming that person. The onus in this regard would be on educators and traditional leaders to conscientize people regarding this new understanding of animal taboos. (2018: 31)

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Finally, they recommend that “the way in which Ubuntu is taught in schools and at universities needs to change, so that non-human animals [and other life forms] can be included in the realm of concern” (2018: 31). Interestingly, this is the position taken by geography teacher and farm manager Maxwell Masasi at Tiger Kloof school in the North West Province of South Africa. We refer to this in Chapter 27 of this volume entitled “Systemic Praxis”. Some reference to Masasi’s way of approaching the geography curriculum as well as the “environment club” at the school is also made in Romm (2020, paragraphs 44–45 and 58). This is the kind of approach taken by McKay (2018) and Mabunda and McKay (2021) in this volume (see Chapter 16), in their explanation of the way in which South African school workbooks and readers were created as a national project. It is also the approach advocated by Le Grange (2018).

A Closer Look at Ubuntu: Some Perspectives We have indicated in the discussion above that Ubuntu as a worldview and way of life focuses on people experiencing themselves as “being” through their involvement in communities. Before we turn to a closer look at this, we revisit the age-old debate around cultures of Collectivism and Individualism. We then turn to the way in which Ubuntu can be interpreted as tending towards “collectivist” (in that selves are experienced from the start as existing “in relation”). We now take a look at some of the meanings associated with these terms, and implications for living in society.

Collectivism and Individualism Various scholars have devoted attention to studying the differing orientations that people might have in regard to being more individualist- or more collectivist-oriented. For example, scholars have developed “scales” via questionnaires with items that are regarded as tapping into either more “collectivist” or more “individualist” orientations that people might have. The problem with these measurements, of course, is that they supposedly measure people’s attitudes, but are not equipped to delve into the details of people’s ways of living in interaction with others. Furthermore, as noted by Uskul et al. (2010), respondents responding to questionnaire items have to consider “what the question likely meant [by those who constructed it]” (p. 191), and this will affect their responses. That is, “respondents need to [try to] figure out what the researcher likely intends to find out” (2010: 197). Nevertheless, studies have suggested that “collectivism” as an orientation—which manifests more in some cultural contexts than in others—implies that people have a “sense of duty to a group, relatedness to others, seeking others’ advice, harmony, and working with a group (Shulruf et al. (2011: 173). Shulruf et al. note that collectivists can also be defined as being more likely to internalize the group’s goals

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and values and give these high priority. Markus and Kitayama point out that in collectivist orientations, “the emphasis is on attending to others … and maintaining harmonious interdependence with them” (1991: 224). Brewer and Venaik (2011: 440) add that collectivism can be defined as “the degree to which individuals express pride, loyalty and cohesiveness” in the community to which they see themselves as a part. The implication is that people who display a “collectivist” orientation, consider themselves as part of the group—towards which they have a responsibility and accountability to promote cohesiveness, and be loyal to the group. In contrast, Oyserman et al. (2002: 3) note that individualism is associated with features such as valuing of personal independence (including uniqueness), goalorientation towards personal achievement, competitiveness, and less feelings of duty to the group. Shulruf et al. summarize that “individualists are more likely to prioritize their own goals over those of the group” (2011: 173). Cho et al. (2010: 82) point out that “individualistic cultural values emphasize self-reliance, autonomy, competition, personal control and individual goals”. In short, individuals (who identify as separate selves) are more concerned with what they see as their individual wellbeing and less with that of the community (or what can be called the common good). Tan and Goh, who undertook an ethnographic study of students from different cultural backgrounds at an Australian university, suggest that those students who can be characterized as more individualist, may admit the need for reciprocity in (certain) social relationships—such as family, friendships, and neighbours—but “the concept of reciprocity “does not connote the [same] intensity of obligation” as for those who express collectivist orientations; and furthermore the notion of a “group orientation” does not apply (2006: 663). Considering the implications of the different cultural orientations that may be adopted by people, Shulruf et al. state that in our globalized society, with the growth of the international education market, these cross-cultural differences have become particularly important. They follow Tan and Goh in calling for educational processes that can, as Tan and Goh put it, enhance people’s “ability to create and sustain excellent cross-cultural relationships” (2006: 664). However, while we would agree that educators need to take into account cultural differences that may be manifesting in educational contexts, we sound a word of caution in noting the global context where individualism is increasingly encouraged, as advanced, for example, in the U.S.A. Cho et al. (2010, p. 82) indicate that in Hofstede’s 2011 study of individualism and collectivism across 50 countries, the U.S.A. was the most individualistic of all countries studied. (The study focused on countries as a whole and did not isolate expressions of subcultural differences in any of the countries). We suggest that in order to reverse the dominance of this “way of life” across the globe, educational systems need to rather focus on strengthening our capacities for collaboration (see, for instance, Adyanga, 2012; Gergen, 2009; Hooks, 2003; Ladson-Billings, 2003; Magdoff & Williams, 2017; Scapp, 2003). In this regard we do not fully concur with Nussbaum (2006), who focuses on how humans should be given the opportunity to realize their capacities to live a life “worth living”, which they choose to live. Nussbaum places her discussion in the context of forwarding human rights (and indeed the rights of all sentient beings—see McIntyre-Mills’s discussion on this

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in Chapters 3 and 10 of this volume). We would not disagree with Nussbaum on the idea that people have rights to develop their capacities and to flourish, but we would prefer to draw out their capabilities, which she also recognizes, for sociality, that is for joint deliberation on “worthy” goals to be pursued. When Nussbaum speaks of the capability for “practical reason”, she refers to one’s “right to think and formulate what she/he considers to be good and to plan, evaluate, and design one’s life according to one’s reflections” (2006: 77). When she refers to the capability of “affiliation”, she considers this as being able to “live with and towards others, to recognize and show concern for other human beings, to engage in various forms of interaction, and to be able to imagine the situation of another and to have compassion for that situation” (2006: 77). What we would put the focus on, which is focused upon in more collectivist-oriented cultures, is our capacity for affiliation/sociality, and furthermore we note that in more collectivist-oriented cultures people do not draw sharp boundaries between “self” and “others” in the first place because they see themselves already as existing “in relation”. In any case, as we see it, the fostering of a competitive spirit amongst learners in (Western-oriented) individualist cultures, and encouraging them to compete for grades so that they can become (personally) “successful” in life, ultimately impacts negatively in the community because, as admitted by Shulruf et al. (2011: 174), people then prioritize their goals over those of the group. For this reason, many scholars—Indigenous and non-Indigenous alike—have embarked on a critique of the way in which individualism became generated in certain cultural contexts over the course of our historical trajectory. Murove traces this orientation to the emergence of industrialization and post-industrialization (accompanied by colonization) where he notes that it is regrettable that “early modern economists attempted to divest economics from morality” and in this process the “idea of sympathy as social logic” was “hardened into a theory of self-interest” (Murove, 2005: 154). Murove emphasizes, in contrast to (Western-developed and inspired) conventional economic views of people as “essentially” selfish, that the notion that the economy runs on self-interested motivation does not give credence to the co-operative skills that indeed allowed human beings to survive and thrive in pre-industrial settings, where the economy was not geared for the most part to people trying to amass wealth for themselves with no regard to the effects on their social relations or on the environment. In the same vein, Gintis questions the notion, which is a prevalent notion across the globe, and which supports the current mode of operation of the global economy, that people are generally “self-interested”. Like other authors, he explores how people can (and have in different historical periods and different geographical regions) been more oriented to practising their relations with others in terms of a communal spirit. Gergen (2009) makes a similar point when he refers to our capacities for “relational being”. Likewise, McIntyre-Mills (2014b: 71), citing De Waal (2009) notes that the “competitive logic that plays out between human beings in competition for jobs and resources is unsustainable. We can evolve through cooperation. Competition is not the only basis for survival or the only basis for evolution”.

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In agreement with these authors, we would suggest that our capacities for relationality are what need to be strengthened, rather than enabling the (current) prevalence of an individualist approach. Furthermore, we cannot ignore the role of culture in people’s orientations regarding ways of experiencing our connection with nonhuman “nature”—or even in creating a binary between “human” and “non-human” existence, as is also noted by authors such as Chilisa (2017, 2020), Cuc (2011), Harris & Wasilewski (2004), Magill (2018), Midgley and Reynolds (2004), Rose (2015), and Stephens (2015). As suggested above, we suggest that “eco-friendly” attitudes to the rest of nature (of which we are part) should also be encouraged in our schooling system, where learners can come to better appreciate “all that exists” as part of our community. Magdoff and Williams point to the importance of our co-operatively developing planning processes at all levels of society and across societies to develop “conscious planned actions over long time scales” (rather than focusing on short-term profit that benefits only the few). They believe that this is possible, in that human beings have for most part across our long history displayed mainly co-operative behavior in our relations with one another and with the rest of nature (2017: 171). In this regard, like the authors cited above, they question the assumption that our “human nature” forbids us from acting in concert co-operatively to find solutions to common goals (that can be defined as we mutually create forums for discussion and solution-seeking). Here they would agree with Hagens (2020: 3) that “humans … are extremely social” and that “our ultrasocialty allows us to function at much larger scales than individuals” (2020: 3). But they insist that to overturn a global economy currently geared to continually create surplus for the market (with the aim of selling goods for profit), a whole shift at world-wide level needs to be activated. Piecemeal tinkering which still revolves around the “rationing of goods through markets” (with scant regard to quality of life of the mass of people and to ecological destruction) mean that people lose hope in an alternative future (2017: 322). Magdoff and Williams argue that a change to alternative modes of production and consumption “requires a value system that emphasizes compassion, cooperation, reciprocity and sharing, an appreciation of nature in all its complexity and beauty, and egalitarianism” (2017: 299). Because capitalism as a system socializes people into being “competitive” and to believing happiness and status can be derived from trying to amass wealth and consumer goods, new ethics need to be forged. Without this, Magdoff and Williams assert that efforts at greening will be dominated by profit-oriented businesses, motivated to develop greening only in cases where it is in keeping with generating profit. They propose that “organizations today striving for system change need to begin modelling the reciprocity, cooperation, and selflessness that will be prominent human characteristics in an ecological society” (2017: 299). And education systems that do not focus on children (or adults) competing with each other for grades, but rather on developing co-operative teamwork, need to be strengthened. As noted above, in the context of South Africa, some attempts have been undertaken to introduce into school curriculum the African concept of, and practices associated with, Ubuntu, which enable children to experience themselves “relationally”. Magdoff and

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Williams would hope that in time, this could lead to what they call an “ecological society” organized around principles of co-operation and based on people considering themselves also as connected with “the rest of the natural world” (of which we are part). At present, though, as noted by Le Grange, the degradation of the natural world on the African continent “is evident in the staggering statistics provided in the Geo-2000 report” (2012: 60). He refers, for example, to: ● An estimated 500 million hectares of land have been affected by soil degradation since about 1950, including as much as 65 per cent of agricultural land; ● Africa lost 39 million hectares of tropical forest during the 1980s, and another 10 million by 1995; ● Fourteen countries are subject to water stress or water scarcity, and a further 11 will join them in 2025. With respect to South Africa, he refers to the analysis of Bond and Hallowes (2002), who “show how the environment has suffered because of the legacy of the form of capitalism practised by successive apartheid governments [and continuing into the present]” (2012: 60). He cites the maldistribution of water; pollution of water sources; structural damage to water ecosystems; oversupply of coal-generated electricity; inefficiency in energy use as a result of geographical segregation and urban sprawl under apartheid; overgrazing and inefficient farming methods on peripheral land, leading to soil erosion, desertification and degradation of wetlands, and so on (Bond & Hallowes, 2002: 35–46). (Le Grange, 2012a: 60)

In somewhat pessimistic vein he argues that this trend “is likely to continue in South Africa because of macro-economic unresponsiveness”. Bond similarly makes the point with respect, for example, to the global creation of oil wealth where “powerful forces from Washington DC to Brussels to Tshwane and in-between” benefit from “fossil-fuel addiction” (2009: 160). He argues that a cost-benefit analysis of who profits from the minerals and oil extraction taking place in “Africa’s largest economy, South Africa” would show how the wealth continues to be concentrated in the hands of the elites and furthermore how the attendant pollution, biodiversity destruction, and overall damage to the environment are felt by those most vulnerable in the society (2009: 159). The South African White paper on national climate change response (2012) admits that: Currently available analyses indicate that, unchecked by climate mitigation action, South Africa’s emissions could grow rapidly by as much as fourfold by 2050. The majority of South Africa’s emissions arise from energy supply (electricity and liquid fuels) and use (mining, industry and transport) … . (2012: 26)

The White paper continues that: … large mitigation contributions will have to come from reduced emissions from energy generation and use. The main opportunities for mitigation consist of energy efficiency, demand management and moving to a less emissions-intensive energy mix, with consequent economic benefits of improved efficiency and competitiveness as well as incentivizing economic growth in sectors with lower energy intensities. … A mix of economic instruments,

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including market-based instruments such as carbon taxes and emissions trading schemes, and incentives, complemented by appropriate regulatory policy measures are essential to driving and mitigation efforts and creating incentives for mitigation actions across a wide range of key economic sectors. (2012: 27)

We can see here the reliance still on “the market” as the primary mechanism that is to be used in our climate change response. This not in keeping with the critical analyses offered by ecological economists worldwide (e.g. Spash, 2009; Martinez-Alier, 2009; Gintis, 2009), who insist that market forces and the attempt at more “efficient” use of resources cannot offer the turnaround required in our human relations (to increased equality) and our relations with the rest of nature. The South African White paper makes the point that because South Africa is a significant global emitter with a heavy reliance on coal-based energy, South Africa may be economically vulnerable to measures taken both internationally and nationally, to reduce GHG emissions. Sectors that are particularly vulnerable are those that are emissionsintensive, and trade-exposed, and may include iron and steel, non-ferrous metals, chemicals and petrochemicals, mining and quarrying, machinery and manufacturing, some agricultural exports, as well as transport services and tourism. (2012: 30)

The White paper expresses concern about the potential economic risks [that] emerge from the impacts of climate change regulation, the application of trade barriers, a shift in consumer preferences, and a shift in investor priorities. There are, however, also economic opportunities that arise from new or expanded markets, enhanced efficiencies and improved competitiveness, [and] of lower-carbon. (2012: 30)

Again, we can see that the narrative in the White paper refers mainly to the “risks” for the economy—which in effect means for those who largely benefit from “business as usual” McIntyre-Mills (2014b). However, Tokar argues that it is crucial to “expose the numerous false solutions to global warming promoted by the world’s elites”. He proposes that: We need mandated emission reduction, a tax on CO2 pollution, requirements to reorient utility and transportation policies, public funds for solar and wind energy and large reductions in consumption in the industrialized world. Buying more green products won’t do. We need to buy less! (2009: 176)

He argues that in a global context where the “American way of life” appears to be at an all-time high, we need to cultivate “small experiments in living more locally, while improving the quality of life [and not in material terms but in relational ones, once basic needs are met]” (2009: 176). He asserts that “we need to be able to look beyond the status quo and struggle for a different kind of world” (2009: 177). The solutions proposed by Tokar and others who refer to the importance of nurturing actions towards a different “quality of life”, focus on ways in which our economic, social and political life can be re-organized around seeking a more relational existence. This would tie in with the remarks we have made above about developing more “collectivist-oriented” ways of living in local and global initiatives, for example, by strengthening our commitments to worldviews such as Ubuntu to infuse our social fabric. Gergen remarks in this regard that “sustaining or enhancing [an

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inclusive] wellbeing requires collaborative efficacy … while the values of autonomy and independence slip into history” (2009: 402). He sees this as particularly pertinent in the face of what he calls “environmental threat”, where we “now confront a choice between productive collaboration or catastrophe” (p. 402). He pleads for us to recognize that “the efforts of isolated individuals, communities, states or nations are insufficient” (2009: 402). He argues that metaphors that provide an invitation to “appreciate relational existence” can be found in many philosophies, and he refers, inter alia, to “African culture [which] offers us the concept of Ubuntu, which emphasizes care and compassion for all” (2009: 388).

A (Holistic) Perspective on the Corona Virus and Other Health Hazards In our starting dialogue, we noted that the efforts at solidarity promoted by WHO could be said to incorporate a kind of internationally-directed Ubuntu. Notably, South Africa is one of the ten countries to date that has joined the solidarity trials initiative (https://news.un.org/en/story/2020/03/1059722). Countries having joined as at 18 March 2020 are: Argentina, Bahrain, Canada, France, Iran, Norway, South Africa, Spain, Switzerland, and Thailand. In some sense this “solidarity” initiative can be regarded as a recognition of the Vhavenda saying, in another expression of Ubuntu, “munwe muthihi a u tusi mathuthu (One finger cannot pick a corn)”. This denotes that on our own as one “finger”, we do not manage to accomplish the goal of “picking corn”, which requires a whole hand (and indeed many hands if there is a whole field to harvest). This implies that we need to work together cooperatively and to recognize our mutual interdependence, in this case in the medical trials as are being forwarded by WHO as an international body. It is also worth mentioning that although WHO has been trying to generate solidarity in the midst of the Coronavirus, certain authors have also expressed concern at the way in which those most vulnerable across the globe (in and between countries) are worst hit by the virus, with insufficient provision being made now (or in terms of learning for the future) for addressing their vulnerabilities. See in this regard, for example, the article in the Guardian as researched by Malik, entitled “In the slums of Delhi or Lagos, social distancing is a dream while social exclusion is all too real and pernicious” (5 April 2020: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/apr/05/whetherin-the-uk-or-the-developing-world-were-not-all-in-coronavirus-together). Moreover, as we noted earlier, the focus on medical trials (coupled with IMF policies to try to revive the global economy) does not go far enough in considering multispecies relationality. Many analyses have already been undertaken that point to the way in which the animal trafficking and wet markets where animals are stored (as objects) on top of each other, were the likely contributors to the mutation of the virus into the current Corona form when it spread from animals to humans in China. Anti-cruelty to animals needs to be part of a global campaign that hopefully

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as humans we will have learned from Corona. (See McIntyre-Mills’s analyses too in Chapters 1 and 3 of this volume.) What we also can learn is to look more critically and compassionately at the way in which urban settlements have developed which encroach upon the habitat of wildlife, so that the wildlife is more frequently in contact with humans; and furthermore, to care about those living in urban sprawl where disease spreads more easily. Unless urban-rural balances are better created (again through a collective effort where the needs of small farmers in rural communities and the problems of climate change are built into our planning), disasters such as Coronavirus are likely to recur. If these issues are not taken seriously, many small-scale farmers will most likely be forced off the land as climate refugees, and move to (over)crowded cities, with the associated social and environmental hazards. (See McIntyre-Mills & Romm, 2019, for examples.) The South African White paper on climate change response notes that: Over nineteen million, or 39%, of South Africans live in rural areas. Eighty percent of rural areas are commercial farming areas with low population densities, and 20% are former “homelands” where the agricultural sector has been undermined, settlements are often densely populated, and people are poor and largely reliant on urban remittances and social welfare for their livelihoods. Small-scale and homestead food production are practiced in rural areas on both high potential and marginal agricultural land, with roughly 1.3 million small-scale farm units. Seventy percent of the country’s poorest households live on smallscale farms and few of them produce enough food to feed themselves throughout the year. (2012: 22)

One of the “solutions” offered in the White paper is based on the observation that: Small-scale and subsistence food production is “particularly vulnerable to climate variability, relying mostly on dryland food production with limited capital to invest in soil fertilization, seed and weed, pest and disease control” (2012: 22).

However, we would need to look more closely when considering this (apparent) “solution”. We consider it important to heed the warnings of authors such as ArkoAchemfour and Dzansi (2016), Shiva (2017), and Magdoff and Williams (2017) regarding the damaging ecological effects of artificial fertilizers and of trying to eradicate all weeds, along with strong chemicals for pest control which seep into the soil and the water causing both short- and-long term damage to health. The idea as expressed in the White paper of “investing” in soil fertilization and weed and pest control does not seem to be consistent with a sense of connectivity to the environment, as reflected in many IKS worldviews. We therefore would urge that more attention is paid to the wisdom of IKS in finding solutions that do not rely on the tools of the so-called “green revolution”, which as Shiva notes, are far from green (Shiva, 2017). We concur with the White paper that “spatial planning needs to address historical inequalities in land distribution without compromising the ability of the agricultural sector to contribute to food security” (2012: 22). But we would argue that food security options and supporting small-scale farming and farmers need to be in keeping with IKS wisdom which is based on regenerating the land in the process of developing food security. The White paper does suggest that we need (as a collective) to:

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Educate subsistence and small-scale farmers on the potential risks of climate change and support them to develop adaptation strategies with on-farm demonstration and experimentation. Adaptation strategies will include conservation agriculture practices including water harvesting and crop rotation and will prioritize indigenous knowledge and local adaptive responses. (2012: 23)

We agree with this, but again offer a word of caution regarding the importance of bearing in mind in any education programmes the problems of pollution of soil and water caused by agri-business type fertilizers and pesticides, where short-term results are sought. As Magdoff and Williams note, pests can develop resistance to the pesticides resulting in farmers needing to rely on stronger ones (from which businesses who sell them make vast profits)—whereas they could have better functioned in the long term by making use of natural predators and strongly-perfumed plants that can be used to ward off (or minimize) pests. Magdoff and Williams warn that: Pesticide contamination of farmers, farm workers, water, and the food itself is pervasive. Natural enemies are killed along with the target pests, frequently leading to the outbreak of previously insignificant secondary pests. As target pests develop resistance to the pesticides used, a treadmill is created, necessitating higher pesticide application. (2017: 94)

Arko-Achemfour and Dzansi make a similar point in the context of Africa when they note that: To be successful, organic farmers must not see every insect as a pest or every plant out of place as a weed, and not find a solution to every problem in an artificial, chemical spray. The aim is not to eradicate all pests and weeds, but to them down to an acceptable level. (2015: 55)

Likewise, farmers can do better with creating fertilizers from organic material, thus leading to long term soil health and also water health, as nitrates will not then escape into water streams, contaminating the water. (See Magdoff & Williams, 2017: 94, in this regard) The point we want to make is that in order to support farmers on the land, we need to take into account short-term and long-term environmental effects: if wealth is distributed more equally in the economy (and the huge inequality gaps become regarded as unacceptable) farmers can be supported towards a common goal of healthy food security—healthy for people and for the wellbeing of nature.

Ubuntu: Scope for Agentic Contribution to the Whole We have threaded through our argument in this chapter somewhat different interpretations of Ubuntu, but all of which focus on Ubuntu as articulating our interconnectedness, and the interdependence of the members of the community, however wide the (social) community is conceptualized in terms of social solidarity and whether it is also conceptualized as including what Chilisa calls “all that exists” as being part of our community. We have also noted that for Sindane (1994: 8–9), “Ubuntu inspires us to expose ourselves to others, to encounter the difference of their humanness so as to enrich our own”. This implies that Ubuntu does not regard

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“selves” as all “the same” but recognizes that the selves-in-relation making up the community may have different ways of expressing their contribution to the community. But the overall intention, is as Metz argues (2007: 322), to act in terms of a requirement to produce harmony and to reduce discord. Or otherwise put, the moral injunction is to strengthen connectivity. In offering an agentic perspective on humans, including in (more) collectivistoriented cultures, Bandura suggests that “personal agency operates within a broad network of socio-structural influences. In these agentic transactions, people are producers as well as products of social systems” (2001: 1). Bandura here makes the point that our cultural heritages influence us (in that we are products of social systems) but we can also input into how we act within these systems, and so become “producers”. When considering what are taken to be more collectivist-oriented cultures, Bandura makes the point (as we iterated in our starting dialogue) that “cultures are not static monolithic entities, as the stereotypic portrayals would lead one to believe. These global cultural classifications mask intracultural diversity as well as the many commonalities among people of different cultural backgrounds” (2001: 15). He is thus wary of “cultural contrasts, in which individuals from a single collectivistic locale [regarded as more collectivist] are compared on global indices to individuals from a single individualistic one” (2001: 16). He suggests that such contrasts can “spawn a lot of misleading generalizations”, because people in a society can express more “collectivism” at points in time and in some interactions and more “individualism” at other points. And he notes that even considering culturally-shaped preferences for behavior on the “collectivism/individualism” continuum, “there are collectivists in individualistic cultures and individualists in collectivistic cultures” (2001: 16). Yet he concedes that cultural embeddedness (the society in which we are socialized) “shapes the ways in which efficacy beliefs [beliefs about how we can exercise agency] are developed, the purposes to which they are put, and the sociostructural arrangements through which they are best exercised” (2001: 16). His view is that: People from individualistic cultures feel most efficacious and perform best under an individually oriented system [where personal goal-creation is encouraged], whereas those from collectivistic cultures judge themselves most efficacious and work most productively under a group-oriented system [where they feel that they are judged in terms of their contribution to group goal-making]. (2001: 16)

What this means in terms of an Ubuntu-type orientation is that people feel “fulfilled” to the extent that they feel that the common goal has been forwarded. Bandura suggests that in both types of cultures (assuming we can identify a culture as dominant in a particular context) people can feel that they are acting as “agents” making a difference to the outcomes that take place, partly as a result of their actions, albeit that in collectivist-oriented cultures they more consciously collaborate to forward what are seen as group goals. Gergen adds that instead of speaking of “self-efficacy” (which is the term used by Bandura), we should use a different language to express this (collaboratively-directed) orientation, namely, “collaborative efficacy” (2009: 402). Collins (2000: 263), as an African-American woman, provides a good example of how this orientation to the whole is expressed in the African tradition of “quilting”.

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She suggests that the metaphor of “Black women’s quilting” expresses a quality of human relationships which encapsulates the “theme of individual expression” in the context of an ethic of caring. As she explains: “Black women quilters place strong color and patterns next to one another and see the individual differences not as extracting from each piece but as enriching the whole quilt” (2000: 263). She argues that “this metaphor provides an illustration of the importance of connectedness in the development of ‘the whole’”. She sees this as “rooted in a tradition of African humanism” (2000: 263). (As indicated earlier, African humanism need not necessarily imply an anthropocentric approach, depending on how people see their connectedness as extending to all that exists). But Bandura re-iterates that “cultures are no longer insular. Transnational interdependencies and global economic forces are weakening social and cultural normative systems” (p. 16) We can see indeed that as Magill (2018: 5) remarks, traditional African environmental ethics, for example, have been unduly influenced by other ways of living—which he laments as unfortunate. Various other authors also lament the dominance of what Tokar (2009: 177) calls the “American way of life”. Many Indigenous authors thus see an asymmetry in the way in which transnationality has rendered dominant certain lifestyles across the globe (to the detriment of others). To sum up, the normative connotations of Ubuntu (as an ethic of seeking to advance “the whole” of which people feel a part) is arguably losing much of its hold in Africa unless efforts are made to resuscitate/strengthen the communal spirit advocated by Ubuntu (Gade, 2012: 493; Quan-Baffour & Romm, 2015:460; QuanBaffour et al. 2019: 242). In this chapter we have offered some pointers to how indeed this can become revived/strengthened. We pointed to how Ubuntu can encapsulate a concern with “individual” flourishing/fulfilment and unique contribution to the whole (excepting that individuals are regarded as attaining fulfilment by sensing themselves as being-in-relation and as part of a whole). We also suggested that although some commentators—such as Enslin & Horsthemke (2004: 548) and Horsthemke (2018: 11)—allege that Ubuntu can be classified as species-ist (advancing the human species) rather than forwarding a multi-species relationality, we can offer contending interpretations of this. We suggested that while Ubuntu can and has been interpreted by some authors as discriminating against “other” species, we can forward interpretations that draw out “nonspecies-ist” expressions. We can draw out the elements that show how Ubuntu can be used to advocate practices which embrace a relationship between self and cosmos and which is inclusive of protecting biodiversity in the process. We explained, for instance, how an extended vision of totemism points to (or can point to) the value attached to animals, trees, plant life, waters and caves, thus pointing to the valuing (for their own sake) of the existence of both non-living and living things.

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Conclusion Some scholars indicate the incompleteness of Ubuntu as a concept that apparently disregards the value of non-human species and primarily promotes human relationships. However, other scholars argue for the importance of juxtaposing Ukama (a Shona word where relatedness implies relatedness to the entire cosmos) and Ubuntu in order to explore the deep meaning of the latter (Le Grange, 2012a: 61). Le Grange notes that Murove (2009: 316) takes the position that “Ubuntu (humanness) is the concrete form of ukama (relatedness) in the sense that human interrelationship within society is a microcosm of the relationality within the universe”. According to Murove, the practices associated with Ubuntu as well as Ukama, imply that “human actions are [ideally] sensitized to all dimensions of existence—past, present and future” (2009: 319). We have explored how we can interpret the customs of the Vhavenda (according to Patricia’s insider account) as potentially implying a close relationship of humans with one another and with the rest of the natural world (not seen as separate from human existence), as reflected in their choice of totems and management of trees in their environment. These practices can be seen to express a sense of interdependence, and interrelatedness between humans and ecological systems, where human living and non-human living are not isolated from each other. However, we also pointed out that although this is the interpretation we would like to draw out, the cultural symbolism does not mean that everyone feels this sense of “cosmic unity”. This article has been directed at advocating and activating the potential of this (Ubuntu-inspired) orientation for embracing a non-anthropocentric ethics.

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Magill, G. (2018). Pivotal perspectives on integral ecology. In G. Magill & J. Potter (Eds.), Integral ecology: Protecting our common home (pp. 2–7). Newcastle Upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing. Markus, H. R., & Kitayama, S. (1991). Culture and the self: Implications for cognition, emotion, and motivation. Psychological Review, 98(2), 224. Martinez-Alier, J. (2009). Ecological economics: “Taking nature into account”. In C. L. Spash (Ed.), Ecological economics (Vol. 1, pp. 39–61). London: Routledge. McIntyre-Mills, J. J. (2014a). Systemic ethics and non-anthropocentric stewardship. New York: Springer. McIntyre-Mills, J. J. (2014b). Transformation from Wall Street to wellbeing. New York: Springer. McIntyre-Mills, J. J. (2017). Planetary passport: Representation, accountability and re-generation. New York: Springer. McIntyre-Mills, J. J., & Romm, N. R. A. (2019). Summary of the papers and relevance of mixed methods for resourcing the commons. In J. J. McIntyre-Mills, N. R. A. Romm, & Y. CorcoranNantes (Eds.), Democracy and governance for resourcing the commons: Theory and Practice on rural-urban balance (pp. 5–37). Cham (Switzerland): Springer. McKay, V. I. (2018). Introducing a parallel curriculum to enhance social and environmental awareness in South African school workbooks. In J. J. McIntyre-Mills, N. R. A. Romm, & Y. Corcoran-Nantes (Eds.), Balancing individualism and collectivism: Social and environmental justice (pp. 97–122). New York: Springer. Metz, T. (2007). Towards an African moral theory. The Journal of Political Philosophy, 15(3), 321–341. Midgley, G., & Reynolds, M. (2004). Systems/operational research and sustainable development: Towards a new agenda. Sustainable Development, 12(1), 56–64. Mugovera, G. (2017). Totems: Our cultural heritage. The Patriot (20 April 2017). Accessed 1 April 2020 at https://www.thepatriot.co.zw/old_posts/totems-our-cultural-heritage/. Murove, M. F. (2005). The theory of self-interest in modern economic discourse: A critical study in the light of African humanism and process philosophical anthropology. Doctoral thesis, University of South Africa, Pretoria. Murove, M. F. (2009). An African environmental ethic based on the concepts of Ukama and Ubuntu. In M. F. Murove (Ed.), African ethics: An anthology of comparative and applied ethics (pp. 315– 331). Pietermaritzburg: University of Kwazulu-Natal. Mutshinyalo, T. T., & Siebert, S. J. (2010). Myth as a biodiversity conservation strategy for the Vhavenda, South Africa. Indilinga African Journal of Indigenous Knowledge Systems, 9(2), 151–171. Mutwa, C. (1996). Isilwane: The animal. Cape Town: Struik. Netshiungani, E. N., & Van Wyk, A. E. (1980). Muthavasindi-mysterious plant from Venda. Veld & Flora, 66(3), 87. Ntseane, P. G. (2012). Transformative learning theory: A perspective from Africa. In E. W Taylor & P. Cranton (Eds.), The handbook of transformative learning: Theory, research, and practice (pp. 274–286). Chichester: Wiley. Nussbaum, M. (2006). Frontiers of justice: Disability, nationality, species membership. Cambridge, Massachusetts, London: Belknap Press. Oyserman, D., Coon, H. M., & Kemmelmeier, M. (2002). Rethinking individualism and collectivism: Evaluation of theoretical assumptions and meta-analyses. Psychological Bulletin, 128(1), 3–72. Purcell, T. W. (1998). Indigenous knowledge and applied anthropology: Question of definition and direction. Human Organization, 57(3), 258–272. Quan-Baffour, K. P., & Romm, N. R. A. (2015). Ubuntu-inspired training of adult literacy teachers as a route to generating “community” enterprises. Journal of Literacy Research, 46(4), 455–474. Quan-Baffour, K. P., Romm, N. R. A., & McIntyre-Mills, J. J. (2019). Ubuntu: A dialogue on connectedness, environmental protection and education. In J. J. McIntyre-Mills & N. R. A. Romm (Eds.), Mixed methods and cross-disciplinary research (pp. 221–250). Cham: Springer.

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Norma R. A. Romm is Research Professor in the Department of Adult Basic Education and Youth Development, the University of South Africa. She has sole-authored four books; co-authored 3 books; co-edited five books and published over 100 research articles. Patricia Vhahangwele Lethole is a Higher Education administrator for distance learning and is currently engaged in a research project involving e-tutors and the staff at the centre for professional development at the University of South Africa towards her doctoral degree.

Chapter 7

Vignette: Habitat Loss and Near Extinction of Plants and Insects in South Africa K. Gottschalk

Abstract Urban development and loss of habitat contributes to a time of mass extinctions, already caused by continental drift and climate warming. Some butterflies and plants are critically endangered, and only just survive, in the Western Cape Province of South Africa. One instance involving butterflies illustrates the interconnectedness of nature. Keywords Pollination · Biodiversity · Mass extinctions

Introduction One overcast autumn day, I admired my biggest protea bush (South Africa’s national flower), over two metres tall, in my front garden. I was not alone. Grateful bees were commuting to its 23 blossoms to harvest pollen. My record was to count eight bees simultaneously in one protea blossom. In two cases, they were pushing each other aside to get at the pollen. The background to this heartening news is millions of years of mass extinctions in Southern Africa. Proteas growing on the Malawi mountaintops reveal that the Cape floral region originally covered much of the Southern African sub-continent. Today, continental drift and climate warming have combined to squeeze this floristic region literally with its back to a wall of sea. This winter rainfall vegetation is now confined to within one or two hundred kilometres of the southern coastline of South Africa. Contrast that with the boreal floral region covering much of three continents. I make it my botanical policy to plant indigenous, water-wise species wherever possible. As well as those protea blossoms in April, the bees adore my buchu bushes planted in ten tubs lining my garden path to the front door. Molecular biologists analyse buchu as a distant cousin of the citrus family, hence its distinctive aroma.

K. Gottschalk (B) University of the Western Cape, Cape Town, South Africa e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2021 J. J. McIntyre-Mills and Y. Corcoran-Nantes (eds.), From Polarisation to Multispecies Relationships, Contemporary Systems Thinking, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-33-6884-2_7

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Time and again, a species of plant or butterfly is confined to a few square kilometres. When urbanization, including suburban sprawl, buries nature beneath tarmac and the current craze for brick paving, species after species dwindles to extinction. The current municipal policy in Cape Town, South Africa, is for “densification”. So, every garden disappears under another granny flat, or off-street parking, by paving over the sub-division of what used to be a front garden. Simultaneously, the crime wave means that the porous wire fences and hedges of a generation ago have been replaced by vibracrete walls. So, the little creatures, the leopard toads and chameleons of decades ago, can no longer roam free to find mates. They are picked off by birds or cats if they attempt the impossibility of climbing walls and concrete, and are now extinct in twenty-first century suburbia. I have not enjoyed sight of a chameleon in my front or back gardens during this century. On paper, South Africa has an enlightened environmental policy. Section 24 of the Bill of Rights gives constitutional protection to the environment. By statute, every river has the right to half the water in it as an “ecological reserve” to protect its fishes, frogs, and riparian plants. But enforcement is sluggish and uneven, and the corporate power of coal-fired power stations, petrochemicals, and mines has won them exemptions from emissions limits. Atmospheric and water pollution are indeed deadly issues in some districts. This article gives a snapshot of the near extinction of three species. The Moraea aristata (blue-eyed uintjie or Blouooguintjie in Afrikaans) can only grow in Peninsula Shale Renosterveld, which today lies under the tarmac of suburbs ranging from Woodstock to Retreat. With one exception. The South African Astronomical Observatory this year celebrates its bicentenary. It was originally founded in 1820 by the British Royal Navy on a large plot amidst dairy farms. More than seven decades ago, the last remnant of these disappeared into blocks of flats, sports stadiums, and double-carriageways. But one patch of the moraea aristata survived in an Observatory lawn overlooking the canalized Liesbeeck River. Kirstenbosch botanists have succeeded in propagating it in their greenhouses.1 The next species had an even more remarkable escape from extinction. The Erica verticillata can only grow on Cape Flats Sand Fynbos soils. Their former range was limited to what is now also a band of southern suburbs in the Cape Peninsula. One surviving bush from a 1940s planting was identified at Kirstenbosch Botanical Gardens by a foreman, and another in a Pretoria park, apparently also planted in the 1940s. Now, ericas enjoy one of the best-organized fan clubs in the horticultural world. So, the search call went out. The most obvious place to search for survivors was in other Mediterranean climates, and indeed one strain turned up in a Californian wholesale nursery during the 1980s.

1 http://pza.sanbi.org/moraea-aristata.

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Much less obvious as an ark for a survivor would be the imperial greenhouses of the former emperors of the Austro-Hungarian empire. But that is the provenance of some which were re-discovered in the Belvedere palace in Vienna. Others turned up in Britain’s famous Kew Gardens, and another one from the Scilly islands. Today, propagation by botanists has enabled their re-introduction into the Tokai forest, the Kenilworth Race Course conservation area within the racetrack oval, and at the Rondevlei nature reserve. (These are the sole grounds for protection as it’ss former habitat has been lost to ‘development’.) The last species on the brink of extinction involves a fragile tripartite symbiosis between a bush, a butterfly, and an ant. The Brenton Blue butterfly (Orachrysops Niobe) lays its eggs on a small bush, Indigofera erecta. After the larvae hatch out, they eat the bush, and secrete. Ants (Camponotus baynei) guard the larvae, and carry them each sunset to their nests, to eat their secretions, and return them each sunrise onto the bushes. One by one, each coastal habitat of this butterfly became built over with holiday cottages for the leisured wealthy. For example, the colony at Nature’s Valley on the southern coast disappeared. One remaining colony was discovered at Brenton on Sea, near the gorgeous Knysna Lagoon, on the south coast of the Western Cape, South Africa. When this fate was about to befall the butterfly’s last known habitat, a patch of land only the size of three soccer fields, Pallo Jordan, then Minister of Environmental Affairs, nationalized it in 1997 so it could be gazetted in 2003 as South Africa’s smallest special nature reserve of barely 14,670 square metres.2 But the butterfly survived, rather than thrived, on its last patch of land. In 2017 a devastating fire swept across the site. While fire is indeed part of the natural cycle of regeneration in fynbos terrain, survival depends on a species dispersal larger than the burnt zone. The bush species in question did reseed; a few butterflies did survive. But all the ants on that patch of land were incinerated; botanists hope to re-introduce them. At most, a dozen of these butterflies live.

References http://www.brentonbluetrust.co.za. http://pza.sanbi.org/erica-verticillata. http://pza.sanbi.org/history-loss-and-rediscovery-erica-verticillata. http://pza.sanbi.org/moraea-aristata. https://whc.unesco.org/en/list/1007. Constitution of the Republic of South Africa, act 108 of 1996. Section 24. National Water Act, 36 of 1998. Section 13 ff. National Environmental Management Act 107 of 1998. 2 http://pza.sanbi.org/history-loss-and-rediscovery-erica-verticillata)tp://www.brentonbluetrust.

co.za.

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Keith Gottschalk is a retired member of the Political Studies Department at the University of the Western Cape, South Africa. He was head of department 2004-2006, and a Fulbright Scholar in 2009-2010. His poetry and academic publications span political issues, peace keeping, space politics and energy supply.

Chapter 8

Stewardship: An Anthropocentric Misnomer? Rights, Responsibilties and Multispecies Relationships Janet J. McIntyre-Mills

Abstract We face a turning point as school protests led by young activists such as Greta Thunberg stress that adults have done too little too late to protect the next generation of life. Greed has indeed governed the way in which economies have been managed as she stated at her UN address. Cutting carbon emissions has achieved too little too late. But transformation will require more than making adjustments to the economy as we know it. New forms of stewardship require rethinking our relationships with one another. Non-anthropocentric ethics requires caring for multiple species of which we are one strand in ‘the web of life’. Paradoxically stewardship has been seen as authority to make decisions in the interests of a small powerful minority at the expense of current and future generations of living systems. A rapid transformation needs to be achieved through praxis to change economics, representation and accountability. The focus needs to be on limiting consumption and protecting habitat through post national regional interventions to protect food, water and energy security and to enable protection and safe passage for species facing displacement. Mitigation and adaptation to climate change requires living in ways that protect multiple species. This requires the protection of habitat and the limitation of consumption through balancing individual and collective needs. Expanding Pragmatism requires understanding what we do to the environment we do to ourselves and our children. We need to recognize our interdependency and connectedness of habitat. Stewardship is about responsibility for current and future generations of life, not the management of resources for the wellbeing of a few at the expense of the majority. Keywords Re-generation · Multiple species · Protection · Habitat

J. J. McIntyre-Mills (B) University of South Africa in the College of Education, Tshwane, South Africa e-mail: [email protected]; [email protected] Adelaide University, College of Professions Main North Terrace, Adelaide, Australia College of Business, Government and Law, Flinders University, Sturt, SA, Australia © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2021 J. J. McIntyre-Mills and Y. Corcoran-Nantes (eds.), From Polarisation to Multispecies Relationships, Contemporary Systems Thinking, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-33-6884-2_8

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We Face a Turning Point ‘Existential risk’ (Bostrom, 2011) continues to escalate and ecocide’(Gauger et al., 2013; Higgins, 2016, 2018) is not yet recognised as part of international law. The definition of ecocide has been recently reformulated (and extended from its original formulation) as follows by Higgins (2012) as the 5th Crime Against Humanity in her Tedex lecture as follows: “The extensive damage to or loss of ecosystems of a given territory, whether by human agency or other causes, to such an extent that peaceful enjoyment by the inhabitants of that territory has been severely diminished.” Higgins (2016) develops the argument and summarises it at the 2018 Hague Peace Lecture (see Higgins, 2019 for details) She explains that the national or post national federal level could support the law and pursue it through the International Criminal Court, a view underlined by Lim (2019). Existential risks are the result of not recognizing our hybridity and interconnectedness. Dualist thinking about consumption and rights pervades our consciousness and is reflected in socially unjust and environmentally unsustainable designs for society. The point of the paper is not to rehearse the current challenges associated with living in the Anthropocene, instead it makes a case for doing things differently in a non-anthropocentric manner (McIntyre-Mills, 2014; McIntyre-Mills and Romm 2019a; McIntyre-Mills, Romm et al., 2019).

Theory and Approach Hannah Arendt emphasised the need to recognise patterns in behaviour, this is important for sociologists, but it is equally important to recognise the need to understand that human culture has the potential to adapt and change the environment, because of the scale at which the global economy operates. The Anthropocene is the product of human culture writ large. But by recognising the ‘banality of evil’ (Arendt, 1963) and the implications of the everyday choices we make, it is possible to do things differently. The way we think matters, it changes the way in which we relate to one another and living systems of which we are a strand. The assemblages we create through our desires can change. Our thoughts and emotions result in decisions and information that support cultural flows that re-generate our environment or lead to its de-generation: Arendt stresses that critical thought is core to upholding justice. This is not the same as a post humanist approach, because it assumes the individual and collective role of responsible human beings. But what is missing in Arendt’s work is an understanding of our ecological interconnectedness. This comes through drawing on the work of Donna Haraway (1991, 1992, 2010) who understands that ‘we are the boundaries’ and that all knowledge is situated. To address the ethical risks associated with partial knowledge we need to consider our thinking and take action as ecological citizens (Shiva, 2012a, b). Another critical systemic thinker who has extended our

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ways of knowing and included the environmental context is Gregory Bateson (1972) who stressed the need for an ‘ecological mindset’. Market capitalism has played out through the role of trade, supported by the creation of state apparatus that evolved in tandem with the expanding market system and the risks that it poses for living systems. The will to know and the will to power, paradoxically underpin the market incentive. The ‘freedoms’ to control people, other animals and nature have a price for living systems of which we are a strand. Neoliberalism has delivered freedom within democracies for some citizens old enough to vote and it has served the elite with power and capital as well as those who are fully employed. For non-citizens (asylum seekers and refugees, those too young to vote) who comprise the 99% who do not have the freedoms enjoyed by the elites, the notion of rights and responsibilities needs to be addressed (Stiglitz, 2011). The right to make decisions that are in the interests of the minority and at the expense of the majority needs to be re-dressed. Voting in a democratically elected government requires ensuring that the right to a life worth living is secured within the state and its region. The notion that decisions about carbon emissions is one that a single nationally elected government can make decisions that impact the life chances of all living systems needs to be addressed. Supporting lower carbon emissions as required for human security necessitates working across national boundaries and with the support of the public, private and civil society sectors. Other key analytical concepts informing this essay include affordance (Gibson, 1986) which refers to the way habitat can support certain ways of living and dependence (Hodder, 2012) on the environment and the need to create different relationships across production, consumption and re-generation, in order to understand the way in which power and knowledge (Foucault & Gordon, 1980) play out in the system of biopolitics (Foucault, 2008). Hodder stresses that our relationships with things are not static and that we can re-configure the assemblages. This requires the desire to do things differently, which requires a cultural shift in the way in which we currently live our lives. According to Hodder (2010, 2012: 4): “So, there are only flows of matter, energy and information (Deleuze & Guattari, 2004; Ingold, 2010).”

Re-Balancing Rights and Responsibilities As the first young person to be selected by Time Magazine, Greta Thunberg has succeeded in changing the narrative and has ousted Trump from the cover, an honour to which Trump responded by photoshopping his head onto her body in an on line response.1 Thunberg stressed on 11th December in Madrid (2019) that hope resides

1 Neumann,

time-cover/.

S. https://people.com/politics/trump-campaign-photoshops-his-head-greta-thunberg-

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in the people and not in governments or organisations2 : “We need a balance of optimism and outrage in the environmental movement.” Chappall (2019) stresses that she went on to say: “We need optimism to keep going and to not give up… and we need outrage to be able to step outside our comfort zones.” Thunberg stressed the need to make further changes to reduce the size of our carbon footprint,3 she is not alone in thinking that people power is needed. Her emphasis has been underlined by Guterres (Green, 2019) at the Madrid conference held on the 11th December, 2019: We need to have the big emitters understanding that their role is essential, because if the big emitters fail, everything will fail,” Guterres told Reuters in an interview: “If we just go on as we are, we are doomed…

Living Systems and the Web of Life Living systems are part of a ‘web of life’ (Capra, 1996) which has been commodified by Capitalism. But the roots lie in the value system associated—not only the Protestant notion of hard work and the need to save resources which Max Weber stressed in Protestant Work Ethic and the ‘spirit of capitalism’ helped to foster the growth and spread of capitalism, but the shift in values from recognition of the sacred which many cultures honour, to seeking to know the price of everything without understanding the inherent value of living systems of which human beings are but a strand. The problem lies deeper in the Christian religion which (in official versions) places God and heaven above man, woman, animals and nature. In unofficial versions of Christianity and many other religions such as Buddhism and Hinduism this is not the case. The next step in the argument is control and suppression of nature. This control has overridden the way of life of indigenous people, women and nature. Women who connected with nature and were close to plants and animals were considered to be strange or to have too much power which gave them access to property and their own resources. Gaining control of their property and removing their power was simply a matter of labelling them ‘other’ as strange and then the next step was blaming them if their interventions failed. The manual for witches4 was written as a manual to guide witch trials. Witches were controlled with the support of those 2 Chappall,

B. 2019. https://www.npr.org/2019/12/11/787026271/greta-thunberg-is-time-mag azine-s-person-of-the-year-for-2019. 3 Kelly, B. 2019 https://www.news.com.au/technology/environment/climate-change/greta-thu nberg-surrounded-by-media-as-she-arrives-in-madrid-by-train-after-atlantic-crossing/news-story/ d1f994d28e8931b8d16932699dba6902, accessed 19/12/2019. 4 “According to Wicasta Lovelace who wrote the introduction to the online version, the book shaped attitudes for centuries”: The lasting effect of the Malleus upon the world can only be measured in the lives of the hundreds of thousands of men, women, and even children, who suffered, and died, at the hands of the Inquisitors during the Inquisition. …. http://www.malleusmaleficarum.org/ downloads/MalleusAcrobat.pdf Accessed 19/12/2019 The Malleus Maleficarum, according to the introduction to the on line version by of Heinrich Kramer and James Sprenger is an ‘unabridged

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who were happy to claim their property. Woman who got the vote claimed it through the suffragette movement. Indigenous first nations have to a greater or lesser extent fought to overcome colonization. The United Nations Declaration of the Rights of Indigenous People (2008) has been invoked to try to maintain rights to land. It has not been popular in many parts of Africa and Asia as it is seen as a way (potentially) to challenge national sovereignty agendas. But the right of nation states to link with Global capitalist markets at the expense of this generation of life and the next needs to be challenged not only in the interests of human species, but in the interests of all species of which we are but one strand. If stewardship is to be taken seriously then we need to recognise the right to habitat for domestic pets, agricultural animals, liminal creatures living in cities and suburbs and wild animals as stressed by Donaldson and Kymlicka (2011) in Zoopolis. Wild creatures are driven to city gardens to find water in drought ridden areas in Australia. We share our garden with possums, three kangaroos, blue tongue lizards and birds. Loss of habitat for plants and animals is not a problem for others, it is our problem, because without a robust living system for pollinators (birds and insects) the food system will break down. The state, market and capitalist system have worked together to silence young people who will have to live with the results of current decisions. It is both brave and appropriate for young people to stress that schools (and universities) are failing them. It is no surprise that one of the attempts to silence Greta Thunberg was to suggest that she is mad. But threats have also been made as reported by Burany (2019), dark humour suggesting that with any luck her boat would sink. This is a reference to her choice to reduce emissions by using wind power for her journey, rather than adding to the size of her carbon footprint. Ridicule has been a standard response to political activists and even more so if they are female and young and (worse) if that they have managed to join up the dots and to speak truth to power that the way of life is unsustainable and that current political systems are inadequate. Another attempt at silencing is suggesting that the most strident messages about time running out to reduce carbon emissions will lead to anxiety and despair. This is at best patronizing and at worst, yet another symptom of denial. The notion that she ought not to make young people anxious with her message (because it could be counterproductive) is also unconvincing, because facing the facts is a vital first step in transformation.

Rural Urban Balance The loss of species makes little difference to urban based populations until they are forced to make the connection that industrial chemicals used by industrial scale

online republication of the 1928 edition’. Wicasta Lovelace explains that the 1948 edition included. Translation, notes, and two introductions by Rev Montague Summers(who according to Lovelace appeared to believe in the witchcraft process).

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farmers have an impact on their food security. The Green Revolution that was introduced in Indonesia by Suharto has resulted in loss of habitat for a range of plant and animal life, but it has also resulted in loss of ground cover and erosion. In August I spent time in a regional area of Bandung, called Alamendah. The dust storm reminded me of the dust storms in Adelaide (one of the hottest driest states in Australia). Besides the erosion and valuable top soil, the water retention capacity in the (once forested area) is being impacted. The result is felt by the farmers who say that the productivity of the soil is deteriorating, and their crop yields are decreasing. In the urban area of Bandung, water insecurity has become a regular occurrence. At a workshop I was running on systemic intervention at the Universitas Padjadjaran, one of the participants said that she had been without water for three days. The head of the Centre for Participation pointed out the hills surrounding Bandung, showing the patches where the indigenous forests had been lost. She stressed that the connection between the loss of forest and the loss of water security was becoming increasingly apparent. Whilst visiting Alamendah in West Java as part of community based research conducted through Universitas Padjadjaran we saw a fire which looked as if it was more than ‘controlled burning’ which worried me as I had raised my concerns about the forest fires in the Amazon and the raging bush fires that had at that time (13th September 2019) had only just begun to burn and had not as yet formed the megafire in NSW, Australia that has a regional impact on air quality5 whilst threatening lives6 and livelihoods. A massive escalation in the fires occurred from the 12th of December when Cappucci and Freedman (2019)7 cited the New South Wales Rural Fire Service8 that the 96 fires spanned 5.3 million hectares9 and explained that: “The fires so far have burned an area 1.5 times the size of Connecticut.” According to Australian government 16.8 million hectares were lost in the bushfires as of Jan, 2020 (12.8 in NSW, 2.2 in WA, 1.4 in Victoria, 0.49 in South Australia10 and Professor Chris Dickson11 and other ecologists12 fear that a billion mammals, birds and lizards could have lost their lives by the end of the bush fire season when it was estimated by some that more than 18.7 million hectares (or about 46 million acres) was lost by mid-February13 . As I was completing the volume a World Wide Fund for Nature report estimates the number is more than three times earlier estimate 5 https://www.climaterealityproject.org/blog/how-climate-change-affecting-australia. 6 https://www.climaterealityproject.org/blog/how-climate-change-affecting-australia. 7 https://www.washingtonpost.com/weather/2019/12/10/raging-bushfires-have-torched-million-

acres-new-south-wales-australia-turning-beaches-black-with-ash/. 8 https://www.news.com.au/national/nsw-smoke-haze-equivalent-to-smoking-34-cigarettes-a-day/ video/4c1c396d6a74293f8f942087e7e34428. 9 2.471 acres = hectare. 10 https://www.statista.com/statistics/1089996/australia-total-area-burned-by-bushfires-by-state/. 11 https://www.cbsnews.com/news/australia-fires-over-1-billion-animals-feared-dead/. 12 https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/jan/04/ecologists-warn-silent-death-australiabushfires-endangered-species-extinction. 13 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2019%E2%80%9320_Australian_bushfire_season.

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and it is in the region of 3 billion “mammals, reptiles, birds, and frogs….killed or displaced by Australia’s devastating 2019–20”.14 The fires have raised the political temperature as Australians demand that more be done to address the risks by mitigating and adapting to climate change and facing up to the impact of the economic decisions. People power has helped to stall the development of coal mines, such as Adani15 through mass protests. The fires in the Amazon have been directly linked with cattle ranchers burning tracts of forest to support cattle for the export beef market.16 Not only do the fires destroy the lungs of the planet, but the burning produces toxins for human beings. The export of meat raises the carbon emissions still further in transportation or freezing of meat. The rights of animals to a life worth living have been highlighted by Nussbaum (2006) in ‘Frontiers of Justice’ in which makes a case for all sentient beings including non-human animals. A further issue is that the potential for trees to reduce carbon emissions is likely to be dramatically reduced. Our relationship to trees and other living systems needs to be understood. The web of relationships created by root systems and rhizomes can be regarded as a synecdoche of other relationships spanning human species, other species and the environment. Our ability to create relationships and to sustain them based on a notion of our shared destiny was elegantly explained by Boulding’s (1956) metaphor of our being in one spaceship, rather than in competitive life boats. Both co-operation and competition are forces cited by Darwinists, but completion has been overemphasized as stressed by researchers such as Frans De Waal (2009) as both co-operation and competition are vital for evolutionary survival. Post national regional co-operation to prevent the damage resulting from fires is one example which underlines the need for stewardship. Multispecies relationships require seeing ourselves as part of a fabric of living systems and opening ourselves to the reality that the decisions we make everyday matters. Multispecies relationships require seeing ourselves as part of a fabric of living systems and opening ourselves to the reality that the decisions we make everyday matters. We need to turn towards the reality of our actions. The simple act of choosing to walk or take public transport and not drive a petrol-powered vehicle can have an impact. If one child’s actions can capture the attention of the world, then surely, we should be galvanized to act? The saving of orangutans in Borneo may mean little to the urban dweller in the United States or Australia who perhaps does not know how closely related we are to other primates and for that matter that we share more than 98% of our genes with laboratory rats. The fact that they are sentient and ought to have recognized rights to a life worth living may not be appreciated, this is the high road to essentialist 14 https://www.wwf.org.au/news/news/2020/3-billion-animals-impacted-by-australia-bushfire-cri

sis#gs.bz5hmi. “According to the report led by Dr. Lily Van Eeden with Professor Chris Dickman of University of Sydney”: 143 million mammals, 2.46 billion reptiles, 180 million birds, and 51 million frogs,” were impacted. 15 https://www.stopadani.com/stopped_adani_getting_any_private_funding. 16 https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/dec/10/revealed-fires-three-times-more-com mon-in-amazon-beef-farming-zones.

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rights detailed by Nussbaum in ‘Frontiers to Justice’. But the low road is to realize that the everyday decisions to allow habitat to be destroyed so that we can get cheap palm oil used in a range of foods and cleaning products will result in a more rapid loss of indigenous forests (Green Peace Report, 2018). Orangutans play a role in fertilizing the forests and they are part of the ecosystem. Without them we face rising temperatures and sharing their fate as we too lose a foothold on our ‘not so secure’ urban environments. So, the links across the clearance of old indigenous forests, the planting of palm oils and the destruction of old growth forests needs to be understood as directly impacting the ability of the planet to absorb carbon. Dismissing Thunberg as an alarmist at best or ‘mentally ill’ is merely being in a state of denial. Being focused on an issue and willing to speak out will become traits that help saving many species and the global commons—our shared habitat. Science has shown that indigenous forests absorb more carbon than the palm oil plantations in Borneo?17 Cultivating more eco-systemic living can be demonstrated by making a simple choice to buy sustainably produced food and cleaning agents that do not contain palm oil. It has been found that palm oil plantations do not absorb as much carbon as the indigenous forests which are needed to absorb carbon if we are to have a hope of increasing carbon capture and reducing our overall emissions. Existential risks are the result of not recognizing our hybridity and interconnectedness. Dualist thinking pervades our consciousness and is reflected in socially unjust and environmentally unsustainable designs for society. New architectures for democracy and governance are needed to protect current and future generations of life. Existing forms of democracy, governance and economics need to be re-framed by recognizing that we are interdependent. This is as relevant to nation states and to the wider post national regions of which they are a part.

Transformative Research According to Peters (in Malone 2018: v): “When the existence of the species and the planet is threatened, ‘normal research’ is trivial, even irresponsible.” Transformative research is both ‘personal and societal’ (Mertens, 2017). The argument set out in this paper is based on a critical heuristics approach that strives to make policy decisions based on enhancing critical agency. It upholds the axiom of the rights of sentient beings as a priori and normative. Transformative research begins with an assumption that social and environmental justice requires upholding the right to a life worth living and to ensure that sentient beings are not commodified and abused. This essay combines the insights detailed by Florini (2003) with a more widely applied architecture of local governance as detailed by UN Local Agenda 21 which

17 https://iview.abc.net.au/show/judi-dench-s-wild-borneo-adventure.

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requires that socio-cultural, economic and environmental accounting and accountability (triple bottom line) be applied. This would enable local residents and members of a wider post national region to have a say in matters that impact on social and environmental justice. Food security requires thinking about bio politics. In Planetary Passport (McIntyre-Mills, 2017) I suggest that a way to achieve rapid transformation is through enabling people to understand the importance of supporting a law that could help them to prevent the disruption of water, food and energy security through the introduction of more sustainable approaches through a) public engagement and better balance across wild conservation areas, rural agricultural areas, urban and suburban areas to preserve biodiversity. The ICC could also support change through scaling up the Aarhus Convention (1998, see McIntyre-Mills, 2014: 21) and that this could remedy the way in which the nationalist social contract is currently framed by developing a planetary passport for ecological citizens who work together at multiple levels to protect their environment. Politically fragmentation and populism have become the new order driven by capitalism, anthropocentrism, sexism, speciesism, nationalism and racism. The case is made that liberalism has progressed too far in undermining collective (cosmopolitan) responsibility.18 Current forms of democracy, governance and economics need to be re-framed by recognizing that we are interdependent. This is relevant to nation states and to the wider post national regions of which they are a part. My ongoing research builds on ‘Planetary Passport’ and the paper on hybridity and interconnectedness (McIntyre-Mills, 2014) to address new architecture for democracy and governance that extend solidarity and protection to all forms of life within a region rather than limiting protection and thus limiting human security which is dependent on biospheres (not national boundaries) as well as everyday praxis decisions about how and what we consume. The Paris Agenda (2015)—whilst hailed as a breakthrough for global security—does not go far enough, according to many of the latest estimates (Ricke et al., 2018; IPPC, 2018). Rolling back adherence to this international agenda is worrying and is evident in the way that food, energy and water security are seen as issues that can be addressed through nation states, rather than as post national coalitions working in share biospheres. The political potential of scaling up the Aarhus Convention (1998) which requires that all members of the EU have access to information and the right to speak out on issues that have a bearing on the environment be heard, has been discussed (Florini, 2003) and extended in ‘Planetary Passport’ (as a critical heuristic step toward a new form of governance and democracy based on discussing ways in which already existing policy and small pilots of alternative forms of engagement can be extended and applied). In an increasingly interdependent world, climate change results in the displacement of people in numbers greater than those displaced during the Second World War, according to António Guterres, the previous UN High Commissioner for Refugees 18 New architectures of democracy and governance need to be supported by constitutions, based on a priori norms, and consequentialist or a posteriori approaches, based on testing out ideas within context and with future generations in mind.

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(2017). McLeman (2018: 150) stresses that climate change will result in rising sea levels and it: …raises the spectre of trapped populations: large numbers of people unable to move away from areas that should be abandoned …These people will include the rural and urban poor, especially single-parent households, and people who are elderly, infirm, unwell, or lack mobility. … entire sovereign nations may one day physically cease to be habitable is a situation for which there is no precedent in modern history.

Too Little Too Late As stressed in Chapters 3, 10, 11 and 27 and this volume, Cochrane and Cooke (2016: 113) stress that: …cosmopolitans regard ultimate moral value as residing in individuals and their basic rights. By recognising that sentient animals also share this value and also share these basic rights, we are essentially extending the shared moral community to include all sentient creatures.

Balancing individual and collective species rights is one of the central challenges for democracy and governance. Learning to read and write requires learning the letters of the alphabet and the shared system of numbers that has enabled the development of the arts, humanities, sciences and mathematics. Learning critical systemic literacy requires many ways of knowing as suggested by Gregory Bateson (1972) in his book the ‘ecology of mind’. Many different intelligences can be employed to make sense of our world. Howard Gardner (2008) stresses the need to draw on diverse forms of human intelligence including: ‘bodily, linguistic, musical, mathematical or logical, naturalistic, spatial, interpersonal and intrapersonal”. But this does not go far enough. The kinds of intelligence of different animal species has been under recognized. Ackerman (2016) gives examples of the way in which species of birds solve problems, use and make tools and teach their young how to find food. This is a form of cultural transmission, based upon communication that goes way beyond mere signaling. De Waal (1996, 2006: 164) argues that the so-called ‘tower of morality’ needs to be transcended by extending the circle of human morality19 and solidarity from “self, family, clan, community, tribe, nation, humanity to all life forms.” Planetary Passport 19 De

Waal (2009) stressed that primates evolved through both the ability to compete and to cooperate. He stressed the importance of emotion and empathy for evolution in ‘The Age of Empathy’. He explains that the pillars of morality are empathy and reciprocity. Animals such as primates and elephants (and other sentients) are capable of making decisions based on a sense of fairness. Recent research at Stanford University shows how primates who are asked to perform specific tasks react when they perceive that some are expected to perform the same task but are given different better tasting food as a reward. Researchers found that the primates threw the food back at the researchers. Stanford research on non-anthropocentric approaches to fairness and unfairness shows that primates and other animals understand the concept of the fair distribution of resources and that a sense of morality and reciprocity guides the behaviour of primates and other animals (including human animals).

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begins where the paper on hybridity and interconnectedness (McIntyre-Mills, 2014: 19) ends: New architecture for democracy and governance needs to extend solidarity and protection to all forms of life within a region … rather than limiting protection and thus limiting human security which is dependent on biospheres not national boundaries expressed in policy design and our everyday praxis decisions about how and what we consume. Sociology needs to support intersectional understanding that human beings are part of a living system and that decisions that undermine life chances will result in violence that poses an ‘existential risk’. (Bostrom, 2011)

New Zealand banned live sheep transport in 2003 (Mochan, 2018) based on an awareness of animal rights and the desire to prevent suffering20 and has also introduced a Wellbeing budget that measures how well New Zealand is doing in terms of a raft of measures that take into account social, economic and environmental indicators of wellbeing. Human suffering today is the result of a widespread cultural disposition to ignore the rights of non-human beings and to disregard their sentience. The resultant cascading effects have brought ‘a weight’ to all classes and to urban living the extent to which Bourdieu (1999) was not anticipated in his theorizing of habitus (1977) and the different forms of capital, namely economic, cultural and social capital (Boudieu, 1986).

Ways Forward? The message is that it is possible to think and act differently! “Wellbeing is an idea whose time has come” (New Zealand Dept of Public Health, 2007) and this has implications for policy and practice. Participation helps to match policy with practice. As stressed elsewhere in this volume, in 2019 Jacinda Ardern has followed through on the notion that wellbeing indicators should be measured by government departments, in order to ensure that “clean air and water, access to housing and health care, education standards, economic mobility, social harmony and community safety, and a safe climate, is the core of work of government” (Field, 2019: 32). Greta is right to suggest that the current political structures are inadequate. We do indeed need a post national, cosmopolitan response to protect those who are currently excluded from the mantle of citizenship rights. Young people, asylum seekers, prisoners, those without a voice because they are frail or disable including all sentient beings are not protected by the nation state. Furthermore, the environment and the habitat for living beings are not protected by the nation state in ways that ensure both current and future generations of life. To know the price of everything and the value of nothing is the current mind set of the state and the market. Civil society has been beguiled by capitalism, but the improved access to material resources and 20 The responsibility to protect animals subjected to transportation as part of the so-called live meat trade lies with voters internationally who need to redraw the boundaries of what is acceptable decent treatment of animals and what constitutes unacceptable commodification of sentient beings.

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mind-numbing media entertainment has a price, namely the surplus value extracted from workers, animals and plants by global capital. Another price is that exhausted workers in the capitalist system who work overtime or multiple jobs to pay the bills, become numbed by the ‘Bread and circus’ aspects of capitalism. But recently the notion that everyday necessities such as water, food and energy supplies may be at stake, has made many panic as the vulnerabilities of supply have been underlined during the bushfires in Australia during 2019–2020. The notion of climate change is no fairy tale. The idea that climate change is inevitable and that there is nothing that can be done about it, because carbon emissions are caused by so many social, economic and natural events, such as volcanic eruptions, is defeatist. Stewardship requires that wellbeing stocks be protected and that creativity be applied to addressing mitigation and adaptation to climate change. Industrialism is not inevitable. Alternative green methods of production are possible, and it is possible to change what we value and why. Non-anthropocentric ethics that place homo sapiens (the twice wise) at the centre of a web, rather than above the web, will provide hope for the future. As Bela Banathy suggested, the ability to think about our thinking is supposedly a mark of our species. Hannah Arendt stressed that without the ability to think about our thinking the banality of evil tends to prevail. This is true in relation to current forms of capitalism, economics and governance as stressed in Systemic Ethics and Non-anthropocentric Stewardship: Implications for Transdisciplinary and Cosmopolitan Politics (McIntyre-Mills, 2014). In this volume and its companion volume titled: ‘Transformation from Wall Street to Wellbeing’ those who wellbeing stocks as I have suggested (following Stiglitz, 2011) the need to change the way in which everyday consumption occurs by extending it to suggest that we need to monitor our carbon footprints. We live in an increasingly commodified and competitive world. Our research focuses on balancing individualism and collectivism by exploring the food, water and energy consumption choices people make and how these relate to their perceptions on ‘wellbeing stocks’. Wellbeing stocks are defined by Stiglitz, (2010: 15) in ‘Mis-measuring our lives’ as multidimensional.21 In ‘Planetary Passport’ (McIntyre-Mills, 2017) and ‘Wall Street to Wellbeing’ (McIntyre-Mills, 2014) the link between wellbeing stocks and the need to develop everyday decisionmaking capabilities from: ● the micro household’s level to the meso level of organisations at the local government level and ● the macro level of regional and post regional decision making on food, energy and water consumption was stressed.

21 The definition is as follows: ‘(1) Material living standards (income, consumption and wealth), (2)

Health, (3) Education, (4) Personal activities including work, (5) Political voice and governance, (6) Social connections and relationships, (7) Environment (present and future conditions), (8) Insecurity, of an economy as well as a physical nature’. This definition of wellbeing stocks fits well with the way in which both Indigenous and Non-Indigenous Australians connect with Country in Australia and elsewhere and the way in which critical systems thinkers and complexity theorists understand.

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It is vital to measure a raft of social, cultural political, economic and environmental indicators that pertain specifically to everyday living. How to encourage reduced consumption in ways that protect both people and planet, is the policy and governance conundrum that should be informed by understanding diverse representations of consumption? My research addresses every day engagement processes that are important for public education on cross sector adaptation and mitigation to climate change, suggesting that the greater the level of participation, the better the match between service users and providers. But how can we increase engagement in the environment in a way that balances individual and collective wellbeing and simultaneously protects people, sentient beings and the environment when we know little about this nexus? The book ‘Transformation from Wall Street to Wellbeing: joining up the dots through participatory democracy and governance to mitigate the causes and adapt to the effects of climate change’ (2014, 13 editions) demonstrates an alternative approach to managing the size of our global footprint and the need to be mindful of our interdependency. A raft of concepts is necessary for defining wellbeing as stressed in several publications (McIntyre-Mills, 2003, 2006, 2008, 2014; McIntyre-Mills and De Vries 2011).22 ‘Planetary Passport: towards representation, accountability and re-generation’ (McIntyre-Mills, 2017) discusses the notion of how the ecological citizen could use a planetary passport to track the distribution and redistribution of resources in the interests of social and environmental justice. The key points are addressed in ‘Recognising our hybridity and interconnectedness’ (McIntyre-Mills, 2017). Its main theme is the need for democracy to re-engage with critical thinking. An early prototype, ‘Pathways to Wellbeing Software’ (see McIntyre-Mills & de Vries, 2012; Binchai, 2014) to enable this process has been developed and piloted, enquiring whether it is possible for groups to be held responsible in the same way that individuals can be held to account for their everyday decisions. Arendt’s (1962) notion that collective responsibility is upheld only when each individual engages critically with their everyday decisions, is addressed. Some of these ideas are summarised as ‘Representation and Accountability in Local Governance and the 2030 Development Agenda: Narrowing the Gap between Perceived Needs and Outcomes’ (McIntyre-Mills, 2017). The papers summarise non-anthropocentric pathways to wellbeing and alternative forms of democracy and governance to address 22 This research was funded by the South Australian Local Government Association. The companion volume, ‘Systemic ethics and non-anthropocentric stewardship: implications for transdisciplinary and cosmopolitan politics’ (2014, 10 editions) elaborates the importance of new architectures to protect biospheres and living systems. The key points are summarized in two articles for the journal ‘Systems Research and Behavioural Science’ (2013): ‘Anthropocentrism and Well-being: A Way Out of the Lobster Pot?’ and ‘Transformation from Wall Street to Wellbeing. Public engagement links high-level challenges with individual perspectives, facilitating nuanced investigation of the complex ethical challenge of closing the gap in life chances. The central argument looks for ways of holding the powerful to account to enable virtuous living by the majority, demonstrated by careful use of resources and protecting habitat for living systems.

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poverty and climate change. The ecological citizen tracks the distribution and redistribution of resources. Engagement links high level challenges with individual perspectives, facilitating nuanced investigation of the complex ethical challenge of closing the gap in life chances. The patterns (Alexander et al., 1977) of engagement that could contribute to the human stewardship of habitat include recognition of the interdependency of living systems and making ongoing policy adjustments in context. This requires new forms of organizational relationships that redress power imbalances that lead to social, economic and environmental injustice and ‘existential risk’ (Bostrom, 2011). It also requires appreciation of cycles for regeneration in designs that sustain living systems. This requires rural-urban balance to protect habitat for domestic, farm and wildlife) that spans multiple species. Barriers to achieving these goals include power imbalances within and acrossspecies which require an intersectional understanding of the way in which species membership, gender, race, culture and abilities shape the power dynamics that underpin social and environmental injustice.23 As urbanisation encroaches on the wild spaces and displaces other forms of life, relationships that are Anthropocentric need to be re-framed to enable re-generation and sustainable living that is non-anthropocentric. Recognising multispecies relationships requires: regeneration of the commons’. Ecological citizens need to stress the importance of interspecies resilience to support pollinators. Consciousness is about making connections—it is what makes us alive. The pathways in the brain that connect the neurons help to achieve life, but consciousness and awareness can be spread across many cells as Candace Pert (1992) recognized in ‘the molecules of emotion’. A new non-anthropocentric approach to democracy and governance is needed to enable monitoring from below and above to ensure that those who are elected are held to account so that they fulfil their role to act as agents of the people and that collective responsibility is indeed taken to protect both People and the Planet. The argument 23 These concerns were explored in two companion volumes (McIntyre-Mills, 2014a, b) and three edited books in the ‘Contemporary Systems Series’ (2018 & 2019a,b) and in my ongoing research. The themes were further explored in invited chapters for ‘Sociopedia’ ( McIntyre-Mills, 2014, Springer’s ‘Encyclopaedia of Food and Agricultural Ethics’ (McIntyre-Mills, 2014) and a conference papers delivered to the International Systems Sciences (McIntyre-Mills, 2018, 2019).Together these outputs have honed my policy research to address social and environmental justice issues. My axiological assumption for transformative user-centric research is that change begins with people who are concerned about living systems. My constructivist ontology is one of understanding local Indigenous and non-Indigenous viewpoints and the relational epistemology relies on working with people to shape policy and practice using a transformative participatory approach. I am not a postpositivist, though I strive for better decisions through testing ideas in ways that balance individual and collective needs. Currently my book ‘Rethinking human security and resilience as vulnerable multispecies relationships’ builds a discussion on balancing individual human rights and collective species rights. It is one of the central challenges for democracy and governance. Learning to read and write requires learning the letters of the alphabet and the shared system of numbers that has enabled the development of the arts, humanities, sciences and mathematics. Learning critical systemic literacy requires many ways of knowing. The research aims to strengthen institutional capacity by drawing on local wisdom. Our fragile interdependence requires a ‘recognition of our hybridity and interconnectedness’ (McIntyre-Mills, 2014) within the web of life.

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made by Arendt in ‘the banality of evil’ is that all Germans were equally responsible for the evil perpetrated and that Eichmann, was not a lone monster responsible for the holocaust and the inequities acted upon human beings in camp hospitals. We face the inconvenient (Gore, 2006) truth that we have normalised every day decisions that can be regarded as evil, because we are consuming resources in excess and we extend the mantle of the social contract to some whilst excluding the rights of non-citizens and the rights of the environment. The concept ‘species’ is a central concern in relation to the issue of categorization, membership, displacement and decision-making (in terms of state sovereignty, territory, colonization and its implications for human, animal and plant life). As urbanisation encroaches on the wild spaces and displaces other forms of life, relationships that are Anthropocentric need to be re-framed to enable re-generation and sustainable living that is non-anthropocentric. The contributions made by Donaldson and Kymlicka (2011) to animal rights through exploring our relationships with other animals need to be given centre stage in redressing current political impasse in animal rights. Frans De Waal (2009) stresses the need to recognise that we evolved not only through our ability to compete but through our ability to cooperate and to show empathy to others and a shared sense of cross-speciescommunity. Cross-speciesrights are necessary for transformation to a more ethical way of life and for our collective survival. Shanor and Kanwaal (2009) and Sharpe (2005) have also shown that animals are capable of showing compassion within and across species. Unfortunately Huxley, Darwin’s colleague emphasised competition not co-operation when he discussed Darwin’s research. Humans evolved from primates and we share the capacity for empathy, reciprocity and fairness. In fact, we evolved through our ability to cooperate and not only to compete (De Waal 2009). Thus, the emphasis is on developing a new basis for the way in which we live. The emphasis needs to be on what we all share in common, namely the need for food, energy, water, safety and the capabilities to live a good life. The social contract extends rights and expects responsibilities to be fulfilled in return. However, what about those who are voiceless, disabled, too young or without citizenship rights (displaced, asylum seekers or refugees)? The notion that reciprocal rights should only be given to citizens who are useful has been successfully critiqued by Nussbaum (2006) who stresses that the way it has been used does not follow the intention of Rawlsian philosophy based on the notion justice as a form of fairness based on the ‘veil of ignorance’ which helps us to make decisions by which we would be prepared to abide if they were applied to our own lives. This basic notion of fairness should be applied in all contexts if justice is to be achieved. If we are to act as stewards then we should at least be capable of empathy for others. De Waal (2009) has demonstrated in his research that primates and other animals are not only capable of empathy, they also have a sense of fairness, for instance when primates were asked to perform tasks and all given the same vegetable treats they were willing to co-operate. But when some were given fruit treats as rewards and the others contInued to be given the vegetables the ones

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who were given vegetables refused to co-operate. Stewardship should entail both empathy and fairness.24 Given that young people will need to find a way forward in the New Silk Road (Frankopan, 2018) of relationships in which they recognise themselves as part of a new web of relationships the focus will be on working with young people in three schools where leadership is a focus. According to Yeates (2014) regional organisations are neglected partners in global efforts and that by working more collaboratively research can offer significant opportunities to strengthen action, protect and re-shape policy agendas. Thus this participatory action research draws on the policy agenda underlined by the UNRSID (2017) to strengthen action through regionalism to support a learning network based on user-centric policy design.

Ecological Citizenship and Transfomative Praxis The notion of extending a sense of ‘ecological citizenship’ (McIntyre-Mills, 2017) could foster awareness of the need for democracy to revitalize the balance between the right to consume the planet to extinction and the responsibility to presence the common good. Rights need to be reframed as do responsibilities so that the economy and the market are seen not as an eternality but as part of the global commons on which this generation and the nest depends. We can redefine these boundaries because ‘we are the boundaries’—according to Haraway (1992). Scott (1998) in ‘Seeing like a State’ gives detailed examples of the way in which the state has crushed diversity—from designing monocultures in forestry to ironing out diverse political opinions. His work could be said to take the approach at which Foucault hints in his lectures on biopolitics further by giving examples that are relevant to the concept of ‘the banality of evil’—the notion that everyday decisions by many can collectively result in a normalization and acceptance of evil then many of the aspects of governance and democracy that we take for granted today need to be re-thought. If we can accept that climate change is the result of collective decisions that constitute a normalization of living beyond our limits, what does that mean for democracy and governance?

24 Capuchin

monkey fairness experiment. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-KSryJXDpZo accessed 19/12/2019.

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Conclusion The need for democracy to re-engage with critical thinking is vital. Is it possible for groups to be held responsible in the same way that an individual can be held responsible? Arendt’s notion that collective responsibility is upheld when each individual engages critically with the everyday decisions about who gets what when why, how and to what effect. Representation, accountability and re-generation are the three major challenges of the day that need to be addressed by means of a cross boundary regionalist approach to address the big issues of the day, namely poverty and climate change. They require a new approach to democracy and governance to enable monitoring from below and above to ensure that those who are elected are held to account and that collective responsibility is indeed taken to protect the Planet. One of the issues that needs to be faced is that much power has been given to those who have been voted into power that they ‘forget’ that democratically elected leaders ought to be agents of the people and that the environment is of primary concern, not their personal, political careers.

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https://www.smh.com.au/business/companies/colgatepalmolive-johnsonjohnson-and-pepsico-failto-keep-palm-oil-promises-20160302-gn87r4.html. https://www.bbc.co.uk/newsround/39492207. World Wild Life WWF https://www.reuters.com/article/us-palmoil/palm-oil-buyers-face-green-sco recard-wwf-idUSTRE54B02T20090512.

Janet J. McIntyre-Mills is Honorary Professor in the College of Education at University of South Africa, Tshwane, South Africa; Visiting Research Fellow of the College of Professions Main North Terrace at Adelaide University; and Adjunct Associate Professor in the College of Business Government and Law at Flinders University, Sturt Campus, Adelaide.

Chapter 9

Social Engagement to Redress the Banality of Evil and the Frontiers of Justice: Limitations of the Social Contract to Protect Habitat and Why an International Law to Prevent the Crime of Ecocide Matters Janet J. McIntyre-Mills Abstract ‘Existential risk’ continues to escalate and the crime of ‘ecocide’ is not yet recognised as part of international law even though it poses a new form of ‘genocide’. Politically fragmentation and populism have become the new order driven by capitalism, anthropocentrism, speciesism, nationalism and racism. The case is made that liberalism has progressed too far in undermining collective (cosmopolitan) responsibility. The result is a form of state control and governance that is more closely linked with the nation state and the market than with protecting habitat or the needs of all those who fall outside the mantel of the social contract, such as young people, asylum seekers, the disabled and other sentient beings. The frontiers of justice need to be extended to protect living systems. The concept ‘species’ is a central concern in relation to the issue of categorization, membership, displacement and decision-making (in terms of state sovereignty, territory, colonization and its implications for human, animal and plant life). As urbanisation encroaches on the wild spaces and displaces other forms of life, relationships that are Anthropocentric need to be re-framed to enable re-generation and sustainable living that is non-anthropocentric. Keywords Values · Multispecies representation · Accountability · Re-generation · Living systems

J. J. McIntyre-Mills (B) University of South Africa in the College of Education, Tshwane, South Africa e-mail: [email protected]; [email protected] Adelaide University, College of Professions Main North Terrace, Adelaide, Australia College of Business, Government and Law, Flinders University, Sturt, SA, Australia © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2021 J. J. McIntyre-Mills and Y. Corcoran-Nantes (eds.), From Polarisation to Multispecies Relationships, Contemporary Systems Thinking, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-33-6884-2_9

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Key considerations are whether new forms of engagement could encourage people to think carefully through their options, rather than making rash decisions: Does discursive democracy and more engagement inevitably lead to populist decisions, polarization or narcissism? The need for democracy to re-engage with critical thinking is vital. Is it possible for groups to be held responsible in the same way that an individual can be held responsible? Arendt argues that collective responsibility is upheld when each individual engages critically with their everyday decisions. Could balancing individual and collective needs be achieved through new processes and structures to help transform values and to address ‘the banality of evil’? Some researchers argue it is indeed possible to engage in large groups that foster collective decision making for the common good. This paper makes the case that critical engagement could be assisted through enabling people to think through the implications of their everyday choices and that this could help to foster an ‘ecological mindset’ to protect living systems. Balancing individual rights and collective responsibility for this generation of life and the next requires governance to protect the common good. This requires considering the consequences of decisions by considering the multispecies rights of living beings (Kirksey & Helmreich, 2010; Raikhel, 2010; Rose, 2009, 2015). The minimum requirement is re-balancing society to ensure that rights of the minority do not override the interests of the majority of living systems in this generation and the next. This requires a collective effort to re-create social and economic processes and structures to protect habitat. The three patterns of engagement that could foster the human stewardship of habitat are: (1) Recognition of the interdependency of living systems, (2) Making (ongoing) policy adjustments in context. In policy terms this requires new forms of organizational relationships that redress power imbalances that result in social, economic and environmental injustice and ‘existential risk’. (3) Appreciation of cycles for re-generation in designs that sustain living systems are needed. This requires rural-urban balance to protect habitat for domestic, farm and wild life, based on the requisite variety for multiple species and their diverse habitats. The barriers to achieving these three pattern goals include power imbalances within and across-species which requires an intersectional understanding of the way in which species membership, gender, race, culture and abilities shape the power dynamics that underpin social and environmental injustice. A way forward is perhaps to focus on what matters within and across many species, namely a safe, inclusive environment, water to drink, food to eat, being able to keep cool or warm enough to sustain life and a sense of fulfilled purpose. This is upheld by the proposed new law on ecocide that ‘protects all inhabitants of a territory’.

Introduction: Area of Concern, Policy Bakground and Aims In this paper I reflect on ways to achieve a better balance between individualism and collectivism through reconceptualizing governance and democracy, in order to

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address the risks that span national boundaries. The focus is on the misdirected socioeconomic system(s) that leads to existential risk (Ackoff & Pourdehnand, 2001; Bostrom, 2011). Multilevel forms of engagement could provide a means by which to re-generate local bio regions and operationalize some of Elinor Ostrom’s (2008, 2010) ideas. The pilots were funded by the Australian Research Council, several small grants and Local Government. Stokols (2018: 302) argues that change can occur if there is transformation in personal values (as Boulding, 1966 suggests), and he also acknowledges change through behavioural modification. He makes the case that when many people change their norms it leads to others following their example. The three patterns (Alexander et al., 1977) of engagement that could foster the human stewardship of habitat are: ● Recognition of the interdependency of living systems and the implications for bioethics. ● Making (ongoing) policy adjustments in context. In policy terms this requires new forms of organizational relationships that redress power imbalances that result in social, economic and environmental injustice and ‘existential risk’ (Bostrom, 2011). ● Appreciation of cycles for re-generation in designs that sustain living systems are needed. This requires rural-urban balance to protect habitat for domestic, farm and wild life based on the requisite variety (Ashby, 1956) that spans multiple species. The barriers to achieving these three pattern goals include power imbalances within and across-species which requires an intersectional understanding of the way in which species membership, gender, race, culture and abilities shape the power dynamics that underpin social and environmental injustice. A way forward is perhaps to focus on what matters within and across many species, namely a safe, inclusive environment, water to drink, food to eat, being able to keep cool or warm enough to sustain life and a sense of fulfilled purpose. The Human Rights Consortium at the University of London has focused on ‘ecocide’ (Gauger et al., 2013) as the fifth (as yet, unacknowledged) crime against peace by individuals, organisations or nation states. A few nation states have recognized ecocide since the Vietnam War. Arthur Galston and other scientists from Harvard campaigned in 1970 for new bioethics and ending the use of the exfoliant agent orange which they said constituted a war related crime (Yale News, 2008). Ecocide National Criminal Codes (2012) have introduced ecocide to include non-war related crimes against the environment and humanity: In these countries’ penal codes, the crime of Ecocide stands alongside the other four international Crimes Against Peace; Crimes Against Humanity, Genocide, War Crimes and Crimes of Aggression. These four core crimes are set out as international crimes in the Rome Statute.1 1 https://eradicatingecocide.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/06/Ecocide-National-Criminal-Codes1.

pdf. The nation states Georgia 1999, Republic of Armenia 2003, Ukraine 2001, Belarus 1999, Kazakhstan 1997, Kyrgyzstan 1997, Republic of Moldova 2002, Criminal Code Russian Federation Criminal Code, Tajikistan 1998, Vietnam 1990.

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Vietnam defines ecocide as follows: “destroying the natural environment”, whether committed in time of peace or war, constitutes a crime against humanity.

The Russian Federation defines it as: “massive destruction of the fauna and flora, contamination of the atmosphere or water resources, as well as other acts capable of causing an ecological catastrophe”, constitutes a crime against the peace and security of mankind.

What is the problem represented to be? (Bacchi, 2009). Given the current international relations between Russian and USA and its allies there has been little support for the proposed law. But the European Institute of Environmental Security (2013) has supported a citizen’s campaign to enable Europe to support the ecocide law, but the number of signatures has not been reached. The definition of ecocide has been recently reformulated (and extended from its original formulation) as follows by Higgins (2012) as the 5th Crime Against Humanity in her Tedex lecture as follows: The extensive damage to or loss of ecosystems of a given territory, whether by human agency or other causes, to such an extent that peaceful enjoyment by the inhabitants of that territory has been severely diminished.

Higgins (2016) develops the argument and summarises it at the 2018 Hague Peace Lecture (Higgins, 2018). In Planetary Passport (McIntyre-Mills, 2017) I suggest that a way to achieve rapid transformation is through enabling people to understand the importance of supporting a law that could help them to prevent the disruption of water, food and energy security through the introduction of more sustainable approaches through (a) on line engagement and (b) better balance between rural and urban areas. Higgins explains that the national or post national federal level could support the law and pursue it through the International Criminal Court. I suggest (McIntyreMills, 2017) that the ICC could also support change through scaling up the Aarhus Convention (1998, see McIntyre-Mills, 2014: 21) and that this could remedy the way in which the nationalist social contract is currently framed by developing a planetary passport for ecological citizens who work together at multiple levels to protect their environment. This paper aims to: ● Address the complex needs of the most vulnerable2 and the interconnections across resilience, food, water and the innovation opportunity for social inclusion, in line with the UN Sustainable Development Goals (2017) and UNDRIP (2007). 2 The gender dynamic within culturally specific gender relations influences the status of, and oppor-

tunities for, women in a given community. Women’s political agency is vital. The policy priorities are also in line with the regional policy agenda (UNRISD, 2017) to map effective regional social policy pathways that span a wide range of sectors. In Indonesia the ‘One village, one product’ (OVAP, Morihiko Hiramatsu—Governor of Oita prefecture, 1979, Yogyakarta, 2014) was applied by President Jokowi in 2008–2009. In Alamendah, the learning organisation, community approach has been developed as a step towards empowering women in order to reduce their vulnerability to trafficking, but the process needs to be extended, in order to expand women’s role in the decisionmaking process and to introduce a range of opportunities that support the capabilities of women and the marginalised (McIntyre-Mills et al., 2018).

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● Make the case that critical agency is vital to understand, monitor and evaluate everyday social, economic and environmental strategies that enable sentient functioning (Nussbaum, 2011). Liberalism has progressed too far in undermining collective responsibility. The result is a form of state control and governance that is more closely linked with the market than with civil society. Minzberg (2015) stresses that radical renewal requires rebalancing society. This could be achieved through implementing post national regional interventions as detailed in Planetary Passport (McIntyre-Mills, 2017) in which I argue that each voter has the right and the responsibility to think about the consequences of their daily choices for their neighbourhood, province and the wider region to which they are inextricably linked. I suggest (McIntyre-Mills, 2014, 2017) that the ‘banality of evil’ (Arendt, 1963) is associated with denying the pain and suffering caused by taking decisions that erode the planet and prevent the re-generation of living systems. This has been underlined by the landmark declaration by the president of Vanuatu (2018) who stresses that companies and nation states that rely on carbon intensive approaches should pay for the damage they cause to nation states with a much lower carbon footprint. Critical Systemic intervention by residents living in local regions is needed on a daily basis to achieve ecological citizenship. The Aarhus Convention (1998) provides three policy pillars to enable this everyday engagement to occur. The policy pillars (currently relevant only for the EU, but scalable elsewhere) include: ● The right of all residents in the EU to access information ● The right to be heard and the right to take the areas of concern to the European Parliament and then to the European Court if the issues are not satisfactorily addressed. As Florini (2003) stresses the policy provides a valuable potential platform for extending democratic rights to residents within and beyond a nation state so that social and environmental justice concerns can be addressed at a post-national regional level.

Statement of the Problem, Background and Policy Context More people are displaced today than during the Second World War and more animals and plants have been displaced than previously.

Populism and De-Generation of Life Chances The focus is on human security associated with climate change and the exponential risks it poses in terms of human security resulting in mass urbanisation, refugee crises leading to instability at a post national regional level as the temperature rises beyond 1.5 degrees Celsius. Populism flourishes in this context and needs to be addressed

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through post national and regional engagement along with the creation of innovative new ways to engage, map and model ways to mitigate and adapt to the nonlinear and exponential risks. The paper addresses the intersection of development, mapping and engagement to support low carbon living and social ecology. It will extend the literature on regenerative community co-operatives based on gender mainstreaming and ecological citizenship (supported by on line engagement) to explicitly empower women and young people through practical training to ‘earn while they learn and to grow a future within the region’. Thus, the research could add to our understanding on the Indigenous production, consumption and re-distribution cycle and the potential to adapt and scale up the ‘one resilient village, one re-generative business’ concept as a regional model popularised in Indonesia by Jokowi in 2014. The UN 2030 Agenda3 is: the new global framework to help eradicate poverty and achieve sustainable development by 2030. It includes an ambitious set of 17 Sustainable Development Goals…. The 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development sets out the global framework to eradicate poverty and achieve sustainable development by 2030.

The 17 development goals address social and environmental justice concerns. How can policy practitioners address these goals in the first instance in our post national region spanning Indonesia, Australia and our neighbours? It requires a change in the architectures of democracy and governance to protect the basic conditions for life; water, food and energy. It also has implications for the way in which the food cycle is understood and the way in which choices impact the production and transportation of food. This paper addresses the potential opportunities for regional mapping from below by the public, private and civil society partners who could contribute to addressing the UN Sustainable Development Goals 1 and 5 (no poverty and gender equality), 11 (sustainable communities) and 17 (partnerships to achieve goals 1 and 11) in order to strive to mitigate risks through supporting low carbon living by using the pathways to wellbeing applied to specific places. Indigenous thinkers such as Chilisa (2012, 2017) stress that our sense of who we are needs to be revised. We are vulnerable and reliant on a shared habitat. The ideas underpinning the UNDRIP stress that Indigenous people need to have the right to express their identity within a sacred space. The challenge will be to scale up this sense of stewardship not only at the local level but also at a post national regional level through understanding that we are stewards of one planet. The earth politics notion of Vandana Shiva is a logical direction for securing living systems We live in an increasingly commodified and competitive world. The research focuses on balancing individualism and collectivism by exploring the food, water and energy consumption choices (Urry, 2010) people make and how these relate to their perceptions on ‘wellbeing stocks’. Wellbeing stocks are defined by Stiglitz et al. (2010: 15) in ‘Mis-measuring our lives’ as multidimensional measures spanning: 3 https://www.un.org/development/desa/disabilities/envision2030.html.

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1. Material living standards (income, consumption and wealth), 2. Health, 3. Education, 4. Personal activities including work, 5. Political voice and governance, 6. Social connections and relationships, 7. Environment (present and future conditions), 8. Insecurity, of an economy as well as a physical nature.

In ‘Planetary Passport (McIntyre-Mills, 2017) and Wall Street to Wellbeing’ (McIntyre-Mills, 2014)4 the link between wellbeing stocks and the need to develop everyday decision-making capabilities from: the micro household’s level to the meso level of organisations at the local government level and the macro level of regional and post regional decision making on food, energy and water consumption was stressed.

Research Approach It is vital to measure a raft of social, cultural political, economic and environmental indicators that pertain specifically to everyday living. Thus, the multivariate research approach is also participatory, because it is important to find out whether the setting of Sustainable Development Goals through public engagement and recording pledges on an interactive digital site could make a difference to consumption choices and whether this public participation impacts on living ethically and well. Regional 4 Droughts,

floods, cyclones and storm surges result in higher rates of morbidity and mortality, which impacts on the most vulnerable. The approach to addressing the SDG will require appropriate planning and processes across public, private and volunteer sectors before, after and during disasters. Policy and planning to address preventative measures require mitigating and adapting to climate change to enable lowering of emissions in order to ensure that water, food and energy security is addressed along with meeting basic health and housing needs. This requires addressing social inclusion at all stages of the process. This is central to social and environmental justice. Droughts, floods, cyclones and storm surges result in higher rates of morbidity and mortality, which impacts on the most vulnerable. The approach to addressing the SDG will require appropriate planning and processes across public, private and volunteer sectors before, after and during disasters. Policy and planning to address preventative measures require mitigating and adapting to climate change to enable lowering of emissions in order to ensure that water, food and energy security is addressed along with meeting basic health and housing needs. This requires addressing social inclusion at all stages of the process. This is central to social and environmental justice. How can we address cross boundary regionalist approaches to the big issues of the day, namely poverty and climate change when we continue to work within the boundaries of outdated science? These problems require drawing on the lived experiences (Polanyi, 1966, 1968) and situated knowledges (Haraway, 1991, 1992) of many people plus a deep ecological awareness that draws on the consciousness of all living systems of which we are a strand. Representation, accountability and re-generation are the three major challenges of the day. How can we improve the way we live our lives? How can we address cross boundary regionalist approaches to the big issues of the day, namely poverty and climate change when we continue to work within the boundaries of outdated science? These problems require drawing on the lived experiences (Polanyi, 1966, 1968) and situated knowledges (Haraway, 1991, 1992) of many people plus a deep ecological awareness that draws on the consciousness of all living systems of which we are a strand. Representation, accountability and re-generation are the three major challenges of the day. How can we improve the way we live our lives?.

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initiatives need to address issues ranging from food security to child trafficking and habitat protection, if they are to have a hope of expanding to regional “road maps for social development more generally” (UNRISD, 2017). Regional social policy needs to underpin the UN Sustainable Development goals by using policy engagement processes that not only give voice to the marginalised but are underpinned by viable cross sectorial participatory governance processes to support regional development. Re-generative community co-operatives could support the policy agenda underlined by recent UN policy documents and the Australian Foreign Policy (2017) agenda. Cross-disciplinary and cross border challenges are intertwined across the social, environmental and economic spheres (UNRISD, 2017; Glasser and Barnes, 2018; IPCC, 2018).

Value Transformation: Recognizing Our Hybridity and Interconnectedness: Implications for Social and Environmental Justice The aim is to extend the research, in order to find out in what contexts: ● Online monitoring in this digital era (Stokols, 2018) could help to protect habitats for diverse species ● Online engagement could lead to more individualism and polarization (Rosenberg, 2002; Greenfield, 2015)? I will draw on ‘Systemic Ethics’ (McIntyre-Mills, 2014: xi) to explain some of the research that underpinned the paper and that I understand that the potential for evolution is based on the interconnectedness of inorganic and organic systems. Webs of relationships are fostered across all forms of inorganic and organic life as recognized in physics. My reading of Turok’s (2012) book was helpful in shaping my understanding of the potential of quantum physics. I go on to explain that: Each particle is in motion and it is the movement and flows of energy that make life possible. The transfer of information through DNA from one living cell to another is repeated in all living systems…..The human animal evolved through thinking about its thinking and being able to relate to others based on shared understanding and reciprocity.

Importantly, evolution was the result: of both co-operation amongst human animals and competition for an ecological space where a tribe could live safely, eat, shelter and reproduce. When the human animal lived as a huntergatherer time was spent surviving. Around the campfire in and near caves was the place for congregating and communicating stories. But whilst men and women hunted and gathered roots, leaves and berries they communicated stories and maps to aid their success in hunting, gathering and surviving. By pointing out landmarks and telling stories (recalled by pointing to features in the landscape), history was held in the landscape and the land became the dreaming site.

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In South Africa, the Sterkfontein caves5 have revealed some of the earliest human relatives who fell to their deaths from the trees above the dolomite caves and a series of sculls show the stages of evolution. Outside the caves, South Africans are reminded of the evolution of their democracy through a heir history by a series of sculptures6 making up a ‘Long march to freedom’ over the centuries of colonisation from the early Khoisan who resisted the loss of their land, the colonial clashes and frontier wars with the British and the rise of South African independence. Donna Haraway (1991, 2011) blurs the dualisms of the human-naturetechnological divide and reminds us of our co-evolution as human beings with companion species and how these cultural relationships shaped both human beings and other species. Haraway reminds us that we construct the boundaries by saying ‘we are the boundaries’ and as tool makers we have created a Capitolocene (2016). We need to appreciate the systemic risks associated with the denial of our interconnectedness. In policy terms it responds to the ‘concept of existential risk’ by explaining that anthropocentric values need to be questioned as they pose a risk to living systems. Policy makers need to learn from the wrong turns taken by misunderstanding our place and role as stewards within natural systems: The focus on anthropocentric humanism and human rights has led to an unethical divide or boundary between the human and the animal (Irvine, 2007; Stanescu, 2012). The human being is seen as the controller of nature. But the divided nature of control and compete is only one part of the story. The continuum of relationships with nature and with animals needs to be seen as co-evolving. Cooperation and nurturing are the other side of the story. … If animals can understand fairness and unfairness and are capable of empathy, then surely it is time to rethink the social contract, which is far too narrowly defined. The social contract extends rights and expects responsibilities to be fulfilled in return. But what about those who are voiceless, disabled, too young or without citizenship rights? (McIntyre-Mills, 2014: 2)

Nussbaum (2006) stresses that the social contract does not go far enough. She discusses the current limitations of social contract theory to protect those who fall outside the boundaries of the nation state or outside the parameters of state protection as they are non-citizens. The notion that the mantle of citizenship should only be given to those of voting age and with the right to cast a ballot is problematic. The environment on which we depend is also entirely controlled by the voting citizens of nation states. In ‘Frontiers of Justice’, Nussbaum (2006) develops an argument for extending the social contract to those sentient beings who are not protected. Her starting point is to stress the need for individual capabilities to be protected, in order to be able to live a life worth living. Her argument includes being able to live in an environment that supports a life in which capabilities can be achieved.

5 https://www.9news.com.au/world/little-foot-australopithecus-lived-in-trees-was-vegetarian-say-

researchers/921c0d91-196e-4c0e-a6ba-f5bb53a7c5e8. Australopithecus was a tree climber. If one visits the dolomite caves, one needs to be careful not to fall through the opening, like Little Foot. 6 https://www.nhmsa.co.za/artists.html.

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Current debates hinge on whether cosmopolitan universal rights7 can be given to sentient beings as a whole or whether rights for human sentients and animal sentients should differ. Donaldson and Kymlicka (2011) link rights to habitat. Thus, the citizenship of domestic animals living in the household may be closer to the citizenship of human sentients. In an increasingly interdependent world, climate change results in the displacement of people in numbers greater than those displaced during the Second World War, according to António Guterres, the previous UN High Commissioner for Refugees (2017). McLeman (2018: 150) stresses that climate change will result in rising sea levels and it: …raises the spectre of trapped populations: large numbers of people unable to move away from areas that should be abandoned …These people will include the rural and urban poor, especially single-parent households, and people who are elderly, infirm, unwell, or lack mobility. … entire sovereign nations may one day physically cease to be habitable is a situation for which there is no precedent in modern history.

Balancing individual and collective species rights is one of the central challenges for democracy and governance. Learning to read and write requires learning the letters of the alphabet and the shared system of numbers that has enabled the development of the arts, humanities, sciences and mathematics. Learning critical systemic literacy requires many ways of knowing as suggested by Gregory Bateson (1972) in his book the ‘ecology of mind.’ Many different intelligences can be employed to make sense of our world. Howard Gardner (2008) stresses the need to draw on diverse forms of human intelligence including: “bodily, linguistic, musical, mathematical or logical, naturalistic, spatial, interpersonal and intrapersonal”. But this does not go far enough. The kinds of intelligence of different animal species has been under recognized. Ackerman (2016) gives examples of the way in which species of birds solve problems, use and make tools and teach their young how to find food. This is a form of cultural transmission, based upon communication that goes way beyond mere signalling. De Waal (1996, 2006a: 164) argues that the so-called ‘tower of morality’ needs to be transcended by extending the circle of human8 morality and solidarity from “self, family, clan, community, tribe, nation, humanity to all life forms.” Planetary Passport 7 According

to Cochrane and Cooke (2016: 113): “…cosmopolitans regard ultimate moral value as residing in individuals and their basic rights. By recognising that sentient animals also share this value and also share these basic rights, we are essentially extending the shared moral community to include all sentient creatures. In other words, it is sentient individuals who have ultimate value – not the collective institutions and associations that have been built around them.” 8 De Waal (2009) stressed that primates evolved through both the ability to compete and to co-operate. He stressed the importance of emotion and empathy for evolution in ‘The Age of Empathy’. He explains that the pillars of morality are empathy and reciprocity. Animals such as primates and elephants (and other sentients) are capable of making decisions based on a sense of fairness. Recent research at Stanford University shows how primates who are asked to perform specific tasks react when they perceive that some are expected to perform the same task but are given different better tasting food as a reward. Researchers found that the primates threw the food back at the researchers. Stanford research on non-anthropocentric approaches to fairness and unfairness shows that primates and other animals understand the concept of the fair distribution of resources and that a sense of

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begins where the paper on hybridity and interconnectedness (McIntyre-Mills, 2014: 19) ends: New architecture for democracy and governance needs to extend solidarity and protection to all forms of life within a region … rather than limiting protection and thus limiting human security which is dependent on biospheres not national boundaries expressed in policy design and our everyday praxis decisions about how and what we consume. Sociology needs to support intersectional understanding that human beings are part of a living system and that decisions that undermine life chances will result in violence that poses an ‘existential risk’. (Bostrom, 2011)

The concept ‘species’ is a central concern in relation to the issue of categorization, membership, displacement and decision-making (in terms of state sovereignty, territory, colonization and its implications for human, animal and plant life). As urbanisation encroaches on the wild spaces and displaces other forms of life, relationships that are Anthropocentric need to be re-framed to enable re-generation and sustainable living that is non-anthropocentric. To summarise, the contributions made by Donaldson and Kymlicka (2011) to animal rights through exploring our relationships with other animals need to be given centre stage in redressing current political impasse in animal rights. Frans De Waal (2009) stresses the need to recognise that we evolved not only through our ability to compete but through our ability to cooperate and to show empathy to others and a shared sense of cross-species community. Cross-species rights are necessary for transformation to a more ethical way of life and for our collective survival. Shanor and Kanwaal (2009) and Sharpe (2005) have also shown that animals are capable of demonstrating compassion within and across species. Unfortunately, Huxley, Darwin’s colleague emphasised competition not cooperation when he discussed Darwin’s research. Humans evolved from primates and we share the capacity for empathy, reciprocity and fairness. In fact, we evolved through our ability to cooperate and not only to compete (De Waal, 2009). Thus, the emphasis is on developing a new basis for the way in which we live. The emphasis needs to be on what we all share in common, namely the need for food, energy, water, safety and the capabilities to live a good life. The social contract extends rights and expects responsibilities to be fulfilled in return. However, what about those who are voiceless, disabled, too young or without citizenship rights (displaced, asylum seekers or refugees)? The notion that reciprocal rights should only be given to citizens who are useful has been successfully critiqued by Nussbaum (2006) who stresses that the way it has been used does not follow the intention of Rawlsian philosophy based on the notion justice as a form of fairness based on the ‘veil of ignorance’ which helps us to make decisions by which we would be prepared to abide if they were applied to our own lives. This basic notion of fairness should be applied in all contexts if justice is to be achieved.

morality and reciprocity guides the behaviour of primates and other animals (including human animals).

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Praxis Approach to Support Social and Environmental Justice Transformative research is both ‘personal and societal’ (Mertens, 2017). The argument set out in this paper is based on a critical heuristics approach (Ulrich & Reynolds, 2010) that strives to make policy decisions based on enhancing critical agency.9 It upholds the axiom of the rights of sentient beings as a priori and normative. The legacy of Deborah Bird Rose on ways to live ecologically (Gibson et al., 2015) informs this approach. Transformative research begins with an assumption that social and environmental justice requires upholding the right to a life worth living and to ensure that sentient beings are not commodified and abused. The Paris Agenda (2015)—whilst hailed as a breakthrough for global security—does not go far enough, according to many of the latest estimates (Ricke et al., 2018; IPPC, 2018). Rolling back adherence to this international agenda is worrying and is evident in the way that food, energy and water security are seen as issues that can be addressed through nation states, rather than as post national coalitions working in shared biospheres. According to the UN the majority of the world’s population will be in Africa and Indonesia. A recent United Nations report projects that by 2050 most of the global urban population is expected to be located in Asia (52%) and Africa (21%) (United Nations, 2014: 11). These selected examples are indicative of the predictions made 9 Hanna

Arendt stresses that critical thought is core to upholding justice. This is not the same as a post humanist approach, because it assumes the individual and collective role of responsible human beings. But what is missing in Arendt’s work is an understanding of our ecological interconnectedness. This comes through drawing on the work of Donna Haraway (1991, 1992, 2010) who understands that ‘we are the boundaries’ and that all knowledge is situated. To address the ethical risks associated with partial knowledge we need to think about our thinking and we need to take action as ecological citizens (Shiva, 2012a‚ b). Another critical systemic thinker who has extended our ways of knowing and included the environmental context is Gregory Bateson (1972) who stressed the importance of level 1, 2 and 3 learning to include those who take on board the need to apply thinking to practice in a responsible manner that addresses both social and environmental justice. Neoliberalism has delivered freedom within democracies for some citizens, namely the elite with power and capital as well as the fully employed who have some job security. For non-citizens, those too young to vote and the 99% who do not have the freedoms enjoyed by the elites, the notion of rights and responsibilities needs to be unpacked (Stiglitz, 2011). The right to make decisions that are in the interests of the minority and at the expense of the majority needs to be explored. Voting in a democratically elected government requires ensuring that the right to a life worth living is secured within the state and its region. The notion that decisions about carbon emissions is one that a single nationally elected government can make decisions that impact the life chances of all living systems needs to be addressed. Supporting lower carbon emissions as required for human security necessitates working across conceptual boundaries of theoretical disciplines and spatial boundaries with the support of the public, private and civil society sectors. To sum up, the axiological assumption for the transformative user-centric research is that change begins with the voiceless, not with policy elites. The constructivist ontology is one of understanding indigenous, local viewpoints and the relational epistemology relies on working with people to shape policy and practice (Cram, 2015; Cram & Mertens, 2015).

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in this UN report and are directly relevant for the case made in this paper that current forms of democracy and governance are no longer relevant. According to the previous United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, Guterres (UNHCR, 2014), for the first time since the Second World War, the global figure for displaced persons has now passed 50 million and, by 2050, this figure could be as high as 150 million. The report stressed that currently more people are displaced than during the Second World War. We face the inconvenient truth that we have normalised every day decisions that can be regarded as evil, because we are consuming resources in excess and we extend the mantle of the social contract to some whilst excluding the rights of non-citizens. Two potential approaches offer hope for the future. These are Structured Dialogue (SD) and pathways to wellbeing software (PW) informed by the same logic employed by SD which inspired the development of PW. The political potential of scaling up the Aarhus Convention (1998) which requires that all members of the EU have access to information and the right to speak out on issues that have a bearing on the environment be heard, has been discussed (Florini, 2003) and extended in ‘Planetary Passport’ (2017) as a critical heuristic step toward a new form of governance and democracy based on discussing ways in which already existing policy and small pilots of alternative forms of engagement can be extended and applied. This paper combines the insights detailed by Florini (2003) with a more widely applied architecture of local governance as detailed by UN Local Agenda 21 which requires that socio-cultural, economic and environmental accounting and accountability (triple bottom line) be applied. This would enable local residents and members of a wider post national region to have a say in matters that impact on social and environmental justice. Food security requires thinking about bio politics and how people can become more responsible and accountable in their every day lives, in this sense a new form of cultural habitus (XXX).

New Approach to Democracy and Governance and Implications for Habitus When we realise that the rubbish dumped in the ocean enters the food chain and plastic and chemicals appear on the dinner plate the notion of interconnectivity is highlighted Similarly, when people understand that feeding farm animals offal results in high risks such as mad cow disease at worst or raised levels of antibiotic tolerance because unhealthy animals are fed a diet of antibiotics this brings the nature of the banality of evil to a new level. Another topical case in point is that the so-called novel corona virus or COVID-19 was caused by the way in which animals were warehoused at a Wuhan food market. Whether or not the COVID-19 virus can be traced to human animal transfer in China in Dec 2019 or Saudi Arabia in 2012 or anywhere else is not the point. The Covid virus may have begun in humans and been transferred to

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animals in captivity. The issue is that it has highlighted the unacceptable cruelty to animals. Creatures that had been trafficked include pangolins from South Africa as well as wild creatures from China.10 Previously other epidemics associated with the inhumane farming and treatment of pigs and poultry underlines this point. Systemic ethics requires that as individuals, we have rights, but we also have to take responsibility for the common good. Individualism can be used as an excuse for private greed at the expense of the common good. As Whitehead (2018) stresses in ‘living theory’ we need to learn from experience and all experience is situated. Furthermore, we create our futures through the constructive or destructive decisions that we take on a daily basis. We need so-called hybrid methodologies (Hesse Bibber, 2018: 17) to begin a discussion of what constitutes the nature of the problem (ontological issue) and how to go about researching the issue (epistemological concern). It is no surprise that Bolivia, an early signatory to the notion of earth politics and the notion that the constitution should protect the environment and the people who depend on Pachamama or ‘Our earth mother’. A coalition led by Bolivia with active support from Asia and Africa has achieved ‘change from below’ by recognizing that peasants and fisherfolk play a vital role in protecting food security. The United Nations Declaration on the rights of peasants and other people working in rural areas (October 2018) notes that: The food crisis 2007–2008 provided a context for the United Nations to recognise the discrimination against the peasants and other people working in rural areas…

What if we could become less tied to only limited ways of knowing? Turok (2012) stressed that the 26 letters of the alphabet have shaped our senses, but that new forms of digital media will lead to further changes in the way we relate to others. Greenfield (2003, 2008, 2015) cautions that digital changes may not always be for the better and emphasizes the need to be guided by norms that protect engagement with others in real time and face to face, not only on line. I stress that: … New architectures for democracy and governance need to be piloted to support regeneration (rather than merely sustainability) because the current system is so deeply problematic that it requires our being the change in our daily lives. (McIntyre-Mills, 2014: xxxiii)

A non-anthropocentric approach to democracy and governance that fosters the agency of the currently marginalized is needed to enable monitoring from below and above to ensure that those who are elected are held to account so that they fulfil their role to act as agents of the people and that collective responsibility is indeed taken to protect both people and the planet. One of the issues that needs to be faced is that too much power has been given to those who have been voted into power. Once elected they ‘forget’ that democratically elected leaders ought to be agents of the people and that the environment is of primary concern, not their personal political careers. Two potential approaches offer ways to improve democracy and governance. These are 10 https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2020/01/wuhan-seafood-market-may-not-be-source-novel-

virus-spreading-globally.

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Structured Dialogue and pathways to wellbeing software (PW) is informed by the same logic employed by SD which inspired the development of PW. The pragmatism of considering ‘if then’ scenarios enables thinking through the possible implications of alternative options.

Critical Systemic Thinking and Agency Is Core to Social and Environmental Justice Churchman’s questioning approach (Design of Inquiring Systems’ or DIS) is an approach based on critical heuristics or ‘what if questions’ that can be extended by means of scenarios to enhance engagement in decision making, in order to test out ideas with those who have lived experience. Openness to the ideas of others is important for democracy as is the need to continuously revise and adjust the way in which we live our lives in relation to one another and the environment. The axiom to guide transformative research is that we can be free and diverse to the extent that our freedom and diversity does not undermine the rights of others. But we also need to accept that limiting carbon emissions will require a dramatic adaptation to reduce the harmful effects of climate change (Meadows & Randers, 1992; IPCC, 2018). To ‘rescue enlightenment from itself’ (McIntyre-Mills & Van Gigch, 2006), we need to realize that there are many ways of knowing. Logic, empiricism, idealism, dialectic and pragmatism (as West Churchman suggested) are some of the ways in which we can know the world. But these ways of knowing are situated (in the sense used by Donna Haraway). Churchman discussed many ways of knowing but these need to be extended if we are to ‘rescue the enlightenment from itself’ (McIntyre-Mills, 2006). An appreciation of animal knowing, plant knowing, the value of the arts and being able to appreciate ‘art in nature’ is a starting point for extending the hierarchy of knowledge that Kenneth Boulding alluded to in his ‘Skeleton of Knowledge’ (1956). Transformation of values from individual human knowing to appreciation of collective knowledge and responsibility and then the leap to appreciation that anthropocentric knowing is far too limited and non-anthropocentrism requires ecological knowing.11

11 Critical systemic thinking needs to extend social and environmental policy to take into account Bateson’s (1972) level 1, 2 and 3 learning to addresses both social and environmental justice. Climate change impacts environments leading to displacement of plants, animals and people as cities encroach or droughts, floods, fires render areas unable to provide a liveable environment. This has profound ethical implications for everyday living choices and the impact is worse than previously understood (Ricke et al., 2018). New architectures to democracy and governance need to be underpinned by systemic ethics, guided by structured dialogue and supported by block chain pathways (Wahlid, 2017). The pragmatism of considering ‘if then’ scenarios before making decisions is important.

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Could Pathways to Wellbeing Provide a Way Forward to Protect the Marginalised and Establish Pathways to Protect Social, Economic and Environmental Wellbeing Stocks (in Line with Stiglitz et al.’s Policy Proposal (2010)? The focus of engagement is on protecting ‘wellbeing stocks’ a concept adapted from Stiglitz et al. (2010: 15) to refer to a multidimensional measure of wellbeing as detailed above. The concept is explained in ‘Transformation from Wall Street to Wellbeing’ (McIntyre-Mills et al., 2014) and Planetary Passport (McIntyre-Mills, 2017). The twofold aim is to: (a)

(b)

Protect diversity and areas of common ground in the interests of current and future generations by focusing on rights and responsibilities to protect sustainable employment that ensures food, energy and water security. Explore ways to protect ‘wellbeing stocks’ (Stiglitz et al., 2010) for current and future generations.

In Planetary Passport (McIntyre-Mills, 2017) the case was made that democracy needs to find new ways to engage people to think about their rights and responsibilities to their immediate family, their neighbourhood and the wider region by enabling them to think about different scenarios for the future and making informed decisions by enabling them to think through the implications of choosing one or another scenarios, such as ‘business as usual’, ‘making small adjustments’ or ‘living sustainably and well’. Participants are asked to consider: ● What they perceive they need to add to their lives to make a difference to mitigating or adapting to climate change, ● What they perceive they need to discard from their lives to make a difference to mitigating or adapting to climate change, ● What they perceive are the turning points for the better or worse, what the barriers are and what services make a difference. Telling a story and thinking about what we have and what we need and what we are prepared to add or discard from life is part of stepping into another conceptual space. The evaluation of the level of importance of multiple and a simultaneously important issue is important by reflecting on one’s life in terms of different scenarios and the consequences of these choices, for example: ● I have the following things in my life—understanding of human rights, respect for biodiversity, fear for the future/ hope for the future, a confidence, or lack of confidence, loss of home due to natural or other disaster, no family/ community support, responsibility to care for others and very high levels of stress. ● I need in my life—a home, a sense of safety, affordable food. ● I will add to my life—more community supports from a range of services and/or more community engagement to lobby for resources, more connection to nature. ● I will discard from my life—a sense of hopelessness, a sense of entitlement, excessive consumption.

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● Self-reflection on the turning points for the better or worse—hope that consumption can be replaced with greater sense of attachment to others and the environment. ● Consideration of the barriers that currently exist and consideration of what could be done to transform society and our relationship to the environment.

Rebalancing Rights and Responsibilities at Multiple Levels The notion of extending a sense of ‘ecological citizenship’ (McIntyre-Mills, 2017) could foster awareness of the need for democracy to revitalize the balance between the right to consume the planet to extinction and the responsibility to presence the common good. Rights need to be reframed as do responsibilities so that the economy and the market are seen not as an eternality but as part of the global commons on which this generation and the nest depends. Nations currently refuse to take responsibility for the impact of their emissions on their neighbours—then we need to think about what that means for current forms of governance. If we can accept that climate, change is the result of collective decisions that constitute a normalization of living beyond our limits what does that mean for democracy and governance? The big issues of the day, namely poverty and climate change cannot be addressed without collective responsibility. Hence, the argument that new architectures for democracy and governance are needed based on: ● A priori norms—that ecological citizenship ought to protect current and future generations of living systems. ● A posteriori measures—of the extent to which UN Sustainable Development goals are upheld and the Sendai Risk plat form addressed. Both these UN documents are based on the notion that individuals and organisations need to act in concert to address the goals across national boundaries. The participatory approach needs to be underpinned by viable cross-sectoral governance to support regional development in line with this regional agenda. The outcome could enable decentralised evidence-based policy across sectors to address the SDGs. The community engagement approach could monitor the sharing of resources ‘from below’. Because block chain is a distributed network that can provide tracking, monitoring surveillance from below it can provide a means to empower the landless and the dispossessed (Nir Kshetri, 2017). It can also provide a means to balance individual and collective needs (McIntyre-Mills, 2017) and monitor the fair distribution of resources such as food, energy and water.

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How Can the Commons Be Resourced by Means of Engagement? A robust version of both forms of software could be shared by means of the cloud and downloaded from a public portal. The pathways to wellbeing prototype software enables data mining and presentation of data in terms of spread sheets that map gender, age specific and cultural aspirations and fears in terms of social, economic and environmental indicators of wellbeing. Thus, it enables responding to the UN Sustainable Development Goals and to address the concerns raised by the Sendai Risk Platform. The engagement processes enable policy makers to mine the data and to enable the policy makers to take decisions that respond to the fine grain details of local neighbourhood places. The geographic focus is most important if political parties wish to respond to diverse needs in cities, rust belts and rural regional areas. Block chain, for example, could enable those who post and share data on specific areas of concern to ensure that the data cannot be changed (Al-Saqaf & Seidler, 2017; Kshetri, 2017). This ensures that people can express their ideas, in order to enhance representation, accountability and re-generation of their community/neighbourhood. Thus, block chain could provide a way to help with balancing individual and collective needs (Wirawan & McIntyre-Mills, 2019). Instead of cyber security ‘from above’, the software could enable monitoring from below (McIntyre-Mills, 2000, 2006). By opening democracy to enable everyday local placed based commentary, the aspirations of local communities can be understood by policy makers. Furthermore, they can hold those they elect to account in between elections. The distributed ledger enables the cross checking to occur and makes hacking more difficult. The software to develop shared intelligence from below could be funded on a cost recovery basis by asking for a donation from each user (suggested amount 10 Australian dollars) for enabling the technology development and testing by working with them. In return they would have access to the pathways to wellbeing software which enables personal and community goals in terms of social, economic and environmental indicators of wellbeing. These can be material and non-material concerns. Cost recovery would be viable if a public, private and NGO organization were to take up the platform and agree to enable the testing, particularly if this is offset by Place Book (potentially linked with Face Book). The value for organizations is that policy makers will then get a better idea of diverse needs of their electorates and service users. Furthermore, the needs of those who are non-voters (young people and temporary residents, asylum seekers, new migrants) can also express their views. Given the level of disengagement and potential for populist discontent caused by the disconnect and distrust in governments this could be particularly helpful to address the issues raised in The Foreign Policy White Paper (2017: 17) that stresses: Australia’s national interests are best advanced by an evolution of the international system that is anchored in international law, support for the rights and freedoms in United Nations declarations, and the principles of good governance, transparency and accountability.

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Developing Policy in Partnership The software development is not merely for personal productivity (although it has this potential), it is to resource the commons. By this we mean that it will be free ware downloadable and by users who can raise issues about social and environmental aspirations. These place book stories are available (as big data) to resource social movements and to inform policy makers of what people think at the local level. The Cogniscope is based on Structured Dialogue12 to enable the in-depth meaning making. The process is suitable for 20–40 people to find shared root causes of their perceived areas of concern and to shared ideas about how to move forward. The Cogniscope, supported by the network Global Agoras is aimed at finding shared meaning in smaller groups of policy makers who wish to explore areas of concern. They can perhaps take the data mined from place book (as proposed) and think through the root causes. Both forms of software enable the capacity to think through options collectively to find pathways to a more sustainable future. It also enables statements that bring together many prospective service users concerned about local infrastructure needs, such as water and energy security, employment, education and health services across the age cohorts.13

12 iframe width = “560” height = “315” src = “https://www.youtube.com/embed/wkcKAw6NoKY?

start=66” frameborder = “0” allow = “accelerometer; autoplay; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture” allowfullscreen > . The global agoras website is a repository of a network of academics and practitioners. Global agoras was set up as a resource as a result of a successful grant. The cogniscope software, like the pathways to wellbeing software needs some development expenditure to test it more widely and to iron out some glitches. Training in the use of the cogniscope is required, whereas the pathways to wellbeing software merely requires being able to use drop down menus and basic computing skills. 13 Examples of areas of concern that could be explored are ways to balance the budget and to meet the pressing needs for services for the different cohorts such as the elderly and young people who need a range of vocational training options. In Australia and the Pacific Region different cohorts in urban and regional areas need to be catered for. It is estimated that 4 billion people will live in cities and a further 2.5 billion people will become urban dwellers by 2050. Most of the global urban population is expected to be located in two regions—Asia (52%) and Africa (21%) (United Nations, 2014: 11).

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Future Directions for Democracy and Governance The potential area and regional study areas need to be selected in response to the predictions made in UN reports.14 Increased socio-economic instability in urban areas and intense pressure on food security are risk factors highlighted in the Australian Government’s (2017) Foreign Policy White Paper ‘Opportunity, Security, Strength’. In line with the agenda stressed in this report this proposal focuses on the importance of promoting opportunities for women and young people within the Indo Pacific and wider region. Budgeting requires responding to diverse needs and place book civic census could achieve civic renewal by providing snapshots of meaning provided by searchable software that provides SPSS spread sheets. The matching of responses to individual contextual needs is vital and the group agreed that engagement with local people is vital. Elinor Ostrom stressed in her update (2014) to her Nobel Peace Prize lecture (2009) that contextual, poly centric, multi scale responses are best. One size, one flavour does not suit everyone. Matching design responses requires that people have a sense of purpose and they are involved in the process. This proposal is in line with the New Zealand approach that has recently stressed the need for a wellbeing budget to addresses multiple dimensions (See World Economic Forum, 2019). To sum up the value of the proposal is that it will narrow the gap between service users and providers and enable greater congruence between governments and the people and places they serve. But even more importantly the local wisdom of groups of people who try out new ways of being the change can be shared more widely. One such example is perhaps developing an alternative currency backed by the water standard and litres of water15 rather than being backed by a gold standard. This point has been stressed in South Africa where water insecurity is a very real threat to the way of life in both rural regional areas and in cities of varying sizes. Dryzek et al. (2019 citing Erkan et al., 2019) stress that:

14 United

Nations Human Development Index. (2003). A compact among nations to end poverty. New York: UNDP, Oxford University Press. United Nations Sustainable Development Goals. (2017). https://www.un.org/development/desa/ publications/sdg-report-2017.html; United Nations. (2014). World Urbanization Prospects. https:// esa.un.org/unpd/wup/publications/files/wup2014-highlights.Pdf. United Nations Declaration of the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. (2007). https://www.humanr ights.gov.au/publications/un-declaration-rights-indigenous-peoples-1. United Nations Office for Disaster Risk Reduction. (2017). http://www.preventionweb.net/files/ 55465_globalplatform2017edings.pdf. United Nations Office for Disaster Risk Reduction. (2015–2030). Sendai Framework. http:// www.preventionweb.net/drr-framework/sendai-framework/. United Nations Paris Climate Change. (2015). Conference of the Parties Twenty-first session Paris, 30 November to 11 December 2015. https://unfccc.int/resource/docs/2015/cop21/eng/l09r01. pdf. United Nations. (2014). World Urbanisation Prospects: The 2014 Revision. https://esa.un.org/ unpd/wup/publications/files/wup2014-highlights.Pdf. 15 http://thegreentimes.co.za/category/articles/green-living-articles/.

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A major improvement to the deliberative system would involve enhancing moments and sites of listening and reflection and integrating these into political processes that are currently overwhelmed by a surfeit of expression.

The notion of ‘communicative plenty’ in face to face dialogue held as public fora and online dialogues can provide spaces for expression of ideas, listening, deliberation and collective decision making in terms of policy options or scenarios. These can provide the basis for balancing individual and collective needs. Pilots of both the above means of engagement16 have been undertaken to address the concern raised by Dryzek et al. (2019) and Bächtiger et al. (2018). A case has been made for finding ways to respond to the diverse needs of residents who face cascading social, economic and environmental risks within so-called ‘resource specific settings’ (Ostrom, 2008). Deliberative democracy needs to be buttressed by legislation to protect crimes against people and the planet. This paper makes the case to support local engagement to manage water, food and energy security in the interests of local place-based communities. In this way the principle of the Aarhus Convention (1998) which underlines the need for transparency, engagement and freedom of information if we are to protect the environment on which all living systems depend. To sum up, citizenship (as it is currently applied) does not protect the rights of all sentient beings unless they are of voting age and they are recognised by the state as citizens. The responsibility as human species to act as stewards is overdue. Tragically the mechanistic view of the world with some human beings at the apex of the pyramid was used to justify the exploitation of powerless human beings and animals. The treatment of animals merely as food sources or ‘beasts of burden’ needs to be challenged, just as the voiceless sentient human beings need to be protected (McIntyre-Mills, 2014). Ackerman (2016) suggests that one of the many the intelligences of fish and birds is in the ability to respond to the actions of those swimming or flying nearby and to make small adjustments to enable the whole to move forward. This is a sound analogy for balancing individual and collective thinking and practice, drawn from the obvious intelligence of other species. By making small adjustments in our thinking and practice, perhaps human beings can move towards a greater level of appreciation of one another, just as the fish and birds swim in schools or fly in flocks. 16 Christakis, A., & Bausch, K. (2006). How people harness their collective wisdom and power to construct the future in co-laboratories of democracy. Information Age; Greenwich., Flanagan, T., & Christakis, A. (2010). The talking point: A collaboration project of 21st Century Agoras. Information Age Publishing; Flanagan T. (2013). Blueprint for a digital observatorium. Worlds Futures Forum, Montreal, Canada; Flanagan, T., & Christakis A. (2010). The talking point: Creating an environment for exploring complex meaning. Charlotte: Information Age Publishing; Flanagan, T., & Bausch. K. (2010). A democratic approach to sustainable futures. Emergence Press; Flanagan, T., McIntyre-Mills, J., Made, T., Mackenzie, K., Morse, C., Underwood, G., & Bausch, K. (2012). A systems approach for engaging groups in global complexity: Capacity building through an online course. Systemic Practice and Action Research, 25(2): 171–193; McIntyre-Mills, J. (2008). Usercentric design to meet complex needs. New York: Nova Science; McIntyre-Mills, J., De Vries, D., & Binchai, N. (2014). Transformation from wall street to wellbeing. Springer, New York.

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The idea that human beings have completely different brains from primates and other animals, birds, lizards or dinosaurs is increasingly contested by the evidence (Ackerman, 2016; De Waal, 2009; Donaldson & Kymlicka, 2011; Goodall, 1986; Kehoe, 2016). Research has debunked the notion of ‘bird brains’ lacking intelligence and (given their sentience) they too have rights that need to be taken into account when planning to address the habitat for wild creatures, liminal creatures who live on the margins and try to share habitat with us, farmed animals and domestic pets as stressed by Donovan and Kymlicka in Zoopolis (2011). The wider implication is the need to make a difference by re-framing the way we live our lives. A further point to make is that the collective and common concern for water and food is a good starting point to enable the practical application of balancing individual and collective concerns. ‘Mixed Methods and Cross Disciplinary Research: Towards cultivating Eco-systemic Living’ (McIntyre-Mills & Romm, 2019) addresses one of the Australian Government’s research priorities: “Environmental change”, which requires the integration of research outcomes from a range of stakeholders and disciplines to support the commons. Bollier and Helfrich (2012: xii) stress that as commoners we: need to “start seeing ourselves as commoners in relation to others, with a shared history and shared future” to create “a culture of stewardship and co-responsibility for our common resources while at the same time defending our livelihoods”. … It asks us to think about the world in more organic, holistic and long-term ways…

The IPPC formula (2013) stresses that the excessive consumption of energy resources affects the size of our carbon footprint. The energy footprint in turn creates cascading social, economic and environmental risks. The cascading social, economic and environmental risks associated with unsustainable consumption poses an existential risk. Our food choices are central to reducing the size of our carbon footprints. The footprint is defined in terms of: E (Emissions) = Population X Consumption per person X Energy Efficiency X Energy Emissions. It suggests that the privileged lives of some people living lavish urban lifestyles consume a range of resources that pose an ‘existential risk’ to all forms of life on the planet (Bostrom, 2011). Consumption based on living simply and ethically and well versus consumerism to express status are based on very different values and they have very different consequences for others and for the environment. At a practical level, the impact of climate change on water and food has been underlined by the most recent IPCC reports and the link with our current energy reliance on coal and petrol has implications for the size of our carbon footprint. By concentrating on water (which makes up the majority of human life), food (in which we are all interconnected in the web of life) and energy on which we depend for transport, heating, cooking and cooling. Some human beings today are consuming resources at the expense of the majority in this generation and the next. Just as democracy evolved from the ancient Greek version that exclude women and slaves, democracy needs to evolve to include the rights of those who are currently excluded by the social contract.

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The challenge we face is to achieve a balance between the individual and collective needs of living systems of which we are a strand (McIntyre-Mills, 2017) and to find a practical way to ‘operationalise the capabilities’ approach through taking local indigenous wisdom and experience into account (Yap & Yu, 2016). Unless habitat is protected through global ethics buttressed through law, multiple species extinctions will become increasingly inevitable. ● To what extent current structures of democracy and governance are adequate for protecting the rights of sentient beings and appropriate habitats to support lives that are worth living? ● To what extent can current structures be considered to support the ‘banality of evil’? (Arendt, 1963) associated with every day decisions that undermine living systems and cause pain and suffering? Valuing other species is a starting point for addressing the critical systemic risks that we currently face. The new policy document provided by the Department of Home Affairs 2019 ‘Profiling Australia’s Vulnerability: the interconnected causes and cascading effects of systemic disaster risk’ that frames the need for a ‘conversation about vulnerability’. The participatory action research described in ‘Transformation from Wall Street to Wellbeing’ (McIntyre-Mills et al., 2014) ‘grasps the nettle’ to ‘address the challenge posed by the Earth Charter. Designs need to be supported by constitutions, based on a priori norms, and consequentialist or a posteriori approaches, based on testing out ideas within context and with future generations in mind. The circle of democracy requires respect for the balance between the individual and the collective which in turn requires ongoing adjustments through thinking about who gets what when why, how and to what effect and monitoring the decisions. This requires scaling up practical pilots of the prototypes discussed in this paper.

Key Considerations Key considerations are whether online engagement could encourage people to think carefully through their options, rather than making rash decisions (Kahneman, 2011). Could it lead to polarization and narcissism (Greenfield, 2003, 2008, 2015; Kahneman, 2011, Rosenberg, 2002)? The need for democracy to re-engage with critical thinking is vital. Is it possible for groups to be held responsible in the same way that an individual can be held responsible? Arendt’s (1963) notion that collective responsibility is upheld when each individual engages critically with their everyday decisions. Could balancing individual and collective needs be achieved? Some researchers argue it is indeed possible to engage in large groups that foster collective decision making for the common good (or instance Flanagan & Christakis, 2010; Flanagan & Bausch, 2010; Dryzek et al., 2019, McIntyre-Mills et al., 2014).

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Critical engagement could be assisted through enabling people to think through the implications of their everyday choices. An early prototype (McIntyre-Mills et al., 2014) to enable this process has been developed and piloted. The research could be extended, in order to find out in what contexts: ● Online monitoring in this digital era (Stokols, 2018) could help to protect habitats for diverse species ● Online engagement could lead to more individualism and polarization (Rosenberg, 2002; Greenfield, 2015)? In Planetary Passport (McIntyre-Mills, 2014: 21) I stress that: The limited nationalist social contract is reframed through suggesting what if we could develop a planetary passport to protect the environment of which we are a strand? What if we could become less tied to only limited ways of knowing?…

Greenfield (2003, 2008, 2015) cautions that digital changes may not always be for the better and emphasizes the need to be guided by norms that protect engagement with others in real time and face to face, not only on line. The research pilots were funded by the Australian Research Council and Local Government.17 A demonstration of the prototype can be found at: https://arc hive.org/details/pathway_DEMO_1. The prototype software is explained at this website hosted by Wirasoft: http://wirasoftfoundation.org/en_GB/web/smartenergy/ wirasoft. 17 The software needs development into a robust version that could be scaled up and tested through participating organisations such as vocational education and training hubs in Indonesian villages that follow the ‘ one village, many enterprises policy’. It currently has the facility to display spread sheets in EXCEL that could enable daily snap shots on social, economic and environmental indicators of wellbeing. My interest is in exploring engagement for the stewardship of diverse species habitats and finding a way to foster ecological citizenship through using a combination of critical heuristics and factual data to inform people of the implications of their choices for themselves, their family and grandchildren and to offer options so that people can make a living through ‘eco-facturing’ as suggested by Gunter Pauli (2010). This is why I have linked with an industry partner who heads Wirasoft and has a leadership role within the Indonesian diaspora. Could engagement in careful decision making about how people live their lives leads to decisions that encourage others to make social, economic and environmental decisions that are supportive of environmental concerns that go beyond the rhetoric of the UN 2030 Sustainable Development Agenda and the Sendai Risk Platform (2015–2030)? Perhaps it could be used as a resource to foster a multispecies stewardship agenda. In terms of innovation we draw on and adapt the principle of the ‘One Village, One Enterprise approach’, decreed by President Jokowi (2014) to enable working across sites to facilitate the mapping of opportunities and the cross fertilisation of ideas. Research needs to make a practical a difference through a community development and community learning approach in line with the UN Sustainable Development Goals and extend the frontiers of justice (Nussbaum, 2006) to protect sentient beings and their habitat. support gender mainstreaming which explicitly empowers women and young people through practical training to ‘earn while they learn and to grow a future’. Community Vocational Education and Training could be supported by local participating schools, colleges and universities using entry level practical training with partner organisations. add to the literature on the production, consumption and re-distribution cycle and the potential to adapt and scale up the ‘one resilient village, one re-generative businesses.’ The link between expanding women’s agency and resilience will be explicitly addressed.

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Conclusion: Rescuing the Enlightenment from Itself Through Recognition of Our Interconnectedness and Human Agency A plea for a relational approach to protecting living systems is developed in Planetary Passport (McIntyre-Mills, 2017) and Balancing Individualism and Collectivism (McIntyre et al., 2018). The critical heuristics approach is vital to address the ‘banality of evil’ which now passes as commonplace governance. Today the markets are open but conceptual and spatial (geographical) borders are closed. This is the paradox that is not addressed in the name of ‘border protection’. The case is made (drawing on Shiva, 1989, 2002, 2012a, 2012b) that sharing resources in common does not lead inevitably to the tragedy of the commons (Hardin, 1968) if the right design conditions prevail (Ostrom, 2008) and reciprocity, trust and ongoing monitoring by engaged local people occurs from below in line with post national conventions to protect people and the planet (Held, 2004) Human capabilities can be extended through indigenous ways of knowing and being. These ways respect the interdependency of living systems, by expressing this relationship as family, spiritual connection and a sense of awe (Harris & Wasilewski, 2004; Romm, 2018). ‘Rescuing the enlightenment from itself” (McIntyre-Mills, 2006), discussed the potential for critical thinking to enable people to think through their rights and responsibilities. Critical reflection is the only thing that will enable people to avoid stepping back from their responsibilities to engage actively as citizens (not only of nation states, but as citizens of the world) who care about what is going on across the border. To rescue enlightenment from itself, we need to realize that there are many ways of knowing, but to protect food security ethical decision making is essential. Systemic ethics needs to be applied to all living systems based on the a priori right to a life worth living and the a posteriori responsibility to consider the consequences of their actions for other living systems as stewards. This is linked with human rights and has been stressed by deep ecologists, eco systemic thinkers such as Haraway (1992), Shiva (2012a, 2012b) and Wadsworth (2010) and critical thinkers such as West Churchman (1972).

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Stiglitz, J. E. (2012). The price of inequality: How today’s divided society endangers our future. New York: W. W. Norton. Stiglitz, J., Sen, A., & Fitoussi, J. P. (2010). Mis-measuring our lives: Why the GDP doesn’t add up. New York: The New Press. Stokols, D. (2018). Social ecology in the digital age: Solving complex problems in a globalized world. London: Academic Press. Turok, N. (2012). The universe within. Allen and Unwin. Based on the CBC Massy Lectures. Ulrich, W., & Reynolds, M. (2010). Critical systems heuristics. In M. Reynolds & S. Holwell (Eds.), Systems approaches to managing change: A practical guide (pp. 242–292). London: Springer. UN. (2007). Declaration on the rights of Indigenous Peoples. http://www.un.org/esa/socdev/unpfii/ documents/DRIPS_en.pdf. UNESCO. (2007). Biosphere reserves: Dialogue in biosphere reserves. References, practices and experiences. Paris: UNESCO. ISSN 2071-1468. United Nations. (2014). World urbanisation prospects: The 2014 revision. https://esa.un.org/unpd/ wup/publications/files/wup2014-highlights.Pdf. United Nations Human Development Index. (2003). A compact among nations to end poverty. New York: UNDP, Oxford University Press. United Nations Office for Disaster Risk Reduction. (2015–2030). Sendai framework. http://www. preventionweb.net/drr-framework/sendai-framework/. United Nations Office for Disaster Risk Reduction. (2017). http://www.preventionweb.net/files/ 55465_globalplatform2017edings.pdf. United Nations Paris Climate Change. (2015). Conference of the parties twenty-first session Paris, 30 November to 11 December 2015. https://unfccc.int/resource/docs/2015/cop21/eng/l09r01.pdf. United Nations Sustainable Development Goals. (2017). https://www.un.org/development/desa/pub lications/sdg-report-2017.html. Urry, J. (2010). Consuming the planet to excess. Theory, Culture & Society, 27(2–3), 191–212. https://doi.org/10.1177/0263276409355999. Wadsworth, Y. (2010). Building in research and evaluation: Human inquiry for living systems. Sydney: Allen and Unwin. Whitehead, J. (2018). Living theory research as a way of life. Brown Dog books. WHO. https://www.who.int/about/who-we-are/constitution. Accessed 15 Mar 2019. Wilkinson, R., & Pickett, K. (2009). The spirit level. London: Allen Lane. Wirawan, R., & McIntyre-Mills, J. (2019). Innovation for social and environmental justice; a way forward? In J. McIntyre-Mills, N. R. A. Romm, & Y. Corcoran Nantes Democracy and governance for resourcing the commons: Theory and practice on rural-urban balance (pp. 447–460). Cham: Springer. Woodcock1, B., Isaac, N., Bullock, J., Roy, D., Garthwaite, D., Crowe, A., & Pywell, R. (2016). Impacts of neonicotinoid use on long-term population changes in wild bees in England. https:// doi.org/10.1038/ncomms12459; https://www.nature.com/articles/ncomms12459.pdf. World Economic Forum. (2019). https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2019/01/new-zealand-s-newwell-being-budget-will-fix-broken-politics-says-jacinda-ardern/. Yale. (2008). In memoriam: Arthur Galston, plant biologist, fought use of Agent Orange. https:// news.yale.edu/2008/07/18/memoriam-arthur-galston-plant-biologist-fought-use-agent-orange. Yap, M., & Yu, E. (2016). Operationalising the capability approach: Developing culturally relevant indicators of indigenous wellbeing. Oxford Development Studies, 44(3), 315–331.

Janet J. McIntyre-Mills is Honorary Professor in the College of Education at University of South Africa, Tshwane, South Africa; Visiting Research Fellow at Adelaide University in the College of Professions Main North Terrace; and Adjunct Associate Professor in College of Business Government and Law at Flinders University, Sturt Campus, Adelaide.

Chapter 10

From Polarisation to Multispecies Relationships: Re-Membering Narratives Janet J. McIntyre-Mills

Abstract Consciousness is a continuum. Axiologically, the paper begins with the assumption that ethically we need to transform the way we live our lives and that this entails changing our relationships to sentient beings and living systems. Ontologically we need to place ourselves within a web of life and epistemologically it requires humility and the willingness to learn from nature. Methodologically this approach is systemic as it is based on recognising that the knower and the known are not separate. In this respect it is based on the notion of a participatory universe. The paper explores the nature of relationships across species. It makes a makes a case for systemic interventions to protect the planet from ‘ecocide’, based on the assumption that we live in ‘a participatory universe’. Systemic Intervention is discussed in terms of mindfulness, critical reflection, an appreciation of Capra’s notion that we are a strand within the ‘web of life’ and praxis to enhance ethics, democracy and governance. The paper explores some of the parallels across systems thinking, the Mahayana Tradition of Buddhism and aspects of Indigenous ways of knowing. The axiological focus is on social and environmental justice and the protection of habitat for all living systems. The paper—written in the form of a dialogue—reflects on key questions pertaining to axiology, ontology, epistemology and methodology inspired by Mertens’ work on this topic. Keywords Relationships · Re-generation · Multiple species · Indigenous ways of knowing

I am based in the Yunus Social Business Centre. It is a new initiative at University of Adelaide and we are in the early stages. The university has signed up to be part of the global effort to address innovative approaches to address the three zeros: poverty, unemployment and carbon emissions. J. J. McIntyre-Mills (B) University of South Africa in the College of Education, Tshwane, South Africa e-mail: [email protected]; [email protected] Adelaide University, College of Professions Main North Terrace, Adelaide, Australia College of Business, Government and Law, Flinders University, Sturt, SA, Australia © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2021 J. J. McIntyre-Mills and Y. Corcoran-Nantes (eds.), From Polarisation to Multispecies Relationships, Contemporary Systems Thinking, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-33-6884-2_10

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Introduction The paper is structured to explore axiology, ontology, epistemology and methodology in more depth. Axiologically a value shift is needed for transformation to occur. I explain why a constructivist view of participation entails a systemic approach to transformation, but that the different methods can be used creatively (in combination) in ways that are respectful of diversity (see Mertens, 2019). Whilst I fully understand the frustration that led to Nancy Pelosi tearing up the State of the Nation Speech after Trump had delivered it in February, 20201 — we do need new narratives and examples of positive alternatives to hold up as options. A new way forward is required to counterbalance the current rhetoric in support of nationalism and business as usual.2 Criticism is insufficient to bring about transformation.

Statement of the Problem Paradoxically although we want change, we do not want to change ourselves and our relationships to living systems (see Wadsworth, 2010). Wadsworth’s work on living systems stresses the importance of looking at areas of concern systemically and that human beings need to understand that their fragmented views are the result of cultural programming. This is echoed by Deborah Bird Rose (2009, 2011, 2015) whose work broke new ground as a contribution to the ecological humanities. We are human animals with the capability to co-operate, to compete and also to be creative or destructive on a grand scale. The industrial approach to war and to agriculture has tipped the balance away from living sustainably. As Shiva (2017)3 stressed in a keynote address, ‘the war on bugs’ and ‘the war on weeds’ are part of the same problem, namely an attempt to obliterate diversity and the small farmer. She stresses the notion that health is linked with the health of all living systems. She stressed that it is no co-incidence that the explosion on 3 December 1984 of a pesticide plant triggered widespread protests in India that is now cited as an example of the way in which industrial agriculture has failed.

1 https://www.vox.com/2020/2/4/21123394/state-of-the-union-full-transcript-trump. 2 In

the State of the Nation Speech (2020) presented by Donald Trump his nationalist narratives support national interest, the power to dominate space and to lift up the oppressed within the American economy by closing borders and putting America first. His axiology, ontology, epistemology and methodology focus on ‘business as usual’. 3 Dr. Vandana Shiva: “Why We Need an Organic Future” (NOFA-VT 2017) Keynote Address, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gof7vdQI6OM.

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We Need to Rethink Our Relationships to Other Species The concept ‘species’ is a central concern in relation to the issue of categorization, membership, displacement and decision-making (in terms of state sovereignty, territory, colonization and its implications for human, animal and plant life). As urbanisation encroaches on the wild spaces and displaces other forms of life, relationships that are Anthropocentric need to be re-framed to enable re-generation and sustainable living that is non-anthropocentric. Arendt’s (1963) argument about ‘the banality of evil’ has wider relevance in relation to the voiceless. Donaldson and Kymlicka (2011) link rights to habitat. Thus, the citizenship of domestic animals living in the household may be closer to the citizenship of human sentients. But rights also need to be given to liminal animals who depend on green spaces in cities and suburbs. Farm animals have been given some (albeit inadequate rights in the European Union, for example). But much more needs to be done to ensure that farmed animals are able to live lives in which their capabilities are not curtailed. Wild animals need their habitat and need to be protected so that they can continue to thrive. Steven Pinker (2011) has argued that we have evolved to become less violent and that the so-called ‘better angels of our nature’ are prevailing. Unfortunately, if violence is defined to include structural violence to non-citizens, sentient beings, the next generation of life and the environment, human beings have a dismal record.

What Is Axiology? Axiology refers to beliefs about ‘the nature of ethics’ (Mertens, 2012: 2) and what constitutes moral behaviour for people on a daily basis. It involves drawing and redrawing boundaries around what is considered acceptable or unacceptable (Midgley, 2000), but also our relationship with all living systems. Singer (2002) makes a plea for extending the boundaries of solidarity to other species in his book ‘One World’. He has also led academics to make a case to Unisuper (a superannuation industry for university academics) that they should disinvest in industries that harm the environment and by extension harms the habitat of multiple species. The notion that regular small adjustments are all it takes to enable one bird to fly in harmony with a flock, gives me hope that despite the challenges posed by climate change, it is possible to do things differently. Just as a cell can emerge into complex life forms through small adjustments, so can each individual co-operate in the interests of collective survival.4 Davies (2006) explains that we live in a universe that (up until recent times) has been ‘just right for life’. He called this the so-called

4 See

Dawkins (2019a) for an explanation that draws on computer simulations of emergence that explains the importance of bottom up creativity.

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Goldilocks Enigma’.5 The universe is brought into being living systems that evolved into human beings who can reflect on their thinking and their practice to bring about change.6 New forms of praxis are inevitable if we are to have a hope of survival. Just as a bloated vampire bat knows it needs to share with its fellow bats who have been unsuccessful hunting (see Dawkins, 2019a), so human beings will need to learn to share water, food and energy with those who are less fortunate. All it would take is for each of us to make small adjustments in the way we live. Based on the rules of reciprocity, many species have learned that co-operation is as important for evolutionary survival as competition. A non-anthropocentric approach requires an openness to new ways of knowing and an appreciation of the importance of moving to the next level of understanding as hinted by Boulding’s (1956) skeleton of knowledge that could have been represented as a continuum of consciousness from inorganic to organic ways of knowing. This notion of continuity of knowing is inherent in the last stage of the continuum which includes ‘transcendence’. Homo sapiens are not merely thinkers. Unfortunately, the so-called ‘twice wise’ human beings (Banathy, 1996, 2000) are more adept at making tools than at thinking about the consequences of the changes they have made to this generation of life and the next. But this is a design choice and we do have the capability to change the way in which we think and act. As detailed below, from a Mahayana Tradition, the sentient and non-sentient stages of the continuum of life is important (Dalai Lama, 2005: 104), because their philosophical focus is axiological, namely the recognition of how conceptualisation, culture and habitus have resulted and the need to alleviate suffering, not about taxonomic categories. Balancing individual and collective (McIntyre-Mills et al., 2017) species rights is one of the central challenges for democracy and governance. Learning to read and write requires learning the letters of the alphabet and the shared system of numbers that has enabled the development of the arts, humanities, sciences and mathematics. Learning critical systemic literacy requires many ways of knowing as suggested by Gregory Bateson (1972) in his book the ‘ecology of mind.’ Many different intelligences can be employed to make sense of our world. Howard Gardner (2008) stresses the need to draw on diverse forms of human intelligence including: ‘bodily, 5 Just

like Goldilocks who tasted the porridge that was too hot, too cold, too salty and then just right, the emergence of life on planet earth began through a number of emergent iterations that found ‘ a just right’ habitat to begin the long journey of evolution from the first iteration of life as a single cell. Davies explains the so-called ‘Goldilocks Enigma’ as a self-reflective universe that has the potential to create meaning and perhaps Homo Sapiens need to rethink their designs. If all matter is in motion then emergence is a matter of chance at first, but later emergence is guided by self-conscious beings. Davies thus steps away from the argument that the earth had to be created by a super form of intelligence/God and suggests that perhaps it has evolved in such a way that life has become more self-aware and more intelligent. Thus, it does now have a sense of purpose. This approach echoes the Buddhist notion that consciousness (like energy) is beginning less and endless. 6 Living systems evolved in the primordial soup by making small adjustments to the environment that enabled their genetic code to be passed on to the next generation (Dawkins, 1976, 2019b). Each living system responds in context and is guided by a genetic code. It then continues to evolve and to adjust to the environment. Eventually homo sapiens (the so-called twice wise) evolved as a reflective tool maker, capable of changing the environment on a scale that was never before possible.

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linguistic, musical, mathematical or logical, naturalistic, spatial, interpersonal and intrapersonal’. But this does not go far enough. The kinds of intelligence of different animal species has been under recognized. Ackerman (2016) gives examples of the way in which species of birds solve problems, use and make tools and teach their young how to find food. This is a form of cultural transmission, based upon communication that goes way beyond mere signalling. De Waal (1996, 2006: 164) argues that the so-called ‘tower of morality’ needs to be transcended by extending the circle of human morality and solidarity from “self, family, clan, community, tribe, nation, humanity to all life forms.” The novel builds on ideas suggested in ‘Planetary Passport’ (McIntyre-Mills, 2017) and ‘Recognising our hybridity and interconnectedness’ (McIntyre-Mills, 2018: 19) and introduces the notion of new architecture for democracy and governance that extend solidarity and protection to all forms of life within a region.

Aim and Focus The focus of this paper is on the importance of ecological thinking for social and environmental justice and a realisation that mind, and matter are not separate. Thinking matters and our perceptions shape our world—our designs and their impact on nature in turn shape us. Systemic intervention needs to be more than criticism, it needs to provide positive examples. One such positive example could be the extent to which there is increasing convergence between physicists, neuroscientists and Mahayana Buddhism about the notion that consciousness is a continuum across all living systems. This is relevant to the way we live our lives. Achieving a calm peaceful mind and striving to live in ways that are kind to all sentient beings enables a virtuous life. As I understand Mahayana Buddhism (‘Mind and its Potential’, 2020)7 at death our mind continues and recycles as continuous energy. Thus, life is more than a long-distance marathon ending with death. The mind endures just as energy endures. Changing the narrative needs to be about rethinking our relationships with multiple species. The relational approach is explained by Harris and Wasilewski (2004). We survive because of a cycle of life in which we are a strand. Perhaps we need to see ourselves with a great deal more humility if we are to have a hope of surviving. The aim of this paper is to challenge the value of growth and productivity and to make the plea for personal as well as ‘eco-systemic’ transformation (McIntyre-Mills et al., 2019). We can change the narrative and our way of life if we have imagination and the will to live well in ways that are good for people and the planet.

7 Mind

and its Potential, Foundation for the Preservation of Mahayana Tradition, Buddha House, Magill, Adelaide, South Australia.

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Vandana Shiva’s narrative (2013) that Growth = poverty8 provides both a warning and a way forward. Another way forward is provided by Stiglitz et al. (2010) in their book “Mis-measuring our lives’. Re-generating wellbeing of current and future generations requires protecting a web of supportive factors. Joseph Stiglitz refers to these as wellbeing stocks. It is a concept adapted from Stiglitz et al. (2010: 15) to refer to a multidimensional measure of wellbeing including: 1. Material living standards (income, consumption and wealth), 2. Health, 3. Education, 4. Personal activities including work, 5. Political voice and governance, 6. Social connections and relationships, 7. Environment (present and future conditions), 8. Insecurity, of an economy as well as a physical nature’. The aim of the concept is to enable people to re-evaluate economics and to become more aware of the way in which we neglect social and environmental aspects of life. The pursuit of profit at the expense of people and the environment is a central problem for democracy and governance.

Sustaining wellbeing is perhaps insufficient, another new narrative that resonates with the times is to think in terms of ‘sufficiency’ as defined by His Majesty King Bhumibol Adulyadej9 of Thailand who stresses the need for ‘simplicity, frugality, and effectiveness’. This narrative resonates with the need to foster the re-growth and re-generation of areas impacted by, for example, over exploitation, drought, fires or floods. Clearly notions of ethics and morality differ depending on our values, experiences and place in society. Furthermore, current legal structures are inadequate to protect the environment, as stressed by Higgins (2018) which requires a change in the way we live our lives. This has implications for ethics, democracy and governance. Just as the Public Health Act can be invoked in Australia (2020) to ensure that people comply with the regulations to control COVID-19,10 it could become necessary to insist on compliance to regulations that protect the habitat of living systems.

8 Vandana

Shiva Growth=Poverty Published on November 10, 2013, http://sydneyoperahouse. com/ideas Ideas at the House, http://www.youtube.com/ideasatthehouse, http://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=7M3WJQbnHKc. 9 Rak Tamachat https://www.raktamachat.org/. 10 https://www.premier.sa.gov.au/news/media-releases/news/strengthening-public-safety-amidthe-threat-of-covid-19. “The State Government is acting to strengthen our public health laws through a set of measures which better equip South Australia to combat COVID-19, and similar threats in the future. The amendments enhance the South Australian Public Health Act, which includes allowing for a warrant to be issued to detain a person if that person is considered to be engaging in conduct that creates a risk of spreading disease.Premier Steven Marshall said that the changes are all about being prepared.”

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Why Is Critical Systemic Intervention an Appropriate Narrative to Address the Current Crisis and What Is the Rationale for Systemic Intervention? The ‘Business as usual’ approach is ‘consuming the planet’ beyond excess and that we risk extinction (see Urry, 2010; Bostrom, 2011) by enabling the 1% to profit at the expense of the majority in this generation and the next. Pauli (2010: 235–236) stresses that capitalism can be reframed to ensure that instead of extracting profit at the expense of people, animals and nature, sources of abundance can be found: Nature does not calculate cash flow. While we are obsessed with monetarization (to our own benefit) natural systems generate multiple revenue flows best measured in protein, drinking water, energy resources and defense systems. Nature produces benefit through the calculation of integrated benefit flow…. (Pauli 2010: 235–236)

In Mixed Methods (McIntyre-Mills, 2019: 46) I quote Gunter Pauli (2010: 230– 235) who explains that: “natural systems do not work in linear ways. They are cyclical and abhor any forms of waste.” I go on to explain that: Pauli (2010: 236) [stresses] that the linear economic model costs inputs, throughputs and outputs and externalises the costs to society and nature. Furthermore, it does not disclose the opportunity costs to future generations of life. A sustainable local community is determined by a sustainable region in which food, energy and water supplies are considered as major determinants for wellbeing. No community can be expected to transform from a high carbon life style (or aspiring to this life style) without feeling part of the design process and owning the decisions as to how resources should be used. However, if young people can be enabled to tap into ‘eco-facturing’ in a ‘cascade economy’ (Pauli, 2010) based on finding sources of abundance in nature and in the misdirected systems (Ackoff and Pourdehnad 2001) created by the current economy, then new possibilities can be created. Pauli (2010: 79) citing Peter Drucker stresses that: ‘the needs of the poor are opportunities waiting for entrepreneurs’. Furthermore, the contributions made by those who live simply and well need to be demonstrated and recognised (see the notions of global citizenship and planetary passport, McIntyre-Mills, 2017). If we are prepared to recognise opportunity, the potential for resilience and also our mutual vulnerability, it provides a basis for stewardship. We are all reliant on others and need to be able to depend on our connections with others in a cascade economy. What if we could recognise our vulnerability, and what if we could foster a sense of caring for others that recognises our humanity and our mutuality?”

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Whose Thinking and Practice Inspires You? Indigenous people are all about place…land is our mother. This is not a metaphor. The natural world is in constant dialogue with us, although we do not always listen or respond… (Walker cites Manulania Meyer, 2014: 306)

The First Australians say ‘We are the earth and the waters.’ We return to the land as compost for plants and food for bacteria, we return to the waters as fish food and to the air which nourishes all living systems. We become energy or essence or as the Mahayana Buddhist philosophy suggests, when the gross mind dies a very subtle mind endures as consciousness, just as energy endures. The notion of nonlocal consciousness is not considered strange by first nations. The mind or soul is more than the body, at the most basic level Ancestors are also re-membered, because their actions have made a difference for the better or worse on the lives of others. At a deeper level the lives of the ancestors live on, because they are believed to influence the lives of the living. Primary research on mindfulness has been inspired by indigenous mentors primarily in South Africa and Australia. Mentoring by Aboriginal Australians, in particular Olive Veverbrants and P.T. has been inspirational for my own learning. Both share Chicken Hawk or Eagle dreaming. Elsewhere (McIntyre-Mills & Veverbrants, 2010) I have cited Olive’s story of how her mother named her after Olive Pink, the botanist and social anthropologist. She also gave Olive the Chicken Hawk totem, because it flies above the landscape, has penetrating sight and a loud clear voice. She said her mother stressed she would never be hungry with good sight and a clear voice. Like her mother who had befriended Olive Pink, Olive Veverbrants took me under her wing. She introduced me to Alice Springs, the people, the landscape and the history. The story of Alice Springs people is written elsewhere and her dialogues with me resulted in a joint paper that records some of the stories from her mother. Olive then asked me to transcribe the tapes in which her mother talks about the genealogical connections she has with other Australians, how her mother married Hong a Chinese gardener and learned to speak Mandarin and how she married a polish immigrant. Her story spans cultures and classes and she reveals our interconnectedness. Her epic poem (in McIntyre-Mills, 2003) on social and environmental injustice in Alice appears as the Preface (McIntyre-Mills, 2003: ix–xi) for ‘Critical systemic praxis for social and environmental justice’. It is called ‘Looking at my town’. Interestingly her totem is shared by P.T. who was given the totem by his adopted parents in Alice. I met him in Alice Springs where he moved to be near his adopted family. But he grew up in a children’s home in Magill nearby my home in Adelaide. He now lives in Adelaide as he needs medical treatment on a regular basis. On one winter day when he visited, he pointed out the yellow sour sops (weeds growing in our lawn) and commented that they were favourites snacks when they were in the children’s home. They often went hungry. He is one of many of the survivors of abuse at this home and he awaits the results of a court case. He calls himself ‘Eagle Man’ and regards the totem as powerful and healing He wears eagle feathers in his hat and

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decorates his four-wheel drive with painted eagle feathers. This symbol enables him to take a broader view and to rise above the challenges of life. Vandana Shiva’s trailblazing praxis on earth security, seed security and water security is inspirational. Her emphasis on the soil and the sacred role of earthworms brings to mind the need for humility and to remember that the root for humility is humus (earth). We are indeed the earth, the waters or the sky when we return to our elements. In ‘Systemic Ethics’ (2014) I stressed that the critical systemic intervention needs to be more than thinking about our relationships to promote social justice. We need to change how we see ourselves within the web of living systems. Kenneth Boulding (1956) could have couched his ‘skeleton of science’ as a continuum from inorganic to organic life, rather than as a fixed hierarchy, but I suspect he would agree that he intended it to be a heuristic device to inspire transformation through enabling human beings to strive for transformation and to see themselves as more than members of competing nation states in ‘separate life boats’ and instead as part of ‘space ship earth’ (Boulding, 1966). He stressed the need to understand a shift in economic values away from so-called ‘cowboy economics’ which he saw as symbolic of taming and subduing nature. Gregory Bateson’s (1972) work is inspirational in that he understood the need to focus on the mind. In his landmark book ‘the ecology of the mind’ he stresses the need to think about our interconnectedness, rather than on polarising the mind and body, us and them, based on categories. Mindfulness remains as relevant today as it was previously. By mindfulness I mean the ability to think about our thinking.11 Susan Greenfield (2000), a neuroscientist has stressed that the more we can think about our thinking the less likely we will be to make rash emotional decisions. Her further works (2003, 2008, 2015) stress the importance of thinking about consciousness and how the way we design and relate to technology can shape our own human wellbeing, development and evolution as a species.

11 According

to Kabat-Zinn (2003: 145): “An operational working definition of mindfulness is: the awareness that emerges through paying attention on purpose, in the present moment, and nonjudgmentally to the unfolding of experience moment by moment. Historically, mindfulness has been called “the heart” of Buddhist meditation (Thera, 1962). It resides at the core of the teachings of the Buddha (Gunaratana, 1992; Hanh, 1999; Nanamoli & Bodhi, 1995), traditionally described by the Sanskrit word dharma, which carries the meaning of lawfulness as in “the laws of physics” or simply “the way things are,” as in the Chinese notion of Tao. One might think of the historical Buddha as, among other things, a born scientist and physician who had nothing in the way of instrumentation other than his own mind and body and experience, yet managed to use these native resources to great effect to delve into the nature of suffering and the human condition. What emerged from this arduous and single-minded contemplative investigation was a series of profound insights, a comprehensive view of human nature, and a formal “medicine” for treating its fundamental “dis-ease,” typically characterized as the three “poisons”: greed, hatred (aversion), and ignorance/delusion (unawareness). “mindfulness is the awareness that arises from paying attention, on purpose, in the present moment, and nonjudgmentally.”

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Recognising Our Hybridity and Interconnectedness Through Mindfulness Scientists debate whether consciousness is a product of the connections made in the synapses or whether it somehow precedes it. Davies (2006) argues that consciousness emerges from ever increasing complexity. It is thus recursive and participatory. If all matter is in motion then emergence is a matter of chance at first, but later emergence is guided by self-conscious beings. This idea of interactions leading to increasing levels of complexity and increasing levels of consciousness has been suggested by scholars such as Richard Dawkins (1996, 2006, 2019a). The notion that this nonlocal consciousness is seen differently by religious leaders such as the Lama who in conversation with Christof Koch 2013 stressed that consciousness is more than ‘a brain in a dish’ or the functioning of a brain and other cells in a human body. Koch agreed that there are different kinds of consciousness, even if he did not go as far as saying that the purpose of life is happiness. Buddhists believe that higher levels of mindfulness can enable us to become more compassionate and less selfish. Buddhism is very much more advanced in terms of an awareness of the rights of all sentient beings and as Lama Thubten Yeshe (2001) stressed, the selfless service to others is a form of Bodhicitta, which is nonhierarchical and ‘an attitude dedicated to all universal living beings’ (Yeshe, 2001: 23). From a Buddhist perspective all beings are regarded with compassion, simply because they exist, not because they have a use value. Buddhist philosophy makes a plea for non-attachment. Yeshe stresses that this should not be confused with a lack of care. It means avoiding greed. Yeshe (2001: 35–36) says: Attachment is a symptom of this sick world. This world is sick because of attachment…oil producing countries are sick because of attachment. Am I communicating with you or not?. … from a Buddhist point of view, it is very difficult for a person to experience non attachment….

Yeshe continues by stressing that in the West few people achieve lives of nonattachment, except for those involved in a spiritual life. He then went on to say that recognizing progress in others (including those who practice other religions) is important. The virtue-based argument in Buddhism is that if one is compassionate one ought not to eat meat –as killing causes suffering.12 Buddhists in the Mahayana Tradition pray: “May I become a Buddha, in order to benefit all sentient beings.”

12 Finnigan,

B. (2018) ‘Buddhism and the moral status of animals.’ November 2018, https://www. abc.net.au/religion/buddhism-and-the-moral-status-of-animals/10518728. Finnegan (2018) sums it up as follows: “Several virtue-based arguments are also advanced in favour of vegetarianism. Some argue that it is not compassionate to eat meat. In La˙nk¯avat¯aras¯utra, it is reasoned that animals feel fear when threatened by a hunter with death and so, out of compassion for this kind of suffering, one should refrain from eating meat. The La˙nk¯avat¯aras¯utra also presents a version of the modified virtuebased argument, claiming that eating meat poses an obstacle to the development of loving-kindness (maitri) and compassion (karun.a¯ ).”

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In terms of the Buddhist notion of the cycle of life, the mind is continuous and is reincarnated in many forms. Buddhists believe animals have souls13 and they do not eat sentient beings. They are vegetarians. By seeing all beings as part of a web of life, there is no hierarchy and no basis for treating sentient beings and their habitat with disrespect or as merely having a functional use value. They believe that in the continuous cycle of consciousness all points of the continuum are experienced, from plant to animal to human animal. The role of a compassionate person is to reduce suffering and to practice kindness to others. This resonates with aspects of systemic thinking based on the notion of evolution from the simple to the complex and that at the end of life the body transforms to basic chemical elements. Energy continues according to physics. An appreciation of non-local consciousness is also fostered in Mahayana Tradition of Buddhism. Similarly, the cycle of life and death and a sense of continuation across generations of living systems is understood by first nations. Despite the limitations on the understanding of Aboriginal culture, the male anthropologist Walter Baldwin Spencer and Francis Gillen (who was the local telegraph station master in Central Australia) explain the two origins to totem story in their field notes. This is one (based on Gillen’s notes edited by Jones, 2017: 162) about how people transformed in the dreamtime (Alcheringa) from plant to animal to human: The Arunta belief is that every man and woman was changed in the Alcheringa from an animal or plant into a human creature, sometimes [a] perfect man but more often an imperfectly formed or rudimentary man who was subsequently completed either by certain spirits called Ungam-bikulla or some other great Alcheringa men whose mission it was to go about the country perfecting their species…

The other is that the ancestors of, for example the animal totem of the great lizard Amulyila did not come from the animal it was the other way around, so that the life form that gave birth predates the human and the animal: From the bodies of each man spirits (Kurinna) issues and these spirits are the ancestors – the real Alcheringa men- of the men of these totems…” For instance, the sons of the lizard were the ancestors of the lizards… This is the solid bed rock of the origin of totemism…”

In fact, it can be said that given the limits of their participant observation as men they did not hear the women’s stories (Bell, 1993) about how women could choose a totem for their child, according to what they see when their foetus moves. In some instances, adopted children are given the same totem as the mother as in the case of my friend, P.T who was given the Eagle Hawk totem. This of course allows a certain amount of discretion in choosing a totem which can be the spirit from the physical landscape, fauna or flora. The spirit could be from anywhere in the environment. A cultural outcome is that one does not eat or destroy one’s totem, because they are recognised as family with whom they have a close connection. Some cross-cultural agreement has been reached between Buddhists and Western Scientists. Giulio Tononi and Christof Koch in 2015 wrote a paper acknowledging 13 Buddhism and (perhaps Assisi’s version of Christianity) do not support drawing lines of exclusion. Assisi embraced living simply and ensured that women could participate in the ministry and teaching. Similarly, Buddhism sees a role for non-attachment and non-sexism.

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that ‘Consciousness is everywhere’. They stress that consciousness is not the preserve of human beings (2015: 5): First, ravens, crows, magpies, parrots and other birds, tuna, coelacanths and other fish, octopuses and other cephalopods, bees and other members of the vast class of insects are all capable of sophisticated, learnt, non-stereotyped behaviours that we associate with consciousness if carried out by people [56–58]. Darwin himself set out ‘to learn how far the worms acted consciously’ and concluded that there was no absolute threshold between ‘lower’ and ‘higher’ animals, including humans, which would assign higher mental powers to one but not to the other [59]. Second, the nervous systems of these species display a vast and ill understood complexity. The bee contains about 800 000 nerve cells whose morphological and electrical heterogeneity rivals that of any neocortical neuron. These cells are assembled in highly nonlinear feedback circuits whose density is up to ten times higher than that of neocortex [60]. Thus, neural signatures of consciousness that have some validity in humans and other mammals may not apply at all to invertebrates.

The Dalai Lama (2005: 97–98) in “The Universe in a single atom: the convergence of science and spirituality” explains his understanding of the continuity across organic and inorganic matter in a manner that resonates with Boulding’s (1956) paper on emerging levels of consciousness. Buddhism does not, as mentioned above, specifically distinguish between organic and inorganic, because its axiological focus is on sentience and the need to develop mindful awareness and compassion for other sentient beings. Consciousness is carried through all living systems and it has varying degrees of awareness. Living systems are part of a ‘web of life’ (Capra, 1996) which has been commodified by Capitalism. Both capitalism14 and communism, however, have been guilty of destroying nature. The roots lie in placing people above nature in both value systems. The Protestant notion of hard work and the need to save resources (which Max Weber stressed in the Protestant Work Ethic and the ‘spirit of capitalism’ helped to foster the growth and spread of capitalism) and the recognition of the sacred was lost in the process. Knowing the ‘price of everything and the value of nothing’ was at the expense of understanding the core value of living systems of which human beings are but a strand. The problem also lies deeper in the Christian religion which (in official versions) places God and heaven above man, woman, animals and nature. In unofficial versions of Christianity espoused by Assisi and Mary Magdalene and many other religions, such as Buddhism and Hinduism—this is not the case. The next step in the argument is control and suppression of the voiceless and nature. The way of life of indigenous people, women and young people who must live with the results of policy decisions has shaped current and future generations of living systems. In the Middle Ages women herbalists and healers (who connected with nature and were close to plants and animals) were considered to have too much power. Their enemies were able to gain control of their property simply by labelling them ‘witches’ engaged in strange acts or blaming them if their herbal remedies or medical interventions failed. Witches were controlled with the support of those who were 14 The

notion of hierarchical taxonomy and commodification of the other is at the root of capital’s justification for extracting profit.

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happy to claim their property after they had been accused and found guilty. The accusations were guided by a manual for witch trials15 which not only destroyed lives, but which shaped attitudes. Woman’s rights have been hard won through their own protests. The suffragette movement was based on the courage of women who were prepared to re-construct their lives by seeing their own potential and a different future in which they could express themselves beyond the household environment and a world in which they could take public roles and public office. Adelaide, South Australia (where I am based) is one of the first places where all women gained the vote in 1894. But the federation of Australia led to restrictions on voting in 1901 and Indigenous men and women had to wait until 1962 to vote in federal elections. Indigenous first nations have to a greater or lesser extent also had to fight for the vote and to overcome colonization. The United Nations Declaration of the Rights of Indigenous People (2008) has been invoked to try to maintain rights to land. It has not been popular in many parts of Africa and Asia as it is seen as a way (potentially) to challenge national sovereignty agendas. But the right of nation states to link with Global capitalist markets at the expense of this generation of life and the next needs to be challenged not only in the interests of human species, but in the interests of all species of which we are but one strand. Young people (deemed too young to vote) have been at the receiving end of policy making, but Greta Thunberg has shown how one young person can change the narrative through making a personal stand on climate change and stresses that the time for change is overdue. Greta Thunberg summed up the situation in her Davos speech to the World Economic forum (21 January, 2020)16 that ‘Our house is still on fire’, she could have said, the planet and our economy is still on fire as the root for ecology and economics is of course ecology. Alexander (2020) underlines the vulnerability of communities who were cut off during the bush fire crisis in Australia. They were without communication and access to outside world. Food in the shops ran low, water supplies were vulnerable and electricity supplies were cut. The cascading effects of this event underline how the design of our current society needs a rethink. He added that a similar cascade effect could occur if Australia was cut off from oil supplies. The point he is making is that our way of life is dependent on outdated designs that are not mindful of our resultant vulnerability. Alexander (2020) sums it up as follows:

15 “According to Wicasta Lovelace who wrote the introduction to the online version, the book shaped attitudes for centuries: “The lasting effect of the Malleus upon the world can only be measured in the lives of the hundreds of thousands of men, women, and even children, who suffered, and died, at the hands of the Inquisitors during the Inquisition. http://www.malleusmaleficarum.org/downloads/Mal leusAcrobat.pdf. Accessed 19/12/2019 The Malleus Maleficarum, according to the introduction to the on line version by of Heinrich Kramer and James Sprenger is an ‘unabridged online republication of the 1928 edition’. Wicasta Lovelace explains that the 1948 edition included. Translation, notes, and two introductions by Rev Montague Summers(who according to Lovelace appeared to believe in the witchcraft process). 16 https://www.democracynow.org/2020/1/21/our_house_is_still_on_fire.

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Capitalism demands limitless economic growth, yet research shows that trajectory is incompatible with a finite planet. If capitalism is still the dominant economic system in 2050, current trends suggest our planetary ecosystems will be, at best, on the brink of collapse. Bushfires will become more monstrous and wildlife will continue to be annihilated.

We need new narratives and new success stories that provide pathways towards a new future. Alexander explains that green growth can be decoupled from environmental destruction: Most mainstream economists and politicians accept the science on the dire state of the planet, but not many people think capitalism is the problem. Instead, the dominant response to the ecological crisis is to call for ‘green growth’. This theory involves producing ever more goods and services, but with fewer resources and impacts. So a business might design its products to have less environmental impact, or a product at the end of its life could be reused – sometimes called a ‘circular economy’. If our entire economy produced and consumed goods and services like this, we mightn’t need to abandon the growth economics inherent to capitalism. Instead, we would just “decouple” economic growth from environmental.

But this paper and other contributions (McIntyre-Mills, 2014, 2017) stress that the focus instead needs to be on limiting consumption and protecting habitat through post national regional interventions to protect food, water and energy security and to enable protection and safe passage for species facing displacement. Mitigation and adaptation to climate change requires living in ways that protect multiple species. This requires the protection of habitat and the limitation of consumption through balancing individual and collective needs. We face a turning point as school protests led by young activists such as Greta Thunberg stress that adults have done too little, too late to protect the next generation of life. Greed has indeed governed the way in which economies have been managed as she stated at her UN address. Cutting carbon emissions has achieved very little. But transformation will require more than making adjustments to the economy as we know it. New forms of stewardship require rethinking our relationships with one another. Non-anthropocentric ethics requires caring for multiple species of which we are one strand in ‘the web of life’. Paradoxically stewardship has been seen as the authority to make decisions in the interests of a small powerful minority at the expense of current and future generations of living systems. A rapid transformation needs to be achieved through praxis to change economics, representation and accountability. Expanding Pragmatism requires understanding what we do to the environment we do to ourselves and our children. We need to recognize our interdependency and connectedness to habitat. Stewardship is about responsibility for current and future generations of life, not the management of resources for the wellbeing of a few at the expense of the majority. Green growth thus needs to be replaced with a sufficiency approach and the protection of ‘the web of life’ (Capra, 1996). New forms of democracy, governance and ethics begin with values. In an interconnected world nation states continue to compete economically and for political control in separate ‘life boats’ to use Kenneth Boulding’s (1966) terminology. We need to understand that the challenge of climate change needs to be faced collectively. Displacement due to fire, flood and drought are widespread and need to be faced in

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post national regions that collectively address concerns. The way to manage social, economic and environmental footprints through engagement from below is a subject of ‘Transformation from Wall Street to Wellbeing’ (McIntyre-Mills et al., 2014), ‘Planetary Passport’ (McIntyre-Mills, 2017) and ‘Systemic Ethics’ (McIntyre-Mills, 2014). I will not repeat the argument here other than saying that if we can understand that food, water and energy security are common needs and that how we make decisions matters not just in our own household, neighbourhood or post national regions. Thus, the personal is political and transparent decision making needs to be widespread. The positive potential for rapid adaptation and mitigation to climate change through transparency has been demonstrated, for example in the Cape Province in South Africa, when the population of the Cape reduced their water consumption in 2018. The use of a water map that transparently made evident the consumption choices of each household by giving the households, red, green or grey symbols ensured that each household was held to account. The management of resources however is not merely a responsibility of households. Each organisation in the public, private or civil society sector should be required to make their management of resources transparent. Furthermore, a cyclical economy could encourage those businesses that focus on environmental green businesses or ‘eco-facturing’, to use Gunter Pauli’s (2010) notion of drawing on nature to create abundance, rather than extracting from nature to create a deficit. Businesses and social enterprises that re-generate the social and environmental fabric should be rewarded through positive sanctions and businesses that deplete should be red flagged. Local water and energy supplies, in particular need to be freed from corrupt centralised services by enabling the transformation of local enterprises. One of the ways we can bring about transformation is providing alternatives. These can be small transformational pilots that prefigure alternative ways of living and being in a quantum universe (McIntyre-Mills et al., 2019a, b). Small scale projects are needed that provide examples of success. People in Australia have reached the stage that air quality is a real concern, but nevertheless there are still initiatives to try to open more coal mines in regional Queensland. Systems thinking (that enables seeing the connections across carbon emissions, climate change, drought and bush fires leading to poor air quality) appears to be lacking in some quarters. But perhaps the issue is not the inability to appreciate the nature of reality and rather it could be seen as short-term greed or fear of unemployment in regional towns (where jobs are scarce and farms face drought). In this context a new narrative of hope is overdue to provide alternative forms of employment. Creative social enterprises based on multidisciplinary initiatives are needed to respond to the local environment. Botanists, agriculturalists and entrepreneurs. need to work alongside the social sciences. For example, could techniques to help revegetate Australian bush ravaged zones benefit by providing windbreaks, mulching and biochar generated by bamboo?

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Are Forms of Democracy and Governance that Support Multispecies Relationships so Hard to Achieve? The quick answer is that examples of successful options exist. They simply have to be extended and applied more widely. Successful examples include: ● Local governance and democracy, for example The Aarhus Convention requires transparency of information to all local residents. If local residents wish to report environmental concerns, they have a right to access information and to seek redress. If they do not have a satisfactory response, they can seek redress form the national government or the European Parliament or the European court. Clearly the inadequacies of the EU do not need to be rehearsed here, but Florini (2003) was outlining the potential for local residents who are citizens of the EU to speak out wherever they are in the EU. The potential is for regional governance at a post national level to be applied in post national regions internationally (see McIntyre-Mills, 2014, 2017). ● United Nations protocols could be scaled up as a Global Covenant (Held) supported by an International Ecocide Law (Higgins, 2016, 2018) that could ensure individuals, organisations and nation states can be held to account if the environmental fabric is destroyed. ● Social movements ranging from the Australian Conservation Foundation17 (a mainstream organisation dedicated to public education, to more radical movements such as Extinction Rebellion18 that advocates a citizen’s assembly and the school strike movement for climate change.19 Extinction rebellion has been supported by the Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams.20

What Is Ontology? Ontology refers to beliefs about the nature of reality. (Mertens, 2012: 2)

If we understand that the nature of reality is experienced through only 5 senses, namely: the eyes, ears, nose, tongue, skin and nerves and is seen, heard, felt and smelled, then we may think that we all see the world the same way if we have these senses intact. But with a little thought we can appreciate that we will have different experiences even if we all have five basic senses. Our attention may be drawn to some things rather than others, depending on our personality or our prior experiences and our values. At the simplest level, the way in which we experience 17 https://www.acf.org.au/. 18 https://xrsa.com.au/. 19 https://www.schoolstrike4climate.com/. 20 #ExtinctionRebellion,

Extinction Rebellion.

Dr. Rowan Williams, “… the future of the human race is now at stake”—

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something depends on how we construct or make sense of it.21 If we include the sixth sense (derived by thinking about our thinking) then we are able to gain more clarity on our experiences. We can know based on the experiences of the 5 senses, based on thinking about our thinking, or based on inferences and by considering the ideas of others, before testing them through experience. This is in line with the critical systemic approach, based on questioning. The idea that our thinking and values shape ourselves and our environment which in turn can shape us draws on Bateson’s (1972) notion of ‘ecology of mind’. A seventh sense may be included as ‘intuition’, which is perhaps all the six senses working together (drawing on the conscious and unconscious mind) to enable quick spontaneous decisions or perhaps a hunch or a feeling that can sometimes enable us to survive danger or to anticipate problems, because we are also drawing on the unconscious mind. The ability to gain clarity of the mind through thinking about the five basic senses through mindfulness is the key concept of the Mahayana tradition of Buddhism to support clarity and testing out ideas22 : …three methods …experience, inference and a reliable authority” (Dalai Lama, 2005: 18– 19) are central along with ongoing openness to testing. According to the Dalai Lama (2005: 13) his study of the relationship between Buddhism and Western Science has revealed many parallels in the approach to experiential learning, careful inferences and the importance of testing out the ideas: …spirituality must be tempered by the insights and discoveries of science. If as spiritual practitioners we ignore the discoveries of science, our practice is also impoverished, as this mindset can lead to fundamentalism. This is one of the reasons I encourage my Buddhist colleagues to undertake the study of science, so that its insights can be integrated into the Buddhist worldview.

Ontological Implications for Understanding the Nature of Consciousness What is consciousness? Consciousness has been understood as either (a) local, rooted in the brain or (b) non-local and distributed. But Rene Descartes’ dualistic notion that body and mind are separate is now questioned by mainstream scientists such as (c) Christof Koch who previously thought that consciousness could be reduced to chemical stimuli in the brain. But the hard problem (Chalmers, 2006) of how experiences are generated remains. We can never see into the mind of another and if we believe that consciousness is merely a chemical reaction then we can imagine 21 For

example, I have just done some watering in the garden and in the process grazed my foot. I hopped to displace my attention and then concentrated on the plants. Then I put a little tea tree oil on the graze. Although it stung I knew that it would heal the toe quickly and so the pain was interpreted quite positively. 22 In Mahayana philosophy it is assumed that the very subtle mind is carried over as non-local consciousness (or energy with imprints of the consequences of our actions or karma) when we die. Axiologically, Buddhists believe we decide our own fates through the choices we make. This is why self-reflection, mindfulness or self-questioning is so important as a guide for ethics.

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that all consciousness mirrors the same reality. When we think we are seeing the same reality we become disappointed or angry when others do not share our view. We need to realise that perceptions are filtered by our thoughts and assumptions. Only through training the mind and setting aside barriers can we approach a clearer vision.23 Mindfulness needs to occur by addressing the enemies within, these are: ‘morality, religion, politics and aesthetics’, to use the phrase of C.West Churchman (1979, 1982). Consciousness is also non-local. Neil Turok in ‘The universe within’ (2012) argues that human perception and a sense of the spiritual remain important and ought not to be dismissed in the way Dawkins (1976, 2006) suggests. The mind of the human being remains a vital aspect in triggering genes and making sense of the environment. Lipton (2016) argues that we are human receptors who make sense of the world around us. We take in signals and we send off signals. Thus, the material body and the mind play an equally important role in promoting wellbeing. Lipton (2012),24 author of ‘Biology of Belief’ (2016) develops an argument that genes only provide the potential or the pattern for proteins and that the trigger for activating the production of certain proteins always comes from the environment and our perception of the environment. Neurogenesis makes the point that the environment and our sense of perception can help us to overcome any potential programming in our cells. So, the notion that brains and genes are the site of consciousness is too simplistic. Non-local consciousness is taken for granted by many first nations. The idea of ubuntu, that ‘we are people through other people’ and that we are dependent on nature is summed up by Indigenous Australians as: “we are the land.” HH the Dalai Lama (2013) made it clear that consciousness is everywhere. This is a theme explored by Richard Davidson (2013)25 at a conference spanning the Mind Life Institute and the Drepung Monastery26 The dialogue resulted in a scholarly paper exploring this viewpoint by Tononi and Koch (2015) called ‘Consciousness: here, there and everywhere?’ Once we accept that all sentient animals share capabilities then the need to extend the social contract to include young people, the disabled, asylum seekers and the voiceless sentient animal. The Dalai Lama (2013) said that surely a beloved dog licking a trusted human companion must indicate emotion and tenderness? David Richardson agreed that the positive effect of relationships between care animals and human beings has helped to improve the wellbeing of those who are ill. Donaldson and Kymlicka (2011) stress that recognizing the rights to domestic, liminal, farm and wild animals is overdue. The non-local notion that all life has consciousness is understood by First nations such as Aboriginal Australians who talk about ‘sacred business’ in 23 Consciousness

is also subjective and this results in intersubjective experience. Quantum theory stresses that the observer constructs reality through their senses. The universe can be seen from this perspective as recursive and that through testing out options in the laboratory of the universe—life emerges and becomes increasingly conscious. 24 Lipton, B 2012 The Frequency That is “You” see http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=iI4WoeP8d_4. 25 Mind, Life and Matter, 2013. Day 1 Drepung Monastery, Mundgod, India January 17–22. 26 Tononi G, Koch C. 2015 Consciousness: here, there and everywhere? Phil. Trans. R. Soc. B 370: 20140167. http://dx.doi.org/10.1098/rstb.2014.0167.

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much the same way as HH the Dalai Lama talks about ‘Buddhist business’. He stressed that he believed that consciousness is definitely more than brain functioning but accepts that Western Science stresses measurement and making things measurable before they are accepted as true. But by the end of the dialogue they were in agreement that the brain is more than a machine and that ‘consciousness is everywhere’, just like energy it is continuous.27

How Can We Take Stewardship Seriously? All sentient beings have rights (Nussbaum, 2006, 2011) and a right to habitat. If stewardship is to be taken seriously then we need to recognise the right to habitat for domestic pets, agricultural animals, liminal creatures living in cities and suburbs and wild animals as stressed by Donaldson and Kymlicka (2011) in Zoopolis. Wild creatures are driven to city gardens to find water in drought ridden areas in Australia. If consciousness is more than the firing of an assembly of neurons in our brain (Chalmers, 2006), how does it relate to mindfulness? What is the link between mindfulness, well-being and living systems? Where do we draw the lines of inclusion and exclusion across sentient species and across human beings and the environments in which they live? What is it to be conscious, to be alive and to die and how does this relate to our being a strand in a living system? At the simplest level, organic life transforms to sustain other forms of life after death. By merging with the earth, we become a resource for other forms of life. Being a blood donor, electing to donate our organs when we die or being prepared to take the risk to share a non-vital organ when we are alive (as a neighbour did for her family member) are just some of the ways in which we can make a contribution. By returning to our elements to re-generate the earth is perhaps another. We can also hope that we will become memories for those who continue to live and perhaps a trace of some of our thoughts and actions will remain in digital records that could help to generate other (better) ideas and designs, the citations and knowledge that we glean by reading, listening to others and other means take on a life of their own. In a sense they generate other responses and other designs. Minds can thus reach out across space and time. 27 Bohm, Einstein and Max Planck suggested that consciousness precedes matter. Matter is perceived

as solid by the brain, but it can be understood as particles in motion in a holographic universe perceived by a holographic brain, to draw on and cite Fredriksson (2015:166, 169) who distils the work of Einstein, Bohm and Pibram. Werner Heisenberg along with others in the field of quantum mechanics found that when observing subatomic particles, the observer and the observed are linked. Frederiksson poses the question: “Are we moving towards a scientific paradigm shift? A paradigm shift where the foundations have been laid by Albert Einstein and the quantum physicists Niels Bohr, Max Planck, Werner Heisenberg, Erwin Schrodinger, David Bohm, Edward Witten and professor of neurophysiology Karl Pribram? (Fredriksson,2015: 168). The paradoxical relationship between relativity and quantum mechanics remains and puzzles thinkers across the spectrum of the sciences was discussed previously by the Dalai Lama (2005: 87).

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The way forward is the ability to work across disciplines and to appreciate many kinds of knowledge, but first we must recognize our anthropocentric starting point. Butler’s (2005, 2011) work stresses “the need to rethink the human as a site of interdependency.” If human beings accept their interdependency, then they will be less anthropocentric and more likely to be able to recognize that they are part of an interconnected web of life. We need to accept that we are human animals and that our sovereign states are a fiction. We are dependent on others in our immediate neighbourhood and on others within our regional neighbourhood. Similarly, our connection and return to other states of organic and inorganic life also needs to be recognized. Butler stresses that humanity needs to be able to ask for assistance and we need to be able to anticipate that we will be heard, and that people will respond with compassion. Unless this is possible it leads to a life that can be unbearable. Do we wish to live in a world where we want to help one another and in which we deny the pain of other sentient beings?28 The Dalai Lama (2005: 100) stresses that human beings are separated from chimpanzees and gorillas by only 2 and 3% of their genes, respectively. The work of Snyder et al. (see Snyder, 2011) and Pert (1999) on the way our thinking shapes our emotions and how this in turn affects our physical wellbeing is now accepted in mainstream biology and neuroscience. Currently, as the world faces COVID-19 virus and the realities of climate change it is time to think about transforming our thinking and our practice. The virus is thought to have spread from the trafficking of wild animals for meat.29 Wild creatures that had been trafficked include bats and pangolins from South Africa as well as other wild creatures from China. The commodification of sentient beings for profit and pleasure has continued for centuries (Frankopon, 2015, 2018).

Mindfulness Symbols and Rituals to Prompt Systemic Praxis In this section I focus on the transformation within. Mindfulness practice that focuses on the clarity of the mind prompted by checking and questioning our 5 senses and our integration of these at a meta sixth level where we ‘think about our thinking’. At a class on ‘Mind and its Potential’, taught by Lama Thubten Dondrub (February– March, 2020)30 our discussion group explored the seven ways of knowing and how 28 Surely,

if all that separates us from other primates is a small percentage of the genome—then we need to respect our connections with other creatures and we need to take seriously the contribution made by the Indigenous notion of learning from ‘the ground beneath my feet’ and connecting to place. We need to take seriously the contribution we should be making as stewards of the environment and other creatures by recognising and appreciating the biodiversity of which we are a strand?. 29 https://www.cbsnews.com/news/pangolin-coronavirus-scale-anteater-possible-host-of-virus-chi nese-scientists-say/. 30 The foundation for the preservation of the Mahayana Tradition. at Buddha House, Magill, South Australia. To sum up, from this point of view, mind has no beginning and no end, as stressed above, just like energy it is believed to be continuous. The gross mind, according to this philosophy uses

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‘direct valid cognition’ is the product of Buddha mindfulness. Our teacher explained that we need to ‘check our thinking’ regularly as only a clear mind can achieve more direct knowing. Achieving clarity of mind is important in this of Mahayana tradition, as the mind is believed to continue when we die. Like energy it continues and (according to this belief system) it has implications for future existence The following vignette is drawn from ‘Planetary Passport’ (McIntyre-Mills, 2017: 119–120): “The rituals derived from the days when oral culture was the only way to store knowledge remain and play an important role in reminding and reconnecting disjointed and segmented modern lives. For example, before entering into a Buddhist shrine the Japanese faithful symbolise setting aside their thoughts and striving for renewal through clearing their minds before connecting with the Buddha. By travelling to Kamakura, people are able to experience a less urbanised environment a few kilometres from Yokohama. The process of emptying the mind is assisted through walking through idealised garden versions of a controlled nature and leaving their negative thoughts behind by symbolically as pieces of discarded, shredded paper and later writing their prayers on small wooden discs that remain as prompts for others to express their thoughts. Alongside, the more spiritual aspects of renewal the more pragmatic collection of money and celebration of those who donate food and rice wine are evident as well. The donations at the feet of the Buddha were regularly collected by Monks and the wine barrels were loyally displayed near the entrance of the sanctuary without any self-conscious attempt to pretend that money was unimportant to the spiritual continuity of the place.... A space for meditation is needed in our busy lives in order to calm the mind and to restore a sense of connection with nature. Globalisation has led to displacements and lack of time which can erode kinship.… People need to be reminded of their connectedness and dependency through symbolism of humility and a sense of awe for the creative and destructive forces of nature. Facing Mecca, contemplating the face of Buddha or remembering the parable of Christ washing the feet or going to the Bush or the Desert to contemplate nature and to empty the mind become increasingly important. This is not a naïve wish to hark back to the past but to realise that transformation is not about striving towards a new modernised future without drawing on the wisdom of nature or losing our connections with animal relatives. The city landscape remains linked with the natural world through remembering human vulnerability to nature but also human capability to redesign and rebuild in ways that prevent and regenerate after natural disasters. The symbolism of the power of nature in the wave by Katsushika Hokusai symbolic imagery was a powerful reminder on our arrival in Yokohama, that the city had recently been rebuilt as a result of the massive tsunami. The disaster and rebuilding theme were stressed by Burroway in his plenary speech at the XV11 World Congress. The great wave design was adapted and worn by the students welcoming the delegation to Yokohama conference.”

Secondary research on mindfulness is based on reading and listening to the dialogues with members of the Mind Life Institute and the Drepung Monastery (2013), participation at the Science of Consciousness Conference (2009)31 and International Systems Sciences Conferences since 2001. The core lessons from empirical the five senses of seeing, hearing, smelling, tasting, touch and it integrates this information through a meta level where we can think about our thinking. This in turn shapes the subtle mind and endures as the very subtle mind when the physical brain (and gross mind) dies. 31 For example, I met Ingrid Fredriksson at the Science of Consciousness Conference in 2009 in Hong Kong who edited volumes on the uncharted areas on the nature of consciousness. In this

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research on wellbeing by Richard Davidson is that forms of meditation to support mindfulness helps people to reduce the recovery time from a negative state. In other words, through mindfulness people suffer less anger and stress. Mindfulness can also help people to concentrate on a specific task and to focus without losing their concentration. The more people are able to remain on an even keel, the calmer and more tolerant they can be or (appear to be) towards other people. This enhances their relationships with others and this creates a recursive circle which re-inforces a state of wellbeing. This constructivist theme is a core theme based on the notion of a constructive (rather than destructive) so-called “participatory universe according to Kafatos and Yang (2015). Thinking matters in a very real sense according to Davies (2006: 281) who explains that human beings are participants in … shaping physical reality, and not as mere spectators…That is indeed a radical idea, for it gives life and mind a type of creative role in physics, making them an indispensable part of the entire cosmological story. Yet life and mind are the products of the universe. So, there is a logical as well as a temporal loop here. Conventional science assumes a linear logical sequence: Cosmos life mind. Wheeler suggested closing this chain into a loop: Cosmos life mind cosmos….’ Physics gives rise to observer-participancy; observer-participancy gives rise to information; information gives rise to physics’. …Wheeler32 thereby rejected the notion of the universe as a machine….

Unfortunately, Wheeler used his understanding of the behaviour of waves and particles for destructive, rather than constructive purposes. So, it is one thing to understand, it is quite another to apply the understanding of the nature of reality in ways that are ethical and supportive of social and environmental justice. Mahayana Buddhism has a strong understanding of the participatory nature of the universe and how we can choose to use positive or negative thinking to shape our reality.33 The Dalai Lama (2005) explains that David Bohm was his physics teacher and that in some ways there are parallels between Bohm’s notion of thought experiments and Buddhist’s notion of careful meditation and thought. Both agree that the way we think shapes our world. All thinking and all practice have either positive or negative effects. volume she cites Edgar Mitchell, NASA astronaut (Fredriksson, 2015: 171) who argues that nonlocal information can be explained in terms of electromagnetic waves moving from one person to another. According to her argument, when electrons stop moving and cannot be restarted, we die (Fredriksson, 2015: 175). When we experience near death they may slow down. Perhaps when we die the energy released from the body remains as a trace in the holographic universe? She explains that t telepathy is thought to be picking up the information from another energy field. If there is a strong emotional connection or bond between people the connection may persist after death. Nonlocal connections have been described by people who visualize past lives. This has been discussed by the Dalai Lama (2013, Mind, Life and Matter, 2013. Day 1 Drepung Monastery, Mundgod, India January 17–22). People who have received organ transplants have said that they experience traces from the donor. But this has not been substantiated by research and it is in the realms of the spiritual. 32 John Wheeler, a student of Neils Bohr applied his understanding of the behaviour atoms, waves and particles to the H bomb project. I do not support his approach to ethics even if it is possible that he had doubts about it and some believed he may have tried to share secrets in a bid to put an end to the project. In any event he remained part of the H bomb project. https://physicstoday.scitation. org/doi/10.1063/PT.3.4364. 33 https://www.infinitepotential.com/. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V2He4oU32sg. From Fragmentation to Wholeness: David Bohm & Dalai Lama 21 February 2018.

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Praxis can be said to create ripples which are set in motion by our own perceptions and actions. Although recruited to be part of the team undertaking military research, he was soon expelled for his leftist views during the McCarthy era and for some time lived in Brazil. Olwell (1999) explains that he was side-lined and marginalised from mainstream physics because he did not believe that the subject and object were distinct, instead he believed in a participatory universe in which thinking matters. Our thinking creates or destroys our world. In South Africa, the first author visited the Mindfulness Institute in Stellenbosch, where I attended the Mindfulness Matters Conference. A key paper ‘From the ground beneath my feet: towards the distant horizon’ was presented by Simon Whitesman. He stressed that the way we think shapes who we are and the sense we make of our daily experiences. Drawing on McIntyre-Mills (2017: 150–151) for example: Neuroscientists such as Clifford Saron34 and Al Kasniak also stress that mindfulness research has shown how thinking affects the material body that we inhabit and the way we think shapes the body and the environment on which we depend. Their research has found that people who exercise in a natural environment and re-connect with trees and plants have higher levels of concentration than people who exercise in a built-up urban environments. Thus, the more we decimate the environment the worse it will be for our ability ‘to re-create’ ourselves when we take a break from learning, working and teaching. Thus, the more we decimate the environment the worse it will be for our ability to recreate ourselves when we take a break from learning, working and teaching. Another key finding from neuroscience is that the telomeres or parts of the cell that protect us from ageing are protected when we have a sense of purpose, when we use all our capabilities each day in an environment that is rich in nature and not degraded…

It has been (wrongly) assumed that we can continue to develop and modernise the planet. It has been assumed that growth in the economy will sustain a growing population; but this is mistaken. We need to understand that the current way of life is unsustainable and that we need to rethink many of the dimensions of modern culture. Culture after all is simply a way of life and a response to the challenges that we face as human beings. …”

34 See http://www.mindfulness.org.za/mindfulness2014/conference-speakers “Clifford D. Saron is an Associate Research Scientist at the Center for Mind and Brain and MIND Institute at the University of California at Davis. He received his Ph.D. in neuroscience from the Albert Einstein College of Medicine in 1999. Dr. Saron has had a long-standing interest in the effects of contemplative practice on physiology and behaviour.”

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What Is Epistemology? Epistemology refers to the nature of knowledge and the relationship between the knower and that which would be known. (Mertens, 2012: 2). Harris and Wasilewski (2004), Christakis, and Brahms (2003). Christakis and Bausch(2006), Christakis and Flanagan (2010), Christakis (2006), Bausch (2000, 2001), Romm (2015) explain that the knower and the known are interconnected and that fostering relationships through respectful dialogue is one of the better ways to engage in transformative research on democracy and how we live our lives. This is an increasingly widely held view of PAR, for instance, Romm (2015: 222) explains her ‘take’ on constructivism is not assuming one reality ‘out there’: What is emphasized here is that the notion (and experience of) connectivity forms a basis for recognizing that in whatever way people proceed as a researchers/inquirers, the inquiry itself will serve to influence the patterning of social life; it is this recognition that, as Chilisa puts it (2012, 13) “invites researchers to interrogate their roles and responsibilities as researchers”. And as Kovach stresses, this interrogation can serve to prompt researchers steeped in Western traditions “to engage in reflexive self-study, to consider a research paradigm outside the Western tradition that offers a systemic approach to understanding [and being in] the world (2009: 29).

Similarly to Cram et al., Kovach notes that within qualitative inquiries in the participatory tradition (such as in participatory action research) there are already “allies for Indigenous researchers”, especially insofar as such research is directed towards “giving back to a community through research as praxis” (2009: 27). But Kovach argues that there is still room for strengthening the idea of “self-in-relation” (a translation of the Cree word nisitohtamowin” (2009: 27) as manifested in research practice.” Like Christakis, Bausch, Flanagan, Romm, Harris and Wasilewski (2004), I tend towards a more constructivist approach. If we believe that the knowers and the known influence one another in the process of research it has a profound impact in the way in which we engage with others. This process has much in common with quantum physics and thus systemic intervention can be said to occur when we question and re-frame the taken for granted world. Being the change can occur through all stages of a project. The questions we ask matter, the actions we take make a difference and the narratives we foster have the potential to become positive or negative memes. The participatory approach to research advocated in this paper draws on the above legacy and is in line with a notion that we participate in constructing the universe in which we live.

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What Is Methodology? Methodology refers to beliefs about the process of systematic inquiry. (Mertens, 2012: 2)

This is where I differ in my approach as systematic inquiry implies linear decision making, whereas a systemic approach is iterative. But knowing some of the work of Mertens I think that systemic is indeed implied. Methodology is thinking about the way we combine methods and why certain methods are chosen. I will briefly reiterate the importance of choosing appropriate methods based on addressing an area of concern appropriately and considering where to draw the boundaries of inclusion and exclusion. The process of matching the response to the area of concern bears repeating here and I will cite from a chapter in a forthcoming handbook in which I explained the importance of techniques such as critical systems thinking to enable us to use questions to enable researchers to select appropriate methods to address areas of concern. Qualitative methods are appropriate for understanding perceptions and quantitative methods are important for answering questions about numbers, but of course number and meaning are linked. What do we mean by homelessness when we are counting the displacement of people in Australia? Is it couch surfing to escape domestic violence or because of a heat wave that sends people to seek alternative accommodation? Is the homelessness the result of a loss of a home or because it is unsafe? Number and meaning are linked and the contextual (systemic issues) need to be carefully examined.

What Does Systemic Intervention Entail? Systemic intervention is purposeful and responds to the areas of concern raised. It is by definition transformative. In order to bring about change it is vital to work with people, to engage in dialogue on their areas of concern and to work on ways to achieve systemic integrated outcomes that protect living systems (Wadsworth, 2010). Transformation in praxis requires re-thinking relationships and values. At a practical level it is about learning to draw boundaries appropriately by asking questions about what to include and exclude in context. The 12 questions summarised by Werner Ulrich and Reynolds (2010) summarise the work of West Churchman and have provided inspiration, but they need to specifically focus on the environment and our relationship to other living systems. I think this requires more than stewardship based on a sense of superiority, it requires understanding that human intelligence is just one of many forms of intelligence. I think it is more than engagement in fragmented projects, it needs to be a way of life based on social and environmental justice. Protecting habitat for multiple species is perhaps the most important aspect. Now let us look at examples of hopeful futures:

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● The short-term application of triple bottom line accounting in pilots run with Neporendi and Unley on user centric policy design (see McIntyre-Mills, 2008a; McIntyre-Mills and De Vries, 2011, 2014) ● Manyeledi—a small project in an arid zone close to the Botswanan border that tried to inspire local farmers to add value to their goats milk as well as other local products by fostering literacy, numeracy and community co-operation (see International Journal for Transformative Research, McIntyre-Mills et al., 2019). ● Cape Town’s rapid adaptation to water insecurity (see Mixed Methods, McIntyreMills et al., 2019a) ● Alamendah in West Java where out migration has halted because of a green approach to job creation supported by an adapted version of One village many enterprises that together have a multiplier effect. They comprise bamboo, tourism, alternative biochar energy and co-operative living (McIntyre-Mills et al., 2019b) ● The social enterprise mission led by Muhammad Yunus et al. (2010) and Muhammad Yunus (2017) that has potential if decoupled from potential of misuse by neoliberal microcredit systems that requires borrowing to repay. All these projects show the potential for scaling up new ways of living if we are able to resource them and sustain them. The approach needs to balance individual and collective needs. The first step is to work with those who have local live experience. In this paper I allude to the process and the promise evident in some best practice examples. This is not the context to elaborate on the process for doing systemic intervention (SI), suffice it to say that it involves working with the participants at each step of the process to identify areas of concern, local wisdom, local skills within a local context that is in turn shaped by the wider environment. At its best SI is an ongoing process of facilitation based on fostering relationships that are not limited to the one project and instead are sustained through an ongoing community of practice that spans a life time of engagement and ongoing connection to learn what works why and how and what does not. When projects succeed, the facilitator needs to celebrate with the participants. When they fail (as they do at certain points) the challenge is to stay with the participants and to try to find ways forward. The ongoing process of learning by doing informs one project and then the next through an iterative cross pollination of ideas that can be shared for mutual growth. Romm and McIntyre (2021, forthcoming) presented examples of small pilots that provide glimmers of hope. The three case studies will not be rehearsed here. Each one provides some insight into a way forward, through facilitation and enabling local wisdom without a naïve notion that the political and economic context in which the projects operate may have positive or negative cascading effects. The Yunus Social enterprise approach provides inspiration—it focuses on working with the public, private, volunteer and civil society sectors. The focus needs to be on those who are currently excluded from mainstream business as usual and the emphasis needs to avoid lending micro-credit if it is linked with punitive repayment conditions. All social enterprise needs to rely on creating hope and opportunities not creating fear and debt. The criticisms that have surfaced about microcredit schemes that require interest on the repayments and threaten those who are unable to repay

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ought not to be ignored.35 Some of the criticisms exerted against the Grameen Bank may have political motivation and it is possible that rogue operators have posed as bank staff. The formative, process and summative evaluations need to involve the recipients to ensure that the so-called ‘neoliberal’ agenda of individual responsibility and profit at the expense of the community and the environment does not occur.

Why Is a Systemic Approach Relevant? The fragmented view of the world based on disciplinary specialisations, organisational competition has resulted in a competitive, rather than a co-operative approach to the world. In a review by McIntyre-Mills et al. (2018) of the work by Stokols (2018) we stress that: The psychological impact of living in a stressful city environment is underlined by his citing studies that show that domestic violence is higher amongst those without a view of trees (or connection to the environment) than those whose city blocks had an outlook onto greenery (Stokols, 2018, 293). He provides in-depth studies on the impact of the city on people and the importance of designing cities better with a focus on the quality of life. Design is a reflection of values. Relationships with others (human and animal) are important for wellbeing, whilst being psychologically absent or interacting only on Facebook is likely to be detrimental to health.

How Can Transformation Be Achieved? One of the ways is through balancing individual and collective rights and responsibility. Wangari Maathai has inspired my understanding of how despite difficulties she was able to apply her understanding of biology and botany to educate Kenyans about the importance of trees for maintaining the health of the soil and how the removal of trees impacts on all biodiversity, resulting in desertification. She spoke out about the political corruption in Kenya and was incarcerated and divorced in the 35 Most

of this critique comes from the structure of the organisations which work on a group basis. One person defaults the whole group are penalised – thus peer pressure is part of the functioning of the microcredit schemes. See Corcoran Nantes: “Nevertheless, microfinance has also drawn women of the rural poor into the world of global capital and debt. The flexibility of traditional moneylending has been transformed into the rigidity of regular repayment and self-help. One family emergency can throw even the best financial calculations off course; while the traditional moneylender will wait, NGO institutions will not. As a member of a “savings and loan group,” the failure of one woman to make a timely payment impacts on the entire group, meaning that no one will receive credit until such an individual’s debt is paid. “Shaming,” a practice well known to Muslim women, involves acts of retribution meted out by women on women. This may range from verbal and physical abuse to the seizure of property.” (2013: 4)

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process of asserting the need to plant trees, enable people to earn a living through green environmentally sustainable activities Gunther Pauli is a more recent inspiration. He has provided 101 ways in which the environment can support an abundant and sustainable way of life through ecofacturing in ways that enable positive cascade economics that re-generate hope for the future. Put simply he says that nature has no waste and that if we work with nature, we can find ways to create food and to build our communities in ways that do not destroy nature. One example is the way in which a natural product, such as bamboo can be grown to provide a source of income, energy and housing without depleting the landscape.

Learning from Best Practice The vision of what works why and how is a matter of local perspective. It is based on the values of those who are affected by the enterprise. Thus, evaluation needs to be built into the process from the outset to enable a formative evaluation rooted in the axiology of the affected. In addition, the engagement needs to consider the impact on multiple species and thus needs to take a non- anthropocentric approach. The potential of small farmers to make a living by regenerating the soil using bamboo focuses on the speed at which bamboo grows, its multiple uses for stabilising the soil, providing food, fuel and a source of building material, a means to reticulate and collect water as well as a source of material for fabric or making furniture. For example, Rudolf Wirawan proposes to develop his Ph.D. to extend his research on the viability of the circular economy within eco hubs. We aim to test the viability of a coffee and bamboo franchise to enable low income farmers to gain control over the production, distribution and consumption cycle and to set up social enterprise franchises as ecovillage nodes in a network supported by the one village many enterprises network in which social engagement and everyday decisions that make a difference are encouraged through a form of village governance that rewards those with a low carbon footprint and a high rate of generosity.

Vision for the Future New architectures for democracy and governance need to be fostered by local governments and the state. In Indonesia the ‘One village, one product’ (OVAP, Morihiko Hiramatsu—Governor of Oita prefecture, 1979; Yogyakarta, 2014) was applied by President Jakowi in 2008–2009. In Alamendah, the learning organisation, community approach has been developed as a step towards empowering women in order to reduce their vulnerability to trafficking, but the process needs to be extended, in order to expand women’s role in the decision-making process and to introduce a range of opportunities that support the capabilities of women and the marginalised (McIntyre-Mills et al., 2018).

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How Can Socio-Environmental Enterprise Support Re-Generative Living and What Difference Can SI Make in the World? Social engagement for transformation in daily life and prefigurative pilot projects that can be scaled up. Social engagement and everyday decisions that make a difference. Becoming vegetarian could be a good start. Walking, cycling, using public transport or driving an electric vehicle. The work of Muhammad Yunus on social enterprise to support the triple zeros of zero poverty, zero unemployment and zero emissions is the focus. The focus is on the potential for critical systemic thinking. The potential of the three projects, namely food production, safe water and accessible communication is the subject of a joint chapter by Yunus et al. (2010) entitled: ‘Building Social Business Models: Lessons from the Grameen Experience’. In terms a systemic review of boundary questions, namely who and what benefits and who or what is excluded from the decision-making process, the projects stack up well in terms of addressing aspects social justice. But the emphasis on working with cattle (albeit culturally appropriate) remains problematic as far as emissions are concerned A further challenge is the emphasis on microcredit repayments, however if the pressure to re-pay the loans is removed, then the projects become more sustainable and less likely to lead to a debt cycle. The focus of one of his projects is on yogurt production to add value to a milk product. The first comment of course is that cows produce methane and that a vegan option would be better. Given the high rate of population growth alternative forms of food will be vital. Thus, alternative forms of protein will need to obtained from plants such as chickpeas, which Vandana Shiva has made her mission to protect (amongst other resilient seed types).The second project is on the provision of safe water through locally owned projects and the third is accessible communication through short term hiring of handsets to enable making calls. All these are sensible options that are potentially beneficial. An additional feature could be to ensure the long-term viability of projects that have multiplier effects producing positive cascading effects. One such project could be the creation of alternative protein sources such as adding value to organic chickpeas, soy beans or algae. The use of algae in South Africa36 and food processing using alternative forms of energy37 rather than focusing on business as usual powered by the bankrupt Eskom reliant on coal-based power from Medupi. The local production of energy could be fostered through fast growing crops such as bamboo that can be harvested for food as well as biochar.

36 https://www.mordorintelligence.com/industry-reports/african-algae-protein-market. 37 https://www.mordorintelligence.com/industry-reports/category/energy-power.

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A Constructivist Approach: Radical Science Fiction to Prefigure Change in Multispecies Relationships An additional way forward is to write new narratives in the form of science fiction about transforming ourselves and our world. We need best practice examples as well as science/social science fiction that pushes the boundaries. This takes constructivism to the next level, being the change in our own lives, striving to bring about change through small prefigurative projects or striving to scale up change in collaboration with others and for those who are impatient to see change, the writing of narratives (making both deductions and inductions from our lived experience) can provide a way forward.

‘Finding the Wind’: A Story for Young People Whatever Your Age The novel is about the young protagonist Thandi who becomes concerned about food, water and energy security in Cape Town. She becomes involved in the Wisdom Seekers Group to find a solution and in the process becomes increasingly aware of the existing problems and the need for a way forward. The novel explores how this can be achieved using science fiction as a quick way to intervene. In the novel the protagonists discover that there are more intelligent life forms, some are still alive and some have passed on. Some are wise religious leaders who have risen above partisanship. They meet the Dalai Lama, Bishop Desmond Tutu, Vandana Shiva, Nelson Mandela, Gandhi, St Francis of Assisi and Hildegard von Bingen amongst others, who give them inspiration to redress climate change. They inspire them to design a better way forward. They learn to set aside the idea of polarising us/them and instead they learn to think in terms of ‘natural inclusion’ (Alan Rayner, 2017a, 2017b). The lesson in rising above partisanship is given by Tutu and the Dalai Lama by citing the 8 pillars of wisdom that include the ability to gain perspective on suffering through a sense of humility and connection with the earth. Another pillar is being able to see humour in a situation laugh at ourselves with compassion and acceptance. This is achieved through the forgiveness of others and gratitude for our own lives. Through compassion for ourselves and others we can create better relationships. This will enable us to give generously of ourselves to others and to all sentient beings. The purpose of life is to find happiness, according to the Dalai Lama (2016) in the ‘Book of Joy’. The novel explores the eight pillars of wisdom discussed in “The book of Joy”38 based on the conversations to celebrate the friendship between the Dalai Lama and Desmond Tutu.39 Desmond Tutu says 38 The

book spans the views of two spiritual leaders and is informed by the experiential wisdom of their lives. 39 The conversations were written up and to some extent facilitated by Douglas Abrams who structured the book to cover the 8 pillars of wisdom informed by experience, science and narratives from

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joy can be achieved despite external challenges that cause unhappiness. Joy comes from an inner sense of peace and through mindfulness or prayer. Joy is thus a choice we make through working towards achieving mindfulness and through improving our relationships with others. These lessons will be invaluable for you. He smiled and said ‘be the change’. To help the protagonist to think about her thinking she is introduced to the notion of ‘The universe within’ (Turok, 2012). Thandi learns how to become the change agent and is exposed to critical thinking tools to enable her to ‘be the change’. Some of these tools include questioning techniques (Ulrich & Reynolds, 2010; McIntyreMills, 2004) which help Thandi to rethink where to draw the boundaries of inclusion and exclusion. Davies (2006) suggests that one design option is that in an expanding universe there is at least one other place where life exists. In this novel it is suggested that a more evolved civilisation exists in another dimension and that perhaps human beings need to be more aware of their key role as creative, re-generative designers. Although it is unlikely that wormholes will allow travel from one part of space to another, the concept of wormhole is used as a heuristic device to enable readers to think about alternative design constructs in a ‘participatory universe’, where each one of us has a responsibility to make a difference through our everyday decisions. Thandi visits other worlds in a conceptual and geographical sense. She even goes ‘off planet’ to Promixa Centauri in her quest to find meaning. She learns that evolution does not rely only on competition and enclosure of the commons, it can also rely on co-operation and ensuring the common good. The novel is loosely informed by my own research on mindfulness with members of the Aboriginal community in South Australia and on what supports and undermines wellbeing Northern Territory. It draws on insights from earlier research on health and healing with Xhosa indigenous healers in Cape Town, South Africa. I also draw on dialogue with a Sundanese healer in West Java.

Cold Stone Walls of Samsara The psychological drama is about the lives of two young and two elderly women. The Agatha Christie style mystery (about preventing a crime before it happens young people. Wisdom is rooted in the ability to gain perspective on suffering of all sentient beings through a sense of humility and connection with the earth. Being able to see humour in a situation laugh at ourselves with compassion and acceptance is part of the process of finding refuge and creating refuge. This is achieved through forgiveness of oneself and others and gratitude for our own lives. Through compassion we can create better relationships. This will enable us to give generously of ourselves, to others, to sentient beings and the habitat on which we all rely. The purpose of life is to find happiness, according to the Dalai Lama (2016) in the ‘Book of Joy’. Desmond Tutu says joy can be achieved despite external challenges that cause unhappiness. Joy comes from an inner sense of peace and through mindfulness or prayer expressed through creating loving kindness to others. Joy is thus a choice we make through working towards achieving mindfulness and through improving our relationships with others.

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through mindfulness, rather than detection) has a purpose besides providing some light reading. The personas they present to the world begin to crack. A fifth woman, Rose plays the ambiguous role of the trickster. Aspects of Jungian theory inform the characterisation without lapsing into the essentialism of archetypes. The shadow that denies or suppresses aspects of human nature is explored as some of the women compete for an alpha male and a young woman asserts her freedom. At one level, the protagonist Monique eventually realises that all the women’s strengths and faults can be seen as ‘projections’ of her own unconscious mind, to use the Jungian notion. The clouded mirror of her mind reveals another reality in which she is the creator of her own heaven and hell. She realises that she alone has the capability to determine whether life is a joy or a burden. Thus, she can escape the cold stone walls of samsara and the feeling that she has been haunted by the past. The novel explores how mindfulness can enhance quality of life. The novel is based on the notion that consciousness is integrated sense making and awareness. The protagonist experiences many challenges that are addressed through learning to think about her thinking and to be reflective Monique realises this both in her personal life and as an academic. She marries a climate change lawyer who understands the interconnectedness of decision making and how risks can have a cascading effect. She begins to understand that ‘consciousness is everywhere’. Monique shares the garden with possums, kangaroos, blue tongue lizards two owls and several native birds as well as two companionable starlings who follow her around the garden. She understands that the loss of habitat for plants and animals is not a problem for others, it is her problem,40 because without a robust living system including ‘all creatures great and small’, from pollinators (birds and insects) to earthworms, the Mycorrhizal fungi,41 the bacteria in the soil and in our guts—her food system could not exist. She also understands that she will one day she will have another incarnation in the living system in which she is a strand. Loss of habitat for plants and animals is not a problem for others, it is our problem, because without a robust living system for pollinators (birds and insects) the food system will break down.

Conclusion: The Need for Non-Anthropocentric Narratives The discussion makes a case for systemic non-anthropocentric narratives based on many ways of knowing to underpin ethics, democracy and governance. The paper draws inspiration from several sources, including Kenneth Boulding, the legacy of Christakis, Bausch and Global Agoras, the Dalai Lama, Bishop Desmond Tutu, 40 Stokols (2018: 293) discusses the psychological impact of living in a stressful urban environment

Relationships with others (humans other animals and plants) are important for our wellbeing. He cites studies that show that domestic violence is higher amongst those without a view of trees (or connection to the environment) than those whose city blocks had an outlook onto greenery (Stokols, 2018: 293). 41 See Alan Rayner on natural inclusion.

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Nelson Mandela, Vandana Shiva, Wangari Maathai, Gunther Pauli, Muhammad Yunus, Polly Higgins, Yoland Wadsworth, Deborah Bird Rose and Greta Thunberg. My own research on poverty and climate change (McIntyre-Mills, 2017) concludes that the state, market and capitalist system have worked together to support a taken for granted approach that has destroyed our appreciation of our hybridity and interconnectedness. In an essay for Fredriksson’s (2015) collection on consciousness: As I get older and I look around me, I begin to understand the notion that we write the landscape in our daily choices and we create the world around us with every word we utter and every action we take. The joy of living and the life-giving energy as we create rapport with one another can contrast with the negative energy or deathly silence or coolness towards one another which creates distance. When we die who we are and how we live as individuals and as groups is written in the landscape and a memory trace is carried by those with whom we made a connection. For some the memory trace is carried at the local level by their grace and their stewardship of the land which they touched gently and with care. For others, the memory trace is carried through their words written on paper from trees that have been felled and carried in digital waves through highly developed internet systems that generate land fill and toxins. Our bodies are part of the environment when we are alive and when we die. The connections we make with other sentient creatures and with the land is part of this understanding of the interconnectedness of life. We need to think of the human body as connected to the air we breathe and to the land or air to which we will return.

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Janet J. McIntyre-Mills is Honorary Professor in the College of Education at University of South Africa, Tshwane, South Africa; Visiting Research Fellow of the College of Professions Main North Terrace at Adelaide University; and Adjunct Associate Professor in the College of Business Government and Law at Flinders University, Sturt Campus, Adelaide.

Chapter 11

Why Thinking Matters: Constructivism, Relationships and the Performative Universe Janet J. McIntyre-Mills

Abstract Ideas about the nature of relationships are central to the work of David Bohm and to this volume. Unlike other physicists Bohm was sidelined from military research, because of his open mindedness and sympathy with leftist thinking and was once a member of the Communist Party for a short while. Instead he followed his own research path which included working closely with spiritual thinkers such as Jiddu Krishnamurti and the Dalai Lama. Bohm stressed that all life has consciousness and that this is the implicate order of things. This was a great insight and I think that the conversations that David Bohm had with the Dalai Lama, Krishnamurti and Suzuki are very relevant to this volume. He believes consciousness is spread across all aspects of the universe and that it is nonlocal. Keywords Relationships · Perceptions · Insight · Agency The Dalai Lama (2005) explained that Bohm met him in 1979 and the rapport that they felt for each other, because they shared an ‘openness to all areas of inquiry’ and an interest in thought experiments.1 After his retirement in 1987, David Bohm became increasingly drawn to the deeper questions about life, meaning and the universe. Both Bohm and the Dalai Lama believe that perception, research design and measurement shape the way we see the world. Bohm designed an experiment to study waves and 1 As a social scientist I was also delighted to be introduced to the work of David Bohm whose work was highlighted to me in conversations with Ingrid Frederiksson at ‘Towards a Science of Consciousness, Investigating Inner Experience: Brain, Mind and Technology’ (Biennial Conference) in 2009. She discussed the quantum implications for consciousness with me and invited me to join in an interesting edited volume called ‘The Mysteries of Consciousness : essays in spacetime, evolution and well-being’ (2015) that pushes the boundaries of mainstream thinking and contains some interesting possibilities and questions.

J. J. McIntyre-Mills (B) University of South Africa in the College of Education, Tshwane, South Africa e-mail: [email protected]; [email protected] Adelaide University, College of Professions Main North Terrace, Adelaide, Australia College of Business, Government and Law, Flinders University, Sturt, SA, Australia © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2021 J. J. McIntyre-Mills and Y. Corcoran-Nantes (eds.), From Polarisation to Multispecies Relationships, Contemporary Systems Thinking, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-33-6884-2_11

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particles2 and explained that whether we ‘see’ a wave or a particle, depends on the process of measurement. Bohm’s interest in the relationship between the observer and the observed3 led to conversations with spiritual leaders including the Dalai Lama as they both considered that thinking matters quite literally. The Dalai Lama said that Bohm’s thinking and Buddhism have much in common, namley thought experiments and meditiation on ‘what if scenarios’. The focus of their conversations was on relationships and the implications for knowledge and its potential for making a difference to the way we choose to live our lives. By thinking about our thinking we can try to address self deception and what West Churchman (1979) called ‘the enemies within’. These are our assumptions and values that can cloud our thinking. Mahayana Buddhism stresses the need for clarity in thinking and that the practice of meditation and the process of checking our ideas helps to maintain clarity. Through dialogue Bohm and the Dalai Lama agreed that problems begin with thought, which needs to be more rational, more compassionate and more spiritual. Thus we need to be aware of our thinking. David Bohm’s wife shared with him the book by Jiddu Krishnamurti4 who talked about the nature of the relationship between the observer and observed. She thought it would interest Bohm as this is the most basic relationship in physics. Over several years David Bohm learned and shared ideas in conversation with Jiddu Krishnamurti who stressed in his book, ‘The Flight of the Eagle’ based on extracts from talks given by Krishnamurti in 19695 : Live, live in this world. This world is so marvellously beautiful. It is our world, our earth to live upon, but we do not live, we are narrow, we are separate, we are anxious, we are frightened human beings, and therefore we do not live, we have no relationship, we are isolated, despairing human beings.

Bohm’s key idea is that all matter is enfolded and he calls our relationships in the word an implicate order. In some ways his ideas are not entirely dissimilar to the work of the feminist physicist Karen Barad,6 albeit Bohm’s work is expressed without 2 https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/qm-bohm/#Bib. 3 Unlike many of his peers Bohm did not make his career in research for the military (Olwell, 1999)

and his influence has been sidelined by mainstream physics. Bohm believes that perception, research design and measurement shapes the way we see the world. He designed an experiment to study waves and particles. Wheeler explained the notion of performativity elegantly but without applying these insights to the way they can be applied to constructive or destructive acts. Unlike Wheeler, Bohm was interested in using his understanding of the behaviour of atoms not for bomb making as part of a mainstream physics career, instead he was interested in quantum ontology and how the way we choose to see the world provides us with agency and gives us a performative role in the universe. David Bohm explains in his conversations with the Dalai Lama, Jiddu Krishnamurti and David Sazuki that science did not necessarily help the world. As a physicist he was blacklisted in USA and he became interested in religion. 4 https://kfoundation.org/krishnamurti-and-david-bohm-4-audio-and-video-conversations/. 5 https://kfimumbai.org/en/publication/the-flight-of-the-eagle/. 6 Barad could have learned a lot from reading The Dalai Lama’s 2005 book We make our world through the way we construct it. Our consciousness shapes reality. Dalai Lama (2005) The Universe

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thinking about the implications of his gendered approach, as evident in this insight from Bohm (2002: 3): In essence, the process of division is a way of thinking about things that is convenient and useful mainly in the domain of practical, technical and functional activities … However, when this mode of thought is applied more broadly to man’s notion of himself and the whole world in which he lives (i.e. to his self-world view), then man ceases to regard the resulting divisions as merely useful or convenient and begins to see and experience himself and his world as actually constituted of separately existent fragments. …

Bohm’s (2002: 4) ontology however has clearly influenced feminist ecological thinking and practice as is evident in the following: Thus, it might be said that a theory is primarily a form of insight, i.e. a way of looking at the world, and not a form of knowledge of how the world is.

He explains (2002: 7–8) further that: To this end, it is useful to emphasize that experience and knowledge are one process, rather than to think that our knowledge is about some sort of separate experience. …

He continues along these lines (2002: 8) that: Clarity of perception and thought evidently requires that we be generally aware of how our experience is shaped by the insight (clear or confused) provided by the theories that are implicit or explicit in our general ways of thinking. …. Now, if we are not aware that our theories are ever-changing fragmentation and wholeness forms of insight, giving shape and form to experience in general, our vision will be limited. One could put it like this: experience with nature is very much like experience with human beings. If one approaches another man (sic) with a fixed ‘theory’ about him as an ‘enemy’ against whom one must defend oneself, he will respond similarly, and thus one’s ‘theory’ will apparently be confirmed by experience. Similarly, nature will respond in accordance with the theory with which it is approached. Thus, in ancient times, men thought plagues were inevitable, and this thought helped make them behave in such a way as to propagate the conditions responsible for their spread. With modern scientific forms of insights man’s(sic) behaviour is such that he ceases the insanitary modes of life responsible for spreading plagues and thus they are no longer inevitable. (italics and bold, my emphasis)

The same cannot be said for Covid-19. We have yet to learn that preventing the spread of viruses from one species to another requires protecting habitat. We have brought the conditions for the development of Covid-19 into being because we have destroyed the environment which we all inhabitat. Each species should have its niche within a liveable habitat. The Covid-19 virus could teach us that we are no longer top predators and that the time for change is overdue. Business as usual is no longer possible. Destroying tracts of land has resulted in creating the conditions for viruses to be spread from one species to another. in a single atom. The convergence of science and spirituality. Harmony. New York. I need to read Barad as I have read her second hand. through Haraway and Rose (I think) As Romm (2020, this volume) stresses Bausch also understood the potential of constructivsm and of course so does Aleco Christakis discussing the potential of engagement and dialogue for change as did Wangari Maathai through planting trees to re-generate the environment as part of the Green Belt Movement.

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Bohm stresses that all life has consciousness and that this is the implicate order of things. He shares his insights in his interview with Sazuki7 about the nature of reality in which he links, science, spirituality and ethics. Bohm’s philosophy is echoed by Donna Haraway (1991) in so far as she stresses that ‘we are the boundaries’ and that we shape our world for better or worse. In her recent works she has stressed the need to reconsider taxonomies that we have created through domestication, colonisation, industrialisation and laboratory research (2003, 2008, 2011, 2015, 2016a, b). The creation of chimeras (cross-species hybrids) in laboratories has implications for immunology and virology (Kelly, 2012). In a recent news article a Chinese scientist, Shi Zhengli is cited warning of the risks associated with containing wild animals in ways that lead to trans species infections and chimeras.8 The threefold risks are associated firstly, with the containment of wild creatures, the destruction of their habitat and thirdly with experimentation without due consideration of systemic ethics (McIntyre-Mills, 2014). In ‘Democracy and Governance’ (McIntyre-Mills et al., 2019: 104), I draw attention to the work of Michael Hardt (2010: 86) who contributed to an interview with Astra Taylor for the volume ‘The Examined Life’ and I mention how he stresses that Bolivia and Ecuador are places to watch for examples of how to live differently— because of their constitutional protection of the planet. In conversation with Norma Romm in preparation of this article she suggested I read an article on the philosophy of Buen Vivir which means living in community and with nature according to Gudynas (2011: 442): “One of the most well-known approaches to Buen Vivir is the Ecuadorian concept of sumak kawsay, the kichwa wording for a fullness life in a community, together with other persons and Nature.”

Gudynas goes on to explain that: “While the Bolivian one is focused on Buen Vivir as an ethical principle, that of Ecuador offers a stronger approach because the concept is conceived as a plural set of rights. The Bolivian formulation offers more options for cultural diversity than the Ecuadorian, but does not include Buen Vivir as a right. The Ecuadorian text clearly stated that development in line with BuenVivir is required to fulfil the rights of Nature or Pachamama (with a biocentric posture that recognizes intrinsic values in the environment).” (Gudynas, 2011: 443)

But despite the rhetoric, the reality is somewhat different as the environment has been ‘sold out’ to market interests, where the critics of Prime Minister Morales have claimed that corruption by government representatives is widespread.9 It is suggested 7 Other

links at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r-jI0zzYgIE. scientist’s chilling warning The scientist who was the first in the world to discover the gene sequence for COVID-19 issued a chilling prediction years before the current outbreak. Read in news.com.au: https://apple.news/AoGj-LLK6T4OyggwWonpERgdownloaded30/04/2020. Also see Shi Zhengli’s Ted Talk https://www.news.com.au/world/asia/coronavirus-chinese-batswomanscientist-shi-zhenglis-chilling-prediction/news-story/99542343419bb8f210a4f196df1654fb with English translations. 9 https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/nov/15/evo-morales-indigenous-leader-who-changedbolivia-but-stayed-too-long. 8 Chinese

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that the practice of governance and accountability is quite different from the rhetoric of care. Thus, care requires not only a priori norms, but also to monitor and govern in an open and transparent manner, based on a posteriori indicators of governance (McIntyre-Mills et al., 2014, McIntyre, 2017). The approach to technical interventions (without considering the axiologucal underpinnings and the consequences for the systems in which we are enfolded) has resulted in the need for a paradigm shift that re-members the contributions made by Indigenous wisdom keepers. For instance, Deborah Bird Rose (2010, 2011, 2015) who gives voice to the philosophy she learned as an anthropologist from her indigenous mentors in Australia. She was taught about human relationships with the natural world and her work echoes the same notion of ontology as espoused by David Bohm, namely the idea of the implicate order. Why does thinking matter? It matters because we construct the world through the way we think and act out our relationships with one another. Deborah Bird Rose’s final works made pleas for more love and more appreciation of all living systems and remind us that Indigneous Australians are aware that consciousness is a continuum and that they regard organic and inorganic life as kin. This is quite literally expressed through totemism. The anthropologist Diane Bell (1993) and my mentor Olive Vevebrants (pers comm, 1999) explain that when a mother feels her foetus move she links it to the first thing she sees in nature, whether it be a rock, a bird or a tree. They become kin to the unborn child. She has the right to choose the totem for her child which can be a very strategic choice, as in the case of Olive’s mother, who chose Hawk Dreaming (see Chapters 1, 3, 32 this volume). We make our world through the way we construct it. Our consciousness shapes reality. This is understood by Indigenous First Nations whose spirituality is rooted in an understanding that we are the land, seas and sky. We exist as being one with nature and consciousness is enfolded as a continuum across inorganic life to organic one-celled beings to complex organisms and that we return to the elements when we die. This idea of the ontology of life echoes aspects of the work of David Bohm. So much of our life is woven into our research and this is what David Bohm meant when he said that the relationship between observer and observed is basic physics. Judith Butler and Athena Athanasiou (2013) stress that disposession needs to be addressed through performative agency. In line with the principles which Arendt espoused, Butler engages in social action through a performance on Occupy Wall Street.10 Importantly, the work of Judith Butler (2011) stresses a political agency in her discussion of everyday ethics. She holds the Hannah Arendt chair and acts as a publicly engaged intellectual. By not speaking out on unemployment and the right for a decent quality of life one is indeed supporting the ‘banality of evil’ (Arendt, 1963). It could be argued that not speaking out on speciesism is one of the greatest challenges of the day. 10 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JVpoOdz1AKQ.

Butler created a performance of prose poetry as a rallying cry: ‘If hope is an impossible demand, then we demand the impossible—that the right to shelter, food and employment are impossible demands, then we demand the impossible. If it is impossible to demand that those who profit from the recession redistribute their wealth and cease their greed, then yes, we demand the impossible’.

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Butler addresses voicelessness, disability and rights together with Saunara Taylor (2010). They walked and a wheel chaired together as they discussed the importance of political agency. They videoed their conversation to illustrate everyday ethics. Saunara stressed that simply performing the act of going into a coffee shop and asking for a coffee, knowing that she would need to be helped becomes a political act. Butler engages with Sanaura on rights and together they weave a conversation on what disability means and how the act of taking a walk or asking for help can be a political act to address difference and aversion. Saunara shared how she had been called ‘monkey’ and how she had reacted by explaining that she regarded monkeys as endearing and her favourites. This assertive way of constructing a situation makes a difference to the way people relate to her and it is an ongoing everyday political act which makes a pathway for others. Living in a world where violence (structural, physical and emotional) exists needs to be confronted by asserting rights and demonstrating agency through performative praxis. The absurd taxonomic distinctions across us/them, subject and object emerge as racism, speciesism and the worst forms of organisation that silence, profiteer and commodify. I was re-introduced to Karen Barad’s work through reading Norma Romm’s contribution, Chapter 12 of this volume and reminded that Barad’s notion of ontology as continuous flows and that our perceptions shape the world are very similar in many respects to the work of David Bohm, Donna Haraway and Deborah Bird Rose (2013, who cites Barad) on being and becoming. These insights also echo aspects of the insights of Deleuze and Guattai (Bogue, 1989) who (to the best of my understanding) stress that love and desire (and their opposites) radiate out rhizomatically in many ways to shape lives as stressed throughout this volume. Communication does not need to rely on language as has been made abundantly clear by many over the centuries, from Hidegard of Bingen to Wangari Maathai or Jane Goodall. Research has shown that forms of communication (and consciousness) span one celled organisms to complex sentient beings, including human beings (Meijer, 2019; Stephens et al., 2019). Similarly the work of Alan Rayner (2010) on natural inclusion (see Chapter 36) stresses the oneness of nature and that our being meets another simply because we are both waves and particles and not separate. He uses the examples of fungi to illustrate the ways in which nutrients are shared within a habitat, how plants ‘decide’ to take in more or less nutrients, depending on their availability and thus consider the needs of cohabitants within the habitat. Aspects of Bohm’s ideas are also echoed in the work of Donna Haraway who stresses that ‘we are the boundaries’, we can remake our relationships with others and with nature if we change the way that we think. Performative engagement on speciesism is long overdue to address agency and performativity, not only representation and taxonomy. David Bohm cared about ontology, relationships and the implicate order of life and how we construct our relationships with others. The work of Vandana Shiva, an ecofeminist with a back ground in nuclear physics has stressed that action is needed to protect seed security and water security. Their approaches do not try to polarise

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species by including notions like ‘post humanism’ or suggesting that care should focus only on some species (deemed sentient and or conscious to some degree) and not others. Instead Bohm (2002) argues in Wholeness and the Implicate Order that consciousness is non local and enfolded in all life. Thus, we need to consider what this means for systemic ethics, if we accept that we are a strand in the web of life and that consciousness is spread across living systems and not simply the preserve of human beings. To balance individual and collective needs we need a priori norms fostering more humility and awareness of the rights of all species spanning the organic and inorganic. The earth does indeed need a good lawyer as Polly Higgins (Higgins, 2012; Higgins et al., 2013) stressed in their work on ‘The Ecocide Law’ (see Chapter 1). Global laws with international reach need to be underpinned by constitutional rights extended beyond the social contract which is limited (Nussbaum, 2006) and extended to protect all living systems. Without the means to enforce ecocide legislation even constitutional window dressing to protect the earth (as in Ecuador, see Chapter 12) can be subverted by relationships forged between the state and the market. Balancing individual and collective needs is an ongoing challenge that requires agency from below and from above. Chiew (2014) talks of our trans species ‘entanglement’ which we deny at our peril. But entanglement is perhaps a weaker way to explain our enfolded reality. The pandemic could be said to be a result of our enfolded passion for ‘business as usual’ and our lack of compassion has brought into being a new order. Covid-19 has brought the world to a standstill resulting in barrels of oil being sold at a negative price in April 2020.11 These are core themes explored in the volume. Why does thinking matter? It matters because the thoughts are translated into policies and practices that are constructive and caring or destructive and abusive. We have been taught that we are no longer ‘top predator’ and no longer able to conduct ‘business as usual.’ Clearly Covid-19 is the result of abandoning an ethic of caring. This vignette was written after reading the Dalai Lama’s (2005: 29–30) book, titled “The Universe in a single atom: the convergence of science and spirituality.” What emerges from reading this book and undertaking some lecture courses on ‘Mind and its potential’ and ‘Karma’ with ‘the Foundation for the Preservation of the Mahayana Tradition’ is an understanding that according to the Tibetan tradition nothing happens randomly and that all consequences have causes. This is similar to aspects of David Bohm’s theory of reality, namely that the parts contain the whole through an implicit order or ‘enfolded consciousness’. The Dalai Lama (2005) mentions the important role that David Bohm played in teaching him about physics12 and Bohm stressed the value of many years of open dialogue with His Holiness. 11 https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/apr/20/oil-prices-sink-to-20-year-low-as-un-sounds-

alarm-on-to-covid-19-relief-fund. “The price of US crude oil crashed from $18 a barrel to -$38 in a matter of hours, as rising stockpiles of crude threatened to overwhelm storage facilities and forced oil producers to pay buyers to take the barrels they could not store.” 12 David Bohm died in 1992 but had suffered ill health and depression and believed that dialogue contributed to understanding and wellbeing.

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When re-membering Bohm, the Dalai Lama said that Bohm helped to ‘open our minds’13 by enabling us to see that we construct our lives through the way we choose to see continuities or categories.

References Arendt, H. (1963). Eichmann in Jerusalem: A report on the banality of evil. New York: Viking Press. Barad, K. (2003). Posthumanist performativity: Toward an understanding of how matter comes to matter. Signs, 28(3), 801–831. https://doi.org/10.1086/345321. Bausch, K. (2001). The emerging consensus in social system theory. New York: Plenum. Bell, D. (1993). Daughters of the dreaming. University of Minnesota Press. Bird Rose, D. (2010). Love in the time of extinctions. The Australian Journal of Anthropology, 19(1). https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/j.1835-9310.2008.tb00112. Bird Rose, D. (2011). Flying Foxes: Kin, Keystone, Kontaminant. In Australian Humanities Review, special issue: ‘Unloved Others: Death of the disregarded in the time of extinctions’, Deborah Rose & Thom Van Dooren, eds. Unloved Others Death of the Disregarded in the Time of Extinctions. Australian Humanities Review, Issue 50. https://press-files.anu.edu.au/downloads/press/ p111121/pdf/book.pdf. Bird Rose, D. (2013, October). Slowly text. Special Issue 20(1). In M. Harrison, D. Bird Rose, L. Shannon & K. Satchell (Eds.), Writing Creates Ecology and Ecology Creates Writing. Bogue, R. (1989). Deleuze and Guattari. London: Routledge. Bohm, D. (2002). Wholeness and the implicate order. London and New York: Routledge, Routledge Classics. Bostrom, N. (2011). Existential risk prevention as the most important task for humanity. www.existential-risk.org. Bohm, D., & Dalai Lama, H. H. (2018). From fragmentation to wholeness: David Bohm & Dalai Lama life and mind enfolded in everything. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V2He4oU32sg. Butler, J. (2011). Precarious life: The obligations of proximity, May 28, 2011. The Neale Wheeler Watson Lecture 2011, given by Professor Judith Butler. Location: Nobel Museum, Svenska. http:// www.youtube.com/watch?v=KJT69AQtDtg. Butler, J., & Athanasiou, A. (2013). Dispossession: The performative in the political. Cambridge: Polity. Chiew, F. (2014). Posthuman ethics with Cary Wolfe and Karen Barad: Animal compassion as trans-species entanglement theory. Culture and Society. https://doi.org/10.1177/026327641350 8449. Churchman, C. W. (1979). The systems approach and its enemies. New York: Basic Books. Dalai Lama, H. H. (2005). The Universe in a single atom: The convergence of science and spirituality. New York: Harmony. Frederiksson, I. (2015). The mysteries of consciousness: Essays in spacetime, evolution and wellbeing. Jefferson, NC: McFarland. Gibson, K., Bird Rose, D., & Fincher, R. (2015). Manifesto for living in the anthropocene. New York: Punctum Books. Goodall, J. (2020). https://www.cnn.com/videos/us/2020/03/19/coronavirus-jane-goodall-acfcfull-episode-vpx.cnn. Gudynas, E. (2011). Buen Vivir: Today’s tomorrow. Development, 54, 441–447. https://doi.org/10. 1057/dev.2011.86.

13 From

Fragmentation to Wholeness: David Bohm & Dalai Lama Life and mind enfolded in everything https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V2He4oU32sg.

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Haraway, D. J. (1991). Cyborgs, simians, and women: The reinvention of nature. London: Free Association Books. Haraway, D. J. (2003). The companion species manifesto: Dogs, people, and significant otherness (Vol. 1). Chicago: Prickly Paradigm Pres. Haraway, D. J. (2008). When species meet. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Haraway, D. J. (2011). Speculative fabulations for technoculture’s generations: Taking care of unexpected country. Australian Humanities Review—Issue, 50, 2011. Haraway D. J. (2015, May 1). Anthropocene, Capitalocene, Plantationocene, Chthulucene. Environmental Humanities, 6(1), 159–165. https://doi.org/10.1215/22011919-3615934. Haraway, D. J. (2016a). Staying with the trouble: Making kin in the Chthulucene. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Haraway, D. (2016b). Anthropocene, Capitalocene, Chthulucene: Making string figures with biologies. Arts, Activisms—Aarhus University. YouTube https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=CHwZA9 NGWg0. Haraway, D. (2014). Anthropocene, Capitalocene, Chthulucene: Staying with the Trouble. 5/9/14 https://vimeo.com/97663518. Hardt, M. (2010). Revolution. In A. Taylor (Ed.), The Examined Life: Excursions with Contemporary Thinkers. New York: The New Press. Higgins, P. (2012). Ecocide, the 5th crime against peace. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Eu xYzQ65H4 see the link in this lecture to Stop Ecocide, Change the Law https://www.youtube. com/channel/UCCYoIf880oaM419JO8XUhEA. Higgins, P. (2018). The 2018 Hague freedom lecture by Polly Higgins. https://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=kQn8oA6e9To. Higgins, P., Short, D., & South, N. (2013). Protecting the planet: A proposal for a law of ecocide. Crime Law Soc Change, 59, 251–266. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10611-013-9413-6. Kelly, S. E. (2012). The maternal-foetal interface and gestational chimerism: The emerging importance of chimeric bodies. Science as Culture, 21(2), 233–257. https://doi.org/10.1080/09505431. 2011.628014. Krishnamurti, J. (2014). Flight of the Eagle, the. https://holybooks-lichtenbergpress.netdna-ssl.com/ wp-content/uploads/The-Flight-of-the-Eagle-by-Krishnamurti.pdf. Maathai, W. (2006). Unbowed: A memoir. New York, NY: Anchor Books. McIntyre-Mills, J. with De Vries and Binchai, N. (2014). Transformation From Wall Street to Wellbeing. New York: Springer. McIntyre-Mills, J., Romm, N. R. A., & Corcoran Nantes, Y. (Eds). (2019). Democracy and governance for resourcing the commons: Theory and practice on rural-urban balance. Springer, Cham. Meijer, E. (2016, translated, 2019). Animal languages: The secret conversations of the living world John Murray. London. Nussbaum, M. C. (2006). Frontiers of justice: Disability, nationality, species membership. Harvard: Harvard University Press. Olwell, R. (1999). Physical isolation and marginalization in physics: David Bohm’s cold war exile. The University of Chicago Press Isis, 90(4), 738–756. Web. Rayner, A. D. M. (2010). Inclusionality and sustainability—Attuning with the currency of natural energy flow and how this contrasts with abstract economic rationality. Environmental Economics, 1, 98–108. Romm, N. R. A. (2018). Responsible research practice. Cham: Springer. Rose, D. B. (2015). The ecological humanities. In K. Gibson, D. B. Rose, & R. Fincher (Eds.), Manifesto for living in the Anthropocene (pp. 1–6). New York: Punctum books. Stephens, A., Taket, A., & Gagliano, M. (2019). Ecological justice for nature in critical systems thinking. Systems Research and Behavioral Science, 36, 3–19. Taylor, A. (2010). The examined life: Excursions with contemporary thinkers. New York: The New Press.

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Links Infinite Potential: The Life & Ideas of David Bohm. See. https://www.infinitepotential.com/consci ousness/David. Bohm and Suzuki talking about nature of reality and links between science and spiritual teachings of Krishnamurti. From Fragmentation to Wholeness: David Bohm & Dalai Lama Life and mind enfolded in everything https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V2He4oU32sg. http://www.textjournal.com.au/speciss/issue20/Rose.pdf. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k0HZaPkF6qE. Examined Life—Judith Butler & Sunaura Taylor 720p.avi. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r-jI0zzYgIE.

Janet J. McIntyre-Mills is Honorary Professor in the College of Education at University of South Africa, Tshwane, South Africa; Visiting Research Fellow at Adelaide University in the College of Professions Main North Terrace; and Adjunct Associate Professor in College of Business Government and Law at Flinders University, Sturt Campus, Adelaide.

Chapter 12

Responsibly and Performatively Researching Multi-species Relationality Norma R. A. Romm

Abstract In this chapter I spell out various perspectives on performative research. I highlight that the common idea is that research should not strive to be “representational” of externally posited realities, but should take into account that it is always complicit in the unfolding of the worlds of which it is a part. I explain the advocacy of a performative idiom as a way to describe as well as to “do” research. I undertake this advocacy with reference to authors hailing from Western scholarship and from Indigenous paradigms of scholarship. Similarly, I explain how the spirit of posthumanism as guiding the research enterprise (where human/nonhuman dualities are rendered fuzzy and where mutual shaping is considered to be at play in all our relations) also is embraced in a variety of scholarly discourses and worldviews. I point to the critiques that have been levelled against certain posthumanists for not treating sufficiently seriously the relational perspectives as elucidated by seers and scholars from colonized social contexts; and I address the question (posed by certain authors) as to whether posthumanism can be “decolonized”. I proceed to offer examples that offer a glimpse of what might be considered as responsibly and performatively (in forward-looking vein) researching multi-species relationality. Such research actively seeks to draw out, and bring forth, prospects for “human” engagement with “others” (admitting that they cannot be conceived in isolation) in non-instrumental terms. Keywords Buen vivir · Eco-community · Human/non-human dualism · Indigenous relationality · Posthumanism · Relational existence

Introduction This chapter points to possibilities for exploring multi-species relationality through a research process which is intentionally performative as well as being posthumanist in orientation, so that our efforts at “knowing” take into account that we are, as Wilson (2008: 56) puts it, “answerable to all our relations” (including all of creation) when N. R. A. Romm (B) University of South Africa, Pretoria, South Africa © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2021 J. J. McIntyre-Mills and Y. Corcoran-Nantes (eds.), From Polarisation to Multispecies Relationships, Contemporary Systems Thinking, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-33-6884-2_12

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conducting inquiries. By “performative-oriented” research, I mean that such research is grounded in a recognition that inquiries are always implicated in the shaping of worlds-in-becoming, which “become” partly through the way in which we relate to them (including via our inquiries, which themselves imply possibilities for action in relation to “the world”). This implies that we must take some responsibility for the manner in which we embark on inquiries (Romm, 2018: 18–19; 2020, paras 17– 19). Chilisa states that once we recognize (contrary to representational accounts of “knowing”) that reality as we come to define it is not “independent of the researcher’s interest in it” (2020: 36), we become alerted to how “the researcher’s ethical and moral obligation foregrounds and is intertwined with perceptions of reality and ways of knowing” (Chilisa, 2020: 25). The idea that research itself is a performative act which performs world shaping (as Gergen puts it, 2015: 287) is based on the idea that the research processes that (natural and/or social) inquirers use to study the (posited) world, and the kinds of questions we raise during research processes, already become impactful in/on the worlds of which the research is a part (Barad, 2003: 814; Gergen, 2015: 287; Gibson et al., 2015: viii; Koro-Ljungberg, 2016: 11; Mertens, 2017: 21; Midgley, 2000: 42; Pickering, 2013: 78; Rosiek et al., 2020: 331; Wu et al., 2018: 507). This means in effect that the (Cartesian) knowing subject/known object dualism disappears and that we recognize that we are in some way answerable to the relations in which we are enmeshed (Wilson, 2008: 56). Epistemological discussion (and attendant moral deliberation) around the shaping effect of “knowing” on the world that is sought to be known, has been generated within many disciplines in the natural and social sciences, and by those operating in cross-disciplinary fashion, who draw insights from quantum theoretical developments in the natural sciences. Bausch, in developing a post-modernist argument, makes the point with reference to the work of quantum physicist Bohr,1 that our ways of “observing” realities already shapes “reality” itself. Bausch states (2016: 2) that it is understood within quantum physics that “at atomic levels our very observation alters the processes we are trying to observe” (2016: 2). For example, depending on how we choose to measure a photon, it can “be” either a wave of a particle. Bausch considers implications hereof for ways in which we might try, as humans engaged in dialogue, to generate new directions for social and ecological development, where (collectively-oriented) knowing becomes part of a future-forming enterprise. Barad, emphasizes in her book entitled “Meeting the Universe Halfway” (2007: 97) that the quantum physics perspective pioneered by Bohr (as she interprets him) implies that he is making claims not only about the nature of our knowing (that is, that we cannot know the behaviour of the world because our measurements affect what appears to us) but about the nature of reality, which is now seen as a process in-the-making (in which our knowing processes are implicated). She avers that our processes of knowing play a part in bringing forth potential states of being, and this is what we call “phenomena” or “reality”. Phenomena do not pre-date the way in 1 As Radomska (2010: 104) notes, Niels Bohr won a Nobel Prize in 1922 as an author of a quantum model of the atom, being one of the first contributors to the development of quantum physics.

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which they are brought forth; and “knowers”—those involved in inquiries—exercise some agency in shaping the way in which these phenomena “become”. Barad argues that this is one implication that can be drawn out of Bohr’s quantum physics, albeit that she is choosing to accentuate this in her own work, where she stresses the fact that we need to take some responsibility for our modes of inquiry. She recognizes that answers concerning the relationship between science and ethics cannot simply be derived from (quantum) physics. And she recognizes that people cannot simply be considered as being the “analogues of atoms” when we study social life. But she suggests that there are certain epistemological and ontological issues that “quantum physics forces us to confront” (Preface to her book). Peacock, in reviewing her book, including her interpretation and extension of Bohr, notes that “her ontology is predicated on the notion that we are part of the nature we seek to understand, thus carving a role out for subjectivity [albeit not the subjectivity of a distinct entity such as a “knower” separated from “known phenomena”], and making us accountable for the ‘phenomena’ produced” (2010: 1). Barad has become famous for her perspective on a performative posthumanist approach to “knowing”. Her (2003) article entitled “Posthumanist Performativity: Toward an Understanding of How Matter Comes to Matter” has been cited more than 5800 times to date (at the time of writing this chapter). And her (2007) book on “Meeting the universe halfway” has been cited more than 9000 times. For this reason, I refer in some detail to her approach in the following sections.2 However, certain authors (such as Lupton, 2019; Rosiek et al., 2020; Wu et al., 2018) have argued that we must be careful of attributing the insights of performative posthumanism to Western authors, forgetting the resonances with Indigenous approaches to knowing and to being, which pre-date Western colonial encounters. They argue that these indigenous cultural heritages (in various geographical localities prior to colonization) offer a similar perspective, which precedes the arguments coming from “the West”. Rosiek, Snyder, and Pratt attribute the lack of awareness of Indigenous perspectives (on the part of many of those propounding a performative posthumanism) to various factors. They consider that one such factor is what can be considered as racism, which plays a part in the failure to take seriously Indigenous ways of knowing and being. As they put it: Racism, for example, plays a part. The assumption that Indigenous studies scholarship is primitive, less rigorous, less theoretically refined, simplistically concerned with identity politics, and so on lingers throughout the academy and can frame people’s encounters with the literature before they read it or even pre-empt such reading. (2020: 333)

They argue, citing various other authors, that these assumptions “need to be surfaced, named, critiqued, and relentlessly checked as part of any 21st-century scholarly 2 Sellberg

and Hinton state that Barad’s work and the terms that she has introduced to express her argument have “shifted the standard metrics of knowledge production and her theories have inspired animated discussion in emerging strands as varied as the new materialism in feminism, object oriented ontology, post- and transhumanism, speculative realism, environmental and digital humanities, among others” (2016, para 1). They point out that the “critical climate [of criticallyoriented research] is becoming increasingly ‘Baradian’” (2016, para 1).

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practice (e.g., Arvin, Tuck, & Morrill, 2013; Deloria, 1999; Simpson, 2017)” (Rosiek et al., 2020: 333). They note that the essay of theirs that they proffer, which is entitled “The New Materialisms and Indigenous Theories of Non-human Agency: Making the Case for Respectful Anti-colonial Engagement” is intended to contribute to showing resonance between, for example, the argument of Barad and that of Indigenous scholars explicating Indigenous relational ontology, epistemology and axiology. They concede that perhaps “complex disciplinary dynamics” are at play in the “lack of attention to Indigenous studies about non-human agency” (2020: 333). But they feel that this “lack of attention” needs to be corrected (as a matter of decolonization). Likewise, the argument that I introduce in this chapter will draw on the work of many Indigenous authors (and those who support their worldviews and their arguments) and indicate implications of these versions of performative posthumanism in terms of our current responsibilities to, as Wilson puts it, to “all of creation” (2008: 56). The chapter is structured as follows: To spark off my discussion concerning ways of responsibly exploring multispecies relationality, I refer to the work of Barad (2003, 2007) and indicate how she creates an argument around what she calls intra-action to express the way in which “relationality” can be conceived. In explicating her argument, I also show links between some of her terms and the expression of Indigenous authors. Although she believes that Pickering’s (1995) account of performative posthumanism does not adequately indicate the political importance of this notion for contemporary critical theory (2007: 411), I offer a somewhat different interpretation of his position, by also locating how he draws on some Indigenous sages and authors to express his argument. Having set the performative posthumanist stage in this way, I proceed to examine implications for the doing (performing) of inquiry that takes account of, and tries to nurture, multispecies relationality, where relationality implies by definition a non-instrumental approach in what Pickering (2013) calls “the dance of [mutual] agency” or what Wilson (2008) calls being answerable to “all our relations”.

Barad’s Posthumanist Performative Argument in Relation to Certain Indigenous Perspectives Barad radically questions what she calls the “allure of representationalism” where knowers as subjects try to “represent” some posited outside world considered as existing independently of the knowing process (2003: 807). She attributes representationalism to being “an inconspicuous [unnoticed] consequence of the Cartesian division between ‘internal’ [subject] and ‘external’ [object] that breaks along the line of the knowing subject [that is, that cuts off the subject from object]” (2003: 806). She refers to the idea (as have many before her) that “representationalism is so deeply entrenched within Western culture that it has taken on a common-sense appeal. It seems inescapable, if not downright natural. But representationalism has a history”

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(2003: 806). Here she trails Pickering (1995: 230) who refers to representationalism as having arisen at a particular point in (Western) history. Pickering explains how the performative idiom (in contrast to a representational idiom) is helpful in tracing historical developments in “science”: The performative idiom encourages us to carry out a genealogy organized around striking transformations in the realm of human and material performances, which for me, to put it simply, would foreground not the Scientific Revolution of the seventeenth century but the Industrial Revolution of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries as a key moment in the history of the West – the time when machinic performativity, as enshrined in the factory and in the distinctively disciplined human performances associated with the factory, started to become definitive of society itself. The performative idiom, then, invites a performative historiography, one might say, that would be centered in the industrial era on technology, the factory, and production (and consumption and also destruction …). (1995: 230–231)

Pickering’s point is that the development of Western science was tied up with the Industrial Revolution and the search to control nature with technological intent in the quest to advance that revolution. It developed a specific way of addressing (engaging with) nature through the scientific performance, which was far from neutral in character. He points out how such a science was not what he calls a “self-enclosed field”— but was tied up with a vision of nature and how it could and should be controlled, thus attempting to shape nature in this direction (as something controllable). Masemula makes a similar critical point by referring to the mathematization of nature brought about through Western science. With reference to Cajete (2000) he indicates that “Western paradigmatic views of science are largely about measurement using Western mathematics” (2013: 125). Cajete criticizes the imposed mathematization of nature wherein “mathematics has … been superimposed on nature like a grid and then examined within that framework” (p. 125). A consequence of this mathematization is that other ways of comprehending, and engaging with, nature become excluded. Masemula laments that due to the current dominance of “Western” science, Indigenous-oriented understandings of ways of engaging with (and relating with) nature (and our connectivity to her), become quashed—and the wisdom carried in these engagements is inferiorized. He considers it unfortunate that in the “ever more abstract treatment of phenomena”, scientists assume “an emotional distance from the realm of nature” (instead of seeing themselves as part of her) with deleterious consequences for possibilities of developing a caring relationship, as in many Indigenous ways of life (p. 125). Masemula’s suggestion is that if we take more seriously Indigenous ways of knowing and being we can learn how to live better “in relation” with nature (Masemula 2013: 126). In the section below I take this argument further, but need to mention that in Barad’s book (2007) she makes only one footnoted reference to Indigenous knowledge practices (p. 452), in the context of explicating her own sense of “past, future and change”. She asserts that we must be careful of the “romantic” idea that we can simply “return to better times” (p. 452). As many Indigenous authors themselves recognize, the (re)credentializing of Indigenous knowledge systems and styles of knowing does not imply that all “knowledge” (and ways of acting) as proffered within Indigenous

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systems has to be accepted as is. Rather, the point is to be open to a dialogical engagement with a variety of ways of knowing, appreciating what Indigeneity has to offer, but not assuming that it is all-knowing (cf. Adyanga & Romm, 2016; Goduka, 2012; Romm, 2014, 2017). Goduka, for instance, calls for an openness of spirit which allows Indigenous Knowledge (IK) to be a dynamic system of knowledge production, which can accommodate alternative visions of (and approaches to) knowing (2012: 14). Harris and Wasilewski express this vision by suggesting that one of the characteristics of dialogue as understood within Indigenous thought (as they see it) is that those engaging in the dialogue appreciate that our strength is increased by sharing [in the process of developing communal wisdom]. We can affirm our view, expand our view, or sometimes alter or even give up our current view when we encounter a new one. We can also allow others to have contrastive views as long as they do not impose their views on us and vice versa. (2004: 498)

Harris and Wasilewski are concerned that in the current arena of globalization, the potential for “positive relationships” where people are oriented to recognize that our fates are interconnected with one another and with Mother Earth, has been unduly threatened by the forces of “power” and “profit” (2004: 498). Hence, they exhort that “we need to establish respectful, caring relationships of responsibility with each other” and concomitantly with Mother Earth (p. 499). For them, ways of knowing (and dialoging) are linked to the development of an orientation of caring, so that epistemology and ethics are not seen as separable. Put differently, the performative intent of “knowing” (which they see as a dialogical enterprise all round, including in dialogue with or respectful engagement with “Mother Earth”) is to make a difference in the direction of more relational caring. Not all Indigenous scholars classify their relational ontology, epistemology, and axiology using the term “performative” (to express our complicity in the unfolding of the web of relations which constitutes “reality”). Some Indigenous scholars do indeed use this term (e.g., Rosiek et al., 2020). But whether or not the term is used, I concur with Rosiek, Snyder, and Pratt that ironically, by Barad (and her followers) tending to ignore the Indigenous notions and current practices of relationality, this omission itself has a performative effect in that it can generate further injustice in the social and ecological worlds of which her theory is a part. That is, can fail to encourage readers from taking due notice of Indigenous contributions which underpin the “political projects of Indigenous communities” (2020: 335–336). Rosiek et al. (2020: 335) explain that in Barad’s agential “realism” she attributes agency to all that exists as they exist in their relations and as they mutually express their agentic relations (where everything has the potential to express agency). They note that in her account of the concepts she offers (such as intra-agency, agential realism, posthumanism) she is attempting (in performative vein) to transform not just the ontology of our objects of study but also the ontology of subjects involved in inquiry, and the relation between objects and subjects. More colloquially, it gestures toward a practice of inquiry that involves transformations not just of our ways of knowing but also of our ways of being, feeling, committing, and living in the world. We should not expect such a reorientation would be a smooth process even for those convinced of its necessity … . (2020: 335)

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What is important about taking a performative view of knowledge production, then, is that we recognize that the way in which we approach “the world” already influences (either constructively or indeed destructively) the potential unfolding of outcomes. Our specific knowing arrangements create impacts, while we too become shaped through the responses/actions of other agents/powers. Barad creates this argument (2003: 814) by considering the implications of Bohr’s notion of the inseparability of “observed object” and “agencies of observation” (such as laboratory apparatuses). She elaborates on this insight of Bohr by stating that: On my agential realist elaboration, phenomena do not merely mark the epistemological inseparability of “observer” and “observed”; rather phenomena [what we call reality] are the ontological inseparability of agentially intra-acting components. (2003: 815)

She states that: The notion of intra-action (in contrast to the usual “interaction,” which presumes the prior existence of independent entities/relata) represents a profound conceptual shift. It is through specific agential intra-actions that the boundaries and properties of the “components” of phenomena become determinate and that particular embodied concepts become meaningful. A specific intra-action (involving a specific material configuration of the “apparatus of observation”) enacts an agential cut (in contrast to the Cartesian cut) … . (2003: 815)

In other words, it is through the process of “knowing” that we create boundaries which then supposedly mark off the various components of “observed” phenomena. Barad considers this a profound conceptual development (as a development of Bohr’s argument). She footnotes as further explanation that: ….relations are not secondarily derived from independently existing “relata,” but rather the mutual ontological dependence of “relata”—the relation—is the ontological primitive. As discussed below, relata only exist within phenomena as a result of specific intra-actions (i.e., there are no independent relata, only relata-within-relations). (2003: 815)

What she means by this is that we cannot isolate “entities” as things that then relate to one another—there are no entities that pre-exist their relationships (2003: 815). This to me echoes the Indigenous ontology as expressed by many Indigenous scholars (and seers) that “things” owe their being to their being-in-relation, which means that we indeed cannot separate out “things” (including even humans from each other and also from the so-called non-human world) except analytically. This ontology (and attendant epistemology and axiology) recognizes that all that “exists” is in process of becoming through a dynamic connection which is what Barad calls “relata-within relations”. In introducing what he calls a decolonizing sensibility to explore ways-ofknowing-nature that employ other-than-Cartesian ontologies, Higgins (2016: 270) considers the relevance of both “Karen Barad’s (2000, 2007) quantum philosophyphysics and Gregory Cajete’s (1994, 1999, 2000) Indigenous science”—as a Tewa Native American educator. Higgins points out that Barad emphasizes (2000: 237) how scientific literacy becomes “a matter … of learning how to intra-act responsibly within the world”; that is, on an ethical level her position on knowing “re(con)figures accountability as a process of not only accounting for, but also being accountable to

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these agents and their intra-action in the world’s ongoing becoming” (Higgins, 2016: 272). He shows resonances with Cajete’s conception that: learning is always already a relational process (i.e., coming-to-knowing, a verb) rather than an independent product (i.e., knowledge, a noun). [Moreover], coming-to-knowing is inseparable from coming-to-being: they are ongoing and interconnected processes woven into the fabric of everyday life. (Higgins, 2016: 269)

He explains the intentionality in Cajete’s “ecology of relationships” as signaling: a way-of-knowing-in-being in which the world is enacted through the flux of relationships, [as well as] an ongoing accounting for and accountability to the ecology of relationships such that it is (re)generated and sustained. (p. 269)

He highlights that Cajete (2000) reminds us that: within many Indigenous languages there is an expression akin to “all my relations” (e.g., Mitakuye Oyasin in Lakota). “All my relations” is an epistemological, ontological and ethical accounting for and being accountable to the ecologies of relationships we find ourselves in and constituted by which extends beyond the immediate present to include generations past and those still yet-to-come. It is a metaphysical principle through and by which “people understood that all entities of nature – plants, animals, stones, trees, mountains, rivers, lakes and a host of other living entities – embodied [and (will) continue to embody] relationships that must be honored”. (Cajete, 2000: 178; Higgins, 2016: 269)

De Line further elucidates that the Cree and Métis notion of “all my relations” (Niw_hk_m_kanak) is iterated during opening and closing ceremonies involving Cree and Métis nations, including Blackfoot and Haudenosaunee Confederacies. De Line explains the importance of these words: The words acknowledge and bless all that is in the continuum, continually in flux, in all our relations; all matter, all energy waves that are in contingent relationality through a familial network (consisting of four main assemblages: ancestral, preferential, involuntary and ordained). All my/our relations is not only a ceremonial acknowledgment but a philosophical proposition. (De Line, 2016: 2)

In answering the question as to whether posthumanism (in its current largely Western formulations) can be decolonized, De Line feels that the philosophical concepts provided by Barad (and her Baradian followers who have applied and extended her ideas in various contexts) and those provided by Indigenous authors (and those who appreciate and extend their arguments) can “benefit each other” (2016: 11). Together they can “expand upon a discourse of science and philosophy – without relying on Cartesian dualities (nature/culture, human/animal, object/subject)” (2016: 12). In this regard, we can consider Chilisa’s exposition of an Indigenous research paradigm that I introduced in my Introduction, which too is premised on a relational ontology, epistemology and axiology. Chilisa notes that in the African context, such recognition of relationality is “captured under the philosophy of Ubuntu” (2020: 24). Le Grange summarizes that “Ubuntu … concerns a condition of being that becomes/unfolds in relationship with the other (other human beings and the biophysical world)” (2012: 66). Le Grange qualifies the concept of “biophysical world” by indicating that it is not postulated to exist “outside” of human involvement in its

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becoming; and by acknowledging the agency it exercises too in this process (as we exist in mutual relationship and shaping). He also explains with reference to the practice of totemism (as similarly referred to by Chilisa, 2012, 2020) the strong tendency to give a human soul to animals, to plants, to nature as such, a tendency which is at the very root of the most beautiful blossoms of poetry, a feeling that there is a community of substance between various forms of life. (Le Grange, 2012: 62)

Le Grange considers that there are lessons to be drawn from this rendering fuzzy the human-nonhuman distinction via totemism. (See also Chap. 6 by Romm and Lethole in this volume.) The lesson is that we can strive to create more “community of substance and more harmony in our mutual connectivity. He argues (in forwardlooking vein) that: I wish to note that a call for the restoration of ubuntu does not suggest turning back the clock, a return to “old” ways of living, but rather harnessing ubuntu to create new ways of living in contemporary (South) Africa. (p. 64)

Le Grange states that we cannot revert to “old formulas, which were pertinent when the planet was less densely populated and when social relations were much stronger than they are today” (p. 62). But he argues that we can find in Indigenous ways of living potential carriers of “new constellations” for living which exceed dominant ways of life in the current era (powered, as Harris & Wasilewski, 2004, also note, primarily by “power and profit”). Before closing this section it is worth mentioning that in 2019, Barad and colleague Schaeffer organized a conference that was entitled a “Feminist Science Studies Conference on Indigeneity and Climate Justice” (https://scijust.ucsc.edu/2019/05/ 30/may30-indigeneity-climate-justice/). In their advertising of the conference, they state that the conference is based on the premise that climate change has been “driven by the forces of capitalism, colonialism, militarism, and imperialism”. As such, ….climate change has been and continues to be perpetuated by the few, while those subjected to precaritization and violence are made to disproportionately absorb the ill effects of “progress” and “development.” In other words, climate change has always been a matter of geopolitics and the ongoing precaritization of oppressed peoples, dominated lands, and other-than-human beings that are part of living landscapes.

In view of this recognition they suggest that: The 2019 UCSC Feminist Science Studies conference takes as its focus the theme of “Indigeneity and Climate Justice.” Climate Justice, as opposed to the more narrow framings of “environmental justice”, marks the consideration of the entanglement of ecological, cultural, social, political, geological, biological and other forces, understood as simultaneous and mutually constitutive. A shared concern among our esteemed keynote speakers (Indigenous presenters] is the question of how to respond to the challenges and potentials of collaborative engagements between Indigenous and non-Indigenous approaches to caring for the Earth. We invite them to engage in conversation with each other and students, faculty, staff, and other conference participants about these pressing questions of multiple ontologies, epistemologies, and uneven responsibilities.

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Here Barad recognizes the need to “bring together” in theory and practice her specific posthumanist understanding (including Baradian-infused understandings of others) and the understandings as provided by Indigenous ontologies, epistemologies and axiologies. One could argue that this is one attempt to decolonize posthumanism, as has been advocated by the authors whom I have cited above. However, it remains to be seen how Barad herself might expand her position in relation to Indigenous contributions.

Pickering’s References to Indigenous Ways of Knowing and Living: Further Exploring Visions of Relationality Interestingly, although Barad makes no reference in her 2003 article on a posthumanist performativity to Indigenous authors (and only one footnoted reference in her 2007 book) Pickering in both his 1995 book and 2013 article does make references to the ideas and practices that can be found in these cultural heritages. When referring to what he calls “nonstandard agency” of human and nonhuman being (admitting that these distinctions are humanly created), he refers to “powers” which we may not ordinarily attribute to either humans (as we conceptualize them) or nonhumans in their exercise of agency (1995: 243). He regards “the most vivid illustrations of this as coming “not from European history but from Carlos Castaneda’s popular anthropology (Castaneda 1968 and its many sequels)”. He notes that these illustrations come from what Castaneda tells us about his partial induction into a “Yaqui way of knowledge,” via his apprenticeship to a Yaqui Indian known as Don Juan. Don Juan, says Castaneda, introduced him to a set of complex disciplines through which he was able to emulate some of his master’s feats [such as], flying like a bird, being in two places at once, conversing with the spirits of hallucinogenic mushrooms, and so on. Such performances sound far-fetched, Castaneda’s writing at least makes them thinkable. (1995: 243)

Pickering contends that the stories offered by Casteneda offer a way of explaining a “nonstandard agency, … [which] resides in nondualist-explicitly posthumanistcultures where our distinctions between the human and nonhuman are eroded, if not entirely effaced’ (1995: 244). Pickering remarks that we may question Castaneda’s credentials, but this questioning and scepticism are also based on assumptions as to what counts as “credible”. Chilisa makes the same point when she notes that Western science relies on “empirical testing” in order to try to credentialize claims about approaching “the truth”, but the issue at stake is what counts as “evidence” (2020: 24). In an Indigenous perspective, “knowledge is relational”; and furthermore, the relationality is “not just with the research subjects I may be working with, but it is a relationship with all of creation. It is with the cosmos; it is with the animals, with plants, with the earth” (Chilisa, 2020: 24, citing Wilson, 2008: 56). The idea here expressed is that we need to extend the realm of “the empirical” to cover the ways of knowing proffered in Indigenous heritages, as has been advocated by many

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Indigenous seers and scholars writing about this. Hence, for instance, McLaughlin (2001) follows Walker (2001) in suggesting that the central characteristic of “Indigenist” research is that it includes a recognition of “interconnectedness, focusing on process and relationships, inclusion of spiritual experience, and expanded definitions of empirical data” (McLaughlin, 2001: 7). McLaughlin elucidates (much in the same way as do Chilisa (2012, 2020), and Wilson, 2008) that: While Western research paradigms [tend to] focus on what can be known or observable, Indigenous epistemology may include experiences of visions and dreams as empirical data. This illustrates the interconnectedness and holistic experiences, illustrating an epistemology which is inherently spiritual. (2001: 7)

This sense of being in spiritual connection with “all that exists” accounts also for why Casteneda may have been able to “fly like a bird” (where he identifies with “a bird” and does not see himself as separated in substance from birds); and is able to communicate with the “spirits of … mushrooms”. Moreover, the relationship as he experiences it is one of mutual sharing and shaping—in the sense that the bird has offered lessons to Don Juan (and to Casteneda through Don Juan) and the mushrooms are in mutual communication with Castaneda, in joint sharing. Here we see what Barad calls “agentic realism” (where agential powers are expressed in all of creation) manifest in the ideas of the “Yaqui way of knowledge”, as elucidated by Castaneda (in turn described by Pickering as “nonstandard agency” (1995: 243). An example of a sense of spiritual connection with “trees” (this time where the connection became cut, due to humans treating trees in instrumental terms for the benefit of using the land for economic use) can be found in Wangari Maathai’s autoethnographic account of her work as founder of the Green Belt Movement in Kenya. In her book (2006) she exhorts us to take some responsibility for the wellbeing of nature and to recognize, in this case, the sacredness of trees. She pleads with us, through her admittedly evocative writing (what I would call in performative vein, hoping to make a difference to our ways of engaging with nature), for the importance of our holding nature in awe. She notes also the mutual shaping occurring, where the humans acted without respecting the tree, which in turn acted back in response. For example, she recounts that: I also learned that someone had acquired the piece of land where the fig tree I was in awe of as a child had stood. The new owner perceived the tree to be a nuisance because it took up too much space and he felled it to make room to grow tea. By then I understood the connection between the tree and water [with the tree root system serving to hold the water], so it did not surprise me that when the fig tree was cut down, the stream where I had played with the tadpoles dried up. … . Ironically, the area where the fig tree of my childhood once stood always remained a patch of bare ground where nothing grew. It was as if the land rejected anything but the fig tree itself. (2006: 121–122)

She here appeals to us to be responsive to nature, by surmising that nature is trying to talk back to us when, for instance, “the land rejected anything but the fig tree”—thus resisting those who regarded the tree as “a nuisance” in the way of human profitmaking. (This is similar to Barad’s speaking, 2003: 816) of the “the dialectic of

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resistance and accommodation”, where neither side in the “intra-action” can act in “ontological separation” (2003: 815). This is also expressed well by Helne (2019) when she notes implications for human being-in-the-world. She suggests that in terms of a strong “ontological relationality”, even the notion of relatedness, strictly speaking disappears, since a relationship requires the existence of at least two objects. Instead, … a feeling of unity ensues, the deep knowledge that there is no difference between the self and other persons, nonhuman animals and the natural world. (2019: 139)

She considers these kinds of experiences of unity as “the highest common factor of most spiritual traditions” (2019: 239). This applies of course to the “traditions” of many Indigenous cultures, of which I have provided some examples above (including the one provided by Pickering, 1995, with reference to the Yaqui Indian experience). Notably, Barad, when referring to Pickering’s (1995) work, suggests that Pickering’s understanding of the performative idiom does not include an acknowledgement of its politically important genealogy (in the writings of authors such as Haraway, Latour, and Rouse) or why it “continues to be important to critical theorists” (2003: 807; 2007: 411). This is her interpretation of what she considers to be an oversight on his part. However, I would suggest that he has offered ideas of import politically, by respecting and credentializing Indigenous practices which express the striving to strengthen relationality, and to be “answerable to all our relations” (as Wilson, 2008, puts it). In his 2013 article, Pickering again refers to the need to undercut “western education” insofar as it “continually reproduces a … Cartesian dualism of people and things” (2013: 78) and he provides arguments and practices that I would regard as politically pertinent. He does so again with reference to cultural traditions that often are not given credibility in the posthumanist writings of Barad and followers, which Sellberg and Hinter (2016, para 1) name as “Baradian”. In his 2013 article entitled “Being in an Environment: A Performative Perspective”, he explains that posthumanism refuses what he calls “exceptionalism”, whereby “humans” are centred and are treated as “special” (2013: 78). He (performatively) refers to the need to consider (and to take some responsibility for) a “forward-looking evolutionary process [via] dances of agency [human and non-human] that explore a world of endless emergence and becoming” (p. 78). By using the phrase “dance of agency” he tries to make the point that the “dancers” depend on each other to complete the moves being made by each of them in their entanglement, who indeed, for this reason, are not considered as ontologically separable. Moreover, he notes (p. 79) that the question with which he is concerned (and that he raises for attention) is how we can “go on” in the world though an intersection between what we call the human and the nonhuman, in a less hegemonic way of engaging, that is, in a way that is not premised on trying to “control” the dance. He gives an example of the Exe river valley where he lives, where “over the centuries people have found a way of living in dynamic equilibrium with the river”, which is not based on trying to “bend nature to our will” (p. 80). It is based on a “performative openness to what the river will do, and a performative

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response to that” (as in a dance)—2013: 80. He refers also to the Tao way of living, where, as he puts it: The moral here is that successful human action depends on latching onto the shi of whatever situation one finds oneself in, going with the flow, in the Taoist sense of the term. I am told this way of thinking is simply commonsense in China, though it is certainly alien to western academic thought. (2013: 81)

In addition, he refers to the work of Jim Scott regarding a body of thought and action called “metis”, which Scott sees as a “less poisonous alternative to modernist rationalization” (2013: 81). Pickering illustrates the notion of the metis as used in relation to erosion control, where an engineer “is finding out what the propensity of the valley and the water is, and he does that by deliberately staging a performative dance of agency with it” (2013: 81). The “experiment” is not the scientific type experiments as done in “normal” Western science, but is a matter of “open[ing] up the possibility of foregrounding and actively conjuring up emergent dances of agency in practice [rather] than casting a scientific veil over them” (2013: 81). Pickering indicates that we can still speak of experiments in this connection in that the forest engineer “certainly experiments on water flows in the valley” (2013: 81). But this is not the same sense of doing “experiments” as is usually associated with (Western) science, where scientific experiment depends on the detour I have been talking about: a displacement of phenomena away from the world and into the lab for the sake of producing knowledge which can then be re-exported to the world. (2013: 81)

The alternative understanding of experiments presented by Pickering is very similar to Ngara’s exposition (2017: 335) of the basis of knowledge-creation in “indigenous communities”. Ngara refers to this basis by citing Ngulube and Onyancha (2011: 132). He does not attempt to provide an exhaustive list, but highlights certain features such as that it: ● Has roots in a particular community and is situated within a broader social context in which all life forms are a result of the interaction between spiritual and social relations; ● Is tacit knowledge transmitted [predominantly] orally; ● Is experiential rather than theoretical; ● Is inherently interlinked to the understanding of the environmental ● Is dynamic and constantly adapting (2017: 335). Ryser et al. (2017: 54) add that knowing according to “fourth world theory and method of inquiry” is based on “relational connection of human experience with the land and the cosmos” and that “relational reasoning” can have “local, regional and global applications” (especially insofar as the issues to be addressed are of global concern). They also emphasize that the relational reasoning that they advocate, is premised on an “equality of kind”—in that “human beings are part of all living things and not the dominant living thing”. They suggest that when applied in life and thought, relational reasoning “ensures comity between peoples, between peoples and living nature, and with the forces of the cosmos” (2017: 54).

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In the same spirit of trying to “welcome non-Western traditions into an expansive perspective”, Wu et al. (2018: 508) articulate posthumanist performative concepts aligned to the (Eastern) notion and practice of Tao and the African notion and practice of Ubuntu. Like Pickering, they consider that the Tao offers an example of “posthumanist performativity” (2018: 512). They explain that As we see in the Tai-chi symbol of a white dot in the black and a black dot in the white represent mutual inclusion, transaction, reciprocity, and pluralistic fusion of horizons. It is a mode of ontology as inter-activity rather than dichotomy. (2018: 512)

They remark that this has been also been “elegantly articulated by Barad’s (2007) posthumanist performativity” (2018: 512). They point out that the strength of the Tao is that in terms of Taoist philosophy “there are moments of recognizing the oneness of all as connected rather than individual separate entities”. In Taoism “there is exists an inability or undesirability to ‘know’ something as essential, identifiable, or static, since the flux of the world, and constantly shifting relations, proffer such conceptualizations as non-representational” (2018: 512–513). Although they suggest that Barad has offered an elegant account of posthumanist performativity, they express that the Tao can also be turned to, as offering an elegant articulation. They consider it important to “welcome” non-Western wisdom such as this. Likewise, they refer to Ubuntu as a “generous ontology” and suggest that what is needed for our time is indeed such an ontology (2018: 514). They make the point, citing Kudadjie and Osei (2004) that “in the African perspective, unlike the western perspective, there is no need for posthuman ponderings” (2018: 514, my italics). This is because in an African worldview … the universe itself – comprising both seen and unseen reality (spirit beings, human beings, plants, animals, mountains, waters, stellar bodies, and all) – is a whole, a community with symbolic influences and relationships. (Kudadjie & Osei, 2004: 36, as cited in Wu et al., 2018: 514)

They feel that De Quincey (2005) also provides a good explanation the spirit of Ubuntu, when he expresses it as follows: … we are definitely not alone … we don’t form relationships, they form us. We are constituted by webs of interconnection. Relationships come first, and we emerge more or less as distinct centers within the vast and complex networks that surround us. In this new view, we are noted in the complex web of life. Each of us is a meeting point, a center of convergence, for countless threads of relationships. We are moments in time and locations in space where the universe shows up – literally, as a phenomenon. (De Quincey, 2005: 182, as cited in Wu et al., 2018: 514)

Again here we have an expression of “posthumanism” that could be considered even better articulated than in Barad’s formulations, and as Wu et al. note, we may not even need to label it posthumanism—as the “generous ontology” implies this from the start. A similar conception is provided by a Yorta Aboriginal, Lee Joachim (2014) in conversation with Matilda Bowra (https://www.dumbofeather.com/conversations/ lee-joachim-is-an-agent-for-change/). In the context of answering Bowra’s question about epistemology (in Bowra, 2014), he notes that:

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It was environmental socialism at its best. When we mention socialism, its Mao Tse-tung and Stalin. This [his understanding] is a more sophisticated system of managing environment and living as a society in cohesion with everything around you. It’s understanding that sophistication to observe what people and animals are actually doing and how they are interacting together. Everything has a right from the smallest insect, bug, slug to those that are on top of the food chain.

Weir (2015: 21), in also referring to Lee Joachim’s insights (and attendant axiology), indicates that “Lee encourages us to begin our ethics of connection by listening to country [a metaphor for the land and “everything around you”]. She continues that: Through listening, we become drawn into a communicative relationship with the river [in this case the Murray river]. Through communicating, we acknowledge the sentience and agency of ecological life. We extend subjectivity [agential powers] to place, plants, animals and rivers and we lay the basis for love, care and ethics [with them]. (2015: 21)

In the section above, I have provided a number of texts that serve to decenter the Baradian way of “meeting the universe halfway” (2007), in order that non-Western seers and scholars are given due credit as we together strive to generate ways of living which are non-anthropocentric in character (as also elucidated by, for instance, Houtart, 2011; McIntyre-Mills, 2013, 2014a, 2014b, 2019; Tishman Centre, 2019). This is what many ecofeminists too (Barad included) have endorsed as a way of being, where the duality between “human” and “nature” is questioned, which too would resonate with a generous reading of the African concept of Ubuntu.3 For good examples of ecofeminist positions which appreciate and engage dialogically with Indigenous perspectives, see Stephens (2015), and Stephens et al. (2019). In their article in which they elaborate on how critical systems thinking can incorporate a concern with what they call the “emancipation of nature” and “ecological justice for nature”, Stephens, Taket, and Gagliano offer certain remarks on how, for instance, plants, need not be treated as “passive objects of investigation” (2019: 4). Their argument is akin to Barad’s account of agential realism, which they favourably cite (2019: 8). They note in this regard that: Ecofeminists promote an ethos needed to support an ontological shift towards a different engagement with species other than human. Barad (2007) calls for non-humans to be included as equal partners in knowledge-making. (2019: 8)

Based also on some of the research work with plants in which Gagliano has been involved, including her development of insights from certain Indigenous perspectives with which she herself was apprenticed (cf. https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/26/ style/can-plants-talk.html), they contend that we can locate sophisticated behavioral tendencies of plants, which not only echo the claims of many indigenous cultures who have maintained their strong traditional systems of knowledge regarding them (Meyer, 2008) but have directly incorporated those systems of knowledge to inform [and redirect] western scientific approaches. (Gagliano, 2018; Stephens et al., 2019: 3)

3 See,

for instance, the reading as expressed by Romm and Lethole in Chap. 6 of this volume.

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They explain that plants are being observed in interactive relations and behaviors, which underlie cognitive processes such as perception, learning, memorization, decision-making and inter-species communications (Gagliano, 2012, 2015, 2018; Gagliano et al., 2012). Through these behavioral actions, plants … affirm their agency (in the literal sense, derived from its Latin root agere, “to act”). (2019: 3)

As a matter of ecological justice for nature, they suggest that: Based on a dynamic internal value system of feelings and subjective experiences, we may look specifically at different forms of non-human sentience [e.g. of plants] and their interests and rights. With a pluralist [inquiry] practice, incorporating (eco)feminist-systems thinking, soft systems sciences and the biological sciences, we can [also] subject the various boundaries concerning human/nonhuman sentient/non-sentient and so on to critical scrutiny. … . We wish to contribute to the discussion and reconsider the interests of a number of different types of non-human entities, both sentient and non-sentient. (p. 5)

Notably, as in Barad’s posthumanism, they question these humanly-made boundaries and dualities, along with other certain other critical systems thinkers (e.g., Midgley, 1994; McIntyre-Mills, 2013, 2014a, 2014b; Reynolds, 2003; Romm, 2015), and along with Indigenous authors whom they cite, such as Meyer (2008). Moreover, they call for knowing practices which value what Indigenous scholars (and those who appreciate their arguments and expressions) are also trying to alert us to in terms of forwarding new ways of knowing and living in the current era in order to strengthen a non-instrumental approach towards what Chilisa (2012, 2020) names as “all that exists”. My overall argument is that Barad’s (2003, 2007) posthumanist performative expositions as well as Pickering’s (1995, 2013) ones, can be brought into communication with the expressions of ontology, epistemology and axiology of scholars and sages hailing from Indigenous cultural heritages. I have intimated that we can draw on these various discourses (or what Barad calls discursive practices, 2003: 518) to point to ways of living which strive, as a matter of ethics, to strengthen relationality (where we engage with “the world” in non-instrumental terms). This implies generating greater dialogue between perspectives (meanings) that are proffered via discursive practices, and it includes in these practices a process of “listening to” and communicating with what we might see as “non-human”. Gergen similarly notes that in terms of his view of “relational being” (2009) we are also in dialogue with “nature”, which too communicates (albeit not through language as we know it). So relational being in social life and feeling “connected” also implies we are (ideally) in communication, and in community, with the rest of nature (with us as humans being part of nature). Gergen calls this a “communiverse” and he suggests that we should use our inquiry processes to strengthen a communiverse, where the community does not mean a limited (bounded) community but indeed includes the entire globe. He asks: “how can we bring this into the world?” (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v= 68NnCaKKtn8). In the next section I point to various examples of inquiry which I regard as contributing to this overall agenda.

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Responsibly and Performatively Co-inquiring Towards Social and Ecological Justice In the light of what Cameron (2015: 99) calls the vast “human experiment with global industrial development … that is starting to produce disastrous consequences on a global scale”, she suggests that we need to pose the question of “what role can social research play in coming to terms with a future in which the certainties of the past have gone and the future lies before us unknown” (p. 99). She indicates that what she has in mind (and what she is hoping to appeal to us too) is more open, even playful forms, of experimentation to try out new ways of living in the Anthropocene. Such an approach would mean setting aside the idea of research as a neutral and objective activity in which there is critical distance between the researcher and the object of study. Instead, research would entail making a stand for certain worlds and for certain ways of living on the planet, and taking responsibility for helping to make these worlds more likely and these ways of living more widespread. (pp. 99–100)

But how indeed can research be directed with this intention? Cameron suggests that one way in which this can be done is by helping people across the globe to recognize that alternative ways of living—alternative to the current “economic and technological pathway” (2015: 101)—are imaginable and possible. In this vein, I refer as my first example below to a case study undertaken by Friant and Langmore (2015) exploring the notion of buen vivir in the context of Ecuador.

Researching the Case of buen vivir in Ecuador Friant and Langmore (2015) offer a construal of their case study investigation of the attempt in Ecuador to incorporate in the Constitution the notion of buen vivir, which has its roots in Andean cosmology. Before considering Friant and Langmore’s account of the case of Ecuador, I offer some background to the genealogy of this notion. Gudynas (a Uruguayan scholar renowned for his work regarding buen vivir) in an interview in The Guardian held with Balch in 2013, explains that: Ecuador is building on its indigenous past by incorporating the concept of sumak kawsay into its approach to development. Rooted in the cosmovisión (or worldview) of the Quechua peoples of the Andes, sumak kawsay – or buen vivir, to give it its Spanish name – describes a way of doing things that is community-centric, ecologically-balanced and culturallysensitive. A far cry from the market-is-king model of capitalism, it inspired the recently revised Ecuadorian constitution, which now reads: “We… hereby decide to build a new form of public coexistence, in diversity and in harmony with nature, to achieve the good way of living”. (Balch, 2013)

In the course of the conversation with Balch, Gudynas further explains that the concept of buen vivir can be seen as closely linked to “other indigenous belief systems, such as those of the Aymara peoples of Bolivia, the Quichua of Ecuador

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and the Mapuche of Chile and Argentina”. Gudynas adds that buen vivir as a concept has also been influenced by political philosophy, such as “western critiques [of capitalism] over the last 30 years, especially from the field of feminist thought and environmentalism” (Balch, citing Gudynas, 2013). As an example, we can consider Houtart’s (non-anthropocentric) suggestion, drawing, inter alia, on the cosmology of buen vivir (p. 89), that “the human being is a part of nature and that a dichotomy should not be set up between the two but rather a symbiosis (2011: 90). Houtart sees links between the philosophies and religions of the East and of the indigenous peoples of the Americas (the Sumak Kwasai, or buen vivir), [and] also the Marxist tradition of the system of universal needs and capacities. (Houtart, 2011: 89)

Houtart offers his critique of capitalism by noting that “capitalism considers ecological damage as ‘collateral’ and inevitable—though perhaps to be reduced as far as possible” (p. 89). In elaborating upon the concept of buen vivir, Houtart does not outrule humans seeking to “embellish nature, using its plant wealth to create new landscapes or gardens for more beauty” (p. 90). Furthermore, he points out that The Earth is also generous and can contribute, but with non-renewable elements, to the production and reproduction of life. But this is totally different from exploiting it to produce a higher rate of profit. (2011: 90)

Here the motif of mutual shaping involving humans and “the Earth” in a generous (non-exploitative fashion) is stressed. It is this idea of seeking harmonious relations between humans and between humans and nature (as part of being human) that is expressed in the notion of buen vivir according to Houtart. Magdoff and Williams offer similar remarks regarding the significance of buen vivir in their understanding of a socialist-oriented ecological society, which they detail in their book “Creating an ecological society: Toward a revolutionary transformation” (2017). They state that “in order for an ecological society to thrive, people need to embrace a way of thinking similar to the Quechua people’s social philosophy of buen vivir” (2017: 284). According to them, this concept implies a life in which “our basic material needs are satisfied, but also … our activities and relationships and spiritual, mental and artistic development are diverse and fulfilling, and we are ‘in harmony with nature’” (2017: 284). Magdoff and Williams cite Gudynas as noting that “our wellbeing is only possible within community” and that the community is understood in an expanded sense, to include Nature. Buen vivir therefore embraces the broad notion of wellbeing and cohabitation with others and Nature. In this regard the concept of also plural, as there are many different interpretations depending on cultural, historical and ecological setting. (Gudynas, 2011, as cited in Magdoff & Williams, 2017: 285)

Magdoff and Williams summarize that “the concept of buen vivir [as living well] implies that everyone would live a good life while living and working in harmony with nature”. They remark that this idea is sometimes contrasted with the phrase “living better”, which implies “ever-increasing quantities and qualities of goods and services” (2017: 285).

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Bearing in mind Gudynas’s statement (2011) that there may be many interpretations of the concept of buen vivir, I now turn to Friant and Langmore’s account of its incorporation within the context of Ecuador after President Correa came to power in 2007, and the new government developed a new Constitution accordingly in 2008. Friant and Langmore spell this out as follows: Ecuador is implementing an alternative to mainstream visions of development based on the indigenous concept of buen vivir (or sumac kawsay in Kichwa). Buen vivir can be directly translated as “living well”, yet it is built on a completely different conceptual basis than hegemonic visions of wellbeing [associated with the hegemony of capitalist production and consumption]. Seeking to create harmonious relations between and within people, nature and society, a more accurate translation of buen vivir would be “harmonious coexistence” (Acosta & Gudynas, 2011). Since the election of Rafael Correa as president in 2007, Ecuador has attempted to embrace this concept as the basis for the national framework of social and economic policy. (Friant & Langmore, 2015: 64)

They remark that while the concept of buen vivir originates in Andean cosmology, it has become “mixed” with “ecological, poststructuralist, socialist and radical democratic voices, [so that] buen vivir is [now] built on a rich diversity of ontologies and teleologies united in the creation of an alternative to hegemonic visions of development (Escobar, 2011)” (Friant & Langmore, 2015: 64). Following Gudynas (2011) they point out that the concept is thus being re-invented, including in the context of Ecuador (p. 64). In this context: When president Correa won power in 2007, the country, much like the continent, was going through a turbulent period. Years of neoliberal reforms and neo-colonialism had left a depressed economy with high levels of poverty and inequality … . This led to rampant violence and insecurity as well as a political instability. (p. 64)

Friant and Langmore state that in a political climate of disillusionment towards global capitalism, Correa allied with indigenous movements, which were proposing buen vivir as an increasingly appealing alternative. Correa was thus elected based on a platform of change and socialism of buen vivir. (2015: 64)

The new Constitution (Constitucion de la Republica del Ecuador, 2008) was set in the spirit of buen vivir and is one of the few constitutions across the globe that enshrines the rights of nature as a principle (as noted also by Stephens et al., 2019: 5). Friant and Langmore concentrate on examining some of the ideals written into the constitution. They indicate that ideals on the level of human wellbeing imply that people should feel a part of a radically democratic society where people have a meaningful power over political and economic forces. Cooperative economic structures and active citizen participation in political decision making are thus promoted as ways to reorganize society ‘from the bottom up’. (p. 65)

Furthermore, buen vivir implies a vision of happiness that reaches beyond the material accumulation and individualism typically endorsed by capitalism. …. Less emphasis is placed on hierarchy and competition: while more is placed on solidarity, reciprocity and citizenship as a whole. Buen vivir is thus

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closely related to concepts of degrowth and slow economy [as in the work of ecological economists such as Martinez-Aliez, 2009; Paulson, 2017; and Spash, 2009]. (p. 65)

What is also crucial in the concept of buen vivir (attendant on an ecological economics) is that it places people as equal inhabitants of the earth, sharing the same limited yet plentiful environment. This symbiotic relationship with pachamama, leads towards the creation of a mode of life in harmony with the natural cycles of life and death. The ideal envisioned by buen vivir is thus in direct opposition to the extractivist consumerism of industrial capitalism. (p. 65)

In line with principles of ecological economics (especially non-anthropocentric interpretations of this—cf. Spash, 2009: 77), buen vivir “promotes organic agriculture, renewable energy, ecotourism and recycling as the basis for an economy in which people and nature can flourish from each other’s cycles” (Friant & Langmore, 2015: 65). However, Friant and Langmore note that while the Constitution expresses these ideals of buen vivir, it “leaves many of the specific mechanisms for their realization to secondary legislations”, which, they suggest, have not always upheld the “revolutionary standards” (p. 66). Nevertheless, they suggest that national planning in terms of buen vivir (National Plan for Buen Vivir—NPBV) created for the period 2009–2013 and 2013–2017 sought to “transform the economy from reliance on the primary sector, especially petroleum, towards a modern tertiary sector economy based on services, ecotourism and biotechnology” (p. 66). Furthermore, the planning aimed to “reduce poverty and reinforce social equity by redistributing resources towards efficient public services such as education, health care and social security” (p. 66). Friant and Langmore deem that in terms of these indicators of ecological and social wellbeing, we can say that some “success” has been achieved. But they state that although the “rights of nature” were (arguably) increased along with social wellbeing, the national plans of 2009–2013 and 2013–2017 still did incorporate some extractive mining activities (p. 66). These were framed by the government as necessary in the short term, and the idea (hopefully) is to eventually stop these practices. Meanwhile, on a social level, redistribution of wealth and “state modernization” has been accomplished to some extent. With reference to the databases and statistical publications to which they had access (CEPAL, 2014), they state that: Social spending has been substantially increased from 10.7 per cent of the GDP in 2006 to 15 per cent in 2012 (CEPAL, 2014). During the same period, education spending grew from 3.4 to 4.8 per cent of GDP (and is due to increase to 6 per cent by 2017) and health spending grew from 1.2 per cent to 2.1 per cent. (Bonilla, 2014: 25, 66)

They note that: These increases were possible due to a substantial growth in government revenue from 14.7 per cent of the GDP in 2006 to 23.1 per cent in 2012. The government was able to obtain this revenue thanks to high international oil prices, and a 2010 law increasing of the state’s share of petroleum profits from 13 per cent to 87 percent … . Additionally, the government

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has tripled income tax revenue thanks to a much-heightened efficiency in its collection [as a way of redistributing wealth]. (p. 66)

Moreover, they point out that poverty and employment figures show improvement, and as far as wages are concerned, a substantial increase of the minimum wage was affected—from US$170 per month in 2007 to US$394 in 2013 (Ambrosi De La Cadena, 2014). Apart from people now being able to afford a “basic basket of goods”, poverty reduction also ensued because of the improvement of the conditional cash transfer program to mothers, seniors and persons with disabilities, which increased from US$15 per month in 2006 to US$50 in 2013. It now benefits over 1.8 million people, up from 1.2 million in 2006. (Bonilla, 2014: 42; Friant & Langmore, 2015: 66)

Clearly, Friant and Langmore do not purport to be offering what can be called a value-free (or even striving to be value-free) account of “the case”. They recognize that they have chosen in their analysis to highlight an interpretation of data relating to improvements in ecological and social justice. While highlighting these, they also note that the extractive mining processes that were planned into the economic planning do not seem to be consistent with the notion of buen vivir as they would wish to treat it (namely, as not considering “nature” as a resource to be exploited). But they express some hope in that at least these extractive practices are constituted in planning processes as a short-term initiative, to be altered as movements are made in a more ecologically sensitive direction. Hence although they suggest there is more to be done, in terms of ecological justice and in terms of radically democratic participation in planning, their analysis of the “case” is intended to offer a glimpse of what can be done on a societal scale and in line with global concerns that have been raised in various quarters (as an alternative to Western-style capitalism). We can say that their analysis does not purport to offer a “representational” account of ecological and social life outside of the way in which they are regarding “the case” (through the lens of the ethical values which they see as connected with buen vivir). But it seems that their hope is that their storying around the case might itself help to raise further discussion in this, and other societies, around prospects for practicing ways of living such as buen vivir. Thus, their analysis can input into the unfolding of “realities” (as practiced). Furthermore, they imply that if we (whomever concerned and in whatever social context) can adopt a less instrumental relationship to nature as indeed encapsulated in the Constitution of Ecuador, this way of engaging will shape “nature” itself—and likewise, nature is likely to express an appreciative response in response to this caring (as implied by the concept of buen vivir). In terms of a “performative” understanding as expressed by Gibson et al. (2015), Friant and Langmore’s exposition of this case study, and their decision to draw out what they have chosen to do, can be seen as part of an effort on their part to “seek out “multiple ways of living with earth others” (2015: viii)—with the Ecuador case pointing in some ways in this direction. Gibson, Rose, and Fincher suggest that as part of a performative inquiry enterprise, we can “find ways forward in what is already being done in the here and now; attend to the performative effects of any analysis; [and] tell stories in a hopeful and open way”. In this way, they suggest, thinking and

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researching can “give rise to new strategies for going on [into the future]” (2015: viii). Gibson, Rose, and Fincher add that the chapters of their own edited book (entitled A Manifesto for Living in the Anthropocene) can be regarded as “tentative hoverings, as the fluttering of butterfly wings, scattering germs of ideas that can take root and grow” (p. viii). I would suggest that Friant and Langmore’s contribution can likewise be read in this light. Whether or not they themselves would conceive their work in this manner (as embracing the intent that it might germinate seeds that can take root and grow), our engagement as readers with it, can of course draw out this possibility: As an inquiry, it is not “finalized’ in their sentences, but requires readers (as agents) to also make moves in relation to it, in what Pickering (2013) might call a “dance of agency”.

Researching (with Stakeholders) Possibilities for Developing an Eco-community in Vietnam: An Action-Oriented Mixed Methods Study In this section I detail my interpretation of a research project (2016–2018) undertaken with a variety of stakeholders, organized by the Center for Eco-Community Development (ECODE) in Vietnam. ECODE is a non-profit organization established in 2015 under the Vietnam Union of Science and Technology Associations (VUSTA). The ECODE Center was developed by the ECODE Interagency Research Group on Climate Change and Sustainable Development. (The group was established in 2013 and consists of teaching staff and graduate students from the Graduate School—Hanoi National University.) The ECODE group defines itself as follows: ECODE is an interdisciplinary, ecosystem-based research, development and consultancy organization dedicated to community development, climate change adaptation, green growth and resource and environmental, contributing to sustainable development of the country. ECODE’s founding members include experts, researchers and social activists in the areas of climate change, green growth, sustainable development that share the same enthusiasm for green growth and low emissions. carbon and environmentally friendly with respect to the protection of natural resources. (http://ecode.vn/about/)

ECODE is involved in many projects; but in this chapter I report upon one with which I am familiar, based on extensive dialoguing and writing with the lead researcher on this project, namely Ha Hoang. Our liaison began at a conference on sustainable development which was held in November 2018 in Vietnam. We happened to present our papers in the same session. Her paper was entitled “Some Ideas of Developing the Eco-community Concept in Vietnam”; and she explained how as she defines such a community as characterized (ideally) by being “more ecologically, socially, economically and culturally/spiritually sustainable in the context of the current global change”. I presented a paper on how research can be done so as to contribute to sustainable development towards an inclusive wellbeing using principles of Ubuntu, and I presented some possibilities emanating from South Africa.

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While I was listening to her paper I was fascinated by the concept of ecocommunity and the way she had been expressing her involvement in trying to use the research process to strengthen such a community in the Red River Delta of Vietnam. Meanwhile, my ideas on using research to forward an inclusive wellbeing must have resonated with her because after the session was finished she came over to me and stated to me that we had much in common in our approaches to research and development. At lunch time she introduced me to her Professor (who supervised her doctoral studies—Prof. Hoc). Further to this we began to communicate further and she sent me more of her work and I commented on it and asked questions, towards creating a joint article for a journal (Systemic Practice and Action Research, Hoang & Romm, 2020a). And further to this I was asked by Prof. Hoc to contribute various joint chapters towards a book that he is editing, entitled: “Ecology and Development of an Ecological Society in Vietnam” (2020). One chapter in which I am involved is Nguyen and Romm (2020) on human and biosphere interaction; one chapter is Hoang and Romm (2020b) on approaches to research and development; and one chapter is with Hoc (as a conclusion to the book). As a result, I have become quite familiar with the work being done, especially by ECODE and by Hoang (who works in conjunction with Prof. Hoc). Due to space limitations my storying here will be somewhat brief, and I will concentrate only on what I consider relevant in terms of the topic of this chapter namely, embracing multispecies relationality. The approach used by ECODE, as explained by Hoc and Hoang (2019: 196) is a “systemic interdisciplinary/ecosystem-based approach” to community development, where ecosystems are seen as part of the “community”—hence the term “eco-community”. What they mean by saying the approach is interdisciplinary is that researchers from various disciplines (natural and social) are brought together in the research teams (with some of the researchers themselves being trained in a variety of disciplines). Disciplines featuring in ECODE are: geography; agricultural economics; ecology; sociology; literature; history; political education; and climate change/human ecology as an interdisciplinary field itself. Furthermore, the team works closely with stakeholders from various levels of the political system (at commune, district, provincial and national levels) in the quest to create options for eco-community development (Hoc & Hoang, 2019: 196; Hoang & Hoc, 2019: 299). For this reason, the research can also be termed transdisciplinary in the sense defined by, for example, Chilisa (2017) and Stokols (2018); that is, the research from the start is not just an “academic” exercise but is based on working with stakeholders in terms of various issues of concern to them and is geared to “make a difference” to people’s (joint) consideration, and enactment of, action-options. Hoang and Romm (2020a, 2020b) explain that transdisciplinary research means that “users” of the research become part of the co-researching process. The quality of the relationships between the various “users/stakeholders” (or those outside of “academia”) and between them and the research team at ECODE is considered as crucial. As Chilisa also underscores (2017: 813), the experience of this quality (and of “solutions” generated as part of these relationships) became the criteria to validate the knowing enterprise in which they all were involved.

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As far as stakeholders are concerned, they were chosen and invited in terms of ECODE’s intention to conduct research in order to mitigate against potential social exclusion of marginalized and vulnerable social groupings and exclusion of the wellbeing of nature. Stakeholders included different target groups such as officials working for different levels of the government; people working for mass social organizations; and representatives of the villages. As far as the last mentioned was concerned, it was considered crucial to involve as stakeholders (in all stages of the research process) groupings of people considered specifically vulnerable in terms of the potential impacts of climate change—in particular, those who are poor, experience disabilities, the elderly, children, and single women. Furthermore, in order to ensure that the voice of nature as a “stakeholder” would be included (implying that a caring relationship was meant to be furthered) the team ensured that those who had shown previously that they had an allegiance to this agenda, were part of the research. Hence, for instance, Hoang shared with me that they chose to invite many female organic farmers into the research process, knowing that they would “speak for” the wellbeing/health of their families, and of the community, as well as of “mother earth”. (This was based on previous research she had undertaken.) In this regard, I noticed when reading the work of Stephens et al. (2019)—see also my discussion of their work above—that they pose the question of how ethical decisions in regard to being able to “listen” to nature should be made. They ask: Is it, for example, “just” a matter of bringing ecological scientists in who “get it” in regard to plants’ communicative capabilities [in the case of liaison with plants], to “speak for” their interests …? Or, are other witnesses [participants], that is, Indigenous experts, more appropriate in this particular milieu? (p. 14)

In this case, I would suggest that Hoang herself was sensitive to the “communicative capacities” of nature (other than human nature) and furthermore she invited as participants in the project people whom she believed too felt connection with nature (such as the female organic farmers in particular). Also, she was aware that many of the people in the villages (those who also became part of the research) would still have some allegiance to Vietnamese traditionally “friendly” encounters with nature (as elucidated in Cuc, 2011). Therefore, she believed that the project of developing and strengthening an eco-community in the current era would find resonance in the community. The details of the range of methods and the weaving together of them as employed in the study are discussed in Hoang and Romm (2020a). Suffice it to say here— highlighting the performative intent of the methods on their own and in combination—that the study began firstly with a questionnaire distribution to government officials, people working for mass organizations, and representatives of the villages— to prompt them to assess the social and ecological resources/assets.4 The study involved also a Geographical Information System (GIS) process designed for social and ecological zoning, land use change analysis and zoning the impacts of climate 4 Shiva (2017) advises that the term “resources” should be seen in the context of its original meaning

connected to “resurgence” or “regeneration”, so that they are seen as linked to living (rather than mechanical) systems.

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change in Giao Thuy district over stages. The mapping was meant to be forwardlooking and was in line with Baker’s account of GIS as “mapping for social change” (2019: 138). The researchers also worked with local officials and vulnerable communities to draw a Climate and Disaster Resilience (CDRI) matrix in terms of various criteria for assessing natural, physical, social, economic, and institutional/policy assets. The focus on locating these assets (via working with stakeholders) is consistent with Wilson’s observations (in working with vulnerable M¯aori populations) that such “strengths and positive attributes” are often overlooked (2019: 1526). In addition, in-depth interviews with local people were held, in which they were asked to reflect upon the role that ecosystems play for community livelihood, and to consider the roles that various members can play in enhancing such livelihood. (This was apart from informal conversations held also with many villagers.) Certain community participants were invited to draw maps (via 5 transect walks) exploring people’s behaviors and needs around specific locations, to highlight issues of concern in the community and what possible interventions may be helpful. Most importantly, the research team set up of discussions/learning encounters among different groups of participants. A total of 15 meetings and group discussions were held, including: - 3 meetings (16-20 participants) were held at the Commune and District People’s Committees C/DPC) with the participation of officials, mass organizations and local people and some from provincial agencies (such as Department of Agriculture, Department of Natural Resources and Environment). - 5 large group discussions (8-10 people) were held at the Community House in the villages or Community Learning Center (CLC) with the participation of local people and representatives of mass organizations. - 7 small group discussions (3-5 people) were held at the households with the participation of representatives of the main livelihoods such as aquaculture, farming and animal husbandry, fishing and small business. Altogether, 36 people participated in the project, and a number of people participated many times (via the different research methods and some in many meetings too). (Hoang & Romm, 2020a)

Hoang shared with me that as she facilitated the discussions, her focus was on trying to aid the participants to reach some “common ground” of mutual understanding and mutual considerations of viable options towards addressing the various issues of concern that were raised. The research team provided information based on other phases of the research, and asked questions to prompt people to share ideas with each other as much as possible. In cases where continued disagreements were manifest, the research team had to take some responsibility in seeking further consultation and information (with officials and villagers) and on this basis would propose priority solutions. For example, in one case it was decided to prioritize the importance of communicating the need to strengthen mangrove planting in the aquaculture area outside a specific dyke (to support such aquaculture) and meanwhile (as had been proposed by others) it was decided to consider the feasibility of sea embankment (to prevent saline intrusion). But the focus on all times was on trying to continue

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a dialogue with all those concerned, taking into account also the welfare of the ecosystems. Hoang’s approach to facilitating the discussions as I read her account, is similar to the approach outlined by Midgley (2017) in regard to various research projects, where he used problem structuring methods to facilitate a process whereby people could, in his words, “move beyond value conflicts” while seeking “common concerns” (p. 2)— and hence were able to reframe the initial differences in framing of “the problem”. In his article he offers various examples of “systemic problem structuring in action”, all based on his facilitating of discussion in relation to (more) eco-friendly engagement with “nature”. He notes with reference to all the examples that most people were able to appreciate a nuanced discussion of the issues being raised, as long as they did not feel that the only (or main) benefit is profit for a private enterprise. In my account above of the research in the Red River Delta facilitated largely by Hoang, I have not touched on wider discussions taking place in Vietnam in relation to the development of a green(er) or more circular economy. Some examples of inquiries in this direction are recorded in the book currently being edited by Hoc (2020). In my reading of the examples in the book, they concur with the spirit of Magdoff and William’s book entitled “Creating an Ecological Society” (2017), to which I also referred in my previous example. The notion of using research performatively towards trying to engender an ecological society is the framework that is used in commenting on the various chapters in the concluding chapter of Hoc’s edited book (Hoc & Romm, 2020).

Pathways to Wellbeing: Interactive Software to Be Used to Aid Reflection on Ways of Living, Combined with Other Forms of Virtual and Face-to-Face Dialogue In this section I turn to the example of the pathways to wellbeing software as explained in detail in McIntyre-Mills (2014b), McIntyre-Mills, Wirawan and the Indonesian research consortium (2017), and in further documents prepared by McIntyre-Mills and Wirawan (shared with me via email, 2020). The “logic” of the development of the pathways to wellbeing software (2013– 2014) was conceived by McIntyre-Mills with assistance from Wirawan, who offered technical and consultancy support based on his skills in designing software and also on his allegiance to the goals of aiding social reflection. The idea behind the software development is to help people to think in terms of “if-then scenarios”, which enable them to “consider the consequences” (at individual and collective levels) of “one choice versus another” (McIntyre-Mills et al., 2017: 69). The scenarios have been developed via focus group discussions in specific localities. McIntyre-Mills (2014b: 1) indicates how the first set of scenarios was developed in an Aboriginal context; and later was adapted, via further focus group discussion, for a locality in South Australia, as part of a local government project. It has also been adapted through

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the Indonesian consortium, based on further focus group discussion in the context of Indonesia (McIntyre-Mills et al., 2017). The scenarios are meant to encourage people to, as McIntyre-Mills et al. put it, “protect the individual and the common good through creating shared pathways that provide sustainable futures through regenerating relationships that span living systems” (2017: 69). McIntyre-Mills (2014b) regards the inquiries that are generated by people as they engage with the software (and also share their thoughts with others) as an example of participatory action research. Participants are invited to interact with the software on the site, where they can consider how they relate to the scenarios as provided in the “main menu” and can liaise (virtually) with others in the process. They can also return to reconsider their responses and perceptions—so that engagement with the software is not a once-off encounter but is meant to allow for processes of learning and consideration of new options for action (as in action research). For further detailed explanations of my reading of this research, readers are invited to look at Romm (2018: 252–276). For the purposes of this chapter, I draw out what I consider to be the performative character of the research in that it is consciously intended to be world shaping, that is, future forming, rather than to merely “represent” people’s supposedly static views or to “represent” a supposedly static web of life in which we are enmeshed as a whole. In other words, it is recognized by McIntyre-Mills that what Barad would call “research arrangements” (2003) will impact on what is being “researched”, in this case, people’s self- and social-reflections and their way of engaging with the (natural) environment, of which the research and reflections are part. As participants enter the pathways to wellbeing site they are invited to consider to what extent they feel that they identify with any of the scenarios as provided. An example of scenarios is expressed in McIntyre-Mills (2014b: 51–52): Business as usual We continue to believe in economic arguments that others believe ignore the social and environmental dimension. We continue to think that our way of life is sustainable and are not prepared to manage the perceived risks of climate change by changing our way of life. We attribute drought, bush fires and floods to one-off unrelated events or natural cycles, and deny that climate change can trigger rising temperatures in some areas and plummeting temperatures in others as melting ice affects the ocean currents. Small changes for the long-haul scenario People make slow annual progress toward goals which they meet for the benefit of their children and grandchildren. People of all ages and from all walks of life who are able to join up the dots between the economic, social and environmental dimensions help to motivate movement toward a better future. We do not perceive these small changes as being too slow to sustain beyond our grandchildren, or we envisage that something else will happen by then to reverse the current trend. Governments and nongovernment organizations take the initiative. They hold workshops to demonstrate how people can make a difference. They listen to the people and help local groups to respond to local challenges. Together, they undertake model projects that demonstrate how it will be possible to live differently. They model different ways

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of thinking and through living the changes show that it is possible to balance individual and collective interests, because we are not selfish nor are we unable to create alternative ways of governing at a regional level. Sustainable future scenario We live in an environment that can support this generation and the next. Housing is affordable and made of sustainable materials. We have faced up to the convergent social, economic and environmental challenges and we are resilient, because we live in clusters of homes, share rain tanks and solar grids that are subsidized by local governments. Our living and working areas are powered by alternative energy. The new status symbol is the environmentally friendly lifestyle. Public transport is green. The green economy supports a vibrant job market spurred by subsidies to enable packaging goods, housing people, transporting people and educating and entertaining the public. The carbon economy is replaced through innovative inventions. All members of the public are encouraged to share their experiences and ideas for living sustainably. The future’s market has been reconstructed to take into account the air, water and earth we need to grow organic, safe food. We have thought carefully about the implications of treating people, animals and the land as commodities and we strive to care for ourselves, others (including the voiceless) and the land.

The kinds of questions posed to participants on the site (where they have seen the scenarios and considered their extent of identification with any of them) are summarily outlined in (McIntyre-Mills et al., 2017: 60–61) and by McIntyre-Mills (2020, Chap. 18 in this volume) as follows: ● I have the following things in my life—understanding of human rights, respect for biodiversity, responsibility to care for others. ● I need in my life—a home, a sense of safety, a place near public transport and hope for the future. ● I will add to my life—more community support from a range of services and/or more community engagement to lobby for resources; more connection to nature. ● I will discard from my life—a sense of hopelessness, a sense of entitlement, excessive consumption. ● Self-reflect on the turning points for the better or worse—hope that consumption can be replaced with a greater sense of attachment to others and the environment. ● Consider the barriers that currently exist and consider what could be done to transform society and our relationship to the environment. We can notice from the above “prompts” that McIntyre-Mills, together with Wirawan and others, are not purporting that the presentation of scenarios on the site is value-free, or that the questions posed to participants on the site are value-free. That is, they admit that they are using the research/inquiry process to aid critical reflection on ethical issues that they are posing. They themselves are committed to “transform society and our environment” in the direction of an increased acknowledgment of the web of social relations in which we all are, and can become better, involved, including an appreciation of the web of the whole of life (what they call “the environment”— although they recognize it is not “outside” of us). The research/action research inquiry that they are setting up is thus performative, in that the words/expressions used in the

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scenarios and in the questions posed on the site are meant to act as prompts to influence people’s “reflections”. Consider, for instance, the statement above concerning “hope that consumption can be replaced with a greater sense of attachment to others and the environment”—here they are prompting participants to revise their possible understandings (which are prevalent in many current discourses) that human happiness is a function of increased consumption. They are trying to unsettle this notion, insofar as people have been socialized (also through capitalist-oriented advertisements) into believing that happiness is increased through (over)consumption. They are also trying to unsettle the notion that care for the environment can be posited as anathema to “human wellbeing”, thus asking people to reconsider “our relationship to the environment”. As I see it, McIntyre-Mills’s involvement with Aboriginal participants and with other Indigenous cosmologies when first developing the “pathways to wellbeing” concept, has been brought to bear in many of the questions posed on the site. In the sustainable futures scenario (which is presented as the last of the three on the site), the final statement is: We have thought carefully about the implications of treating people, animals and the land as commodities and we strive to care for ourselves, others (including the voiceless) and the land.

Manifestly, McIntyre-Mills and others’ intent is to (performatively) ask people to “think carefully” about a relationality with people, animals, and the land, based, inter alia, on concern for the vulnerable (who may be relatively voiceless) and for the land (a metaphor for eco-systemic living). McIntyre-Mills and Wirawan—also in conjunction with, for example, the Indonesian consortium—continue to develop the software. A recent development is that the software is enhanced to allow people to monitor “social businesses”, which are not merely profit oriented and are based on fairness in terms of social relations and also in terms of relations with the environment. This is the block chain idea that is built into the software and allows for monitoring of any business or other social processes in the social arena (in this volume entitled “Social Engagement to Protect Multispecies Habitat”, by McIntyre-Mills with Wirawan, Widianingsih and Riswanda, see Chap. 15). The transparency via the block chain principle would allow people to consider and to “report” anonymously upon activities that they regard as going against the grain of relationality. So, the research process—inquiry—is meant to help bottom-up monitoring in this vein. I also asked Wirawan (via email, April 2020) if he could include on the site a section that allows people using the site to give some indication/story around their increased self-reflections and also what they might have learned from others on the site, as well as from the site set-up itself (e.g. from the scenarios and the questions posed). They could also be given a space to offer suggestions for possible improvement of the site. Wirawan replied (15 April 2020) that:

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Yes, feedback is very important to aid progress. Since the Pathways to Wellbeing will be categorised according to interest or topic, we can of course create a specific topic called “feedback”, where people can discuss just that. In this way, we can monitor and continue to enhance the product [the software] accordingly. Yes, it can be done and thank you again Prof Norma.

Upon seeing this email, McIntyre-Mills confirmed (15 April also via email) that: “yes this is vital as well”. This means, as far as I see it, that this “topic” (feedback) itself could have an additional performative (world shaping) function in prompting people to reflect again on their learning (including in conjunction with others and with their whole engagement with the software). And this could have continued implications for their reflectedupon experience of social relationality and across the various species. his in turn might influence further people’s way of engaging with “the environment”—thus shaping “the environment”. Moreover, it would allow for increased participation of the participants in (re)designing aspects of the software, in line with the participatory character of action research, again with potential effects for the future development of the software and for those using it. As noted by McIntyre-Mills (2020 in this volume, see Chap. 18), the pathways to wellbeing (PW) site can (and should) be fruitfully combined with other forms of democratic deliberation in public spaces, such as have been encouraged via structured democratic dialogue (SDD) processes as a mechanism to collaboratively generate “collective wisdom” (see, for example, Christakis & Bausch, 2006; Cisneros & Hisijara, 2013; Laouris et al., 2017). The SDD process has been designed so that it can take place virtually and/or in face-to-face communication between participants. In her Chap. 5 entitled “Consciousness for Balancing Individual and Collective Wellbeing”, McIntyre-Mills refers to SDD and PW as being two potential approaches (informed by a similar logic of examining “if-then scenarios”) to “offer ways to improve democracy and governance”.

Some Extracts of Conversation with McIntyre-Mills Around Nussbaum’s Frontiers of Justice In the course of my preparing this chapter (Romm, 2020, along with the one coprepared with Patricia Lethole—See Chap. 6 of this volume), Janet McIntyre-Mills and I had an email exchange around interpretations of Nussbaum’s argument in her Frontiers of Justice (2006). As part of this conversation I looked up some of Nussbaum’s further work and found a chapter of hers in a book she edited with Comim (2014). The chapter is her Introduction to the book. She offers some commentary on some of the other chapters as follows: Holland [one of the contributors to the book] applies the capabilities approach [as she has named her approach, 2006] entirely within the context of an anthropocentric account of capabilities. That’s one good thing to do, but we need to ask, at a deeper level, whose capabilities count as goals. In Frontiers of Justice I have offered some reasons for thinking

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of non-human animals as subjects of political justice, but I (so far) resist the inclusion of plants (except instrumentally), and I retain the principle that individuals are ends, thus refusing to make ecosystems ends in themselves, though they are surely important for the ends of animals and humans. Others will take the dialog further. Bendik-Keymer [another contributor to the book] emphasizing the depth and multifacetedness of the notion of dignity, gives us a good start. (Nussbaum, 2014: 3, my italics)

I noticed in the above quotation how Nussbaum places a cut-off point at our (the human species) affording rights to animals and does not extend this to other forms of existence, including organic and inorganic forms. While Nussbaum considers that we should treat other humans and also animals as “ends” (that is, as having the right to expect justice), she “resists” the inclusion of plants and ecosystems as having such rights. The conversation between me and Janet proceeded as follows (in somewhat quickly constructed emails, but still well expressed and pertinent for this chapter). Norma to Janet: By the way, I noticed in the chapter by Nussbaum [in the 2014 book which I attached] that she does not want to extend rights to plants, or to see them as ends in themselves. She wants to extend rights only to animals—not to the ecosystem. Janet to Norma: Thank you, yes, Nussbaum only thinks about sentient beings, but the volume we are working on extends the notion of rights to protecting the planet, which includes organic life and the inorganic systems on which we all depend. That is why we are talking about multispecies relationships. So I am not saying I am following her, but her work has made a step in the right direction. Norma to Janet: I also found a very nice one [chapter] by a person called Gasper who suggests in his chapter that she realizes that our view of capacities needs to be operationalized by local democratic processes (again not universal capacities, as implied in her list in Frontiers of Justice). He suggests that in specific cultural contexts people should work together to think about how to cater for capabilities. We [Patricia Lethole and I, in our joint chapter] wanted to make the point that individualism as we defined it, as concerned more with individual goals and autonomy than with interdependence as in more collectively-oriented cultures, is problematic. What we mean by individualism (as also in the literature we cited) does not mean against rights (indeed we spoke of animal rights and the rights of nature). And yes it also means humans have a right to exercise their capabilities—but the focus must be on this and not on people’s believing they can be defined outside of their relationality as separate “selves”. This again is what is highlighted in more collectively-oriented cultures (as defined in the literature we cited). Janet to Norma: I have critiqued her 10 points [list of capabilities], but if you look at all her work she stresses that the social contract is all wrong and needs to be extended to protect sentient beings and their habitat. She is an essentialist, however. I am not. But I do think she has made very valid points about the disabled and sentient beings and asylum seekers and young people, all of whom have protection from the state through the social contract. Furthermore, she is one of the first thinkers to group all these excluded beings and to link their capabilities with the need for a safe habitat. Her points about property are not well thought out [I had mentioned this to Janet in an earlier email] and I have critiqued all these points in Systemic Ethics [2014a] and the edited Springer volumes [which we previously co-edited]. You can add some of this exchange from me, because I believe that Nussbaum (idealist and essentialist) plus Amartya Sen (pragmatist who believes in a priori ideals and

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also a posteriori measures) need to be considered when discussing development and capabilities. Nussbaum also stresses the need for more collective responsibility through extending the social contract to protect all sentient beings. She goes further than Sen, in this respect. These are all important contributions albeit mainstream philosophy. I like her argument because she stresses that they have rights simply because they are sentient and not because they are useful. Nevertheless, Peter Singer has also made contributions, albeit from a pragmatic argument about rights for animals because they feel pain. But they feel so much more than pain, they have empathy, reciprocity, a sense of fairness, memory, problem solving skills and some would argue (such as Meijer) they also have the ability to work things out in groups and thus have a form of political ability. I cover some of this in my Introduction [to the current volume]. Norma to Janet: Looks like you covered a lot. I will see how I handle what I add to the chapter: Something about catering for people’s capabilities but also stressing their capabilities for sociality and deliberative discourse towards common goals. I will also make a point about her not wanting to include the rights of plants. This is where indigenous people would also part company with her.

Later I sent Janet a New York Times write up of Gagliano’s engagement with plants https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/26/style/can-plants-talk.html. She replied affirming that she found this to be very interesting and was sharing with others too, whom she thought would find it interesting. As I noted in my discussion above of Stephens et al.’s work (2019), Gagliano also made an effort to apprentice herself with non-Western traditions of thought (alternative to what Janet calls in our conversation here “mainstream philosophy”). This is all part, I would suggest, of decolonizing our considerations around how we engage with plants and ecosystems and whether (as so far resisted by Nussbaum) they should be treated as “ends” and not instrumentally for the purposes of human wellbeing. In terms of cosmologies which consider that existence/being is relational, and where people are socialized from the start to regard nature with awe and respect (and indeed not to “other” her), Nussbaum’s resistance to this would be out of place. For a good example of how children can be socialized to see their existence as tied up with multispecies relationality, see Chap. 16 by Mabunda and McKay (2021), where they recount how this has been accommodated in their involvement in the construction of South African school workbooks, based on an understanding of Ubuntu.

Conclusion In this chapter I offered an exposition of research processes that are intentionality performative, where it is acknowledged that research performs world shaping by impacting upon worlds-in-becoming, of which the research is admittedly a part. I pointed out that the shaping is a two-way process, in that “worlds” being explored too have agential powers to impact on us (as knowers and actors). I looked at how issues of responsibility and accountability have been approached by those who adopt a “performative” orientation to inquiry practices. I indicated that while Barad has become famous for her performative posthumanist inquiry approach where various

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dualities are questioned, Indigenous seers and scholars provide similar ontologies, epistemologies and axiologies to what has been called “Baradian” critical theorizing (cf. Sellberg & Hinton, 2016). I highlighted how Pickering, also well known for his performative posthumanism, draws on certain Indigenous perspectives and shows their relevance for the current era (post-industrialization). Considering both Barad and Pickering’s formulations of performative posthumanism, I showed resonances with the various expressions used by Indigenous seers and scholars and by those who appreciate and try to forward/revitalize these arguments. I referred in some detail to how relationality is understood outside of “Western” critical theoretical discourses. With this as background, I proceeded to offer some examples of doing research in critical vein, via a performative posthumanism that draws on Indigenous-inspired scholarship. In reviewing the examples, I fleshed out how research processes can be performatively directed to unhinging instrumental relations with “the world” (as interpreted), and to increase ethical sensibilities rooted in a sense of multispecies relationality. To “ground” this ethics, I referred finally to a conversation held between Janet-McIntyre and myself, where we (re)looked at Nussbaum’s ethics as forwarded primarily in her Frontiers of Justice (2006). We iterated (in the course of our conversation) that her decision to treat animals as deserving the right to a “life worth living”, but not plants and other “matter”, is an arbitrary boundary that she has created. Readers are of course invited to engage further with my arguments as detailed in the chapter and with the conversation presented in the penultimate section above.

References Acosta, A., & Gudynas, E. (2011). La renovacion de la critica al desarrollo y el buen vivir como alternative. Utopıa y Praxis Latinoamericana, 16(53), 71–83. Adyanga, F. A., & Romm, N. R. A. (2016). Researching Indigenous science knowledge integration in formal education: Interpreting some perspectives from the field. International Journal of Educational Development, 3(1), 1–14. Ambrosi De La Cadena, M. (2014). Mas de un salario para la dignidad. America Latina en Movimiento. Available from: http://alainet.org/active/73517&lang=es. Accessed 28 July 2014. Arvin, M., Tuck, E., & Morrill, A. (2013). Decolonizing feminism: Challenging connections between settler colonialism and heteropatriarchy. Feminist Formations, 25(1), 8–34. Baker, J. M. (2019). The map as object: Working beyond bounded realities and mapping for social change. Educational Research for Social Change, 8(1), 138–152. Balch, O. (2013). Buen vivir: The social philosophy inspiring movements in South America (interview with E. Gudynas). The Guardian, February 4. Accessed 2 April 2020 at: https://www.theguardian.com/sustainable-business/blog/buen-vivir-philosophy-southamerica-eduardo-gudynas?CMP=share_btn_link. Barad, K. (2000). Reconceiving Scientific Literacy as Agential Literacy. In R. Reed & S. Traweek (Eds.), Doing science + culture (pp. 221–258). New York: Routledge. Barad, K. (2003). Posthumanist performativity: Toward an understanding of how matter comes to matter. Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society, 28(3), 801–831. Barad, K. (2007). Meeting the universe halfway: Quantum physics and the entanglement of matter and meaning. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.

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Norma R. A. Romm is Research Professor in the Department of Adult Basic Education and Youth Development, the University of South Africa. She has sole-authored four books; co-authored 3 books; co-edited five books and published over 100 research articles.

Chapter 13

The Changing Face of City Life in Vietnam Huong Nguyen, Y. Corcoran Nantes, and Janet J. McIntyre-Mills

Abstract How has urban living changed over time and how has it impacted on the lives of women and their families? This paper uses the lens of Nussbaum’s Capabilities Approach to examine the change and impact of urban living on women and their family. By reflecting on a case study of actual urban living experience, it explores the extent to which some central human capabilities are applied in the way people understand and practice their rights and the ways they are presented on the policy agenda in Vietnam urban context. Keywords Capabilities · Urban · Loss of quality of life This vignette was written by the first author based on her experience, as a Vietnamese woman, living and working in Vietnam as a senior officer in an INGO leading a team working in the field of social inclusion and women’s rights. The second author reflects on her research in Vietnam on women in the resistance in the French and America wars in Vietnam. The third author asked Huong and Yvonne about the potential for women to express their voice in terms of both social and environmental justice to support quality of life. The vignette was facilitated by the third author who posed questions and suggested applying Nussbaum’s lenses to consider how life in the city had changed in Vietnam. H. Nguyen (B) Gender and Women’s Studies, College of Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences, Flinders University, Adelaide, SA, Australia e-mail: [email protected] Y. Corcoran Nantes College of Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences, Flinders University, Adelaide, SA, Australia e-mail: [email protected] J. J. McIntyre-Mills University of South Africa in the College of Education, Tshwane, South Africa Adelaide University, College of Professions Main North Terrace, Adelaid, Australia College of Business, Government and Law, Flinders University, Beaumont, SA, Australia J. J. McIntyre-Mills e-mail: [email protected]; [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2021 J. J. McIntyre-Mills and Y. Corcoran-Nantes (eds.), From Polarisation to Multispecies Relationships, Contemporary Systems Thinking, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-33-6884-2_13

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“I would prefer to live in the countryside, definitely”—that is my answer to someone who asks “Where would I like to live if I were given a choice”, according to the first author who was born in a rural area and moved to live in the city for last three decades. But it is not only Nguyen’s personal preference, many Vietnamese people would like to live a better life, and this is frequently expressed in the desire for a better quality of life. Living in a city remains a dream for many people because it is considered a better place to access health care, education and job opportunities. It is acknowledged that the quality of life is improving and urban living is far more advantageous when modern life connects people to the wider world and new opportunities. City living, however, does not mean that you are experiencing a better quality of life or that you are able to exercise freedom of choice when urbanization has increased the challenges that urban dwellers face. It is often assumed that rural areas are prejudicial to one’s health, because of isolation, poverty and poor access to resources. Moreover, new research highlights that urban life in high rise, treeless spaces without access to diverse species results in much higher levels of stress (Larcombe et al., 2011, 2019). This has in turn been directly linked to higher levels of domestic violence. How has urban living changed over time and how has it impacted on the lives of women and their families? This paper uses the lens of Nussbaum’s Capabilities Approach to examine the change and impact of urban living on women and their family. By reflecting on Nguyen’s actual urban living experience case study, this paper explores the extent to which some central human capabilities are applied in the way people understand and practice their rights and are presented on the policy agenda in Vietnam urban context. The first section will briefly introduce Nussbaum’s centre capabilities approach, the second section reflects Nguyen’s urban living experience, and last section will discuss the application of Nussbaum’s approach in a context of Vietnam and its reflection in law and policy.

Nussbaum’s Capabilities The approach links to the Human development approach with an emphasis on assessing development by how well it expands the capabilities of all people. It provides the foundation for a theory of justice and entitlement for nonhuman animals and humans (Nussbaum, 2011: 18). The Capabilities Approach makes two key normative claims that argue: the freedom to achieve well-being is of primary moral importance, and freedom to achieve well-being is to be understood in terms of people’s capabilities. The focus of the approach is choice and freedom with a central question of “what is each person able to do and to be” (p. 18). It is defined as an approach to assess the quality of life, define the goal of public policy and theorize about basic social justice.

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According to Nussbaum, a good society importantly should present people with a set of opportunities or substantial freedom which they may choose to exercise or not. Capability means an opportunity to select and is defined as a kind of freedom to achieve the alternative function combination of personal abilities and the political, social and economic environment (p. 20). Combined capabilities thus include internal capabilities and functioning, which is an active realization of one or more capabilities. She goes on to explain that: on the other side of capability is functioning. A functioning is an active realization of one or more capabilities. Functioning need not be especially active or, to use the term of one critic, “muscular”. enjoying good health is a functioning, as is lying peacefully in the grass. Functionings are beings and doings that are the outgrowths or realization of capabilities. (p. 25)

The approach focuses not only on human’s equality and justice but extends to the relationship with other species. The capabilities, as is linked to Nussbaum’s ten central capabilities for a life worth living the following capabilities need to be met including: (1) living a life that is not cut short prematurely (2) bodily health, (3) bodily integrity, (4) sense, imagination, and thoughts, (5) emotions, (6) practical reason, (7) Affiliation, (8) Other species, (9) Play, (10) Control over one’s environment. In Nussbaum’s version, the Capabilities approach focus on “the protection of areas of freedom so central that their removal makes a life not worthy of human dignity” (p. 31). Nussbaum, however, extends these capabilities to all sentient beings and thus takes an important step towards non-Anthropocentrism. It is about people being able to live in freedom and dignity and able to exercise choices to pursue a full and creative life. The ten central capabilities provide a flexible framework for a development approach that permits an analysis of how the diverse challenges that people and countries face has been addressed in state policy. Applying the lens of Nussbaum’s central capabilities to reflect the urban living experience in Vietnam, this section below will describe some aspects of actual city living to understand the changes in city life and how people are able to use their capabilities to deal with change. By reflecting on the living experience, the paper then will examine whether hypotheses below are relevant to Vietnam, including: ● The greater the level of (A) public education on Nussbaum’s ten capabilities for a life worth living, the more likely (B) people are to participate as active agents to exercise and protect their rights? ● The greater the level of (A) participation through diverse forms of engagement to protect of local habitat and local living systems as stocks for wellbeing, the greater the (C) mitigation and adaptation to climate change?

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City Living Experience—How Life Has Changed Thirty-three years ago, the first author’s initial trip to Hanoi—the nation’s capital and the second largest city in Vietnam was a reward for her primary school graduation. For many rural girls like her, a trip to Hanoi city was always an important dream, a special summer school award after a year of hard studying. Every summer, along the national main road there were many old buses from different provinces in Vietnam taking hundreds of rural pupils to visit Hanoi. For Nguyen, it was 5 hour drive in a very old car that was full of people, goods and even animals, including cats, dogs, small pigs, chickens and ducks, for a trip from Nguyen’s village, to Hanoi. It was a popular way of transporting goods from the countryside to the city as a source of food and livestock. Nguyen got car sick each time due to the smell of the petrol, goods and animals in the car, but it was still an exciting trip opening up the door to city life for rural children. In Nguyen’s memory, Hanoi was as beautiful as its name meaning the ‘City for Peace’ with a peaceful lifestyle, friendly people, and green roadside trees. Most people went to work by bicycle and the popular forms of public transportation were - n) and the pedicab (xích lô). As a city, Hanoi was so different the electric tram (tàu diê . from Nguyen’s life in the countryside where urban living was seen as modern with cars, high buildings, paved roads and zoos. In fact, Hanoi was a mix of urban and rural lifestyles where it was not hard to find the character of countryside in the middle of Hanoi. The culture of agricultural life drew a bold line in the urban living which can be found through the name of small towns that are associated with traditional agricultural planting characters like Làng Vòng - Vong village and Làng Hoa Ngo.c Hà - Ngoc Ha flower village. There were large rice paddy fields in the suburbs of Hanoi with many large ponds and lakes in between the residential areas. Nguyen’s aunt’s house, 15 km outside the centre of Hanoi, was surrounded by paddy fields with bamboo fences which were popular in many parts of the countryside of Vietnam in 1980. Nguyen often joined with other children there to play in a grass-playground every noon and afternoon. She helped her aunt to feed the chickens and pigs–which was similar work to that she did at home. At that time, many families in Hanoi raised animals and planted vegetables at home as the main additional income generating activities which contributed to the subsistence of the family. Life was simple and enjoyable in the peacefulness of Hanoi four decades ago. In her generation’s childhood, Hanoi was always a place of promise and a dream existence to which she returned every summer.

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Twenty-five years ago, Nguyen started her life in Hanoi as a freshman student at the Hanoi University of Law. Hanoi had not changed much in the interim eight years although the bicycle was, for the most part, replaced by scooters and motorbikes. She lived with her grandparents in a house near the lake side. There were two big lakes full of lotus and water lilies flowers. In the rainy season, the lakes’ flooded the pathways like many other rural areas in the Red River delta. Life was still so close to nature with people catching freshwater seafood (fish and shrimp) in the lakes on rainy days and harvesting lotus flowers. Local people enjoyed boating to collect water lilies and lotus in the summer as a part of their enjoyment of life as well as providing extra income through selling flowers or lotus. From Nguyen’s grandparents’ house, she went to the university by bike, riding along the small streets covered by green trees and never having to worry about a traffic jam. Near to her university is a traditional herb village where local Hanoi people planted herbs - Làng Láng (Lang village). Her friends rented houses in this village and they enjoyed gardening work at the weekend with friendly local owners. But that was her first year in the university, when she finished the fourth and final year, there was a large road expanded and built in front of the University. The road then soon became the most beautiful street to celebrate the 1000th anniversary of Hanoi. The introduction of the new road was a sign of how rapid city development was happening at this time. The road was the pride of Hanoi for over two decades as it was considered one of the most impressive streets in Vietnam with long lines of trees and wide pathways. However, the street’s pathway have now been downsized to expand the traffic lanes due to it being increasingly crowded with vehicles. The city authority recently imported maple trees from Canada with the hope of re-greening the streets when other trees were cut down during the ‘modernisation’ of the city. However, maples are not accustomed to the tropical weather in Vietnam and did not grow as expected after two years. This street once again reflects the changes to Hanoi and its rapid urbanization. Seventeen years ago, Nguyen got married and moved to live in a residential area of the Hanoi National University ten kilometres away from the Hanoi centre. This area was an ideal living area where people could go for walk in the University parks and the large playgrounds. Her children used to play with their neighbours in the square among the housing blocks. However, that was more than ten years ago, and the green space belonged to the past. Many of the trees were cut down to build more school classrooms. Even, the university green areas were destroyed many years ago to make way for a private school built within the University campus. Children no longer have space to play and they often regret the lack of free space. All the public spaces and the square is now occupied by an expanded outdoor market for vendors and illegal motorbike parking. As we lose the trees in cities, we will lose the birds. What will cities be like without shade and birds?

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The residential area became stifling and seemed to lack fresh air to breathe. People from different provinces north of Hanoi migrate to Hanoi and work as street vendors or operate a self-employed business. The constant increase in traffic jams, noise and air pollution are of considerable concern for every local resident. Nguyen’s house is right in front of a main street to the city centre and under the construction of a new Hanoi metro - a sky train. The sky train was expected to be in operation in 2014 but until 2020, it is still under construction with no date confirmed for completion. An innovation that would greatly alleviate the traffic and transit situation in Hanoi and reduce the commute to work by half.

Heavy transit in Hanoi [Yvonne Corcoran-Nantes]

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The hope of modern metropolitan transportation has been replaced by anger as workers continue to confront traffic jams daily. Every night or morning, Nguyen and her neighbours were kept up late or awoken early by the loud noise of construction machines excavating and vehicles’ engines as people in transit moved very slowly due to the incessant traffic jams. Whenever Nguyen leaves her home she must cope with heavy traffic and rides her motorbike under the ongoing construction of the sky train. It is one hours drive by motorbike in the twelve kilometres commute from home to work—it is a most challenging daily task. It is just 600 meters along the route where Nguyen picks up her children from school, but it often takes more that fifteen minutes stuck in traffic and exhaust smoke to reach her house. Without green trees on the roadside, the pavement surface seems to melt in the high summer temperature when Nguyen stops at traffic lights or is stuck in a traffic jam. Every time she picks up her children to return home, they do a count of the old trees left on the roads since these trees will be replaced soon when the sky train is finally developed. Sadly, the land acquired for this innovation led to hundreds of centuries old trees, including the 80–100 years old Khaya senegalensis, being cut down on the 11/10/2016 to build the sky train. Many people tried to come and take pictures before the trees were cut down. They did that with the hope of capturing Hanoi at least in the city’s memory and served as a goodbye to the beautiful streets. People were not only sad but disappointed and felt helpless because they could not change the situation. The streets and trees provided green spaces, and the beauty that once typified Hanoi attached to the well-known Thu Le zoo and park. Many people were devoted to these peaceful and romantic green spaces that bore witness to important events in their life. For example, for young people, it is a place for meeting friends and dating. For Nguyen, when she was a student, she usually went there with her classmates after school, or at weekends and for outdoor activities with her partner. For older people, it is a place where they can go for walk or do exercise. The street with greenspace is not only a physical space, but one that nurtures the spiritual life in both young and old. When people expressed their sorrow at the loss of the trees, the Hanoi authority informed them that most of the trees had been moved to a nursery garden and that they would be re-planted in Gia Lam district, a suburb of Hanoi. One hundred and thirty trees were removed, ninety-five were re- planted and thirty-five were cut down, because they were old or diseased. Nguyen has seen pictures of the nursery where the trees are currently being ‘nursed’, but she does not know what percentage of the trees have survived. Although the trees were reported to be saved, Hanoi would never have a greenspace like it when the sky train is inaugurated. The people in Hanoi will only be able to recall it through pictures and commit them to memory. Of course, the next generation will never imagine how beautiful and peaceful such streets could be, a street lined with hundred-year-old trees shaping the greenspace were the urban lung of Hanoi. But the hope remains that the new trees will grow.

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These pictures were taken of Kim Ma Street, Hanoi where the Hanoi skype metro is being built. All the trees of nearly 100 years old were cut down and removed to make way for the sky bridge. The people in the neighbourhood, including people living elsewhere in Hanoi and even other provinces who knew about the cutting down of the trees were very remorseful and dismayed by the destruction. Many newspapers at that time also released pictures to convey people’s regrets about losing a beautiful and green space in middle of Hanoi. Her children’s question of “Mom, how can we save the trees and how can we transmit the hurt voice of a tree to people who make the decision to cut down trees for buildings and the sky train” conveys how urbanization and modernization can impact on the environment and people’s emotional life. It also helps to understand why her children’s favourite summer vacation is the countryside rather than the city. In her hometown, children can play in large gardens, ride a bike around the village, go fishing at local ponds and ride buffalo. Her daughter, when she was only sixteen months old, could remember and name different animals and colours after one week

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of living in countryside where she can learn visually from direct interaction with nature and environment. These experiences make their young lives more enjoyable and exciting; although land in the countryside is getting small and concrete roads replace green land roads when rural areas are also under urbanization. Nguyen’s children’s perceptions are completely different from her generation about having an interesting summer vacation because it is the way they define a life that allows them to live with natural space and interact with environment.

Children visiting their ancestral villages for family celebrations and Tet holiday [Yvonne Corcoran-Nantes & Huong Nguyen] Hanoi, a representative picture of urban living in Vietnam, does not only reflect a rapid modernization and urbanization, but also that the swift construction of concrete buildings, residential construction and roads is expanding everywhere. Hanoi with many names of traditional wards and villages that reminded people of the specific nature of Hanoi specialities as “Lang Vong”, or “Ngoc Ha” are now committed to memory because the agricultural products that gave the location its name are no longer cultivated there. Like many cities in Asia, Hanoi is a place to shop with new modern mall centres, commercial buildings, apartments and busy streets filled with shops and restaurants. It is a convenient life when you can easily get what you need near your house, but it is increasing difficult to find the relaxing and peaceful pace of life that was once Hanoi. The issue of living space is an environmental issue and impacts on climate change. Hanoi experienced many severe floods in 2002, 2008, 2010, 2018 which left areas of the city surrounded by water for a week and also led to the deaths of some people (Luo et al., 2018). In addition, the speed of urbanization is not synchronized with infrastructure leading to deficiencies in the drainage system,

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causing heavy inundation in many areas of Hanoi after heavy rain. The two large ponds near Nguyen’s grandparents’ house no longer exist as twenty years ago they were replaced by hundreds of houses. These like many disappeared ponds in Hanoi once acted as water catchment areas for Hanoi during the rainy season.

Typhoons and flooding Hanoi 2018 [Yvonne Corcoran-Nantes]

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The well-known To Lich River was once beautiful with a crowded anchorage and boat landing in the middle of Hanoi Thang Long citadel. It is now known as a very polluted small river, but people remember that To Lich once had a glorious past, a most beautiful and poetic river flowing between the Thang Long citadel (Uong, 2018). As the living space and environment has deteriorated, local people are becoming more aware and getting involved in city planning and management. One recent example is the community opposition calling to reject the building of a car park and malls within a park in Hanoi (Khanh, 2019). For instance, an embellishment project around the Hoan Kiem Lake project has been asked to seek public opinion which went against the aims of the project and its outcomes for the local environment (Vietnam Tin tu´,c, 2020). This illustrates that when people are living with the threat of many environmental issues, they become more aware of the value of a life worth living and will actively protect their rights. The development of the city brings higher living standards to people regarding the availability and choice of food, clothes, and entertainment while at the same time facing the erosion of the public green spaces and an eco-friendly living environment. This, in part, is due to a commensurate increase in migration to the city. When Nguyen began her journey in Hanoi, most new people migrating to Hanoi were, like her, students and those who had graduated and got a job in the city. There were very few people who came to Hanoi for casual work such as street vendors or factory workers. It is reported that, in 2019, the Hanoi population reached 8.053 million people living in 2.22 million households (Vietnam General Department of Census 2019). Every year, the population increases by nearly 200.000. In the last 5 years, Hanoi’s population increased by 1.3 million, of which 1.2 million live in central urban areas. Population density is 2.100 people/km2 which is 8.2 per cent higher than the country’s average, and higher in the city centre (Vietnam General Department of Census 2019). The increase in population and high density occupancy places inordinate pressure on city transportation, the environment and living spaces (Hanoi Department of Population and Family Planning 2019). Hundreds of high-rise apartments have been built to address housing and land shortages to meet increasing populations. Many apartments for low income people look like matchboxes stacked up with a frequent lack of public space and green areas. The population density is not only noticeable within households but also in schools. Nguyen’s daughters, in their 5 years of primary school, always studied in a class designed to accommodate 40–45 pupils but was catering for 55–60 pupils. Nguyen’s youngest daughter soon complained of stomach ache when she started in 1st grade and the reason was that she was so stressed by studying and trying to make friends in a crowded class. It is common every day to see crowds of people waiting at the school gate to pick up their children and then find themselves stuck in peak hour traffic after school ends. Due to the reduced space in the new urban environment, the supermarket is often the only place that children go with their parents at the weekend. An eco-tour to the countryside is also a choice for primary school children to help bring students close to nature and learn about environment.

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In addition to this issue of living space, other social problems including childcare, health and violence are associated with the rapid pace of urban living. Nguyen has met many people who move away to escape from agricultural work to find insecure employment in the city such as fruit and food street vendors or clothes sellers or a factory job. Most of them are women, when they move to the city, they must leave their children with their parents or husband at home. If both parents migrate to city, children often stay with their grandparents or even their older siblings. This means that their children do not have full time care from their mothers. Those who bring their children to the city experience difficulties in taking care of them or sending them to school. This is because, according to the law, parents can only send their children to school if they have a resident’s card in the school zone, otherwise they have to go on a waiting list for the very few vacancies or they have to study in private schools which are unaffordable for migrants. In summer, during the school break, Nguyen sees many new faces of children who come to stay with their parents for a short time. That is considered to be some compensation for children after a long year far away from their parents. For many rural children, like Nguyen 30 years ago, a city vacation is something interesting that brings children out of countryside to know about modern life, especially when these children can stay with their mothers/parents. However, activities during these days in city included going with their parents to the market when parents are working or staying at home and playing with their peers who also arrive during summer break. In Nguyen’s work, she had opportunities to meet and work with many migrant workers; most of them are young from age 18 to 30. They come to the city in the hope of getting a job which offers a better income than agricultural work in their hometown. Many of them must migrate to the city because land for agriculture has reduced while weather conditions become more challenging with drought, flood and storms to confront. For some, it may be an adventure or journey to find new life experiences in the city when they are young and just graduated from high school. For others who chose not to enter further education in colleges or university, it is a place where they seek to find or create employment. Both migrant street vendors or workers choose to rent a small house with poor conditions to minimise their expenditure. These small and poor condition houses potentially create health problems but migrants are often not aware of this risk. Nguyen has tried to ask some migrant workers living near to her house or others she met in her work how their life in the city is going. The common answer is it is not an easy life, but it enables them to support their family with income from work. Associated with the many challenges above, women are often faced with genderbased violence (GBV) in the workplace and at home. Street vendors may encounter violence by owners, customers or their peers or even from local police and their partners. Workers also face similar risks of violence or experience violence at their home or on the way to work as well as sexual harassment at work. Although the numbers of women affected is not well documented with respect to violence issues in Vietnam so far, there is evidence to show that they are experiencing violence but are reluctant to make a report or take the matter further (ILO, 2013). For older workers, there are other issues that affect their working future. Factories often seek reasons to

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make workers redundant when they are more than 35 years old because they have to pay higher wages and social insurance for experienced workers while they choose to believe after that age workers are not as productive as they were (Lan, 2019). Violence can be a familiar threat to women facing many personal challenges living in the city. Nguyen, in the course of her work, had opportunities to talk with female migrants. Sadly, she found that, these women had experienced violence but they accept it as simply one of life’s challenges when living far from home and in the city. Furthermore, workers who experience violence consider it a family or personal matter and those who experience workplace sexual harassment do not reveal their stories or speak out. Thus, living in an urban area can expose people to social, ecological and mental factors that may be stressful and contribute to poor health. Consequently, violence as a contextual factor of urban life, for migrant women especially, becomes a threat and a potential hazard of urban life. Nguyen’s experience has provided first hand observations of city life. First, there is a significant change in urban living space where people are living in more confined spaces with limited green sites and interaction with the environment and species. High-rise apartments have expanded quickly in the city considered to be affordable residential spaces and cheaper housing for working people on low incomes. However, it also provides poor living conditions where people have little access to natural spaces, plants and animals (Larcombe et al., 2019). In addition, environmental pollution, especially air pollution is alarming in Hanoi. Poor air quality often rises to a dangerously high level that, on occasion, requires an emergency health warning for the entire population. This may create physical and mental health problems which impacts on the wellbeing of people who are isolated and enjoy less social interaction with others. In addition, being safe and secure is one of the major concerns for those living in certain residential areas. In the last 5 years, there has been at least seven serious fires in high-rise apartments in Hanoi leading to some people being injured. Moreover, the small living space increases challenges for fire protection and response. Secondly, it reflects the way that people make life choices. For Nguyen, she made a decision to study, work and live in the city but it seems that it would not be her first choice. She chooses to live in the city not because it is the best choice for a good quality of life, but one shaped by other factors such as employment, education and her children’s future that she has to trade off for family socio-economic wellbeing. Like Nguyen, migrant workers freely make a choice of moving and staying in the city to earn a living. Many people would not go to the city to live and work if they had better choices in their countryside villages where they can live and enjoy the large open spaces, friendly environment and a lower risk of violence at work and of family break up or separation. On the other hand, accepting the challenges of city living may mean greater opportunity for earning and supporting the family. Their choice is, therefore, influenced by many push/pull factors in the context of rapid urbanization. Third, there is a generational change in the perception of where it is worth living and how one defines a ‘good life’. Among Nguyen’s generation, the city was a curious, desirable place for not only visiting but also for living and working. In

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contrast, her children’s generation seems to love living in the countryside. When a good quality of life is not only defined by the availability of food, clothes, convenient transportation and health care services, but also about living in a good environment, fresh air, green space and interaction with species but also one which in turn offers valuable and positive emotional and spiritual health. Nevertheless, the city is still considered to be a good place for many people and the city population continues to increase daily. This may reflect the people’s living choice, but it may not be the best choice for a good quality of life.

City Life and the Reflection of Nussbaum’s Capabilities Approach Nguyen’s actual lived experience is not necessarily a representative picture of urban living in Vietnam. However, it can serve as a case study to understand the changing life in the city and perceptions of this change and capabilities to deal with diverse challenges arising. This lived experience helps to examine some of the key capabilities and analysis in the hypotheses of Nussbaum. Nussbaum’s capabilities approach focuses on choice and freedom with the key question of “what is each person able to do and to be” have been illustrated in some ways. In Vietnam, people are free to make a choice in moving from place to place and set up their lives in their own way. Nguyen’s example of a rural girl becoming an urban citizen studying and working in the city, or migrant people moving from the countryside to work and live in the city give a sense of a “bodily integrity” capability being exercised. The right to freedom of movement applies to everyone, regardless of age, ethnicity and gender or religious and economic background. This can be seen through the rapid increase in domestic and international migration across Vietnam. The Population and Housing Census 2019 report show that more than 6.4 million people are migrants counts for 7.3% of total population (Vietnam General Department of Census 2019a). International migration as a labour export also increased to 142.000 in 2019, of which 500 were women. Foreign workers in Vietnam was 92.000 in July 2019 (VnEconomy 2019). It is reported that financial remittances from Vietnamese overseas workers is 2, 5–3 billion US dollar annually (ILO, 2019). Thus, the freedom of movement enables people to make personal life choices while supporting their family and contributing to economy. Living in the city or working overseas helps people find jobs and generate incomes. This leads to better access to health care, education and other social services which will help to improve the quality of life. By forming their own life choices, people are able to define and shape a perception of the good and to engage in critical reflection about planning one’s life. This is closely linked to the Nussbaum capabilities of “life”, “bodily health” and “practical reason” (Nussbaum, 2011, p. 33). However, many people do not entirely fulfil their capabilities given the context of living, the socio-economic environment as well as education and employment opportunities. Many of Nguyen’s friends had to stay in their hometown and could not study in the city as they desired, because finance and transportation difficulties at that time placed certain restrictions on their mobility. On the other hand, some decided to stay in the city because they may not find a good

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job in countryside, not because it was a choice. For migrant’s children, as mentioned above, they were obliged to live with their parents, and their choice would be to stay with their parents either in their hometown or the city. In fact, these children could not make their choice as the family circumstances does not allow them to fully exercise their capabilities. In addition, domestic violence and sexual harassment in the workplace are gender specific and social issues against migration and workers. A strong community and family relations as a support factor for people to deal with violence is not well practiced in the urban context when people, particularly migrants, are more isolated. A national study of the family conducted in 2006 discovered that 21.2% of married couples had experienced domestic violence (DV), and 58% and 62.9% of women reported experiencing at least one type of physical, sexual and/or emotional violence in the national surveys conducted 2010 and 2019 respectively (UNFPA, 2010, Kristin et al. 2020). A 2014 survey found that 50% of Vietnamese women aged 15–49 and 44.5% of girls aged 15–19 believe that wife beating is justified. An acceptance of violence against women is higher among ethnic minority women aged 15–49 with 59% agreeing that wife beating is justified. However, it is likely that these rates of violence are merely the reported level of gender based violence (GBV) which is under-reported due to normalization, cultural constraints and a high acceptance of GBV (ActionAid International Vietnam, 2014). Violence is one manifestation of the power inequality between men and women which violates women’s human rights. It is argued that labour migration should be a safe choice and the rights of all workers should be protected (ILO, 2019). The city’s restricted living environment with reduced green spaces, interaction with nature and other non-human sentient beings while facing a fast pace of life has limited the capacity of people to exercise their capabilities of ‘sense, imagination and thought” and “emotions’. While people now have accessible high technology and many social platforms to express themselves, they have less attachment to things and people outside of their social environment. Nguyen’s children love to play in open green spaces, visiting the countryside and raising pets. However, these reasonable basic needs of children are often not met. Nguyen feels guilty when she has to refuse her children’s request to have pets as her house is not large enough for pets or postpone outdoor activities or vacation in other places where children can improve their natural interaction. The way her children express their love of the environment, their pain in the destruction of trees reflect a fact that they are not able to fully exercise the capability of “other species” to live with concern for and in relation to animals, plan and the world of nature (Nussbaum, 2011: 34). Although people are more engaged in city policy making and planning with respect to environmental control, the city has faced many critical environmental issues which there has been little chance to correct or that require considerable time to recover and fix. Nguyen’s children’s perception of the need to save trees and the recent example of how people in Hanoi responded to the building of car parks and malls in a city park shows that people are aware of their rights, which they are able to exercise and protect as active agents for change. The reflection of urban living experience above in relation to Nussbaum’s capabilities approach supports, in some ways, the hypothesis that:

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● The greater the level of (A) public education on Nussbaum’s capabilities for a life worth living, the more likely (B) people are to participate as active agents to exercise and protect their rights? ● The greater the level of (A) participation through diverse forms of engagement to protect of local habitat and local living systems as stocks for wellbeing, the greater the (C) mitigation and adaptation to climate change.

Reflection of Nussbaum’s Capabilities Approach into Vietnam Policy Vietnam located in the South-East Asia with a total area of approximately 331,212 km2 and a population of approximately 92.7 million people (2016) is divided into 63 provinces and cities. Since Doi Moi (renovation) was introduced in 1986 to implement a socialist-oriented market economy strategy, its economy has taken off with significant achievements. Vietnam managed to elevate itself from the group of poor countries in the development ranking into the group of lower-middle income countries with GDP per capita increased from US$ 1052 in 2008 into US$ 1168 in 2010, a threefold increase compared to 2000 (Vietnam Government, 2015) and reaches to US$ 2.566 in 2018 (The World Bank, 2018). Vietnam has been integrating broadly and deeply into the global economy and plays an important role in contributing to the world sustainable development and peace. Together with economic development, Vietnam has made great efforts in achieving social and human development. According to the Government CEDAW report (2015), 1.7 million new jobs are created annually. Health care service is improved and more accessible to people, a medial network and preventive health care is further enhanced. The universalization of elementary education is maintained successfully while increasing students in higher level of education in high school, college and university. Special attention on vulnerable groups including women, children, ethnic minorities, and people with disability, HIV, and victims of Agent Orange is given central attention in many policy and intervention programs to help vulnerable groups access to fundamental social services. Vietnam has adopted and enacted appropriate policies and provided incentives to each group to assist and facilitate their development and social integration. Thus, Vietnam’s economic development strategy is coupled with human development with a pronounced focus on building and enhancing people’s capacity and it brings into play human resources in its development and global integration. Changes in Vietnamese policy and law formulation has demonstrated the immense progress of ensuring and maximizing human rights and promoting people’s capabilities and potential. It is clearly reflected in Vietnam’s revision of the constitution in 2013. The chapter on Human rights in the 1992 Constitution now appears as chapter two of the 2013 Constitution. The change in chapter position is not merely an instrumental shift, a permutation of the composition but a change of perception toward

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Human rights which significantly highlights that people are the supreme subject of constitutional rights. The 2013 Constitution currently refers to human rights repeatedly, an affirmation that these belong to everyone in Vietnam, both citizens and noncitizens. The Constitution also includes legal provisions on discrimination, access to legal counsel, fair trials, and forced labour. Constitutional change has arisen out of progress and a renewed understanding and implementation of human rights. It speaks to the fact that the more people are educated about their rights and capabilities, the more they actively participate in the exercising and protection of their rights. Under Vietnam’s constitution (2013), many laws and bills have been developed and translated into reality. The principle of discrimination has been translated into practical legislation and the legal system engaging the entire society and Vietnamese people in the country’s development. The Law on Gender Equality 2006 stipulates the criteria of gender equality and the ways of ensuring women’s rights. The goal of gender equality is central to the policy with the aim of eliminating gender discrimination and creating equal opportunities for men and women in socioeconomic development and human resources development and the move toward equitable gender relations in all dimensions of social and family life. This principle is further developed and reconfirmed in other important laws: Law on Protection, Caring and Education of Children in 2004, the Civil Procedure Code in 2004, the Civil Code in 2005, the Law on amendment and supplement of some articles of the Law on Emulation and Reward in 2005, the Law on Gender Equality in 2006, the Law on Social Insurance in 2006, the Law on Vocational Training in 2006, the Law on Prevention of domestic violence in 2007, the Law on amendment and supplement of some articles of the Law on drugs prevention and control in 2008. Despite considerable progress in achieving gender equality in human rights, the concept of discrimination against women has not been fully and inclusively applied in law formulation and implementation in some specific areas of life. For example, women migrant workers are not recognized in important and relevant policies such as the Law on legal aid (2006); in the National Strategy for Reproductive Health 2001–2010; the National Strategy for Youth health care; or the National Strategy for Family 2005–2010. The absence of a consideration of migrant workers in relevant key policies place people, particularly women, in a disadvantaged position in regard to health care, social insurance, children’s education, and violence prevention. Migrants are not able to participate in community opinion gathering because they do not have permanent residential status. Thus, their voice on environment issues or social wellbeing is not being heard. In conclusion, it is clearly that law and policy is a crucial enabling environment for the practice and enhancing of human rights and capabilities. Law and policy shape the free exercise of internal capability. However, having a good policy framework is insufficient if policy implementation and law enforcement is not effective and when legal literacy among the population is low. Thus, Nussbaum’s capabilities approach helps us to understand how the assessment and definition of a good quality of life is directly connected to the exercise and protection of human rights. The Vietnamese case study presented here illustrates the complexities of defining and protecting the

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quality of life of individuals and the community in a culturally specific intricate scenario of urban and rural experiences and realities.

References ActionAid International Vietnam. (2014). Policy brief: For women and girlds: Can dreams come true. Hanoi. ˜ N˘am Dân Sô´ Hà Nô.i T˘ang Hanoi Department of Population and Family Planning. (2019). Môi Ba`˘ ng Mô.t Huyê.n. Economic Time. http://thoibaotaichinhvietnam.vn/pages/xa-hoi/2018-10-18/ moi-nam-dan-so-ha-noi-tang-tuong-duong-mot-huyen-lon-63276.aspx. ILO. (2013). Sexual harassment at the workplace in Vietnam: An overview of the legal framework. International Labour Organization. ILO. (2019). Labour migration should be a safe choice. In Labour migration should be a safe choice. Hanoi. https://www.ilo.org/hanoi/Informationresources/Publicinformation/Pressrele ases/WCMS_725519/lang–en/index.htm. ´ Xeij Công Viên Câu ` Giây ´ Thành Bãi Ðô˜ Xe. VietKhanh, H. (2019). Dân Phaij n Ðôi namnet.Vn. https://vietnamnet.vn/vn/bat-dong-san/du-an/dan-phan-doi-xe-cong-vien-cau-giaylam-bai-do-xe-531050.html. Kristin, Diemer, Jansen Henrica, Nata Duvvury, Gardner Jessica, Vyas Seema, Thi Minh Hien Phan, & Tu Anh Hoang. (2020). National Study on Violence against Women in Vietnam 2019Summary Report. Hanoi. https://vietnam.unfpa.org/en/publications/national-study-violence-aga inst-women-viet-nam-2019. ij ˜ Lo Sa Thaij i. Báo Công Thu,o,ng Viê.t Nam. https:// Lan, H. (2019). Công Nhân Nu˜, Sau 35 Tuôi: Nôi congthuong.vn/cong-nhan-nu-sau-tuoi-35-noi-lo-bi-sa-thai-128433.html. Larcombe, E., Logan, P., & Horwitz, P. (2019). High-rise apartments and urban mental healthhistorical and contemporary views. Challenges, 10(2), 34. https://doi.org/10.3390/challe100 20034. Lederbogen, F., Kirsch, P., Haddad, L., Streit, F., Tost, H., Schuch, P., et al. (2011). City living and urban upbringing affect neural social stress processing in humans. Nature, 474(7352), 498–501. https://doi.org/10.1038/nature10190. Luo, P., Dengrui, Mu, Xue, H., Ngo-Duc, T., Dang-Dinh, K., Takara, K., et al. (2018). Flood inundation assessment for the Hanoi Central area, Vietnam under historical and extreme rainfall conditions. Scientific Reports, 8(1), 1–11. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-018-30024-5. Nussbaum, M. C. (2011). Creating capabilities: The human development approach. Cambridge, MA and London: The Belknap Press of Harvard University. The World Bank. (2018). GDP per capital Vietnam. https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP. PCAP.CD. UNFPA. (2010). National study on domestic violence against women in Vietnam. Uong, Trieu. (2018). Hà Nô.i—Quán Xá Phô´ Phu,o`,ng. Hanoi: NXB V˘an Ho.c. Vietnam General Department of Census. (2019). Vietnam population and housing census report 2019. Vietnam Government. (2015). CEDAW Report 2015. https://tbinternet.ohchr.org/_layouts/15/treaty bodyexternal/Download.aspx?symbolno=CEDAW%2FC%2FVNM%2F7-8&Lang=en. ij ´ ý Kiên ´ Cô.ng Ðông ` Vietnam News. (2020). Lây vê` Du., Án Chinh Trang Quanh Hô` Gu,o,m. , Tin Tu´ c News. https://baotintuc.vn/xa-hoi/lay-y-kien-cong-dong-ve-du-an-chinh-trang-quanhho-hoan-kiem-20200102110837493.htm.

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Huong Nguyen, is a Ph.D. candidate in Gender and Women’s Studies at Flinders University, Australia, a Master of Law in Vietnam, and a Master of Arts in International Development and Social Change in America, advocates for women’s rights and gender equality with more than 18 years of experience serving INGOs and the public sector internationally and in Vietnam. Yvonne Corcoran-Nantes is Associate Professor (Adjunct) and Principal Research Fellow in the Social Sciences at Flinders University. She is also an International Gender Consultant working with major INGOS and engages with some of the major issues facing women globally. Janet J. McIntyre-Mills is Honorary Professor in the College of Education at University of South Africa, Tshwane, South Africa; Visiting Research Fellow at Adelaide University in the College of Professions Main North Terrace; and Adjunct Associate Professor in College of Business Government and Law at Flinders University, Sturt Campus, Adelaide.

Part II

Reframing and Re-Claiming the Commons Through A Priori and A Posteriori Approaches

Chapter 14

Social and Environmental Justice Janet J. McIntyre-Mills and A. N. Christakis

Abstract Balancing individual rights and collective responsibility to this generation of life and the next requires a new form of democracy and governance to protect the common good. This requires considering the consequences of decisions whilst preserving the right to voice and agency to the extent that it does not undermine the rights of the majority in this generation and the next. The case is made that liberalism has progressed too far in undermining collective responsibility. The result is a form of state control and governance that is more closely linked with the market than with civil society. Re-generation requires re-balancing society as Minzberg stresses to address political barriers but also to ensure that rights of the minority do not override the interests of the majority in this generation and the next. This requires a collective effort to re-create social, economic architectures to protect living systems and readdress Bostrom’s notion of ‘existential risk’. Keywords Structured Democratic Dialogue · Representation · Accountability and re-generation of living systems

J. J. McIntyre-Mills (B) University of South Africa in the College of Education, Tshwane, South Africa e-mail: [email protected]; janet.mcintyre@flinders.edu.au Adelaide University, College of Professions Main North Terrace, Adelaide, Australia College of Business, Government and Law, Flinders University, Sturt, SA, Australia A. N. Christakis Global Agoras, New York, NY, USA © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2021 J. J. McIntyre-Mills and Y. Corcoran-Nantes (eds.), From Polarisation to Multispecies Relationships, Contemporary Systems Thinking, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-33-6884-2_14

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Introduction How can we address cross boundary regionalist approaches to the big issues of the day, namely poverty and climate change when we continue to work within the boundaries of outdated science?1 Human capabilities can be extended through indigenous ways of knowing and being. These ways respect the interdependency of living systems, by expressing this relationship as family, spiritual connection and a sense of awe (Harris & Wasilewski, 2004; Romm, 2018, 2019).

A Way Forward Through Critical Engagement and Being the Change Through Everyday Praxis Naess and Haukeland (2002) also stressed that transformation is not impossible: ethical living requires ‘doing small things in a big way’ on an everyday basis. This requires being guided by a priori norms for praxis and considering the consequences of one’s choices through careful consideration aided by means of critical heuristics, also known as thinking in terms of ‘if then’ scenarios. This process of ethical consideration is known as ‘expanding pragmatism’, in order to consider the consequences for self and other living systems (Bailey, 2006). An early prototype2 to teach and 1 These problems require drawing on the lived experiences (Polanyi, 1966, 1968) and situated knowl-

edges (Haraway, 1991, 1992, 2010) of many people plus a deep ecological awareness that draws on the consciousness of all living systems of which we are a strand. Representation, accountability and re-generation are the three major challenges of the day. How can we improve the way we live our lives? A plea for a relational approach to protecting living systems is developed in Planetary Passport (McIntyre-Mills, 2017a) and ‘Balancing Individualism and Collectivism’ (McIntyre, Romm, et al., 2018). The critical heuristics approach is vital to address the ‘banality of evil’ which now passes as commonplace governance. Today the markets are open but conceptual and spatial (geographical) borders are closed. This is the paradox that is not addressed in the name of ‘border protection’. The case is made (drawing on Shiva, 1989, 2002, 2012a, b) that sharing resources in common does not lead inevitably to the tragedy of the commons (Hardin, 1968) if the right design conditions prevail (Ostrom, 2008) and reciprocity, trust and ongoing monitoring by engaged local people (Keane, 2009) occurs from below in line with post national conventions (Habermas, 2001) to protect people and the planet (Held, 2004) though enabling people to explore the way they feel (Pert, 1999) and how to address social and environmental injustice. 2 Naess and Hankeland (2002) stress that transformation is not impossible: ethical living requires ‘doing small things in a big way’ on an everyday basis. This requires being guided by a priori norms for praxis and considering the consequences of one’s choices through careful consideration aided by means of critical heuristics, also known as thinking in terms of ‘if then scenarios’. This process of ethical consideration is known as ‘expanding pragmatism’, in order to consider the consequences for self and other living systems. As stressed in McIntyre (2018: 13): “An early prototype to teach and engage participants in learning about ecological citizenship has been developed and tested (McIntyre-Mills et al., 2014). The evaluation of the level of importance of multiple (and simultaneously important issues) is important by reflecting on one’s life in terms of different scenarios and the consequences of these choices, for example:

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engage participants in learning about ecological citizenship has been developed and tested (McIntyre-Mills et al., 2014).The evaluation of the level of importance of multiple (and simultaneously important issues) is important by reflecting on one’s life in terms of different scenarios and the consequences of these choices for social and environmental injustice. Upstream and downstream users need to fish in the same river—this principle applies to oceans and to the idea that there are no boundaries when we realize the currents circulate the waste and it enters the food cycle. When we realise that the rubbish dumped in the ocean enters the food chain and plastic and chemicals appear on the dinner plate the notion of interconnectivity is highlighted.3 As Whitehead (2018) stresses in ‘living theory’ we need to learn from experience and all experience is situated. Furthermore, we create our futures through the constructive or destructive decisions that we take on a daily basis. We need so-called hybrid methodologies (Hesse Biber, 2018: 17) to begin a discussion of what constitutes the nature of the problem (ontological issue) and how to go about researching the issue (epistemological concern). It is no surprise that Bolivia, an early signatory to the notion of earth politics and the notion that the constitution should protect the environment and the people who • I have the following things in my life—understanding of human rights, respect for biodiversity, responsibility to care for others. • I need in my life—a home, a sense of safety, a place near public transport and hope for the future. • I will add to my life—more community support from a range of services and/or more community engagement to lobby for resources; more connection to nature. • I will discard from my life—a sense of hopelessness, a sense of entitlement, excessive consumption. • Self-reflect on the turning points for the better or worse—hope that consumption can be replaced with a greater sense of attachment to others and the environment. • Consider the barriers that currently exist and consider what could be done to transform society and our relationship to the environment.” See the demonstration of the pathways to wellbeing software at https://archive.org/download/ pathway_DEMO_1 pathways to wellbeing: https://archive.org/details/VN860546 ethics and design The opposite is true, living lives that do not reflect on our everyday choices supports business and usual and every day social and environmental injustice. Upstream and downstream users need to fish in the same river—this principle applies to oceans and to the idea that there are no boundaries when we realize the currents circulate the waste and it enters the food cycle. When we realise that the rubbish dumped in the ocean enters the food chain and plastic and chemicals appear on the dinner plate the notion of interconnectivity is highlighted. Similarly, when people understand that feeding farm animals offal results in high risks such as mad cow’s disease at worst or raised levels of antibiotic tolerance because unhealthy animals are fed a diet of antibiotics this brings the nature of the banality of evil to a new level. Systemic ethics requires that as individuals, we have rights but we also have to take responsibility for the common good. Individualism can be used as an excuse for private greed at the expense of the common good. 3 Similarly, when people understand that feeding farm animals offal results in high risks such as mad cow’s disease at worst or raised levels of antibiotic tolerance because unhealthy animals are fed a diet of antibiotics this brings the nature of the banality of evil to a new level. Systemic ethics requires that as individuals, we have rights but we also have to take responsibility for the common good. Individualism can be used as an excuse for private greed at the expense of the common good.

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depend on Pachamama or ‘Our earth mother’. A coalition led by Bolivia with active support from Asia and Africa has achieved ‘change from below’ by recognizing that peasants and fisherfolk play a vital role in protecting food security.

A Non-Anthropocentric Approach to Democracy and Governance A non-anthropocentric approach to democracy and governance is needed to enable monitoring from below and above to ensure that those who are elected are held to account so that they fulfil their role to act as agents of the people and that collective responsibility is indeed taken to protect both People and the Planet. One of the issues that needs to be faced is that too much power has been given to those who have been voted into power. Once elected they ‘forget’ that democratically elected leaders ought to be agents of the people and that the environment is of primary concern, not their personal political careers. Two potential approaches offer ways to improve democracy and governance. These are Structured Dialogue and pathways to wellbeing software (PW) informed by the same logic employed by SD which inspired the development of PW. We adopt an approach guided by systemic ethics and supported by pathways to wellbeing engagement. The pragmatism of considering ‘if then’ scenarios before making decisions is important. This paper aims to: ● Address the complex needs of the most vulnerable and the interconnections across resilience, food, water and the innovation opportunity for social inclusion in line with the UN Sustainable Development Goals. ● Makes the case that critical agency is vital to understand, monitor and evaluate everyday social, economic and environmental strategies that enable sentient functioning (Nussbaum, 2011) and makes a case for non-anthropocentrism (Braidotti, 2018; Cochrane, 2012; De Waal, 2006, 2009; McIntyre-Mills & De Vries, 2011; McIntyre-Mills, 2017a, 2017b) based on a recognition of sentient capability and rights. Liberalism has progressed too far in undermining collective responsibility. The result is a form of state control and governance that is more closely linked with the market than with civil society.4 4 Minzberg (2015) stresses that radical renewal requires rebalancing society. Each voter has the right

and the responsibility to think about the consequences of their daily choices for their neighbourhood, province and the wider region to which they are inextricably linked. The ‘banality of evil’ (Arendt, 1963) is associated with denying the pain and suffering caused by taking decisions that erode the planet and prevent the re-generation of living systems. This has been underlined by the landmark declaration by the president of Vanuatu (2018) who stresses that companies and nation states that rely on carbon intensive approaches should pay for the damage they cause to nation states with a low carbon footprint.

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We argue that critical systemic intervention by residents living in local regions is needed on a daily basis to achieve ecological citizenship. The Aarhus Convention (1998) provides three policy pillars to enable this everyday engagement to occur. The policy pillars include: ● The right of all residents in the EU to access information. ● The right to be heard and the right to take the areas of concern to the European Parliament and then to the European Court if the issues are not satisfactorily addressed. In line with the Paris Declaration (1997), public administration needs to be framed together with co-researchers with local lived experience. A multisite symposium held in 2018 (McIntyre-Mills et al., 2019a, 2019b) in Adelaide, South Australia and Bandung, West Java explored the challenge of increased urbanization and movement towards cities and the implications it has for the life chances of unemployed women who become increasingly vulnerable to trafficking. In Indonesia, the rate of urbanization is faster than other Asian countries: According to the World Bank: “Indonesia is undergoing a historic transformation from a rural to an urban economy. The country’s cities are growing faster than in other Asian countries at a rate of 4.1% per year. By 2025—in less than 10 years—Indonesia can expect to have 68% of its population living in cities5 ”. The UN 2030 Agenda6 is: the new global framework to help eradicate poverty and achieve sustainable development by 2030. It includes an ambitious set of 17 Sustainable Development Goals…. The 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development sets out the global framework to eradicate poverty and achieve sustainable development by 2030.

A critical reading of the capabilities approach could stress that Nussbaum’s (2011) approach does not take into account power dynamics or the institutional power wielded by a minority (McIntyre-Mills et al., 2018) who use the state, the legal system and the market to protect their own interests at the expense of others. Churchman’s questioning approach (Design of Inquiring Systems’ or DIS) is an approach based on critical heuristics or ‘what if questions’ that can be extended by means of scenarios to enhance engagement in decision making, in order to test out ideas with those who have lived experience. Openness to the ideas of others is important for democracy as is the need to continuously revise and adjust the way in which we live our lives in relation to one another and the environment by recognizing that we are part of a living system and that ‘natural inclusion’ should be a way of live (Rayner, 2017a, 2017b). The axiom to guide transformative research is that we can be free and diverse to the extent that our freedom and diversity does not undermine the rights of others. But we also need to accept that limiting carbon emissions will require a dramatic adaptation to reduce the harmful effects of climate change (Meadows & Randers, 1992; IPCC, 5 http://www.worldbank.org/en/news/feature/2016/06/14/indonesia-urban-story. 6 http://europa.eu/rapid/press-release_MEMO-15-5709_en.htm.

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2018). To ‘rescue enlightenment from itself’ (McIntyre-Mills & Van Gigch, 2006), we need to realize that there are many ways of knowing. Logic, empiricism, idealism, dialectic and pragmatism (as West Churchman suggested) are some of the ways in which we can know the world. But these ways of knowing are situated (in the sense used by Donna Haraway). Churchman had great insight, but our thinking and practice is always limited by our embodied selves and by our experiences. Churchman stressed the need to ‘think about our thinking’ and to engage with others through questioning our design of inquiry. This is a good start as is his emphasis on striving for ideals (shaped by norms) but also being open to testing out ideas by considering the lived experiences of others. He could also have explicitly talked about gendered knowing, species knowing and also about the way in which ‘the ecology of mind’ (Bateson, 1972) is extended by thinking about the consequences of decisions for this generation of living systems and the next. Churchman stressed that the systems approach is not only about making holistic, universal maps of the world. It is also about appreciating diversity. Churchman discussed many ways of knowing but these need to be extended if we are to ‘rescue the enlightenment from itself’ (McIntyre-Mills, 2006). An appreciation of animal knowing, plant knowing, the value of the arts and being able to appreciate ‘art in nature’ is a starting point for extending the hierarchy of knowledge that Kenneth Boulding alluded to in his ‘Skeleton of Knowledge’ (1956). Transformation of values from individual human knowing to appreciation of collective knowledge and responsibility and then the leap to appreciation that anthropocentric knowing is far too limited and non-anthropocentrism requires ecological knowing. Critical systemic thinking needs to extend social and environmental policy to take into account Bateson’s (1972) level 1, 2 and 3 learning to addresses both social and environmental justice. The Paris Agenda (2015)—whilst hailed as a breakthrough for global security—does not go far enough, according to many of the latest estimates (Ricke et al., 2018; IPPC, 2018). Rolling back adherence to this international agenda is worrying and is evident in the way that food, energy and water security are seen as issues that can be addressed through nation states, rather than as post national coalitions working in share biospheres. According to the UN the majority of the world’s population will be in Africa and Indonesia. A recent United Nations report projects that by 2050 most of the global urban population is expected to be located in Asia (52%) and Africa (21%) (United Nations, 2014: 11). Climate change impacts environments leading to displacement of plants, animals and people as cities encroach or droughts, floods, fires render areas unable to provide a liveable environment. This has profound ethical implications for everyday living choices. According to the Nuccitelli (2018 who cites Ricke) and correctly emphasizes that as a warm country it is in its interests to address global warming and climate change. Ricke et al. (2018: 1) explain that they address: a socio-economic, climate, damages and discounting module ‘wherein a time series of future damages is compressed into a single present value…’

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Critical Systemic Thinking and Agency Is Core to Social and Environmental Justice We face the inconvenient truth that we have normalised every day decisions that can be regarded as evil, because we are consuming resources in excess and we extend the mantle of the social contract to some whilst excluding the rights of non-citizens. Two potential approaches offer hope for the future. These are Structured Dialogue (SD) and pathways to wellbeing software (PW) informed by the same logic employed by SD which inspired the development of PW. Could a new form of participatory block chain democracy and governance empower and enhance ownership of the most marginalised in regional and rural areas? New architectures to democracy and governance need to be underpinned by systemic ethics, guided by structured dialogue and supported by block chain pathways. The pragmatism of considering ‘if then’ scenarios before making decisions is important. This paper aims to: ● Address the shared area of concern, namely water, food, energy security and social inclusion in line with the UN Sustainable Development Goals. ● Makes the case that critical agency is vital to understand, monitor and evaluate everyday social, economic and environmental strategies that enable a life worth living (Nussbaum, 2011). Two architectures for participation and scaling up governance will be detailed below:

The Legacy of Structured Democratic Dialogue (SDD) SDD was developed by Alexander Christakis with insights from Doxiadis, West Churchman and John Warfield and collaboration with a range of researchers and others whom he influenced (see Christakis, 1973, 1988, 2006, 2011; Christakis & Bausch, 2006; Flanagan & Christakis, 2010; Flanagan, 2013; Christakis & Brahms, 2003. Christakis & Harris, 2004). The process involves people sharing their areas of concern and developing a triggering question which can be explored face to face or through on-line engagement processes. It is suited to addressing very complex challenges in order to inform policy decisions. The process involves enabling participants to think through the implications of one option versus another and to vote on the option. Their choices then form part of a decision-making process. The logic informing the process has resulted in several other projects such as a version used in

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the European Union7 and the pathways to wellbeing software which enables participants to think about social, economic and environmental indicators of wellbeing. Christakis sums it up as follows (Pers. Comm., 2018): Dialogic design science has been developed with the intent to enable citizens from all walks of life to engage in coherent, authentic, and productive design dialogues for the definition and resolution of complex systemic issues affecting their lives. The science makes it possible for the stakeholders to co-create successive and flexible approximations of visionary anticipations. It belongs to the Third Phase science of intersubjectivity, which is meant to be complementary to the First and Second Phase sciences focusing on objectivity. It represents a scientific revolution (paradigm shift) in the evolution of policy planning and participative democracy. It is best applied in the co-laboratories of democracy designed and conducted in a Demoscopio capability, i.e., a place, a space, and a methodological mix for engaging stakeholders in designing their futures instead of having others designing futures for them without their voices being heard (see Flanagan, 2013; Flanagan & Christakis, 2010; Flanagan & Bausch, 2010; Flanagan et al., 2012).

Structured dialogue/pathways to wellbeing/other approaches that draw on SD rely on enabling people to think through options by pairing potential factors and considering the implications of the choice, through using ‘if then scenarios’. The radical potential of this approach is that it enables people to make sense of complexity and to reframe their options. It is constructivist and provides some hope as a way to balance individual and collective needs. Groups of people concerned about issues meet to brainstorm and to develop a triggering question that they are all interested in working on. Then ideas are generated by writing them up on a board or post it stickers on the wall. Then ideas are grouped, and participants can then decide to vote on which combination of ideas is best suited to address their concern. Participants are asked to think through options using ‘if then scenarios’. These ideas begin to show areas of divergence and convergence and patterns begin to emerge. The areas of overlap on shared notions of core factors for social, economic and environmental wellbeing are caring for people and their environment on which they depend and of which they are a strand in a web of living systems.

Engagement: Dialogic Design Employs Third Level Science The political potential of scaling up the Aarhus Convention (1998) which requires that all members of the EU have access to information and the right to speak out on issues that have a bearing on the environment be heard, has been discussed (Florini, 2003) and extended in ‘Planetary Passport’ (as a critical heuristic step toward a new form of governance and democracy based on discussing ways in which already existing policy and small pilots of alternative forms of engagement can be extended and applied). 7 https://www.coe.int/en/web/culture-and-heritage/structured-democratic-dialogue-process.

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First level science is about working within a paradigm and developing solutions to an area of concern. Second level science is based on comparing and contrasting different approaches to addressing an area of concern in order to extend the boundaries of a problem. Whereas, Third level science is about problematizing and reframing the way in which we see the world. It requires leaping beyond the boundaries of the taken for granted. It involves a form of creative design with people to enable re-visioning the way in which we perceive issues. Monitoring from above and below can be achieved using a combination of structured dialogue in local learning communities and pathways to wellbeing to explore decision making at a personal level in order to achieve everyday decision making to meet the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals. Dialogic design science has been developed with the intent to enable participation, in order to construct better social, economic and environmental solutions. It helped to inspire the pathways to wellbeing approach. These new architectures for democracy and governance use readily available tools and software to link local learning communities with regional and post national regional partners and networks. The policies that could make this approach possible already exist (Florini, 2003; McIntyre-Mills et al., 2014; McIntyre-Mills, 2014, 2017a) (Table 14.1). The area of concern which a Global Covenant (Held, 2004) and proposed Planetary Passport to Protect People and the Planet needs to address is poverty, climate Table 14.1 New architectures to protect living systems and to support the global commons Structure

Process

Action

Micro-level individuals

UN local Agenda 21 (1992) and Aarhus convention (1998)

Questions raised and posed to local government by individuals

Local government, NGOS and individuals

Meso states and regions

Aarhus convention linked to global covenant

Online monetary democracy and governance to address state/market/civil society concerns

Networking NGOs and INGOS to address representation and accountability

Macro Cosmopolitan governance

Legal structures to support the global covenant, Aarhus convention and Biospheres convention

International Criminal Global action to pass Court United Nations laws to protect social and environmental justice in overlapping biospheres

Sources Table 3.1: McIntyre-Mills (2017a: 148, 313) to address nodes (people, organisations) and to connect them to areas of shared post regional concern (Habermas, 2001) through an on-line Planetary Passport (PP) (The decisions are prompted by scenario guidelines. The daily living choices can be guided by means of an on-line engagement tool that helps decision making and enables the monitoring of social, economic and environmental choices. Positive and negative sanctions through monitoring could ensure that resources are fed forward to those in need and in the interests of future generations as detailed below). Adapted from Florini (2003) and Archibugi in Wallace and Held (2010: 322) cited in McIntyre-Mills et al. (2014: 92) and McIntyre-Mills (2014: 7) in Reconsidering boundaries, Sociopedia.

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change, displacement of people and destruction of habitat. The PP could strive to balance individual and collective needs in line with a Global Covenant. Post national regions could be protected in the form of a nested governance system spanning the local personal level to the household, community, regional and post national regional level. This could (perhaps) be achieved based on co-creating pathways (McIntyre-Mills & De Vries, 2011; McIntyre-Mills & Wirawan, 20178 ) to map and manage local resource systems (Ostrom, 2008) in context ‘from below’ based on selfreflection (through critical heuristics questions) to prompt decision making (Jackson, 2000). Stiglitz et al’s (2010) wellbeing stocks could be supported by enabling people to ‘be the change’ on a daily basis through the way they choose to live their lives and making social contracts through the on-line system to protect local resource systems. Their footprint can be monitored locally, and they can generate transformation locally. The potential success of this approach is detailed (McIntyre-Mills & De Vries, 2011; McIntyre-Mills et al., 2014) on a pilot of the software and McIntyre-Mills (2019) explores the wider potential for redressing the cascading risks of climate change and how the way in which the management of risks was indeed achieved through the Cape Town Provincial Government’s use of a transparent water management application that succeeded in getting people to change their water usage in a very short period of time through a combination of shame and the wish to ‘do the right thing’ and to share resources in order to prevent ‘day zero’, the day when taps would run dry and the residents of Cape Town would need to stand in queues at approximately 200 proposed water collection points. The problem was caused by the high cost of implementing a desalination plant along with reservations about the appropriateness of such an option (despite the rising rate of in migration to the Cape). A further issue was the associated political friction between levels of government with different partypolitical affiliations. The use of structured dialogic design across political interest groups has been shown to be both appropriate and successful (Christakis, 2006; Kakoulaki & Christakis, 2017). The ‘monitoring from below’ approach achieved re-generation of control by the people of a scarce resource. The potential for further monitoring by means of pathways to wellbeing software to achieve social, economic and environmental outcomes for social and environmental justice can be achieved. This is a way to achieve re-generation with people in and beyond the usual structures of governance. This approach extends the social contract to ecological citizens who can log on to a new post national form of governance and democracy. It includes those who are currently excluded from citizenship—the young and the displaced.

8 See

the demonstration of the pathways to wellbeing software at https://archive.org/download/pat hway_DEMO_1 pathways to wellbeing https://archive.org/details/VN860546ethicsanddesign.

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Pathways to Wellbeing This application of the logic used in SDD extends the UN Local Agenda 21 which requires that socio-cultural, economic and environmental accounting and accountability (triple bottom line) be applied (McIntyre-Mills & De Vries, 2011; McIntyreMills et al., 2014). This would enable local residents and members of a wider post national region to have a say in matters that impact on social and environmental justice. Representation, accountability and re-generation are the three major challenges of the day that need to be addressed by means of a cross boundary regionalist approach to address the big issues of the day, namely poverty and climate change. They require a new approach to democracy and governance to enable monitoring from below and above to ensure that those who are elected are held to account and that collective responsibility is indeed taken to protect the Planet. One of the issues that needs to be faced is that much power has been given to those who have been voted into power that they ‘forget’ that democratically elected leaders ought to be agents of the people and that the environment is of primary concern, not their personal, political careers.

A Way Forward to Protect the Marginalised? By considering social, cultural, economic and environmental concerns in terms of: 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7.

What we have (material and non-material terms) What we need What we are prepared to think and do to add/ create and share with the global commons What we are prepared to think and do to discard/ change to help the global commons Turning points for the better and worse Barriers Drop down lists that grow shared resources linked with ‘persons, entities, themes and actions’ (Marc Pierson, 2019, pers. comm., International Systems Sciences Blue Jeans Dialogue) at the personal, household, local, national and post national levels

This could provide the means by which to implement the Sustainable Development Goals from the local, to the regional and post national regions in order to resource the commons (Bollier & Helfrich, 2012). Because block chain is a distributed network that can provide tracking, monitoring surveillance from below it can provide a means to empower the landless and the disposed (Nir Kshetri, 2017; Wirawan & McIntyre-Mills, 2019). It can also provide a means to balance individual and collective needs (McIntyre-Mills, 2017a) and monitor the fair distribution of resources such as food, energy and water from below

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(McIntyre-Mills, 2019) trace the origin of foodstuffs and to protect the safety of voiceless sentient beings. According to Al-Saqaf & Seidler (2017: 340): blockchain …ranges from finance to record-keeping and from tracking the flow of goods to verifying the identity of citizens. The fundamental common characteristic that all blockchain based services share is a design that depends on immutability and decentralisation in storing data. Yet, a system based on the community cannot work without the community”.

Al-Saqaf and Seidler (2017) go on to stress that while much has already been written about blockchain applications and the potential for industry, little research has been undertaken to explore the extent to which user-centric governance and democracy can be enabled through alternative pathways. This section strives to contribute to the literature by exploring blockchain technology’s potential to support social and environmental justice by considering to what extent can ‘decentralisation, transparency, equality and accountability’ (Al-Saqaf & Seidler, 2017: 338) be addressed and to what extent engagement could play a role in: ● Limiting top down approaches to human rights and the abuse of power through enabling more surveillance ‘from below’ and through. ● Enhancing the stewardship potential to protect the voiceless, including those without citizenship rights, women, children and animals. “An early prototype to teach and engage participants in learning about ecological citizenship has been developed and tested (McIntyre-Mills & De Vries 2011; McIntyreMills et al., 2014).9 The evaluation of the level of importance of multiple (and simultaneously important issues) is important by reflecting on one’s life in terms of different scenarios and the consequences of these choices, for example: ● I have the following things in my life—understanding of human rights, respect for biodiversity, responsibility to care for others. ● I need in my life—a home, a sense of safety, a place near public transport and hope for the future. ● I will add to my life—more community support from a range of services and/or more community engagement to lobby for resources; more connection to nature. ● I will discard from my life—a sense of hopelessness, a sense of entitlement, excessive consumption. ● Self-reflect on the turning points for the better or worse-hope that consumption can be replaced with a greater sense of attachment to others and the environment. ● Consider the barriers that currently exist and consider what could be done to transform society and our relationship to the environment.” The transformative, transdisciplinary research (Darian-Smith & McCarty, 2017) proposed explores plausible pathways in line with the United Nations (UN) Sustainable Development Goals to enhance wellbeing and resilience for those at risk of displacement and those already displaced. Clearly, this has implications for public policy, human service governance and delivery and the way in which the Paris Climate 9 See

the demonstration of the pathways to wellbeing software at https://archive.org/download/pat hway_DEMO_1 pathways to wellbeing https://archive.org/details/VN860546 ethics and design.

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Change Agreement (2015), UN Sustainable Development Goals (2014) and the UN Sendai Framework (2015–2030) for Disaster Risk Reduction are addressed. Thus Goal 1 (end poverty) with specific implications for food, energy and water security, Goal 5 (gender inequality) and Goal 17 (creating partnerships) are particularly relevant to protecting the most vulnerable, whilst The United Nations Declaration of Rights of Indigenous Peoples (2007) provides a vital pathway for socially inclusive decision-making on habitat protection. Indigenous thinkers such as Chilisa (2012, 2017) stress that our sense of who we are needs to be revised. We are vulnerable and reliant on a shared habitat. The ideas underpinning the UNDRIP stress that Indigenous people need to have the right to express their identity within a sacred space. The challenge will be to scale up this sense of stewardship not only at the local level but also at a post national regional level through understanding that we are stewards of one planet. The earth politics notion of Vandana Shiva is the only logical direction for securing the biospheres for food security of living systems We live in an increasingly commodified and competitive world. Our research focuses on balancing individualism and collectivism by exploring the food, water and energy consumption choices people make and how these relate to their perceptions on ‘wellbeing stocks’. Wellbeing stocks are defined by Stiglitz et al (2010: 15) in ‘Mis-measuring our lives’ as multidimensional.10 In ‘Planetary Passport (McIntyreMills, 2017a) and Wall Street to Wellbeing’ (McIntyre-Mills, 2014) the link between wellbeing stocks and the need to develop everyday decision-making capabilities from: ● the micro household’s level to the meso level of organisations at the local government level and ● the macro level of regional and post regional decision making on food, energy and water consumption was stressed. It is vital to measure a raft of social, cultural political, economic and environmental indicators that pertain specifically to everyday living. Thus, the multivariate research approach is also participatory, because it is important to find out whether the setting of Sustainable Development Goals through public engagement and recording pledges on an interactive digital site could make a difference to consumption choices and whether this public participation impacts on living ethically and well. Instead of merely listing goals and asking people to meet them, the approach is to request people to make a personal pledge to address food, energy and water 10 The definition is as follows: ‘1. Material living standards (income, consumption and wealth), 2. Health, 3. Education, 4. Personal activities including work, 5. Political voice and governance, 6. Social connections and relationships, 7. Environment (present and future conditions), 8. Insecurity, of an economy as well as a physical nature’. This definition of wellbeing stocks fits well with the way in which both Indigenous and Non-Indigenous Australians connect with Country in Australia and elsewhere and the way in which critical systems thinkers and complexity theorists understand inter relationships. The raft of concepts is necessary for defining wellbeing as stressed in several publications by McIntyre-Mills (McIntyre-Mills & De Vries 2011; McIntyre-Mills, 2003, 2006, 2008, 2014, 2017a, b).

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consumption by thinking through the consequences of their choices in terms of three scenarios, namely Business as Usual, Making Small Adjustments and Living Virtuously and Well in terms of considering: what local residents have, what they need, what they are prepared to add or discard from their lives, the turning points for the better and worse, the barriers and the resources and or services which they could draw upon in their local government area or to which they could contribute. To realise the so-called ‘liberative potential’ (Gouldner, 1971) of an ecological citizen we need to be trained to be mindful of the so-called ‘enemies within’, these are, according to West Churchman: “religion, politics, morality, aesthetics”. In his usual poetic turn of phrase, he was explaining that what constitutes so-called knowledge is filtered by our values. In terms of morality, the focus on anthropocentrism needs a great deal more attention, so that parallels can be learned from studying other populations that faced extinct Drawing the line becomes important if living systems are to be protected. This requires stewardship based on humility and recognition that the Anthropocene is a result of human intervention. This has implications for social and environmental justice. It needs to be addressed through responses that take into consideration current and future generation of life. This requires the need to revisit the challenges of balancing individual and collective interests. An easy way through is a recognition of the continuity of living systems as conscious interconnected systems. This is more than merely accepting our place in a post human system. It requires capability and agency to intervene in ways that are sustainable for the common good. This requires a post nationalist response to protect biodiversity in terms of a Global Covenant, rather than a narrow social contract within nation states (McIntyre-Mills, 2010, 2014, 2017b).

Rebalancing Rights and Responsibilities The notion of extending a sense of ‘ecological citizenship’ (McIntyre-Mills, 2017a) could foster awareness of the need for democracy to revitalize the balance between the right to consume the planet to extinction and the responsibility to presence the common good. Rights need to be reframed as do responsibilities so that the economy and the market are seen not as an eternality but as part of the global commons on which this generation and the nest depends.

We can redefine these boundaries because ‘we are the boundaries’—according to Haraway (1992). The only problem is that some have more power to decide than others. The responsibility to protect children wrested from the arms of their parents at the Mexican border lies not with the children or their parents, but with the voters— the public and civil society who need to defend the rights of those who are outside the mantle of the social contract. The responsibility to protect animals subjected to transportation as part of the socalled live meat trade lies with voters who need to redraw the boundaries of what is

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acceptable decent treatment of animals and what constitutes unacceptable commodification of sentient beings John Scott (1998) in ‘Seeing like a State’ gives detailed examples of the way in which the state has crushed diversity—from designing monocultures in forestry to ironing out diverse political opinions. His work could be said to take the approach at which Foucault hints in his lectures on biopolitics further by giving examples that are relevant to the concept of ‘the banality of evil’—the notion that everyday decisions by many can collectively result in a normalization and acceptance of evil then many of the aspects of governance and democracy that we take for granted today need to be re-thought. ● If we can accept that climate, change is the result of collective decisions that constitute a normalization of living beyond our limits what does that mean for democracy and governance? ● If the German population as a whole (and their collaborators) were guilty of collective evil through being unable to think critically (and simply accepting what they were told to accept) what does that mean for current democracy and governance? ● If we can now accept that collective responsibility can be ascribed and that many nations can together be collectively responsible for evil, then nation states must take responsibility for the impact of their emissions. ● If we can accept that more people than ever before have been displaced, what does that mean for human ethics and the nation that neoliberal governments should close borders? ● If we can accept that it is now scientifically proven that genetically human beings share 98% of their genes with a lab rat and even more with the primates that are experimented on—how can we justify inflicting pain or denying rights to human beings and other sentient animals? ● If we can accept that the boundaries between people are constructed on the basis of will and power, then we can accept that people have the right and the responsibility to do something about injustice. The need for democracy to re-engage with critical thinking is vital. Is it possible for groups to be held responsible in the same way that an individual can be held responsible? Arendt’s notion that collective responsibility is upheld when each individual engages critically with the everyday decisions about who gets what when why, how and to what effect. Representation, accountability and re-generation are the three major challenges of the day that need to be addressed by means of a cross boundary regionalist approach to address the big issues of the day, namely poverty and climate change. They require a new approach to democracy and governance to enable monitoring from below and above to ensure that those who are elected are held to account and that collective responsibility is indeed taken to protect the Planet. One of the issues that needs to be faced is that much power has been given to those who have been voted into power that they ‘forget’ that democratically elected leaders ought to be agents of the people and that the environment is of primary concern, not their personal, political careers.

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Liberalism: The Market Has Prevailed Over the State and Civil Society Capitalism has delivered an apparent rise in living standards for many and the narrative that we believe is that the current way of life today is better. This is true for the elite and still true for increasingly squeezed middle classes. But it is not true for the majority of the world’s population. They do not appear in news media and many are silenced through fear. Statistics show that the gap between the rich and poor is wider than ever before, and the rich are richer than ever before (Hay & Beaverstock, 2016). The size of companies is larger than ever before. Miller’s (2010: 57) paper stresses that Foucault’s lectures on the birth of bio politics should really have referred more explicitly to neo-liberalism: Dominant in world thought for three decades, neoliberalism was nothing less arrogant than ‘a whole way of being and thinking’, an attempt to create ‘an enterprise society’ through the pretence that the latter was a natural (but never achieved) state of affairs, even as competition was imposed as a framework of regulating everyday life in the most subtly comprehensive statism imaginable. (pp. 145, 147, 218)

Hannah Arendt stressed that in Germany the state normalised evil. Obedience to the state, resulted in disregard for the rights of many human beings. The notion that Kantian ethics or ‘the moral law’ could be misinterpreted to mean—the Führer’s law was the result of the loss of all critical engagement by the public. Unless it is possible to hold organisations to account, states can act with impunity. The big issues of the day, namely poverty and climate change cannot be addressed without collective responsibility. Hence, the argument that new architectures for democracy and governance are needed based on: A priori norms—that ecological citizenship ought to protect current and future generations of living systems. A posteriori measures—of the extent to which UN Sustainable Development goals are upheld and the Sendai Risk plat form addressed. Both these UN documents are based on the notion that individuals and organisations need to act in concert to address the goals across national boundaries. According to Judith Butler (2011: 1): By writing about Eichmann, Arendt (1963) was trying to understand… a crime against humanity, one that would acknowledge the destruction of Jews, Gypsies, gay people, communists, the disabled and the ill. Just as the failure to think was a failure to take into account the necessity and value that makes thinking possible, so the destruction and displacement of whole populations was an attack not only on those specific groups, but on humanity itself. As a result, Arendt objected to a specific nation- state conducting a trial of Eichmann exclusively in the name of its own population

The nation state per se is part of the problem. It is one of the boundaries that need to be addressed. If we agree with Arendt that ‘the consequences of non-thinking are genocidal, or certainly can be…’ (Butler, 2011: 2) then we need to teach critical thinking skills as a basis for democratic engagement.

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The German population ceased to think critically and to engage with the state or to raise questions. So, what has the ‘banality of evil’ got to do with strategic decision making, bio politics and food security, is the obvious question? The answer is that bio politics refers to neoliberal notions of freedom. Balancing individual and collective responsibility requires critical thought and engagement by people on an everyday basis to prevent the banality of evil from recurring. In this paper, we explore why social and environmental justice needs to be served by systemic ethics (McIntyreMills, 2014) supported by systemic intervention. This requires agency to ensure that individual needs and collective responsibly are balanced. The case is made that liberalism has progressed too far in undermining collective responsibility. The result is a form of state control and governance that is more closely linked with the market than with civil society. Minzberg (2015) stresses that radical renewal requires rebalancing society, I would argue that power politics need to be addressed and that Foucault’s approach to critical theory is vital. But one ingredient is missing and that is the ability to draw the line based on critical systemic intervention. The critical heuristics approach is vital to address the banality of evil which now passes as commonplace governance. Today the markets are open but conceptual and spatial (geographical) borders are closed. This is the paradox that goes UN named in the name of ‘good governance and border protection’. In situations where children can be wrested from the arms of their parents in the name of a neo-liberal economy is problematic.

Transformative Research Transformative research is both ‘personal and societal’ (Mertens, 2017). The argument set out in this paper is based on a critical heuristics approach that strives to make policy decisions based on enhancing critical agency. It upholds the axiom of the rights of sentient beings as a priori and normative. Transformative research begins with an assumption that social and environmental justice requires upholding the right to a life worth living and to ensure that sentient beings are not commodified and abused. This paper combines the insights detailed by Florini (2003) with a more widely applied architecture of local governance as detailed by UN Local Agenda 21 which requires that socio-cultural, economic and environmental accounting and accountability (triple bottom line) be applied.11 This would enable local residents and 11 The

Paris Agenda (2015)—whilst hailed as a breakthrough for global security—does not go far enough, according to many of the latest estimates (Ricke et al., 2018; IPPC, 2018). Rolling back adherence to this international agenda is worrying and is evident in the way that food, energy and water security are seen as issues that can be addressed through nation states, rather than as post national coalitions working in share biospheres. The political potential of scaling up the Aarhus Convention (1998) which requires that all members of the EU have access to information and the right to speak out on issues that have a bearing on the environment be heard, has been discussed (Florini, 2003) and extended in ‘Planetary

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members of a wider post national region to have a say in matters that impact on social and environmental justice. Food security requires thinking about bio politics. Hannah Arendt stresses that critical thought is core to upholding justice. This is not the same as a post humanist approach, because it assumes the individual and collective role of responsible human beings. But what is missing in Arendt’s work is an understanding of our ecological interconnectedness. This comes through drawing on the work of Donna Haraway (1991, 1992, 2010) who understands that ‘we are the boundaries’ and that all knowledge is situated. To address the ethical risks associated with partial knowledge we need to think about our thinking and we need to take action as ecological citizens (Shiva, 2012a, b). Market capitalism has played out through the role of trade, supported by the creation of state apparatus that evolved in tandem with the expanding market system and the risks that it poses for living systems. The will to know and the will to power, paradoxically underpin the market incentive. The ‘freedoms’ to control people, other animals and nature have a price for living systems of which we are a strand. Neoliberalism has delivered freedom within democracies for some citizens, namely the elite with power and capital as well as the fully employed who have some job security. For non-citizens, those too young to vote and the 99% who do not have the freedoms enjoyed by the elites, the notion of rights and responsibilities needs to be unpacked (Stiglitz, 2011). The right to make decisions that are in the interests of the minority and at the expense of the majority needs to be explored. Voting in a democratically elected government requires ensuring that the right to a life worth living is secured within the state and its region. The notion that decisions about carbon emissions is one that a single nationally elected government can make decisions that impact the life chances of all living systems needs to be addressed. Supporting lower carbon emissions as required for human security necessitates working across national boundaries and with the support of the public, private and civil society sectors. Researchers need to consider the social, economic and environmental aspects of their proposed area of concern and to consider to what extent different stakeholders have different ideas about what constitutes good governance. At this point, I introduce the importance of ensuring that areas of concern are not gender blind or blind to ageism, or racism or a range of disabilities, for example. The application of simple sets of questions to enable exploring the intersectional challenges (Crenshaw, 1991) facing women and children would be a first step to designing pathways to wellbeing with families in Limpopo, South Africa, for example. The immigrant in a new environment is regarded with antipathy. Without support the isolated mother is more likely to give up her child and to view the child (if sickly or ill as a liability) (Cimric, 2010). This sort of behaviour is seen in populations that are reduced to unliveable conditions. Passport’ (McIntyre-Mills, 2017a) as a critical heuristic step toward a new form of governance and democracy based on discussing ways in which already existing policy and small pilots of alternative forms of engagement can be extended and applied.

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Conclusion: Rescuing the Enlightenment from Itself Through Recognition of Our Interconnectedness and Human Agency The greater the level of participation the greater the sense of connection to others (Christakis, 2011) and to the area of concern (see McIntyre-Mills, 2000, 2003, 2004, 2008, 2010; McIntyre-Mills et al., 2008, 2014; McIntyre-Mills & De Vries, 2011, 2012; Christakis & Fowler, 2009; McIntyre-Mills & Romm, 2019, McIntyreMills et al., 2019). ‘Rescuing the enlightenment from itself’ (McIntyre-Mills, 2006), discussed the potential for critical thinking to enable people to think through their rights and responsibilities. Critical reflection is the only thing that will enable people to avoid stepping back from their responsibilities to engage actively as citizens (not only of nation states, but as citizens of the world) who care about what is going on across the border. In the ‘Banality of Evil’, Hannah Arendt stresses that this is the only faculty that will prevent other occurrences of collective evil—that resulted in death camps where prisoners were processed under factory like conditions in Nazi Germany. The issue of responsibility was collectively shared and the right to deny responsibly, because of following orders was set aside as an unacceptable conclusion in the summing up by Hannah Arendt at Eichmann’s Trial. She blamed Eichmann but also the system that enabled him to operate with impunity. But she did not leave it as a reified system, she talked about the collective responsibility of the entire German nation. In ‘Frontiers of justice’ (Nussbaum, 2006) outlines these points, but does not develop an argument to support the safe passage of all living systems from one generation of stewards to the next. So, this paper strives to extend her argument. Safe passage for human and other animals in the wake of disasters (social and natural) will become increasingly commonplace and can be regarded as the so-called ‘new normal’. To rescue enlightenment from itself, we need to realize that there are many ways of knowing, but to protect food security ethical decision making is essential. Nussbaum’s capability approach is core to human agency for food security along with respect and stewardship of voiceless sentient beings. Her work dovetails quite well with Donaldson and Kymlicka (2011) in Zoopolis. Protecting habitat for human animals and other living systems is the logical next step to prevent existential risks to all. Safe passage across habitats in post national regions flows from this argument on new forms of architecture for governance. Ways of knowing as listed by Churchman such as logic, empiricism, idealism, dialectic and pragmatism need to be extended to include other ways of knowing by drawing on nature. Wadsworth (2010: xxvii) poses the question as to: what would a more life-enhancing system of research and evaluation look like? Although still dimly perceived by many, some of it ironically reflects some very ancient wisdom, now converging with some breath-taking new knowledge from physics, biology,

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mathematics, engineering, psychology and sociology in a transdisciplinary picture that may promise to give not just hitherto elites but all of us a whole new way of thinking about ‘how we can be with each other’ and our worlds…. (xxvii)

As such systemic ethics needs to be applied to all living systems based on the a priori right to a life worth living and the a posteriori responsibility to consider the consequences of their actions for other living systems as stewards. This is linked with human rights and has been stressed by deep ecologists, eco systemic thinkers such as Haraway (1992), Shiva (2012a, b) and Wadsworth (2011) and critical thinkers such as West Churchman (Churchman, 1982).

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McIntyre-Mills, J., Bausch, K., Christakis, A., & de Vries, D. (2008). How can we break the mould: Democracy, semiotics and regional governance beyond the nation state? Systems Research and Behavioural Science, 25(2), 305–322. McIntyre-Mills, J., & De Vries, D. (2011). Identity, democracy and sustainability: Facing up to convergent social, economic and environmental challenges. Litchfield Park: Emergent Publications. McIntyre-Mills, J., & de Vries, D. (2012). Transformation from Wall Street to Well- being. Systems Research and Behavioural Science. First published online: 10 October 2012. https://doi.org/10. 1002/sres.2133. McIntyre-Mills, J., De Vries, & Binchai, N. (2014). Transformation from Wall Street to wellbeing. New York: Springer. McIntyre-Mills, J., & Romm, N. (2019). Mixed methods and cross disciplinary research: Towards cultivating eco-systemic living. Cham: Springer. McIntyre-Mills, J. J., & Romm, N. R. A. (Eds.). (2018). Mixed methods and cross-disciplinary research: Towards cultivating ecosystemic living. Cham, Switzerland: Springer. https://doi.org/ 10.1007/978-3-319-58014-2. McIntyre-Mills, J., Romm, N., & Corcoran-Nantes, Y. (Eds.). (2017). Balancing individualism and collectivism: Supporting social and environmental justice. Cham, Switzerland: Springer. McIntyre-Mills, J., Romm, N. R. A., & Corcoran Nantes, Y. (Eds.) (2018). Democracy and governance for resourcing the commons: Theory and practice on rural-urban balance. Cham: Springer. McIntyre-Mills, J., Romm, N. R. A., & Corcoran Nantes, Y. (Eds.). (2019). Democracy and governance for resourcing the commons: Theory and practice on rural-urban balance. Cham: Springer. McIntyre-Mills, J., & Van Gigch, J. P. (2006). Wisdom, knowledge and management. London: Springer. McIntyre-Mills, J., & Wirawan, R. (2017). Chapter 4: Governing the Anthropocene: Through balancing individualism and collectivism as a way to manage our ecological footprint. In J. McIntyre-Mills, N. Romm, & Y. Corcoran-Nantes (Eds.), Balancing individualism and collectivism: Social and environmental justice. New York: Springer. McIntyre-Mills, J., Wirawan, R., Laksmono, B. S., Widianingsih, I., & Hardeani Sari, H. (2017). Pathways to wellbeing—Low carbon challenge to live virtuously and well. In J. McIntyre-Mills, N. Romm, & Y. Corcoran-Nantes (Eds.), Balancing individualism and collectivism: Social and environmental justice. New York: Springer. Miller, T. (2010). Michel Foucault, the birth of bio politics: Lectures at the College de France, 1978–79. International Journal of Cultural Policy, 16(1), 56–57. Minzberg, H. (2015). Rebalancing society: Radical renewal beyond left, right, and center. Oakland: Berrett-Koehler Publishers, Inc. Naess, A. & Haukeland, P. I. (2002). Life’s philosophy: Reason and feeling in a deeper world (R. Huntford, Ed.). Athens, GA: University of Georgia Press. Translated. Nuccitelli, D. (2018). New study finds incredibly high carbon pollution costs—Especially for the US and India: As a wealthy, warm country, the US would benefit from implementing a carbon tax to slow global warming. The Guardian. https://www.theguardian.com/environment/climateconsensus-97-per-cent/2018/oct/01/new-study-finds-incredibly-high-carbon-pollution-costs-esp ecially-for-the-us-and-india. Nussbaum, M. (2006). Frontiers of justice. London: Harvard University Press. Nussbaum, M. (2011). Creating capabilities: The human development approach. Cambridge: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press. Ostrom, E. (2008). Design principles of robust property-rights institutions: What have we learned? Elinor Ostrom Workshop in Political Theory and Policy Analysis, Indiana University Center for the Study of Institutional Diversity Arizona State University. http://www.indiana.edu/~workshop. Pauli, G. (2010). The blue economy: Report to the Club of Rome. Paradigm Publications.

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Pert, C. (1999). The molecules of emotion: Why you feel the way you feel. New York: Simon and Schuster. Polanyi, M. (1966). The tacit dimension. Chicago: Chicago University Press. Foreword by Amartya Sen, 2009. Polanyi, M. (1968). The Great transformation: The political and economic origins of our time. New York: Renehart and Co. Raikhel, E. (2010). Multispecies ethnography. Cultural Anthropology, Vol. 15. Somatosphere. http:// somatosphere.net/2010/10/. Rayner, A. (2017a). Natural inclusion. In J. J. McIntyre-Mills, N. Romm, & Y. Corcoran-Nantes (Eds.), Balancing individualism and collectivism: Social and environmental justice (pp. 461–470). London: Springer. Rayner, A. (2017b). https://en.wikiversity.org/wiki/Natural_Inclusion. Reynolds, M. (2008). Response to paper ‘Systems Thinking’ by D. Cabrera et al.: Systems thinking from a critical systems perspective. Journal of Evaluation and Program Planning, 31(3), 323–325. Ricke, K., Drouet, L., Caldeira, K., & Tavoni, M. (2018). Country-level social cost of carbon Nature Climate Change. www.nature.com/natureclimatechange. Published: 24 September 2018. https:// www.nature.com/articles/s41558-018-0282-y. Romm, N. R. A. (2017). Foregrounding critical systemic and Indigenous ways of collective knowing toward (re)directing the Anthropocene. In J. J. McIntyre-Mills, Y. Corcoran-Nantes, & N. R. A. Romm (Eds.), Balancing individualism and collectivism: Social and environmental justice (pp. 1–17). New York, NY: Springer. Romm, N. R. A. (2018). Responsible research practice. Revisiting Transformative Paradigm in Social Research. Cham: Springer. Romm, N. R. A. (2019). Sustainable development towards an inclusive wellbeing: Some possibilities emanating from South Africa. In Proceedings of international conference (Hanoi Forum, 2018): Towards sustainable development (pp. 157–168). Hanoi: National University of Vietnam. Scott, J. (1998). Seeing like a state. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. Sen, A. (2005). Human rights and capabilities. Journal of Human Development, 6(2), 151–166. Senge, P. M. (2006). The fifth discipline: The art and practice of the learning organization. New York: Random House. Shiva, V. (1989). Staying alive: Women, ecology and survival in India. London: Zed Books. Shiva, V. (2002). Water wars: Privatization, pollution and profit. London: Pluto Press. Shiva, V. (2011). Earth democracy. Portland University. www.youtube.com/watch?v=UOfM7Q D7-kk/. Shiva, V. (2012a). Monocultures of the mind. Penang: Third World Network. Shiva, V. (2012b). Making peace with the earth. Winnipeg: Fernwood Publishing. Singer, P. (2002). One world: The ethics of globalization. Yale University Press. Stiglitz, J. J. (2011). Of the 1%, by the 1%, for the 1%. https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2011/05/ top-one-percent-201105#. Stiglitz, J., Sen, A., & Fitoussi, J. P. (2010). Mis-measuring our lives: Why the GDP doesn’t add up. New York: The New Press. Stokols, D. (2018). Social ecology in the digital age: Solving complex problems in a globalized world. London: Academic Press. Ulrich, W., & Reynolds, M. (2010). Critical systems heuristics. In M. Reynolds & S. Holwell (Eds.), Systems approaches to managing change: A practical guide (pp. 242–292). London: Springer. UN. (2007). Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. http://www.un.org/esa/socdev/unp fii/documents/DRIPS_en.pdf. United Nations. (2014). World Urbanisation Prospects: The 2014 Revision. https://esa.un.org/unpd/ wup/publications/files/wup2014-highlights.Pdf. United Nations Declaration of the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. (2007). https://www.humanrights. gov.au/publications/un-declaration-rights-indigenous-peoples-1. United Nations Human Development Index. (2003). A compact among nations to end poverty. New York: UNDP, Oxford University Press.

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United Nations Paris Climate Change. (2015). Conference of the parties twenty-first session Paris. 30 November to 11 December 2015. https://unfccc.int/resource/docs/2015/cop21/eng/l09r01.pdf. United Nations Research Institute for Sustainable Dev. (2017). Beyond the nation state how can regional social policy contribute to achieving the sustainable development goals? www.unrisd. org/ib5. United Nations Sustainable Development Goals. (2017). https://www.un.org/development/desa/pub lications/sdg-report-2017.html. Wadsworth, Y. (2010). Building in research and evaluation: Human inquiry for living systems. Sydney: Allen and Unwin. Watson, I., Shelley, J and Tuysuz (2018, December 17). Vanuatu threatens to sue biggest carbon energy producers. CNNUpdated 1807 GMT (0207 HKT). https://edition.cnn.com/2018/12/17/ world/vanuatu-cop-climate-change-intl/index.html. Wenger, E., White, N., & Smith, J. (2009). Digital habitats: Stewarding technology for communities. CP Square: Portland. Whitehead, J. (2018). Living theory research as a way of life. Brown Dog books. Wirawan, R., & McIntyre-Mills, J. (2019). Innovation for social and environmental justice; a way forward? In McIntyre-Mills, J, Romm, Corcoran Nantes, Y. 2019 Democracy and governance for resourcing the commons: Theory and practice on rural-urban balance. Cham: Springer. Yap, M., & Yu, E. (2016). Operationalising the capability approach: Developing culturally relevant indicators of indigenous wellbeing. Oxford Development Studies, 44(3), 315–331. Yunus, M. (2017). A world of three zeros: The new economics of zero poverty, zero unemployment, and zero net carbon emissions. New York: Hachette.

Janet J. McIntyre-Mills is Honorary Professor in the College of Education at University of South Africa, Tshwane, South Africa; Visiting Research Fellow at Adelaide University in the College of Professions Main North Terrace; and Adjunct Associate Professor in College of Business Government and Law at Flinders University, Sturt Campus, Adelaide. A. N. Christakis founder of Institute for 21st Century Agoras, Heraklion, Crete, Greece.

Chapter 15

Social Engagement to Protect Multispecies Habitat: Implications for Re-Generation and Food Security Janet J. McIntyre-Mills, R. Wirawan, I. Widianingsih, and R. Riswanda

Abstract This paper aims to explore policy possibilities for strengthening institutional capacity to address the UN 2030 Sustainable Development Agenda through ecological engagement based on a “one village, many enterprises approach” to development to reduce rural poverty, outmigration and better rural-urban balance. The paper outlines the way in which we can live differently by understanding that production, consumption, re-production/re-generation cycle that follows a natural ecological approach, rather than the current approach to extracting profit at the expense of future generations. Production and reproduction need to be conducted in ways that do not exploit people and the environment. Exchange practices need to ensure that the interests of the few are not expended at the expense of the many. The case is made for securing food chains to the advantage of the farmers through governance based on a priori norms and a posteriori measures of wellbeing stocks (in the sense used by Joseph Stiglitz) defined as a raft of socio-cultural, economic and environmental indicators. It advocates transformative-directed research in Indonesia and South Africa (which share high rates of urbanization) through a community of practice approach. Keywords Rights · Relationships · Multispecies habitat · Re-generation An earlier version of the Plenary Paper: ‘Social engagement to protect multispecies habitat: implications for food security’ was presented at the Food Security Conference, Universitas Sultan Ageng Tirtayasa, Indonesia, 8th–9th September, 2019. The chapter has been extended on the basis of collaborative research supported by the Universitas Padjadjaran and Universitas Sultan Ageng Tirtayasa. J. J. McIntyre-Mills (B) University of South Africa in the College of Education, Tshwane, South Africa e-mail: [email protected]; janet.mcIntyre@flinders.edu.au Adelaide University, College of Professions Main North Terrace, Adelaide, Australia College of Business, Government and Law, Flinders University, Sturt, SA, Australia R. Wirawan · I. Widianingsih Universitas Padjadjaran, Bandung, Indonesia R. Riswanda Universitas Sultan Ageng Tirtayasa, Kota Serang, Indonesia © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2021 J. J. McIntyre-Mills and Y. Corcoran-Nantes (eds.), From Polarisation to Multispecies Relationships, Contemporary Systems Thinking, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-33-6884-2_15

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Introduction: Area of Concern and Rationale Urbanization is has increased beyond expectations according to a recent UN report on urbanization (2014). By 2050 the majority of the world’s population will be located in Asia (52%) and Africa (21%), according to the UN (2014: 11). The Asian and African demographic growth provides both a dividend and a liability. The potential for investing in social and environmental justice through job creation that protects people and the environment is the focus for the paper.1 Unemployment in cities and social exclusion (as highlighted by the Sendai Risk Platform) will pose a human security risk. Furthermore, two thirds of the under nourished people worldwide live in sub-Sahara Africa and Southern Asia, according to the United Nations and according to the same source, Asian and African Agricultural workers comprise the poorest workers worldwide.2 The world’s poorest workers are involved in agriculture, it is hardly surprising that poverty (linked with climate change) is driving people into the cities. In East Africa for example farmers are plagued by locusts that have bred rapidly as a result of changing climatic conditions, according to Curtis and Kasire (2020: 9)3 who cite Abubakr Salih Babiker. “They stress that even a small swarm can consume enough food for 35,000 people in a single day”. World hunger is increasing at an alarming rate according to the Report by the Secretary-General.4 This is not yet the case in some parts of West Java where agricultural re-generation is a focus amongst young people who are making a success of farming through forming co-operatives, giving farming a good name as a vocation that can provide a good living. They make farming appear ‘cool’ by wearing uniforms and supporting one another in successful farming ventures. Another successful example 1 According

to the United Nations World Urbanization Prospects (2014) in 2014, to cite and paraphrase this report: “54% of the world population was urban and by 2050, 66% of the world’s population is projected to be urban if current trends continue”. Better urban governance needs to ensure that cities remain liveable and sustainable during and after the development process. Another central concern that urban governance schemes need to consider is the balancing of resources to meet both state and individual needs and goals. Land usage, either for agricultural production or for urban development, strategies and policies needs to be well informed to ensure not only optimal production is achieved but also elements of justice and equity prevail for a balanced development. The UN estimates that 71% will be in cities by 2030 and 80% in urban areas by 2050—if current rates are maintained (UN Report on Urbanisation, 2014, Rand Daily Mail, 26 May, 2015). 2 https://www.un.org/sustainabledevelopment/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/E_Infographic_02.pdf. 3 Curtis, B. and Kasira, J. 2020 Swarms of locusts plague East African economy. The Australian, 27 January, page 9. 4 https://sustainabledevelopment.un.org/sdg2. Report of the Secretary-General, Special edition: progress towards the Sustainable Development Goals. “An estimated 821 million people—approximately 1 in 9 people in the world—were undernourished in 2017, up from 784 million in 2015. This represents a worrying rise in world hunger for a third consecutive year after a prolonged decline. Africa remains the continent with the highest prevalence of undernourishment, affecting one fifth of its population (more than 256 million people). Consistent with the continued growth in undernourishment, 770 million people faced severe food insecurity in 2017…”.

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is the way that the entire community of Alamendah has worked together to support successful enterprises in line with Jokowi’s notion of “One Village, One Enterprise Approach” (2014) decreed by the President of Indonesia, Jokowi. The successful intergenerational transfer of knowledge on bee farming in Cibeber from father to son spanning more than four generations. Through creating a community of practice network at a post-national level, we have considered the application of the “one village one enterprise” notion in the South African context to help share local wisdom to support local capacity building. The UN 2030 Agenda5 is: the new global framework to help eradicate poverty and achieve sustainable development by 2030. It includes an ambitious set of 17 Sustainable Development Goals…. The 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development sets out the global framework to eradicate poverty and achieve sustainable development by 2030.

In order to have a hope of achieving the UN Sustainable Development Goals (2030) this paper proposes a new approach to post national governance is needed to focus on food, energy and water security and to protect the forests and rivers that provide water security. Social, economic and environmental challenges are convergent. The hypothesis is that highly urbanized regions face food and water insecurity and are at risk of becoming food deserts unless everyday strategies are explored with service users and providers to find better pathways to resilience and wellbeing for the most vulnerable members of the population. What potential pathways can promote opportunities and redress the food and water insecurity associated with a growing population of vulnerable people in highly urbanized regions and vulnerable regional areas where informal housing areas predominate? What can Australia contribute with Partner Organisations to mitigate risk and maximise plausible pathways to resilience and wellbeing?

The Potential of Participatory Democracy and Governance to Support Habitat The paper summarises the potential of small case studies and pilots on alternative ways of doing, being and interacting. Together they inform the conceptualization of a new architectures for democracy and better governance through addressing the issue of a priori norms and a posteriori measures for transformation towards re-generative living and preventing displacement of people, plants, animals.6 Profit is nothing less than energy extracted at the expense of people and the planet. Alternative forms of 5 http://europa.eu/rapid/press-release_MEMO-15-5709_en.htm. 6 More

people are displaced today than during the Second World War. More animals and plants have been displaced than ever. According to the previous United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, Guterres (UNHCR, 2014), for the first time since the Second World War, the global figure for displaced persons has now passed 50 million and, by 2050, this figure could be as high as 150 million (Rusbridger, 2015, 13).

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organisation are possible to support ‘wellbeing stocks’ to cite Joseph Stiglitz on the nature of the problem. The rate at which world hunger is increasing has been highlighted in the Report by the Secretary- General.7 Urbanization has increased beyond expectations according to a recent UN report on urbanization and (2014) and that by 2050 the majority of the world’s population will be in Asia and Africa. In these latter contexts unemployment in cities and social exclusion (as highlighted by the Sendai Risk Platform) will pose a human security risk. ● Firstly, this chapter refers to two published case studies in Manyeledi South Africa, North West Province (McIntyre-Mill, Corcoran et al., 2019, McIntyreMills, Romm et al., 2019) and Alamendah Indonesia (West Java, McIntyre-Mills, Corcoran et al., 2019) to enable local leadership and ownership of the project through setting up support networks. Manyeledi is an arid zone on the border of Botswana where goat farming has been extended by adding value to goats’ milk, turning it into cheese and developing some hardy herbs and vegetables that have enabled these resilient farmers to be less reliant on government social payments. Water and food insecurity is an issue in many parts of South Africa as is the need to address the rising challenge to provide education, training and employment. Currently, tertiary level education in South Africa is not meeting their demands. The opportunity to extend education and training in regional areas Future scenarios need to consider the following factors: Displacement of people and animals, Unsustainable way of life—extraction of profit to the detriment of people and the planet, Increased levels of competition and risk faced by the most vulnerable, Growing populations, Growing gap between rich and poor, Increased urbanisation increased pollution and waste. Neglect of food, energy and water. Competition for resources in an increasingly complex global economy and Food Deserts. 7 https://sustainabledevelopment.un.org/sdg2. Report of the Secretary-General, Special edition: progress towards the Sustainable Development Goals “An estimated 821 million people—approximately 1 in 9 people in the world—were undernourished in 2017, up from 784 million in 2015. This represents a worrying rise in world hunger for a third consecutive year after a prolonged decline. Africa remains the continent with the highest prevalence of undernourishment, affecting one fifth of its population (more than 256 million people). Consistent with the continued growth in undernourishment, 770 million people faced severe food insecurity in 2017. Stunting has been decreasing in nearly every region since 2000. Still, more than 1 in 5 children under 5 years of age (149 million) were stunted in 2018. Globally, 49 million children under 5 were affected by wasting and another 40 million were overweight in 2018. Strengthening the resilience and adaptive capacity of small-scale and family farmers, whose productivity is systematically lower than all other food producers, is critical to reversing the trend of the rise in hunger. The share of small-scale food producers in terms of all food producers in countries in Africa, Asia and Latin America ranges from 40 to 85%, compared with fewer than 10% in Europe. Government spending on agriculture compared to agriculture’s contribution to the total economy has declined by 37%; the ratio fell from 0.42 in 2001 to 0.26 worldwide in 2017. In addition, aid to agriculture in developing countries fell from nearly 25% of all donors’ sector-allocable aid in the mid-1980s to only 5% in 2017, representing a decrease of $12.6 billion. A continuous downward trend has been observed in export subsidy outlays reported to the World Trade Organization (WTO). The total outlays fell from close to $500 million in 2010 to around $120 million in 2016. This reduction in export subsidies by Governments is leading to lower distortions in agricultural markets.”

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is thus worth pursuing in more depth. Whereas Manyeledi is in an arid zone and Alamendah has previously had high rainfall, both areas are becoming more affected by climate change. In both instances social engagement in setting up support networks with local schools and universities, namely University of South Africa and Universitas Padjadjaran has enabled rural job creation. Both universities emphasise community outreach in their region. The paper refers to published case studies.8 ● Secondly, the chapter proposes a new form of governance to support food security based on post national regional collaboration to support the global commons (see McIntyre-Mills, Corcoran et al., 2019, McIntyre-Mills, Romm et al., 2019). A multisite symposium held in 2018 (McIntyre-Mills Corcoran et al., 2019, McIntyre-Mills, Romm et al., 2019) in Adelaide, South Australia and Bandung, West Java explored the challenge of increased urbanization and movement towards cities and the implications it has for the life chances of unemployed women who become increasingly vulnerable to trafficking. In Indonesia, the rate of urbanization is faster than other Asian countries: According to the World Bank: “Indonesia is undergoing a historic transformation from a rural to an urban economy. The country’s cities are growing faster than in other Asian countries at a rate of 4.1% per year. By 2025—in less than 10 years—Indonesia can expect to have 68% of its population living in cities9 ”. In Indonesia, Java the one village, many enterprises approach has been successfully applied in a regional area of Bandung with Vocational Education and Training support from the Universitas Padjadjaran. Interest in marketing ecologically sustainable products has also been fostered in Kediri, East Java by the second author who is part of this network (Wirawan & McIntyre, 2019) which explores a pilot for village-based computing. The potential for the prototype pathways to wellbeing software to be developed with blockchain could help manage the food chain and ensure decentralized and distributed control of legers (Kshetri, 2018). ● Thirdly, the paper makes the case that rapid urbanisation and the decline of regional areas poses a human security challenge. In two Springer volumes an alternative approach is detailed.10 Hopeful case studies of ways to do things differently 8 The paper reflects on the content of two volumes, namely: Mixed Methods and Cross Disciplinary

Research: Towards Cultivating Ecosystemic Living. Springer, New York. Democracy and Governance for Resourcing the Commons: Theory and Practice on Rural-Urban Balance. Springer, New York. Paper in the International Journal of Transformative Research, titled ‘Efforts to inspire transformative research with farmers in a small town in the North West Province of South Africa. 6, 1:10–19. 9 http://www.worldbank.org/en/news/feature/2016/06/14/indonesia-urban-story. 10 The particular field visits in South Africa and Indonesia (which informs this paper—namely, field visits in December 2017, July 2018 and October 2019) followed on from the multi-site mixed methods and cross-cultural research symposium held in Australia (in line with Australia’s Foreign Policy, 2017) and West Java, which underlined the importance of collaborative research as equal partners in the so-called “One Village, One Enterprise Approach” (2014) decreed by the President of Indonesia, Jokowi. Through creating a community of practice network at a post-national level, this paper considers the potential of the application of the “one village one enterprise” notion supported by governance at a post national level to protect the global commons on which food

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are detailed on the volumes and some further local examples are suggested. This paper aims to explore policy possibilities for strengthening institutional capacity to address the UN 2030 Sustainable Development Agenda through the following: Ecological engagement based on a “one village, many enterprises approach” to development to reduce rural poverty and rural to urban migration and to support better rural-urban balance by securing the food chains to the advantage of the farmers. Supporting food security through governance based on a priori norms and a posteriori measures. Advocating advocate for policy changes and Transformative-directed research in Indonesia and South Africa (which share the high rates of urbanization) through a community of practice approach. The particular field visits in South Africa and Indonesia (which informs this paper— namely, field visits in December 2017, July 2018 and October 2019) followed on from the multi-site mixed methods and cross-cultural research symposium held in Australia (in line with Australia’s Foreign Policy, 2017) and West Java, which underlined the importance of collaborative research as equal partners in the socalled “One Village, One Enterprise Approach” (2014) decreed by the President of Indonesia, Jokowi.11

and water security rests. The paper proposes an alternative cyclical economy based on eco-villages supporting urban hubs to re-generate rural-urban balance based on eco-facturing, to use Gunter Pauli’s concept. Africa and Asia are two of the fastest urbanising areas globally. The development of eco-villages supporting the ‘one village many enterprises’ concept currently applied in Indonesia relies on responsive design. The development of eco-facturing using local products such as cassava for bioplastics, bamboo for biochar and fair trade, free range Luwak coffee are discussed as three examples of eco-facturing that are currently being developed in Indonesia. The potential for ecofacturing to be applied in Southern Africa and Ghana is currently being explored using bamboo and cassava in appropriate areas and exploring a suitable cash crop. Coffee is one option, but many others such as red bush tea, aloes as well as a host of local herbs could be explored with Indigenous holders of wisdom. Some core design principles are suggested outlined by Christakis and members of Global Agoras community of practice and affiliates. Salience, trust and engagement to protect living systems and the people who are affected need to be involved in the decision-making process. These principles are discussed in the paper together with the importance of ‘being the change’ through expanding pragmatism to consider the social, economic and environmental implications of choices. Systemic Ethical decisions honour ‘freedom and diversity’ to the extent that freedom and diversity are not undermined by power imbalances. 11 A multi-site, cross cultural Mixed Methods Symposium was held in Adelaide and Bandung to explore the potential for vocational training, integrated development and ways to enhance the capabilities of institutions to develop eco-facturing by making use of environmental resources in ways that re-generate people and places. Three crops were explored, namely cassava for bioplastics, bamboo for biochar and building and ethical luwak coffee and fair-trade Indonesian coffee. The Alamendah case study (McIntyre-Mills, Corcoran et al., 2019) demonstrates low rates of out migration as a result of community engagement in sustainable living and re-generative activities. The potential for women to be further empowered through enhancing their representation and accountability is explored. Indonesia has a policy that fosters rural development. It is called the ‘Jokowi one village one entrepreneurial project’ to support poverty reduction. We explored examples of sustainability and then considered whether it could inform vocational education and training in South Africa. Collaboration followed on from the multi-site mixed methods symposium held in Australia (in line with Australia’s Foreign Policy, 2017) and West Java which underlined the importance of

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● Fourthly, through creating a community of practice network at a post-national level, this paper considers the potential of the application of the “one village one enterprise” notion supported by governance at a post national level to protect the global commons on which food and water security rests. ● Finally, the paper makes the case for monitoring from below, because rapid urbanisation and the impact on human security pose a challenge for the region as stressed by Glasser and Barnes (2018). The global commons and the process of supporting the global commons (Bollier, 2011) can be defined as a process for enabling people to protect living systems of which they are a strand. Thus, the research contributes to a new area: namely the commons as a process and a sense of connection to living systems, rather than as a resource ‘held in common’, to cite Bollier (2011)12 : “The commons is not a resource. It is a resource plus a defined community and the protocols, values and norms devised by the community to manage its resources…. There is no commons without community—the social practices and norms for managing a resource for collective benefit”. The Sustainable Development goals need to address the systemic interconnection across providing infrastructure development, the creation of decent work and the need to protect the fabric of life that depends on protecting multispecies habitats. Ironically the most important job, namely farming, is one of the lowest status and worst paid. The case that is developed in this paper for addressing both a priori norms as well as a posteriori measures to monitor social and environmental indicators for each region. In order to have a hope of achieving the UN Sustainable Development Goals (2030) a new approach to post national governance is needed to focus on food, energy and water security.

collaborative research as equal partners in the so-called ‘One Village, One Enterprise Approach’ (2014) decreed by the President of Indonesia, Jokowi. Through creating a community of practice network at a post-national level, we have considered the application of the ‘one village one enterprise’ notion in the South African context and we are learning from the experience in Indonesia. A colleague from South Africa attended the multi-site symposium which was followed up by setting up a community of practice with other colleagues which resulted in our working together in range of ways, namely sharing resources and making suggestions as to how to foster opportunities in regional areas, such as Manyeledi in the North West Province (McIntyre-Mills, Karel et al., 2019). In this region, unemployment for young people in the 15–34 age group is one of the highest and it resulted in civil unrest in 2018 which required Cyril Ramaphosa to return from a visit in the UK, to address these concerns. The aim of the research is to encourage the notion that we can earn while we learn and grow a future together and to explore relationships with service users to build the capacity of the providers and to provide a better understanding of what works, why and how with the hope that it will help to inform policy decisions. 12 07/15/2011 “I am always trying to figure out how to explain the idea of the commons to newcomers who find it hard to grasp. In preparation for a talk that I gave at the Caux Forum for Human Security, near Montreux, Switzerland, I came up with a fairly short overview, which I have copied below…:http://www.bollier.org/commons-short-and-sweet”.

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Rights, Relationships and Responsibilities to Protect Habitat We are the land. Our history and choices are written in the landscape (prologue to Planetary Passport, McIntyre-Mills, 2017a). The frontiers of justice for food security is the focus for this paper. Indigenous people are all about place…land is our mother. This is not a metaphor. The natural world is in constant dialogue with us, although we do not always listen or respond …”. (Walker, 2013: 206, citing Manulania Meyer)

Previously the social sciences, were merely a study of human relationships. However, today it is a study of human beings’ relations to one another (including sentient beings) and our ability to shape this generation of living systems and the next (McIntyre-Mills, 2017b, 2019; Romm, 2017, 2018b).13

Ecological Citizenship The notion of extending a sense of ‘ecological citizenship’ in Planetary Passport (McIntyre-Mills, 2017a) could foster awareness of the need for democracy to revitalize the balance between the right to consume the planet to extinction and the responsibility to protect the common good. Rights need to be reframed as do responsibilities so that the economy and the market are seen not as an externality but as part of the global commons on which this generation and the next depends. Nations currently refuse to take responsibility for the impact of their emissions on their neighbours—then we need to think about what that means for current forms of governance. If we can accept that climate, change is the result of collective decisions that constitute a normalization of living beyond our limits what does that mean for democracy and governance?

13 Food security requires both a priori norms and a posteriori measures to ensure local, national and post national support to ensure that the fabric of life is protected. Highly urbanised, environmentally affected regions have been selected as so-called ‘canary cases’ into address the projected 2050 scenario when most of the global urban population is expected to be located in Asia (52%) and Africa (21%) (United Nations, 2014: 11). The study areas selected take significance from the predictions made in this UN report. They are also the primary focus of this paper and the recent volumes (McIntyre-Mill, Corcoran et al., 2019, McIntyre-Mills, Romm et al., 2019) on which it draws, because they face substantial environmental change. The social and environment challenges have been exploited by people traffickers in Africa, for example where slavery has become more visible than ever in Libya as desperate people fall into the hands of traffickers. The notion that sentient beings have rights is not even on the horizon in some socio-political contexts.

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Rethinking Human Security and Resilience as Vulnerable Multispecies Relationships The rate of displacement of human beings, animals, plants is likely to rise which makes it vital to develop and pilot alternative forms of democracy, governance, public education and development that protect multispecies habitats. This is the focus of my current research agenda. Thus, the aim of research is to explore taxonomies of rights, relationships and responsibilities across cultures to understand human, plant and animal relationships with a focus on understanding the implications for commodification and consumption. ‘Existential risk’ continues to escalate and the crime of ‘ecocide’ (Higgins, 2017) is not yet recognised as part of international law even though it poses a new form of ‘genocide’. Politically fragmentation and populism have become the new order driven by capitalism, anthropocentrism, speciesism, nationalism and racism. The case is made that liberalism has progressed too far in undermining collective (cosmopolitan) responsibility. The research focuses on (i) strengthening institutional capacity and powers to address the UN 2030 Sustainable Development Agenda by drawing on local wisdom. (ii) extending Vocational Education and Training using a gender mainstreaming approach that foregrounds opportunities for marginalised women and children in remote, areas with few employment opportunities and high levels of poverty. The following 4 goals are the focus for the study, namely: SDG’s 4 (Quality Education), SDG (Women’s empowerment), SDG 8 (Decent work), 10 (Reduced inequalities), SDG 11 (Sustainable communities & 1 SDG 7 (Partnering for the goals) will be addressed. These goals have been identified as applying to the Disability sector and strives to ‘protect all inhabitants of a territory’ as proposed by Gauger et al. (2013) to prevent ‘ecocide’, Nussbaum’s 10 Capabilities (2011) to support rights to a life worth living and Donaldson and Kymlicka’s (2011) notion of diverse habitats for domestic, liminal and wild life. Large city populations become unstable when living costs are unaffordable. It is not surprising that the so-called Arab Spring started as a result of rising food costs. In Solo, Indonesia riots occurred when living costs and cooking oil become too expensive for the small street traders to survive. The demographic dividend namely high population growth and the rising number of young people could become the trigger for political unrest in rapidly urbanising cities in both Africa and Indonesia where the rising levels of unemployment and poverty result in the vulnerability of women and children to crime and trafficking. The need to link positive vocational training with positive digital engagement through social, economic and environmental pathways to wellbeing is very important for human security. Training in ‘joining up the social, economic and environmental dots’ could be facilitated by the pathways to wellbeing software. As Donna Haraway stresses, ‘we are the boundaries’ and we can reframe the boundaries by changing hearts, minds and values. The socio-economic system of exploitation needs to be stopped before it is too late. The first step is the need to

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de-entre taken for granted views on the world. My background is both sociology and social anthropology. The latter field was responsible in the past for curating the artefacts of ‘others’ as if they were collectable commodities. But worse the ‘specimens’ were often slaughtered to enable shipping and display in museums. The colonized people were seen as sources of labour and profit and in need of conversion by missionaries. Human cultures were regarded as objects of study. More people, animals and plants are being displaced than ever before along with the habitats on which they depend. The research focuses on (i) strengthening institutional capacity and powers to address the UN 2030 Sustainable Development Agenda by drawing on local wisdom to ‘protect all inhabitants of a territory’ as proposed by Gauger et al. (2013) to prevent what Polly Higgins called ‘ecocide’ (see the ecocide website and blogs). The aim is to support Nussbaum’s 10 Capabilities (2011) to support rights to a life worth living and Donaldson and Kymlicka’s (2011) notion of protecting diverse habitats. How can regional social policy contribute to achieving the sustainable development goals within and beyond the nation state? The challenge for governing the Anthropocene ethically and wholesomely is one of moving away from disciplinary and functional differentiation, in order to span biological, psychological, social, cultural, spiritual, political, economic and environmental dimensions to support living ethically in ways that redress the worst aspects of modernisation (Berger, 1966; Berger & Luckman, 1974). Indigenous cultures teach us about stewardship and relationships with the land, but these relationships have been oversimplified (Langton, 2012, 2015) or lost in non-Indigenous cultures that tend to caricature the notion of stewardship without understanding the social and environmental justice implications for current and future generations. According to Yeates (2014) regional organisations offer significant opportunities to both reshape policy through working on ways to try out different options. The research aims to address a user centric regionalist policy agenda (UNRSID, 2017) based on a learning network that strengthens institutional capacity to implement the UN 2030 Sustainable Development Agenda. Effective regional mechanisms need to initiate social, economic and environmental pathways with a focus on cross-border challenges.

How Can Regional Social Policy Contribute to Achieving the Sustainable Development Goals Within and Beyond the Nation State? The challenge for governing the Anthropocene ethically and wholesomely is one of moving away from disciplinary and functional differentiation, in order to span biological psychological, social, cultural, spiritual, political, economic and environmental dimensions to support living ethically in ways that redress the worst aspects of modernisation (Berger, 1966; Berger & Luckman, 1974). Indigenous cultures teach

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us about stewardship and relationships,14 but these relationships have been oversimplified (Langton, 2012, 2015) or lost in non-Indigenous cultures that tend to caricature the notion of stewardship without understanding the social and environmental justice implications for current and future generations. According to Yeates (2014) regional organisations offer significant opportunities to both reshape policy through working on ways to try out different options. The research aims to address a user centric regionalist policy agenda (UNRSID, 2017) based on a learning network that strengthens institutional capacity to implement the UN 2030 Sustainable Development Agenda. Effective regional mechanisms need to initiate social, economic and environmental pathways with a focus on cross-border challenges.

The Case for Multilevel Governance to Protect Food Security This section of the paper aims to: ● Address the complex needs of the most vulnerable15 and the interconnections across resilience, food, water and the innovation opportunity for social inclusion, in line with the UN Sustainable Development Goals (2017) and UNDRIP(2007). ● Make the case that critical agency is vital to understand, monitor and evaluate everyday social, economic and environmental strategies that enable sentient functioning (Nussbaum, 2011). The Stop Ecocide Blog has stressed that the Amazon fires constitute ecocide as trees are vital for the health of the planet. and that trees are our lungs: President Emmanuel Macron declared last Friday that “the Amazon is burning and this is an issue that concerns the entire world, because it is a source of biodiversity. We have a real ecocide that is developing everywhere in the Amazon and not only in Brazil”. While the

14 As Major Sumner, a Ngarrindjeri Indigenous elder from the periodically drought-ravaged lower Murray River in South Australia and custodian of the river stresses, we are the land and the land is us. Re-establishing relationships with the land is at the heart of effective cultural ecosystem management (see http://www.mdba.gov.au/what-we-do/working-withothers/aboriginal-communities/ringbalin) and sustainable employment. 15 The gender dynamic within culturally specific gender relations influences the status of, and opportunities for, women in a given community. Women’s political agency is vital. The policy priorities are also in line with the regional policy agenda (UNRISD, 2017) to map effective regional social policy pathways that span a wide range of sectors. In Indonesia the ‘One village, one product’ (OVAP, Morihiko Hiramatsu—Governor of Oita prefecture, 1979; Yogyakarta, 2014) was applied by President Jokowi in 2008–2009. In Alamendah, the learning organisation, community approach has been developed as a step towards empowering women in order to reduce their vulnerability to trafficking, but the process needs to be extended, in order to expand women’s role in the decisionmaking process and to introduce a range of opportunities that support the capabilities of women and the marginalised (McIntyre-Mills et al., 2018).

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circumstances are clearly dire, we have to appreciate that the sheer scale of what is going on means the concept is becoming ever harder to avoid.16

The case is made that international security depends on enhancing the status of agriculture and food production enabling primary, secondary and tertiary level training along with universities to be co-located in regional and rural areas. This will provide twofold opportunities to enhance agency of the poorest people on earth and provide opportunity to enable the agency and literacy of women. The best way to achieve a demographic transition is through enhancing the education of women. Women who are literature and numerate and have a voice beyond the household context need to be empowered to act on food security. One of the ways to achieve this is through education so that people have control over their own lives and their bodies. Setting up digital villages that enable sustainable living so that people can earn while they learn and grow a future together would be a step in the right direction. Reducing the number of births and reducing consumption of energy intensive foods would be a step in the right direction. Foods should be grown, consumed and recycled in ways that minimize the size of our carbon footprint. Researchers from Indonesia and Malaysia reported at the Food Security Conference (September, 2019) that they’re focusing on producing plant based protein from a range of readily available sources such as algae and protecting mangrove areas in Serang so that plant based proteins can be grown amongst the mangroves, thus protecting the coastline from storm surges by advocating for the value of the mangroves for local farmers who wish to engage in new forms of agriculture. An added benefit from this form of eco-facturing is the production of multipurpose food proteins that also help to manage infections by being used as an alternative to treating antibiotic resistant infections. The many uses of mangrove forests thus can be raised as another policy rationale for preventing the clearance of mangroves and forests. Douglas (2019) reports the concerns raised by Macron that the burning of rain forests for grazing constitutes a crime against humanity and the environment and that Brazil is one of the largest meat exporters17 This is neither sustainable nor necessary as a way forward to protect human security: The horrific destruction of the Amazon rainforest under Brazil’s far-right president, Jair Bolsonaro, raises a pressing question for the world community: do the prerogatives of sovereignty entitle a nation to destroy resources within its territorial control, when this destruction has global environmental consequences? The answer delivered by France’s president, Emmanuel Macron, at the G7 summit is an emphatic no. It is time for the international community to build on Macron’s lead and to recognize a right to environmental intervention patterned on the notion of humanitarian intervention.18

16 https://www.stopecocide.earth/blog/bolsonaro-and-ecocide-in-the-amazon-some-questions-ans

wered. 17 https://www.businessinsider.com.au/meat-consumption-linked-to-the-amazon-fires-2019-8?r= US&IR=T. 18 Douglas, L. (2019) Do the Brazil Amazon fires justify environmental interventionism? https:// www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/aug/31/brazil-amazon-fires-justify-environmental-int erventionism.

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A few nation states have recognized ecocide and since the Vietnam War. Arthur Galston and other academics from Harvard campaigned in 1970 for a new bioethics and ending the use of the exfoliant agent orange which they said constituted a war related crime (Yale News, 2008). The Human Rights Consortium at the University of London has focused on ‘ecocide’ (Gauger et al., 2013) as the fifth (as yet, unacknowledged) crime against peace by individuals, organisations or nation states. A few nation states have recognized ecocide since the Vietnam War. Arthur Galston and other scientists from Harvard campaigned in 1970 for a new bioethics and ending the use of the exfoliant agent orange which they said constituted a war related crime (Yale News, 2008). Ecocide National Criminal Codes (2012) have introduced ecocide to include non-war related crimes against the environment and humanity: “In these countries’ penal codes, the crime of Ecocide stands alongside the other four international Crimes Against Peace; Crimes Against Humanity, Genocide, War Crimes and Crimes of Aggression. These four core crimes are set out as international crimes in the Rome Statute.19 To cite this same reference: Vietnam20 defines ecocide as follows: “destroying the natural environment”, whether committed in time of peace or war, constitutes a crime against humanity”21

In Planetary Passport (McIntyre-Mills, 2017a) it is suggested that a way to achieve rapid transformation is through enabling people to understand the importance of supporting a law that could help them to prevent the disruption of water, food and energy security through the introduction of more sustainable approaches through (a) on line engagement and (b) better balance between rural and urban areas. Higgins explains that the national or post national federal level could support the law and pursue it through the International Criminal Court. I suggest (McIntyre-Mills, 2017a, b) that the ICC could also support change through scaling up the Aarhus Convention (1998, see McIntyre-Mills, 2014: 21) and that this could remedy the way in which the nationalist social contract is currently framed by developing a planetary passport for ecological citizens who work together at multiple levels to protect their environment. The case is made that international security depends on enhancing the status of agriculture and food production enabling primary, secondary and tertiary level training along with universities to be co-located in regional and rural areas. This 19 https://eradicatingecocide.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/06/Ecocide-National-Criminal-Cod

es1.pdf. 20 What is the problem represented to be? (Bacchi, 2009). Given the current international relations between Russian and USA and its allies there has been little support for the proposed law. But the European Institute of Environmental Security (2013) has supported a citizen’s campaign to enable Europe to support the ecocide law, but the number of signatures has not been reached. The definition of ecocide has been recently reformulated (and extended from its original formulation) as follows by Higgins (2012) as the 5th Crime Against Humanity in her Tedex lecture as follows: “ The extensive damage to or loss of ecosystems of a given territory, whether by human agency or other causes, to such an extent that peaceful enjoyment by the inhabitants of that territory has been severely diminished.” (see Higgins, 2016, 2018, Hague Peace Lecture). 21 https://eradicatingecocide.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/06/Ecocide-National-Criminal-Cod es1.pdf.

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will provide twofold opportunities to enhance agency of the poorest people on earth and provide opportunity to enable the agency and literacy of women. The best way to achieve a demographic transition is through enhancing the education of women. Women who are literate and numerate and have a voice beyond the household context. As Nussbaum (2011) has stressed the population rate decreases when women are given an opportunity to receive an education and to have a voice in public affairs along with respect in their own households. One of the ways to achieve this is through setting up digital engagement that enables people to earn while they learn and grow a future together. International security depends on policy and public administrative changes, such as: ● A Global Covenant (Held, 2004) buttressed by an Ecocide Law (Gauger et al., 2013) law to protect habitat as well. ● Application of the Aarhus Convention in post national regions (not just in Europe where it is currently applied to support freedom of information, social engagement by participants and the responsiveness of government. ● Earth democracy and environmental security (Vandana Shiva, 2011, 2012) that is underpinned by re-generating the social and environmental fabric and then sustaining wellbeing stocks (Stiglitz et al., 2010). ● Building coalitions of the willing is becoming more difficult as nation states compete with one another for resources. More awareness is needed that Kenneth Boulding’s (1966) warning that nation states should co-operate and that we are all part of Spaceship Earth. Thus, this paper develops a discussion on: Boundaries, Perspectives, Relationships and Systems. The case that is developed for addressing both a priori norms as well as a posteriori measures to monitor social and environmental indicators for each region. International security depends on policy and public administrative changes.

Praxis and Process The message is that it is possible to do things differently! “Wellbeing is an idea whose time has come” (New Zealand Dept of Public Health, 2007) and this has implications for policy and practice. Participation helps to match policy with practice. In 2019 Jacinda Ardern has followed through on the notion that wellbeing indicators should be measured by government departments, in order to ensure that “clean air and water, access to housing and health care, education standards, economic mobility, social harmony and community safety, and a safe climate, is the core of work of government” (Field, 2019: 32). Service users and providers need to work with stakeholders to draw on local wisdom and combine it with some of the new digital potential. Three core axioms underpin the research. These are informed by and contribute to 7 axioms from Global

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Agoras.22 Salience, trust and engagement to protect living systems need to underpin the decision-making process. Critical systemic research explores wicked problems in terms of the 12 is/ought questions (Ulrich & Reynolds, 2010) which need to consider social, economic and environmental dimensions together with those who are affected and involved (Table 15.1). Wicked problems by definition are complex. They comprise many, interrelated variables that are perceived differently by different stakeholders and must be explored contextually (see Flood & Carson, 1993; Rittel & Webber, 1984, West Churchman, 1979, 1982). However, the collaboration across stakeholders needs to be guided by the axiom that: ‘We can be free and diverse to the extent that our freedom and diversity does not undermine the common good of both current and future generation of life’ (McIntyre-Mills, 2014). This axiom has been explored in depth in previous work (see McIntyre-Mills, 2006, 2014, 2017a, b). It explores the notion that our fate is determined by a realization of our interdependence. It aims to increase an understanding their concerns, by honouring requisite variety of distinctions and perspectives as manifested in the Arena (Peter Jones).” 22 Participants included leadership by Ken Bausch, Tom Flanagan with participation by several colleagues including Norma Romm, Gayle Underwood. Leadership has continued through Peter Jones (2019) who sums up the seven axioms: “1. The Complexity Axiom: Observational variety must be respected when engaging observers/stakeholders in dialogue, while making sure that their cognitive limitations are not violated in our effort to strive for comprehensiveness (John Warfield). 2. The Engagement Axiom: Designing complex social systems, such as for healthcare, education, cities, and communities, without the authentic engagement of the stakeholders is unethical and results in inferior plans that are not implementable (Hasan Özbekhan). 3. The Investment Axiom: Stakeholders engaged in designing their own social systems must make personal investments of trust, committed faith, or sincere hope, in order to be effective in discovering shared understanding and collaborative solutions (Tom Flanagan). 4. The Logic Axiom: Appreciation of distinctions and complementarities among inductive, abductive, deductive, and retroductive logics is essential for collective futures creation. Retroductive logic (referred to in design as backcasting) makes provision for leaps of imagination as part of value- and emotion-laden inquiries by a variety of stakeholders (Norma Romm, Maria Kakoulaki).” Contributions by McIntyre in the following publications (McIntyre-Mills, 2003; McIntyre-Mills, J., Bausch, K, Christakis, A. and de Vries, D. 2008, ‘How can we break the mould: democracy, semiotics and regional governance beyond the nation state’). “5. The Epistemological Axiom: A comprehensive human science should inquire about human life in its totality of thinking, wanting, telling, and feeling, as indigenous people and the ancient Athenians were capable of doing. It should not be dominated by the traditional Western epistemology that reduced science to only intellectual dimensions (LaDonna Harris and Reynaldo Trevino).” Contributions by McIntyre in the following publications McIntyre-Mills (2008, 2017a, b), User centric policy design, McIntyre-Mills et al. (2014). “6. The Boundary-Spanning Axiom: A science of dialogue empowers stakeholders to act beyond imposed boundaries in designing social systems that enable people from all walks of life to bond …: Contributions by McIntyre in the following publications, McIntyre-Mills et al. (2008a, 2008b) “7). A tradition within the community of practice is to identify the original contributor of the proposal by name, without reference to a specific work but by affirmation. Contexts of Cocreation: Designing with System Stakeholders 32 disciplinary barriers and boundaries, as part of an enrichment of their repertoires for seeing, feeling, and acting (Loanna Tsivacou and Norma

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Table 15.1 The boundary critique and questions Boundary judgements informing a system of interest (S) Sources of influence

Social roles (Stakeholders)

Specific concerns (Stakes)

Key problems (Stakeholder issues)

Sources of motivation

1. Beneficiary Who ought to be/is the intended beneficiary of the system (S)?

2. Purpose What ought to be/is the purpose of S?

3. Measure of improvement What ought to be/is S’s measure of success

Sources of control

4. Decision maker Who ought to be/is in control Of the conditions of success of S?

5. Resources What conditions of success ought to be/are under the control of S?

6. Decision environment What conditions of success ought to be/are outside the control of the decision maker?

Sources of knowledge

7. Expert Who ought to be/is providing relevant Knowledge and skills for S?

8. Expertise What ought to be/are relevant New knowledge and skills for S?

9. Guarantor What ought to be/are regarded as assurances of successful implementation?

Sources of legitimacy

10. Witness Who ought to be/is representing the interests of those negatively affected by but not involved with S?

11.Emancipation What ought to be/are the opportunities for the interests of those negatively affected to have expression and freedom from the worldview of S?

12. Worldview The Affected What space ought to be/ is available for reconciling differing worldviews regarding S among those Involved and affected?

The involved

Source Ulrich and Reynolds (2010: 244).

of life chances and dynamics of vulnerable population groups in areas most affected by climate change related areas. Significantly, the collection responds to complex ethical policy challenges posed by the Paris Agreement and the UN Sustainable Development Goals, in order to narrow the gap in living standards between rich and poor. Policy choices made by this generation shape the wellbeing of both current and future generations. The outcome of implementing VET programs to support an adapted version of ‘One Village, one enterprise’ (2014) adopted by the Indonesian president Jokowi could be a better understanding of socio-cultural discourses, Romm).” Contributions by McIntyre in the following publications McIntyre-Mills, J., Bausch, K, Christakis, A. and de Vries, D. (2008). “8. The Reconciliation of Power Axiom: Social systems design aims to reconcile individual and institutional power relations that are persistent and embedded in every group of stakeholders and

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life chances and behaviour to inform policy and to improve public administration by learning what does and does not work and why from the most vulnerable populations. In line with the Paris (2005) Declaration and Accra Agreement (2008) on harmonising development goals, development needs to take into account the values of the participants, based on long term trust. Engagement to address educational challenges needs to address indigenous wisdom and to avoid colonisation.

Theoretical Insights Systemic intervention could help to extend the boundaries of knowledge to appreciate the implications of systemic interdependencies and the inadequacies of the social contract to protect the most vulnerable (sentient beings including the displaced, the dispossessed, the voiceless and the disabled). A non-anthropocentric approach requires an openness to new ways of knowing and an appreciation of the importance of moving to the next level of understanding as hinted by Boulding’s (1956) skeleton of knowledge. Which should really have been a continuum of consciousness from inorganic to organic ways of knowing. This notion of continuity of knowing is developed in the metaphor of Mobius band (2008). The government of things could be employed to support this rebalancing by enabling environmental citizens to shape decisions that protect biospheres, which are after all the basis for food security.23 Human beings are animals that are co-dependent on other living systems. The biochemical make up of living systems can be understood as a Mobius band (McIntyre-Mills, 2008). A Mobius band is symbolic of string theory. Human beings are born, live, die and return to the elements which in turn re-generate life.

Praxis Approach to Support Social and Environmental Justice Case Study: Manyeledi The case study addresses transformation efforts in a drought-prone community in the North West (NW) Province by a team of resilient farmers, inspired and supported by Lesego Serolong from the Tiger Kloof Educational Institution in Vryburg who was inspired to contribute to the development of the region. The article describes the motivation for the project, the empowerment process of drawing on support from the wider community (as part of the learning process) and then describes one of the stages 23 Through re-drawing the line based on engagement we could rebalance a sense of individual responsibility for the collective. We need to foster responsibility and stewardship through governance that protects the commons.

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of the research. It discusses how facilitators; farmer practitioners and community members engage in re-generative agriculture and how they address climate change and water insecurity that was becoming more of a challenge and resulting on lower crop yields. The rationale for this article is to discuss community engagement and the potential for Vocational Educational Training (VET) and Research rooted in concerns regarding food and water security.24 The engagement in one of the most arid areas, ‘Manyeledi’ on the potential of adding value to goat farming by suggesting the value of introducing cheese making, bee keeping, herbs and hardy vegetables was led by Lesego, a graduate of a nearby school who aimed to give back to the community by building leadership skills and links with the public, private and volunteer sectors within the region. Central support was provided by the University of South Africa which runs an outreach program to teach vocational education and training. Before the farmers could be trained, they needed to learn literacy and numeracy skills. The approach ensured that a gender mainstreaming approach was used to empower all age groups and to enable both men and women to take leadership roles. Although the community development approach has not yet achieved financial independence for the community, it has succeeded in raising skill levels and confidence in their ability to ‘put Manyeledi on the map’ and most importantly it has also reduced their reliance on government pensions.

24 In this case, the VET is provided through the University of South Africa’s (Unisa’s) Adult Basic Education and Youth Development Department and through Bokamoso Impact Investments. The article focuses on the importance of addressing the needs of farmers in regions that are increasingly vulnerable to climate change. The IPCC (2018) report makes it clear that global warming will exceed the 1.5% benchmark and this has specific implications for Africa. Glasser (2018) stresses that globally we face cascading risks. One of these will be the impact of using unsustainable farming practices to produce large food crops in vulnerable food growing regions that face increased risks of drought, fires and floods. He then cites 45–80% of Africa will be affected by climate change and that this will impact food security. One such area is the North West Province of South Africa (just south of Botswana at the edge of the Kalahari Desert). It has a low average rainfall and climate change has made the farming on marginal farming land more challenging than in previous years. This article also considers the potential opportunities to address the challenge to support cross-sectoral collaboration by public, private and civil society partners to contribute to addressing the SDGs 1 (no poverty), 11 (sustainable communities) and 17 (partnerships to achieve goal 1 and 11). Challenges are intertwined across the social, environmental and economic spheres (UNRISD, 2017; Glasser, 2018; IPCC, 2018). South Africa’s unemployment rate increased to 26.7% in the first quarter of 2019. This is a 0.5% increase. The North West Province has an overall unemployment rate of 26.6%. It is worth pointing out that even though the overall unemployment in the NW Province is lower than in Gauteng which has an unemployment rate of 29% (South African Market Insights, 2019 it has the highest unemployment rate nationally, namely, 40,3% for young people aged 15–24 who are not in employment or training. This is based on the official statistics and shows the highest rate of employment for this age group in South Africa. One of the greatest challenges has been to address the so-called “not in employment education or training” category that covers young people aged 15–24 and to work with the wider community to ensure that this most vulnerable group is given more education, training and employment opportunities. Consensus exists within the Adult Basic Education, Training and Youth Development Department at Unisa about its identity as a facilitator of learning that is linked to scholarship and research to foster active community engagement and critical pedagogy (as Giroux, 2004, 2011, puts it).

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Case Study: West Java The case study is on the outskirts of Bandung in an area called Alamendah (meaning Beautiful Nature) on the potential for integrated development (in line with the One Village Many Enterprises Project). It provides an example of social inclusion, vocational training and opportunities for employment that reduced outmigration (McIntyre-Mill, Corcoran et al., 2019, McIntyre-Mills, Romm et al., 2019). The crops produced ranged from strawberry production for tourists to a range of vegetables Alamendah is based in Rancabali Subdistrict, Bandung District, West Java Province. It is one of the most resource rich agricultural areas due to its volcanic soil and provides us with a case study of successful rural development. Alamendah relies on agriculture with 95% of the inhabitants working as farmers. Apart from the agriculture sector, ecotourism can be supported further through visiting places of interests such as the tea and coffee plantations, the waterfalls, hot springs and strawberry farms. This case study demonstrates that it is possible to develop local agricultural industry not centred on rice production such as the production of berries, a range of vegetables, coffee, tea and bamboo.25 While in the past there was an emphasis on bamboo production the Head of the Village informed us that the bamboo gardens, also included the production of coffee to provide biodiversity. Moreover, the expansion of local enterprise has led to a heavy dependence on active productive inputs and organization of women increasing earning potential and self-employment in an environment within which women’s agricultural labour on the family farm goes unrecognized and unpaid. The loss of land and unpaid labour has resulted in driving young people to seek employment in cities. One village, many enterprises could provide opportunities in an extension of markets and possible solutions to the energy crisis in South Africa. After attending the Food Conference in Serang (hosted by Universitas Sultan Ageng Tirtayasa in 2019), I visited Alamendah and Cibodas once again, they are now only an hour’s drive from Bandung in West Java thanks to the infrastructure work undertaken by Jokowi to enable better rural- urban linkages. The road infrastructure throughout the region had made many of the sites previously visited much more accessible and this will make marketing the farm produce much easier. This is an example of progress, but the challenges for farmers have increased as a result of rising temperatures, reduced water supply, loss of forest and ground cover resulting in the loss of topsoil through erosion and wind. Whereas previously the temperatures in September required wearing warm clothing, the temperatures were around 33 degrees. The water insecurity in these areas was evident by the need to irrigate newly planted vegetables and to cover some of the crops or rely on green houses. The 25 In

2013 in Indonesia there are 72 million 944 thousand villages and there are 32,000 villages in the eastern part of Indonesia. Of these 43% of the poor villages are in eastern Indonesia have limited support. This is one of the reasons for introducing the Ministry for Village and Less Developed regions. In 2013, 63% of the poorest of the poor are farmers and they make up 28.6 million farmers. Another point raised by Ida is that food insecurity in many parts of Indonesia is linked with the inability to grow rice.

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green economy in West Java (like many other parts of the world) the so-called Green Revolution in the 1970’s has resulted in deforestation for the production of cash crops at the expense of ground cover and the protection of water by the root systems and associated plants. As trees are lost, habitat for many species associated with food security it also lost. The pollinators (insects and birds) require trees such as the Kaliandra (cabello de angel) and Kawung (Arengga pinnata) as well as the coffee trees. For example, the apis cerana bees live in the forest near Cibeber. They live on Kaliandra trees and they also rely on Kawung trees as do the luwak (civet cats) who rely on the also eat the fruit from the Aren tree and help to fertilise the forest. The winds blowing across the deforested areas carried valuable topsoil and some of the team wore face masks so that they could cope with the high dust levels. This vignette is on the potential of small interventions to prompt transformation. All change begins with thinking. This is why thinking matters: The green revolution in West Java speared by Suharto’s push towards modernization and the eradication of diversity has resulted in quite the opposite of what was intended, namely a decrease in crop yields. The fear that any form of communism could be re-surgent has resulted in caution as it is a narrative used by Jokowi’s detractors. A field visit to update the previous visit to Alamendah (McIntyre-Mill, Corcoran et al., 2019, McIntyre-Mills, Romm et al., 2019) revealed that further building had occurred and a new VET school had been built which provides opportunities for young people to make a contribution to agriculture and hospitality. The risk however is that the curriculum will be based on modernization, rather than re-generative agriculture. The headmaster stressed that the industry partners who support the school will wish the applied farming to be productive and the challenge will be to achieve both sustainability and growth. It was stressed that the increased temperatures would be managed by growing vegetables and strawberries under cover and that they would rely on watering the crops. The clearance of forest in patches around Alamendah was evident as the hot wind blew the top soil off the increasingly eroded slopes, where crop yields were lower than in previous years, according to the spokesperson for the Reggae Farmers, known as the ‘Regge’ Group. This group had been formed by a father and son who has teamed with Uus, the leader of a successful co-operative to regenerate the region. They have given farming a positive name through showing that young people can make a success of agriculture. Their colourful tea shirts and vehicles to promote close co-operation have attracted many followers. There are now more than 50 leaders with followers of their own spreading the message of re-generation of farming through better methods implemented by the younger generation. This is hopeful, but it will need effort to ensure that progressive farming methods prevail, and that re-vegetation is encouraged, rather than massive deforestation. Current yields have decreased in recent months (Photo 15.1).

15 Social Engagement to Protect Multispecies Habitat … Photo 15.1 Irrigating the crops as the temperature is higher than usual exacerbated by dry winds (Source, first author’s photographs)

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A visit to a bee keeper at Cibeber was also instructive. He explained that his grandfather, his grandfather’s father and back through the generations has resulted in an oral history of beekeeping. He stressed that Indonesia has many bee species. They keep local Apis cerana bees as well as the wild Giant honey bee. The giant honey bee is known as ‘Odeng’ in Sundanese language, one tree can have 5–10 bee colonies. Each colony can produce 10–20 kg. The honey produced by the Apis Dorsant Bee is known as Odeng honey or forest honey (Photo 15.2). He pointed out the Kaliandra tree which provides habitat for bees and the Kawung (local sugar/brown sugar trees) that provide habitat for both bees and the civet cat or Photo 15.2 They rely on the coffee trees that produce white flowers

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Luwaks and the bees. Kawung trees also produce brown sugar that can be used in coffee. The honey they produce from a range of bees enables them to sustain a family business which adds value to honey by producing a range of bee products including a jelly from tiny local hapisata bees. They manage to produce between 100–300 kg and have between 50 hives. Apis Mellifera is a favourite bee for beekeepers in Indonesia because 1 colony could produce 35–40 kg per year. They also have a good adaptation capability they could live in different regions in Indonesia. The Apis mellifera bees according to our informant will not remain in cool areas and need more nectar. The Trigona bees found in South Africa also need plenty of nectar which is why moving hives to follow the nectar supply can be very important. With reduced access to nectar or compromised sources of nectar, the bee populations can be impacted. The more chemicals that are used the more bees are affected. The beekeeper stressed that they were facing challenges in his area as well as the forest was particularly dry and without nectar the bees move to other areas or die. In South Africa, the impact of climate change and drought on crops has impacted on honey supply and in the north West province and Limpopo area crops are increasingly reliant on irrigation. The potential for communal efforts to support vocational education and training. The initiative to develop ‘one village many enterprises’ suggested by Jokowi could be undermined not only by opposition to any form of social enterprise, but by the ripple effects of industrialized agriculture that is now jeopardizing West Java through impacting water security as forest cover exposes the region to erosion and a diminishing water table. According to Bevins (2017): Historians estimate that beginning in 1965, between 500,000 and 1 million Indonesians were killed in Gen. Suharto’s bloody rise to power, the worst mass slaughter in Southeast Asia’s modern history after the Khmer Rouge killing fields in Cambodia.

But the impact of the purge has had far wider impacts as the notion of the commons and common good are undermined. The turnaround in the use of the military to protect the Citarum26 river is however is good news story. Jokowi has managed to protect the first stage of the river with the help of the military staged all along the river system.

26 The Citarum is the longest river in West Java and while once it was a source of water and fish, it is now polluted. https://thediplomat.com/2018/04/indonesias-citarum-the-worlds-most-pollutedriver/.

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Whereas once the river was clogged with plastic and debris all along the river, now at least the first stage has been successfully cleaned up. A visit with Dr. Ida Widianingsih (Executive Director of the Center for Decentralization and Participatory Development Research, Universitas Padjadjaran) was inspirational, because a year ago it was still heavily polluted according to her. A conversation with a Sundanese Wisdom Keeper who is an indigenous protector of the river, was instructive. This area had always been regarded as sacred, a place where the West Javanese King had meditated and sought solace from the troubles of public office. Our guide said that his family (back through the generations) had been responsible for protecting the river. He said that his role was to continue to educate people when they visit the area. He now has a position supported by the government to maintain this role. The education centre he runs is informal, but his story telling helps to maintain the connection with the past. The signage and history boards along with the presence of the military has succeeded. The fish, birds and plant life has returned to the river. Although critics of the military said that they could do more harm than good the upper level of the Citarum river is a success story. The lower reaches of the river

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remain riddled with plastic27 and polluted by chemicals from the many factories along the riverbanks. On some days, the river turns red in sections from the red dye from the clothing factories. Fisherman who once relied on fishing to supplement their livelihoods ‘catch’ plastic and the health of villagers is eroded by the chemicals in the river.28 As the river passes through villages such as Alamendah and Bandung the villages have no way to process plastic waste. According to Ida: Previously the villagers used to dispose of the food wrapped in banana leaves on the ground and they would compost. Now with plastic it just leads to pollution and clogging the rivers.29

‘Balancing Individual and Collective Needs’ In terms of exploring ‘policy possibilities for strengthening institutional capacity to address the UN 2030 Sustainable Development Agenda through ecological engagement’, one might want to ask whose voices are represented and which part of community we are talking about, and also what kinds of engagements and to what extent that all parties related to securing life define ‘security’ A noteworthy point coming up from research by Riswanda with some colleagues at Universitas Padjadjaran in Indonesia is related to water security. They are working on a collaborative research project on water security issue in terms of developing Multi-Stakeholder Forums (MSFs) adapting ‘the notion of wellbeing, namely social, economic and environmental’ wellbeing (McIntyre-Mill, Corcoran et al., 2019, McIntyre-Mills, Romm et al., 2019) to governing water usage management, water justice and mapping out potential water conflict. The research addresses: 1. 2.

3. 4. 5.

Who are the actors in actual fact and who ought to be the actors in the MSFs with respect to environmental perspectives in Indonesia? How can the common interests be strengthened among the actors mentioned formerly; how can we overcome some of the differences in interest and ways of working? What are other options available? What is needed to strengthen the influence of the least influential, how can empowerment be promoted in the view of environmental policy? How can interdependence at the level of water access and control be realised? Which capacities need/can be strengthened, how can power within be developed to lead to power to and power with?

27 Pumps that produce bubbles can help to consolidate waste so that it can be more easily harvested see the Dutch prototype detailed at https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/nov/07/bubble-bar rier-launched-to-keep-plastics-out-of-oceans. 28 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GEHOlmcJAEk. 29 Worthy of note are the campaigns to return top using banana leaves for wrapping both in Asia and other regions of the world: https://thenewdaily.com.au/news/good-news/2019/ 06/04/banana-leaves-used-wrapping-produce/, https://www.ernestpackaging.com/buzz/sustainab ility/banana-leaf-wrappers/, https://www.biobasedpress.eu/2019/09/processed-banana-leaves-aneco-friendly-packaging-solution/.

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There has been a shift in development paradigm in Indonesia. A ‘rural-urban balance’ lesson learned from the research is that demands for participatory and inclusive policy-making are on rise, highlighting concerns for community resilience programs to be included in the making of policy responds on water security. The rise could be influenced by the current Joko Widodo’s regime having to do with the continuum of decentralising governance to regional development.

Source Conceptual images by Riswanda from a work-in-progress research report: Widianingsih et al. (2020) The provincial government of West Java in this case is committed to water cycle and water sustainability and remarked its commitment by supporting Indonesian water law in 2014. Water stewardship policy is also the main objective of watershed revitalisation in having this collaborative research. ‘Knowledge action’ is then termed out to make sure the objective could be met. The government then came up with business sector involvement just regulated recently, including policy on ground water tax. The provincial government has done a lot of conservation programs and forums developed showing their Community Engagements. However, campaigns on water scarcity by some NGOs in particular areas without understanding that groundwater is very much different with surface water usage. Social media management is the next issue relating water industries to the issue of Water Scarcity happened by nature and perhaps by merely misconceptions of water security. Recent studies seem to have more discussion on ‘research-based policy making’ with respect to initiating partnership among government institutions-private sectorscommunity organisations. The initiation is expected to come across different sectors where Universities become a leading sector in many academic based public discussions. Government agencies today are not only taking roles as regulators of the

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markets but also as beneficiaries from market domains to fill in spaces in public affairs which were before dominated by government domain. A typical policy-making is needed to give up spaces for facilitating and accelerating community organisations to have their own socio-economic capacity building. Water Security and Water Justice towards Water Sustainability is systemic in Indonesia. The mapping of water-related stakeholders’ perceptions, roles and capacity in water resource management is crucial in preparing for the structure for integrated water resource management. Water stakeholder varied in terms of their entity, roles, and functions. Some of them may also have competing perspectives, values and interests that are not easy to unite or have more power and resources to support their roles than others. The understanding of stakeholders in water resource management can provide valuable information about the weaknesses, strengths, challenges and potentials needed to prepare them to work more effectively and sustainably. Lack of coordination and integration between and among stakeholders; inefficiency, corruption and poor management among government agencies; and poor participation of low level of government’s and community institutions in the planning and implementation stages have been documented as barriers of integrated water resource management. As an instance, refusal to save water for local people may jeopardize the sustainability of water entrepreneurs’ business. On the other hand, the community’s supply of water depends on the sustainability of water entrepreneurships. Apart from the contributions of co-production to the improvement of physical access, quality, and affordability, cooperation between local entrepreneurs and community members extends to conflict management. Bio and socio environmental assessment are done by involving local universities in provincial regions where the water factory production established. The involvement is to stimulate local government initiatives in terms of community development issues (Photo 15.3). Photo 15.3 Empowering local communities is a way.

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Bounded Rationality calls for systemic intervention (Midgley and Ochoa-Arias, 2004; Ulrich, 2000) –whose voice counts and according to whose lenses, and what are the domineering views. How differing lenses lead to different perception on water security; what kind of policy interventions needed—dependent of how and why policy makers and service providers have common grounds on what could be the roots of the roots policy issues. The term water security can be viewed in differing perspectives that are grounded on the community’s ability to preserve proper access to acceptable quality water. The differing perspectives are likely to do with fulfilling various demands for the varied purposes of water. This requires managing water resources—including the river basin. Studies on water security today also discuss water-related disaster. Most attentions are given to key lessons for development considering the impact of and the need to discuss the issue of water security in a way that could contribute to protecting lives and environment.

Food Security and Energy Security The issue of water security interconnects food security and energy safety since it relates to the balance of the usage of water resources for social-ecological resilience. The management of waste in Alamendah has been encouraged through a point system linked with recycling and free care at the clinic. But the issue is that across Indonesia the management of waste is a local government responsibility that is not supported by local government funding. Thus, innovative approaches need to be developed to enable widespread waste management rather than dumping in the rivers or burning waste which simply adds to the pollution of water and the air. The reliance on NGOs and volunteering has fostered reliance on foreign donors. Some of the donations have resulted in better infrastructure, but other donations come with political or policy strings attached. Another aspect us the increase in private sector investment in tourism and the extent to which international visitors have supported more conservative religious elements whilst cynically exploiting tourism in some instances calling it “Halal tourism,” where local prostitution is disguised as marriage with the support or least connivance of the local mosques.

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In South Africa, the reliance on government could be alleviated through following the ‘One village many enterprises model’ as mentioned above. As the first and third authors of this chapter drove from Thabazimbi back to Pretoria, we saw the mining areas and reliance on primary industry. Unfortunately the reliance on coal mining has impacted on carbon emissions and Eskom has been looted by the Guptas who took over the control of the board and promoted the use of poor grade coal in the coal mines they acquired (Hoffstater, 2018; Shai, 2017) Some would argue it is a long bow to connect carbon emissions with climate warming and the impact on the conveyer belt current carrying cold water to the equator from Arctic and the impact it has had on precipitation on the catchment areas in the Cape or the impact on the krill in the ocean. But the links between climate change and the warming of the ocean are being felt along the coast as whales and sharks move elsewhere for access to food.

Extending Solidarity Through Digital Engagement and Ecological Citizenship Projects with potential are detailed in ‘Balancing Individualism and Collectivism’ and in the companion volumes for Contemporary Systems Series called: ‘Mixed Methods and Cross Disciplinary Research Towards Cultivating Eco-systemic Living’ and ‘Democracy and Governance for Resourcing the Commons: theory and practice on rural-urban balance to address loss and displacement.’30 Since completing the volumes, the lead author has been researching the notion of human dependency on nature and the extent to which our entanglement with the things derived from a capitalist carbon-based economy have entrapped or blinded us to other options. The affordance of the niches created by successful crop production made it possible to specialise and industrialise. This has resulted in a way of life that is no longer sustainable. The production of goods in the current prevalent economy uses energy supplies that are largely unsustainable. The Adani mine in Queensland Australia, for example will provide jobs at the expense of the environment (McIntyre-Mills, Romm et al., 2019) and will undermine the long-term liveability of the planet. The chapter summarises some of the key points from these volumes aimed at providing sources of ideas for policy makers and those engaged in strategic thinking31 to protect and re-generate living systems in terms of ‘wellbeing stocks’ a 30 These volumes published in 2019 were based on a symposium hosted at Flinders and Uni of Padjadjaran. Colleagues from Uni of South Africa also attended and have provided papers. 31 The critical systemic approach takes into account many diverse ways of seeing and tries to find common themes that could underpin ‘lives worth living’, based on testing out ideas with those who are to be affected by the decisions and mindful of future generations of life (including sentient beings). This is a form of expanded pragmatism based on mindful decision making in the interests of living systems of which we are a strand (McIntyre-Mills, 2017a, b).We need to respond to systemic socio-demographic, cultural, political, economic and environmental challenges and the different needs of age cohorts in developed and developing and less developed parts of the world. Harper

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concept adapted from Stiglitz et al. (2010: 15) to refer to a multidimensional measure of wellbeing. This requires re-framing not only economics but our relationships. Stiglitz et al. (2011: 15) use a multidimensional measure of wellbeing spanning: 1. Material living standards (income, consumption and wealth), 2. Health, 3. Education, 4. Personal activities including work, 5. Political voice and governance, 6. Social connections and relationships, 7. Environment (present and future conditions), 8. Insecurity, of an economy as well as a physical nature.

The aim of the ‘wellbeing stocks’ concept is to enable people to re-evaluate economics and to become more aware of the way in which we neglect social and environmental aspects of life. The pursuit of profit at the expense of people and the environment is a central problem for democracy and governance. The vulnerability of cities is a symptom of the lack of balance between individual and collective needs. Economic and environmental indicators of wellbeing were tested by means of a prototype. In order to manage the commons mutual agreements, need to be negotiated and records need to be kept, in order to protect the interests of stakeholders. The commons need to be theorized as a legal concept (Marella, 2017) and as a transformative governance concept (see Planetary Passport (PP), McIntyre-Mills, 2017a, b and Systemic Ethics, McIntyre-Mills, 2014). The book ‘Planetary Passport’ provides a new epistemic narrative and responds to the 2030 Development Agenda by suggesting a way to enhance representation and accountability by extending the Millennium Goals and UN Sustainable Development Agenda. It reflects on studies of alternative architectures for democracy and governance and suggests a way to extend local engagement in social, economic and environmental decision-making.32 Use values that currently commodify people and the environment and consumption choices that ignore the opportunity costs are unsustainable. This approach is not inevitable, it is possible to do things differently. The cycle can be a closed loop,

(2017) stresses that population change is below replacement levels in many parts of Europe where the population profile is one of low fertility and low mortality. So, population change needs to be viewed in terms of ballooning and shrinking populations. Added to this the life chances of young people need to be understood in different parts of the world. Basic concepts include, wellbeing, democracy, subsidiarity, capacity building, critical systemic praxis and wicked problems, complex decisions need to be made by complex decision makers. Others are: cultural studies, critical systems thinking, Informatics and modelling complex systems, sociology and public policy, management systems and governance. 32 The engagement processes (see ‘Balancing Individualism and Collectivism’, McIntyre-Mills et al. 2017) that enable protecting the commons are explored in the companion volumes in which the rationale for a new way of living is developed with participants in Africa and Indonesia, where risks associated with displacement and loss are explored in more depth. The rationale for a more ethical form of representation and accountability to support cosmopolitan transdisciplinary approach is detailed in Systemic Ethics (McIntyre-Mills, 2014). Then in Planetary Passport for Re-generation: knowing our place through recognizing our hybridity (McIntyre-Mills, 2017a, b) a case is made that the commons could be protected through working across conceptual and spatial boundaries to enable low carbon, virtuous living in which resources are saved, re-generated to protect current and future generations of living systems.

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rather than extracting resources in ways that are destructive and lay waste to people and the environment, an alternative is possible. Currently unemployment and lack of access to tertiary or vocational training are major human security challenges in a degraded urban environment. Highly urbanised, environmentally affected regions face the cascading social, economic and environmental challenges that impact on the habitat across the continuum from domestic, liminal, agricultural and wild animal life (to draw on Donaldson & Kymlicka, 2011). The greater the use of participatory design processes to address complex problems, the better the problem-solving outcomes for service users and providers. Hodder stresses that our relationships with things are not static and that we can re-configure the assemblages. This requires the desire to do things differently, which requires a cultural shift in the way in which we currently live our lives. According to Hodder (2012: 4): “So, there are only flows of matter, energy and information” (Deleuze & Guattari, 2004; Ingold, 2010). The point of the contribution is not to rehearse the current challenges associated with living in the Anthropocene, instead it makes a case for doing things differently in a non-anthropocentric manner (McIntyre-Mills, 2014). Hannah Arendt emphasised the need to recognise patterns in behaviour, this is important for sociologists, but it is equally important to recognise the need to understand that human culture has the potential to adapt and change the environment, because of the scale at which the global economy operates. The Anthropocene is the product of human culture writ large. But by recognising the ‘banality of evil’ (Arendt, 1963) and the implications of the everyday choices we make, it is possible to do things differently. The way we think matters, it changes the way in which we relate to one another and living systems of which we are a strand. The assemblages we create through our desires can change. Our thoughts and emotions result in decisions and information that support cultural flows that re-generate our environment or lead to its de-generation: The social contract protects people within the boundaries of the nation state, but the mantle of protection is given only to citizens and it is anthropocentric. It does not protect plants and animals or the living systems on which we depend. We need to do things differently and this will require training and engagement (using mixed methods to resource the commons and to protect habitat for multiple species. This means that we will need to protect habitat for animals, plants in domestic spaces, liminal places, farms as well as wild spaces. This is important to address the United Nations 2030 Agenda. The commons is not a resource, it is a process for managing social practices and for collective benefit. The rate at which species are disappearing is now linked with climate change and loss of habitat. The categorization of species in museums included humans, animals and plants and the re-claiming of family from the bowls of museums was the fate of many indigenous people. Donna Haraway’s recent work (2015, 2016, 2018) stresses the need to extend a sense of solidarity and care to other species. We need to move away from the sense of boundaries across-species and re-think our values and our relationships. This requires a new perspective on our place within living systems.

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I have just received the latest copy of Global Policy and I have scanned the entries on topics ranging from the risks associated with Brexit to the rising level of conflict in regions such as Horn of Africa, North Africa and Middle East, the tensions in the Pacific as comments made by the Australian Deputy Prime Minister suggests that the residents of Tuvalu would survive the rising sea levels as they would be welcome to work in Australia.33 This comment was made after the Fijian Prime Minister had asked for Australia to reduce its coal emissions. The challenges underpinning peace and security are focused on food, energy and water security. The news reports may not highlight these three core areas, but they are the subtext of most of the contested news items. The offer to purchase or take over Greenland by Donald Trump, is yet another example of a bid to access oil reserves and to build travel destinations. Fortunately, the Danish PM did not take the offer seriously.34 Chulov (2019)35 stresses that “Iran views Trump with contempt, but on balance believes the economic war36 launched by his administration, and military threats, are designed not to start a bombing war, but to shore up a negotiating position, vis-a-vis a bid to redraw the nuclear deal that was signed by his predecessor, and torn up by Trump last year.”

Extending Solidarity We can redefine these boundaries because we are the boundaries—according to Haraway. The only problem is that some have more power to decide than others. The responsibility to protect children wrested from the arms of their parents at the Mexican border lies not with the children or their parents, but with the voters—the public and civil society who need to defend the rights of those who are outside the mantle of the social contract. The responsibility to protect animals subjected to transportation as part of the so-called live meat trade lies with voters who need to redraw the boundaries of what is acceptable decent treatment of animals and what constitutes unacceptable commodification of sentient beings. John Scott (1998) in ‘Seeing like a State’ takes the approach at which Foucault hints by giving detailed examples of the way in which the state has crushed diversity—from designing monocultures in forestry to ironing out diverse political opinions. I argue that if we accept the concept of the banality of evil—the notion that everyday decisions by many can collectively result 33 https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2019/aug/22/australias-deputy-pm-apologises-to-

pacific-for-fruit-picking-comments-if-any-insult-was-taken. 34 https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-49423968. “US President Donald Trump has called the Danish leader “nasty” after she rebuffed his idea of buying Greenland. He lashed out hours after Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen said she was “sorry” that Mr. Trump had abruptly called off a state visit to Denmark. She has dismissed the suggestion of such a land deal as “absurd”. 35 https://www.theguardian.com/books/2019/jun/13/oil-tanker-attacks-will-inflame-conflict-bet ween-the-us-its-allies-and-iran. 36 https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/apr/23/us-toughens-stance-on-iran-ending-exempt ions-from-oil-sanctions.

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in a normalization and acceptance of evil—then we have to re-think many of the aspects of governance and democracy that we take for granted today. If we can accept that more people than ever before have been displaced, what does that mean for human ethics and the nation that neoliberal governments should close borders? If we can accept that it is now scientifically proven that genetically human beings share 98% of their genes with a lab rat and even more with the primates that are experimented on—how can we justify inflicting pain or denying rights to human beings and other sentient animals? If we can accept that the boundaries between people are constructed on the basis of will and power, then we can accept that people have the right and the responsibility to do something about injustice, because ‘we are the boundaries ‘as Haraway (1992) stresses.The need for democracy to re-engage with critical thinking is vital. Is it possible for groups to be held responsible in the same way that an individual can be held responsible? Arendt’s notion that collective responsibility is upheld when each individual engages critically with the everyday decisions about who gets what when why, how and to what effect. Crowds formed without prior planning may act irresponsibly and the individuals in the crowd are individually and collectively responsible. Crowds orchestrated through political rallies are even more responsible and the political party per se can be called irresponsible. According to the UN the majority of the world’s population will be in Africa and Indonesia. A recent United Nations report projects that by 2050 most of the global urban population is expected to be located in Asia (52%) and Africa (21%) (United Nations, 2014: 11). The study areas selected take significance from the predictions made in this UN report.37

37 According to the previous United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, Guterres (UNHCR, 2014), for the first time since the Second World War, the global figure for displaced persons has now passed 50 million and, by 2050, this figure could be as high as 150 million (Rusbridger, 2015: 13). stressed that currently more people are displaced than during the Second World War. I argue that climate change impacts environments leading to displacement of plants, animals and people as cities encroach or droughts, floods, fires render areas unable to provide a liveable environment. This has profound ethical implications for everyday living choices. According to the Nuccitelli (2018 who cites Ricke) and correctly emphasizes that as a warm country it is in its interests to address global warming and climate change. Ricke et al. (2018: 1) explain: “Following the recommendations of the recent report by the US “National Academies, we executed our calculations of the social cost of carbon through a process with four distinct components: a socio-economic module wherein the future evolution of the economy, which includes the projected emissions of CO2 , is characterized without the impact of climate change; a climate module wherein the earth system responds to emissions of CO2 and other anthropogenic forcing; a damages module, wherein the economy’s response to changes in the Earth system are quantified; and a discounting module, wherein a time series of future damages is compressed into a single present value. In our analysis, we explored uncertainties associated with each module at the global and country level. We focused only on climate impacts, and did not carry out a fully-fledged cost–benefit analysis, which would require modelling mitigation costs.”

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Proposed Future Directions: from Fragmented Silos to Food Webs and Water Flows The root metaphor of flows was used with Neporendi when undertaking research with care takers of the River Murray linked with Neporendi where I undertook research as part of an Australian Research Council Linkage Grant from 2004 (see McIntyreMills, 2008). The other (linked) metaphor of weaving strands of experience came about through conversations with the elders who explained the importance of the river grasses for removing salinity as the river ebbs and flows. The health of the Murray is dependent on the removal of toxins. The grasses can be seen to function as liver or kidneys. This has also been stressed by Weir (2009, 2015). The idea that we now need to think of democracy in terms of weaving together strands of experience is important as is the notion of river grasses for removing salinity and water as a synecdoche of the sense of flow that the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) formula sums up to demonstrate that what we do in one part of society flows on to effect the environment on which we depend. The binary oppositional thinking and commodification are core problems in Western neo-liberalism as stressed elsewhere (McIntyre-Mills, 2014) which has implications for ethics and addressing our polarising our relationship with living systems. The realisation of both environmental flows and cultural flows rests partly with whether we can reduce the powerful influence of separation thinking, and this is also what thwarts our ethics for living lives in connection. Cultural flows are quickly trapped in the contradictory constraints of separation thinking and are more easily communicated as narrowly defined water allocation. (Weir 2009: 119–129 cited in Weir, 2015)

In ‘Planetary Passport’ (2017a), I propose a reframed form of governance which rests on supporting social, economic and environmental wellbeing monitored from below by engaged inhabitants of a region and stress the need for stewardship as detailed below (Table 15.2). Table 15.2 Stewardship approach Governance factors adapted from by Van der Waal (2016)

New architectures for people and the planet by McIntyre-Mills (2017a, b)

Accountability tools to protect

Living systems

Policy tools

Co-determination

Role of government

Steward eco-facturing

Style

Postnational cascade economics

Accountability for

People and the planet

Goal

Protection of wellbeing stocks

Source Adapted from categories suggested in column 1 by Zeger van der Wal, Flinders Symposium, 2016 and cited as Table 12.5 as an evolution of democracy and governance in McIntyre-Mills et al. (2017: 293)

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Progress to Date on New Architectures for Democracy and Governance This section makes the case that critical agency is vital to understand, monitor and evaluate everyday social, economic and environmental strategies that enable a life worth living (Nussbaum, 2011). Two architectures for participation and scaling up governance are discussed. These new architectures for democracy and governance use readily available tools and software to link local learning communities with regional and post national regional partners and networks. The policies that could make this approach possible already exist (Florini, 2003; McIntyre-Mills et al., 2014; McIntyre-Mills, 2014, 2017) (Table 15.3). The area of concern which a proposed ‘Global Covenant’ (Held, 2004) and proposed Planetary Passport needs to address is poverty, climate change, displacement of people and destruction of habitat. The PP could strive to balance individual and collective needs in line with a Global Covenant. Post national regions could be protected in the form of a nested governance system spanning the local personal level to the household, community, regional and post national regional level. This could (perhaps) be achieved based on co-creating pathways (McIntyre-Mills & De Vries, 2011; McIntyre-Mills & Wirawan, 2017) to map and manage local resource Table 15.3 Multi-level engagement architectures to protect living systems and to support the global commons Structure

Process

Action

Micro-level individuals

UN local Agenda 21 (1992) and Aarhus convention (1998)

Questions raised and posed to local government by individuals

Local government, NGOS and individuals

Meso States and regions

Aarhus convention linked to global covenant

On line moratory democracy and governance to address state/market/civil society concern

Networking NGOs and INGOS to address representation and accountability

Macro Cosmopolitan governance

Legal structures to support the global covenant, Aarhus convention and Biospheres convention

International Criminal Global action to pass Court United Nations laws to protect social and environmental justice in overlapping biospheres

Source Adapted from Florini (2003) and Archibugi in Wallace Brown and Held (2010: 3: 22) cited in McIntyre-Mills et al. (2014: 92) and McIntyre-Mills (2017a, b: 7), ‘Reconsidering Boundaries Table 3.1. McIntyre-Mills (2017a, b: 148, 313) to address nodes (people, organisations) and to connect them to areas of shared post regional concern (Habermas, 2001) through an on-line Planetary Passport (PP) (The decisions are prompted by scenario guidelines. The daily living choices can be guided by means of an on-line engagement tool that helps decision making and enables the monitoring of social, economic and environmental choices. Positive and negative sanctions through monitoring could ensure that resources are fed forward to those in need and in the interests of future generations as detailed below)

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systems (Ostrom, 2008) in context ‘from below’ based on self-reflection (through critical heuristics questions) to prompt decision making (Jackson, 2000). Stiglitz et al’s (2010) wellbeing stocks could be supported by enabling people to ‘be the change’ on a daily basis through the way they choose to live their lives and making social contracts through the on-line system to protect local resource systems. Their footprint can be monitored locally, and they can generate transformation locally. The potential success of this approach is detailed (McIntyre-Mills & De Vries, 2011; McIntyre-Mills et al., 2014) and McIntyre-Mills (2019) explores the wider potential for redressing the cascading risks of climate change and how the way in which the management of risks was indeed achieved through the Cape Town Provincial Government’s use of a transparent water management application that succeeded in getting people to change their water usage in a very short period of time. The ‘monitoring from below’ approach achieved control by the people of a scarce resource. The potential for further monitoring by means of pathways to wellbeing software to achieve social, economic and environmental outcomes for social and environmental justice can be achieved. This is a way to achieve re-generation with people in and beyond the usual structures of governance. This approach extends the social contract to ecological citizens who can log on to a new post national form of governance and democracy. It includes those who are currently excluded from citizenship—the young and the displaced. These new architectures for democracy and governance use readily available tools and software to link local learning communities with regional and post national regional partners and networks. Post national regions could be protected in the form of a nested governance system spanning the local personal level to the household, community, regional and post national regional level. This could (perhaps) be achieved based on co-creating pathways (McIntyre-Mills & De Vries, 2011, McIntyre-Mills & Wirawan, 201738 ) to map and manage local resource systems (Ostrom, 2008) in context ‘from below’ based on self-reflection (through critical heuristics questions) to prompt decision making (Jackson, 2000). The policies that could make this approach possible already exist (Florini, 2003; McIntyre-Mills et al., 2014; McIntyre-Mills, 2014, 2017a, b). The area of concern for a proposed Global Covenant (Held, 2004) and proposed Planetary Passport to Protect People and the Planet is to address poverty, climate change, displacement of people and destruction of habitat. The PP could strive to balance individual and collective needs in line with Held’s notion of a so-called ‘Global Covenant’. Stiglitz et al’s (2010) wellbeing stocks could be supported by enabling people to ‘be the change’ on a daily basis through the way they choose to live their lives and making social contracts through the on-line system to protect local resource systems. Their footprint can be monitored locally, and they can generate transformation locally. The potential success of this approach is detailed (McIntyre-Mills & De Vries, 2011; McIntyre-Mills et al., 2014) on a pilot of the software and McIntyre-Mills (2019) 38 See

the demonstration of the pathways to wellbeing software at https://archive.org/download/pat hway_DEMO_1 pathways to wellbeing https://archive.org/details/VN860546ethicsanddesign.

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explores the wider potential for redressing the cascading risks of climate change and how the way in which the management of risks was indeed achieved through the Cape Town Provincial Government’s use of a transparent water management application that succeeded in getting people to change their water usage in a very short period of time through a combination of shame and the wish to ‘do the right thing’ and to share resources in order to prevent ‘day zero’, the day when taps would run dry and the residents of Cape Town would need to stand in queues at approximately 200 proposed water collection points. The problem was caused by the high cost of implementing a desalination plant along with reservations about the appropriateness of such an option (despite the rising rate of in migration to the Cape). A further issue was the associated political friction between levels of government with different partypolitical affiliations. The use of structured dialogic design (SDD) across political interest groups has been shown to be both appropriate and successful (Christakis, 2006; Kakoulaki & Christakis, 2017). The ‘monitoring from below’ approach achieved re-generation of control by the people of a scarce resource. The potential for further monitoring by means of pathways to wellbeing software to achieve social, economic and environmental outcomes for social and environmental justice can be achieved. This is a way to achieve re-generation with people in and beyond the usual structures of governance. This approach extends the social contract to ecological citizens who can log on to a new post national form of governance and democracy. It includes those who are currently excluded from citizenship—the young and the displaced.

Pathways to Wellbeing This application of the logic used in SDD extends the UN Local Agenda 21 which requires that socio-cultural, economic and environmental accounting and accountability (triple bottom line) be applied (McIntyre-Mills & De Vries, 2011; McIntyreMills et al., 2014). This would enable local residents and members of a wider post national region to have a say in matters that impact on social and environmental justice. Representation, accountability and re-generation are the three major challenges of the day that need to be addressed by means of a cross boundary regionalist approach to address the big issues of the day, namely poverty and climate change. They require a new approach to democracy and governance to enable monitoring from below and above to ensure that those who are elected are held to account and that collective responsibility is indeed taken to protect the Planet. One of the issues that needs to be faced is that much power has been given to those who have been voted into power that they ‘forget’ that democratically elected leaders ought to be agents of the people and that the environment is of primary concern, not their personal, political careers.

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Pathways to Wellbeing: A Way Forward to Protect the Marginalised? By considering social, cultural, economic and environmental concerns in terms of: 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7.

What we have (material and non-material terms) What we need What we are prepared to think and do to add/create and share with the global commons What we are prepared to think and do to discard/change to help the global commons Turning points for the better and worse Barriers Drop down lists that grow shared resources linked with ‘persons, entities, themes and actions’ (Marc Pierson, 2019, pers. comm, International Systems Sciences Blue Jeans Dialogue) at the personal, household, local, national and post national levels

This could provide the means by which to implement the Sustainable Development Goals from the local, to the regional and post national regions in order to resource the commons (Bollier & Helfrich, 2012). Because blockchain is a distributed network that can provide tracking, monitoring surveillance from below it can provide a means to empower the landless and the disposed (Nir Kshetri, 2017; Wirawan, 2019). It can also provide a means to balance individual and collective needs (McIntyre-Mills, 2017a, b) and monitor the fair distribution of resources such as food, energy and water from below (McIntyreMills, 2019) trace the origin of foodstuffs and to protect the safety of voiceless sentient beings. According to Al-Saqaf and Seidler (2017: 340): “blockchain …ranges from finance to record-keeping and from tracking the flow of goods to verifying the identity of citizens. The fundamental common characteristic that all blockchain based services share is a design that depends on immutability and decentralisation in storing data. Yet, a system based on the community cannot work without the community.

Al-Saqaf and Seidler (2017) go on to stress that while much has already been written about blockchain applications and the potential for industry, little research has been undertaken to explore the extent to which user-centric governance and democracy can be enabled through alternative pathways. This section strives to contribute to the literature by exploring blockchain technology’s potential to support social and environmental justice by considering to what extent can ‘decentralisation, transparency, equality and accountability’ (Al-Saqaf & Seidler, 2017: 338) be addressed and to what extent engagement could play a role in: (a) (b)

Limiting top down approaches to human rights and the abuse of power through enabling more surveillance ‘from below’ and through Enhancing the stewardship potential to protect the voiceless, including those without citizenship rights, women, children and animals.

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Al-Saqaf and Seidler (2017) go on to stress that while much has already been written about blockchain applications and the potential for industry, little research has been undertaken to explore the extent to which user-centric governance and democracy can be enabled through alternative pathways. This section strives to contribute to the literature by exploring blockchain technology’s potential to support social and environmental justice by considering to what extent can ‘decentralisation, transparency, equality and accountability’ (Al-Saqaf & Seidler, 2017: 338) be addressed and to what extent engagement could play a role in: (a) (b)

Limiting top down approaches to human rights and the abuse of power through enabling more surveillance ‘from below’ and through Enhancing the stewardship potential to protect the voiceless, including those without citizenship rights, women, children and animals.

This requires being guided by a priori norms for praxis and considering the consequences of one’s choices through careful consideration aided by means of critical heuristics, also known as thinking in terms of ‘if then scenarios. This process of ethical consideration is known as ‘expanding pragmatism’, in order to consider the consequences for self and other living systems. As stressed in McIntyre et al. (2014 and McIntyre, 2017, 2018: 13): An early prototype to teach and engage participants in learning about ecological citizenship has been developed and tested (McIntyre-Mills and De Vries, 2011, McIntyre-Mills, et al., 2014).39 The evaluation of the level of importance of multiple (and simultaneously important issues) is important by reflecting on one’s life in terms of different scenarios and the consequences of these choices, for example: • I have the following things in my life—understanding of human rights, respect for biodiversity, responsibility to care for others.

• I need in my life—a home, a sense of safety, a place near public transport and hope for the future. • I will add to my life—more community support from a range of services and/or more community engagement to lobby for resources; more connection to nature. • I will discard from my life—a sense of hopelessness, a sense of entitlement, excessive consumption. • Self-reflect on the turning points for the better or worse hope that consumption can be replaced with a greater sense of attachment to others and the environment. • Consider the barriers that currently exist and consider what could be done to transform society and our relationship to the environment. The transformative, transdisciplinary research (Darian-Smith & McCarty, 2017) proposed explores plausible pathways in line with the United Nations (UN) Sustainable Development Goals to enhance wellbeing and resilience for those at risk of displacement and those already displaced. Clearly, this has implications for public policy, human service governance and delivery and the way in which the Paris Climate 39 See the demonstration of the pathways to wellbeing software at: https://archive.org/download/pat

hway_DEMO_1 pathways to wellbeing https://archive.org/details/VN860546ethicsanddesign.

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Change Agreement (2015), UN Sustainable Development Goals (2014) and the UN Sendai Framework (2015–2030) for Disaster Risk Reduction are addressed. Thus Goal 1 (end poverty) with specific implications for food, energy and water security, Goal 5 (gender inequality) and Goal 17 (creating partnerships) are particularly relevant to protecting the most vulnerable, whilst The United Nations Declaration of Rights of Indigenous Peoples (2007) provides a vital pathway for socially inclusive decision-making on habitat protection. Indigenous thinkers such as Chilisa (2012, 2017) stress that our sense of who we are needs to be revised. We are vulnerable and reliant on a shared habitat. The ideas underpinning the UNDRIP stress that Indigenous people need to have the right to express their identity within a sacred space. The challenge will be to scale up this sense of stewardship not only at the local level but also at a post national regional level through understanding that we are stewards of one planet. The earth politics notion of Vandana Shiva is the only logical direction for securing the biospheres for food security of living systems. We live in an increasingly commodified and competitive world. Our research focuses on balancing individualism and collectivism by exploring the food, water and energy consumption choices people make and how these relate to their perceptions on ‘wellbeing stocks’. Wellbeing stocks are defined by Stiglitz et al. (2010: 15) in ‘Mismeasuring our lives’ as multidimensional.40 In ‘Planetary Passport (McIntyre-Mills, 2017a, b) and Wall Street to Wellbeing’ (McIntyre-Mills, 2014) the link between wellbeing stocks and the need to develop everyday decision-making capabilities from: ● the micro household’s level to the meso level of organisations at the local government level and ● the macro level of regional and post regional decision making on food, energy and water consumption was stressed. It is vital to measure a raft of social, cultural political, economic and environmental indicators that pertain specifically to everyday living. Thus, the multivariate research approach is also participatory, because it is important to find out whether the setting of Sustainable Development Goals through public engagement and recording pledges on an interactive digital site could make a difference to consumption choices and whether this public participation impacts on living ethically and well. Instead of merely listing goals and asking people to meet them, the approach is to request people to make a personal pledge to address food, energy and water 40 The definition is as follows: ‘1. Material living standards (income, consumption and wealth), 2. Health, 3. Education, 4. Personal activities including work, 5. Political voice and governance, 6. Social connections and relationships, 7. Environment (present and future conditions), 8. Insecurity, of an economy as well as a physical nature’. This definition of wellbeing stocks fits well with the way in which both Indigenous and Non-Indigenous Australians connect with Country in Australia and elsewhere and the way in which critical systems thinkers and complexity theorists understand inter relationships. The raft of concepts is necessary for defining wellbeing as stressed in several publications by McIntyre-Mills (McIntyre-Mills, 2003, 2006, 2008, 2014, 2016; McIntyre-Mills and De Vries, 2011).

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consumption by thinking through the consequences of their choices in terms of three scenarios, namely Business as Usual, Making Small Adjustments and Living Virtuously and Well in terms of considering: what local residents have, what they need, what they are prepared to add or discard from their lives, the turning points for the better and worse, the barriers and the resources and or services which they could draw upon in their local government area or to which they could contribute. This is important if living systems are to be protected. This requires stewardship based on humility and recognition that the Anthropocene is a result of human intervention. This has implications for social and environmental justice. It needs to be addressed through responses that take into consideration current and future generation of life. This requires the need to revisit the challenges of balancing individual and collective interests. An easy way through is a recognition of the continuity of living systems as conscious interconnected systems. This is more than merely accepting our place in a post human system. It requires capability and agency to intervene in ways that are sustainable for the common good. This requires a post nationalist response to protect biodiversity in terms of a Global Covenant, rather than a narrow social contract within nation states (McIntyre-Mills, 2014).

Eco-Village Nodes and Eco City Hubs: The Way Forward? Vocational Education in Rural Universities and Training colleges could help to promote the value of agriculture to students who could be tasked with the vital issue of food and water security. To enable lifelong engagement by active citizens requires action learning to address areas of perceived policy concern. The policy proposal is to develop more educational institutions that focus on teaching design skills from primary to secondary and tertiary level based on the blue economy and biomimicry in ways that draw on the lived experience of the learners. In rural and regional areas, the local plant materials, for example could be used for developing a range of products, according to Pauli (2010) including cosmetics, cleaning agents, building materials, plant dyes, bio degradable plastics, to name but a few examples. In urban developed areas the blue economy could be used to recycle and re-use materials for building sustainable housing powered by sustainable energy and supplied with carefully collected rainwater to support indigenous plants wherever possible in the urban environment. VET curricula needs to address many ways of knowing spanning human logic, empiricism, dialectical thinking and pragmatism and extended to include spiritualism and appreciation of animal knowing, biomimicry and learning from nature. By valuing certain kinds of knowledge at the expense of others human beings have created a new age, namely ‘the Anthropocene’, characterised by rapid urbanisation and unsustainable development.

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A Curriculum for VET Training The chapter (Quan Baffour et al., 2019) reflects on some of the aspects of an educational program that responds to the call for an African Renaissance (Mbeki, 1999, Sesanti, 2016). In South Africa people have lost faith in the state because the elites in the public and private sectors are not accountable to the people they serve. The price of inequality–national and global–has escalated. The gap between rich and poor grows globally and in South Africa. The challenges are as follows to: ● Design places of learning to match the educational content to the contextual needs of a growing population in need of sustainable employment in liveable biodiverse environments. ● Sustain a system of education to prepare people across the life cycle to protect diversity and the land on which we depend. Piketty (2015) stressed the importance of data on money trails and wealth to ensure fairness and reciprocity in his 13th Nelson Mandela Address. Although transparency is vital for public trust a further step is required, namely the need to protect the environment through everyday decisions, as stressed previously by Wangaari Maathai in the 3rd Nelson Mandela Lecture. This requires: ● Addressing resilient urban, rural and regional infrastructure by ● Exploring the implications of urbanisation, loss of territory, water insecurity,41 loss of species and the implications for living systems of which we are a strand. ● Focusing on the challenge of creating jobs that protect people and the environment ● Developing options for responding and adapting to the impacts of environmental change’ and ● Contributing to expanding knowledge through studies of human society by exploring culturally diverse ways of caring and stewardship through fostering values that protect biodiversity for social and environmental justice.

The Case for Vocational Education and Training to Reduce Migration to Cities and Restore Rural-Urban Balance ‘Earn while we learn and grow a future together’ is the slogan for working together with rural communities supported by vocational education and training in collaboration with a network of providers as suggested in this illustrative diagram:

41 Waughray, D. (2017) Water, energy-food: can leaders at Davos solve this global conundrum? Huge demands for water present complicated challenges, but leaders will not resolve these kinds of interconnected risks without a systems approach https://www.theguardian.com/profile/dominicwaughray, https://www.theguardian.com/global-development-professionals-network/2017/jan/16/ water-energy-food-challenge-davos.

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Source Wirawan, 2020, adapted from Chicago Clipart Source: PNGKIT, Arrows Source: Clipartmax Pile of Dirt Source Clipartkeyhe

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Wirawan (2020) adapted from Sustainable Future Image Source: Reinhart, Industry 4.0 Image Source: Logical Advantage, Blue Ocean Image Source: Why is the ocean blue? The aim is to set up pilot VET hubs in Africa and Indonesia to ● Explore relationships with service users to build the capacity of the providers ● Provide a better understanding of what works, why and how ● Inform policy decisions Vocational education and training to match resources to needs:

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For Example: Trace Your Honey Using Pathways to Wellbeing

The software is detailed in “Transformation from Wall Street to Wellbeing” and ‘Planetary Passport and forthcoming in “Transformative Education for Regenerative Development: Pathways to Sustainable Environments”.

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In Planetary passport the case was made that democracy needs to find new ways to engage people to think about their rights and responsibilities to their immediate family, their neighbourhood and the wider region by enabling them to think about different scenarios for the future and making informed decisions by enabling them to think through the implications of choosing one or another scenarios, such as ‘business as usual’, ‘making small adjustments’ or ‘living sustainably and well’. Participants are asked to consider (a) What they perceive they need to add to their lives to make a difference to mitigating or adapting to climate change, (b) What they perceive they need to discard from their lives to make a difference to mitigating or adapting to climate change (c) What they perceive are the turning points for the better or worse, what the barriers are and what services make a difference. Telling a story and thinking about what we have and what we need and what we are prepared to add or discard from life is part of stepping into another conceptual space. The evaluation of the level of importance of multiple and a simultaneously important issue is important by reflecting on one’s life in terms of different scenarios and the consequences of these choices. Source McIntyre-Mills and De Vries (2011; McIntyre-Mills et al., 2014), McIntyre-Mills (2017a, b), McIntyre-Mills et al. (2018), McIntyre-Mills (2018).

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Source De Vries, D. 2008. Appendix on pathways to wellbeing in McIntyre-Mills, J.J. (2008) User centric policy design to address complex needs. Nova Science. New York, cited in McIntyre-Mills et al 2018, chapter 3 and cited in McIntyreMills, J.J. (2020) ‘Systems Research and Education: about a critical systemic approach to creativity and design’. In Metcalfe, G. Handbook of Systems Science. Springer. Cham. Also see https://ia801606.us.archive.org/20/items/pathway_demo_ 1/pathway_demo_1.mp4.

The implementation of the above concept is done in three phases as follow: ● Gathering written data by means of posting personal stories ● Analyse the data using AI, ML and NLP ● Gathering oral data by means of ChatBot

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Gathering Written Data by Means of Posting Personal Stories

Source De Vries, D. 2008. Appendix on pathways to wellbeing in McIntyre-Mills, J.J. (2008). User centric policy design to address complex needs. Nova Science. New York The above diagram depicts the data gathering module, in which the user can connect to or be connected from other users. Each user would be able to write their personal stories or chatting with other users to gain insight to their written stories. The collected data will be fed to a Natural Language Processing (NLP) and Machine Learning (ML). These interactions will automatically generate user’s profile which can be used to identify the user’s pathway pattern by means of Artificial Intelligence (AI) as depicted in the following diagram.

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Analyse the Data Using AI, ML and NLP

Source Gathering oral data by means of ChatBot Whereas previously people had to choose between three options, which sum up their approach to living, namely: ‘Business as Usual’, ‘Taking Small steps’, ‘Wellbeing’, the new design proposes telling a narrative first42 and then being prompted to consider ‘if then scenarios’, about the implications of their choices. Source De Vries, D. 2008. Appendix on pathways to wellbeing in McIntyre-Mills, J.J. (2008) User centric policy design to address complex needs. Nova Science. New York

42 http://wirasoftfoundation.org/en_GB/web/smartenergy/bbb#_48_INSTANCE_M76iJOdxS

15w_=about%3Ablank%23blocked.

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A Way Forward: Marketing from Farm to Door

Source Of the slide above: Wirawan, 2020 User Centric Management to Manage Single Point Services

Responsive Delivery to People in Lock Down Without a vaccine for Covid-19 the only way to manage the virus is by working together. Pandemics need to be redressed by international networks supported by coalitions. A new systemic approach is explored through learning communities (supported by pathways to wellbeing software) could enhance single point access to support mitigation and adaptation to flatten the curve. The pathways to wellbeing software enables scalable engagement by individuals, households, public, private and voluntary organisations, neighbourhoods, local government, provincial/state and federal level. Each level can engage to enable complex needs to be met whilst in isolation.

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Source Slide by Wirawan, 2020 drawing on https://abcnews.go.com/Health/flatte ning-coronavirus-curve-happening/story?id=70119118downloaded23/05/2020 and adapted from ABC News Photo Illustration, CDC/The Economist

Architecture for Social Services and Single Point of Access The aim of the participatory action research project using on line engagement is to help service users to mitigate, adapt and flatten the curve of Covid-19, by enabling participants by means of single point access to information, services and opportunities to earn while they learn and grow a future together. It addresses sustainable social, economic and environmental wellbeing (Stiglitz et al., 2010; Pauli, 2010; Mair, 2020; United Nations Office for Disaster Risk Reduction, 2017). According to Yeates (2014) regional organisations are neglected partners in global efforts and that by working more collaboratively research can offer significant opportunities to strengthen action, protect and re-shape systemic policy agendas. The objective is to contribute to regional wellbeing. Case studies using comparative social policy methods (cross-national, cross-sectoral), need to build up a strong evidence base to inform policy analysis and policy making that integrates social, economic and environmental wellbeing. Thus, this participatory action research draws on the policy agenda underlined by the UNRSID (2017) to strengthen action through regionalism to support a learning network based on user-centric policy design. ● The pathways to wellbeing software enables scalable engagement by individuals, households, public, private and voluntary organisations, neighbourhoods, local government, provincial/state and federal level. ● Each level can engage to enable complex needs to enable flattening the curve of the virus and managing it once social isolation ends. ● While much has already been written about blockchain applications in an industrial context, little research has been undertaken to explore the extent to which user-centric service delivery to address complex needs.

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Design and Approach The research question is: To what extent can ‘decentralisation, transparency, equality and accountability’ be addressed and play a role in managing Covid-19? ● Step 1: Enter demographic details and home delivery/care details ● Step 2: Select category of need: A. experiencing symptoms, B. recovering C. self-quarantine ● Step 3: Map your needs in terms in terms of haves, needs, turning points for better and worse, barriers. ● Step 4: Select one of the services: ● link to on line advice for health ● link to pharmaceutical delivery services ● link to food delivery services—Protective equipment and a range of rapid response delivery services’ to grow jobs and keep businesses open ● Step 5: Prevent further outbreaks by contracting to address social, economic and environmental wellbeing in line with Nussbaum’s 10 capabilities for sentient beings to prevent cross-species infection and in line with the Ecocide Law advocated by Gauger et al. of Harvard School Polly Higgins and Vandana Shiva—Information links to be provided43 The software is open and has space for the people to develop their stories It works on the same principle as the pathways to wellbeing software where people have to choose between A. B. C.

Business as usual, denial and shifting the blame for the virus, Lame duck, making small changes that are too little and too late, Achieving wellbeing for people and the planet through understanding that ‘A is better off when B is better off”. This requires safe habitat for multiple diverse species as we are part of one interconnected web of life. In the three options they will be prompted by stories that inspire change.

43 Videos

to add to the application, for example: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z-SyZiwX Ks0&feature=youtu.be. A letter from the virus. #LISTEN—YouTube,#coronovirus#planetearth #climatechange #pandemic Video made by Darinka Montico: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v= a2gdztJU1zY. I’m not the owner of this video. www.youtube.com, https://www.cnn.com/videos/ us/2020/03/19/coronavirus-jane-goodall-acfc-full-episode-vpx.cnn. “Dr. Jane Goodall’s message of hope amid the coronavirus pandemic. Anderson Cooper talks with Dr. Jane Goodall, legendary conservationist, about humans’ interactions with animals and how we can avoid pandemics like the novel coronavirus.”

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Data Collection

● I have the following needs. My own story is: ● I need the following: My own story is: ● I will add the following protocols to my life to keep myself and my community safe: Hand washing, wiping down surfaces with hospital grade disinfectant, leaving shoes outside ● My own story is: ● I will discard the following: non- essential use of public spaces. My own story is: ● Self-reflection on the turning points for the better or worse. My own story is: ● Consideration of the barriers that currently exist and consideration of what could be done to help. My own story is:

Balancing Individual and Collective Needs

● A. Business as usual, denial and shifting the blame for the virus, the problem is one that can be fixed by means of a technical solution, rather than changing my own life ● Lame duck, making small changes that are too little and too late. We want others to change, but we do not want to B. change our own lives ● C. Achieving wellbeing for people and the planet. We understand that ‘A is better when B is better’. This requires safe habitat for multiple diverse species as we are part of one interconnected web of life. We will make changes, such as border control to prevent illegal trafficking of people and animals and pass laws to protect the environment and diverse habitats ● We will ensure that all sentient beings can live lives that are worth living ● We will promote Nussbaum’s (2011) 10 capabilities for all sentient beings [link to these will be provided] ● We will change our own lives by making adjustments at a personal, interpersonal and public level ● I will add the following protocols to my life to keep myself and my community safe: ● I will care for myself, others and the environment. ● Hand washing, wiping down surfaces with hospital grade disinfectant, leaving shoes outside, sorting rubbish, reducing, recycling and re-using to protect food, energy and water ● Achieving wellbeing for people and the planet

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A simple way forward has been used during the Covid-19 epidemic where farmers in the Ciwidey and Alamendah areas are marketing their goods through Whatsapp messaging supported by Wirasoft and Universitas Padjadjaran.

Could Access to Online Control of Markets Such as Blockchain Provide a Way Forward to Protect the Marginalised? Because blockchain is a distributed network that can provide tracking, monitoring surveillance from below it can provide a means to empower the landless and the disposed (Nir Kshetrim, 2017). It can also provide a means to balance individual and collective needs (McIntyre-Mills, 2017a, b) and monitor the fair distribution of resources such as food, energy and water from below (McIntyre-Mills, 2018) trace the origin of foodstuffs and to protect the safety of voiceless sentient beings. blockchain …ranges from finance to record-keeping and from tracking the flow of goods to verifying the identity of citizens. The fundamental common characteristic that all blockchain based services share is a design that depends on immutability and decentralisation in storing data. Yet, a system based on the community cannot work without the community. (Walid Al-Saqaf & Nicolas Seidler 2017: 340)

While much has already been written about blockchain applications and potential for industry, little research has been undertaken to explore the extent to which usercentric governance and democracy can be enabled through alternative pathways. This research is an effort to contribute to that body of scholarship by exploring blockchain technology’s potential applications, and their limits, in areas that intersect with social impact, including human rights. To what extent can ‘decentralisation, transparency, equality and accountability’ be addressed and to what extent can it play a role in limiting top down approaches to human rights and the abuse of power through surveillance ‘from below’ and through enhancing the stewardship potential to protect the voiceless, including those without citizenship rights, women, children and animals. The transdisciplinary research (Darian-Smith & McCarty, 2017) proposed here explores plausible rural-urban development pathways in line with the United Nations(UN) Sustainable Development Goals to enhance wellbeing and resilience for those at risk of displacement and those already displaced. Clearly, this has implications for public policy, human service governance and delivery and the way in which the Paris Climate Change Agreement (2015), UN Sustainable Development Goals (2014) and the UN Sendai Framework (2015–2030) for Disaster Risk Reduction are addressed. Thus Goal 1 (end poverty) with specific implications for food, energy and water security, Goal 5 (gender inequality) and Goal 17 (creating partnerships) are particularly relevant to protecting the most vulnerable, whilst The United Nations Declaration of Rights of Indigenous Peoples (2007) provides a vital pathway for socially inclusive decision-making on habitat protection.

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Indigenous thinkers such as Chilisa (2012, 2017) stress that our sense of who we are needs to be revised. We are vulnerable and reliant on a shared habitat. The ideas underpinning the UNDRIP stress that Indigenous people need to have the right to express their identity within a sacred space. The challenge will be to scale up this sense of stewardship not only at the local level but also at a post national regional level through understanding that we are stewards of one planet. The earth politics notion of Vandana Shiva is the only logical direction for securing the biospheres for food security of living systems. The argument is that we need so-called hybrid methodologies (Hesse Bibber, 2018) to begin a discussion of what constitutes the nature of the problem (ontological issue) and how to go about researching the issue (epistemological concern). We live as detailed by Stiglitz et al. (2010: 15) in an increasingly commodified and competitive world Research on balancing individualism and collectivism needs to explore the food, water and energy consumption choices people make and how these relate to their perceptions on ‘wellbeing stocks’. These are defined by Stiglitz et al. as multidimensional.44 ‘Planetary Passport and Wall Street to Wellbeing’ link wellbeing stocks explicitly to developing everyday decision-making capabilities on food, energy and water consumption made by households and organisations at the local government level. It is vital to measure a raft of social, cultural political, economic and environmental indicators that pertain specifically to everyday living. Thus, the multivariate research approach is also participatory, because it is important to find out whether the setting of Sustainable Development Goals through public engagement and recording pledges on an interactive digital site could make a difference to consumption choices and whether this public participation impacts on living ethically and well. Instead of merely listing goals and asking people to meet them, the approach is to request people to make a personal pledge to address food, energy and water consumption by thinking through the consequences of their choices in terms of three scenarios, namely Business as Usual, Making Small Adjustments and Living Virtuously and Well in terms of considering: what local residents have, what they need, what they are prepared to add or discard from their lives, the turning points for the better and worse, the barriers and the resources and or services which they could draw upon in their local government area or to which they could contribute. To realise the so-called ‘liberative potential’ (Gouldner, 1971) of an ecological citizen we need to be trained to be mindful of the so-called ‘enemies within’, these are, according to West Churchman: “religion, politics, morality, aesthetics. “In his usual poetic turn of phrase, he was explaining that what constitutes so-called knowledge 44 The definition is as follows: ‘1. Material living standards (income, consumption and wealth), 2. Health, 3. Education, 4. Personal activities including work, 5. Political voice and governance, 6. Social connections and relationships, 7. Environment (present and future conditions), 8. Insecurity, of an economy as well as a physical nature’. This definition of wellbeing stocks fits well with the way in which both Indigenous and Non-Indigenous Australians connect with Country in Australia and elsewhere and the way in which critical systems thinkers and complexity theorists understand inter relationships. The raft of concepts is necessary for defining wellbeing as stressed in several publications by McIntyre-Mills (McIntyre-Mills, 2003, 2006, 2008, 2011, 2014, 2016).

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is filtered by our values. In terms of morality, the focus on anthropocentrism needs a great deal more attention, so that parallels can be learned from studying other populations that faced extinction. Drawing the line becomes important if living systems are to be protected. This requires stewardship based on humility and recognition that the Anthropocene is a result of human intervention. This has implications for social and environmental justice. It needs to be addressed through responses that take into consideration current and future generation of life. This requires the need to revisit the challenges of balancing individual and collective interests. It requires capability and agency to intervene in ways that are sustainable for the common good. This in turn requires a post nationalist response and one that recomposes that ‘seeing like a state’ is linked with controlling biodiversity! It limits variety and controls forests by hacking down some varieties and promoting others (based on immediate profit) in the same way individuals and groups who do not fulfil the social contract—are barred from safe passage. Rights are accorded to those who work and who support the market. Responsibilities are defined in terms of serving the state. Seed banks that ensure continuity are as important as protecting the habitat that supports them.

References Al-Saqaf, W., & Seidler, N. (2017). Blockchain technology for social impact: Opportunities and challenges ahead. Journal of Cyber Policy, 2(3), 338–354. https://doi.org/10.1080/23738871. 2017.1400084. Bevins, V. (2017). In Indonesia, the ‘fake news’ that fuelled a Cold War massacre is still potent five decades later. Washington Post. https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2017/ 09/30/in-indonesia-the-fake-news-that-fueled-a-cold-war-massacre-is-still-potent-five-decadeslater/. Boyd, A., Brown M., & Midgley, G. (2004). Systemic intervention for community OR: Developing services with young people (Under 16) living on the streets. In: G. Midgley, & A. Ochoa-Arias, (Eds.),Community operational research. Contemporary Systems Thinking. Springer, Boston, MA. Chilisa, B. (2012). Indigenous research methodologies. 1st ed. London: Sage. Chilisa, B. (2017). Decolonizing transdisciplinary research approaches: An African perspective for enhancing knowledge integration in sustainability science. Sustainability Science, 12(5), 813– 827. Churchman, C. W. (1979). The systems approach and its enemies. New York. Basic Books. Churchman, C. W. (1982). Thought and wisdom. Californian: Intersystems Publications. Curtis, B., & Kasira, J. (2020). Swarms of locusts plague East African economy. The Australian 27th January page 9. Florini, A. (2003). The coming democracy. Washington, DC: Island Press. Gouldner, A. W. (1971). The coming crisis of Western sociology. London: Heinemann. Hesse Biber, S. (2018). Foreword: Problem-centered hybrid methodologies: Deploying mixed methods to enhance environmental social justice. In: J. McIntyre-Mills, N. R. A. Room, & Y. Corcoran Nantes, (Eds.), Democracy and governance for resourcing the commons: Theory and practice on rural-urban balance. Cham: Springer. Hofstatter, S. (2018). License to loot: How the plunder of Eskom and other Parastatals almost Sank South Africa. Random House, Penguin.

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Kshetri, N. (2017). Will blockchain emerge as a tool to break the poverty chain in the Global South? Third World Quarterly, 38(8), 1710–1732. https://doi.org/10.1080/01436597.2017.1298438. McIntyre-Mills, J. (2003). Critical systemic praxis for social and environmental justice. London: Springer. McIntyre-Mills, J. (2006). Systemic governance and accountability. West Churchman Series, vol. 3. London: Springer. McIntyre-Mills, J. (2008). User-centric design to meet complex needs. New York: Nova Science. Appendix on software by De Vries, D. McIntyre-Mills, J. (2010). Wellbeing, mindfulness and the global commons. Journal of Consciousness Studies, 17(7–8), 44–72. McIntyre-Mills, J. (2014). Systemic ethics and non-anthropocentric stewardship. New York: Springer. McIntyre-Mills, J. (2017a). Planetary Passport. New York: Springer. McIntyre-Mills, J. (2017b). Recognizing our hybridity and interconnectedness. Current Sociology, 1–24. http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0011392117715898. McIntyre-Mills, J. (2018). Policy Design for non-anthropocentric pathways to protect biodiversity and regenerate the land. International Education Journal in South Africa. https://journals.co.za/ content/journal/10520/EJC-117cea7615. McIntyre-Mills, J., & De Vries. (2011). Identity, democracy and sustainability: facing up to convergent social, economic and environmental challenges. ISCE/ Emergence/ Complexity and Organization. Litchfield Park, USA. McIntyre-Mills, J., Romm, N. (2019). Mixed methods and cross disciplinary research: Towards cultivating eco-systemic living. London: Springer. McIntyre-Mills, J., & Wirawan, R. (2017). Pathways to wellbeing. In Balancing individualism and collectivism. London: Springer. McIntyre-Mills, J., De Vries, & Binchai, N. (2014). Transformation from Wall Street to wellbeing. New York: Springer. McIntyre-Mills, J., Romm, N., & Corcoran-Nantes, Y. (Eds.). (2017). Balancing individualism and collectivism: Supporting social and environmental justice. New York: Springer. McIntyre-Mills, J. J., Romm, N. R. A., & Corcoran-Nantes, Y. (Eds.). (2019). Democracy and governance for resourcing the commons: Theory and practice on rural-urban balance. McIntyre-Mills, J., Corcoran Nantes, Y., Widianingsih, I., & Wirawan, R. (2019). Alamendah: rural Camelot in West Java- A case study of empowerment and integrated rural development. Democracy and governance for resourcing the commons: theory and practice on rural-urban balance. Cham, Switzerland: Springer. McIntyre-Mills, J., Karel, J., Arko-Achemfuor, A., Romm, N. R. A., & Serolong, L. (2019). Efforts to inspire transformative research with farmers in a small town in the North West Province of South Africa. International Journal for Transformative Research, 6(1), 10–19. https://doi.org/ 10.1515/ijtr-2019-0003. Midgley, G., & Ochoa-Arias, A. (2004). Community operational research: OR and systems Thinking for community. London: Springer. Naess, A., & Haukeland, P. I. (2002). Life’s philosophy. In R. Huntford (Ed.), Reason and feeling in a deeper world. Athens, GA: University of Georgia Press. Translated. Quan Baffour, K., Romm, N. R. A., & McIntyre-Mills, J. J. (2019). Ubuntu: A dialogue on connectedness, environmental protection and education. In J. McIntyre-Mills & N. Romm (Eds.), Mixed methods and cross disciplinary research: Towards cultivating eco-systemic living (pp. 221–250). Cham, Switzerland: Springer. Rittel, H., & Webber, M. (1984). Planning problems are wicked problems, developments in design methodology. New York: Wiley. Shai, K. B. (2017). South African state capture: A symbiotic affair between business and state going bad(?) Insight on Africa, 9(1), 62–75. https://doi.org/10.1177/0975087816674584. Stiglitz, J., Sen, A., & Fitoussi, J. P. (2010). Mis-measuring our lives: why the GDP doesn’t add up. New York: The New Press.

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United Nations. (2014). World Urbanisation Prospects: The 2014 Revision. https://esa.un.org/unpd/ wup/publications/files/wup2014-highlights.Pdf. United Nations Paris Climate Change. (2015). Conference of the Parties Twenty-first session Paris, 30 November to 11 December 2015. https://unfccc.int/resource/docs/2015/cop21/eng/l09r01.pdf. United Nations Declaration of the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. (2007). https://www.humanrights. gov.au/publications/un-declaration-rights-indigenous-peoples-1. Von Foerster, H. (1995). Cybernetics of cybernetics (2nd ed.). Minneapolis: Future Systems Inc. Widianingsih, I., Riswanda, R., & Paskarina, C. (2020). Rural urban linkage and local government capacity in addressing water security issues: Comparative analyses in Indonesia, South Africa and South Australia. Center for Decentralization and Participatory Development Research.

Janet J. McIntyre-Mills is Honorary Professor in the College of Education at University of South Africa, Tshwane, South Africa; Visiting Research Fellow at Adelaide University in the College of Professions Main North Terrace; and Adjunct Associate Professor in College of Business Government and Law at Flinders University, Sturt Campus, Adelaide. R. Wirawan is CEO of Wirasoft and Senior Researcher at Flinders University. I. Widianingsih is Chairperson of Center for Decentralization and Participatory Development Research, Faculty of Social and Political Sciences, Universitas Padjadjaran, Bandung. R. Riswanda is Associate Professor in Faculty of Politics and Social Science at Universitas Sultan Ageng Tirtayasa.

Chapter 16

Educational Curriculum and Multispecies Relations Pinkie Louisa Mabunda and Veronica McKay

Abstract The COVID-19 pandemic has revealed the fragility of our world. It has exposed the risks we have ignored for decades which impact on the sustainability of the earth’s ecosystems. Now more than ever, the call for the implementation of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) is prominent against the backdrop of the global COVID-19 pandemic. In this article we acknowledge the critical role played by education for sustainable development, both as an SDG in its own right and also as the enabler for the other 16 SDGs. While Environmental Education has long been seen as the treatment of choice to offset the challenges that degrade the planet, we argue for an Education for Sustainable Development approach, rather than environmental education as an insular or mono-disciplinary subject. We offer a case for mainstreaming environmental issues across-the-curriculum, and present the African philosophy of Ubuntu as offering an ecosophical basis for collectivism, for embracing all species and for connecting humans, animals and the natural environment, as well as for decentering the grand narratives that have peripherised African thought. Keywords Environmental education · Multispecies · Ubuntu · Sustainable development goals (SDG) · COVID-19 · South Africa · Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) · Curriculum and Assessment Policy Statements (CAPS)

Introduction “Look at those big, big teeth!” “Look at its horns”, “Can you see those sharp claws?”—these are the squeals of delight from pre-school Grade R1 learners, at more 1 In South Africa, Grade R is the Reception year before formal schooling which begins in Grade 1. Grade R is considered part of the foundation phase of schooling and is followed by Grades 1. 2 and 3.

P. L. Mabunda · V. McKay (B) College of Education, University of South Africa, Pretoria, South Africa © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2021 J. J. McIntyre-Mills and Y. Corcoran-Nantes (eds.), From Polarisation to Multispecies Relationships, Contemporary Systems Thinking, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-33-6884-2_16

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or less the same time, across the country, as the same worksheet is used to present a lesson in the first five weeks of the fourth term. The same lesson is presented to all Grade R children in South African public schools, where carefully prepared workbooks are distributed in the 11 official languages to enable each learner in every public school to learn in his or her home language, in what is one of the largest state interventions to improve teaching and learning. Beyond the walls of the classroom, cars sport bumper stickers calling to “Save the rhino”, “Save the whale” or “Save the penguins” in a context where these species face extinction, in a country renowned for its game parks and surrounded by oceans, but where animals are poached, elephants are butchered for their tusks, rhinos for their horns, and penguins need to be rescued when they are coated in oil from ocean oil spills. An awareness of the threat of extinction and of the eco-environment is instilled early in pre-school (Grade R), as required by the primary school Curriculum and Assessment Statements (CAPS) (Department of Basic Education [DBE], 2011), and every year thereafter, the curriculum requires learners to journey through their eco-environment following the pre-designed lessons presented in the state-issued workbooks which, while teaching language and literacy, incorporate themes that are relevant to social justice and the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) (United Nations, 2015). In the year before starting formal schooling, the government workbooks give learners information on the threat of extinction and what extinction means in a simplified form as they assemble a dinosaur cut-out from a special cardboard cutout page in their workbooks. They read a story about a dinosaur, paste stickers of different species of dinosaurs into the spaces in their workbooks, put together a cutout dinosaur jigsaw puzzle and make animal masks that they use to act out animal roles. These lessons are intended to develop an environmental consciousness and to encourage learners to talk about animals that are extinct, about rhinos and elephants and how they are hunted for their tusks and horns, and the need to protect these wildlife species.

The Workbook Intervention for Focusing on the Environment The Rainbow Workbooks were designed as one of the interventions of the Department of Basic Education aimed at addressing poor learner performance in language and mathematics. In the course of conceptualising this intervention, the materials developers sought to infuse the teaching of values education both in the overt and covert curriculum, or in what McKay (2018a, b, 2019) refers to as the parallel curriculum, which aims at ensuring that learners understand and internalise positive values and respect for all forms of life. The workbooks were designed specifically to bring about a new consciousness and to convey positive values of care for the environment and social and environmental justice, whilst teaching the official curriculum. Hence,

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while teaching about the environment takes place most explicitly through the South African Life Skills curriculum, McKay (2018a, b, 2019) talks about how sustainable development consciousness may be inculcated across the learning areas where this takes the form of a “parallel curriculum” conveying messages of positive values regardless of the content being taught. In this sense, the workbooks focus on multiliteracies and endeavour to teach these across the curriculum. Environmental literacy enhances learners’ understanding, skills and motivation to make responsible decisions that consider their relationships with natural systems, communities and future generations. It was this literacy that we incorporated in the parallel curriculum, across the range of learning areas. We argue that for Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) to be effective, it has to be mainstreamed across all curricula of formal and non-formal education, from early childhood development, throughout schooling and beyond. Goal 4.7 of the SDG stresses the importance of ESD stating that By 2030, ensure that all learners acquire knowledge and skills needed to promote sustainable development, including, among others, through education for sustainable development and sustainable lifestyles, human rights, gender equality, promotion of a culture of peace and nonviolence, global citizenship and appreciation of cultural diversity and of culture’s contribution to sustainable development. (United Nations, 2015)

ESD concerns the core of teaching and learning, as a critical cross-field outcome integrated across the curricula, across both sustainability-related intended learning outcomes and across disciplines or subjects, for responsible global citizenship (UNESCO, 2017), necessary to prepare learners to pursue sustainable development. Following UNESCO’s2 call for mainstreaming ESD, the Department of Basic Education undertook a massive materials development project to develop materials that took an ESD approach that blurred disciplinary boundaries. Introduced by a presidential injunction, the development of the national school workbooks in 20113 coincided with the introduction of the Curriculum and Assessment Policy Statement (CAPS), required a reconsideration of conventional practices around teacher and learner support in the classroom by providing both content knowledge and guiding the pedagogy. The use of textual guidance to improve learning outcomes is a common approach. Shulman (1986, 1987: 8) identifies pedagogical content knowledge (PCK) as the integration of content knowledge (the what) with pedagogical knowledge (the how), which is fundamental for teachers to convey subject matter in a manner that makes it accessible to learners. Shulman’s notion of PCK was central to conceptualising the workbooks so that they might offer support in 2 In

addition, the 2002 World Summit on Sustainable Development in Johannesburg, South Africa endorsed the International recognition of ESD as a key enabler for sustainable development. 3 The original development in 2011, gave rise to annual impact assessments and evaluations until 2017. Each year, the DBE published newly revised editions of the materials. To date 6 million books have been delivered at no cost to all children in all public schools. The books have been used across the African Union. They are open resources available from the DBE website https://www.education.gov.za/Curriculum/LearningandTeachingSupportMateria ls(LTSM)/Workbooks/2020WorkbooksTerm1and2.aspx.

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classrooms where this was needed, and guide learning towards the values described in the National Curriculum Statement (McKay, 2019). Hence, while the school workbooks aimed to teach explicitly the content of the official Life Skills and Language and Literacy curriculums, they were designed in such a way to ensure that the covert curriculum (or what is usually considered the hidden curriculum4 ) supported the values of democracy, social and environmental justice drawing on a Critical Diversity framework, the workbook aimed to promote ethical conduct and inclusivity in terms of race, class, gender, ability, and an awareness of the need for humanised societies. In addition, the overt and parallel messages in the workbooks aimed to encourage children to explore their relationship with the planet and the animal and eco-environment—striving at all times to ensure that the sophisticated concepts and values of sustainability and human rights were accessible to the target population of children in the 4-year-old to 13-year-old age band (McKay, 2018a). This intervention was considered to be the most cost-effective way to raise the quality of primary education. Outhred et al. (2014: 60) refer to learner support material as necessary for “bridging” systemic learning deficits, especially when curriculum changes are introduced or when teachers lack the necessary pedagogical skills. These authors contend that well-designed instructional materials strengthen learners’ and teachers’ interaction with the curriculum when the teacher needs support, since materials offer opportunities to reinforce and supplement teaching and learning and to “support teachers through potentially disturbing and threatening change processes, demonstrate new and/or untried methodologies, introduce change gradually, and create scaffolding upon which teachers can build a more creative methodology of their own” (Litz, 2005: 6). In support of engendering the knowledge, attitudes, and skills needed for environmental awareness, the DBE’s National Curriculum Statement (DBE, 2016: 6–7) espouses the values of systemic thinking and sees these as underpinning multispecies relationships by acknowledging the need to seek linkages and synergies when trying to find solutions to problems. It is through “an understanding of the world as a set of related systems and by recognising that problem solving contexts do not exist in isolation” (DBE, 2016: 6–7) that learning about and for the environment happens. Echoing this, Rosenburg (2009) states that the National Curriculum Statement embodies the principles of a healthy environment, social and environmental justice and human rights and that these principals underpin all learning areas and subjects, across schooling and are explicitly expressed in particular learning outcomes in the Social and Natural Sciences, and also in subjects like Technology, Design, Tourism, Agriculture, and Life Orientation (the latter being a compulsory learning area for life and

4 It is recognised that in Marxist terms the covert or hidden curriculum usually carries with it negative

connotations; however, in the case of the workbooks, the development team chose to manipulate aspects of the material often constituting the hidden curriculum to ensure that the parallel curriculum supported positive values necessary for a humanised society.

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citizenship education). She further points out that concepts and values like sustainability, respect for the environment, responsibility and participation, all feature across the curriculum. In our interrogation of the National Curriculum Statement undertaken to guide the ESD approach taken in the workbooks we acknowledge the Curriculum’s focus on the whole as being more than the sum of its parts and how it prescribes a shift from thinking about “things” in isolation, to thinking about “wholes” and linking these to environmental processes. The National Curriculum Statement highlights the importance of the following: ● human rights, inclusivity, environmental and social justice ● infusing the principles and practices of social and environmental justice and human rights as defined in the Constitution of the Republic ● diversity and focusing on issues of poverty, inequality, race, gender, language, age, disability valuing indigenous knowledge systems by acknowledging the rich history and heritage of the country as important to nurturing the values contained in the Constitution (DBE, 2016: 6–7). In responding to the curriculum Meiring (2018: 232) argues that there is a lack of specificity in the CAPS. Her research into the study, of teaching foundation phase learners about the environment in South Africa, leads her to argue that it is unclear where teachers are “expected to include environmental concerns into learning programs” because, the curriculum, she asserts, is “essentially [only] a compilation of learning activities”. Other researchers, however, offer converse arguments, for example, Raath and Hay (2019) explain that from their research, teachers suggest that the CAPS are explicit in what should be taught, what appropriate materials should be used, and what activities and modes of instruction should be adopted. They further argue that ESD represents a major shift in the way students are taught and learn— requiring a broad and flexible approach and to this end, the CAPS provide an enabling framework for implementing ESD. Raath and Hay (2019) locate the strength of the curriculum as residing in the extent to which it allows teachers to use these moments for interpretation and adaptation. Our own analysis of the CAPS, in conceptualising the school workbooks highlighted the principles of human rights, inclusivity, environmental and social justice that undergird the curriculum. We have, through the deliberate design of the Grade R workbooks (and the workbooks for the other grades) tried to ensure that ESD finds expression as a feature across the language and literacy materials. In developing the architecture for the workbooks, we5 as developers looked at the design holistically to

5 The

second author was the coordinator of the school workbook intervention, and conceptualised the framework for the series, specifically the development of the language, literacy, life skills and the Grade R workbooks illustrated in this chapter. The first author was involved in developing the teachers’ handbooks and in ensuring that the materials were CAPS compliant whilst cutting across “subjects”. The team comprised 60 people and included artists, layout designers and various content and language experts. Both authors are academics working in initial teacher education at the University of South Africa.

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ensure that across the series6 for a particular grade and progressively for subsequent grades, that we exploited every opportunity to emphasise on ESD, and the materials focus on sustainable consumption, sustainable use of the oceans, marine resources, and terrestrial ecosystems. Specifically, we focused on the protection of endangered species and animal extinction as we integrated these topics throughout the curriculum with the intention of enabling environmental literacy and the acquisition of the values as prescribed in the National Curriculum Statement. From our piloting of the workbooks of the workbook materials before going to print, and thereafter, during their implementation (referred to in McKay, 2018a, b and 2019) it was found that regardless of race, class and gender, the learners’ and teachers’ interest and enthusiasm to focus on their environment and on animal conservation was high. Our findings were contrary to the racialised claims put forth by Nattrass (2020: 1) who argued, from her (limited opportunistic) survey, that there were differences pertaining to university students’ “attitudes towards evolution and experience with, and attitudes to, animals” along racial lines or according to the number of pets that students had. Without exception, we found that children were drawn especially to the themes dealing with life below water and life on land as we endeavoured to incorporate the environmental goals of the Millennial Development Goals and thereafter, in subsequent editions, the SDGs. McKay (2018a) explains that the workbooks aimed to engender an awareness of: environmental activities, water purification, clean-ups, vegetable gardening … thus affirming the value of caring for the environment. While much of the focus of the books is on environmental issues, one of the books [in the series] includes [in the home language books] the childhood story of Wangari Maathi, who founded the green movement, and stresses that the simple act of planting trees in Kenya could make a difference through mobilising people to take action.

Through our efforts to teach ESD across the curriculum, we took advantage of opportunities in the CAPS to encourage learners to engage in action-oriented cleanups and tree planning, and “for learners to become active sustainability-oriented citizens able to participate in shaping a sustainable future requiring pedagogical approaches that are action-oriented and transformative” (UNESCO, 2017).

The Multispecies Approach Following the SDG curriculum frameworks provided UNESCO (2017) and explicated by Osman et al’s, (2017) Commonwealth SDG framework, we took a multispecies approach to interpreting the CAPS. 6 The workbook package included a number of artefacts such as theme posters, anthology of stories,

songs and poetry, two workbooks per subject per grade, graded reading books, teachers notes, cut out cardboard activities such as mask or animal building, and peel off stickers to be pasted in the workbooks. In some grades, CDs with songs and rhymes. All materials are open source and digitised for use on IPads.

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Scholars such as Lotz-Sisitka et al. (2015) point out that the transformative, transgressive forms of learning needed for ESD all require engaged forms of pedagogy that involve multi-voiced engagement with multiple actors and emphasise cognitive justice and the development of individual and systemic agency. They contend that transformative, transgressive learning processes have been influenced by new social movements such as postcolonial and decolonisation theory. We took the view that the philosophy of Ubuntu is commensurate with a multispecies approach which we discuss in the following section where we show that the multispecies approach can be operationalised through the adoption of the Ubuntu philosophy—that this approach is appropriate for an understanding of environmental literacy towards meeting sustainability. Ndlovu-Gatsheni (2013) in fact argues that educational spaces, such as universities and schools are sites of knowledge reproduction, and that they perpetuate colonial discourses without breaking from dominant Western discourses. He calls on the education sector to reimagine and redefine these spaces to identify the extent to which indigenous and non-indigenous knowledges might coexist. For Nxumalo (2020), coexisting implies relatedness and indigenous ways of knowing, and these provide courage and hope in dealing with the Anthropocene—the current geological age understood extensively as the period during which human activity has been the dominant influence on the climate and the environment and which some suggest began with the industrial revolution. Nxumalo (2020) argues that the discourses and anthropogenic activities are important to explore since the epoch provides a backdrop for Black and Indigenous beings as “deserving of presence, innocence, survivance, creativity, and decolonized futurities”. Furthermore, Nxumalo (2020) stresses the importance of realising that “coloniality and anti-blackness are always already imbricated in the asymmetric impacts of the Anthropocene”. Taylor and Pacini-Ketchabaw (2015) explore affirmation theories and point to the importance of moving beyond humanist educational paradigms, arguing that while we often consider the development of individual children within their social and exclusively human world, we need to deliberately reposition them within the heterogeneous multispecies common worlds in which we all interact and live. This, they argue, requires a shift beyond the social, exclusively human, individual childcentred pedagogies that predominate education spaces to a focus on “collectivity” and strategies through which learners can engage with other “species, entities, and forces in their immediate common worlds”. They term these “collectively engaged [pedagogies and] modes of learning” (Taylor & Pacini-Ketchabaw, 2015). The arguments presented by Ndlovu-Gatsheni and Nxumalo confirm the need for appropriately situated and socio-politically and “ethically attuned” approaches to environmental education, and draw from perspectives that include environmental humanities, posthuman theories and feminist science studies. This in an attempt to challenge “idealized, decontextualized, and human-centered notions of nature and childhood” (Nxumalo, 2020). Furthermore, they contend that attempts should address the gap that exists in curriculum, pedagogy and research around the erasures of and orientation weaknesses toward blackness and indigeneity, such as the misrepresented

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view that presents “Black people as not caring about or as indifferent about nature” (Nxumalo, 2020). The recent controversial and racially inspired article referred to above, by Nattrass (2020), entitled “Why are black South African students less likely to consider studying biological sciences?” is one such example. Nattrass stereotypically concludes that few black South Africans enter the biological sciences as a result of their “experience with pets and attitudes towards wildlife”. We consider her research to be anecdotal and untested because the real lived experiences of African children is contrary to her assertions: Many black families, even poor ones, invariably have a dog or a cat and in the rural areas, families have cattle, sheep, goats and indigenous poultry. Nattrass’s notion that few black South Africans have positive experiences with pets and wildlife is a misrepresentation of their realities. For example, dogs are used for various purposes such as guard dogs and for hunting, but they are also regarded with prestige and pride. Cattle and cows are closely related to customs such as lobola (dowries), they are a status symbol and wealth. Animal totems are symbols of kinship and regarded as symbols of pride, while wildlife such as impala, springboks, gazelle, kudu are managed under the strict control of village authorities to prevent their decimation. The flimsy study conducted by Nattrass (2020) did not touch on these matters nor on the fact that in South Africa, by far the largest proportion of game rangers are Africans. Nxumalo (2020) points out that these narratives of misrepresentations of blackness and indigeneity as “not caring about or as indifferent about nature” fail to take into account the ecosophical dimension of the indigenous African concept of botho/hunhu/Ubuntu, which is discussed in the final section of this chapter and which shows that the African philosophy of Ubuntu embraces the universe, including the planet and its species, in its entirety and in its wholeness, relatedness and interconnectedness. Specifically, in this chapter, we emphasise the relatedness and connectedness of Ubuntu as it links humans, animals and the natural environment (Tran & Wall, 2019). Gillespie and Lawson (2017) and Whatmore (2006) indicate that most multispecies scholarship focuses on the connections to, and within, multiple “more-thanhuman worlds”, while exploring ways in which education needs to be reconfigured to promote meaningful engagement. The more-than-human modes of enquiry presume that socio-material change is not an exclusively human activity but that other entities such as animals, plants, social objects, and technological devices are involved in the co-fabrication of the worlds. Writing on the Actor Network Theory (ANT) in the more-than-human worlds context espoused by the multispecies theory, Nimmo (2011: 109) contends that ANT provides a corrective to the usual social scientific focus upon human beings and the social domain of human subjects, by directing attention to the significance of nonhumans in social life. It suggests that social relations should not be seen in isolation, but as always existing in relations with all kinds of extra-social networks between humans and nonhumans, which need to be recognized and made visible. For ANT there is no society as such, in the sense of a domain consisting exclusively of relations between human subjects, as these

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relations are always mediated and transformed and even enabled by nonhumans of diverse kinds, whether objects, materials, technologies, animals or eco-systems.

In a similar vein, the theory of pluralism also acknowledges that reality is constituted by many worlds and many ways of knowing. The theory is based on the assumption of an interrelated, non-hierarchical coexistence of the human and nonhuman worlds, which also extends to the natural and spirit worlds, all of which are interconnected in time and space. Silova (2020) explains that both human and nonhuman are always interrelated. The environmental system and catastrophes cannot be explained in terms of human exceptionalism and individualism. Education needs to serve as a link between various species and holistic systems (Silova 2020).

Education and the Sustainable Development Agenda The focus on environmental literacy is at the heart of the SDGs. Osman et al. (2017), in offering learning frameworks for teaching the SDGs as supporting a holistic lifecourse approach to education, points to the integration of different types and forms of knowledge, including indigenous and traditional knowledge systems, and also the complex interplay of social and environmental factors necessary for sustainable futures. The framework aims to inform curricula development that would enable learners to acquire the knowledge, values, and attitudes to craft ways of living together on a common planet and to build a better future in an interdependent world (McIntyreMills, 2019). At the systemic level, Osman et al. (2017) propose mainstreaming the SDGs into curricula and practice across all the subsectors of education, with a view to building an awareness of the interconnectedness of the challenges. They refer to the values underpinning the SDGs as embracing inclusion and democracy, respect for people and all life forms, equity and social justice, quality of life, care and duty, sustainability, equity, tolerance and respect for others. These values underscore our individual and collective responsibility for innovating new learning delivery and approaches. In explaining systemic thinking, McKay (2020) argues for education that is lifewide, implying the need for the integration of learning and the development of foundational skills to be used in different ways across a wide range of places or spaces—cutting across sectors such as health, work, social security, environment and culture and thus embrace the broad range of SDGs that cut across sectors. Similarly, Oghenekohwo and Frank-Oputu (2017: 130) see education, including basic literacy, as central to the achievement of all 17 SDGs, and as essential to decreasing the vulnerability of individuals and communities (SDGs 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 10 and 16) as well as increasing people’s capacity for participation in a knowledge-driven system (SDGs 8, 9, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15 and 17); it is thus essential to sustainable development. Figure 16.1 shows the 17 SDGs clustered according to the main components of sustainable development, below the overarching themes of peace, justice, equity and

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Fig. 16.1 Mapping the SDGs (adapted from Osman et al., 2017: 14)

gender, underpinned by global partnerships. While the three pillars in the diagram may appear to suggest silos, it is recognised that the 17 SDGs and their 169 targets are interdependent and that their implementation is interrelated. Education is both a goal in itself and a key enabler for ensuring the achievement of the other 16 SDGs. It is thus a catalyst for sustainable development. It emphasises collective knowledge, skills, values, and attitudes to enable people to move along pathways towards sustainable development, necessitating that learners of all ages are equipped with the knowledge, skills, values, and attitudes needed to be responsible planetary citizens. The critical role to be played by education is clearly spelt out in Target 4.7 of the SDGs, which highlights the need to ensure that individuals contribute to sustainable development through enhancing their competencies across the learning phases.

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While the National Curriculum Framework and the CAPS resonate with the SDGs, the workbooks offer a practical way of ensuring that all learners attain at least a basic level of environmental literacy. Meiring (2018: 232), in her study of a Grade R and a Grade 3 class in one South African urban primary school, generalises her findings stating that, from the curriculum it is unclear as to ‘where’ teachers are “expected to include environmental concerns into learning programs”. She (2018: 232) argues that during her research (in the one school) it “became clear that ‘environment in the curriculum’ was of less importance than maths and English” and one of the subjects that easily becomes sidelined “while teachers complete other urgent tasks outside or inside the classroom” or relegated environmetal education to a once-off overnight environmental camp. We are concerned that she has attributed her experience from one urban school to condemn the curriculum and the efforts made by teachers across South Africa to offer an enriched enviromental experience. We therefore disagree with her assertion that in South Africa. the subject “Life Skills was brought into schools to help children acquire the necessary life skills that they might not be privileged enough to acquire at home. An important and necessary subject one would think, but in practice it is neglected and scorned upon as it is not considered as important as subjects like maths, physics and literacy. It is very likely that the same low status will be given to Environmental Education in South Africa if it was to become a formal subject.

Meiring (2018) proceeds to state that turning environmental education into an official government school subject runs the risk of it becoming further “indoctrination” arguing that teachers do not know where and how to find the spaces to teach it in the everyday curriculum. As an aside, she points out that while the DBE workbook for Grade 3 (DBE, 2017: 10–11) “covers different types of pollution but does not mention solar energy”. We disagree with Meiring (2018) on all accounts: Firstly, she cannot dismiss the work done by teachers under difficult conditions around the country by using her sample of one school and one or two classes. Secondly, the CAPS and the workbooks are premised on an understanding of ESD as espoused by the UNESCO (2017) and the Commonwealth Framework for incorporating the SDGs across the education continuum. Both these frameworks take, as their point of departure, the need for ESD-related topics be taught across the curriculum and across all education phases. With sustainable development topics cutting across all the learning areas, specifically languages, life skills and even in mathematics. There is therefore no need for teachers to seek places to teach environmental issues. In our meta-concept for the workbooks, (readers, teachers’ notes and posters developed per school grade) we aimed to ensure that the range of environmental topics feature ‘across the package’. We recognised furthermore that the 2 hours set aside each week for “beginning knowledge” was insufficient to give attention to the vast range of environmental matters referred in the CAPS for the Foundation Phase, and therefore teaching environmental literacy across the curriculum served our ESD intention. Secondly, and stemming from the aforementioned, we identified many “spaces” for incorporating knowledge and skills about the environment (including for teaching

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energy about alterative energy). As one example, we refer to a Grade 3 reading book entitled ‘Strange but true’ which, in fact refers to aeroplane that stored sufficient solar energy in its batteries to even fly at night. Household solar energy is referred to elsewhere in the materials. Based on our understanding of ESD, this same reading book produced in all eleven official languages included information on whales, flesh eating plants, flying snakes, flowers, magnets and water on Mars. The rationale for this was to ensure that our language materials were useful for Cognitive Academic Language Proficiency (CALP), whilst teaching environmental and social justice topics across the materials, with even the fictional reading books concluding with a dedicated section on the environment, land, plant or animals that related to the story. We do not agree with Meiring’s (2018) contention that the CAPS failed to pinpoint the topics that could be used to facilitate the implementation of environmental education, arguing that the CAPS is merely a list of activities. We, however, contend that the CAPS (unlike the previous Outcomes-Based Curriculum 2005) are perhaps overly explicit in directing environmental learning outcomes, albeit relying on teachers’ will and ability. This over prescription for teachers was intended to mitigate the challenges of implementing the new curriculum, and also to compensate for any limitations in teachers’ ability in this learning area. The DBE’s Rainbow Workbooks intervention was intended to offer a strong scaffold for directing lessons, particularly where educators are un/under-qualified and for contexts where resources are scarce (McKay, 2018a, 2019). In our conceptualisation of the workbooks, we aimed to guide teachers’ pedagogical practice by translating the CAPS into implementable lesson worksheets. While we concur with Meiring’s (2018) contention that many teachers are not able to implement curriculum with ease, McKay (2018a and 2019) refers to a range of examples of the ways in which the CAPS were recontextualised and reconceptualised to teach ESD across-the curriculum. In doing this, we were inspired by the growing body of literature (such as Gordon, 2006) that suggests that ESD needs to be understood from a transdisciplinary perspective as opposed to the mono-disciplinarity that is dominant in education. This movement argues that transdisciplinary perspectives stress the crossing of disciplinary boundaries and transcends mono-cultural practices in order to create new forms of human activity and social systems that are more sustainable and socially just. We took the ESD across-the-curriculum approach seriously with our development of the workbooks from Gr R across the primary school phase. Some of the typical lessons in the Grade R workbooks (which integrate the teaching of literacy and language, maths and life skills) show how we allowed the life skills themes of ‘Beginning Knowledge’ to organise the teaching of the other two learning areas. We have included some of the topics below to show the use of graphic devices to attract learners and to stimulate their curiosity.

16 Educational Curriculum and Multispecies Relations ● FESTIVALS AND SPECIAL DAYS In teaching about festivals and special days, we selected from the range of United Nations international days and the lessons focuse on these in the relevant month.

● THE SEASONS The various seasons are taught during the relevant months and offered immense opportunities to introduce topics around weather and even climate change by focusing on: ● The weather in each season ● How nature is affected ● How animals are affected ● How people are affected - what we eat, wear, do, games that we play In each season, learners are required to focus on the changes in nature, trees and plants. The workbooks make provision for learners to focus on when animals are born and when plants and sown, grown and harvested.

● WATER ● ● ● ● ●

Objects that float and sink Things that live in the water Mixing different things in water to change what it looks like Pouring and measuring water Saving water

The various lessons focus on life in the oceans, water pollution, endangering water life and focus on water conservation.

● A HEALTHY ENVIRONMENT ● ● ●

The importance of a clean environment How people pollute the environment The importance of recycling

The curriculum is interpreted to encourage learners to focus on environmental pollution, (littering and other forms of pollution) and to focus on recycling and reusing objects.

International Mother Earth Day Wildlife Day World Oceans Day International Day of Clean Air for Blue Skies World Habitat Day Arbour Day

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● DINOSAURS Learners are introduced to different dinosaurs ● How dinosaurs lived ● Wow we know about dinosaurs today ● What does ‘extinct’ mean? ● How we can protect animals from extinction ● What animals are most threatened?

● BIRDS Learners explore birdlife in their surroundings and learn about: ● Different types of birds ● General characteristics of a birds such as having feathers, two legs, a beak and lays eggs ● Birds that cannot fly - ostrich, penguin ● Nests

● REPTILES ● ● ●

Different reptiles - e.g. crocodile, snake, lizard Characteristics of reptiles - cold-blooded, scaly body, lays eggs Find out more about at least one reptile

● WILD ANIMALS ● ● ● ●

What is a wild animal? Types of wild animals Where we find wild animals How wild animals live

Finding out about one wild animal by choosing one wild animal to study, focusing on what the animal looks like, where it lives, what it eats, it’s babies and when they are born etc.

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The Pedagogy of the Covid-19 Pandemic We argue in this chapter that ESD is required to overcome the disciplinary barriers that limit their teaching about, and for, the environment. The need to focus on the health of the planet and for climate justice is now at the centre of discussions as we engage the lessons learned from the COVID-19 pandemic. In his book ‘The cruel pedagogy of the virus’, Boaventura de Sousa Santos (2020) reflects on the impacts on the world plunged into crisis by the virus. He identifies the intrinsic inability of many current economic systems to face the challenges caused by the pandemic, revealing the deep social, economic, political, cultural, environmental, and educational inequalities in our world, and attributes this to, inter alia, the excessive focus on the market at the expense of ensuring that the basic needs of the population and the planet are met. While the virus is indiscriminate across race, class and gender, it has had a far more profound impact on the poor in all countries, regardless of the economic status of the country (Lopes & McKay, 2020). The focus of education for an informed citizenry is essential and, as countries recover from the Covid-19 pandemic, it is necessary that the education sector renew the focus on the planet. This is eloquently expressed in the Mandela Day address by the United Nations (UN) Secretary-General António Guterres (2020), who states that the COVID-19 pandemic has demonstrated the fragility of our world. It has laid bare risks we have ignored for decades: inadequate health systems; gaps in social protection; structural inequalities; environmental degradation; the climate crisis. … One hundred million more people could be pushed into extreme poverty. We could see famines of historic proportions.

Guterres (2020) considers the long-term prospects stating that: by 2050, accelerating climate change will affect millions of people through malnutrition, malaria and other diseases, migration, and extreme weather events. This creates serious threats to inter-generational equality and justice. Today’s young climate protesters are on the frontlines of the fight against inequality. The countries that are most affected by climate disruption did the least to contribute to global heating. The green economy will be a new source of prosperity and employment. … And this is why we call not only for climate action, but climate justice.

In the education sector, the pandemic presents a call for a thoughtful synthesis of how to re-orient our post-Covid-19 policies to connect the educational agenda to the advancement of the global community as a whole, ensuring a balance between the economic and ecological and focusing on the interconnection between sustainable development and the UN’s core values of peace and non-violence, human rights and justice, development and well-being Guterres (2020). These values are at the heart of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, the blueprint for peace and prosperity on a healthy planet. In practical terms, this implies increased attention to inclusion, equality and equity, as well as relevance and quality in education, alongside a thorough reflection on how

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to get international solidarity and environmentalism on track. In the short term, there is a need to work on how to safeguard the ‘Right to Education’ and in the medium and long term, to rethink the role of education in preparing societies for any future disasters that might hit the planet. The pandemic has been a catalyst for change and has reinforced the need to seriously consider the SDGs and how these may be accentuated across education systems. This momentum must not be lost (Guterres, 2020).

Ubuntu the Essential Philosophy Our focus is on the African philosophy of Ubuntu, which makes manifest the values of collectivism, inclusiveness and environmental stewardship by focusing on human interconnectedness (Letseka, 2000: 179), communal togetherness (Chilisa, 2009: 407), and the holistic worldview of interdependencies of people, planet and place (Oviawe, 2016: 5). As Oviawe (2016: 5) indicates, Communities are networks of relationships both biological and social that exist within a given ecosystem. It is clear that humans and nature are intertwined and have a relationship of reciprocity whereby one depends on the other to survive. Indeed, the collective ethos is not limited to human communities only but rather they are connected to their environment … [Ubuntu] provides a roadmap for viewing the world in a more holistic and ecologically sound manner, revealing the processes behind the connections and patterns that crystallise seemingly separate parts into a unified whole.

What Oviawe (2016) is suggesting is that an education founded on Ubuntu will offer ways of overcoming the fragmentation of species and of the universe. Ubuntu as an educational philosophy opens the way for being in the world, guided by values of a common collective and consideration for the well-being of all species—of our eco-environment. It offers a vision for world peace and justice—for acknowledging the importance of the wider community, and for the use of wisdom for a “collective ethos that is global”. Scholars espousing this position regard Ubuntu as a broad and encompassing principle of human and mutual interconnectedness. The interconnection embraced by Ubuntu includes the entire social and physical ecology and takes expression in generosity, caring, a morally compassionate and practically enabling state (Assié-Lumumba, 2017: 14). For Assié-Lumumba (2017: 14), the worldview encompassed by the Southern African Nguni word “Ubuntu is neither specific to the Southern African sub-region and nor is it exclusively African” but holds promise for the planet. In considering whether Ubuntu is akin to humanism, Ramose (2015: 59) argues that: The concept of botho/hunhu/Ubuntu in indigenous African languages is not readily translatable into humanism, especially if the latter is understood as a specific trend in the evolution of Western philosophy. Humanness is a better rendition of the concept than humanism. The former suggests both a condition of being and the state of becoming, of openness or ceaseless unfolding. It is thus opposed to any -ism, including humanism, for this tends to suggest a

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condition of finality, a closedness or a kind of absolute either incapable of or resistant to any further movement…. This basic difference between humanness and humanism speaks to two different perceptions of and perspectives on reality or being. Humanness regards being or the universe as a complex wholeness involving the multi-layered and incessant interaction of all entities. This condition of permanent, multidirectional movement of entities is not by definition chaos. On the contrary, it is both the source and the manifestation of the intrinsic order of the universe. Herein lies the ecosophical dimension of the indigenous African concept of botho/hunhu/Ubuntu.

The point that Ramose makes is that Ubuntu embraces the universe in its entirety and in its “wholeness”. He offers an ecosophical dimension that is derived from African thought, and which he argues is not conceptualised by Western thinking. It regards the relatedness and interconnectedness—a wholeness—that embraces the planet and its species. Specifically, for this chapter, we emphasise the relatedness and connectedness of Ubuntu as it links humans, animals, and the natural environment (Tran & Wall, 2019). In the context of post-apartheid South Africa, Ubuntu has a critical role to play in entrenching the constitutional values such as non-racialism, non-sexism, nondiscrimination, and respect for freedom, human rights, and dignity (Letseka, 2012). Ubuntu constitutes a challenge to the inequalities, injustices, including in the fight against racism as in post-apartheid South Africa. Meiring (2018: 238), however, disagrees with a specifically indigenous philosophy for South Africa which she argues is a “new hegemonic politically correct” thought pattern. As she puts it: So, no – I do not believe a specifically (South) African indigenous philosophy for environmental education is needed. Only a posthumanist praxis as a ‘post’ to the idea of the human as a Western, white heterosexual male as well as a ‘post’ to hierarchical constructs based on anthropocentric notions, yet without new hegemonic ‘politically correct’ exclusivist thought patterns.

We, once again disagree with Meiring (2018), and following the proponents Ubuntu referred to elsewhere in this chapter, believe that environmental justice is inextricably intertwined with socio-economic and political justice and cannot be separated for individual comfort or convenience. Molefe and Magam (2019: 4–5) make this point when they state that while Ubuntu does accommodate a backward-looking moral logic in dealing with the past, however, they assert that while reconciliation is valued, Ubuntu can and should demand justice for victims of historical injustices and continued economic oppressions. Letseka (2012: 48) recognises the demand for social justice and argues that “Ubuntu has normative implications in that it encapsulates moral norms and values such as altruism, kindness, generosity, compassion, benevolence, courtesy, and respect and concern for others”. Msila (2013: 495) further elaborates on what Ubuntu means in African societies: One lives for fellow brethren; a neighbour cannot starve if I have victuals, however small. At the centre of Ubuntu is oneness of community, communication with each other, humanness and the importance of group solidarity on matters of survival.

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At the core of Ubuntu is communalism and collectivism; however, “when Ubuntu is employed in ways to guide action, perhaps in the singular and essentialist ways, there is a risk that Ubuntu’s strong ties with communalism and collectivism place it in uncomfortably close proximity to consequentialism, if not utilitarianism”. Some scholars thus also argue for the valuing of “an individual”, but this is in contrast to “individualism where existence is solitary, potentially against communal interests and competitive” (Tran & Wall, 2019: 8). In the context of education, Ubuntu guides teachers to embrace humanness, interconnectedness and situatedness and to consider the human needs of students and adapt their teaching practices such that interconnectedness is enhanced among various role players in the learning and social community spaces (Tran & Wall, 2019). Letseka (2012) contends that Ubuntu can serve as both a moral theory and public policy, guided by normative implications. Hlatshwayo, Shawa and Nxumalo (2020: 4) propose the notion of Ubuntu currrere as an emancipatory alternative to the hierarchical approach of curriculum development. These authors argue for an Ubuntu currere conceptual tool that is “dialectical, inclusive, and democratic and multivocal”. This, they argue will avert “epistemic closure”, allowing space for transformation in education. They further argue that in the South African context, contemporary curriculum practices cannot be divorced from the broader calls emanating from the 2015–2016 students’ movement for decoloniality and transformation in the academy without first commenting on the contested history and institutional differentiation that characterises the sector. Ubuntu currere will thus provide an engagement with the values of solidarity, compassion, respect, and dignity that encourages tolerance and the survival of humanity and is useful in conceiving and enacting social justice. The consideration of reflexive and dialogical currere is resonated in Gordon’s, (2006: 85) work on ‘disciplinary decadence’ where he asserts that disciplining has been unremitting, leading him to argue for transdisciplinarity in the social–ecological sciences since no single discipline can deal with the vast range. On recognising these limitations, he points to a ‘deontologised’ or absolute conception of disciplinary life and argues for learning that involves the blurring boundaries, in a dialogic interaction. We extend these arguments by suggesting that this averting epistemic closure and transdisciplinarity and a widened ontological lens will provide space for multispecies respect and planetary care. The lens will enable one to see horizontal, stakeholdercentred moments of curriculum enactment far beyond the disciplinary divides that current conventional education reaches (Hlatshwayo et al., 2020) and will assist in enabling teachers and policy makers to identify the spaces and places for ESD.

Conclusion The need to implement the SDGs is foregrounded against the global pandemic that highlights the destruction of the earth. In this chapter, we argue that education has a critical role to play, as an SDG in its own right and as the glue that integrates

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the other SDGs. We argue that the grand Western colonial narratives that dominated thinking and peripherised African ways of being need to be decentred. African thought, through living and practising Ubuntu, provides an epistemology and philosophical basis to embrace the universe in its entirety and in its “wholeness”. As we have shown in our discussion, African thought offers an ecosophical dimension that prioritises relatedness and interconnectedness—a wholeness that embraces the planet and its species, a collectivism and relatedness that connects humans, animals and the natural environment. We have argued that ESD cannot and should not reside in a mono-discipline that is taught for two hours a week. That rather, in the postCOVID-19 renewal, transdisciplinary ESD based on Ubuntu principles offers the planet and all that inhabit it a fighting chance.

References Assié-Lumumba, N. D. T. (2017). The Ubuntu paradigm and comparative and international education: Epistemological challenges and opportunities in our field. Comparative Education Review, 61(1), 1–21. https://doi.org/10.1086/689922. Chilisa, B. (2009). Indigenous African-centered ethics: Contesting and complementing dominant models. In D. M. Mertens & P. E. Ginsberg (Eds.), The handbook of social research ethics (pp. 407–25). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. https://doi.org/10.4135/9781483348971.n26. DBE (Department of Basic Education). (2011). Curriculum and assessment policy statement: Foundation phase grades R–3; life skills. Pretoria: Department of Basic Education. DBE (Department of Basic Education). (2016). National curriculum statement: Grades R–12. Pretoria: Department of Basic Education. DBE (Department of Basic Education). (2017). Grade R: Workbook, term 4. Pretoria: Department of Basic Education. Gillespie, K., & Lawson, V. (2017). “My dog is my home”: Multispecies care and poverty politics in Los Angeles, California and Austin, Texas. Gender, Place & Culture, 24(6), 774–793. https:// doi.org/10.1080/0966369X.2017.1339021. Gordon, L. (2006). Disciplinary decadence: Living thought in trying times. New York, NY: Routledge. Guterres, A. (2020, July 18). Tackling the inequality pandemic: A new social contract for a new era. Nelson Mandela Annual Lecture 2020. New York, NY. https://www.nelsonmandela.org/news/ entry/annual-lecture-2020-secretary-general-guterress-full-speech. Hanemann, U. (2015). Lifelong literacy: Some trends and issues in conceptualising and operationalising literacy from a lifelong learning perspective. International Review of Education, 61(3), 295–326. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11159-015-9490-0. Hlatshwayo, M. N., Shawa, L. B., & Nxumalo, S. A. (2020). Ubuntu currere in the academy: A case study from the South African experience. Third World Thematics: A TWQ Journal, 5(1–2), 1–17. https://doi.org/10.1080/23802014.2020.1762509. Letseka, M. (2000). African philosophy and educational discourse. In P. Higgs, N. C. G. Vakalisa, T. V. Mda, & N. T. Assie-Lumumba (Eds.), African voices in education (pp. 179–193). Cape Town: Juta. Letseka, M. (2012). In defence of Ubuntu. Studies in Philosophy and Education, 31(1), 47–60. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11217-011-9267-2. Litz, D. R. A. (2005). Textbook evaluation and ELT management: A South Korean case study. Asian EFL Journal, 48, 1–53. https://www.asian-efl-journal.com/Litz_thesis.pdf.

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Lotz-Sisitka, H., Wals, A., Kronlid, D., & McGarry, D. (2015). Transformative, transgressive social learning: Rethinking higher education pedagogy in times of systemic global dysfunction. Current Opinion in Environmental Sustainablity, 16, 73–80. Lopes, H., & McKay, V. (2020). Adult learning and education as a tool to contain pandemics: The COVID-19 experience. International Review of Education. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11159-02009843-0. McIntyre-Mills, J. (2019). Maintaining space for dialogue and diversity. In J. McIntyre-Mills & N. Romm (Eds.), Mixed methods and cross disciplinary research (pp. 59–126). Cham: Springer. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-04993-5_3. McIntyre-Mills, J., Karel, J., Arko-Achemfuor, A., Romm, N. R. A., & Serolong, L. (2019). Efforts to inspire transformative research with farmers in a small town in the North West province of South Africa. International Journal for Transformative Research, 6(1), 10–19. https://doi.org/ 10.1515/ijtr-2019-0003. McKay, V. I. (2018a). A constructivist approach to education for social and environmental justice. In J. McIntire, N. Romm, & Y. Corcoran-Nantes (Eds.), Balancing individualism and collectivism: Social and environmental justice. Cham: Springer. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-58014-2. McKay, V. I. (2018b). Literacy, lifelong learning and sustainable development. Australian Journal of Adult Learning, 58(3), 390–425. McKay, V. I. (2019). Fit for purpose: Using a distance education approach to support underperforming schools in South Africa. Progressio, 41(1), 1–26. https://doi.org/10.25159/0256-8853/ 4597. McKay, V. I. (2020). Learning for development: Learners’ perceptions of the impact of the Kha Ri Gude Literacy Campaign. World Development, 125,104684. Meiring, R. (2018) Com-post-humanism: Implications for foundation phase environmental education in South Africa. Thesis Presented for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the School of Education. University of Cape Town, Cape Town. Molefe, M., & Magam, N. (2019). What can Ubuntu do? A reflection on African moral theory in light of post-colonial challenges. Politikon: South African Journal of Political Studies, 46(3), 311–325. https://doi.org/10.1080/02589346.2019.1642669. Msila, V. (2013). Stephen Biko’s philosophy and its pedagogical implications in South Africa. Creative Education, 4(8), 492–496. https://doi.org/10.4236/ce.2013.48071. Nattrass, N. (2020). Why are black South African students less likely to consider studying biological sciences? South African Journal of Science, 116(5/6), #7864. https://doi.org/10.17159/sajs.2020/ 7864. Ndlovu-Gatsheni, S. J. (2013). Empire, global coloniality and African subjectivity. New York, NY: Berghahn Books. Nimmo, R. (2011). Actor-network theory and methodology: Social research in a more-thanhuman world. Methodological Innovations Online, 6(3), 108–119. https://doi.org/10.4256/mio. 2011.010. Nxumalo, F. (2020). Situating indigenous and black childhoods in the Anthropocene. In A. CutterMackenzie-Knowles, K. Malone, & E. Barratt Hacking (Eds.), Research handbook on childhoodnature: Assemblages of childhood and nature research (pp. 535–556). Cham: Springer. https:// doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-67286-1_37. Oghenekohwo, J. E., & Frank-Oputu, E. A. (2017). Literacy education and sustainable development in developing societies. International Journal of Education and Literacy Studies, 5(2), 126–131. https://doi.org/10.7575/aiac.ijels.v.5n.2p.126. Osman, A., Ladhani, S., Findlater, E. & McKay, V. I. (2017). Curriculum framework for the sustainable development goals. London: Commonwealth Secretariat. https://www.thecommon wealth-educationhub.net/wp-content/uploads/2017/01/Curriculum_Framework_for_SDGs_J uly_2017.pdf. Outhred, R., Deliwe, C. N., Stubberfield, C., Beavis, A., Wilkinson, J., & Murphy, M. (2014). Towards quality as an equity imperative: Workbook development, supply, utilisation and quality in the Republic of South Africa. In H. Zhang, P. W. K. Chan & C. Boyle (Eds.), Equality in education (pp. 61–78). Rotterdam: Sense. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-6209-692-9_6.

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Oviawe, O. J. (2016). How to rediscover the Ubuntu paradigm in education. International Review of Education, 62, 1–10. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11159-016-9545-x. Raath, S., & Hay, A. (2019). Preservice geography students’ exposure to systems thinking and cooperative learning in environmental education. Journal of Geography, 118(2), 66–76. Ramose, M. (2015). Ecology through Ubuntu. In R. Meinhold (Ed.), Emerging from cultures and religions of the ASEAN Region (pp. 69–76). Bangkok: Konrad-Adenauer-Stiftung. Rosenburg, E. (2009). Teacher education workbook for environment and sustainability education. Grahamstown: Rhodes University, Unit for environment and sustainability education. Santos, Boaventura de Sousa. (2020). The cruel pedagogy of the virus. Coimbra, PT: Almedina. Shulman, L. S. (1986). Those who understand: Knowledge growth in teaching. Educational Researcher, 15(2), 4–14. https://doi.org/10.3102/0013189X015002004. Shulman, L. S. (1987). Knowledge and teaching: Foundations of the new reform. Harvard Educational Review, 57(1), 1–23. https://doi.org/10.17763/haer.57.1.j463w79r56455411. Silova, I. (2020). Anticipating other worlds, animating ourselves: An invitation to comparative education. ECNU Review of Education, 3(1), 138–159. Taylor, A., & Pacini-Ketchabaw, V. (2015). Learning with children, ants, and worms in the Anthropocene: Towards a common world pedagogy of multispecies vulnerability. Pedagogy, Culture & Society, 23(4), 507–529. https://doi.org/10.1080/14681366.2015.1039050. Tran, L. & Wall, T. (2019). Ubuntu in adult vocational education. International Review of Education, 65 4), 557–578. http://doi.org/10.1007/s11159-019-09776-3. UNESCO. (2017). Education for sustainable development goals: Learning objectives. Paris: Unesco. ISBN 978-92-3-100209-0. United Nations. (2015). Transforming our world: The 2030 agenda for sustainable development (A/RES/70/1). https://sustainabledevelopment.un.org/content/documents/21252030%20a genda%20for%20Sustainable%20Development%20web.pdf. Whatmore, S. (2006). Materialist returns: Practising cultural geography in and for a more-thanhuman world. Cultural Geographies, 13(4), 600–609. https://doi.org/10.1191/1474474006cg j377oa.

Pinkie Louisa Mabunda is Associate Professor at the University of South Africa, she is currently an academic in the Department of Curriculum and Instructional Studies at the University of South Africa. As a Commonwealth scholar she and obtained a Ph.D. from the University of Nottingham. Her research interests and work are in, inter alia, teaching, curricula studies, teaching practice and qualitative research. Veronica McKay is Professor in the College of Education, University of South Africa, where she is responsible for the implementation of programs for initial and continuous teacher development, from preschool to post schooling, including adult and community education.

Chapter 17

The Potential of Eco-Facturing: Towards Social and Environmental Justice Through Vocational Education and Training Janet J. McIntyre-Mills, Y. Corcoran-Nantes, R. J. Wirawan, and I. Widianingsih Abstract The paper proposes an alternative cyclical economy based on eco-villages supporting urban hubs to re-generate rural-urban balance based on eco-facturing, to use Gunter Pauli’s concept. Africa and Asia are two of the fastest urbanising areas globally. The development of eco-villages supporting the ‘one village many enterprises’ concept currently applied in Indonesia relies on responsive design. The development of eco-facturing using local products such as cassava for bioplastics, bamboo for biochar and fair trade, free range Luwak coffee and honey production are discussed as examples of eco-facturing that are currently being developed in Indonesia. The potential for eco-facturing to be applied in Southern Africa and Ghana is currently being explored using bamboo and cassava in appropriate areas and exploring a suitable cash crop. Coffee is one option, but many others such as red bush tea, aloes as well as a host of local herbs could be explored with Indigenous holders of wisdom. Core design principles, namely salience, trust and engagement to protect living systems and the people who are affected need to underpin the decision-making process. These principles are discussed in the paper together with A version of this paper was presented at International Systems Sciences, Corvallis in 2019 by the first author who conceptualised and wrote the paper. Ida Wirawan set up and facilitated these interviews in West Java as the key facilitator of the COP, Yvonne Corcoran-Nantes participated in interviews whilst Rudolf Wirawan has contributed to the software design. J. J. McIntyre-Mills (B) University of South Africa in the College of Education, Tshwane, South Africa e-mail: [email protected]; [email protected] Adelaide University, College of Professions Main North Terrace, Adelaide, Australia College of Business, Government and Law, Flinders University, Sturt, SA, Australia Y. Corcoran-Nantes · R. J. Wirawan College of Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences, Flinders University, Adelaide, SA, Australia e-mail: [email protected] I. Widianingsih Universitas Padjadjaran, Bandung, Indonesia © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2021 J. J. McIntyre-Mills and Y. Corcoran-Nantes (eds.), From Polarisation to Multispecies Relationships, Contemporary Systems Thinking, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-33-6884-2_17

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the importance of ‘being the change’ through expanding pragmatism to consider the social, economic and environmental implications of choices. Systemic Ethical decisions honour ‘freedom and diversity’ to the extent that freedom and diversity are not undermined by power imbalances. Keywords Design principles · Vocational education and training · Eco-villages and hubs · Cyclical economy · Cycles in nature · Food webs · Water flows

The Potential of Eco-Villages and City Hubs As the global economy falters, Covid-19 poses both opportunities and threats. Throughout history crises have presented opportunities for change, three of the most obvious opportunities will be discussed in this paper, namely: the opportunity to flatten the curve of climate change and unemployment using digital means to enable participatory governance that balances individual and collective needs. The fear associated with addressing the virus has resulted in many societies accepting top down controls, but the challenge to maintain an actively engaged civil society remains vital and whereas previously people tended to use digital technology less Covid-19 has resulted in ever greater reliance on virtual connectivity. The need to do things differently has been raised as an opportunity.1

Sources Adapted and cited from the following: Arrows Source: Clipartmax Pile of Dirt Source: Clipartkey, Sustainable Future Image Source: Reinhart1 https://www.news24.com/Analysis/thabi-leoka-the-biggest-casualty-in-the-war-against-the-

virus-will-be-the-economy-20200507.

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Food security depends on multiple factors ranging from access to land, water and pollinators. Trees play a vital role in protecting the planet and they are under Bees and other pollinators are central to food security which requires eliminating harmful pesticides and vocational education and training in regenerative, sustainable farming methods. Stamets in a passionate Ted talk2 stresses the role that mycelia play in providing a network of linkages to support life. He explains that, for example in an old growth forest when bears scratch a tree it provides a niche for fungae to grow, the fungae provide an antibiotic to protect bees and as major pollinators this is vital (Stamets, 2019). The widespread use of insecticides is killing bees at an alarming rate and in his talk (2019) he stresses that more than 50% of bees are dying in the USA. The systemic interconnections discussed by Stamets between fungae and their ability to re-generate soil from polluted sites is also important as is the point that fungae create soil by removing calcium from rocks.3 Stamets (2017) suggests that mycelia are in fact the first computer internet and that they provide the basis for soil creation. The potential for mushrooms to be grown in conjunction with other crops is vital for food security, because mushrooms act as natural antibiotics to protect bees from infection. Bees are vital pollinators and honey is in turn one of nature’s great food sources for human beings. The potential of bamboo is vital as it provides a source of fuel, material for construction from furniture, to clothing and packaging. Similarly, cassava is multi use and can be used for the production of bioplastics. The combination of these could help to enable villagers to develop a re-generative way of life.

Supporting New Forms of Democracy, Governance and Re-Generative Enterprise New forms of enterprise are needed to enable a better balance between urban and regional areas to prevent risk and to enhance resilience by recognising the need to protect habitat for all living systems, both plants and animals. The focus will be to ensure that industries and professions are not merely sustainable, but also able to re-generate society and the environment. Critical systems heuristics (Ulrich & Reynolds, 2010) and if then scenarios need to guide policy engagement. The chapter takes its point of departure from key policy documents and guidelines for managing change.4 Taxonomies that impact social enterprise such as human/animal/ organic/inorganic, human/machine and local/nonlocal need to be re-framed as 2 Action

on the Bee Crisis: Paul Stamets, 7 March 2019. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TZP kCozuqM8&feature=youtu.be. 3 Paul Stamets. https://youtu.be/XI5frPV58tY6 ways mushrooms can save the world | Paul Stamets he talks about the sentience of mushrooms and that mycelium are the first network or internet. See also Mushrooms, Mycology of Consciousness—Paul Stamets, EcoFarm Conference Keynote 2017. 4 Ulrich, W., and Reynolds, M. (2010). In: Reynolds, Martin and Holwell, S., eds. Systems Approaches to Managing Change: A Practical Guide. London: Springer, pp. 242–292.

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they impact social enterprise and entrepreneurship. Donna Haraway (1992) stressed ‘we are the boundaries’ and we can change them. We will explore the categories through a structured dialogue with members of the Global Agoras team (founded by Emeritus Professor Alexander Christakis) and members of Balancing Individualism and Collectivism Special Integration Group, International Systems Sciences (which McIntyre leads) to explore the following questions: ● What could rights, respect and relationships look like in the context of Covid-19? ● What might Ecological Justice look like from a Critical Systems Thinking approach and how will it impact our approach to social enterprise? ● Could an engagement process spanning micro, meso and macro levels based on visioning and co-creation help to reframe taxonomies of species, rights and relationships in ways that enhance public education and ‘buy in’ to new norms and governance requirements? All sentient beings have a right to a life worth living This requires access to habitat in which they can express their full capabilities (Nussbaum, 2006, 2011).The right for animals to live undisturbed lives requires recognising their rights, simply because they are sentient. The right for plants to exist in biodiverse habitats also needs to be recognised if living systems are to have a hope of surviving (Higgins, 2016; Stephens et al., 2019). Non-anthropocentric researchers have stressed the need to recognise that many animal sentient beings have empathy, reciprocity and a sense of fairness (De Waal, 2009). Other researchers go further arguing that all living systems communicate in some way, from one celled to the most complex organisms (Meijer, 2016; Rayner, 2017a; Stephens et al., 2019). The boundaries need to be re-drawn to recognise justice for plants. This has been stressed by both barrister Polly Higgins and physicist Vandana Shiva in making a plea for an Ecocide Law and a recognition of an Earth Charter. Just as the artificial human-animal barrier has been breached, so the artificial barrier between people and nature needs to be breached by recognising our hybridity and interconnectedness UN. (2007). Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. http://www.un.org/esa/socdev/ unpfii/documents/DRIPS_en.pdf. United Nations Office for Disaster Risk Reduction. (2017). http://www.preventionweb.net/files/ 55465_globalplatform2017edings.pdf. United Nations Paris Climate Change 2015 Conference of the Parties Twenty-first session Paris, 30 November to 11 December 2015. https://unfccc.int/resource/docs/2015/cop21/eng/l09r01.pdf. United Nations Sustainable Development Goals. (2017). https://www.un.org/development/desa/ publications/sdg-report-2017.html. United Nations. (2014). World Urbanisation Prospects: The 2014 Revision https://esa.un.org/ unpd/wup/publications/files/wup2014-highlights.Pdf. United Nations Office for Disaster Risk Reduction. (2015–2030). Sendai Framework http:// www.preventionweb.net/drr-framework/sendai-framework/. United Nations Office for Disaster Risk Reduction. (2017). http://www.preventionweb.net/files/ 55465_globalplatform2017edings.pdfsendai-framework/. United Nations Research Institute for Sustainable Dev. (2017). ‘Beyond the nation state how can regional social policy contribute to achieving the sustainable development goals?’ www.unrisd. org/ib5.

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(McIntyre-Mills, 2018). We need systemic ethics (McIntyre-Mills, 2014) to underpin non-anthropocentric forms of democracy and governance. Wild habitat has been lost and the species that once lived in isolation (and have no immunity to viruses) are thrust into contact with one another. The domino effect of loss continues as agricultural land and liminal green spaces in and around cities disappear. If politics is about who, gets what, when, why and to what effect, it is time to rethink politics as cross-species engagement to ensure the balance of individual and collective needs. A new politics needs to acknowledge our interconnectedness, based on recognition and respect. The Ecocide Law (Higgins et al., 2013) is central to protect multiple species as the earth needs a good lawyer to disrupt the cycle of greed, over-exploitation, lack of distribution, poverty and conflict.5 But the legal perspective needs to be buttressed by the rights perspective to protect all sentient human and other animals (simply because they are sentient) as well as their habitat. We need to enter into a new respectful dialogue with nature and extend the ‘I thou’ approach to multiple species. The notion that profit can be extracted by commodifying or treating as an object is challenged by drawing on the potential of alternative approaches suggested by Gunther Pauli (2010) who makes a case for so-called ‘ecofacturing’, by working with nature to achieve regenerative cascading benefits, rather than extractive degenerative profits. Wellbeing stocks (Stiglitz et al., 2010) will be the focus of a raft of indicators so that we avoid ‘mis-measuring our lives’ by outdated notions of what constitutes progress are increasingly irrelevant.

The Policy Problem and a New Architecture for Engagement Without a vaccine the only way to manage the virus is by working together. The time has come to recognise that we are reliant on multiple species and that plants and animals have rights, relationships and the ability to communicate. We need to rebalance individual and collective responsibilities to enhance our relationships with one another and nature by recognising that rights and agency needs to be extended beyond the social contract to include a new social-ecological contract that supports not merely sustainable businesses, but also re-generative social enterprises. The pathways to wellbeing software enables scalable engagement by individuals, households, public, private and voluntary organisations, neighbourhoods, local government, provincial/state and federal level. Each level could engage to enable complex needs to be met whilst in isolation. The focus is to develop an online mapping and engagement to support an integrated response to flattening the curve of social and environmental injustice. The Pathways to wellbeing project proposes a new architecture for democracy and governance to protect the commons and has been piloted as a proof of concept with NGO and Local Government and discussed as a wider post national approach that extends Nussbaum’s human rights approach from human dignity to instead 5 http://thecodedoc.com/en/home/.

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consider the importance of enabling sentient beings to live a life worth living. She thus extends the social contract to include sentient beings and stresses that we need to be able to enjoy and connect with nature. Churchman’s questioning approach (Design of Inquiring Systems’, DIS) is an approach based on critical heuristics or ‘what if questions’ that can be extended by means of scenarios to enhance engagement in decision making, in order to test out ideas with those who have lived experience. The Systemic Interventionist approach detailed in this paper is based on working on ‘what if scenarios’ with people.6 Those of us who call ourselves ‘critical systemic thinkers’ are not seeking a total, unified system. We realize this would be hubris and quite problematic as a starting point for engaging in a responsible development that seeks to work with diverse stakeholders on complex, wicked problems, which by definition comprise many interrelated variables that are seen differently by different stakeholders. Step 1: Step 2: Step 3: Step 4:

Enter demographic details and home delivery/care details Select category of need: (A) experiencing symptoms, (B) recovering, and (C) self-quarantine Map your needs in terms of haves, needs, turning points for better and worse, barriers. Select one of the services: ● link to online advice for health ● link to pharmaceutical delivery services ● link to food delivery services to grow jobs and keep businesses open.

Step 5:

Consider three scenarios to promote social, economic and environmental capabilities.

New forms of economics need to be based on learning new lessons about multispecies relationships. Boundaries need to be re-constructed and we need to follow new ways to engage with one another and nature based on extending the capabilities approach. The convergent social, economic and environmental links with climate change have created cascading risks, such as the loss of habitat and the displacement of species. More intensive forms of agriculture, mining and urbanisation at the expense of habitat poses an existential threat. The case is made that by pursuing profit human beings, other animals and plants have suffered as a result of high carbon emissions, rapid development, over exploitation and climate change. The development of new architecture for engagement that enables participants to think about the consequences of their actions on all living systems based on 6 West

Churchman summed up CSH by saying there is no such thing as a total system, and that the systems approach begins when first we try to see the world through the eyes of another and that systems thinking is a good idea as long as we do not assume that we have all the answers. He stresses that our values filter the way we see the world and that we are part of the system we are studying. Reynolds (2008) ‘System of systems thinking’ elegantly sums up the 3 elements: (A) Framework for understanding complex interrelationships, (B) Framework for practice when engaging with different perspectives, and (C) Framework for responsibility taking into account A and B.

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if then scenarios’ is detailed in Chapters 17 and 18 of this volume. It builds on existing research7 that resulted in the development of an approach to enable better decision making informed by critical systemic thinking and practice. The work of Werner Ulrich will be applied to exploring what social enterprise for social and environmental justice should look like, in order to produce a policy and strategy for the new economy.

New Economics The paper builds on an extends the content of two volumes,8 namely: ● Mixed Methods and Cross Disciplinary Research: Towards Cultivating Ecosystemic Living. Springer, New York. ● Democracy and Governance for Resourcing the Commons: Theory and Practice on Rural–Urban Balance. Springer, New York. The policy approach could be said to be informed by the principle of subsidiarity and Ashby’s rule, namely that policy decisions need to be made at the lowest level possible and the complexity of design decisions need to match the complexity of the local residents. The paper makes the case for residents to act as caretakers for local living systems and maps out design principles by making the case that all living systems are in constant motion and design needs to respond in ways that generate energy, rather than extracting energy at the expense of this generation and the next. 7 McIntyre-Mills,

J. (2017). Planetary Passport: Re-presentation, Accountability and ReGeneration. Springer International Publishing AG, Cham, Switzerland. eBook ISBN, 978-3-31958011-1, 10.1007/978-3-319-58011-1. McIntyre-Mills, J. (2014). Systemic Ethics and non-anthropocentric stewardship. Springer, New York, 270pp. http://www.sense.nl/gfx_content/documents/20161115_Uitgevers.xlsx. McIntyre-Mills, J. with De Vries, and Binchai, N. (2014). Transformation From Wall Street to Wellbeing: Joining Up the Dots Through Participatory Democracy and Governance to Mitigate the Causes and Adapt to the Effects of Climate Change. Springer, New York, 253. Springer, ranked B. Second and third authors provided the appendix on software user guide (pp. 193–198). McIntyre-Mills, J. (2018). Recognizing our hybridity and interconnectedness: Implications for social and environmental justice. Current Sociology, 66(6), 886–910. https://doi.org/10.1177/001 1392117715898. Rayner, A. (2010). Inclusionality and sustainability—Attuning with the currency of natural energy flow and how this contrasts with abstract economic rationality. Environmental Economics, 1(1), 98–108. Stephens, A., Taket, A., and Gagliano, M. (2019). Ecological Justice for Nature in Critical Systems Thinking. Syst. Res, 36, 3–19. https://doi.org/10.1002/sres.2532. Stokols, D. (2018). Social ecology in the digital age: Solving Complex Problems in a Globalized World. Academic Press, London. 8 The volumes give examples of hopeful case studies of ways to do things differently. The majority of the case studies are from Australia, Indonesia, Bangladesh and Africa. The rationale for this choice is that rapid urbanisation and the impact on human security pose a challenge for Australia and additional case studies cover issues of displacement and loss of habitat in other regions.

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Profit is nothing less than energy extracted at the expense of people and the planet. Alternative forms of organisation are possible to support ‘wellbeing stocks’ to cite Joseph Stiglitz, but this needs to be achieved through creating a change in values through reaching out to one another in ways that support and engage (Bogue, 1989). Rapid urbanisation and the decline of regional areas poses a human security challenge. The upstream approach to addressing the human security risk is to promote re-generative integrated development in line with the proposed laws of ecocide which protects all the inhabitants in a region. This is a multispecies approach. The downstream approach is to address the consequences of displaced inhabitants. As Polly Higgins stressed in 2018 in her address to the Hague, 750 million people are at risk of displacement by 2050. In 2017 65 million are displaced. This excludes the other forms of displacement and extinctions that are occurring. Debra Bird Rose (Gibson et al., 2015), an anthropologist stressed in her work on extinction that we need to see ourselves as part of a living system. The paper: ● develops an alternative way of living and being through developing eco-villages and enabling people to live, learn and grow in regional areas in order to build on their lived experiences to bring about a new transformation (Polanyi, 1966, 1968). ● outlines the way in which we can live differently by understanding that production, consumption, re-production/re-generation need to follow a natural ecological approach, rather than the current approach to extracting profit at the expense of future generations. Production and reproduction need to be conducted in ways that do not exploit people and the environment. Exchange practices need to ensure that the interests of the few are not expended at the expense of the many. In ‘Planetary Passport’ a reframed form of governance is proposed by the first author which rests on supporting social, economic and environmental wellbeing monitored from below by engaged inhabitants of a region.

Area of Concern and Rationale Social, economic and environmental challenges are convergent. Most of the global urban population will be located in Asia (52%) and Africa (21%), according to the UN (2014: 11). The Asian and African demographic growth provides both a dividend and a liability. The potential for investing in social and environmental justice through job creation that protects people and the environment is the focus for the paper.9 The hypothesis is that highly urbanized regions face food and water insecurity and are at risk of becoming food deserts unless everyday strategies are explored with service users and providers to find better pathways to resilience and wellbeing for the most vulnerable members of the population. What potential pathways can promote 9 Measures

will need to be taken to accommodate the education and training needs of current and future generations in ways that encourage better rural-urban balance.

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opportunities and redress the food and water insecurity associated with a growing population of vulnerable people in highly urbanized regions and vulnerable regional areas where informal housing areas predominate? What can Australia contribute with regional partners to mitigate risk and maximise plausible pathways to resilience and wellbeing? The program of research10 detailed in the above volumes conceptualizes new architectures for democracy and better governance through addressing the issue of a priori norms and a posteriori measures for transformation towards re-generative living and preventing displacement of people, plants, animals. The research contributes to a new area: namely the commons as a process and a sense of connection to living systems, rather than as a resource ‘held in common’, to cite Bollier (2011)11 : ● “The commons is not a resource. It is a resource plus a defined community and the protocols, values and norms devised by the community to manage its resources…. ● There is no commons without commoning—the social practices and norms for managing a resource for collective benefit”. Based on the volumes, this chapter covers some of the lessons and discusses the potential for setting up Vocational Education and Training that supports a green, regenerative economy. The discussion is informed by small pilots to address: complex health, housing and social inclusion and mitigation and adaptation to climate change. As such it makes policy recommendations on greening cities and the re-generation of regional areas through new architectures for democracy, governance and education. Case studies are based in Australia, Indonesia and South Africa and are summarised below. This chapter and Chapters 3, 10, and 32 also reflect on past research conducted by the first author in Alice Springs and environs on behalf of Local Government in the Northern Territory. In Alice Springs social inclusion and reliance on the social wage resulted in working with the Tangentyere Housing Association and several organisations to build institutional capacity. The case was made for the need for more social inclusion through creating pathways to wellbeing which build social, economic and environmental potential (McIntyre-Mills, 2003) and to understand that wellbeing is dependent on the health of living systems of which we are a strand. This was followed by participatory action research in South Australia with Neporendi. The first author was funded by an Australian Research Council Grant and several small grants which involved collaboration with NGOs and government departments and agencies. The case was made once again for more opportunities to maximise pathways to social inclusion that protect the environment and the River Murray. 10 The paper draws on two volumes (summarised below) that go beyond critique to offer small case studies and pilots as alternative ways of doing, being and interacting. The volumes are based on papers presented at a multisite symposium as well as additional papers by authors with whom I collaborate. 11 07/15/2011 “I am always trying to figure out how to explain the idea of the commons to newcomers who find it hard to grasp. In preparation for a talk that I gave at the Caux Forum for Human Security, near Montreux, Switzerland, I came up with a fairly short overview, which I have copied below…: http://www.bollier.org/commons-short-and-sweet”.

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The outcome was the creation of a prototype for social engagement based on usercentric design (McIntyre-Mills 2008c) by with and for Aboriginal Australians. The prototype was shown in Canberra at the invitation of a federal government department and I was asked to scale up the design which initially comprised an NGO, a job club in the Southern Region and the Domestic Violence network. This led to her working with SA Local Government and members of the Local Government network which resulted in funded research on mitigation and adaptation to climate change by enabling residents in the local government areas of Marion, Unley, Burnside to consider the implications of everyday social, economic and environmental decisions on their carbon footprint. This research contributes to the concerns raised by Elinor Ostrom (2008) to find a way to operationalize ways to limit the size of our human footprints. Simultaneously, the first author was supervising Ph.D. students working on socio-economic and environmental policy concerns in a range of contexts which resulted in collaborations with Ph.D. students and graduates.

Community of Practice and Learning Network A community of practice (Wenger, 2009) developed organically to foster institutional capacity building which resulted in collaborative research in Indonesia and South Africa.

Engaging with Stakeholders in West Java to Explore Transformative Possibilities The research in Bandung and environs, particularly in Alamendah (meaning Beautiful Nature) on the potential for integrated development (in line with the One Village Many Enterprises Project) provided an example of social inclusion, vocational training and opportunities for employment that reduced outmigration (McIntyreMills et al., 2019). A multi-site, cross cultural Mixed Methods Symposium was held in Adelaide and Bandung to explore the potential for vocational training, integrated development and ways to enhance the capabilities of institutions to develop ecofacturing by making use of environmental resources in ways that re-generate people and places. Three crops were explored, namely cassava for bioplastics, bamboo for biochar and building and ethical Luwak coffee and fair-trade Indonesian coffee. The community engagement is supported by Dr. Ida Widianingsih based at Universitas Padjadjaran in Bandung West Java located 2 h from Alamendah. This enabled understanding how social networks rooted in Islamic faith can help to develop a village co-operative. The entire village of Alamendah acts as a co-operative. This is in response to president Jokowi’s decree that each village in Indonesia should

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identify a source of business. It is in line with the ‘One Village one enterprise philosophy’. In West Java Indonesia the ‘One village, one product’ (OVOP, Morihiko Hiramatsu—Governor of Oita prefecture, 1979; Yogjakarta, 2014)12 has been successfully established at Alamendah where a learning organisation, learning community approach has been developed as a step towards empowering women and preventing their vulnerability to trafficking, but the process needs to be extended to give more agency to women in the decision making (McIntyre-Mills et al., 2018). The co-operative was fostered as a result of striving to achieve shared goals in a shared local economy. The village has succeeded in producing a range of products that are produced and marketed with the support of the women and young people. A downside of the co-operative arrangement is that in this traditional, patriarchal society only one woman is represented on the committee. Nevertheless, the women play a vital role in all aspects of production and they have a deep knowledge of the community dynamics. They intend to ask more women to stand for election. One of the success stories is that they run a women’s group linked with the local clinic. This group supports the local environment and the health of women and their children. They have devised a program that links access to the clinic with recycling. To access services women are required to recycle rubbish to prevent pollution of the river and ground water. Each woman is rewarded for the amount of recycled material delivered to the clinic. Tokens are provided to women to re-enforce the importance of recycling. They can use the tokens to obtain further services from the clinic. This notion of using behavioral feedback to reinforce norms that protect people and the environment is important for more resilient communities (Stokols, 2018: 302). Motivation is to change behavior and value systems. We are not trying to adjudicate on whether behavior or value change does or should come first. Boulding makes a plea for changing values, but in some contexts, it is helpful to bring about behavior change first. Value change often can follow. The women’s committee made the choice to use tokens as a motivation for transforming behavior to support resilient living. Furthermore, the local built environment is supported by using sustainable building materials such as bamboo. Bamboo is important for preventing erosion and land falls, it is also used for small biodigesters (using bamboo and organic waste) that supports domestic cooking. The Alamendah case study (McIntyre-Mills et al., 2019) demonstrates low rates of out migration as a result of community engagement in sustainable living and re-generative activities. The potential for women to be further empowered through enhancing their representation and accountability is explored. Indonesia has a policy that fosters recycling as well as a policy on rural development. It is called the ‘Jokowi one village one entrepreneurial project’ to support poverty reduction. We explored examples of sustainability and then considered whether it could inform vocational education and training in South Africa. Collaboration followed on from the multi-site mixed methods symposium held in Australia (in line with Australia’s Foreign Policy, 12 The One Village One Product has been adopted in Indonesia by President Jakowi based on an adapted version of the Japanese model.

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2017) and West Java which underlined the importance of collaborative research as equal partners in the so-called ‘One Village, One Enterprise Approach’ (2014) decreed by the President of Indonesia, Jokowi. Through creating a community of practice network at a post-national level, we have considered the application of the ‘one village one enterprise’ notion in the South African context and we are learning from the experience in Indonesia.

Engaging with Stakeholders in South Africa to Explore Possible Alternatives A colleague from South Africa, Norma Romm attended the multi-site symposium which was also co-facilitated with Donna Mertens, invited to co-facilitate the symposium. This was followed up by setting up a community of practice with other colleagues in South Africa which resulted in our working together in range of ways, namely sharing resources and making suggestions as to how to foster opportunities in regional areas, such as Manyeledi in the North West Province (McIntyre-Mills et al., 2019). In this region, unemployment for young people in the 15–34 age group is one of the highest and it resulted in civil unrest in 2018 which required Cyril Ramaphosa to return from a visit in the UK, to address these concerns. Manyeledi is an arid zone on the border of Botswana where goat farming has been extended by adding value to goats milk, turning it into cheese and developing some hardy herbs and vegetables that have enabled these resilient farmers to be less reliant on government social payments. Water and food insecurity are an issue in many parts of South Africa as is the need to address the rising challenge to provide education, training and employment. Currently, tertiary level education in South Africa is not meeting their demands. The opportunity to extend education and training in regional areas is thus worth pursuing in more depth. In Indonesia, Java the one village, many enterprises approach has been successfully applied in a regional area of Bandung with Vocational Education and Training support from the Universitas Padjadjaran. Interest in marketing products has also been fostered in Kediri, East Java by a colleague who is part of this network (Wirawan & McIntyre-Mills, 2019) which explores the potential for village-based computing if funding could be obtained to support the project. The potential for the prototype pathways to wellbeing software to be developed with blockchain could help manage the food chain and ensure decentralized and distributed control of legers (Kshetri, 2017). The aim of the research is to encourage the notion that we can earn while we learn and grow a future together and to explore relationships with service users to build the capacity of the providers and to provide a better understanding of what works, why and how with the hope that it will help to inform policy decisions.

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Urbanisation in South Africa and Indonesia The collaborative learning network resulted in asking: ● Could new forms of democracy and governance based on block change make a difference or is this the wrong kind of question posed from a modernization approach to development or does it have the potential to re-frame the way in which democracy and governance operates through monitoring resources from below? ● Could it provide a way forward to protect the most marginalized? In the context of climate change the number of displaced people has escalated. The rising number of witchcraft accusations in South Africa in the region of Limpopo where a large number of refugees are entering into South Africa and the high number of accusations in Cape Town (associated with mob justice) need to be seen in the context of displacement of people, competition for scarce resources13 and the accusations associated with blaming problems on ‘outsiders’. In cities, a UNICEF report has found that witchcraft accusations have risen. Cities can be regarded as food deserts for some and places where the dreams of a better future end for many. In this context the most vulnerable, namely women and children can be accused of witchcraft. The answer to the question of ‘why me and why have I experienced misfortune are answered by urban diviners and pastors of religion who according to the UNICEF report (Cimric, 2010) result in escalating the problem by acknowledge the ‘reality’ of the problem.14

13 As stressed in a previous chapter, in the Cape Town context, the issue is exacerbated by the number of young people who are affected by gang violence through being forced to join gangs or being the subject of gang violence. Fighting for the right to ‘own turf’ to sell drugs and manage associated prostitution rings has resulted in vigilante responses by residents who want to regain control of their communities. Large city populations become unstable when living costs are unaffordable. It is not surprising that the so-called Arab Spring started as a result of rising food costs. In Solo, Indonesia riots occurred when living costs and cooking oil become too expensive for the small street traders to survive. The demographic dividend namely high population growth and the rising number of young people could become the trigger for political unrest in rapidly urbanising cities in both Africa and Indonesia where the rising levels of unemployment and poverty result in the vulnerability of women and children to crime and trafficking. The need to link positive vocational training with positive digital engagement through social, economic and environmental pathways to wellbeing is very important for human security. Training in ‘joining up the social, economic and environmental dots’ could be facilitated by the pathways to wellbeing software. 14 Although the number of witchcraft accusations decreased according to this report in the 1960s, there has been a resurgence in Africa in recent years (Cimric, 2010). The notion that the family support extends beyond the boundaries of death is complacent in Africa. When people experience misfortune, the Xhosa describe the process as being ‘intwaso’ or called by the ancestors who speak to them through dreams and through a state of possession. The state of vulnerability is addressed by family who call upon indigenous healers or apostolic or Zionist healers. At best, it leads to re-integration into a community. At worst, it leads to labelling and violence. The Comaroffs (1999) have stressed that the shattering of hope can lead to possession states and when communities are facing high levels of conflict, the blame is placed on scapegoats.

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Critical systemic research explores wicked problems in terms of the 12 is/ought questions (Ulrich & Reynolds, 2010) which need to consider social, economic and environmental dimensions together with those who are affected and involved. Wicked problems by definition are complex. They comprise many, interrelated variables that are perceived differently by different stakeholders and must be explored contextually (see Flood & Carson, 1993; Rittel & Webber, 1984; Churchman, 1979, 1982). However, the collaboration across stakeholders needs to be guided by the axiom that: ‘We can be free and diverse to the extent that our freedom and diversity does not undermine the common good of both current and future generation of life’ (McIntyre-Mills, 2014). This axiom has been explored in depth in previous work (see McIntyre-Mills, 2006, 2014, 2017c). It explores the notion that our fate is determined by a realization of our interdependence. It aims to increase an understanding of life chances and dynamics of vulnerable population groups in areas most affected by climate change related areas. Significantly, the collection responds to complex ethical policy challenges posed by the Paris Agreement and the UN Sustainable Development Goals, in order to narrow the gap in living standards between rich and poor. Policy choices made by this generation shape the wellbeing of both current and future generations. The outcome of implementing VET programs to support an adapted version of ‘One Village, one enterprise’ (2014) adopted by the Indonesian president Jokowi could be a better understanding of socio-cultural discourses, life chances and behaviour to inform policy and to improve public administration by learning what does and does not work and why from the most vulnerable populations. In line with the Paris (2005) Declaration and Accra Agreement (2008) on harmonising development goals, development needs to consider the values of the participants, based on long term trust. Engagement to address educational challenges needs to address indigenous wisdom and to avoid colonisation.

Theory and Key Concepts Key terms include affordance (Gibson, 1986) and dependence (Hodder, 2012) and the need to create different relationships across production, consumption and regeneration, in order to understand the way in which power and knowledge (Foucault & Gordon, 1980) play out in the system of biopolitics (Foucault, 2008). Hannah Arendt emphasised the need to recognise patterns in behaviour, this is important for sociologists, but it is equally important to recognise the need to understand that human culture has the potential to adapt and change the environment, because of the scale at which the global economy operates. The Anthropocene is the product of human culture writ large. But by recognising the ‘banality of evil’ (Arendt, 1963) and the implications of the everyday choices we make, it is possible to do things differently. The way we think matters, it changes the way in which we relate to one another and living systems of which we are a strand. The assemblages we create through our desires can change (Deleuze & Guattari, 2004). Our thoughts and emotions

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result in decisions and information that support cultural flows that re-generate our environment or lead to its de-generation. According to Hodder (2012: 4): “So, there are only flows of matter, energy and information’ (Deleuze & Guattari, 2004; Ingold, 2010).” Hodder stresses that our relationships with things are not static and that we can re-configure the assemblages. This requires the desire to do things differently, which requires a cultural shift in the way in which we currently live our lives. The point of the paper is not to rehearse the current challenges associated with living in the Anthropocene, instead it makes a case for doing things differently in a non-anthropocentric manner (McIntyre-Mills, 2014). The paper summarises some of the key points and is aimed at being a source of ideas for policy makers and those engaged in strategic thinking15 to protect and re-generate living systems by addressing ‘wellbeing stocks’ a concept adapted from Stiglitz et al. (2010: 15) to refer to a multidimensional measure of wellbeing. This requires re-framing not only economics but our relationships. Stiglitz et al. (2010: 15) use a multidimensional measure of wellbeing spanning: 1. Material living standards (income, consumption and wealth), 2. Health, 3. Education, 4. Personal activities including work, 5. Political voice and governance, 6. Social connections and relationships, 7. Environment (present and future conditions), 8. Insecurity, of an economy as well as a physical nature.

The aim of the wellbeing stocks concept is to enable people to re-evaluate economics and to become more aware of the way in which we neglect social and environmental aspects of life. The pursuit of profit at the expense of people and the environment is a central problem for democracy and governance. The vulnerability of cities is a symptom of the lack of balance between individual and collective needs. Economic and environmental indicators of wellbeing were tested by means of a prototype. In order to manage the commons, mutual agreements need to be negotiated and records need to be kept, in order to protect the interests of stakeholders. The commons needs to be theorized as a legal concept (Marella, 2017) and as a transformative governance concept (see Planetary Passport (PP), McIntyre-Mills, 2017c and Systemic 15 The critical systemic approach takes into account many diverse ways of seeing and tries to find common themes that could underpin ‘lives worth living’, based on testing out ideas with those who are to be affected by the decisions and mindful of future generations of life (including sentient beings). This is a form of expanded pragmatism based on mindful decision making in the interests of living systems of which we are a strand (McIntyre-Mills, 2017c).We need to respond to systemic socio-demographic, cultural, political, economic and environmental challenges and the different needs of age cohorts in developed and developing and less developed parts of the world. Harper (2016) stresses that population change is below replacement levels in many parts of Europe where the population profile is one of low fertility and low mortality. So, population change needs to be viewed in terms of ballooning and shrinking populations. Added to this the life chances of young people need to be understood in different parts of the world. Basic concepts include, wellbeing, democracy, subsidiarity, capacity building, critical systemic praxis and wicked problems, complex decisions need to be made by complex decision makers. Others are: cultural studies, critical systems thinking, Informatics and modelling complex systems, sociology and public policy, management systems and governance.

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Ethics, McIntyre-Mills, 2014). The book ‘Planetary Passport’ provides a new epistemic narrative and responds to the 2030 Development Agenda by suggesting a way to enhance representation and accountability by extending the Millennium Goals and UN Sustainable Development Agenda. It reflects on studies of alternative architectures for democracy and governance and suggests a way to extend local engagement in social, economic and environmental decision-making.16 Projects with potential are detailed in ‘Balancing Individualism and Collectivism’ and in two companion volumes for Contemporary Systems Series called: ‘Mixed Methods and Cross Disciplinary Research Towards Cultivating Eco-systemic Living: We are the land and the waters’ and ‘Democracy and Governance for Resourcing the Commons: theory and practice on rural–urban balance to address loss and displacement.’ Since completing the volumes, the first author has been researching the notion of human dependency on nature and the extent to which our entanglement with the things derived from a capitalist carbon-based economy have entrapped or blinded us to other options. The affordance of the niches created by successful crop production made it possible to specialise and industrialise. This has resulted in a way of life that is no longer sustainable. The production of goods in the current prevalent economy uses energy supplies that are largely unsustainable. The Aldani mine in Queensland Australia, for example will provide jobs at the expense of the environment (McIntyreMills and Romm, 2019) and will undermine the long-term liveability of the planet. Use values that currently commodify people and the environment and consumption choices that ignore the opportunity costs are unsustainable. This approach is not inevitable, it is possible to do things differently. The cycle can be a closed loop, rather than extracting resources in ways that are destructive and lay waste to people and the environment, an alternative is possible. Currently unemployment and lack of access to tertiary or vocational training are major human security challenges in a degraded urban environment. Highly urbanised, environmentally affected regions face the cascading social, economic and environmental challenges that impact on the habitat across the continuum from domestic, liminal, agricultural and wild animal life (to draw on Donaldson & Kymlicka, 2011). The greater the use of participatory design processes to address complex problems, the better the problem-solving outcomes for service users and providers.

16 The engagement processes (see ‘Balancing Individualism and Collectivism’, McIntyre-Mills et al.

2018) that enable protecting the commons are explored in the companion volumes in which the rationale for a new way of living is developed with participants in Africa and Indonesia, where risks associated with displacement and loss are explored in more depth. The rationale for a more ethical form of representation and accountability to support cosmopolitan transdisciplinary approach is detailed in Systemic Ethics (McIntyre-Mills, 2014). Then in ‘Planetary Passport for Re-generation: Knowing Our Place Through Recognizing Our Hybridity’ (McIntyre-Mills, 2017c) a case is made that the commons could be protected through working across conceptual and spatial boundaries to enable low carbon, virtuous living in which resources are saved, re-generated to protect current and future generations of living systems.

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Aims, Praxis and Process The message is that it is possible to do things differently! “Wellbeing is an idea whose time has come” (New Zealand Dept of Public Health, 2007) and this has implications for policy and practice. Participation helps to match policy with practice. In 2019 Jacinda Ardern has followed through on the notion that wellbeing indicators should be measured by government departments, in order to ensure that “clean air and water, access to housing and health care, education standards, economic mobility, social harmony and community safety, and a safe climate, is the core of work of government” (Field, 2019: 32) Service users and providers need to work with stakeholders to draw on local wisdom and combine it with some of the new digital potential. Three core axioms underpin the research. These are informed by and contribute to 7 axioms from Global Agoras.17 Salience, trust and engagement to protect living systems need to underpin the decision-making process.

17 Participants included leadership by Ken Bausch, Tom Flanagan with participation by several colleagues including Norma Romm, Gayle Underwood. Leadership has continued through Peter Jones (2020) who sums up the seven axioms:

1.

“The Complexity Axiom: Observational variety must be respected when engaging observers/stakeholders in dialogue, while making sure that their cognitive limitations are not violated in our effort to strive for comprehensiveness (John Warfield).

2.

The Engagement Axiom: Designing complex social systems, such as for healthcare, education, cities, and communities, without the authentic engagement of the stakeholders is unethical and results in inferior plans that are not implementable (Hasan Özbekhan).

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The Investment Axiom: Stakeholders engaged in designing their own social systems must make personal investments of trust, committed faith, or sincere hope, in order to be effective in discovering shared understanding and collaborative solutions (Tom Flanagan).

4.

The Logic Axiom: Appreciation of distinctions and complementarities among inductive, abductive, deductive, and retroductive logics is essential for collective futures creation. Retroductive logic (referred to in design as backcasting) makes provision for leaps of imagination as part of value- and emotion-laden inquiries by a variety of stakeholders (Norma Romm, Maria Kakoulaki).” Contributions by McIntyre in the following publications (McIntyre-Mills, 2003, McIntyre-Mills, J., Bausch, K, Christakis, A. and de Vries, D. 2008, ‘How can we break the mould: democracy, semiotics and regional governance beyond the nation state’

5.

The Epistemological Axiom: A comprehensive human science should inquire about human life in its totality of thinking, wanting, telling, and feeling, as indigenous people and the ancient Athenians were capable of doing. It should not be dominated by the traditional Western epistemology that reduced science to only intellectual dimensions (LaDonna Harris and Reynaldo Trevino).” Contributions by McIntyre in the following publications McIntyre-Mills (2008c, 2017c), User centric policy design, McIntyreMills et al. (2014).

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Proposed Future Directions: From Fragmented Silos to Food Webs and Water Flows West Churchman’s Design of Inquiring Systems Approach (DIS) (1971) enables exploring options through addressing 12 boundary questions to enable exploring what is the case and what praxis changes should occur to address poverty and climate change? How can change help to address rural urban imbalance and a heavy carbon footprint causing water, food and energy insecurity? The demographic challenges of in Africa of a young population aged 15–24 facing high levels of unemployment can be addressed through integrated development and new forms of governance and democracy as detailed in McIntyre-Mills and Romm (2019) and McIntyre-Mills et al. (2019). The root metaphor of flows was used with Neporendi when undertaking research with care takers of the River Murray linked with Neporendi where the first author undertook research as part of an Australian Research Council Linkage Grant from 2004 (see McIntyre-Mills, 2008c). The other (linked) metaphor of weaving strands of experience came about through conversations with the elders who explained the importance of the river grasses for removing salinity as the river ebbs and flows. The health of the Murray is dependent on the removal of toxins. The grasses can be seen to function as liver or kidneys. This has also been stressed by Weir (2015). The idea that we now need to think of democracy in terms of weaving together strands of experience is important as is the notion of river grasses for removing salinity and water as a synecdoche of the sense of flow that the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) formula sums up to demonstrate that what we do in one part of society flows on to effect the environment on which we depend. The binary oppositional thinking and commodification are core problems in Western neo-liberalism as stressed elsewhere (McIntyre-Mills, 2014) which has implications for ethics and our relationship with living systems.

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The Boundary-Spanning Axiom: A science of dialogue empowers stakeholders to act beyond imposed boundaries in designing social systems that enable people from all walks of life to bond …: Contributions by McIntyre in the following publications, McIntyre-Mills (2008a, 2008b).

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A tradition within the community of practice is to identify the original contributor of the proposal by name, without reference to a specific work but by affirmation. Contexts of Co-creation: Designing with System Stakeholders 32 disciplinary barriers and boundaries, as part of an enrichment of their repertoires for seeing, feeling, and acting (Loanna Tsivacou and Norma Romm).” Contributions by McIntyre in the following publications McIntyre-Mills, 2008c).

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The Reconciliation of Power Axiom: Social systems design aims to reconcile individual and institutional power relations that are persistent and embedded in every group of stakeholders and their concerns, by honouring requisite variety of distinctions and perspectives as manifested in the Arena (Peter Jones)”.

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The realisation of both environmental flows and cultural flows rests partly with whether we can reduce the powerful influence of separation thinking, and this is also what thwarts our ethics for living lives in connection. Cultural flows are quickly trapped in the contradictory constraints of separation thinking, and are more easily communicated as narrowly defined water allocation. (Weir, 2009: 119–129 cited in Weir, 2015)

Progress to Date on New Architectures for Democracy and Governance This section builds on previous contributions and makes the case that critical agency is vital to understand, monitor and evaluate everyday social, economic and environmental strategies that enable a life worth living (Nussbaum, 2011). Two architectures for participation and scaling up governance are discussed. These new architectures for democracy and governance use readily available tools and software to link local learning communities with regional and post national regional partners and networks. The policies that could make this approach possible already exist (Florini, 2003; McIntyre-Mills et al., 2014, 2019; McIntyre-Mills and Romm, 2019; McIntyre-Mills, 2014, 2017c):

New Architectures to Protect Living Systems and to Support the Global Commons Structure

Process

Action

Micro-level individuals

UN local Agenda 21 (1992) and Aarhus convention (1998)

Questions raised and posed to local government by individuals

Local government, NCOS and individuals

Meso states and regions

Aarhus convention linked to global covenant

On line monitory democracy and governance to address state/market/civil society concern

Networking NGOs and INGOS to address representation and accountability

Macro cosmopolitan governance

Legal structures to support the global covenant, Aarhus convention and Biospheres convention

International Criminal Court United Nations

Global action to pass laws to protect social and environmental justice in overlapping biospheres

Sources Adapted from Florini (2003) and Archibugi in Wallace Brown and Held (2010: 322) cited in McIntyre-Mills et al. (2014: 92) and McIntyre-Mills (2014: 7) in ‘Reconsidering Boundaries’, Sociopedia

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Table 3.1. McIntyre-Mills (2017c: 148, 313) to address nodes (people, organisations) and to connect them to areas of shared post regional concern (Habermas, 2001) through an on-line Planetary Passport (PP).18

Eco-Village Nodes and Eco City Hubs: The Way Forward? Vocational Education in Rural Universities and Training colleges could help to promote the value of agriculture to students who could be tasked with the vital issue of food and water security. In order to enable lifelong engagement by active citizens requires action learning to address areas of perceived policy concern. The policy proposal is to develop more educational institutions that focus on teaching design skills from primary to secondary and tertiary level based on the blue economy and biomimicry in ways that draw on the lived experience of the learners. In rural and regional areas, the local plant materials, for example could be used for developing a range of products, according to Pauli (2010) including cosmetics, cleaning agents, building materials, plant dyes, bio degradable plastics, to name but a few examples. In urban developed areas the blue economy could be used to recycle and re-use materials for building sustainable housing powered by sustainable energy and supplied with carefully collected rainwater to support indigenous plants wherever possible in the urban environment. VET curricula needs to address many ways of knowing spanning human logic, empiricism, dialectical thinking and pragmatism and extended to include spiritualism and appreciation of animal knowing, biomimicry and learning from nature. By valuing certain kinds of knowledge at the expense of others human beings have created a new age, namely ‘the Anthropocene’, characterised by rapid urbanisation and unsustainable development.

18 The

area of concern which a proposed ‘Global Covenant’ (Held, 2004) and proposed Planetary Passport needs to address is poverty, climate change, displacement of people and destruction of habitat. The PP could strive to balance individual and collective needs in line with a Global Covenant. Post national regions could be protected in the form of a nested governance system spanning the local personal level to the household, community, regional and post national regional level. This could (perhaps) be achieved based on co-creating pathways (McIntyre-Mills & De Vries, 2011; McIntyre-Mills & Wirawan, 2017) to map and manage local resource systems (Ostrom, 2008) in context ‘from below’ based on self-reflection (through critical heuristics questions) to prompt decision making (Jackson, 2000). Stiglitz et al.’s (2010) wellbeing stocks could be supported by enabling people to ‘be the change’ on a daily basis through the way they choose to live their lives and making social contracts through the on-line engagement process. See the demonstration of the pathways to wellbeing software at https://archive.org/download/pathway_DEMO_1 pathways to wellbeing https://archive.org/details/VN860546 ethics and design. The decisions are prompted by scenario guidelines. The daily living choices can be guided by means of an on-line engagement tool that helps decision making and enables the monitoring of social, economic and environmental choices. Positive and negative sanctions through monitoring could ensure that resources are fed forward to those in need and in the interests of future generations.

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An ABC Resource for VET Training The full ABC for ecological living can be accessed as Chapter 5: “Policy Design for Vocational Pathways to Protect Biodiversity and Regenerate the Land in McIntyreMills et al. (2019) ‘Democracy and Governance for Resourcing the Commons: Theory and Practice on Rural-Urban Balance’. The chapter from which this section is drawn reflects on some of the aspects of an educational program that responds to the call for an African Renaissance (Mbeki, 1999; Sesanti, 2016). In South Africa people have lost faith in the state because the elites in the public and private sectors are not accountable to the people they serve. The price of inequality—national and global—has escalated. The gap between rich and poor grows globally and in South Africa. The challenges are as follows to: ● Design places of learning to match the educational content to the contextual needs of a growing population in need of sustainable employment in liveable biodiverse environments. ● Sustain a system of education to prepare people across the life cycle to protect diversity and the land on which we depend. The development of eco-villages supporting the ‘one village many enterprises’ concept currently applied in Indonesia relies on responsive design informed by the principle of subsidiarity and Ashby’s rule, namely that policy decisions need to be made at the lowest level possible and that the complexity of design decisions need to match the complexity of the local residents who act as caretakers for local living systems. Pikketty (2015) stressed the importance of data on money trails and wealth to ensure fairness and reciprocity in his 13th Nelson Mandela Address. Although transparency is vital for public trust a further step is required, namely the need to protect the environment through everyday decisions, as stressed previously by Wangaari Maathai in the 3rd Nelson Mandela Lecture. This requires: ● Addressing resilient urban, rural and regional infrastructure by ● Exploring the implications of urbanisation, loss of territory, water insecurity,19 loss of species and the implications for living systems of which we are a strand ● Focusing on the challenge of creating jobs that protect people and the environment ● Developing options for responding and adapting to the impacts of environmental change’ and ● Contributing to expanding knowledge through studies of human society by exploring culturally diverse ways of caring and stewardship through fostering values that protect biodiversity for social and environmental justice. 19 Waughray, D. (2017). Water, energy-food: can leaders at Davos solve this global conundrum? Huge demands for water present complicated challenges, but leaders will not resolve these kinds of interconnected risks without a systems approach https://www.theguardian.com/profile/dominicwaughray. https://www.theguardian.com/global-development-professionals-network/2017/jan/16/water-ene rgy-food-challenge-davos.

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The following boxed section draws on Systemic Ethics and non-anthropocentric stewardship (McIntyre-Mills, 2014) ‘Policy Design for Non-anthropocentric Pathways to Protect Biodiversity and Regenerate the Land’ McIntyre-Mills, 2018): A is for a priori norms and a posteriori measures to promote Ukama (African non-anthropocentrism) Key terms include affordance (Gibson, 1986) which refers to the way habitat can support certain ways of living and dependence (Hodder, 2012) on the environment and the need to create different relationships across production, consumption and regeneration, in order to understand the way in which power and knowledge (Foucault & Gordon, 1980) play out in the system of biopolitics (Foucault, 2008). The key concepts for a transformative educational approach need to be based on non-anthropocentricism. This means focusing on ways to protect the habitat of all living systems. The approach takes the next important step in the research agenda, to link the notion of relationships across humans, animals and the land as a source of Indigenous and non-Indigenous wellbeing and the broader societal need for environmental protection and effective ecosystem management of domestic, liminal and so-called wild or natural habitat (Donaldson & Kymlicka, 2011). A priori norms to govern South Africa need to be adapted and extended to protect a habitat protected for human and animal life where three locations are available, namely ● Domestic spaces for human beings and animal life that can co-exist ● Liminal spaces where domestic and suburban areas give way to shared spaces that enable life ● Wild spaces protected for animals and their habitat. A posteriori measures are based on what works why and how and what the consequences of a particular policy decision would be people and the environment. As such a priori norms provide benchmarks and a posteriori measures ensure accountability based on a broad range of indicators of education effectiveness to enhance educational pathways. Policy guided by pragmatism takes a consequentialist approach based on considering the meanings of the ideas and practices for the majority of stakeholders. It is a posteriori approach and it takes into account the points of view of the stakeholders in specific contexts. Pragmatism can be divided into ‘narrow pragmatism’ that considers the majority, but not all stakeholders. At the other end of the continuum of pragmatism is ‘expanded pragmatism’ that considers the consequences for all life. Narrow pragmatism is based on thinking about the consequences only for ourselves and not others. It leads us to believe that our power and profit must be driven by self-interest and that the bottom line, namely ensuring our powerful positions and our profits. We tend to think that social and environmental considerations are ‘externalities’, rather than embedded in the current system. Expanded pragmatism (EP) is the capability to think in terms of the consequences for self, others (including sentient beings) and future generations of life. It has much in common with idealism in that it considers the consequences for all life. It also has much in common with virtue-based ethics in that it is based on dialogue with

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those who are to be affected by decisions and with the rights of future generations in mind. The way to teach ethical thinking is to help people to learn through engaging in practical learning to address everyday challenges. This is action learning which Denzin and Lincoln (2000: 567) defines as a problem-solving technique that: Engages people’s concrete experiences to explore the current situation, clarify the purpose of the organization and removing obstacles to achieve effectiveness and efficiency.

Learners can be facilitated to engage in a self-reflection to assess what works, why and how and equally important what does not work and why. An Action Learning Approach that supports ‘planning for country’ (Walsh, 2002) can be used to explore how to care for country. It can be used to engage with all the stakeholders, so they decide on areas of concern, frameworks and methods. Social and environmental justice are central to new participatory architectures for democracy and governance (Mertens, 2017; Romm, 2018). The curriculum needs to enable learners to understand that living systems are interconnected. Human beings are linked with other animals and the land as a source of wellbeing. This is why Indigenous people say ‘we are the land’! Rose (1992) stresses that relationships with animals and nature help mutual survival in the Australian desert. Rose (1996, 2004, 2005; Gibson et al., 2015) explains in her publications and website how the land nourishes the body and that it is the best medicine. Without the land ‘as mother’ we face extinction. B is for boundaries that support social and environmental justice and for protecting biodiversity Taking a policy decision needs to be based on an ongoing policy process based on drawing and re-drawing boundaries. Biodiversity is the focus for a new approach to economics developed by Gunter Pauli (2010). He outlines more than 100 ways to create opportunities through environmental thinking that does not privilege the environment at the expense of people. Instead his approach is to find ways to enable the unemployed to benefit through working on environmental challenges. His motto is: ‘There is no unemployment in eco-systems’ (Pauli, 2016).20 He stresses the need to provide integrated opportunities through design that taps into the abundant talent and environmental opportunities that can be found and to ensure that the designs protect both people and habitat. This is a systemic approach that could ensure that people come up with solutions that do not create binary oppositions between people and the environment. It is unnecessary to argue that for people to flourish the environment must suffer. Sustaining the social and environmental fabric of which we are part ought to underpin our policy designs for governance. Participatory action research on democracy and governance to enhance sustainable living and wellbeing are discussed in the ‘Contemporary Systems Series’ (McIntyre-Mills, 2014, 2017a, b; McIntyre-Mills et al., 2014) which 20 https://www.speakersassociates.com/speaker/gunter-pauli.

Accessed 20/12/2016.

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explores the suggestion made by Florini (2003) in ‘The Coming Democracy’ that the Aarhus Convention (1998) on freedom of environmental information and participation could be usefully extended to support the nexus between sustaining human and environmental wellbeing and resilience. Nature does not calculate cash flow. While we are obsessed with monetarization (to our own benefit) natural systems generate multiple revenue flows best measured in protein, drinking water, energy resources and defense systems. Nature produces benefit through the calculation of integrated benefit flow…. (Pauli, 2010: 235–236)

The VET engagement process needs to explore the different life chances across age cohorts and the need to ensure that the life chances of young people from lowor no-income families are placed uppermost in the policy decisions. The so-called ‘cascade economy’ conceptualized by Pauli (2010) is based on emulating nature and growing opportunities by working in harmony, rather than exploiting people and nature. Instead of building with concrete natural materials such as local stone, mud or bamboo can be used following some of the more traditional design principles. Pauli notes, for example that termite mounds use natural air flow principles that could be emulated. C is for culture, caring for country, acknowledging complexity and the common good rather than ‘buying in’ to commodification and consumerism D is for democracy and design to address complex, diverse needs E is for Ecological Apartheid an engagement with diverse stakeholders to address social, economic and environmental justice for emergence Shiva (2011, 2020a, b) stresses that ecocide and femicide have walked hand in hand and are a result of ‘ecological apartheid’ and genetically modified interventions by big corporations that destroy seed diversity. If socio-political thinking is about who, gets what, when, why and to what effect, it is time to address bio-politics (Foucault, 2008) and cross- species engagement to ensure the balance of individual and collective needs. Scott (1998) in ‘Seeing like a State’ extends Foucault (2008) by giving detailed examples of the way in which the state has crushed diversity—from designing monocultures in forestry to ironing out diverse political opinions. If we accept the concept of the banality of evil (Arendt, 1963)—the notion that everyday decisions can collectively result in a normalization and acceptance of evil— then we have to re-think many of the aspects of society that we take for granted today. Engagement with diverse stakeholders needs to address social, economic and environmental justice and extreme forms of consumption that undermine wellbeing and relationships. Emergence refers to the ability to escape the trap of our own thinking, to cite Vickers in Beer (1994: 252): ‘the trap is a function of the nature of the trapped.’ According to his theory of ‘recursive consciousness we are able to emerge from our entrapment through making connections and realising that we have the capability to achieve transcendence as we become more conscious. One way out

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of the trap is to become more creative in our thinking and more open to learning from the environment, even if we do not mimic it!21 F is food, friendship and facilitation of a new economy that prevents the financialisation of systems and a recognition of flows of information and energy The ability to work with many ways of seeing requires the ability to think about multiple texts and contexts and to develop a way to respect situated knowledges to the extent that the approaches do not undermine the rights of others or the environment. This can be achieved through a recognition of flows.

Sources Of the diagrams above are from: McIntyre-Mills, J. De Vries and Binchai, N. (2014). Transformation from Wall Street to Wellbeing. Springer, New York. McIntyreMills, J., and De Vries, D. (2011). Identity, democracy and sustainability: Facing up to convergent social, economic and environmental challenges. Litchfield Park: Emergent Publications. https://ia801606.us.archive.org/20/items/pathway_DEMO_ 1/pathway_DEMO_1.mp4‘

21 https://biomimicry.org/what-is-biomimicry-3/.

According to the biomimicry institute website: “Biomimicry is an approach to innovation that seeks sustainable solutions to human challenges by emulating nature’s time-tested patterns and strategies. … The core idea is that nature has already solved many of the problems we are grappling with. … After billions of years of research and development, failures are fossils, and what surrounds us is the secret to survival”. Accessed 29/07/2020.

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An ABC of aphorisms for social and environmental justice A is for a priori norms and a posteriori indicators of wellbeing B is for boundaries, biospheres and balance C is for caring and communication D is for dualistic us/them thinking E is for Ecological Apartheid (Shiva, 2020a) and eco villages and eco farms (Shiva 2020b) F is for food and fraterinity G is global commons and green economics H is for human rights I is for intermeshed, interconnected fate and inclusion of the marginalised J is for justice K is for knowledge based on respect for multiple species L is for living systems, listening

M is for multispecies relationships and multiple methods N is for Non anthropocentrism O is for ontology or nature of reality P is for peace and planetary protection Q is for questioning R is for relationships and rights S is for spirituality T is for transformation U is for Ubuntu and Ukama V is voices W is for wilderness habitat X is for xenophobia Y is for Youth Z is for not following the so-called zero sum approach

G is for governance to protect the global commons Governance refers to working across conceptual and spatial boundaries to protect food, energy and water security. This is vital as a first step towards preventing poverty. Governance needs to address the big issues of the day, namely poverty and climate change by protect biospheres, rather than merely protecting national interests in a ‘zero sum’ approach. Governance needs to be fluid, systemic and organic. Global commons refers to earth, water, the air that we breathe and genetic material that is the basis of living matter. H is for habit and hybridity (McIntyre-Mills, 2017c). I is for Indigenous, innovation, integrated responses and information Indigenous people and indigeneity are concepts that can empower or be used to disempower. Indigenous groups exist in different circumstances, some have political rights in the form of treaties or constitutional recognition, some have land rights (often hard won through years of litigation), some have limited cultural rights and recognized limited political representation. Some have none of the above, some are not minority groups, but they have survived a history of colonization and prefer to see themselves as Indigenous. This is why the United Nations GA 2007; Resolution 61/295 of 13 September enables self-identification. This is certainly the case in South Africa where the majority African culture describes itself as ‘Indigenous’ not just the smaller minority groups like the San and Khoi. In South Australia leadership based on ‘speaking as country’ is a growing movement in recognition of Indigenous was of knowing and being based on an appreciation of our interconnectedness. Innovation is the result of drawing on lived experiences to address local problems with local knowledge. J is for justice and K is for knowledge management Justice can be addressed through acknowledging the increased levels of inequality’ at a national and global through a design for social and environmental justice. L is for listening to address the new democratic deficit (Dobson, 2012).

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Conclusion Those who live sustainably could be rewarded through measuring their low impact and be afforded points on a resilience scorecard that indicates transparently what a low footprint they have and the extent to which they are contributing to socially, culturally economically and environmentally. Bonus points are rewarded in the form of social status advertised in the form of local government honours lists and in the form of a social and environmental wage for those who are actively engaged in protecting their local community and thus contributing to the ‘one people and one planet philosophy’. Practical engaged citizenship is the way forward, but it needs to be promoted through immediate feedback to promote realistic rewards and, most importantly, a way to earn a sustainable living.

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McIntyre-Mills, J., De Vries, & Binchai, N. (2014). Transformation from Wall Street to Wellbeing: joining up the dots through participatory democracy and governance to mitigate the causes and adapt to the effects of climate change. New York: Springer. McIntyre-Mills, J., Romm, N., & Corcoran-Nantes, Y. (Eds). (2018). Balancing Individualism and Collectivism: Supporting Social and Environmental Justice. New York: Springer. McIntyre-Mills, J., Corcoran-Nantes, Y., Widianingsih, I., & Wirawan, R. (2019). Chapter 7. Alam Endah: Rural camelot in west java—A case study of empowerment and integrated rural development. In McIntyre-Mills, J., Romm, N. R. A., & Corcoran-Nantes, Y. (Eds.), Democracy and governance for resourcing the commons: Theory and practice on rural–urban balance (pp. 179–192). Cham: Springer. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-04891-4. Print ISBN: 978-3-030-04890-7. McIntyre-Mills, J., & Van Gigch, J. B. (2006). Wisdom, knowledge and management. London: Springer. McIntyre-Mills, J., & Wirawan, R. (2017). Chapter 4: ‘Governing the anthropocene: Through balancing individualism and collectivism as a way to manage our ecological footprint. In J. McIntyre-Mills, N. Romm, & Y. Corcoran-Nantes (Eds.), Balancing individualism and collectivism: Social and environmental justice. New York: Springer. Meadows, D., & Randers, J. (1992). Beyond the limits: Global collapse of a sustainable future. London: Earthscan Publications. Meijer, E. (2016, translated, 2019). Animal languages: The secret conversations of the living world John Murray. London. Mertens, D. M. (2017). Transformative research: Personal and societal. International Journal for Transformative Research, 4(1), 18–24. https://doi.org/10.1515/ijtr-2017-0001. Murove, M. F. (1999). The Shona concept of Ukama and the process philosophical concept of relatedness, with special reference to the ethical implications of the contemporary neo-liberal economic practices. Master’s Thesis, University of Natal. Murphy, K. (2018). Three liberal MPs push Morrison to take child refugees and families off Nauru. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/oct/16/three-liberal-mps-push-morrisonto-take-child-refugees-and-families-off-nauru. New Zealand, Public Health Advisory Committee. (2007). An idea whose time has come. https:// can.org.nz/system/files/an-idea-whose-time-has-come.pdf. Nussbaum, M. (2006). Frontiers of justice. London: Harvard University Press. Nussbaum, M. (2011). Creating capabilities: The human development approach. London: The Belknap Press. Nuccitelli, D. (2018). New study finds incredibly high carbon pollution costs—Especially for the US and India: As a wealthy, warm country, the US would benefit from implementing a carbon tax to slow global warming. The Guardian https://www.theguardian.com/environment/climateconsensus-97-per-cent/2018/oct/01/new-study-finds-incredibly-high-carbon-pollution-costs-esp ecially-for-the-us-and-india. Ostrom, E. (2008). Design principles of robust property-rights institutions: what have we learned? Elinor Ostrom Workshop in Political Theory and Policy Analysis Indiana University Center for the Study of Institutional Diversity Arizona State University. http://www.indiana.edu/~workshop. Pauli, G. (2010). The blue economy: Report to the club of Rome. Paradigm Publications. Pikketty, T. (2015). 13th Nelson Mandela annual lecture. https://www.nelsonmandela.org/news/ entry/transcript-of-nelson-mandela-annual-lecture-2015. Polanyi, M. (1966). The tacit dimension. Chicago: Chicago University Press. Foreword by Amartya Sen, 2009. Polanyi, M. (1968). The great transformation: The political and economic origins of our time. New York: Rinehart and Co. Rayner, A. (2017a). The origin of life patterns in the natural inclusion of space in flux. Berlin/Heidelberg: Springer. https://en.wikiversity.org/wiki/Natural_Inclusion.

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Rayner, A. (2017b). Natural inclusion. In J. J. McIntyre-Mills, N. R. A. Romm, & Y. CorcoranNantes (Eds.), Balancing individualism and collectivism: Social and environmental justice (pp. 461–470). London: Springer. Reynolds, M. (2008). Response to paper ‘systems thinking’ by D. Cabrera et al.: Systems thinking from a critical systems perspective. Journal of Evaluation and Program Planning, 31(3), 323–325. Reynolds, M. (2011). Critical thinking and systems thinking: Towards a critical literacy for systems thinking in practice. In Critical thinking. Ricke, K., Drouet, L., Caldeira, K., & Tavoni, M. (2018). Country-level social cost of carbon nature climate change. www.nature.com/natureclimatechange. Published: 24 September 2018. https:// www.nature.com/articles/s41558-018-0282-y. Rittel, H., & Webber, M. (1984). Planning problems are wicked problems, developments in design methodology. New York: Wiley. Romm, N. R. A. (2018). Responsible research practice. Cham: Springer. Rose, D. B. (1992). Dingo makes us human: Life and land in an Aboriginal Australian culture. Cambridge and Melbourne: Cambridge University Press. Rose, D. B. (1996). Nourishing terrains: Australian aboriginal views of landscape and wilderness. Canberra, ACT: Australian Heritage Commission. Rose, D. B. (2004). Reports from a wild country: Ethics for decolonisation. Sydney: UNSW Press. Rose, D. B. (2005). Dislocating the frontier. http://epress.anu.edu.au/dtf/html/frames.php, see http:// epress.anu.edu.au. Rose, D. B. (n.d.). Love at the edge of extinction. http://deborahbirdrose.com/links/. Scott, J. (1998). Seeing like a state. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. Sesanti, S. (2016, April). African philosophy in pursuit of an African Renaissance for the true liberation of African women. Shiva, V. (1989). Staying alive: Women, ecology and survival in India. London: Zed Books. Shiva, V. (2002). Water wars: Privatization, pollution and profit. London: Pluto Press. Shiva, V. (2011). Earth democracy. Portland University. www.youtube.com/watch?v=UOfM7Q D7-kk/. Shiva, V. (2012a). Making peace with the earth. Winipeg: Fernwood Publishing. Shiva, V. (2012b). Monocultures of the mind. Penang: Third World Network. Shiva, V. (2020a). Two paths to the future of food and farming - EcoFarm 2020 Keynote https:// www.youtube.com/watch?v=9vNPGwqR4TQ. Shiva, V. (2020b). UBC connects with Vandana Shiva: The future of food and farming in a pandemic world. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a-0MC4Q3Jyc. Shiva, V. (2020c, March 25). Ecofeminism and the decolonization of women, nature and the future. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hVbbov9Rfjg—Uploaded by San Telmo Museoa. Singer, P. (2002). One world: The ethics of globalization. New Haven: Yale University Press. Stamets, P. (2017). https://youtu.be/XI5frPV58tY6 ways mushrooms can save the world | Paul Stamets he talks about the sentience of mushrooms and that mycelium are the first network or internet. See also Mushrooms, Mycology of Consciousness—Paul Stamets, EcoFarm Conference Keynote 2017. Stamets, P. (2019). Action on the bee crisis: Paul Stamets, 7 March 2019. https://www.youtube. com/watch?v=TZPkCozuqM8&feature=youtu.be. Stephens, A., Taket, A., & Gagliano, M. (2019). Ecological justice for nature in critical systems thinking. Systems Research and Behavioral Science, 36, 3–19. Stiglitz, J. J. (2011). Of the 1%, by the 1%, for the 1%. https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2011/05/ top-one-percent-201105#. Stiglitz, J., Sen, A., & Fitoussi, J. P. (2010). Mis-measuring our lives: Why the GDP doesn’t add up. New York: The New Press. Stokols, D. (2018). Social ecology in the digital age: Solving complex problems in a globalised world. London: Academic Press. The UN Declaration of the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. (2008). http://www.ohchr.org/.

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Tng, D. (2014). https://davidtng.wordpress.com/2014/11/30/plants-and-people-in-bali-a-quick-gla nce/. Ulrich, W., and Reynolds, M. (2010). Critical systems heuristics. In M. Reynolds & S. Holwell (Eds.), Systems approaches to managing change: A practical guide. London: Springer, in association with The Open University, Milton Keynes, UK. United Nations. (2014). World urbanisation prospects: The 2014 revision. https://esa.un.org/unpd/ wup/publications/files/wup2014-highlights.Pdf. United Nations Declaration of the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. (2007). https://www.humanrights. gov.au/publications/un-declaration-rights-indigenous-peoples-1. United Nations Paris Climate Change. (2015). Conference of the parties twenty-first session Paris, 30 November to 11 December 2015. https://unfccc.int/resource/docs/2015/cop21/eng/l09r01.pdf. Wadsworth, Y. (2010). Building in research and evaluation: Human Inquiry for living systems. Sydney: Allen and Unwin. Walsh, F. (2002). Planning for country. Alice Springs: IAD Press. Watson, L. (1973). Super nature. New York: Anchor Press. Watson, L. (1976). Gifts of unknown things. Kent: Hodder and Stoughton. Weir, J. K. (2015). Lives in connection. In K. Gibson, D. B. Rose, & R. Fincher (Eds.), Manifesto for living in the Anthropocene (pp. 17–22). New York: Punctum books. Wenger, E., et al. (2009). Digital habitats: Stewarding technology for communities. CPsquare. Wirawan, R., and McIntyre-Mills, J. (2019). Innovation for social and environmental justice: A way forward? In J. McIntyre-Mills, N. R. A. Romm, & Y. Corcoran-Nantes, Democracy and governance for resourcing the commons: Theory and practice on rural–urban balance. Cham: Springer.

Janet J. McIntyre-Mills is Honorary Professor in the College of Education at University of South Africa, Tshwane, South Africa; Visiting Research Fellow of the College of Professions Main North Terrace at Adelaide University; and Adjunct Associate Professor in the College of Business Government and Law at Flinders University, Sturt Campus, Adelaide. Yvonne Corcoran-Nantes is Associate Professor (Adjunct) and Principal Research Fellow in the Social Sciences at Flinders University. She is also an International Gender Consultant working with major INGOS and engages with some of the major issues facing women globally. Rudolf Wirawan is CEO of Wirasoft and Senior Researcher at Flinders University. Ida Widianingsih is Chairperson of Center for Decentralization and Participatory Development Research, Faculty of Social and Political Sciences, Universitas Padjadjaran, Bandung.

Chapter 18

From Education as Usual to a Post National Learning Community Janet J. McIntyre-Mills and R. Wirawan

Resoucing the Commons The aim is to develop capability to make better judgements by acknowledging values and emotions, in order to be aware of their influence, so as to enable us to be both more compassionate and more rational in our judgements. Critical systems practice involves the complementary use of theory and methodology when: ● thinking, ● working with groups of stakeholders, ● doing policy research and practice (facilitating, managing, implementing and evaluating). This chapter reflects on engagement with colleagues1 based in Indonesia and South Africa and our attempt to obtain funding to support the eco-village concept to support the United Nations Development Goals. Some of the exercises were tried out in community contexts and with post graduate students to find out what they thought they could do to make a difference in their everyday lives to support re-generative economics (Pauli, 2010) and a respect for our interdependency. The first step for learning capability and enhancing our capacity for boundary judgements, is to understand the challenge of framing so-called problems and our 1

Widianingsih, I., Riswanda, Romm, N. R. A., and Achemfuor, A.

J. J. McIntyre-Mills (B) University of South Africa in the College of Education, Tshwane, South Africa e-mail: [email protected]; [email protected] Adelaide University, College of Professions Main North Terrace, Adelaide, Australia College of Business, Government and Law, Flinders University, Sturt, SA, Australia R. Wirawan Adelaide University, Adelaide, SA, Australia © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2021 J. J. McIntyre-Mills and Y. Corcoran-Nantes (eds.), From Polarisation to Multispecies Relationships, Contemporary Systems Thinking, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-33-6884-2_18

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ability to change the world as we engage with it. Who is included in the discussion? Who is excluded? Why? Who ought to be included and what ought to be discussed? In whose opinion? Who has the power to make decisions and on what basis? Problems that do not involve many diverse stakeholders, with diverse values and who do not have many different variables are less difficult to address. They are sometimes (I believe misguidedly called) ‘Tame problems’ as opposed to ‘Wicked problems’. If we assume that wicked is a value judgement, then so is the word ‘tame’. It has overtones of control which is problematic. We need to accept that many challenges cannot be controlled, they need to be addressed through transforming the way in which we live. This involves our relationships with others and with the environment.

Summing up the Key Characteristics of Critical Systems Thinking and Practice Re-Framing Boundaries Some of the challenges need to be addressed within very specific contexts. Donna Haraway stresses that all knowledge is situated and that we need to develop specific responses by appreciating the many factors that shape life chances within context. How we make sense of the world is shaped by our life experiences. Being aware that we are indeed the boundaries, because we can make and remake the boundaries through our policy decisions, is an important starting point for design. A great deal of the writing by Haraway critiques the notion of essentialism and instead stresses that being boundary creators frees people from the limitations of categories and recognizes our hybrid relationships with others including living systems of which we are a part. Her work is very different from Martha Nussbaum’s work, because Nussbaum is normative in prescribing the conditions for human rights. I think that whilst their approaches are different both have much to offer in terms of providing guidelines for protecting people and the environment.

Complementary Use of Theory to Address an Area of Concern The first challenge we face when we address an area of concern is to think about the combination of voices and domains of knowledge that need to be brought to bear on the issue. These questions are carefully expanded and organised by a student of West Churchman, called Werner Ulrich. He called this process critical heuristics. It is summed up below (Table 6.1): Critical Systemic Praxis translates thinking into practice. It addresses an area of concern by thinking about how to frame it, who to include and the implications of

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Table 6.1 The boundary categories and questions of CSH Sources of influence

Boundary judgements informing a system of interest (S) Social roles (Stakeholders)

Specific concerns (Stakes)

Key problems (Stakeholding issues)

Sources of motivation

1. Beneficiary Who ought to be/is the intended beneficiary of the system (S)?

2. Purpose What ought to be/is the purpose of S?

3. Measure of improvement What ought to be/is S’s measure of success

Sources of control

4. Decision maker Who ought to be/is in control of the conditions of success of S?

5. Resources What conditions of success ought to be/are under the control of S?

6. Decision environment What conditions of success ought to be/are outside the control of the decision maker?

Sources of knowledge

7. Expert Who ought to be/is providing relevant knowledge and skills for S?

8. Expertise What ought to be/are relevant new knowledge and skills for S?

9. Guarantor What ought to be/are regarded as assurances of successful implementation?

Sources of legitimacy

10. Witness Who ought to be/is representing the interests of those negatively affected by but not involved with S?

11. Emancipation What ought to be/are the opportunities for the interests of those negatively affected to have expression and freedom from the worldview of S?

12. Worldview The affected What space ought to be/is available for reconciling differing worldviews regarding S among those involved and affected?

The involved

Source Adapted from Ulrich (1996: 44), see Table 1: The boundary critique and questions. Source Ulrich & Reynolds, 2010, p. 244

excluding some stakeholders in defining the issue. It considers the issue by asking questions (what, why, how, so what). It explores the relationships spanning self, others (including sentient beings, the environment and also considers the implications of our decisions on future generations of life). It questions areas of concern through considering the following domains of knowledge, identified by West Churchman that include: logic, empiricism, idealism, the dialectic and expanded pragmatism. It confronts human values (known as ‘enemies within, that include religion, morality, politics and aesthetics’, according to West Churchman. This approach builds on and extends the approach by considering other ways of knowing informed by Indigenous Wisdom and developing participatory processes to include those who are to be affected by decisions and the role of caretaking and stewardship for future generations (Aarhus Convention, 1998).

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Complementary Use of Theory to Address an Area of Concern The first challenge we face when we address an area of concern is to think about the combination of voices and domains of knowledge that need to be brought to bear on the issue. These questions are carefully expanded and organised by a student of West Churchman, called Werner Ulrich. He called this process critical heuristics. It is summed up below: Critical Systemic Praxis translates thinking into practice. It addresses an area of concern by thinking about how to frame it, who to include and the implications of excluding some stakeholders in defining the issue. It considers the issue by asking questions (what, why, how, so what). It explores the relationships spanning self, others (including sentient beings, the environment and considers the implications of our decisions on future generations of life). It questions areas of concern through considering the following domains of knowledge, identified by West Churchman that include: logic, empiricism, idealism, the dialectic and expanded pragmatism. It confronts human values (known as ‘enemies within, that include religion, morality, politics and aesthetics’, according to West Churchman. My approach builds on and extends the approach by considering other ways of knowing informed by Indigenous Wisdom and developing participatory processes to include those who are to be affected by decisions and the role of caretaking and stewardship for future generations.2

Example of Design for Learning A Round Table Discussion on the Cascading Risks Associated with Climate Change ● Triggering question for the dialogue: what can we do to address the UN Sustainable Development Goals? ● What are the implications of these goals for thinking and practice? ● Are these goals adequate to address the risks?

2 So,

I begin by disassociating CSP from a narrowly operations approach that strives to control, instead the approach developed in critical systemic thinking and practice tries to understand our connections and dependency on one another and on nature—in other words that we are living systems. Please read the Prologue by Wadsworth, 2010: entitled: “The paradox of ‘we want change – but we don’t want to change’" in Wadsworth, Y. 2010. Building in Research and Evaluation. Human Inquiry for living systems. Allen and Unwin. Sydney. The point she is making is that we are part of a living systems and connected to it. The way we currently think and practice research tends to place us above other living systems. This is a critique of meta systems.

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Area of Concern and Approach to Learning Exercise continued: Please design a response an area of concern. We will try to work on ways to address the UN Sustainable Development Goals. One of the most important areas of research is human security associated with climate change (Urry, 2010) and the exponential risks it poses in terms of food and water insecurity, mass urbanisation, refugee crises leading to instability at a post national regional level. Populism flourishes in this context. Some of these challenges were discussed in Planetary Passport (McIntyre-Mills, 2017a). Post national and regional engagement along with the creation of innovative new ways to engage, map and model ways to mitigate and adapt to climate change will become increasingly important. Climate change needs to be addressed through cross organisational and post national collaboration. See the confronting video by Dr. Glasser and Barnes (2018).3 The challenges are nonlinear and exponential. This is also explained in the video, entitled, “A story of stuff”4 that could be used in a range of contexts spanning primary, secondary and tertiary levels. Another potential exercise is to consider the following pictures, for example and explain what is happening in them. Participants could be asked how the commodification of people, plants and nature has resulted in a deteriorating quality of life.

3 https://www.aspi.org.au/video/surviving-era-disasters

“In this address, Dr. Glasser describes the main features of this emerging Era of Disasters.” 4 School level—Story of stuff https://storyofstuff.org/movies/story-of-stuff/. Accessed 29 July 2020.

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Source The pictures above were drawn by the artist Jacques Coetzee for the South African National Literacy Campaign’s learner materials. McKay (2020) provides a discussion of how the artwork functioned to aid the learners understanding of the MDG/SDG-related themes. Similar images are included in McKay and Romm (2019) which provides an evaluation of the literacy campaign.

What Can We Do to Make a Difference in Our Community? ● Have you ever heard of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals? ● If yes, please explain what you know and where you heard about them? ● If no, please visit this site https://www.un.org/development/desa/disabilities/env ision2030.html.

Source Fig 15.3 in Democracy and Governance for Resourcing the Commons (McIntyre-Mills et al., 2019: 452). The scenarios prompt ‘If then’ thinking to address individual and collective needs based on considering self, other species and our shared environment

● Please review your understanding of the United Nations Sustainable Development goals. ● How will you make a difference in your own life now that you have thought about the social, economic and environmental challenges. ● Please post 2–3 pages of notes, pictures or a video on your actions. – On the shared website we could discuss education and democratic engagement https://archive.org/details/VN860626. – https://archive.org/details/VN860553 reconsidering boundaries and what constitutes knowledge. – https://archive.org/download/pathway_DEMO_1pathways to wellbeing. – https://ia801606.us.archive.org/20/items/pathway_DEMO_1/pathway_D EMO_1.mp4.

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Please think about your own life in terms of the consequences of these choices, for example: • I have the following things in my life—understanding of human rights, respect for biodiversity, fear for the future/ hope for the future, a confidence, or lack of confidence, loss of home due to natural or other disaster, no family/ community support, responsibility to care for others and very high levels of stress My own story is: • I need in my life—a home, a sense of safety, a place near public transport and hope for the future My own story is: • I will add to my life—more community supports from a range of services and/or more community engagement to lobby for resources, more connection to nature My own story is: • I will discard from my life—a sense of hopelessness, a sense of entitlement, excessive consumption My own story is: • Self-reflection on the turning points for the better or worse—hope that consumption can be replaced with greater sense of attachment to others and the environment My own story is: • Consideration of the barriers that currently exist and consideration of what could be done to transform society and our relationship to the environment My own story is:

Possible Ways Forward The public and private sector along with NGOs should be invited to contribute to supporting the education system. This could be a wonderful opportunity for transformative work on combining face to face learning in the community that draws on local tacit knowledge that is supported by local small cafes where people meet, greet, learn new skills in a multi-generational way with facilitators who build capacity and support education and vocational training through a range of alterative options that move away from ‘Education as usual and that make progressive steps towards alternative forms of education at the primary, secondary, tertiary level linked at each level with Vocational Education and training and that support transformative education nodes and networks that aim to balance individual and collective needs across rural and urban areas and that engages with both service providers (administrative, management and academic staff) and learners. Current models of education need to address re-generation and sustainability as a substantial underpinning theme. The root causes of the problems, namely the axiological starting point for transformation, namely the purpose of education. If education is for protecting multiple species and habitat and for addressing social and environmental justice then the focus will be on addressing what and who is included

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or excluded from the curriculum and how education is addressed from the primary, secondary and tertiary level together with members of the local community. Jain (2020) refers factory-based education for a neo-liberal economy and although the research raises many poignant issues, the barriers facing those in rural areas, the barriers faced by service users and providers, the need for counselling and support services. If public education is about protecting local wisdom, then ecovillages with hubs to support local capacity building would be a starting point. The loss of agricultural land will impact on food security; thus education needs to focus on village hubs to support the protection of local agriculture along with the wisdom of local producers. Seed security, along with the wide range of pollinators need to be protected. The local lived experiences of people (Polanyi, 1966: 68) needs to be protected. Vandana Shiva (2011, 2012a, 2012b, 2020) and Manish Jain (2020), respectively have highlighted the need to protect local wisdom, local seeds and local farmers along with local ecologies. The digital divide echoes the gap between local wisdom versus the plantation or factory farm mindset governed by the market state in the thrall of neo-liberalism. Vandana Shiva (2012a, 2012b) stresses the need to avoid ‘monocultures of the mind’ which are taught by neo-liberal education systems. She stresses the need to link education with the land and the people who are close to working the earth, namely rural women and their families. She has a gendered perspective and links the industrialised farming approach with the market and the state. She explains that the companies that provide fertiliser and seeds have also been linked with the production of chemicals that have supported the military industrial complex. The re-generation of seeds is threatened by Monsanto and the approach to development, education and the management of the habitat on which local farmers depend. Manish Jain (2020) is …deeply committed to regenerating our diverse local knowledge systems and cultural imaginations. He is one of the leading voices on the planet for “de-schooling” our lives.

Vandana Shiva and Manish Jain support eco villages and ‘beavering’ or working with people in local contexts that are outside the current institutional framework. A way forward needs to be emphasised in the volume. This needs to go further than merely stating that an ubuntu mindset is required. What does this actually mean? If we are people though other people and through nature to which we are inextricably linked it requires a de-colonisation of the mind and setting aside what Shiva (2020) calls ‘ecological apartheid’ and the engagement with local wisdom to protect, local habitat and the protection and re-generation of local species. The United Nations Sustainable Development Goals are mentioned in passing as is the current crisis in education indicated by the Fees Must Fall campaign. But the increasing rate at which agricultural land and species are being lost is a vital concern. Forming a community of practice requires transformation in the axiological underpinning of what transformative education entails. It is more than adjusting service delivery within the current model of education. It requires taking on board the notion of alternative forms of education that re-balance the relationship between the rural and the urban. We live in a ‘risk society’, to cite Ulrich Beck and we face

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‘existential risks’ (Bostrom, 2011) if we do not develop a deep understanding of our interconnectedness. Africa and Asia have the potential to grasp the potential of the demographic dividend and to work with the marginalised in regional and rural areas by facing up to the convergent social, economic and environmental challenges by creating new educational opportunities. This requires more than merely acknowledging that universities in urban areas cannot cope or need to provide more services. Instead the services need to be located in so-called deep rural, regional areas. People travel hundreds of kilometres to access services with minimal income to pay for buses. This underlines that adding more urban service centres is not the answer. Furthermore, South African broadband is already oversubscribed and congested. Towers are available in some rural areas, but the cost of computers and data bundles from Vodacom are prohibitively expensive. We need to pause to ask, if education potentially means ‘to lead out’, what kind of transformation are we trying to achieve? More people with degrees for jobs that do not address social and environmental justice? It is preferable to develop a new approach based on adapting the ‘One Village, One or many enterprises’. This is an approach developed by President Jokowi that has potential for South Africa (McIntyre-Mills et al., 2019, 2020). One of the greatest risks that we face is to loss of diverse habitat for diverse species. This will impact on food security. Species extinctions are one threat: Birds, bees, insects are at risk from climate change and associated fires or floods, but we are also at risk of pandemics as a result of species coming into contact with other species that are farmed or trafficked in ways that are inappropriate which result in pandemics as detailed in Chapters 1 and 3 of this volume (see Goodall, 2020). The rate of urbanisation according to the UN Urbanisation Report (2014) is unsustainable and the risks to those in cities is also growing, according to the UN Sendai Risk Platform. All these issues are vital for transformative education that could be realised by means of an innovative approach to digital and on line education that begins with rural education centres that enable students and their families to earn while they learn and grow a future together. Vocational education and training could be fostered by means of an Eco-village Market and Meeting Place (https://ecovil lage-cafe.netlify.app/) that enables those who are currently excluded to consider: ● ● ● ● ●

What they have What they need Turning points for the better and worse Barriers Resources (material and non-material) that can be shared locally or through capacity building at a local and regional level.

Transformative education needs to address the purpose of education, namely: social and environmental justice. This is the starting point for addressing everyday education systems that uphold ecological apartheid. The poignancy of the situation in South Africa, for example is summed up by anonymous (2020) who stresses the difficulties associated with poverty, unemployment, minimal aid from the National

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Student Financial Aid Scheme and the lack of disposable income to enable access to bus fare or internet access.

Business as Usual Scenario We continue to believe in economic arguments that others believe ignore the social and environmental dimension. We continue to think that our way of life is sustainable and are not prepared to manage the perceived risks of climate change by changing our way of life. We attribute drought, bush fires and floods to one-off unrelated events or natural cycles and deny that climate change can trigger rising temperatures in some areas and plummeting temperatures in others as melting ice effects the ocean currents. We do not perceive that the sea is used as a dumping ground to the extent that it no longer helps to regulate our climate.

Small Changes Scenario People make slow annual progress towards goals which they meet for the benefit of their children and grandchildren. People of all ages and from all walks of life who are able to join up the dots between the economic, social and environmental dimensions help to motivate movement towards a better future. We do not perceive these small changes as being too slow to sustain beyond our grandchildren, or we envisage that something else will happen by then to reverse the current trend. Governments and non-government organisations take the initiative. They hold workshops to demonstrate how people can make a difference. They listen to the people and help local groups to respond to local challenges. Together they undertake model projects that demonstrate how it will be possible to live differently. They model different ways of thinking and through living the changes show that it is possible to balance individual and collective interests, because we are not selfish nor are we unable to create alternative ways of governing at a regional level.

Re-Generation Scenario We live in an environment that can support this generation and the next. Housing is affordable and made of sustainable materials. We have faced up to the convergent social, economic and environmental challenges and we are resilient, because we live in clusters of homes, share rain tanks and solar grids that are subsidised by local governments. Our living and working areas are powered by alternative energy. The new status symbol is the environmentally friendly lifestyle. Public transport is green. Off road vehicles are no longer permitted to private citizens. They can be hired for

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specific tasks and the kilometres are logged. The green economy supports a vibrant job market spurred by subsidies to enable packaging goods, housing people, and transporting people, educating and entertaining the public. The carbon economy is replaced through innovative inventions. All members of the public are encouraged to share their experiences and ideas for living sustainably. The futures market has been reconstructed to take into account the air, water and earth we need to grow organic, safe food. We have thought carefully about the implications of treating people, animals and the land as commodities and we strive to care for ourselves, others (including the voiceless) and the land. The idea is to use the scenarios as starting points to EXPLORE ways to enable people to live healthy, happy ethical lives that are not at the expense of others or the next generation of life. The scenarios are for Australia and we need scenarios from other parts of the world that reflect social, cultural, political, economic and environmental diversity. The links below can be used to enable matching services to need. It has been populated with data to address complex health, housing and social inclusion needs. Each service user is asked to consider whether they identify with: ● Wellbeing/Life in balance and able to help others ● Just keeping it together ● Life in chaos This first prototype was funded by an ARC linkage project led by McIntyre with software designed by Denise de Vries overseen by Professor John Roddick. The proof of concept was developed and tested with Neporendi and Southern Domestic Violence Association. It also supported by Anglicare and SA Health (McIntyre-Mills, 2008a; McIntyre-Mills & De Vries, 2010). The second prototype to address mitigation and adaptation to climate change is programmed to enable service users to consider whether they identify with: ● Regenerative living to support wellbeing ● Taking small steps towards sustainable living ● Business as usual The second prototype was funded by local government to address social, economic and environmental indicators of wellbeing. The aim is to encourage people to move towards more sustainable living and to re-generate their local communities through considering what they have, what they need, what they are willing to add or discard, turning points for the better and worse and barriers (McIntyre-Mills et al., 2011, 2014).

http://wirasoftfoundation.org/en_GB/web/smartenergy/wirasoft

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https://ia801606.us.archive.org/20/items/pathway_DEMO_1/pathway_DEMO_ 1.mp4 The third prototype is being developed by Wirawan together with McIntyre with support from Universitas Padjadjaran and based on the previous work and adding an interactive feature to a chat box enabling narrative. Security is supported by block chain. It is suggested that these prototypes could be valuable to address community re-generation and case work interventions to support physical and mental health as well as broader social, economic and environmental wellbeing.

Using the ChatBot technology, a user can be guided to explore pathways to wellbeing by interacting with the ChatBot as depicted in the above diagram.

Rescuing the Enlightenment from Itself Through Recognition of Our Interconnectedness and Human Agency In ‘Rescuing the enlightenment from itself” (McIntyre-Mills, 2006), I discussed the potential for critical thinking to enable people to think through their rights and responsibilities. Critical reflection is the only thing that will enable people to avoid stepping back from their responsibilities to engage actively as citizens (not only of nation states, but as citizens of the world) who care about what is going on across the border. In the ‘Banality of Evil’, Hannah Arendt stresses that this is the only faculty that will prevent other occurrences of collective evil—that resulted in death camps where prisoners were processed under factory like conditions in Nazi Germany. The issue of responsibility was collectively shared and the right to deny responsibly, because of following orders was set aside as an unacceptable conclusion in the summing up by Hannah Arendt at Eichmann’s Trial. She blamed Eichmann but also the system that enabled him to operate with impunity. But she did not leave it as a reified system, she talked about the collective responsibility of the entire German nation. In frontiers of justice (Nussbaum, 2006) outlines these points, but does not develop and argument to support the safe passage of all living systems from one generation of stewards to the next. So, this paper strives to extend her argument. Safe passage for

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human and other animals in the wake of disasters (social and natural) will become increasingly commonplace and can be regarded as the so-called ‘new normal’. To rescue enlightenment from itself, we need to realize that there are many ways of knowing, but to protect food security ethical decision making is essential. Nussbaum’s capability approach is core to human agency for food security along with respect and stewardship of voiceless sentient beings. Her work dovetails quite well with Donaldson and Kymlicka (2011) in Zoopolis. Protecting habitat for human animals and other living systems is the logical next step to prevent existential risks to all as well as a sense of awe for all living systems. Safe passage across habitats in post national regions flows from this argument on new forms of architecture for governance. Ways of knowing as listed by Churchman such as Logic, empiricism, idealism, dialectic and pragmatism need to be extended to include other ways of knowing by drawing on nature. Wadsworth (2010: xxvii) poses the question as to: “what would a more life-enhancing system of research and evaluation look like?” One of the issues that needs to be faced is that democratically elected leaders ought to be agents of the people and the environment. This ought to be of primary concern, not their personal political careers. Two potential approaches offer ways to improve democracy and governance. These are Structured Dialogue and pathways to wellbeing software (PW) informed by the same logic employed by SD which inspired the development of PW. In Transformation from Wall Street to Wellbeing and Planetary Passport an engagement approach is suggested—based on small pilots—that are guided by a non-anthropocentric approach to systemic ethics and supported by pathways to wellbeing. The pragmatism of considering ‘if then’ scenarios before making decisions is explained (McIntyre-Mills et al., 2014; McIntyre-Mills, 2014, 2017b). We argue that critical systemic intervention by residents living in local regions is needed on a daily basis to achieve ecological citizenship. The Aarhus Convention (1998) provides three policy pillars to enable this everyday engagement to occur. The policy pillars include: ● The right of all residents in the EU to access information. ● The right to be heard and the right to take the areas of concern to the European Parliament and then to the European Court if the issues are not satisfactorily addressed. As Florini (2003) stresses, the policy provides a valuable potential platform for extending democratic rights to residents within and beyond a nation state so that social and environmental justice concerns can be addressed at a post-national regional level.

Three Patterns and an Axiom for Food Security We can be free and diverse to the extent to which our freedom and diversity does not undermine the freedom and diversity of others in this generation and the next. This requires:

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● Recognition of the interdependency of living systems and the implications for bioethics. ● Making (ongoing) policy adjustments in context. In policy terms this requires new forms of organizational relationships that redress power imbalances that result in social, economic and environmental injustice and ‘existential risk’ (Bostrom, 2011). ● Appreciation of cycles for re-generation in designs that sustain living systems are needed. This requires rural-urban balance to protect habitat for domestic, farm and wildlife based on the requisite variety (Ashby, 1956) that spans multiple species. The barriers to achieving these three pattern goals include power imbalances within and across-species which requires an intersectional understanding of the way in which species membership, gender, race, culture and abilities shape the power dynamics that underpin social and environmental injustice. A way forward is perhaps to focus on what matters within and across many species, namely a safe, inclusive environment, water to drink, food to eat, being able to keep cool or warm enough to sustain life and a sense of fulfilled purpose. Just as Arendt (1963) stressed at Eichmann’s trial, the evils of the holocaust were not the result of the actions of one man. At his trial she stressed that the problem was caused by everyday decisions that rendered evil a banal everyday occurrence to which all Germans contributed by looking the other way and allowing the pain and suffering. Today the ‘banality of evil’ is associated with everyday decisions that contribute to the size of our carbon footprint or our decisions to use water resources unwisely. By denying the pain and suffering caused by taking decisions that erode the planet and prevent the re-generation of living systems, we contribute to our shared ‘existential risk’ (Bostrom, 2011). This has been underlined by the landmark declaration by the president of Vanuatu (2018) who stresses that companies and nation states that rely on carbon intensive approaches should pay for the damage they cause to nation states with a low carbon footprint. A non-anthropocentric approach to democracy and governance is needed to enable monitoring from below and above to ensure that those who are elected are held to account so that they fulfil their role to act as agents of the people and that collective responsibility is indeed taken to protect both people and the planet.5

5 The

critical heuristics approach is vital to address the ‘banality of evil’ (Arendt 1963) which now passes as commonplace governance leading to heavy carbon footprints. Today the markets are open but conceptual and spatial (geographical) borders are closed. This is the paradox that is not addressed in the name of ‘border protection’. The case is made (drawing on Shiva, 1989, 2002, 2012a, 2012b) that sharing resources in common does not lead inevitably to the tragedy of the commons (Hardin, 1968) if the right design conditions prevail (Ostrom, 2008) and reciprocity, trust and ongoing monitoring by engaged local people occurs from below in line with post national conventions to protect people and the planet (Held, 2004).

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The Mission for Fluidity and Transformatio Versus the Mission for Integration The International Systems Sciences (ISSS) president for 2019 is admirably focused upon the frontiers of oceanography and forestry and has set up centres to expand frontiers through exploration. The frontiers of social and environmental justice are well served by these initiatives, but I am tempted to question the passion for integration across the many and diverse Special Integration Groups. Finding patterns of overlap whilst helpful, need to preserve space for diversity. Having said that I cannot resist the temptation to attend ISSS to listen to the diverse ideas of the many attendees. As a sociologist trained in social anthropology, I have to ask myself why I have returned year after year (since 2000) to a conference with such diversity of thought. And of course, I have answered my question. I want to understand how the natural sciences portray themselves in relation to the social sciences. The focus seems to be on integration and finding isomorphies, to use the phrase of Len Troncale. Whilst ISSS has been located year after year in the United States, it does make an effort to hold conferences in alternate years (where possible) but many of the society’s decision makers are located in diverse parts of the world and although the agenda is framed to (mostly) respond to the challenges of Western Academia it has also been open to the ideas of other academics from diverse disciplines and cultures. I am tempted to pose a question as a result of re-reading ‘the saturated self’ by Kenneth Gergen (2002) who ‘explores dilemmas of identity in contemporary life.’ Gergen (2002: 83) poses the question: “Why does the saturated self-lead to a breakdown in objective reality? He continues by reflecting that “If we step outside any one discipline and hear the different views across paradigms, we get a much better sense of the nature of the academic enterprise. I am avoiding the use of the terms ‘natural sciences’, ‘social sciences’ or ‘humanities’”. What appears to be the integrative theme is the need to jump through academic hoops set by administrators who make decisions about what constitutes knowledge. All this has been said before by Foucault. Power and knowledge are indeed linked. Gergen (2002: 83) reminds us of the Heisenberg effect which is increasingly relevant in the era of quantum physics which acknowledges that there is no such thing as a static representation of reality. For practical purposes it may be useful to portray a static model that can be perceived to represent reality, but the only constant is change and the ability to respond to the challenges. Being and becoming, fluidity and transformation are far more relevant when addressing complex evolving challenges faced by individuals or groups. Today the challenge is to see ourselves as part of a living system, rather than as scientists working within a discreet discipline. Thus, questions and the ability to design a set of relevant questions is more relevant to responding to challenges. If the isomorphies are patterns for the design of engagement processes, or patterns to guide ethical engagement then patterns can be worthwhile. Gergen ends his foray into dissecting the body of science by saying that critical analysis needs to be supplanted by action. Transformative engagement or learning by doing provides experiential knowledge. But as Len Troncale sagely said, one of the oldest systems

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is the cell. Through studying what works, why and how we can gain a better understanding of who we are in the fabric of life. We are definitely fluid and cannot be pinned down! When that happens, we are likely to be in formaldehyde and presented as specimens for dissection! Nevertheless, if we are encouraged to consider systemic patterns, such as feedback or feedforward, for example across a number of areas of concern, such as the history of agriculture and the use of pesticides or labour studies we could have a better understanding of the ongoing iterations of cause and effect and how policy decisions impact everyday life. Interestingly, the title of H.H. The Dalai Lama’s book (2005) is “The universe in a single atom: the convergence of science and spirituality” in which he makes a case for recognising that reality is fluid. He cites the physicist David Bohm, the psychologist Richard Davidson and the astrophysicist, Paul Davies, for example on the importance of perception and how it helps to shape reality. The notion of fluidity and interconnectedness is a basis of many religions, especially Australian Indigenous views on consciousness (Hume, 2004).

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Janet J. McIntyre-Mills is Honorary Professor in the College of Education at University of South Africa, Tshwane, South Africa; Visiting Research Fellow at Adelaide University in the College of Professions Main North Terrace; and Adjunct Associate Professor in College of Business Government and Law at Flinders University, Sturt Campus, Adelaide. Rudolf Wirawan is CEO of Wirasoft and Senior Researcher at Flinders University.

Chapter 19

The Co-Laboratory of Democracy Archetypes: Engaging Stakeholders in Deliberative Democracy to Respond Proactively to Diversity Jeff Diedrich and Alexander N. Christakis Abstract Forty years of experience with the Co-Laboratory of Democracy methodology, has led to the identification of seven application Archetypes in the arena. These seven are the result of appropriate combinations of the three Co-Laboratory types, namely: (a) Future scenarios/Vision, (b) Barriers/Challenges Anticipation, and (c) Action planning. In this chapter we focus on the seven Co-Laboratory Archetypes, drawing similarities and distinctions among them in terms of their deployment in the arena of practice. The SDD approach lends itself to addressing complex challenges, such as poverty, climate change and pandemics that require new forms of engagement to work across conceptual and spatial boundaries. It also lends itself to exploring policy options to address complex needs. In this chapter the needs of people with special educational needs are discussed.

Introduction The science of dialogic design and the methodology of Structured Dialogic Design (SDD) have been discussed in other chapters of this volume (McIntyre and Christakis; Christakis and Kakoulaki). The science is founded on the Domain of Science Model (DOSM), conceptualized by Warfield (Warfield, 1987). The DOSM draws distinctions among four domains, which are connected in a virtuous circle of complementarity. These are: Foundation, Theory, Methodology, and Applications. In this chapter we will focus on the Application Domain, and more specifically on the seven Co-Laboratory of Democracy Archetypes.

J. Diedrich · A. N. Christakis (B) Institute for 21st Century Agoras, Crete, Greece e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2021 J. J. McIntyre-Mills and Y. Corcoran-Nantes (eds.), From Polarisation to Multispecies Relationships, Contemporary Systems Thinking, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-33-6884-2_19

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The Applications Domain of the Science Variations of the generic methodology of the science are used with communities in specific applications. The communities can be corporate or civic, religious or secular, local or international, etc. Such applications of the science typically allow a measure of flexibility to accommodate conditions unique to different situations; however, each application does have its limitations, and use of methodology beyond the validated context of the science constitutes an experimental application. The inference is that in experimental applications, limitations of the methodology may cause failures. It is in the spirit of minimizing the risk of failures that the seven Archetypes have been identified, in order to provide guidance in the design and conduct of CoLaboratories by SDD professionals. The professionally responsible application of the SDD methodology entails three distinct and complementary phases. These are:

The Discovery Phase During this phase the SDD practitioners responsible for the application engages in an inquiry which involves: (a) Conducting interviews with members of the community of stakeholders in order to explore their alternative understandings and perceptions of the situation, (b) Gathering and study relevant documentation and data (c) Selecting a Core Planning Team (CPT), which includes at least one member of the community, called the Broker, for guidance in the design of the Co-Laboratory, (d) Framing a Triggering Question (TQ) for focusing the deliberations of the participants during the Co-Lab, and (e) Identifying a representative group of participants to the Co-Lab, in accordance with the Law of Requisite Variety (Christakis & Bausch, 2006), i.e., all perspectives should be present at the Co-Lab.

The Co-Laboratory Phase This phase of SDD focuses on applying the theory and methodology for engaging the group of participants in a productive, effective, authentic, and democratic dialogue. This approach to deliberative democracy emulates the Agora of the Athenian democracy in 600 BC, and is based on four distinct and overlapping steps, namely: (a) Generation of ideas in response to the Triggering Question, (b) Evaluation if the ideas proposed, by asking participants to vote on the relative saliency of the ideas at various points during the deliberation, (c) Clustering the set of ideas into affinity groups by employing the similarity relationship, and (d) Mapping a priority subset of ideas by exploring pair-wise relationships of influence among them and producing a tree of influence (digraph).

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Follow-Up Action Phase This phase focuses on implementing the findings and recommendations of the CoLab. For example, if the group work has produced a consensus action plan, then specific activities are assigned to members of the group of participants, or the community at large, for implementation. This phase might produce the requirement for additional Co-Labs with different groups of stakeholders focusing on diverse and sometimes more detailed Triggering Questions. In many applications we have experienced a tapestry of deliberations over time, offering them the opportunity to conceptualize and implement a continuum of iterative learning and action for the resolution of the complex situation (Flanagan & Christakis, 2010). In the following sections we will briefly discuss the Discovery Phase and allocate most of the Chapter to the Co-Laboratory of Democracy Phase.

The Discovery Phase The Discovery phase involves a series of considerations and is full of nuances depending on the uniqueness of the complex situation. There is not a single formula that works for every application, but there are some general guidelines or rules of thumb. Initially, a meeting occurs between the SDD practitioner(s) and the Broker, i.e., a person assigned to the project by the sponsor of the work. The sponsor is essentially the owner and the expert of the complex situation to be addressed by a representative group of stakeholders in a Co-Laboratory of democracy. The role of the Broker is very critical for the successful application. It is essential that the Broker has the respect and the trust of the leadership of the sponsoring organization. The very few times that applications have failed are attributed to the Broker role not being played in accordance with the requirements. For example, the worst Broker ever experienced by Christakis in his practice over the last fifty years was John Warfield, who happens to be one of the contributors to the science of dialogic design, whose obvious talent lay elsewhere. The best Broker has been Jeff Diedrich, the co-author of this Chapter. During the initial meeting(s), a series of questions are addressed to assist in appreciating the complexity of the situation. For example, one question is to find out if other methodologies have been applied to the situation, and whether they have failed. If other efforts have not been effective, SDD should be attempted for an application, because of its track record of success. In addition, the initial discussions provide insights regarding the appropriateness of SDD for the specific situation, on account of the fact that its successful application requires that the leadership of the sponsoring organization is humble and capable of valuing the wisdom of the people. Participants engaging in SDD develop a strong appreciation for the collective wisdom and a deep investment in the definition and resolution of the situation. It follows that they should not be disappointed if their findings and recommendations are not being

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appreciated. It is at the Discovery phase that the SDD practitioners and the Broker assess the commitment of the sponsor to implement the finding of the group work. If the sponsor ignores the recommendation of the group, engaging stakeholders will be counter-productive and more detrimental than doing nothing at all regarding the situation. The preliminary choice of an application Archetype can help inform the level of effort and the depth of the Discovery phase necessary to ensure a successful application. In the hundreds of applications of SDD worldwide, the few failures can be attributed to the lack of effective Discovery phase work. For example, if the sponsor is interested in engaging a group in the definition of the complex situation and not in designing a consensus action plan, then most likely a two-day Co-Lab will be sufficient. In addition, the Archetype can guide framing preliminary Triggering Question(s) (TQs), which are essential for focusing the dialogue of the CoLaboratories. While it is helpful to identify a preliminary Archetype, it is advisable not to be constrained by the initial selection. As the Discovery phase progresses, new insights may reveal necessary adjustments, including a shift to an alternative Archetype. Another important aspect of the Discovery phase is the establishment of a Core Planning Team (CPT), consisting of five-seven members. to make critical decisions regarding: (a) Framing the TQ, (b) Finalizing the selection of the appropriate Archetype, and (c) selecting a representative group of participants for the Co-Lab deliberations. The following characteristics are desirable for the members of the CPT: ● Knowledge of the issue; ● Ability to think systemically (understanding how different parts of a system can influence one another within a whole); ● Candour (Authentic, honest, critical); ● Humility (Willingness to share thoughts AND be open to hearing and appreciating input from others); ● Respect from colleagues. The CPT members are thought partners, assisting in the development of the Triggering Question, identifying stakeholder perspectives and subsequent participants for the Co-Laboratory(s), as well as the research/interviews in preparation for the CoLaboratory phases. A thorough review of the literature and/or interviews, perhaps culminating in a White Paper documenting the problem may also be conducted. Careful consideration to the diversity of perspectives should be given when identifying persons to interview. It is often advantageous to outsource the interviews to an individual with extensive experience. Our experience tells us that the best qualified people for conducting the interviews are individuals trained in journalism. When conducting interviews, a general rule of thumb is, once a threshold of interviews has been reached, to stop interviewing when the respondents stop generating new ideas. Participants to the Co-Lab are identified during the Discovery phase using a rigorous process that focuses first on diverse perspectives, and then on selecting individuals that are representatives of the perspectives. For example, if a group is being selected for the design of a national health plan, the voice of the patients should

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be represented at the Co-Lab. The success of a Co-Laboratory can rest on the diversity of perspectives. It is important to consider those participants who have vastly different viewpoints, for if the situation could be resolved by like-minded individuals, it would most likely have been already resolved. A rule of thumb with regard to participants is that, while it’s advantageous to have “disruptive” mindsets, those individuals should be respectful and open minded to learning from and with other participants. The Triggering Question is framed during the Discovery phase. This is perhaps the most challenging task of the Co-Laboratory design, as it guides the entire dialogue. A poorly crafted Triggering Question will surely lead to a failed Co-Laboratory. During the framing, the initial draft should be based on input from the sponsor as well as informed by the review of literature and discussion amongst the members of the CPT. In our experience, the initial draft is never the final draft. Every word in the TQ is critical, and those nuances can make a difference between a good TQ and a bad one (Flanagan & Christakis, 2010). The goal in framing the TQ is to focus the dialogue with the least amount of constraint to the participants in terms of generating content within the context of the TQ. After the TQ is finalized by the CPT for the launch of the Co-Laboratory, the sponsor will introduce the TQ to the participants, and ask if there are any questions regarding the meaning and the intent of the TQ. In some cases, participants may require additional clarification from the sponsor and, in somewhat rare instances, the TTQ may be modified by the sponsor based on feedback from participants during the Co-Lab. Finally, logistics for the Co-Laboratories are addressed during the Discovery phase. The space should be comfortable and have the capacity to accommodate a set-up as depicted in Fig. 19.1.

The Co-Laboratory of Democracy Phase We have all experienced the benefits of dialogue when we openly and thoughtfully confront issues. We have also experienced the frustration of interminable discussion that does not lead to progress. The application of the SDD methodology, leveraging the use of the Logosofia platform in conducting Co-Laboratories of Democracy efficiently, enables diverse groups of stakeholders to dialogue and generate positive results. It accomplishes this by ensuring that the diversity, authenticity, autonomy, learning, and cognitive limitations of the participants are respected and protected during the conduct of the dialogue. In response to a Triggering Question, each Co-Laboratory engages groups in the following steps: ● Generation of Statements—participants respond to the TQ with concise statements that capture the essence of their meaning of their ideas. The SDD Facilitator, responsible for managing the dialogue, ensures that the authenticity and autonomy

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Fig. 19.1 Co-Laboratory facility set-up

of every voice is respected at the table and, through a round-robin approach, each person shares their ideas. The stopping rule is that the generation of responses to the TQ stops only when participants have exhausted all contributions. ● Prioritization (initial)—Prioritization voting preferences are captured at various points throughout the Co-Laboratory. Doing so will demonstrate: (a) the evolution of group learning, (b) the in-depth understanding of the meaning of the ideas, and (c) an appreciation for the diverse perspectives of participants regarding a complex situation. On the basis of over a thousand applications, we have discovered that the average number of ideas generated, independent of the situation and the group is equal to sixty-four. Participants are amazed when they realize at the start of the Co-Lab the diversity of viewpoints. Reviewing all ideas generated, which are displayed for visibility in one of the walls of the Co-Lab facility shown in Fig. 19.1, participants select their top five statements on the basis of their individual judgments of saliency in the contest of the TQ. Significant divergence amongst the participants is expected and observed at this stage of the process. ● Clarification of Statements—the author of each statement is invited by the Facilitator to elaborate on the meaning of their concise statement to ensure all other participants fully understand the intent of the author. During the clarification of meanings of the statements the Facilitator protects the authenticity of every participant in terms of the intent of their idea. Also, during this step, value-judgments regarding each statement contributed by individual participants are not allowed.

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In other words, at this point of the process. It is irrelevant as to whether participants agree or disagree with a particular statement; only that they understand its meaning and intent counts. Prioritization (second)—Following the clarification of the ideas, participants are asked to select again their top five ideas. As a result of the clarification that preceded, participants begin to abandon selecting their own ideas and to adopt for inclusion in their top five statements contributed by others. It is anticipated that groups begin to converge on priorities because of understanding and learning. Categorization—After all ideas are clarified they are categorized into affinity clusters in accordance to a relationship of similarity. Cluster headings are agreed upon by the group, based on the ideas within the cluster/category vs. predetermined categories, as is usually done. The categories help to reduce cognitive overload by organizing the ideas into management chunks of information. Also, they help the participants get a deeper understanding of the meaning of the ideas. Prioritization (third)—With the aid of ideas being clustered according to similarities, participants again select their top five ideas. Their judgments of relative saliency are now different, on account of: (a) their deeper understanding of meaning, and (b) their selection of their top five is supported by the organization of the ideas into affinity clusters. It is anticipated that the voting results will converge even more to a narrower subset of ideas. Influence Mapping—SDD utilizes the Interpretive Structural Model (ISM) consensus method (Warfield, 1976) together with the Logosofia software to yield a map that indicates the influence relationships amongst a subset of ideas included in the mapping process (as informed by the third Prioritization). Participants engage in voting regarding the influence relationship amongst two ideas at a time, i.e. if Statement X was addressed, would that help significantly in addressing Statement Y? A “Yes” vote for the group requires a super-majority consensus (i.e. 75%+ ) amongst the group members. The participants engage in significant dialogue throughout influence mapping, with individuals sharing her/his rationale for how they voted. The new learning that occurs though this dialogue can shift opinions and votes. Logosofia tracks the votes using the Interpretive Structural Modeling (ISM) algorithm (Warfield, 1976), which is capable of significantly improving the efficiency of “connecting the dots (ideas)” by making connections via the algorithm. The reduction in the number of pairwise queries posed to the participants can get up to a factor of five, which means that instead of the group having to spend a whole day to “connect the dots,” it can do it in two hours. The influence map often demonstrates that the top priority ideas obtained from the voting on relative saliency are not necessarily the most effective in terms of exerting leverage on other ideas of the subset included in the map (Christakis and Bausch, 2006). (See the Christakis and Kakoulaki chapter in this volume for additional explanation of this phenomenon). Prioritization (final)—Following the influence mapping, participants are offered a final opportunity to select their top five ideas. A tremendous amount of learning occurs during influence mapping, often resulting in new insights. Results of this round of voting may inform additional ideas that ought to be considered for

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adding into the influence map, in an effort to promote learning through iterations and successive approximations. Additional information regarding the SDD process is available in other chapters in this book, as well as other literature (see the Bibliography section of Chapter 35). Co-Labs represent the correct response to the planning challenge conceptualized by Hasan Ozbekhan in his seminal paper titled “Toward a General Theory of Planning,” published in 1968, in Perspectives of Planning, edited by a distinguished systems scientist named Erich Jantsch that Christakis had the good fortune to meet and interact with fifty years ago. Ozbekhan wrote in the chapter: Planning and Values: In my view there is no more important question in planning discourse; it is truly the heart of the matter. Let me begin by saying. Yes, we can will the future, but only if change is caused to occur in values rather than an object’s other attributes. What I mean is that any change that is not a fundamental change in values merely extends the present rather than creating the future. It seems to me that from this general postulate one can derive five statements which govern all planning. Only change in the overall configuration of values can change the present situation; Only individual will can bring about such value changes; Value changes cannot be predicted; Value changes always occur as individual ideas, or responses, or insights concerning betterment, and when they become socialized over a large part of the system we have ‘progress;’ Planning is the organization of progress. Thus, the main subject of planning is the willed future.

Co-Labs have demonstrated throughout the many years of applications world-wide, the capability of satisfying all the five planning requirements mentioned above.

Co-Laboratory Archetypes As mentioned in the discussion of the Application Domain, during the Discovery phase of the SDD methodology, the Core Planning Team responsible for the design of the Co-Lab must complete a number of tasks, including decide on the appropriate Archetype to be applied for the complex situation. The Co-Lab Archetypes have been designed on the basis of many applications in the arena of practice, and correspond to appropriate combinations of the three types of Co-Labs, namely: (a) Future scenarios/Vision, (b) Barriers/Challenges Anticipation, and (c) Action planning. We have identified seven Archetypes. A summary of the distinctions among these seven is shown below:

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Type A: Diagnosis of the Problematique: complex primarily through vaguely defined and intensely interacting mega-trends. It applies primarily to large organizations with significant level of complexity, such as the Global Problematique; Type B: Reconnaissance: complex primarily through unexplored situations and unexamined intentions. It is the social system designing equivalent to flying in an airplane over a landscape and gathering data by taking pictures; Type C: Long Range Action Scenario Construction: complex primarily through uncertain futures. It is useful for extrapolating the data base of the present to obtain alternative futures for evaluation and choice; Type D: Futures—Creative: complex primarily through unvoiced transformational hopes and anticipations. It is the Archetype most applicable for engaging groups in creating a desirable future which is not an extrapolation of the present trends; Type E: Collaborative Action Agenda: complex primarily through the number and diversity of essential collaborators. Useful for engaging groups in designing a short to medium term action agenda by first identifying the challenges to be addressed collectively; Type F: Root Cause Analysis: complex through the string coupling of observerindependent and observer-dependent data. For example discovering the root cause for the high school drop-out rate by engaging students, parents, and teachers concurrently; Type G: Evaluation by Indicator Rating: complex through the diversity of indicators measuring a social or natural phenomenon. Useful when a large number of indicators relevant to a situation have been identified, and their utility is questionable without organizing them and determining their interactions. A graphic displaying the combination of the three types of Co-Labs to produce the seven Archetypes is shown in Fig. 19.2:

Fig. 19.2 Showing graphically the combinations of the three Co-Lab types to produce the seven archetypes

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We will discuss each Archetype briefly below by offering an overview and some elaboration based on our experience as appropriate. In the Appendix to this chapter we present a Matrix, which helps in comparing the characteristics among the seven Archetypes. Type A: Diagnosis of the Problematique Co-Laboratory Types included: Barriers/Challenges Anticipation Brief overview Situations requiring this Archetype are complex primarily through vaguely defined and intensely interacting mega-trends. Diagnosis of the Problematique focuses on identifying the “drivers” of the wicked problem, i.e., those issues or trends with the maximum leverage in terms of making progress towards its resolution. Wicked problems are not solvable, they are only resolvable. They require continuous monitoring and improvement of the situation. The concept of the Problematique was for the first time identified in the Club of Rome prospectus on the predicament of mankind (Ozbekhan, 1970). This Archetype has been used extensively by many organizations for the purpose of diagnosing the complexity of their situations, such as the Ford Motor Company, the Center for for Drug Evaluation and Research of the Food and Drug Administration, and many others (Warfield, 1994; Christakis & Bausch, 2006). Type B: Reconnaissance Co-Laboratory Types included: Barriers/Challenges Anticipation Brief overview Situations requiring this archetype are complex primarily through unexplored challenges and unexamined intentions. The Reconnaissance Archetype is utilized to explore a complex innovation to gain an overview, perspective, and insights. The information gathered from the diversity of perspectives from a group in a Co-Lab can assist in determining why the innovation is working or not working, and how it can be improved. For example, if a new approach to the implementation of an improvement plan for an education system is experiencing difficulties, this Archetype is helpful in its adoption by the community of stakeholders. Type C: Long Range Action Scenario Construction Co-Laboratory Types included: Futures Scenario/Vision Barriers/Challenges Anticipation Action Planning Brief overview Situations requiring this Archetype are complex primarily through uncertain futures. This Archetype helps groups explore alternative futures based on the extrapolation of past and present trends. It does not engage the participants in any effort to

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idealize a desirable future. In the majority of cases the most probable future corresponds to the critical future, i.e., the future that after being identified by the group it would need to be redesigned so that it will not come to pass. It is in this context that the barriers/challenges are identified by the group in the second Co-Lab, i.e., what challenges will need to be met effectively so that the critical future will be avoided. During the third Co-Lab, the group focuses on specific actions which, if adopted and implemented, will address the challenges in order to effectively avoid the critical (extrapolated) future. The identification of the challenges in the second Co-Lab is based on the diagnosis of the critical future, and not on a desirable “idealized” future as is the case in the futures-creative Archetype. This Archetype has been applied in situations that there is some disquiet in the committee of stakeholders with respect to their probable future, but it is not necessary to design a drastically different future. In year 1994, a group of international and national participants employed this Archetype in an auditorium setting in the city of Lion, Mexico, to forecast alternative futures for Mexico to the year 2020, i.e., a planning horizon of twenty-five years. The audience of about one thousand people were engaged by expressing their voting preferences in terms of probable trends and events for Mexico and the world. Type D: Futures—Creative Co-Laboratory Types included: Futures Scenario/Vision Barriers/Challenges Anticipation Action Planning Brief overview The Futures Creative Archetype is complex primarily through unvoiced transformational hopes. It is challenging for people to liberate themselves of current constraints and dream of a drastically different future. Careful consideration must be given to the Discovery Phase, and more specifically, to the variety of perspectives/participants. A typical approach when faced with a complex challenge would be to consider the current situation and project it, i.e., describing a future that is somewhat different from the present but not drastically different, as discussed in Archetype C. The goal of the Futures Creative Archetype is to offer the opportunity to create a situation that is drastically different from the current situation—a visionary future of what “ought to be”. To close the planning gap between the current situation, the extrapolated future, and the visionary future, a group must recognize that there are constraints or challenges that get in the way of achieving the visionary future. This is referred to as the “wall or tree of obstacles” and in the second Co-Lab, participants focus on “what can be”. Finally, participants engage in a Co-Laboratory to determine actions that “will be done” to overcome the barriers and approximate the ideal future. Type E: Collaborative Action Agenda Co-Laboratory Types included:

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Barriers/Challenges Anticipation Action Planning Brief overview Situations requiring the Collaborative Action Agenda are complex primarily through the number and diversity of essential collaborators. This Archetype is useful in situations that an organization wants to engage a group in the identification of challenges needed for improving the performance by designing a short-term action agenda. The principal focus is the design of an action agenda, and in doing this in the context of a thoughtful deliberation for the development of a systemic approximation to the challenges facing the organizatio. It is extremely helpful in avoiding the conventional approach of designing an action plan without the identification of the system of challenges to be addressed collaboratively. Type F: Root Cause Analysis Co-Laboratory Types included: Barriers/Challenges Anticipation Action Planning Complex through the strong coupling of observer-independent and observerdependent data. For example, in redesigning a school system the observer-dependent data are those ideas generated by parents who have been invited to participate at the Co-Lab as stakeholders, and the observer-independent data are statistical data known by school administrators. Brief overview of an application case In March 2004, the CWA Ltd. consultancy with expertise in SDD, in collaboration with The Great Lakes Area Regional Resource Center (GLARRC), and the Michigan Department of Education, Office of Special Education and Early Intervention Services (OSE/EIS), designed and conducted a root cause analysis CoLaboratory with the engagement of thirty stakeholders. The participants to the CoLab were representatives from the community of practitioners in the field of a monitoring process called Continuous Improvement Focused Monitoring (CIFM). These practitioners were responsible, among other things, for implementing for the state of Michigan the No Child Left Behind (NLCB) legislation, passed by the US Congress in 2002. The participants were initially engaged in a series of Co-Labs for the purpose of designing the CIFM process relevant to their situation, which they will then have to implement in the field with school districts throughout the state. After they completed the design of the CIFM process, it was decided to conduct a “root cause analysis Co-Lab” with the engagement of the same group of participants. The purpose of this particular Co-Lab was to try to anticipate any factors that might inhibit the successful implementation of the CIFM process in the field. The intention was to conduct an anticipatory root cause analysis, as opposed to one that is the result of an existing systemic problem(s). The major distinction between Archetype A, which maps the Problematique and identifies the drivers for its resolutions, as compared to this Archetype, is that in the Root Cause case there is more certainty

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in the identification of factors for the definition of the problem situation, i.e., the situation is not as wicked as in Type A. Type G: Evaluation by Indicator Rating Co-Laboratory Types included: Action Planning General Overview This Archetype is complex through the diversity of indicators measuring a social or natural phenomenon. In more recent years, some innovative alternative application models have emerged. These models are currently being tested in the Arena for gathering evidence. A recent application involved using a panel of experts to determine weights to be assigned to fifty-three Assistive Technology (AT) Indicators, which had been developed by this panel and classified in eight distinct categories. Those weights will be used, together with other metrics at the local level, to assess the performance of an educational agency in the context of delivering AT services to its community of stakeholders. The following specific steps are required for the implementation of this Archetype. These steps are unique to this Archetype and for this reason are spelled out below: With a properly selected group of stakeholders, participants respond to a carefully crafted Triggering Question. With the set of indicators identified and clarified, the group of stakeholders classify the indicators into affinity clusters based on an exploration of the similarity relationship. Engage the group of stakeholders in constructing an influence tree or each affinity cluster displaying the distinctions of leverage among the indicators assigned to the specific cluster. Use the influence tree constructed for each affinity cluster to assign a “weight” for the indicators belonging to each cluster. A weight equal to one (1) is assigned to the indicators appearing at Level I of the influence tree, i.e., for those indicators that exert zero leverage to the set of indicators belonging to this cluster. The weight for the remaining indicators of this cluster is determined by counting the number of influences they exert on other indicators of this cluster plus one. In other words, if an indicator at Level III of the tree is influencing 4 other indicators in the set, the weight for this indicator will be equal to 5. Construct an influence map among the affinity clusters in order to determine the weight each cluster should contribute to the assessment of the situation by summing up the contributions of each indicator as shown in the equation below: Total value of the Quality of a situation is = Sum of the weight of a cluster times the value of the specific indicator belonging to this cluster. Engage the group of stakeholders in developing affinity cluster metrics for measuring, on a scale of 1 to 5 the effectiveness or impact of an indicator for a specific situation.

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Calculate for a particular assessment situation the overall quality by using the matrix of Step 6 and the formula of Step 5. Co-Laboratory Example The QIAT Community is a long-standing nationwide grassroots group that includes hundreds of individuals who provide input into the ongoing process of identifying, disseminating, and implementing a set of widely applicable Quality Indicators for Assistive Technology. The indicators support the provision of assistive technology services in school settings. The matrices support: School districts as they strive to develop and provide quality assistive technology services aligned to federal, state and local mandates Assistive technology service providers as they evaluate and constantly improve their services Consumers of assistive technology services as they seek adequate assistive technology services which meet their needs Universities and professional developers as they conduct research and deliver programs that promote the development of the competencies needed to provide quality assistive technology services Policy makers as they attempt to develop judicious and equitable policies related to assistive technology services. The website supports QIAT’s mission of guiding the development and delivery of quality assistive technology services by providing the QIAT Community with a gateway to resources. According to the QIAT website: “The Quality Indicators for Assistive Technology include the specific quality indicators that were developed by focus groups and validated through research, intent statements that further explain each indicator, and a list of common errors for each of the eight areas. The eight areas are all important to the development and delivery of assistive technology services and include: Consideration of AT Needs, Assessment of AT Needs, AT in the IEP, AT Implementation, Evaluation of Effectiveness of AT, AT in Transition, Administrative Support for AT, and AT Professional Development”. The eight areas include: Assistive Technology Consideration Assistive Technology Assessment Assistive Technology in the Individualized Education Plan (IEP) Assistive Technology Implementation Assistive Technology Effectiveness Assistive Technology for Transition Assistive Technology Administrative Support Assistive Technology Professional Development & Training There is a total of fifty-three indicators across the eight areas, with no more than seven indicators per area. Discovery Phase: Many districts using the indicators would often yield low scores in many areas. Upon examining the indicators and based on feedback from the field, it became

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apparent this was a cognitive overload in the sense that users had difficulty prioritizing interventions to yield systemic impact. As noted by the QIAT Leadership team, all indicators are important; however, that does not mean all are equally impactful. The QIAT Leadership was engaged to discuss using the process to produce a weighted scale for each area as well as across the indicators. The QIAT Leadership Team agreed to participate in the dialogue in Michigan. Prior to the engagement, each member of the QIAT Leadership Team was asked to respond to a survey ranking importance of each indicator within the eight categories. Results of the survey demonstrated variances amongst the group. Co-Laboratory Phase: The content was established so there was no need for generation, clarification, or categorization. This information was simply entered into the SDD software and the focus of the dialogue was on determining influence relationships. For each area, the group constructed an influence tree in an effort to determine the influence exerted among the indicators within the specific cluster. Figures 19.3 and 19.4 on subsequent pages provide two examples of such influence trees from two areas, Consideration and Assessment. Upon completion of influence mapping for indicators within each area as well as across all eight, a formula was devised to assign weights for each specific indicator based on its location and connections in the influence map. With this information, users are able to prioritize action based on leverage for the purpose of improving the overall system performance for an agency.

Quality Indicators for Assistive Technology

CONSIDERATION

Level

I

Level

II

Level

III

CogniScope II

Indicator 1: Assistive technology devices and services are considered for all students with disabilities regardless of type or severity of disability.

Indicator 4: Decisions regarding the need for assistive technology devices and services are based on the student's IEP goals and objectives, access to curricular and extracurricular activities, and progress in the general education curriculum. In Cycle with Indicator 5: The IEP team gathers and analyzes data about the student, customary environments, educational goals, and tasks when considering a student's need for assistive technology devices and services

Indicator 3: IEP team members have the collective knowledge and skills needed to make informed assistive technology decisions and seek assistance when needed.

Indicator 6: When assistive technology is needed, the IEP team explores a range of assistive technology devices, services, and other supports that address identified needs.

Indicator 7: The assistive technology consideration process and results are documented in the IEP and include a rationale for the decision and supporting evidence.

Indicator 2: During the development of the individualized educational program, the IEP team consistently uses a collaborative decisionmaking process that supports systematic consideration of each student's possible need for assistive technology devices and services.

Generated by the QIAT Leadership Team on April 16-17, 2011, in Lansing, MI Prepared by MITS

Fig. 19.3 Influence tree for the area of consideration

CogniScope 2 Software

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ASSESSMENT

Level

I

Indicator 4. Assistive technology assessments, including needed trials, are completed within reasonable timelines.

Indicator 6. The assessment provides the IEP team with clearly documented recommendations that guide decisions about the selection, acquisition, and use of assistive technology devices and services.

Indicator 7. Assistive technology needs are reassessed any time changes in the student, the environments and/or the tasks result in the student’s needs not being met with current devices and/or services.

Level

II

Indicator 3. All assistive technology assessments include a functional assessment in the student’s customary environments, such as the classroom, lunchroom, playground, home, community setting, or work place. In Cycle with Indicator 5. Recommendations from assistive technology assessments are based on data about the student, environments and tasks.

Indicator 2. Assistive technology assessments are conducted by a team with the collective knowledge and skills needed to determine possible assistive technology solutions that address the needs and abilities of the student, demands of the customary environments, educational goals, and related activities.

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Indicator 1. Procedures for all aspects of assistive technology assessment are clearly defined and consistently applied.

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CogniScope II

Generated by the QIAT Leadership Team on April 16-17, 2011, in Lansing, MI Prepared by MITS

CogniScope 2 Software

Fig. 19.4 Influence tree for the area of assessment

Conclusion We have discussed in the Chapter the Co-Laboratory phase of the Structured Dialogic Design methodology. More specifically, we have focused on the identification and application of the seven Co-Laboratory Archetypes that have been deployed during the many years of application of SDD in the arena of practice. In accordance with the discussion of the Discovery phase, it is strongly recommended that the choice of the appropriate Archetype to apply for a particular complex situation is determined by the Core Planning Team. The choice of the Archetype is influenced by many considerations, such as the requirements imposed by the sponsor on the SDD team of practitioners, the planning horizon of the project, and the resources available for the application of the methodology. The diagnosis of the complexity of the situation by the Core planning Team, and the framing of the Triggering Question(s) inform the determination of the Archetype to be applies in terms of the appropriate combination of the three Co-Lab types identified, namely: (a) Future scenarios/Vision, (b) Barriers/Challenges Anticipation, and (c) Action planning.

Appendix A

“What are key factors that should be taken into consideration in the application of the implementation science in the arena of education in Michigan?”

Appropriate for enhancing the understanding and commitment to a challenge or initiative that impacts a community of stakeholders

Type B: Reconnaissance Complex primarily through unexplored situations and unexamined intentions

1

“What are the critical 1 problems that we need to keep in mind as we seek to address the challenge of global sustainability?”

Appropriate for trying to build a “community” that embraces stakeholders from diverse perspectives to mitigate under-conceptualization of the challenges

# of Co-Labs

Type A: Diagnosis of the Problematique Complex primarily through vaguely defined & intensely interacting mega-trends

Sample triggering question

Design considerations

Archetype Time commitment by the participants Increased costs due to extended Discovery

Disadvantages

Community of N/A stakeholders from diverse perspectives offering insights into the situation from their experiences with the initiative

• Enhanced “ownership” of the problem • More time for amending & interpreting the influence map

Advantages

(continued)

Other Considerations

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“What national/regional 3 trends/events would you consider as having the greatest impact on electric energy efficiency over the next fifteen years?”

“What are descriptors of 3 an ideal model for interaction, communication & cooperation of Greek & Turkish Cypriot Famagustians to serve as an example for a future united Cyprus?”

Appropriate to explore alternative futures based on extrapolation of past and present trends

Enable the participants to articulate the “ought”, “can”, and “will do” to create an idealized future and achieve it through successive approximations

Type D: Futures Creative Complex primarily through unvoiced transformational hopes

# of Co-Labs

Type C: Long Range Action Scenario Construction Complex primarily through uncertain futures

Sample triggering question

Design considerations

Archetype

(continued)

Increased shared ownership and commitment through face-to-face interactions to attaining the idealized future vs. an extrapolated future

Enables a community of stakeholders to converge on a collaborative action plan for approximating a preferred alternative future within the cone plausibility (probable and possible)

Advantages

Higher time & cost commitment

Commitment of time and cost

Disadvantages

(continued)

• Preferably in a “retreat” environment • Intense work prior to 3-day Co-Lab in conducting surveys and gathering data • Increased time to generate final report

Other Considerations

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“What are action options 2 which, if adopted & implemented by the community of stakeholders, will help in addressing the system of barriers?” “What factors do we 2 anticipate will emerge as inhibitors to the successful implementation by OSE/EIS of the CIFM cycle of activities in its field applications?” No triggering question is 1 necessary—influence maps are constructed based on previously established work

Appropriate for reallocation of resources and a change in policy direction by converging in a collaborative action agenda CKD Kidney Report

Appropriate for anticipating factors that might inhibit the successful implementation of an innovation in the field of practice

Appropriate when participants have significant understanding of the intent of a set of indicators and need assistance in building similarity clusters and assigning weights

Type E: Collaborative Action Agenda Complex primarily through the number and diversity of essential collaborators

Type F: Root Cause Analysis Complex through the merging of observer-independent and observer-dependent data

Type G: Evaluation by Indicator Rating Complex through the clustering and weight assignment of a set of performance indicators

# of Co-Labs

Sample triggering question

Design considerations

Archetype

(continued)

Makes the utilization of the indicators more user friendly and identifies leverage points for intervention

Other Considerations

N/A

Final tool development will require consultation and additional cost

Time allocated to explain intent of the innovation prior to discovering the root causes from the participants & distinctions between observer-independent & observer-dependent data must be explicit

Because it is Self-preservation may short-term, impact needed change people must change the course without a lot of freedom or flexibility

Disadvantages

Determining the N/A leverage points that are likely to have more impact on successful implementation of an innovation

Short-term action agenda amongst a diversity of organizations that must collaborate to address a major issue

Advantages

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References Christakis, A. N., & Bausch, K. (2006). Co-Laboratories of democracy: How people harness their collective wisdom and power. Charlotte: Information Age Publishing. Flanagan, T., & Christakis, A. N. (2010). The talking point: Creating an environment for exploring complex meaning. Charlotte: Information Age Publishing. Ozbekhan, H. (1970). The predicament of mankind: A quest for structured responses to growing world-wide complexities and uncertainties. http://web.archive.org/web/20070928083748/, http:// www.cwaltd.com/pdf/clubrome. Warfield, J. N. (1976). Societal systems: Planning, policy, and complexity. Wiley-Interscience Publication. Warfield, J. N. (1987). The domain of science model: Extensions and restrictions. Fairfax, VA: George Mason University. Warfield, J. N. (1994). A science of generic design: Managing complexity through systems design. Ames: Iowa State University Press.

Jeff Diedrich is a member of the Institute for 21st Century Agoras and as the creator of the Logosofia platform for the application of the science of dialogic design. Alexander N. Christakis , founder of Institute for 21st Century Agoras, Heraklion, Crete, Greece.

Part III

Case Studies and Vignettes : Loss, Hope and Common Gound

Chapter 20

The Greta Factor: Turning Point for Transformation Janet J. McIntyre-Mills

Abstract We face a turning point as school protests led by young activists such as Greta Thunberg stress that adults have done too little too late to protect the next generation of life. Greed has indeed governed the way in which economies have been managed as she stated at her UN address and her address at Davos in January, 2020. Cutting carbon emissions has achieved too little too late. But transformation will require more than adjusting the economy as we know it. New forms of stewardship require rethinking our relationships with one another. Non-anthropocentric ethics requires caring for multiple species of which we are one strand in ‘the web of life’. Paradoxically stewardship has been seen as the authority to make decisions in the interests of a small powerful minority at the expense of current and future generations of living systems. A rapid transformation needs to be achieved through praxis to change economics, representation and accountability. The focus needs to be on limiting consumption and protecting habitat through post national regional interventions to protect food, water and energy security and to enable protection and safe passage for species facing displacement. Mitigation and adaptation to climate change requires living in ways that protect multiple species. This requires the protection of habitat and the limitation of consumption through balancing individual and collective needs. Expanding Pragmatism requires understanding what we do to the environment we do to ourselves and our children. We need to recognize our interdependency and connectedness of habitat. Stewardship is about responsibility for current and future generations of life, not the management of resources for the wellbeing of a few at the expense of the majority. Keywords Re-generation · Multiple species · Protection · Habitat

J. J. McIntyre-Mills (B) University of South Africa in the College of Education, Tshwane, South Africa e-mail: [email protected]; [email protected] Adelaide University, College of Professions Main North Terrace, Adelaide, Australia College of Business, Government and Law, Flinders University, Sturt, SA, Australia © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2021 J. J. McIntyre-Mills and Y. Corcoran-Nantes (eds.), From Polarisation to Multispecies Relationships, Contemporary Systems Thinking, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-33-6884-2_20

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We Face a Turning Point

According to Peters (in Malone 2017: v): “When the existence of the species and the planet is threatened, ‘normal research’ is trivial, even irresponsible.”

The loss of species makes little difference to urban based populations until they are forced to make the connection that industrial chemicals used by industrial scale farmers have an impact on their food security. The Green Revolution1 that was introduced in Indonesia by Suharto has resulted in loss of habitat for a range of plant and animal life, but it has also resulted in loss of ground cover and erosion. In August 2019 I spent time in a regional area of Bandung, called Alamendah. The dust storm reminded me of the dust storms in Adelaide (one of the hottest driest states in Australia). Besides the erosion and valuable topsoil, the water retention capacity in the (once forested area) is being impacted. The result is felt by the farmers who say that the productivity of the soil is deteriorating and their crop yields are decreasing. In the urban area of Bandung, water insecurity has become a regular occurrence. At a workshop I was running on systemic intervention at the Universitas Padjadjaran, one of the participants said that she had been without water for three days. The head of the Centre for Participation pointed out the hills surrounding Bandung, showing the patches where the indigenous forests had been lost. She stressed that the connection between the loss of forest and the loss of water security was becoming increasingly apparent.

1 Norman

Borlaug, winner of the 1970 Nobel peace prize for ‘his role in developing high-yield crops’ is now regarded by thinkers such as Vandana Shiva as being responsible for hunger and poverty, because industrialised farming has been linked with the destruction of biodiversity and the sale of expensive and toxic pesticides https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/povertymatters/2014/apr/01/norman-borlaug-humanitarian-hero-menace-society.

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Lush forested area in a suburb of Bandung (above) contrasts with the clearance of forests for agriculture which could impact water retention and local micro climate. Source: Author’s own photographs

Too Little, Too Late Living systems are part of a web of life which has been commodified by Capitalism. But the roots lie in the value system associated—not only the Protestant notion of hard work and the need to save resources which Max Weber stressed in Protestant Work Ethic and the ‘spirt of capitalism’ helped to foster the growth and spread of capitalism, but the shift in values from recognition of the sacred which many cultures honour, to seeking to know the price of everything without understanding the inherent value of living systems of which human beings are but a strand. The problem lies deeper in the Christian religion which (in official versions) places God and heaven above man, woman, animals and nature. In unofficial versions of Christianity and many other religions such as Buddhism and Hinduism this is not the case. The next step in the argument is control and suppression of nature. This control has overridden the way of life of indigenous people, women and nature. Women who connected with nature and close to plants and animals were considered to be strange or to have power and their own resources and thus they were controlled (often with the support of those who were happy to claim their property). Women who got the

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vote claimed it through the suffragette movement. Indigenous first nations have to a greater or lesser extent fought to overcome colonization. The United Nations Declaration of the Rights of Indigenous People (2007) has been invoked to try to maintain rights to land. It has not been popular in many parts of Africa and Asia as it is seen as a way (potentially) to challenge national sovereignty agendas. But the right of nation states to link with Global capitalist markets at the expense of this generation of life and the next needs to be challenged. It is our only hope. The state, market and capitalist system have worked together to silence young people who will have to live with the results of current decisions. It is both brave and appropriate for young people to stress that schools (and universities) are failing them. It is no surprise that one of the attempts to silence Greta Thunberg was to suggest that she is mad. But threats have also been made as reported by Burany (2012). This has been a standard response to political activists and even more so if they are female and young and (worse) that they have managed to join up the dots and to speak truth to power that the way of life is unsustainable and that current political systems are inadequate. Another attempt at silencing is suggesting that the most strident messages about time running out to reduce carbon emissions will lead to anxiety and despair. This is at best patronizing and at worst, yet another symptom of denial. The notion that she ought not to make young people anxious with her message (because it could be counterproductive) is also unconvincing because facing the facts is a vital first step in Transformation. Rural urban balance.

Post National Transformation Greta is right to suggest that the current political structures are inadequate. We do indeed need a post national, cosmopolitan response to protect those who are currently excluded from the mantle of citizenship rights. Young people, asylum seekers, prisoners, those without a voice because they are frail or disabled including all sentient beings are not protected by the nation state. Furthermore, the environment and the habitat for living beings are not protected by the nation state in ways that ensure both current and future generations of life. To know the price of everything and the value of nothing is the current mind set of the state and the market. Civil society has been beguiled by capitalism, but the improved access to material resources and mind-numbing media entertainment has a price, namely the surplus value extracted from workers, animals and plants by global capital. Another process is that exhausted workers in the capitalist system who work overtime or multiple jobs to pay the bills, become numbed by the ‘Bread and circus’ aspects of capitalism. But recently the notion that everyday necessities such as water, food and energy supplies may be at stake, has made many wake up. The notion of climate change is no fairy tale.

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The idea that climate change is inevitable and that there is nothing that can be done about it, because carbon emissions are caused by so many social, economic and natural events, such as volcanic eruptions, is defeatist. Stewardship requires that wellbeing stocks be protected and that creativity be applied to addressing mitigation and adaptation to climate change. Industrialism is not inevitable. Alternative green methods of production are possible and it is possible to change what we value and why. Non-anthropocentric ethics that place homo sapiens (the twice wise) at the centre of a web, rather than above the web, will provide hope for the future. As Bela Banathy (1996, 2000) suggested, the ability to think about our thinking is supposedly a mark of our species. Arendt stressed that without the ability to deliberate about our thinking the banality of evil tends to prevail. This is true in relation to current forms of capitalism, economics and governance as stressed in Systemic Ethics and Nonanthropocentric Stewardship: Implications for Transdisciplinary and Cosmopolitan Politics, (McIntyre-Mills, 2014). In this volume the case has been made for reconsidering our rights, relationships and the notion of consumption. The aim of my research (which underpins my approach to working with students and conducting community service) is to analyse the complex, inter-related factors underpinning policy decision making and resource sharing. My research applies critical systemic design to the two major interrelated contemporary problems—poverty and climate change. I have made a contribution in my niche area on participatory design and governance (applied to social and environmental justice) by (a) conceptualising a new architecture for cosmopolitan democracy and governance and (b) reframing social, economic and environmental areas of concern. This is detailed in the article ‘Recognising our hybridity and interconnectedness’ (McIntyre-Mills, 2017) which stresses that our thinking shapes the conceptual pathways we create in our neighbourhoods, workplaces and wider environment and that a post national approach (that balances individual and collective concerns) is vital to address both mitigation and adaptation to climate change. As human beings we have the ability to create or to destroy. The more we appreciate that thinking matters, the more likely we are to live in ways that regenerate life (see my article, ‘Recognising our hybridity and interconnectedness’ nominated for ‘Current Sociology’, ‘Sociologist for August’, 2019). This is vital If we are to have a hope of addressing and improving upon the UN 2030 Sustainable Development Agenda. The article ‘Anthropocentricism and wellbeing: a way out of the Lobster pot?’ (2012) is extended in the sole authored book ‘Systemic Ethics and nonanthropocentric stewardship’ (2014). Both the article and the book contribute to a now-recognised argument about ‘expanding pragmatism’ to consider the social, economic and environmental consequences of decisions on living systems. The inclusion of this argument in Springer’s ‘Encyclopedia of Food and Agricultural ethics’ (2014), shows its recognition. The practical goal of my research is to address the challenge for governing the Anthropocene ethically and wholesomely by moving away from disciplinary and functional differentiation, in order to span biological psychological, social, cultural, spiritual, political, economic and environmental dimensions

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that support living ethically and in ways that redress the worst aspects of modernisation. I build on Berger’s and Luckman’s (1974) approach as part of a research program detailed in a jointly authored companion article and book for the Contemporary Systems Series, called: ‘Transformation from Wall Street to Wellbeing’ (2012). This argument has been cited by Valentinov and Chatalova (2014) who stress the contribution it makes to more equitable approaches to accounting and accountability. My role in this paper and book was to conceptualise the research, apply for the ARC research grant and write up the research, which was conducted with help from De Vries and Binchai who developed the data collection platform. This mixed method work addresses the need for accountability for the ethical implications of policy and governance decisions in the short, medium and long term, based on testing the implications for self, other and the environment. The article ‘Representation and Accountability in Global Governance and the 2030 Development Agenda: Narrowing the Gap between Perceived Needs and Outcomes’ (2017) is extended in the sole authored book ‘Planetary Passport for representation, accountability and re-generation’ (2017) in which I discuss the example of a small pilot study and its wider potential at post national regional level, whilst preserving local wisdom and diversity. I explain that Indigenous cultures teach us about stewardship and relationships with the land, but these relationships have been oversimplified or lost in non-Indigenous cultures that tend to caricature the notion of stewardship without understanding the social and environmental justice implications for current and future generations. It foregrounds the insights, for example, of Ngarrindjeri elder Major Sumner from the periodically drought-ravaged lower Murray River in South Australia, who stresses that as custodians, ‘we are the land and the land is us’. Re-establishing relationships with the land are at the heart of effective cultural ecosystem management and sustainable employment. I thus contribute to developing policy suggestions (see Yeates, 2014) as to how regional organisations can address mitigation and adaptation to climate change. I apply an interdisciplinary and cross-cultural approach to sociology, ethics and critical systemic thinking. Thinking and emotions matter. I argue that they shape the human body (Pert, 1999) and the next step in the argument is that they shape the environment on which we depend. Overall, my research has aimed to address a user-centric regionalist policy agenda (The United Nations Declaration of the Rights of Indigenous People, 2017) based on a learning network that strengthens institutional capacity to implement the UN 2030 Sustainable Development Agenda by drawing on local wisdom. Effective regional mechanisms should initiate social, economic and environmental pathways with a focus on cross-border challenges. This argument has been extended in my chapters in ‘Democracy and Governance’ (2019) that view the global commons “as a legal, transformative governance concept, and a basis for systemic ethics…”. The speech given by Greta Thunberg has resulted in responses from some world leaders along the lines of ‘raising anxiety levels’, possibly counterproductive as it will make people do less. But she raises an important point, namely that national leaders are doing too little too late. If the tipping point for carbon emissions is approaching rapidly, more needs to be done to limit emissions. This needs to be achieved through multiple

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forms of intervention including improving rural -urban balance. Highly urbanised, environmentally affected regions provide canary cases that address the projected 2050 scenario when most of the global urban population is expected to be located in Asia (52 per cent) and Africa (21 per cent) (United Nations, 2014: 11). Too many farmers are abandoning farming in South Africa, Australia and Indonesia, for example as a result of climate change (fires, floods and droughts) In fact the rate at which regions in Australia are affected by one disaster after another means that some areas barely have time to recover from a drought, hot winds blowing away top soil and fires, before they are affected by flooding. My reasons for working across South Africa, Indonesia and Australia is that we need to address the impact of urbanization on food, energy and water security. A further challenge is the use of fracking for natural gases which add a risk to the supplies of ground water, for example in the NT. Cultivating more eco-systemic living can be demonstrated by making a simple choice to buy sustainably produced food and cleaning agents that do not contain palm oil. It has been found that palm oil plantations do not absorb as much carbon as the indigenous forests which are needed to absorb carbon if we are to have a hope of increasing carbon capture and reducing our overall emissions. Science has shown that indigenous forests absorb more carbon than the palm oil plantations in Borneo?2 Did you know that “12 companies are linked with driving deforestation?” ‘They include (according to a report by Green Peace3 food companies producing (amongst other products) “chocolate, biscuits, soaps and toothpaste”. Multispecies relationships require seeing ourselves as part of the very fabric of living systems and opening ourselves to the reality that the decisions we make everyday matters. We need to turn towards the reality of our actions. The simple act of choosing to walk or take public transport and not drive a petrolpowered vehicle can have an impact. If one child’s actions can capture the attention of the world, then surely, we should be galvanized to act? The saving of orangutans may mean little to the urban dweller in the United States or Australia who perhaps does not know how closely related we are to other primates and for that matter that we share more than 98% of our genes with laboratory mice.4 The fact that they are sentient and ought to have recognized rights to a life worth living may not be appreciated, this is the high road to essentialist rights detailed by Martha Nussbaum in ‘Frontiers to Justice’. But the low road is to realize that the everyday decisions to allow habitat to be destroyed so that we can get cheap palm oil will result in a more rapid loss of indigenous forests. Orangutans play a role in fertilizing the forests and they are part of the ecosystem. Without them we face rising temperatures and sharing their fate as we too lose a foothold on our ‘not so secure’ urban environments. The links across palm oil, deforestation and carbon sinks need to be understood. 2 https://iview.abc.net.au/show/judi-dench-s-wild-borneo-adventure. 3 Green

Peace Report (2018) “Dying for a Cookie”:https://storage.googleapis.com/planet4-intern ational-stateless/2018/11/e841ec57-Greenpeace_dyingforacookie_final.pdf. 4 https://www.newscientist.com/article/dn2352-just-2-5-of-dna-turns-mice-into-men/.

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Links Across Palm Oil, Deforestation and Carbon Sinksneed to Be Understood Dismissing Thunberg as an alarmist at best or ‘mentally ill’ is merely being in a state of denial. Being focused on an issue and willing to speak out will become traits that help saving many species and the global commons—our share habitat. My research addresses every day engagement processes that are important for public education on adaptation and mitigation to climate change, suggesting that the greater the level of participation, the better the match between service users and providers. But how can we increase engagement in the environment in a way that balances individual and collective wellbeing and simultaneously protects people, sentient beings and the environment when we know little about this nexus? The book ‘Transformation from Wall Street to Wellbeing: joining up the dots through participatory democracy and governance to mitigate the causes and adapt to the effects of climate change’ (2014) demonstrates an alternative approach to managing the size of our global footprint. This research was funded by the South Australian Local Government Association. The companion volume, ‘Systemic ethics and nonanthropocentric stewardship: Implications for transdisciplinarity and cosmopolitan politics’ (2014) elaborates the importance of new architectures to protect biospheres and living systems. The key points are summarized in two articles for the journal ‘Systems Research and Behavioural Science’ (2013, Wiley): ‘Anthropocentrism and Well-being: A Way Out of the Lobster Pot?’ and ‘Transformation from Wall Street to Wellbeing’. Public engagement links high-level challenges with individual perspectives, facilitating nuanced investigation of the complex ethical challenge of closing the gap in life chances. The central argument looks for ways of holding the powerful to account to enable virtuous living by the majority, demonstrated by careful use of resources and protecting habitat for living systems. How to encourage reduced consumption in ways that protect both people and planet, is the policy and governance conundrum that should be informed by understanding diverse representations of consumption? The book ‘Planetary Passport: Towards Representation, Accountability and Re-Generation’ (2017: 12) discusses the notion of how the ecological citizen could use a planetary passport to track the distribution and redistribution of resources in the interests of social and environmental justice. The key points are addressed in the ‘Current Sociology Journal’ (McIntyreMills, 2017). Its main theme is the need for democracy to re-engage with critical thinking. An early prototype, ‘Pathways to Wellbeing Software (see McIntyre-Mills et al. 2014) to enable this process has been developed and piloted, enquiring whether it is possible for groups to be held responsible in the same way that individuals can be held to account for their everyday decisions. Arendt’s (1963) notion that collective responsibility is upheld only when each individual engages critically with their everyday decisions, is addressed. Some of these ideas are summarised as ‘Representation and Accountability in Local Governance and the 2030 Development Agenda: Narrowing the Gap between Perceived Needs and Outcomes’ in ‘Systemic Practice, Action Research’ (2017) and the ‘Journal of Globalization Studies’. The papers

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are succinct summaries of the research on non-anthropocentric pathways to wellbeing and alternative forms of democracy and governance to address poverty and climate change. The ecological citizen tracks the distribution and redistribution of resources. Engagement links high level challenges with individual perspectives, facilitating nuanced investigation of the complex ethical challenge of closing the gap in life chances. The three patterns (Alexander et al., 1977) of engagement that could contribute to the human stewardship of habitat are: ● Recognition of the interdependency of living systems ● Making ongoing policy adjustments in context. This requires new forms of organizational relationships that redress power imbalances that lead to social, economic and environmental injustice and ‘existential risk’ (Bostrom, 2011). ● Appreciation of cycles for regeneration in designs that sustain living systems. This requires rural-urban balance to protect habitat for domestic, farm and wildlife based on requisite variety (Ashby, 1956) that spans multiple species. Barriers to achieving these pattern goals include power imbalances within and across-species which require intersectional understanding of the way in which species membership, gender, race, culture and abilities shape the power dynamics that underpin social and environmental injustice. These concerns were explored in two companion Springer vol’s (2014) and three edited books in the ‘Contemporary Systems Series’ (2018 & 2019) and in my ongoing research with leaders in the field and with emergent researchers. The themes were further explored in invited chapters for ‘Sociopedia’ (2014), Springer’s ‘Encyclopedia of Food and Agricultural Ethics’ (2014) and a chapter in ‘Faces of Homelessness in the Asia Pacific’ (2017). Together these outputs have honed my policy research to address social and environmental justice issues and have built on the foundation of my doctoral thesis on interrelated social, economic and environmental concerns by engaging in participatory action research and on the Australian Research Council Grant to address complex health, housing and social inclusion needs of Aboriginal Australians. My axiological assumption for transformative user-centric research is that change begins with people who are concerned about living systems. My constructivist ontology is one of understanding local Indigenous and non-Indigenous viewpoints and the relational epistemology relies on working with people to shape policy and practice using a transformative participatory approach. The starting point for my research is thus policy and governance praxis through collective co-determinism informed by those who have lived experience. I am not a postpositivist, though I strive for better decisions through testing ideas in ways that balance individual and collective needs. Currently ‘Rethinking human security and resilience as vulnerable multispecies relationships’ builds a discussion on balancing individual human rights and collective species rights. It is one of the central challenges for democracy and governance. Learning to read and write requires learning the letters of the alphabet and the shared system of numbers that has enabled the development of the arts, humanities, sciences and mathematics. Learning critical systemic literacy requires many ways of knowing. The research aims to strengthen institutional capacity by drawing on local wisdom.

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Our fragile interdependence requires a ‘recognition of our hybridity and interconnectedness’ (McIntyre-Mills, 2014) within the web of life. This volume explores taxonomies of rights, relationships and responsibilities across cultures to understand human, plant and animal relationships with a focus on understanding the implications for commodification and consumption. Thus, current structures need to be revised through balancing individual needs and collective responsibilities as detailed in ‘Planetary Passport’ (2017) to ensure local contextual responses to the global challenges of displacement and loss of habitat. My ongoing research builds on ‘Planetary Passport’ and the paper on hybridity and interconnectedness (McIntyre-Mills, 2017) to address new architecture for democracy and governance that extend solidarity and protection to all forms of life within a region rather than limiting protection and thus limiting human security which is dependent on biospheres (not national boundaries) as well as everyday praxis decisions about how and what we consume. ‘Existential risk’ (Bostrom, 2011) continues to escalate and ecocide (Higgins, 2016) is not yet recognised as part of international law. Politically fragmentation and populism have become the new order driven by capitalism, anthropocentrism, sexism, speciesism, nationalism and racism. The case is made that liberalism has progressed too far in undermining collective (cosmopolitan) responsibility. The concept ‘species’ is a central concern in relation to the issue of categorization, membership, displacement and decision-making (in terms of state sovereignty, territory, colonization and its implications for human, animal and plant life). As urbanisation encroaches on the wild spaces and displaces other forms of life, relationships that are Anthropocentric need to be re-framed to enable re-generation and sustainable living that is non-anthropocentric. The eradication of species as a result of rapid urbanisation places humanity at risk. Narrow anthropocentrism has focused on the stories of human beings at the expense of other species and the environment. This research explores a priori norms, narratives and laws and a posteriori actions that include and protect multiple species. I propose a re-framed regional social policy could contribute to achieving the sustainable development goals within and beyond the nation state by drawing on local wisdom to support living systems of which we are a strand. In ‘Recognising multispecies relationships: regeneration of the commons’ I stress the importance of interspecies resilience to support pollinators Food security depends on multiple factors ranging from access to land, water and pollinators. Existential risks are the result of not recognizing our hybridity and interconnectedness. Dualist thinking about consumption and rights pervades our consciousness and is reflected in socially unjust and environmentally unsustainable designs for society. Designs need to be supported by constitutions, based on a priori norms, and consequentialist or a posteriori approaches, based on testing out ideas within context and with future generations in mind. Current forms of democracy, governance and economics need to be re-framed by recognising that we are interdependent. This is relevant to nation states and to the wider post national regions of which they are a part. ‘Recognising our hybridity and connectedness’ (McIntyre-Mills, 2017) addresses non-anthropocentric policy for living systems. Mixed Methods and Cross Disciplinary Research: Towards cultivating ecosystemic living’ (McIntyre-Mills and

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Romm, 2019) and ‘Democracy and governance for resourcing the commons: theory and practice on rural-urban balance’ (McIntyre-Mills et al., 2010). Addresses the rapid rate of urbanization in Africa, Indonesia and Australia and a shared history of colonization is one of the reasons for comparative research in these areas. In 2015, I was invited to give a plenary and participate in a Symposium at the Future Worlds Institute in Cyprus, building on my research discussed at Research Committee 10 at the International Sociological Association World Congress of Sociology: ‘Facing an Unequal World: Challenges for Global Sociology’, Japan, 2014. I organized the stream ‘Wellbeing, Participation and Digital Democracy’ that addressed the cosmopolitan concern that humanity faces systemically-linked social, economic and environmental crises, which requires post national interventions and raises concerns about the ability of regional federations to address the needs of increasingly unequal societies. It aimed to discuss an understanding of the way in which cosmopolitanism is shaped by diverse definitions and applied very differently by theorists and those who engage in transformative praxis. Participants explored the extent to which the development of new forms of digital communication could enable broader participation in a wider public space, whilst exploring the role of the state and ‘if then’ scenarios about the role of (a) federations, (b) post national biospheres or (c) so-called republican federalism.

What Can We Do? ● Do not buy these products, check the name of the company on the list ● Raise awareness so that the public sector supports ecological awareness Share this information in ways that will increase awareness as to why we need to protect forest habitat. It protects the creatures in the forest and the forests of SE Asia, Australia and the Amazon are the lungs of the planet and provide an essential means to reduce carbon emissions. ● Produce sustainable products and market these sustainably ● Support sustainable agriculture, trace and track these products ● Monitor with score cards.

References Alexander, C., Ishikawa, S., Silverstein, M., Jacobson, M., Fiksdahl-King, I., & Shlomo, A. (1977). A pattern language: Towns, buildings, construction. Berkley: University of California. Arendt, H. (1963). Eichmann in Jerusalem: A report on the banality of evil. New York: Viking Press. Ashby, W. R. (1956). An introduction to cybernetics. London: Chapman and Hall. Banathy, B. (1996). Designing social systems in a changing world. London: Plenum.

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Banathy, B. (2000). guided evolution of society: A systems view. London: Kluwer/Plenum. Bostrom, N. (2011). Existential risk prevention as the most important task for humanity. Faculty of Philosophy & Oxford Martin School University of Oxford. http://www.existential-risk.org/. Burany, S. (2012). Greta Thunberg’s enemies are right to be scared.:Her new political allies should be too. https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/sep/30/greta-thunbergenemies-inaction-climate-crisis. Higgins, P. (2016). Eradicating ecocide: Laws and governance to stop the destruction of the planet. London: Shepheard-Walwyn (Publishers) Ltd. Higgins, P. (2018). The 2018 Hague freedom lecture by Polly Higgins. https://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=kQn8oA6e9To. Malone, K. (2017).Children in the Anthropocene: Rethinking sustainability: child friendliness in cities. London: This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by Springer Nature. McIntyre-Mills, J. (2014). Systemic ethics and non-anthropocentric stewardship. New York: Springer. McIntyre-Mills, J. (2017). Recognising our hybridity and interconnectedness: Implications for social and environmental justice. Current Sociology, 66(2). https://uk.sagepub.com/en-gb/jou rnals-permissions. McIntyre-Mills, J. with De Vries and Binchai, N. (2014). Transformation from Wall Street to Wellbeing: joining up the dots through participatory democracy and governance to mitigate the causes and adapt to the effects of climate change. New York: Springer. McIntyre-Mills, J., & Romm, N. (2019). Mixed methods and cross disciplinary research: Towards cultivating eco-systemic living. Cham: Springer. McIntyre-Mills, J., Romm, N. R. A., & Corcoran Nantes, Y. (Eds.). (2019). Democracy and governance for resourcing the commons: Theory and practice on rural-urban balance. Cham: Springer. Pert, C. (1999). The Molecules of emotion: Why you feel the way You feel. New York: Simon and Schuster. Romm, N. R. A. (2018). Responsible research practice. Cham: Springer. United Nations Declaration of the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. (2007). https://www.humanrights. gov.au/publications/un-declaration-rights-indigenous-peoples-1. Yeates, N. (2014). Global poverty reduction: What can regional organisations do? (PRARI Policy Brief No 3). Milton Keynes: The Open University. https://www.open.ac.uk/social sciences/prari/.

Janet J. McIntyre-Mills is Honorary Professor in the College of Education at University of South Africa, Tshwane, South Africa; Visiting Research Fellow at Adelaide University in the College of Professions Main North Terrace; and Adjunct Associate Professor in College of Business Government and Law at Flinders University, Sturt Campus, Adelaide.

Chapter 21

Gender Quota in Local Government: Implications for Community-Climate Action in Bangladesh Shajeda Aktar

Shajeda Aktar with contributions by the editors.

Abstract The introduction of direct elections to reserved seats in the Local Government of Bangladesh in 1997 aimed not only at fostering women’s empowerment but also as a measure that would help to improve the livelihood and well-being of the marginalised people of the country including women. This paper attempts to explore the implication of women’s reserved seats for the wider community they serve, and in particular, (i) the role of elected women representatives in enhancing economic opportunity for the destitute poor; (ii) in eliminating patriarchal ties, age-old prejudices and social malpractices that contain women’s well-being, agency and decisionmaking ability; and (iii) in protecting the environment and ecosystem in the era of climate change. Empirical findings document women representatives’ active role in helping poor and distressed families to get involved in enhanced income generating activities including poultry raising, cattle raising, facilitating microcredit in remote areas, fighting seasonal income shocks, providing skill improving training, encouraging crop rotation and non-crop farming, etc. Elected women representatives were contributing equally in fighting against social malpractices, prejudices and patriarchal attitudes including fatwa, dowry, child marriage, polygamy, domestic violence, drugs, gambling and moneylender’s trap. Finally, from the fieldwork presented here it was clear that women representatives played a critical role when it comes to the issues of protecting the environment, disaster preparedness and post-disaster management including protecting from river erosion, recovering river from encroachment, protecting ponds and water bodies from land grabbers, tree plantation, pollution control, solid waste management, fighting against carbon emission and encouraging climate friendly farming. Keywords Women’s empowerment · Reserved seats · Local government · Social stigma · Climate change S. Aktar (B) Department of Public Administration, University of Rajshahi, Rajshahi, Bangladesh e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2021 J. J. McIntyre-Mills and Y. Corcoran-Nantes (eds.), From Polarisation to Multispecies Relationships, Contemporary Systems Thinking, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-33-6884-2_21

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Introduction Women are marginalised from political office in almost all countries across the globe (Chowdhury, 1994; Krook, 2007; Brody, 2009; Dahlerup, 2006). But women’s participation in the decision-making process and political representation is important in a democratic society in order to ensure representation from all walks of the society and for promoting development from the grass roots. They could also play a vital role in raising awareness about the rights of farm animals and that maintaining healthy diets and free-range living conditions is vital for both human, animal wellbeing and the environment (see Chapters 17 and 18 of this volume). A society cannot function as democratic without representation from a significant cross section of the society and most of all without women’s participation and meaningful contribution as the majority of the population (UN, 1992; UNDP, 1997; Sun, 2004; Haque, 2003). A democratic society should not tolerate any discrimination or exclusion of certain groups irrespective of gender, ethnicity, creeds, or race. In a democracy, there should be equality for all with no one excluded or ignored. Accordingly, there should not be any discrimination between men and women, and women should enjoy similar opportunities and access to political office in the same way as men (Lindberg, 2004; Tremblay, 2007; Aktar & McIntyre, 2019). Democracy nurtures certain values that are essential to safeguard equality and equity in the society. It upholds certain values including freedom of speech, freedom of choice, fundamental human rights and equality for all. However, the literature suggests that women across the globe are excluded or under-represented in political office, senior managerial positions in both private and public sectors, in national parliaments and governments. The Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action 1995 urged all governments and authorities to confront these inequities and recommended gender quotas for women across the world. In very few circumstances has this been achieved (Aktar & McIntyre, 2019; Dahlerup, 2006; Haque, 2003; UN, 1996). However, women’s empowerment has been urged by researchers, policy planners and development activists as pivotal for the sustainable development of a society. Researchers opine that the empowerment of women is not only required for the representation of women in the political process but also for the betterment of the entire society. The literature suggests, for example, that a dollar earned by women is primarily spent on children’s health, education and family well-being contrary to the same dollar earned by men (Kabeer, 2001; Hulme & Mosley, 1996; Pitt et al., 2003; Chowdhury, 1994). In that the majority of representatives are male, contrary to claims made by men themselves, frequently fail to represent women adequately as women’s experience, thoughts, and concerns are very different than those of men (European Network of Experts, 1997; Vickers, 1997; Lister, 1997). Thus female representation and participation in the decision-making process is also imperative for good governance as it ensures equity and efficiency in the development initiatives (Chowdhury, 1994; Fulton, 2008; Goetz, 2009; Brody, 2009).

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At the same time, the introduction of reserved seats for women is considered, by researchers and development agencies, as the fast-track to increase women’s representation in political office and to foster women’s participation in mainstream politics (Dahlerup, 2006; Dahlerup & Freidenvall, 2005; Krook, 2005; Tripp & Kang, 2008). On the other hand, considering the marginalized position of women in the political process, researchers advise that local government is the key platform for their effective participation and empowerment (Goetz, 2004; Mukhopadhyay, 2005; MacLean, 2003; Magnusson, 1996). It is important to note that a pre-requisite for good governance is the effective participation of people from all walks of life in the decisionmaking process—and local government certainly is the starting point for women’s participation. This is especially relevant for a society like Bangladesh—where due to the strong presence of patriarchy and conservative social norms women are largely confined to their home, excluded from the outside world, and are mostly absent in the decision-making process at both local and national level. Researchers consider local government as the entry level platform for gender mainstreaming because they are closer, simpler and readily accessible by the marginalised community including women (Mukhopadhyay, 2005; Vijayalakshmi, 2002). Local government also deals with community issues such as water supply, drainage, sewerage, waste management, school, traffic and local infrastructure, that are closely related to the livelihood of the marginalized people (Mukhopaddhay & Meer, 2004; Mukhopadhyay, 2005; Goetz, 2004; Vijayalakshmi, 2002). Bangladesh has introduced a seat quota for women, one-third of the total seats, in rural and urban local government bodies and implemented universal adult franchise in those reserved seats in 1997. There is a plethora of studies exploring the effect of the introduction of direct elections on the empowerment of women in Bangladesh. Empirical research offers mixed results regarding evidence of women’s empowerment through the introduction of direct election to reserved seats for women in the local government institutions. For example (Mahtab, 2007; Halder, 2004; Aktar, 2014; Aktar & McIntyre, 2019) found significant positive effects of the introduction of direct elections on women’s empowerment in Bangladesh. There are also studies that identify certain challenges associated with women representatives’ capability to perform local government functions, and hence propose specific policy interventions for the further empowerment of women in the local government institutions in Bangladesh (Aktar, 2014; Aktar & McIntyre, 2019; Frankl, 2004; Mukhopadhyay, 2003; Murshid, 2004). There is, however, hardly any literature that offers a specific focus on the implications for gender equality of the direct election to reserved seats for women or men in the wider community. This is, however, important as the proponents of the gender quota have argued that electoral representation will not only empower the elected women representative but also contribute to the well-being of the marginal people in the society in large (Dahlerup, 2006; Dahlerup & Freidenvall, 2005; Krook, 2005). The empowerment of women is emphasized by scholars (see Sen, 1999; Nussbaum, 2000, 2003) not as an end but as a means to an end—to achieve

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socio-economic objectives such as the elimination of poverty, ill health, ignorance and injustice prevailing in the society. As Sen (1999: 14–15) argued, Development has to be more concerned with enhancing the lives we lead and the freedoms we enjoy. Expanding the freedoms we have reason to value not only makes our lives richer and more unfettered, but also allows us to be fuller social persons, exercising our own volitions and interacting with—and influencing—the world in which we live.

Accordingly, development is the expansion of one’s choice and agency to live a life that is dignified and worth living. This paper, in this context, explores the implication of electoral representation through direct elections to the reserved seats in Bangladesh in enhancing agency and capability for the itinerate poor and destitute people especially the women of the wider community to bring meaningful change to their lives and well-being. It is expected that women representatives’ participation in the decision-making process, access to resources and involvement in the local development programmes has the potential to make a productive contribution for the betterment of the wider community and to lead overall societal development; combat against climate change; eliminate social malpractice and prejudice; and create economic opportunity for the hardcore poor. This paper aims to explore all these avenues and as such intends to fill the void in the literature.

Methodology of the Study The research was conducted in the Kurigram and Lalmonirhat Districts of Bangladesh and was conducted between October 2018 to March 2019 as part of a research project entitled “Gender Quota and Women’s Empowerment: Exploration of the NonWomen Benefits” financed by the University Grants Commission, Bangladesh. Both the Lalmonirhat and the Kurigram districts belong to Rangpur Division located in the northern part of the country. For this study we chose these two districts considering their high rates of poverty and vulnerability compared to the rest of the country and hence the implication of women’s quota seats for wider impact in this area. Kurigram is the poorest district of the country with a rising poverty rate at 71% in 2016 whereas the poverty rate was 64% in 2010 which is in sharp contradistinction to the astounding GDP growth of the country. The poverty rate in Lalmonirhat stands at 42% in 2016 from 34% in 2010 (Prothom-Alo, 2018) compared to a national average of 29%. The distance from Dhaka to Lalmonirhat is 358 km, while it is 355 km for Kurigram. The research is a qualitative study using a combination of various tools including a questionnaire survey, one to one interviews, participant observation and focus group discussion. Qualitative research methods enables us to investigate real life insights and experiences towards a deep understanding of a particular phenomenon. It facilitates an insight of the thoughts, feelings and ideas of the women respondents. Qualitative research offers a chances to realize the value and wisdom people nurture and share, and the position they take particular issues and actions in their society (Babbie, 2007). Since of majority of the elected female respondents are newcomers

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to political office and are involved with diverse range of projects, applying various qualitative research techniques enable us to offer the thoughtful responses necessary for the purpose of this study. There are 45 Union Parishads in Lalmonirhat and 2 Municipalities whereas Kurigram District comprises 72 Union Parishads and 3 Municipalities. Union Parishad is the lowest tier of local government in rural Bangladesh whereas Municipality is the lowest tier of local government in an urban area. For the purpose of the study we picked all 5 Municipalities and 20 Unions randomly from Lalmonirhat and Kurigram districts. Each of these Unions and Municipalities has 3 reserved seats for women. So, there are 15 elected women representatives from the urban local government, whereas there are 60 women representatives from rural local government institutions, altogether these 75 elected women representatives are our primary respondents of this study. In addition, we also interviewed about 20 Key Informants from government and non-government offices, NGO staffs, community leaders. We also had conversations with some local residents about their views and opinions about the role of the elected women representatives on the socio-economic and environmental challenges they face.

Empirical Findings The introduction of direct election in the reserved seats in the local government of Bangladesh aimed at fostering women’s empowerment that will help to address the burning issues the marginalised people face in everyday life. The aim of this paper is to explore the implication of reserved seats in enhancing economic opportunity for the destitute poor; in eliminating patriarchal ties, age-old prejudices and social malpractices that contain women’s well-being in Bangladesh; and in protecting the environment and ecosystem in the era of climate change. In this Section we are presenting our empirical results from field survey.

Ensuring Economic Well-Being for the Distressed Poor Elected women representatives were concerned about the rising poverty in this part of the country. The data shows that while Bangladesh has grown at a rate of 6–7% per annum over the past 10 years, the poverty rate in Kurigram and Lalmonirhat did not decline, but rather it has gone up (BBS, 2018). Being elected representatives of the local government institutions, women representatives must face the plight of poverty every day. It is, therefore, important for them to expand the economic opportunity of the region and create income and employment for the indigent poor. The empirical findings of this study also support this.

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Providing Necessary Support During Income Shocks: Elected women representatives were concerned about the vulnerable condition of the poor especially during a natural disaster. The story of Mrs. MK illustrates this: Mrs. MK: Supporting During Hard Time Is My Top Priority Mrs. MK is from Thetrai Union Parishad mentioned that her area is prone to flooding. Every year during the monsoon people suffer desperately from flood and crop loss. Day labourers lose jobs, informal sectors shut down and marginal farmers see their paddy fields wash away. But she noticed that despite the regular phenomenon of flood and post-flood disaster, the Union Parishad has no clear plan how to stand besides these people during such hard time. During her election campaign she asked the voters what they want from her if she is elected. She learnt that most of them want to receive her support during flood and other calamities. Voters asked her not to spend her own money for them, but to make sure that the government relief and rehabilitation fund, food grain assistance, seeds and pesticides to be properly allocated among those who are duly affected and need help. She promised the voters to do so, took that word in her mind, and put her effort best to stay beside the flood affected people. She said that: I had to fight a lot against other local government representatives, but I did compromise in distributing relief materials among the affected people. I prepare a list categorizing the affected people in terms of their loss, their need, alternative income source and then distribute the relief materials based on their need.

During a follow-up interview one year later, when we visit Mrs. MK’s constituency, we visited the river basin area and asked people about relief distribution during flood. Majority of them hail Mrs. MK’s effort during flood for her effort, sympathy and efficiency distributing relief items during flood. An elderly widow mentioned: I am 65 years old. Earlier I didn’t get the Old-Age Allowance from UP as I couldn’t manage money to bribe them. But after getting elected Mrs MK provided me with this allowance. Before, during the flood, nobody used to ask me about my food or medicine. But Mrs MK visited me during flood and gave me rice, pulses, and flour every week. She is not my daughter but more than that, and she is not only looking after me but also many elderly widows like me in this village. I think God lives in her.

Following Kabeer (1999), this indicates that women representatives of the LGIs now have the resources necessary to achieve certain goals of their choosing. To Sen (1999), the identification of vital functions is important, but the capability to change the misfortune of the indigent poor is the accomplishment one can dream for. To Sen (1999), this is in fact the freedom, to choose and live a dignified life that is meaningful for others and development. The economic contribution of the women representatives, their ability to exercise citizenship and to raise their voice and efforts for the poor and the helpless during hard times reveals the nature of their empowerment at the local government institutions.

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Creating Income Opportunity for the Unemployed Women Women representatives are seen to actively help the poor and impoverished families to get involved in additional income generating activities. This is particularly seen for the rural elected women representatives. One of our respondents Mrs. RB mentioned during our survey: Mrs. RB: Self-Help is the Best Help When I was campaigning for election, I promised many things. In fact, when I met some beggars, I told them I will help them to get out of begging. When I met flood victims, I also promised that I will help them to rehabilitate. I promised the women who were victim of dowry and family violence to help them become self-employed. But after getting elected I see the local government has very limited resources or the capacity to fulfil my promises. I was in a bind. But people were facing hardship, unemployment, and some were struggling to feed their children two times a day. I tried to help them as much as I can from the resources I get from Union Parishad and personally. But I started thinking how I can help them to raise their income and employment permanently. I thought that I cannot help them every now and then, but I need to chalk out a plan so that they make their own fortune in the near future. This is because I believe that no one can help the poor people to get out of poverty but self-help is the best help. I see that most of the families have no skill other than labour and farming though they are mostly landless. I thought that there are lands unused alongside the roads of every village. We can use this piece of land to cultivate some cash crops. I talked to Union Agricultural Office and they liked my idea. They advised me to go with Red Gram Bean (Piegeonpeas) cultivation during summer. These Red Gram Bean plant is tall and strong, can survive attack by goats, sheep and cows, the plant sticks can be used for fuel while the bean seeds are a good source of protein. Similarly, we can also cultivate Maize, Green Banana, and Guava along the roadside in other seasons. All these can fulfil the nutrition demand of these struggling households, and can meet the demand of fuel and earn extra income by selling. But the major issue was that roadside land is common property and so cultivating anything without cooperation from the whole community can backfire. I, therefore, convened a number of meetings with the villagers and formed a Cooperative Society of the Landless Women (called ‘Somity’) in every village. We form a steering committee for each of the Somity and gave them the responsibility to decide which crop to cultivate, how to nurture the plants, monitor their growth, yield, harvesting and sharing between the households. I organise Union Agriculture Officers to provide training to some selected Somity organisers to train certain crop cultivation. I also managed high yielding seeds from government seeds centre, paid from local government fund and we proceed. Initially the move was not welcomed by the villagers. Many were even laughing looking at our projects. But soon the roadside fallow land looks greener as the Red Gram plants, the Maize plant, the Guava plants or the Green Banana plants started growing. The Somity members maintained a duty roster for watering, weeding and trimming the plants. They kept a ledger of income-expenditure to document costs of production. The project was a huge success. We then expanded our project to fallow lands on the side of the river. Now I see smile in the faces of these rural women and I am happy that I could initiate some positive changes that helped to promote food security, resistance against economic shock, freedom and self-esteem to these women (Picture 21.1).

A Somity member reaffirmed the success of the self-help project. She said that: I had no breadwinner in my family being a widow. But I had to feed three children. I used to work as housemaid in other’s houses. When there was no work, I had to go begging. Then

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Picture 21.1 Cultivation of red gram bean (Pigeonpeas) on the roadside

I joined the Somity of RB Apa. The Somity planted Gach Kalai (Red Gram Bean), Kacha Kola (Green Banana), Bhutta (Maize) in the roadsides. We cared these plants round the day and night by rotating duties. Within 4 to 6 months we harvested all the crops. We shared the crops equally by all members, take some for own consumption and sale the rest. The money I used for repairing my rooftop which used to pour water during rainy season. Meanwhile I am also cultivating these plants in my backyard to get extra income. This is unbelievable for me as I had no land, no skill earlier. Mrs RB has also arranged me an Old Age Allowance card. I am now tension free to feed my children three times a day with all these income stream.

Expanding Microcredit Programs The rural areas in Bangladesh, specially the landless households are excluded from formal financial institutions even by the NGOs (Mallick, 2012; Pitt et al., 2003). The rural poor are marginalised because they lack skills, training, and above all access to the capital required for any modernisation of agriculture or the implementation of new technology (Pitt et al., 2003; Aghion & Mordhuch, 2007). They have persistence, passion and a hardworking spirit. Women political representatives in this study were proactive in their help to NGO operations in their constituency and helped to form microcredit groups (see Corcoran-Nantes, 2019). As one of our respondents Mrs. NK mentions:

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Mrs. NK: Help Them Access to Credit, They Will Help Themselves Many people used to come to me seeking financial help or to borrow money for a period of time. I tried to help them as long as I can. I think this is what all women representatives do. But soon I realized that I cannot help everyone, and it is also not viable. I cannot help so many people for so many months or years. So, I thought I would take help from NGOs and help the local people to form microcredit groups. What I was concerned of is that the local people must use the loan proceeds for a productive purpose. If they don’t do, they will fail in repaying their loan instalment and in such a situation, I assumed that they will as well the NGO staffs will come to me for help. So, I was keeping an eye on their enterprise so that each and every project becomes profitable. I have helped form 26 microcredit groups through which 130 households got microcredit from local NGOs. They got credit for productive purposes including raising poultry, homestead gardening, petty shops in local market, cattle rearing, cultivating maize, pulse and vegetables, buying rickshaw and vans etc. I asked all the group leaders to visit door to door to monitor the projects. The projects are largely successful with our strong vigilance and the hard work from the people. With additional income they earned from these projects they achieved a certain ability to cope with economic difficulties, buying necessary foods, clothing and medicine. Now they hardly come to me for borrowing money or seeking favour.

Free range poultry ensures the health of the birds and hence the health of the community. The use of manure also provides a valuable fertiliser for home gardens. Another woman representative reiterated that helping local people to get access to microcredit was critical in solving income problems of the disadvantaged people. She said that, Finding a job is difficult but finding a source of finance is easy. So, I advised people of my locality to come with some productive enterprise idea and I will arrange finance. They did it and are somewhat successful in increasing their household income. All this surely helped them to ensure food security during hard time.

Training for the Young Women: Many rural women lack education and training and are mostly confined to their household chores (Kabeer, 2001). Finding no marketable productive activities, they consider themselves as housewives and stay within the boundaries of their home. Local government institutions often favour development projects that facilitate income earning skills for the young men and women. Such projects are important considering the limited scope of training for the poor. As one of our respondent Mrs. DB mentioned: Mrs. DB: Training Gives Them the Spark They Needed Mrs. DB was elected to the Ulipur Pouroshova (Municipality). She said that I was a NGO officer before being elected in the Municipality. From my experience I knew that NGOs have number of training programs. So, I talked to the high officials of my ex-workplace if they can train some of the young girls of my area. They agreed to my proposal. In fact, that NGO helped me a lot during my election campaign. So, they are in no hesitation to help me. But when I submitted the proposal in the Municipality it was turned down on financial grounds. The Mayor said that the Municipality had no money to finance any kind of training. I was disheartened but wanted to see this through. So, I submitted the training proposal to the Zilla Parishad (District Council) meeting. After one year of persuasion the

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project was finally approved by the Zilla Parishad. I contacted the NGO for possible training options. They arranged a couple of focus group discussions and selected 45 young girls for training in embroidery, tailoring and beauty parlour. They provided them with one-months training. Now they are all self-employed and earning a regular income for their households. The embroidery items are sold locally and even sometimes bought by BRAC. In some of these girls’ families, earlier there were incidences of dowry-related violence, hunger and starvation. Now I do not hear any such incidences in the past two years, maybe because of these young women’s contribution in the household.

This study also talked to the NGO that provided training to these young women in Ulipur Pouroshova. The manager of the NGO agreed with what Mrs. DB had said. He mentioned that, “these young women were very hard-working, enthusiastic and sincere to their dream. When we provided them with training we understood that they will eventually be successful and they were. Training was a just the spark they needed to light their candle of hope”. It helped them to attain fundamental and strategic gender needs through enhanced ability and agency in their life choices and to achieve dignity and recognition within the household and the society (Kabeer, 2011; Alsop & Heinsohn, 2005; Moser, 1989).

Expanding Non-crop Farming Practices to Raise Income The northern part of Bangladesh is the poorest region in the country. Kurigram district has the lowest per capita GDP and is the district with highest level of poverty rate (BBS, 2018). The district is dominated by agriculture where the primary source of income in 72% of households’ is derived from agriculture (BBS, 2018). While cultivation of paddy, potato, pulse, jute, onion, garlic, maize and tobacco are the main agricultural activities. Non-crop agricultural production with typically high return potential is not common in the district for some reason. The District Agricultural office often attempts to diversify the agricultural practice, but the change is slow. This often led the Agricultural Dept., the Environment Directorate, Livestock Dept. & Fisheries Dept. to get help from the local government representatives. When the local government representative joins hands with these government agencies, things start to change for the benefit of the local people. As was the experience of Mrs. TK: Mrs. TK: Second Source of Income Means an Insurance Against Shocks It was a devastating flood that hit my constituency last year. The river Teesta was overflowing at the beginning of the monsoon season. It washed away almost everything from the farmland. However, the paddy fields were the hardest hit and this caused a disaster as most of our farmers are traditionally prone to cultivate rice. When we started post flood rehabilitation programmes, the government offices including the Fisheries Dept., the Livestock Dept., and the Environment Directorate came to us with their plans. I understood that the severity of the flood damage is high because most of the farmers have no or little income coming

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from agricultural crops. They were heavily dependent on crops and particularly, on rice production. If the rice production is damaged for some reason they are in danger. I took the plans of the government agencies and thought to encourage people get training on modern cattle rearing, cow fattening, poultry raising, silk-worm cultivation, etc., apart from cultivating paddy. We trained a group of farmers and youths on these issues. Now there is a commercially run poultry farm in my area run by educated youths which was unthinkable earlier. There are also number a number of cow fattening projects targeting the Eid market and all are run by educated youths. Even housewives have joined us in these projects. They now have a good source of income apart from cultivating rice which gives them the courage to engage in other initiatives, to help children have nutritious food and a better education.

This narrative raises concerns about the rights of the cattle and poultry. Cattle are ruminants that ought to be able to graze on grass. This is good for their health and it is good for fertilising the soil for other crops or for the grass to grow sustainably. Some would argue that in an overpopulated nation like Bangladesh the farming of cattle for protein is quite inappropriate, because of the size of their carbon footprint and their hight methane emissions. It is possible to develop high protein replacements from a range of other plant sources, in order to achieve a sustainable supply of food (Picture 21.2).

Picture 21.2 Cultivation of silkworm

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The local people are optimistic about these secondary income sources. Many found these opportunities as life changing. As one beneficiary, Mrs. LB from Gunaigach Union mentioned: I was in a terrible condition with my husband. He holds a Bachelor degree but has got no job. He was just sitting idle, roaming around like a vagabond, and often used to take drugs. Having no job and no income he was in depression all the time that affected our conjugal life. If I protest, he fights and even beats me mercilessly. Many times, I thought to commit suicide, but I couldn’t do this thinking of my two children. When Mrs. TK came to my home with the Livestock Officers and proposed that we rear some meat producing hybrid baby cows brought from abroad I agreed to their proposal without thinking or without talking to my husband. I took 3 cows from the Livestock Dept. in 2016 at the cost Taka 30,000/-.1 I spent 3000 Taka every month for the cow’s feed and medicine. After 8 months of rearing I sold all three cows in the Eid market when the demand is high. I got Taka 150,000/- with a net profit of 96,000/- which is equivalent to Taka 12,000/- per month over a period of eight months. With this money I built a new bigger shed for rearing cows and bought 8 baby cows in 2017. I sold these 8 cows in the following Eid for a total of Taka 480,000/-. With this money, I built a two-bedroom house with bricks and cement which would have been unthinkable before, installed a sanitary latrine in my house and also bought 10 baby cows for further rearing. My husband is cooperating with me all the time. He goes to the market to buy cow feed and medicine, takes care of the cows and helps selling them at right price. I must say that this project has changed our life entirely.

Clearly the raising of cattle in sheds on commercially produced food is problematic in terms of animal wellbeing and could potentially result in mad cow’s disease, an epidemic that terrified the British population (see Chapter 1 of this volume). The issue of the size of the carbon footprint could also be addressed by female councillors who suggest other options for making money. The opinion of Mrs. LB, however shows how women representatives are contributing to the development of human capital and vision of life—which are important for the improved and lasting position of women and mainstreaming gender in the society (Kabeer, 2011; Moser, 2000; Nussbaum 2011, 2003).

Reconstruction After Natural Disaster Bangladesh is a country that regularly experiences ‘natural’ disasters. It is the country with the largest network of rivers. About 700 rivers are flowing the country most originating in the Himalayas. These rivers become dangerous during the monsoon season when carrying mammoth quantities of monsoon water overflowing the riverbanks and causing huge floods. Floods wash away crops, homes, cattle, trees, shops and schools. Local government representatives have to deal with reconstruction and rehabilitation initiatives every year after flood and cyclones that hit the study area regularly. When we ask the women representatives about the rehabilitation effort, they reply that it is important to take appropriate action to rehabilitate people soon after the natural disaster (see Adda et al., chapter in this volume). Otherwise their 1 30,000/-

Taka equals 350 USD at that time.

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livelihood will be affected. The women representatives from the rural local government all mentioned that they take urgent action to distribute rice seedlings to farmers so that the rice cultivation and production is not hampered and the food security of thousands of households are not affected. They also mentioned that when homes are washed away due to flood or cyclone, they provide corrugated sheets to repair their houses urgently. Women representatives also mentioned that they prioritize road repair for communication, restore kitchen markets, repair shops and schools so that normal economic activities can be restored quickly soon after the disaster happens. This is certainly a demonstration of the structural changes of the society in which women are playing strategic role for the entire community enabling a life with dignified choices for women (Kabeer, 1994, 2001; Moser, 1989, 2010).

Overcoming Social Challenges for Community Development Bangladesh is a conservative country with strong patriarchal values prevailing both in the rural and urban communities where men are considered to do outside jobs and women to focus on the household (Kabeer, 1999, 2001; Chowdhury, 1994; Mahtab, 2007; Aktar, 2014; Aktar & McIntyre, 2019). Women’s mobility, especially that of rural women, outside the home is restricted and they are seldom allowed to visit local markets, government offices or hospitals (Kabeer, 1999; Chowdhury, 1994; Mahtab, 2007). Elected women representatives have to work hard in this society to bring positive change and specifically to foster women’s development.

Containing Dowry and Dowry Related Violence Dowry or bride price is part of the marriage contract in Bangladeshi society specially in the rural areas. The socio-cultural settings nurture the practise of dowry for generations. Though the practice of dowry is strictly forbidden by law of the country, the widespread presence of dowry is well documented in the literature (ASK, 2020; Anderson & Eswaran, 2009; Chowdhury, 1994, 2002; Mahtab, 2007). Ayeen O Shalish Kendra (ASK). In 2019 there were 96 incidences of dowry related deaths, a further 62 incidences of physical violence and a total of 97 police cases in Bangladesh (ASK, 2020). Women representatives of this study acknowledged this reality and mentioned that they were aware of it and they try their best to bring an end to this curse. As one rural women representative from Lalmonirhat mentioned: Mrs. SA: Fighting Against Dowry is Fighting for One’s Life I hail from a remote village named Harati. The village is dominated by agriculture and petty business. One day I heard that a teenage bride has attempted to commit suicide in my village because of dowry related violence. I rushed to her house and see the recently-wed girl in

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utter shock. There are dozens of people around but no one to say what happened. I asked the bride directly but she was just crying and looked nervous to say anything in public. I wanted to talk to her in-laws but to my shock I see them propagating gossip about her bad ‘character’—as if a bad character bride must have to pay high bride-price as dowry or else they will face brutal physical punishment. The bruise and blood I see on the visible parts of the young wife’s body reveals the horror she has suffered. Hearing the allegations from her in-laws I understand that this is a typical weapon in this patriarchal society to justify violence against women. This is how they try to shut the door for others who might show sympathy to the victim and seek punishment for their abuse of her. I understood that I alone could not help this woman rather I came back to my office and requested that the local police bring the woman into safe shelter under the police department. I met the girl when she is in the shelter and asked about her experience. I learnt that before finalising the wedding her father agreed to pay Taka 50,000/- as dowry. He borrowed that money from a moneylender and duly paid the in-laws. But her husband often gambles and loses money. Every time he is short of money, he forces her to go to her father and bring 5000–10,000 Taka. If she refuses, he started beating her often with logs, iron rods even with sharp weapons. If she runs to her in-laws they do not give her shelter rather they scold her. Sometimes, they even join her husband in torturing her mercilessly. Finding no solution and seeing no prospects in her life she decided to bring it to an end. She said that she is so unlucky that she even failed to commit suicide. However, with legal support from Bangladesh Women’s Lawyers Association we filed a case against her husband and four in-laws. The local police arrested all five within a couple of days and send them to prison. Soon they realized their mistake and pleaded with us for a viable solution. They promised in a written legal document to take care of her and promised that she will not face any torture in future. I arranged a microcredit to buy a rickshaw for her husband, and some ducks and chickens for generating a regular income. Now the woman is enjoying a peaceful life.

During our field visit, we talked to this woman. She acknowledged the contribution of Mrs. SA in her life. She said that, “I was about to take my own life. Luckily that day Mrs. SA came to our place and she took me to lodge the case against my husband and in-laws. The women lawyers association also helped me a lot without taking any money. This has saved my life. Later she also arranged for a microcredit loan from RDRS with which we bought a rickshaw. I have also got training about poultry rearing and cow fattening from RDRS and now I have 5 egg-laying hens and 4 egglaying ducks. After keeping some for family consumption, I can sell about 200 eggs every month for about 1500 Taka. All this has changed my life from hell to heaven”. The educational role of elected women representatives needs to be explored by the first author, by setting up ecologically sustainable projects that respect animal rights and aim to achieve both social and environmental justice.

Fighting Against Child Marriage Child marriage is a vital social problem in Bangladesh. About 59% of girls in Bangladesh are married before turning 18 years old and 22% got married before their 15th birthday. According to UNICEF, Bangladesh has the 4th highest rate of

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child marriage in the world, and the second highest in the number of absolute child brides—4,451,000. The median age of girls at first marriage is the lowest (15 years) in Rangpur Division where this study was carried out (Girls Not Brides, 2020). The major causes of child marriage in the country include poverty, illiteracy, family honour, demand for young girls in the marriage market and dowry. This is important because child marriage has a devastating effect on the physical and mental health of the bride, the nutrition, education, employment and even life expectancy. A study shows that ending child marriage in Bangladesh could see a 12% rise in earnings and productivity (Girls Not Brides, 2020). Most of our respondents in this study accepted the prevalence of child marriage in the area, though they verified their fight against child marriage. As one respondent mentioned: Mrs. ZF: It Was Their Time Going Schools and Together We Can Make It The local administration in my area is vigilant about child marriage. But the problem is that the Registrar always shows girl’s age above 18 years in the register—otherwise he cannot register a marriage according to law. So, it is not possible to detect child marriage by verifying legal documents. What helps us is inside information by the friends, teachers, relatives, or well-wishers of the young bride, if any, before the marriage. We, therefore, raise awareness among local people, school students, guardians and religious leaders about the adverse effects of child marriage including the health hazards, psychological trauma, loss of education, loss of employability and productivity. We share a hotline number (999) that can be contacted toll-free in the event of a child marriage. We circulate posters, pamphlets and advertisements in the locality. The response from the local community is slow yet we try to convince the guardians that girls need to go to school at this age. This is their time to play with friends, go to schools, learn music, dance, embroidery, tailoring, and other skill improving training. It can also be noted that government of the country has offered free education for girls up to bachelor level and also offer some stipend for all the girls. But still child marriage prevails in this poverty-stricken region with conservative social norms. I understand that cultural change takes time but I am hopeful that people are more aware nowadays than before because of our wide scale campaign. This enabled us to stop at least 15 child marriages last year alone in my constituency. In all these cases, typically the girl bride herself or their school friends called us for help. I did not get any such information from adults rather than those young-brave school children—this probably depicts the picture of the social settings here. I also hear similar stories from my local government colleagues in the neighbouring areas—that reflects an overall scenario of the society. But we women representatives, and sometimes our colleagues also, join hands to fight against child marriage anywhere we hear. This is our strength because we believe that the root of child marriage lies deep down in our culture, and we cannot fight alone on this front rather we need collaborative effort to eliminate this curse from the society.

The story of Mrs. ZF obviously tells us the tussle the women representatives have to fight against child marriage. It is, in fact, not easy to fight against social prejudice and age-old malpractice. It can even turn difficult making the issue personal and delicate. Just as another women representative from Satdargah, Mrs. RBS shared the following story:

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Mrs. RBS: Child Marriage is Deep Rooted “Two years ago, I hear that a child marriage is happening right now in Satdargah. I went to the spot immediately and ordered to stop the wedding. The father of the girl asked me angrily that if I stop this wedding, I have to take the girl to my house because he cannot feed her. The girl was crying, with a blank look in her eyes. When I agreed to this proposal some elderly men came forward and blocked my way. They asked me, how many girls I can take, 10; 20; 30? They threatened me they would arrange 20–30 girls’ wedding next week and challenged me to stop. I was trying to explain to them the adverse effect of child marriage and the law of the country. But they threatened me and said that they follow the Rule of Shariah,2 not the rule of the government. I was so shocked and stunned. Anyway, I returned home stopping that marriage after much chaos and harsh arguments. I was exhausted but determined to see the end of this vendetta. So, I talked to the Chairman, other members and local police officers. We all went there after a couple of days. The Officer-In-Charge of the Police Station issued a warning that they would take stern action if any child marriage takes place in the area. The local people then understood and didn’t do it anymore.”

The women representatives mentioned that stopping child marriage was important to bring women out of the strictures of patriarchy. Only the education of girls and productive employment outside the home can promote women’s empowerment and household well-being. But tackling child marriage is important to achieve these.

Saving Indigent Women from Fatwa Fatwa are religious decrees in Islam issued by clerics. Fatwa are harsh, mostly exercised against a woman being accused of having an extra-marital relationship and divorce. The punishment is so harsh that it involves includes brutal physical assault including being beaten with a stick, stoned to-death, fined, being driven away from the village, enforced isolation and being an outcast. Being physically, mentally and socially humiliated many women often commit suicide due to fatwa (ASK, 2020). Although the High Court banned fatwa in Bangladesh in 2001, a revised verdict of the Supreme Court in 2011 states that religious clerics can issue Fatwa based on the holy books but cannot enforce them as binding. This leaves a loophole with respect to fatwa and therefore it still prevails in the society (BBC, 2011). The incidence of fatwa, however declined in recent times since it was banned by the High Court. It says that from 2012 to 2017, about 135 women in Bangladesh became victims of fatwa and shalish.3 Of them 2 women were killed, 16 committed suicide, and 41 cases were filed with local police stations (Dhaka Tribune, 2019). Yet the incidences are more common in remote Bangladesh like our study area. Since fatwas are mostly 2 Rule of Shariah is based on Holy books of Islam. According to Shariah Rule, girls can get married

at their puberty and boys at 15. In many cases puberty starts at the age of 12 years, and hence is defined as the minimum age for girl’s marriage. 3 Shalish is local arbitration by villagers and community leaders to solve petty disputes within the village.

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exercised against women, elected women representatives have to come forward to help those victims. As in one incidence Mrs. MS mentioned: Mrs. MS: Only The Victim Knows What a Fatwa Bites Like Last year I had to go to a village Nefra hearing the news of a fatwa. I heard that a local Shalish has issued a decree to beat a woman 80 times and they executed it. The woman is very sick now and they even drove her away from the village. Her mistake was that her husband uttered the word Talaaq4 during a family altercation. Upon hearing this the village elites and religious clerics ordered that they must have to go through Hilla Marriage5 before they can remarry and restart their conjugal life. Her husband didn’t listen to it, may be failing to understand the consequences. To him, he uttered Talaaq without meaning it. So, they started to pursue their normal life as before. Within two weeks of the incidence, some village elites accused them of violating Shariah Law. The villagers alleged that the man has no relationship with the woman after divorce. So, what they were doing was adultery according to the villagers who accused them. The religious clerics ordered the woman to be caned 80 times with strong canes and fined the man Taka 15,000/. The woman fell unconscious with less than half the punishment but they continued caning her. When the perpetrators left, the woman was still unconscious and bleeding. No rickshaw or van was helping the man to take his wife to hospital as the religious clerics ordered villagers to exile them. Being the elected woman representative, I rushed to visit the ill-fated woman as soon I heard about it two days later. By this time the woman had tried to hang herself in shame but had failed. The man disappeared in the dark of the night fearing further repercussions from the village elites and religious clerics. I took a rickshaw and took the woman to the hospital. I arranged for her treatment in the government hospital and then contacted Women Lawyers and police for further help. When she got well, the police officer took her home. They took a case filed by the woman and arrested some clerics and elites of the village. It took a couple of months before the couple could start to live their normal life.

The story of Mrs. MS tells the horror of a typical fatwa in Bangladesh. It also tells why electoral representation of women is required. As argued in the literature that women’s emotion, misery and experience can be better understood by another woman (Lister, 1997; Vickers, 1997; European Network of Experts, 1997). The finding of this study reveals that women’s empowerment is conducive not only to bring access to political office but also to save dignity and salvage one’s life in a remote area like Bangladesh.

4 Talaaq is a Arabic word means I divorce you. In Shariah Law husband has to utter talaaq three-times

to confirm the divorce. 5 Hilla marriage is a marriage of a divorced wife with a third person before she is eligible to remarry

her old husband. According to Shariah Law, if a husband divorces his wife, he can only remarry her only after her marriage with a third person called the Hilla marriage.

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Eliminating Drugs and Gambling Gambling and drug abuse are two emerging problems specially in the urban areas of Bangladesh. It is often argued that drug use and gambling are increasing in Bangladesh because of rising unemployment, poverty and depression. During our survey, women representatives of the urban local government largely reported this problem in their area, though rural areas reported lower level of incidences. As one-woman representative from Ulipur Municipality mentioned, Gambling, especially during IPL6 season is increasingly affecting young generation. I have heard that the young and unemployed guys are involved in gambling substantially during IPL. Besides, there were reports of locally made liquor and alcoholic consumption in some areas of my town. Since I promised to tackle drug and gambling before election, I wanted to stop it. I talked to the local people, community leaders, religious leaders and they all agreed to it. I then talked to the law enforcing agencies. We conducted series of awareness raising campaign. We warned about the legal consequence of gambling and drug use. Now the area is almost free from drugs and gambling.

Similar stories are also heard from other women representatives. They mentioned that it is challenging to identify the culprit behind the drug selling but it is not difficult to identify the users. So, most of the respondents mentioned that they targeted the drug users so that they do not use it. However, women representatives mentioned that controlling this kind of social curse needs constant vigilance from the law enforcing agencies for which they urge appropriate action from relevant government agencies.

Helping Women Escape Domestic Violence Bangladesh is a conservative country with strong patriarchal norms (Kabeer, 1999, 2001; Chowdhury, 1994). Women are treated here as subject to husbands, they use a husbands’ last name as their surname, move to the husband’s house leaving their father’s home after marriage, they are deprived of their rights to parental property (Anderson & Eswaran, 2009; Kabeer, 1999; Chowdhury, 1994). Acid throwing, sexual harassment, dowry, divorce, polygamy and physical assault are common to the plight of women in the country (Mahtab, 2007; Aktar, 2014). During our interview, most of the women representatives mentioned that: “domestic violence is common among the poor, illiterate and unemployed household.” The majority are of the opinion that, the social norm here is that men have the right to discipline women. If women do any wrong, then men have the right to beat women mildly. However, in practice the physical assault is merciless and often the wrongdoing came from the men themselves. For example, most of the incidences of violence against women are related with dowry demand, polygamy without wife’s consent, and husband’s habit of gambling and drug use. 6 IPL

stands for Indian Premier League, a franchise-based cricket tournament held in India. This popular shorter version of cricket is not only popular in India but also in this cricket-crazy nation Bangladesh.

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The elected women representatives had certain initiatives to address this issue. The local government institutions in Bangladesh have a number of Standing Committees. Women representatives are the convener of the Women’s and Children’s Welfare Committee. They work actively to combat violence against women. As one women representative mentioned that: whenever we hear anything about violence against women, we women representatives immediately go to the victim’s place and try to understand about it. We offer legal and psychological support to the victim, regularly make follow-up visit to make sure that the victim is not abused any further. If needed, we lodge case against the perpetrator and call police. This is why now there are only few incidences of violence against women in this area.

This claim was supported by one of the victims during our field trip. This victim mentioned that, I was married to an old man as my father was unable to pay dowry. The man was married twice before me and had 8 children. When I came to his house, his previous two wives were threatening me to kill. Soon they started beating me for lame excuse, and even their children join them to beat me. I didn’t get support from my husband rather in couple of months he is asking for dowry. At one stage I sought support from our women councillor who took me to police station and solved the issue.

Saving the Poor from Moneylenders The rural poor in Bangladesh are oppressed and exploited by the moneylenders. Since the formal financial and banking institutions are not serving the poor due to lack of collateral, the poor in crisis must go to the moneylender for short term loan. The moneylender charges exorbitant interest rate, up to 30–40% per month (Mallick, 2012; Berg et al., 2013). The poor cannot pay that much interest per month and eventually are forced to sell their few assets or take another loan to repay the first. Their condition gets worse by selling their last means of support and falling into the loan trap. Some escape from the village, disappear all of a sudden leaving behind their dependent family members and even some are forced to commit suicide due to excessive pressure from the moneylender (Sridhar, 2006). Our study area is not an exception to this and in fact the highest incidence of moneylender issues happens in the Rangpur division (The Daily Star, 2019). Elected women representatives mentioned that they try to provide alternative lowcost financial opportunity for the indigent poor. One good alternative is microcredit. However, microcredit NGOs even exclude the extreme poor of the society and they seldom go to the areas where communication is difficult including the river basin and mid-river islands (Mallick, 2012; Berg et al., 2013). The majority of women representatives of this study, however, reported that they were able to pursue some local level NGOs, if not national level ones, to expand their operations in their area so that the poor no longer need to go to the moneylenders. We found two women representatives who, failing to mobilise NGOs, initiated the formation of independent cooperative societies. These cooperative societies followed the formula

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of Rotating savings and Credit Associations (ROSCA). The poor were able to avoid going to a moneylender for short term financial need, instead borrowed money from the ROSCA-like cooperatives.

Combating Environmental Degradation Bangladesh is a country of 166 million people (8th in the world) but with a smaller amount of land mass of 147,570 square km (92nd in the world). The population density with 1,117/km2 is highest in the world for countries with more than 1,000 sq km of land mass—whereas the world average density is 14.7/km2 (World Population Review, 2020). Deforestation, rivers encroaching, and occupying hillsides are the inevitable consequence of this land hungry big population causing catastrophic environmental damage. Furthermore, the economy is robustly growing with around 6–7% GDP growth for the past 20 years (World Bank, 2019). Such economic expansion led by garments industry also requires land for factory, port, roads, highways and rail stations. All these are putting increasing pressure on the limited natural resources of the country including land, water and fresh air. The elected women representatives, therefore, must encounter a number of environmental challenges in their area. During our interview, most of them accepted that generally people are aware of the environmental degradation and climate change. But the poor and illiterate are ignorant of the issues and often create environmental damage in their ignorance.

Containing River Erosion and Reviving Dead River River erosion is a serious challenge in Kurigram and Lalmonirhat. There are five rivers flowing over Kurigram District and two rivers over Lalmonirhat. These rivers originate from the Himalayas. During the rainy season, these rivers carry monsoon water that the river beds cannot afford to carry leading to the erosion of the river bank. The river erosion swallows hundreds of homes, cultivable land, crops, and other establishments every year. The homeless people routinely fall into the poverty trap. Kurigram, as a result stands as the most poverty-stricken district of the country since its independence (BBS, 2018). The narrative shared by Mrs. WY demonstrates their fight against poverty: Mrs. WY: Combating Against Time and Tide Mrs. WY was elected from Thetrai Union, Ulipur. Every year her area got flooded and hit by river erosion. She said that whenever rainy season comes, I started to worry about the flood-hit people and river erosion. In the last few years, the river Teesta became so fierce and dreadful. It is swallowing homes, paddy fields, bamboo bushes, bazaars, mosques

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everything. People come for help but the local government office only offers some relief items including rice, pulses, edible oil etc. There is no permanent solution in our hands. My heart breaks when I see the skinny bones of the children due to malnutrition or the blank eyes of the homeless people who might have had everything before river erosion but now simply homeless, property less, income less. I see myself helpless in this war against time and tide. Seeing the misery of the flood and river erosion, the local youths form a Committee to Protect People from River Erosion and Flood in Ulipur in 2017. I joined the movement as soon as it began and contributed from the front. I also brought my other colleagues to join the movement. We conducted series of meetings, demonstration, human chain programmes, and submitted memorandum to District Council and to the Ministry of Water Resources. The movement went on for almost a year and drew attention from newspaper, TV channels and online media. The Minister of Water Resource finally made a visit to the area and committed to build a flood protection embankment, along with dredging the river bed to control river erosion in my area. The embankment has been built last year, the dredging has also been done and now we hope that it can save thousands of my people from flood and river erosion.

Another challenge of the area is the encroaching riverbank. The land-grabbers swallowed up an entire river damaging the ecosystem badly in Ulipur. Through the Ulipur Upazilla, there was a fast-flowing river called the Buri Teesta flowing from Thetrai to Kachkol with a stretch of 31 km long. The land grabbers occupied the river slowly over the years and at one stage it completely lost its flow. The river was crucial not only for agriculture but also for carrying goods across waterways. Elected representative Mrs. HHL describes her effort to free the river from encroachment as: Buri Teesta was a steadily flowing river in my childhood. It was not like other rivers of the district. The good thing was its steady flow doesn’t create erosion of the river bank and hence people living on the bank of the river used to feel blessed with its natural water, fresh air, silt, diverse varieties of fish round the year, and its use for agriculture and commerce. It was an integral part of their livelihood. But slowly the situation changed. In 2017 a group of miscreants blocked its important Gunaigach-Ulipur point. They filled the entire are and built a market in a very short space of time. The local people were disheartened but couldn’t do anything. Then we formed a movement to save the river from the land grabbers. The local community joined hands with us including the media, business community and the farmers. I lodged an application with the District Council to recover the Gunaigach-Ulipur point of the river. The movement took momentum after many more incidences. It finally went up to the Prime Minister of the country when she was visiting Kurigram for a political meeting. The Prime Minister talked to us and eventually was in favour of recovering all the rivers and water bodies. She allocated Taka 161 million to dredge the river and revive its water flow. The river got its life back finally for the betterment of the entire community.

The study findings, thus illustrate that the initiation of women’s reserved seats in the local government has enabled certain ‘economic, political and socio-cultural spaces’ for women (Deshmukh-Ranadive, 2005; Malhotra & Schuler, 2005) necessary to develop their capability and agency and enabling the villagers to live a life of their choosing (Nussbaum, 2000, 2011; Sen, 1999) (Picture 21.3).

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Picture 21.3 Reviving of Buri Teesta through dredging

Conserving Ponds and Water-Bodies The urban areas of Bangladesh witness a disproportionately high density of population in the centre. The cities are not well planned in this country. The roads and utility services are all concentrated and are not easily available in the outer suburbs. Consequently, the pressure of land in the urban centre is monumental. In this condition, people are filling ponds and water bodies increasingly nowadays. This is a dangerous move as it is causing harm to our ecosystem and biodiversity. Local government institutions struggle to conserve these bodies of water but things are not easy. As Mrs. SL stated: Mrs. SL: The Influential Can Manage Administration I am elected from the Lalmonirhat Municipality. The municipality earlier had 400 plus ponds in its area. But a recent survey in 2014 showed that half of these ponds are already filled by the owners in order convert the acquired land for a market, shopping centre or business complex Since commercial land is of high value with high return, it is lucrative for the owners to convert a pond into a commercial space. But according to the Reservoir Protection Act 2000, it is illegal and a punishable offence to fill up natural water bodies, open space, playground, or park for any reason other than with prior permission from the Department of Environment. However, despite this law, I had to fight a lot to save lowland in my area. In the Upashahar area of the municipality, there were some wetlands that work as a reservoir for harvesting rainwater. A locally influential real estate enterprise attempted to fill this land and to sell it to prospective buyers. The neighbours of the area were anxious because once the wetland was filled, the rainwater could cause flood in the area with serious devastation. I talked to the real estate company several times but all in vain. When we lodge a case against the company, they turned violent. They tried to tarnish my image by publishing false news reports in a local newspaper that they own. Me and my family were getting constant threats from them. Even the district administration was asking my family to compromise with them. However, my concern was the people who live there and the

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potential damage due to the loss of the wetland in future. So, I continued to fight against them. But we were afraid that these influential people can influence the court and judicial system here locally. So, we applied to transfer the case to the High Court Division in Dhaka. The High Court took a long time and go through a lengthy hearing process over a period of three years. However, at the end, the High Court gave the verdict in 2019 in favour of protecting the water body as it was.

This case study shows that protecting environment is necessary for the sustainable development of the society, the struggle can take a heavy toll. Since the environmental damage is done by the local influential entities, it is not always easy to fight against them. But, if the elected representatives are persistent, honest and show true courage, there is always a chance that the law will support the noble cause. This is also important for the survival of the indigent poor whose livelihood is heavily dependent on a congenial environment.

Popularising Tree Plantation as Social Movement Bangladesh has only 17.5% forest land against a minimum required of 25% (Bdforest, 2016). The woodland in the urban area is lower than the national average. This is causing climatic change in the country with immense socio-economic consequences including drought, landslide, salinity, desertification and flooding among others. The government of Bangladesh has recently undertaken effort to plant trees on the fallow land as a social movement. The elected women representatives were an important part of this initiative. Most of the respondents of this study mentioned that they feel the necessity of tree planting both in the rural and urban areas. They urged that trees are our lifeline: trees provide us fresh air, oxygen, fruits, timber and fuel. Some representatives were taking serious steps to plant trees that are economically benefitting the poor people in the society. In the words of Mrs. SN: Mrs. SN: Roadside Plantation of Trees is a Source of Nutrition I see that the poor people in my area cannot buy fresh fruits for their children. The children are unhealthy I see when I visit their home. So, as per the tree plantation program, I mobilised the landless poor households to form a cooperative. I asked that each cooperative society should have 20–50 members. I then distributed to each of these groups about 50–100 fruit trees including guava, jack fruit, black berry, mango and lychee. They collectively plant those trees in the narrow fallow land of the roadside, monitor and take care of the plants as a team. Since they are landless they don’t have land to cultivate. Finding some opportunity to plant trees at the roadside with the help of local government institutions they were so happy. It is two years now since we took on the project. Some of the trees have grown and have started to give fruits. Influenced by the project, the people of the area now took tree plantation seriously. I also brought forest officials to give training to local people on various issues. The forest department also helped us with varieties of trees ranging from fruits, timber, and medicinal plants.

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Women representatives agreed that planting trees is beneficial in many aspects. People of the society nowadays understand all the benefits associated with it. However, most of the women representatives mentioned that taking a one-shot program of tree plantation may not be successful, rather the government can take the tree plantation program as a national event every year, preferably when the rainy season begins. The forestry officials of the government also echoed similar opinion that rainy season is the perfect time for tree plantation and we should plant trees in this season regularly. Women representatives also suggest that schoolchildren should also be engaged in this movement since they are more concerned about the environment.

Controlling Urban Pollution Urban areas of the country have different environmental concerns than those we observe in the rural areas of Bangladesh. The rural areas of the country still possess green vegetation, fresh air, flowing rivers and so on that are largely absent in the urban areas. Urban regions of Bangladesh are synonymous with environmental pollution including dust pollution, soil, noise, water and air pollution. The elected women representatives must confront all these issues throughout the year. As one woman representative from Lalmonirhat Municipality mentioned: Mrs. LT: Cattle Slaughtering Ignoring Animal Rights and Environment In my municipality there were some kitchen markets that openly slaughter cows, goats, lambs and other animals. The blood drained during the slaughtering process is causing serious pollution in these kitchen markets but there was no one to look after it. In fact, there is a law about cattle slaughtering that says slaughtering cattle has to be done only in a safe and contained area. I talked to the market committee in each of these places but failed to see any result. I tried to convince the butchers to go to a safe place for slaughtering, but they refused. Finding no immediate solution, I submitted a project in the Municipality to build a concrete custom-made slaughtering house with access to water, air and drainage in every kitchen market of the municipality. After two years of persuasion I was able to build a slaughtering corner in every market with access to water, air and drainage. Now the environment of the market is clean and everyone is very happy.

The question about animal rights is however not even raised in the above narrative. By slaughtering animals at night, it is a tacit admission that it is a practice which is problematic. The issue needs to be raised and discussed in the community. The rights of all sentient beings to a life worth living needs to be explained through engaging women in considering the consequences of confining cattle to small spaces. The notion that animals have no rights needs to be challenged if we are to have a hope of achieving better multispecies relationships. One of the central roles for the women representatives is to enable members of the community to understand their roles as green educators that enable women to understand the potential of green economics and the reason why animals should be able to achieve their full capabilities as sentient

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beings who deserve to live lives that are worth living. This entails free movement, the right to associate with their own kind, an appropriate diet, the right to play and to be without fear. Furthermore, the issues of developing alternative sources of protein through planting beans and pulses to which value could be added by preserving them and processing them into products for sale. In highly populated areas raising cattle is inappropriate and adds to the size of the urban footprint. Almost all elected women representatives from the urban local government institutions mentioned that making environment friendly sewerage is essential to them. To them, this is one of their top priorities because managing sewerage is very important for hygiene, child health, pollution, and decency. They argued that when a bad smell comes from a drain nearby of any home, it cannot remain healthy. To them, the emphasis is on building a concrete drain where drains are muddy, and second, we tried to cover the drain in the main areas of the town. This way, we wanted to improve the drainage system of the area we are representing. The rights of domesticated farm animals need to be addressed in Bangladesh. In Chapter 3 of this volume it is stressed that animal rights need to recognised and that domesticated animals have the right to a life worth living. This means that they need to be able to fulfil their animal capabilities. A cow kept in a barn cannot move freely or graze on grass. Ruminants need to be able to eat grass (see Chapter 1). Furthermore, they have a right to live lives free from suffering, which seems unlikely from the above scenario. It is vital that the animals are not killed inhumanely and this needs to be carefully monitored. It is important to note that according to The Animal Slaughter and Quality of Meat Control Act 2011 of Bangladesh, slaughtering animals (e.g., cow, goat, ox, bull, bullock, camel, etc.) outside a designated slaughter house is strictly prohibited except during religious occasions and family functions. It states that slaughtering must not pollute water or a water source, air or environment. The blood, skin and other residues must be cleaned up following environmental guidelines after slaughtering. The Act states that the animal and the carcass must have to be physically examined by an authorized Veterinary Officer before and after the slaughtering. The slaughter-house must maintain its standard, size and other facilities; it must have access to safe water, ice and freezing facilities as required; it should have proper facilities for taking the skin off from the slaughtered animal and drying the skin accordingly (MOFL, 2011). The effort of Mrs. LT certainly upholds the guidelines of the act in slaughtering cattle in environmentally friendly way without polluting air, water or locality.

Environment Friendly Cooking Stove About 90% households in Bangladesh uses conventional cooking stove made of mud using firewood. The smoke caused by these stoves is responsible for as many as 2.5 million asthma patient and 50,000 deaths every year of whom 32,000 are children

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Picture 21.4 Cooking with biogas: No fuel cost, no carbon emission

and 18,000 are women (Prothom-Alo, 2016). These stoves use an astounding figure of 1500 million-ton firewood damaging the limited forest of the country in unprecedented rate. The carbon-dioxide emitted from these stoves posits a serious challenge to the environment (WHO, 2009). Experts urge for using environment-friendly stoves to contain environmental damage. The Bangladesh Science and Industrial Research Council developed environment friendly stoves in the 1980s. In 2006, in collaboration with the German Agency for International Cooperation (GIZ), they developed a stove made of concrete, connected with a chimney to discharge the smoke safely. The GIZ established a subsidiary, Bondhu Foundation (Friend’s Foundation) for the comprehensive expansion and use of the stove in Bangladesh. In the local market the stove is known as Bondhu Chula (Bondhu Stove). Bondhu Chula is smoke free, uses half of the firewood than usual and is easy to install at home. The women representatives are found to popularize the ‘Bondhu Chula’ in order to protect the environment. As a representative from Nazim Khan Union Parishad mentioned: Mrs. NN: Saving Environment, Saving Life Through Bondhu Chula Bondhu Chula has many advantages. It needs half the firewood of a conventional stove because of its design that is important both for the economy and the environment. It doesn’t allow heat to go outside which is good for health and safety. The chimney passes the smoke outside kitchen without causing harm to the cook. There is, therefore, no chance that smoke can cause, cough, cold, asthma, bronchitis or other respiratory diseases. However, villagers cannot make it by themselves as it was the case for the conventional stove. The villagers must buy it from the Bondhu Foundation at a cost of 800 Taka for single burner stove, and 1200 Taka for a double-burner stove. It is because of this, that an environment friendly stove is still not widely used by the people. I talked to the Climate Change unit of the PKSF back in 2017. I know that they have some funding directly from the Prime Minister’s Office, to facilitate climate friendly technology. They agreed to subsidize the stove for my people. Now the stove is available at Taka 500 and Taka 800 for single burner and double burner

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respectively. We have distributed about 1100 stoves in the past two years. I am trying to fully subsidize this project taking help from government and non-government agencies. I am sure if we can offer the stove for free, all people will adopt this technology for the betterment of environment, public health and safety (Picture 21.4).

Women representatives were also in support of popularizing the biogas stove in their areas. Biogas plants use agricultural waste, manure, sewage, plant material, green waste or food waste. In rural Bangladesh the readily available inputs for biogas plants are cow dung and poultry manure. Two to three cows can produce the required manure for a small size biogas plant that is enough for a family’s everyday cooking. Since most of the rural households possess cows, goats, chicken and ducks—the installation of biogas plant requires no input cost other than the fixed cost of the plant.

The Introduction of Organic Fertiliser Is Cost Effective and Sustainable The biogas plant is environment saving. A Biogas plant saves 1 ton of fuel per year, 0.8 ton emissions of carbon-dioxide, can produce bio-fertilizer that can save 50% on the use of chemical fertiliser (Paolini et al., 2018). The majority of the rural women representatives of this study mentioned that they are in touch with the Youth Development Directorate of the country which is subsidizing the installation of biogas plant. As one woman representative Mrs. PY from Aditmari mentioned (Picture 21.5):

Picture 21.5 Biogas plant

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It takes about 30,000 Taka to install a biogas plant. The Youth Development Directorate currently subsidizes 5000 Taka and offers the rest of the amount as credit. So, it means that a household without any immediate financing can install the plant. After installation, with regular supply of manure and waste, the fuel cost of the household goes free. The residue of the manure or the waste becomes good source of bio-fertilizer. So altogether it is financially lucrative for the farmers. But above all, this is environment friendly as it prevents using firewood, fossil fuel and so on for cooking. Last year I was able to install 160 plants in my area and am hoping to install few hundred this year.

Encouraging Climate Friendly Farming Practices Women representatives were also involved with a project to encourage environmentally friendly farming practice in the study area. In Bangladesh, farmers are relying heavily on chemical fertilizer and pesticide for farm production. They have very little knowledge of the environmental damage caused by chemical fertilizer and pesticide. Chemical fertilizer erodes soil quality in the long run damaging the ecosystem (Gupta, 2000; Ju et al., 2007; Atafar et al., 2010). On the other hand, pesticide is linked with contamination of soil, water and vegetation (Aktar et al., 2009; Kole et al., 2002). Most of the women representatives replied during our interview that environment friendly farming is necessary to protect future generations and the mother planet. So, they encourage farmers to practice organic farming and environment friendly farming in the rural areas. As one woman representative, Mrs. RK from Lalmonirhat mentioned: Mrs. RK: Environment Friendly Farming is The Future of Our Planet My area was famous for tobacco production. Tobacco has many side effects, but farmers used to cultivate it for better revenue than rice, wheat or maize. The Agricultural Department in Lalmonirhat was collaborating with a local NGO, RDRS, to change the farming practice of the farmers. I invited them to work in my area. We started testing soil for the first time in this area. With testing soil, farmers get to know the nutrient contents and deficiency of his land which help them to use the right variety of fertilizer in right quantity. This is important to protect soil fertility in the long run and for the sustainable development of agriculture and the livelihood of the farmers. The experts from the Agricultural Department and RDRS also explained to the farmers the benefit of crop rotation, use of bio-fertilizer and use of surface water for irrigation. We encourage farmers to follow these guidelines. Many farmers now test soil before cultivation and increasingly use bio-fertilizer replacing chemical fertilizer in my area. RDRS has also brought Zero Tillage machine by which farming of certain crops such as maize and wheat can be cultivated with no or zero tillage saving the top-soil of the land and requiring minimum irrigation. With the help of RDRS, I have formed groups of farmers to apply zero tilling in my area. We hope that we can spread this environment friendly farming practice in near future.

When we talked to the RDRS officials, they replied that farmers were very slow to adopt new technology, may be because of inertia and their familiarity of the conventional technique. However, they opined that local government representatives were instrumental to mobilise the farmers, to form farmers’ groups and to popularise

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environment friendly farming practices including soil testing, crop rotation, use of bio-fertilizer, adoption of zero tilling, etc. It is, however, important to note that this densely populated country adopted increasing food production as the top national priority adopting Green Revolution in the late 1970s following a famine in 1974 that took hundreds of thousands lives. The country saw rice production to climb up to three-times since its independence (BBS, 2018). The Green Revolution brings ‘high yield seeds-fertilizer-pesticidesirrigation’ model as a quick fix to combat food shortage and famine despite raising environmental concern. Farmers in Bangladesh adopted this model as a means to ensure food security of their own household, and hence are reluctant to take risks adopting a new technology.

Conclusion Clearly the role of women representatives in creating green and sustainable employment options is a step in the right direction. Women are ideally placed to speak out for the rights of women and for an improvement in their quality of life through enhancing their capabilities. This requires freedom and lack of fear, it also requires the right to speak out on behalf of the voiceless. These include those without a vote, such as young people and asylum seekers. It also includes the disabled, the frail and other sentient beings. The work of Martha Nussbaum is usually associated with gender rights and her work on the essential capabilities for a life worth living. But she also focuses on the rights of the voiceless. In ‘Frontiers of Justice’ (Nussbaum, 2006) she stresses that sentient beings are currently unprotected by the social contract. Her approach is based on an essentialist, idealist argument. The opportunity for women representatives to take the lead in introducing decent lives and carefully managed (humane) slaughtering is vital. By reducing reliance on meat and increasing research into alternative forms of protein is vital for the highly populated nation of Bangladesh. But even a narrow pragmatist without an awareness that animals have rights— simply because they are sentient-needs to take heed of the impact of inappropriate (and cruel) animal husbandry which has resulted in SARS, MERS, so-called ‘Mad Cow’ disease caused by feeding cows offal and most recently the Covid-19 pandemic believed to be caused by wet markets (see Chapter 3 of this volume). The introduction of reserved seats in the local government institutions in Bangladesh provided an opportunity to bring marginalised women into mainstream politics. It also has significant implications for socio-economic, and environmental development of the society apart from empowering women in political office. The elected women representatives emphasised that the financial and non-financial resources obtained from the LGIs enabled them to enhance their role and agency in the overall change of the society worth living. Women representatives are seen as active to help poor indigent families to get involved in additional income generating activities across rural and urban local government institutions. The respondents are found to pioneer skill improving training for the unemployed youth and hence help

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generate self-employment. They also assisted NGO operations in their constituency and enabled the formation of microcredit groups for the destitute poor. Thus the poor were able to access credit for productive purposes including raising poultry, homestead gardening, stalls in the local market, cattle rearing, cultivating maize, pulse and vegetables, buying rickshaw and vans etc. The disadvantaged community are then able to earn additional income from these projects and to protect them in an economic crisis and to buy necessary food, clothing and medicine on a regular basis. Elected women representatives were also fighting against social malpractices and prejudices including fatwa, dowry, child marriage, gambling, and violence against women. There is evidence that women representatives contributed to increase social awareness and advocate against all forms of oppression and injustice towards women including fatwa, dowry, child marriage, acid throwing and ‘eve-teasing’. The empirical findings also document that the elected women representatives have to encounter a number of environmental challenges in their area including deforestation, river encroachment, the filling up of ponds and water bodies, floods, droughts, cyclones and river erosion and so on. Apart from these there were issues like drainage and sewerage in the urban areas that are addressed by women representatives. It is also found that women representatives were encouraging practicing environment friendly farming, the use of bio-gas, bio-fertilizer, surface water for irrigation, soil testing and crop rotation in the study area. The finding of this study, thus, documents that the reservation of quota seats has been conducive not only for women’s access to political office but also to foster the diverse development of the entire society ranging from economic development, confronting social stigma and prejudice, and conservation of environment in Bangladesh. Through gaining a voice through political representation, women representatives have been able to effectively advocate for gender-based issues and the environment which has brought successful outcomes for the families and communities of the working poor as well as the women of the community both individually and collectively.

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Shajeda Aktar (Ph.D., Public Policy) is currently Professor in the Department of Public Administration at the University of Rajshahi, Bangladesh and focuses on grassroots politics in Bangladesh.

Chapter 22

Balancing the Interests of Wildlife and Humans Resulting in Sustainable Ecotourism: The Case of Boabeng-Fiema Monkeys’ Sanctuary, Ghana Akwasi Arko-Achemfuor Abstract The paper employs the qualitative methodology to shed light on a sustainable ecotourism endeavour in two neighbouring rural communities in the Bono East Region in Ghana. The ethnographic research design was applied in the paper to explore the understanding, beliefs and behaviour of the respondents to describe the place and circumstances in which they live, and to analyse the impact the ecotourism endeavour is making in their communities. The main research instruments used to gather data for the study were individual interviews, observation and a focus group discussion. Most ecotourism development in Ghana has largely continued along the practices of colonial wildlife conservation and forestry which failed to consider the needs of the affected local communities. This approach to development most often disadvantages the affected communities and creates tension between the communities and the developers while at the same time misses out on the narratives on the environment, expertise and marginalisation of local ecological knowledge. The Boabeng-Fiema Monkey Sanctuary (BFMS) where the ecotourism endeavour was established some decades ago provides habitat for two monkey species, the blackand-white colobus (Colobus vellerosus), and mona monkey (Cercopithecus campbelli), which co-exist with the inhabitants of the twin villages of Boabeng and Fiema. The monkeys are protected and revered as “children of the gods” by traditional taboos and historic cultural beliefs. This research found out that this ecotourism endeavour, which has been based on the belief systems and cultural traditions of the two communities, has resulted in a win-win situation for all the stakeholders. The study argues for creating knowledges that seek to speak back with the researched communities to benefit all the stakeholders. Keywords Beliefs · Conservation · Culture · Development · Ecotourism · Sustainability

A. Arko-Achemfuor (B) University of South Africa, Pretoria, South Africa e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2021 J. J. McIntyre-Mills and Y. Corcoran-Nantes (eds.), From Polarisation to Multispecies Relationships, Contemporary Systems Thinking, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-33-6884-2_22

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Introduction The cry over the world against environment degradation has been growing louder and louder over the years because of the way many countries across the world are exploiting natural resources in an unsustainable manner. Rizzo (2015) reports that the environmental degradation of the Lake Chad Bazin region, particularly, the shrinking of Lake Chad, has impeded development and contributed to conditions of poverty for several reasons. Odada et al. (2006) add that most of the region’s major economic activities have been adversely affected, leading to complex migration patterns in the past which have carried through to 2014 where they have taken on a new conflictrelated dimension. Furthermore, Rizzo (2015) notes that, lake Chad in Central Africa for example has over the past forty years shrank by over 80% where most of the catchment areas of the lake have now turned desert mainly due to human action. This situation has forced countries in the region which depend on the lake for their livelihoods to find other ways of addressing the situation. In Ghana, indiscriminate mining of gold and other minerals has led to the drying of and pollution of big and small rivers and turning the forests on which cocoa and other forest crops were cultivated to wastelands. Communities which use the rivers as drinking sources are no more able to drink from those rivers thereby causing serious health and socioeconomic hardships for those communities. Some other unsustainable activities causing serious environmental degradation for most communities in Ghana include the indiscriminate poaching of game and wildlife to the level of extinction, the burning of charcoal, burning of bushes for bush meat and farming and logging just to name a few. The governments, civil society and development practitioners have been sounding the alarm bells in communities, but it appears the warnings and the advice to communities and companies are not being taken seriously possibly because of the quest for survival. This study investigated how two small communities in the Bono East Region of Ghana with the tourism authorities have tapped into the belief systems of Fiema and Boabeng communities to establish and sustain an ecotourism business. Ecotourism can be conceptualised as any tourism programme that is (a) nature based, (b) ecologically sustainable, (c) where education and interpretation is a major component, and (d) where local people benefit from its activities (Vishwanatha & Chandrashekara, 2014). According to Vishwanatha and Chandrashekara (2014), ecotourism is a purposeful travel to natural areas to understand the cultural and natural history of environment, taking care not to alter the integrity of the ecosystem, while producing economic opportunities that make conservation of natural resources beneficial to local people. Honey (2008) confirms ecotourism’s three main impacts as conservation, sociocultural and economic. The initiative under discussion can be classified as cultural tourism. Cultural tourism refers to travel to experience the arts or history of a location or travel to immerse oneself in the language, society, or culture of a region. In the study under investigation, one can say that the communities where this ecotourism

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initiative exists endeavour to perpetuate their ancestral beliefs, customs, traditions and values and steward their environment which is helping the communities to thrive. The socio-cultural impacts of ecotourism describe the effects on host communities of direct and indirect relations with tourists, and of interaction with the tourism industry. The Boabeng Fiema Monkey Sanctuary (BFMS) according to Eshun and Tonto (2014) is the only place in Africa where the two different species of monkeys exist in large numbers and co-exist harmoniously with humans in the Boabeng and Fiema villages since the 1830s. Eshun and Tonto (2014) intimate that the Sanctuary is home to about 200 Colobus and 500 Mona monkeys and also 249 plant species including trees, lianas and ground vegetation. The creation of the Sanctuary has led to an increase in numbers of the monkeys (Saj & Sicotte, 2006). The case study area of the Boabeng-Fiema Monkey Sanctuary (BFMS) is 71,430 N and 11,420 W; 350 m above sea level, is located 22 km north of Nkoranza, and 230 km from Accra. In 1975, a byelaw was passed which prohibited the hunting of the monkeys within 4.5 km2 . The sanctuary (the habitat for the monkeys is actually 1.9 km2 ). In addition, because the monkeys are seen as children of the gods and revered, they have their own cemetery. BFMS is in Nkoranza North District of the Bono East Region of Ghana, with Busunya as its capital. Several legends are told by the two communities which vary regarding the monkeys and the two communities. Most of the inhabitants of the two villages however hold the traditional belief that the monkeys are the descendants of the god Daworo, the god of Boabeng, and Abudwo, the god of Fiema. Another legend has it that a Boabeng hunter on entering the forest one day found a vase covered with a calico, the fetish of the Daworo spirit, protected by two Campbell’s Mona and two Western black-and-white colobus monkeys. The hunter according to the legend could not kill the monkeys as it appeared as if he was hypnotized by them, but decided to bring the fetish found in the forest to the village but the monkeys which were guarding the fetish followed the man to his hut. The hunter according to this legend consulted an oracle to find out the relationship that linked the fetish to the mysterious monkeys. The oracle declared that the monkeys should not be killed or wounded because they were the sacred children of the Daworo fetish. As time passed and the number of monkeys increased according to the legend, so even the fortunes of the hunter increased, who attributed his improved material condition to the monkeys. This led to the symbiotic relationship between the monkeys and the inhabitants of the villages which has remained until today. The villagers dedicated a section of the forest where the monkeys were found as their habitat just at the edge of the two villages.

Another legend has it that a sorcerer had the ability to turn men into monkeys as this was used as a very useful trick during battles as the warriors could move and hide in the forest under the guise of harmless monkeys and then turn back into men and fight their attackers by taking advantage of the element of surprise. However, during a battle, the sorcerer died and therefore was not able to bring back to life the warriors he had turned into monkeys. From that moment the primates were associated with and identified as those soldiers who never went back to the human status. The inhabitants still believe that when a group of Western black-and-white colobus emits an unusual noise between 11 p.m. and midnight, an elderly person in the twin

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villages of Fiema-Boabeng will die. Perhaps this could be because the ancestor monkeys could be calling to those who are about to die or have special powers to know when such a calamity is going to happen. The community members give many other narratives. Eshun (2010: 26) points to the changing role of Protected Areas (PAs) and why tourism is increasingly being based on these areas. The monkeys live in the forest, which is at the edge of the two communities but come to the villages in the morning and the evening for food. The community members are not to deny the monkeys food or harm them in any way as it is believed that any person who does so will experience a calamity in his/her family. The legends narrated above have been based on the belief systems of the two communities who dedicated the section of the land occupied by the primates as the sanctuary. This conservation endeavour to save the monkeys is what has turned out to be the sanctuary over the years.

Research Purpose and Research Questions The purpose of the research was to investigate how the Boabeng-Fiema communities in rural Ghana have established and sustained a monkeys’ sanctuary over the years through some belief systems. The research questions for this paper are: ● What belief systems have the two communities used to create and maintain the monkeys’ sanctuary? ● What are the experiences of the communities regarding living with the monkeys? ● What impacts does the monkeys’ sanctuary have on the surrounding communities?

Theoretical Framework This paper is underpinned by Murphy’s (1983) ecological theory. The theory is used to explain the relationship between tourism and local ethnic groups and emphasises the participation of the local ethnic group in comparison to the outsiders. Murphy’s ecological model also stresses that the local ethnic group’s participation in various stages of planning and implementation will determine a holistic ethnic group development equipped with ethnic group participation and empowerment. Murphy (1983: 181) argues that tourism is a “community industry”, using the analogy of a cooperative that “represents the interests of the whole community”. This study appears as a form of indigenous tourism. Kunasekaran et al. (2017) intimate that several studies have sought to identify the impacts of indigenous tourism whose outcomes are primarily focused on the perceptions of the host ethnic group who present their culture and way of life as a form of ecological and cultural tourism. There is the need to understand the factors required to run tourism business from an indigenous peoples’ point of view to develop sustainable practice to create a model of sustainable indigenous tourism. Gaining insight into the perceptions of indigenous people

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is very important, as they are the industry’s key players. Holder and Ruhanen (2017) point out that the focus of cultural aspect in indigenous tourism research area is the indigenous people and their unique and authentic lifestyle. Similarly, Kunasekaran et al. (2017) add that the development of indigenous and cultural tourism strongly depends on the ethnicity, heritage and festivals of the people in question. The theory is relevant and applicable to this paper as the two communities (Boabeng and Fiema) in the Bono East Region of Ghana have established an ecotourism initiative that is embedded in their heritage, traditions, beliefs and culture. The Boabeng-Fiema Monkey Sanctuary (BFMS) provides habitat for two monkey species, the black-andwhite colobus (Colobus vellerosus), and mona monkey (Cercopithecus campbelli), which co-exist with the inhabitants of the twin villages of Boabeng and Fiema. The monkeys are protected and revered as “children of the gods” by traditional taboos and historic cultural beliefs. Various versions of the legend behind the monkeys and the two communities exist which were discussed a bit more in detail in the introduction. The locals jealously protect the habitat of the animals while at the same time the forest and the tourism business which have generated a thriving tourism business are contributing to sustainable livelihoods for the communities.

Methods The qualitative method used in this research was based on observations, individual and focus interviews, photos, and a journal were the main instruments that were used to collect data to investigate how the communities have created and sustained the monkeys’ sanctuary over the years through their belief systems. The ethnographic research design was adopted for the study. The ethnographic design made it possible for me to explore the beliefs, activities and behaviour of the respondents and their experiences and the impact of the initiative on the two communities. The respondents in the study included a tourist guide, a community elder from one of the villages, and six key informers from the two communities who participated in the individual interviews and another six members from the two communities who participated in the focus group discussion. Fourteen people thus participated in the research. The purposeful sampling technique was used to obtain relevant and useful information from knowledgeable people from the two communities who were recommended by a key informant from one of the two communities. The individual interviews were conducted at the homes of the respondents at the agreed times they had indicated. The focus group took place at Boabeng where I arranged for the respondents from the Fiema community to join the respondents from Boabeng. The meeting took place at the local junior secondary school in Boabeng. The observations were made at the two villages in the mornings and the evenings where the monkeys normally come to the villages, the sanctuary in the forest, the reception centre, the arts and craft centre among others. I obtained permission from the chiefs of the villages to conduct the interviews and also to take the photos. I asked for permission from the participants to tape-record the individual and focus group

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interviews. The data collected were analysed thematically according to the themes that emerged from them.

Results, Discussion and Implications The data from the individual and focus group interviews, observations and photos taken are presented and analysed in the following section. When the participants were asked about the history and origins of the monkeys and the sanctuary, they gave a long history about the villages and how their ancestors came in contact with the monkeys. They mentioned two deities that are associated with the two villages and the monkeys. The participants from Boabeng mentioned the deity Daworo while Abudwo was referred to mostly by the participants from Fiema. In any case, they agree about the monkeys as the children of the two gods. It was reported during the focus group interview by the participants to confirm their belief that the monkeys are the children of deities (Daworo and Abudwo).

Traditional and Cultural Beliefs It was remarked during the focus group discussion that: This is our culture and we strongly believe that the monkeys are the children of the gods who protected our ancestors in the past and continue to protect us even up to now.

It was again reported during the focus group discussion that most of the members of the two communities believe strongly that they had lived over the years with the animals and any harm caused to them brings catastrophe to the perpetrator. It was reported clearly that: We live harmoniously with the monkeys and we know that any person who harms them in anyway suffers the consequences. We have heard from the past and also witnessed ourselves what happens to people who harm the monkeys in anyway.

It was again stated that: People who do not understand our culture think that we are primitive but we understand ourselves as our living together with monkeys has kept us safe and that is what brings you and the other tourist and researchers here. People and researchers come here daily to see this place and the way we live with the monkeys. Who would have come to this place without this sanctuary?

Figures 22.2 and 22.3 show a section of the forest where the monkey priests and the monkeys which die are buried. The Fetish Priest of Daworo buries the monkeys, which die. He performs funeral rites that are similar to human beings where a coffin is used in which the monkey is wrapped in a cotton cloth. He also performs an annual purification ceremony to pacify the souls of the ancestors and of the gods, for the

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Fig. 22.1 One of the Mona monkeys (Source Author’s own photograph)

Fig. 22.2 A post marking the grave of one of the ‘monkey priests’ at the sanctuary among the graves of the monkeys (Source Author’s own photograph)

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Fig. 22.3 The graveyard of the monkeys and the monkey priests in the sanctuary

good health of the villagers and of all the monkeys. According to the narratives, the deity Daworo instructed the first hunter who came in contact with the monkeys to treat the monkeys as relatives. The participants indicated that the tradition of burying the Fetish Priest with the monkeys is an instruction from Daworo. The following were some of the responses that were given by the participants during the individual interviews. P3 indicated that: We do not have a problem living with the monkeys as this has been our way of life since time immemorial. I am a Christian and do not believe in other gods but we have lived over the year with them, so they are part of us. I am of the view that the sanctuary is a way of conserving the environment.

From the data gathered from the interviews, photos and the observations, it is clear that members of the two communities hold strong beliefs regarding the relationship between the monkeys, the communities and the sanctuary. A poignant point that can be made here is how the priests of the monkeys are buried among the monkeys right in the forest. Figures 22.2 and 22.3 show the cemetery that is dedicated for the burial of the monkeys and the monkey priests. The participants explained that when any of the monkeys die, they prepare rituals similar to that of human being before going to bury them in the sanctuary. This phenomenon is one of the very clear indication of the beliefs and cultural traditions of the communities which have persisted over the years.

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Environmental Conservation I observed that the forest/sanctuary is an aesthetic beauty when one travels all the way to the place. The forest is green like a tropical rain forest whereas the neighbouring terrain is degraded. The forest is the habitat for the monkeys but there are many other animal and plant species that are found there. During the focus group interview, it was pointed out that: Look at the forest here and just opposite the forest and the way you came. It is beautiful and evergreen as against all the surrounding areas. It is not only the monkeys but there are many other plants and other animal species [here] which are almost extinct [elsewhere, but] you find [here] because of the sanctuary. We get plants and herbs from the sanctuary for medicinal purposes. Dead wood can also be collected for fire but no one is allowed to cut any fresh wood from the forest.

On the protection of the monkeys and other animals, the elder emphasised during the interview that: If you chase any animal outside the sanctuary and it enters the forest, you kiss your day good bye. It means the animal has taken refuge among the gods and that is the end of the story.

The elder’s response above means that any animal that is hunted outside the sanctuary that runs into it should never be pursed further. In effect, the person chasing the animal’s luck has run out for that day. Bush meat is one of the main sources of protein for many people in Ghana most especially among the rural folk. Some of the neighbouring community members hunt the monkeys when they go outside the sanctuary. It was reported also that sect members of one religious body from the community at some point were killing the monkeys but the bottom line is that any monkey or animal that takes refuge in the sanctuary is protected. It was very exciting one of the days I visited the sanctuary with one of the tour guides where we heard some birds making some unusual sounds in the forest. He indicated that we should go towards where the noise was coming from. When we got near the place, he pointed to towards where the birds were and there was a big pangolin which had coiled itself around a branch on top of the tree. That was the first time I saw this type of animal in its wild habitat. We also saw some other bird species. He indicated that such animals could only be located in the sanctuary or very close to it (Fig. 22.4). The figure shows the picture of one of the carnivorous trees in the sanctuary. This is an example of how this plant creeps around a big tree and gradually covers the trunk and kill it eventually. The hole in the middle of the tree shows where the other tree used to be. There are many such examples in the forest of this plant busy covering trees and at the different stages of killing them. The observation and the responses from the participants indicate how the sanctuary has managed to protect and conserve the environment beautifully by preserving the monkeys and other animals and plants. As I have explained, most of the areas surrounding the sanctuary are degraded. The sanctuary thus serves as a good example of how the communities have used their traditions and belief systems to conserve the environment.

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Fig. 22.4 The picture of one of the carnivorous trees in the forest

Economic Impact Another important issue which emerged from the different data collection tools used was the economic benefits the ecotourism endeavour is contributing to the two communities. When the question was posed regarding the benefits the sanctuary was generating for the communities, most of the responses were made on the economic aspects. It was stated in the focus group that: Because of the sanctuary, we receive a number of benefits where people come here and spend money to see the monkeys and learn about our cultural traditions.

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Some of the economic benefits that emanate from the endeavour were again confirmed during the focus group interview that: Our twin communities of Boabeng and Fiema benefit from the sanctuary. There are members of our community who are employed as tourist guides, conservation officials and others at the guesthouse. There are people who also trade here who sell art and craft materials, food items for the tourist and those who sell groundnuts and bananas which the tourists and visitors buy to give to the monkeys.

I noticed during the observation sessions of people who are employed directly and indirectly as a result of the sanctuary. I saw many women who sell foodstuff, groundnuts and bananas among other things to visitors and tourists who visit the sanctuary. I also saw the arts and craft market at Boabeng where a number of items are sold to the visitors. The tourist guide remarked that “I am employed here as a tourist guide which has helped me to earn a stable income to support myself and my family.” Figure 22.5 shows some tourists who arrived at the sanctuary while I was gathering data. A number of such groups visited the place for the whole one week I was there gathering data. Such groups and researchers spend considerable amount of resources at the place which generate benefits for the communities. Figure 22.6 is a photo of some of the art and craft items in one of the shops in one of the villages. Visitors and tourists normally buy some of these items as gifts and souvenirs thereby generating income and employment for those involved. It was reported by the participants that the revenue received from the tourists and visitors are shared between the communities, the district assembly and the forestry

Fig. 22.5 Photo of some tourists who visited the sanctuary while I was gathering data at the sanctuary (Source Author’s own photograph)

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Fig. 22.6 A picture of some items sold in the craft shops (Source Author’s own photograph)

commission. They also acknowledged that some of the revenue is been used to provide some amenities in the communities. The economic benefits to the two communities as per the responses and the observations made on the economic benefits of the sanctuary point to the apparent symbiotic relationship between the communities and the monkeys and the sanctuary. These benefits from the sanctuary suggest that the communities take care of the environment, which houses the sanctuary and the monkeys while the sanctuary and the monkeys on the other hand bring some economic benefits to the communities.

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Conflict Between the Communities and the Monkeys Although it is reported about the cordial relationship that exists between the monkeys and the communities, it was equally reported that sometimes the monkeys cause nuisance to people when they come to the homes and steal/take food, eat and destroy crops in farms and go to drink water from their pots where they drink themselves. It was also reported that they make noise and destroy thatch roofing sometimes. It was also confirmed from both the focus group and the individual interviews that some of the community members felt that the land demarcated for the sanctuary and the monkeys could be used better as the benefits from the sanctuary has limited impact on the communities. P5 stated that: Land is very scarce here but almost 4.5 km2 is demarcated for the sanctuary. The opportunity cost of having the sanctuary is too high. We can use the land better to produce the food we need in our communities. Besides, the damage the monkeys cause to our crops is incalculable.

However, P1 had a contrary view to what P5 had expressed. She said: Yes, there are some challenges with the monkeys but the advantages of keeping the sanctuary and the monkeys I think far outweigh the nuisance they cause.

P4 added that: One of my relatives who killed a monkey was sanctioned excessively which has made us bitter towards the whole initiative. We do not see much benefit from it. I think the land can be put to better use.

Although most of the views expressed during the focus indicated that the sanctuary was good for the communities, they still experience disturbances from the monkeys and sometimes the visitors and tourist. For example, it was expressed that: We like the monkeys but they sometimes inconvenience us. They sometimes invade our homes and damage our property. And because of the sanctuary, we do not have our privacy as visitors, researchers and tourist troop in day in and day out.

It was added that Yes, sometimes they can be a bit of nuisance when they come to the houses and take food and spoil some things. They also sometimes destroy our crops but that is part of our lives here. The eating and destruction of crops is a major source of concern for our communities as we are mostly peasant farmers. When our crops are destroyed, we face hunger.

The experiences of the respondents above point to some of the factors that cause conflict between the monkeys and the communities. As indicated in the responses, they include the nuisance they cause which include noise, taking food from the houses and the land that is demarcated solely for the monkeys as well as the destruction of their crops. On the plus side, however it could be pointed out that there would be no eco or cultural tourism in the area without the monkeys as they help to fertilise the forest and sustain the growth of the vegetation.

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The finding indicate that the belief systems have enabled the two communities to maintain their traditions and culture as well as the preservation of the environment and as a result creating a sustainable ecotourism endeavour which is generating income and employment for the community and the municipality at large. The themes that emerged from the study include: the socio-cultural traditions of the communities, economic benefits of the sanctuary, environmental conservation and conflict between the monkeys and the communities.

Socio-Cultural Beliefs and Conservation As it was discussed under the belief and traditions of the communities under the data presentation and analysis, it emerged that it is the belief system of the communities that have maintained and sustained this community-based ecotourism endeavour. Some people may assume that the belief system is primitive as it is based on myths and tales. However, the traditions have endured over the centuries. For example, Attuquayefio and Gyampoh (2010) point out that before what they call modern or “introduced” biodiversity conservation methods, traditional African societies had their own complex religio-cultural belief systems that used traditional norms, myths, taboos, totems and closed seasons to preserve certain critical natural resources. They cite (Ntiamoa-Baidu, 1995; Abayie-Boaten, 1998; Attuquayefio & Fobil, 2005) who argued that one school of thought suggests that such traditional edicts only inadvertently promoted natural resource conservation but were strictly adhered to, in order not to incur the wrath of deities or ancestral spirits. Similarly, (Amanor, 1994; Gyasi, 1997; Arhin, 2008) concur that irrespective of the original intention of such belief systems, their influence on natural resource management is enormous. From the empirical study in paper, I argue that the Boabeng-Fiema Monkeys Sanctuary has been based on such traditional belief systems and serving its purpose.

Economic Benefits The sanctuary it was noted also attracts a lot of both local and international visitors and researchers who visit the place throughout the year. There are economic benefits that accrue to the communities and the national economy as whole. It was noted that some community members are directly employed through the operations of the sanctuary. These include conservation officers, tourist guides, traders etc. The revenue received from is shared between the communities and the conservation authorities. Eshun (2014) for example found out that 40% of the revenue generated from the BFMS went to the communities while the rest was shared between the other stakeholders such as the wildlife division, the District Assembly, the traditional council among others. From the empirical studies, as indicated above, some of the community members were employed as tour guides, conservation officers. Other community

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members were employed at the reception centre as revenue collection clerks. The guesthouse built near the sanctuary also employs other community members. The craft markets at communities and the local food producers and sellers also have found golden opportunities to ply their trades to eke out living for themselves and their families. These activities are in line with what Honey (2008) found to be as sources of revenue from ecotourism which include entry fees, camping fees, sales of services and products at the site, donations by visitors and sales of concessions for accommodation, food and tours. The participants confirmed that some of the revenue generated is used to provide amenities in the communities.

Environmental Protection and Conservation On environment protection and conservation, it was also observed that the sanctuary apart from the monkeys also hosts a number of other game and wildlife as well as a number of plant species which cannot be found around the degraded surrounding environment. Some of these include antelopes, pangolin (which we saw on top of a tree one of the days I was taken to the sanctuary); chameleons and different bird species. The participants indicated that such animals are not found anywhere around the area except at the sanctuary or near it. As indicated from the empirical studies, the sanctuary also contains exceptional plant species which include some carnivorous plants which kill the other plants they get attached to as depicted in Fig. 22.4. A journey to the BFMS and the surrounding communities shows how the whole area is degraded leaving the sanctuary as a beautiful forest which is green most of the time in the year. Eshun and Tonto (2014) confirm that the vegetation around the area on a whole comprises a mosaic of original forest, degraded forest, woodland and savannah. Furthermore, Eshun and Tonto (2014) found in their study that the cultural traditions including their belief systems have contributed to the preservation and conservation of the environment in the area.

Conflict Situation From the findings, it emerged that most of the participants are of the view that the BFMS is good for their community based on the attention and interest it has generated around the world, there are some who believe that the sanctuary is not very beneficial to the communities. This is mainly attributed to the conflict situation that arises over some restrictions that are placed on the communities with respect to accessing the land that is demarcated for the sanctuary and the encroachment of the monkeys to homes as well as the destruction of the crops and property. Farming is the main occupation among the two villages and the other neighbouring communities but the destruction of property, stealing food and the destruction of crops continue to cause animosities and conflicts between the people and the monkey. These

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were expressed in both the focus group and individual interviews. Such conflicts occur where ecotourism projects are located very close to communities. Researchers and scholars such as (Tosun, 2000; Kiss, 2004; Rogerson & Visser, 2004; Stone & Rogerson, 2011; Eshun & Page, 2013) have highlighted the challenges of local involvement and participation in tourism. Eshun and Tonto (2014) confirmed in their study that some of the Fiema-Boabeng community members complained about the restrictions placed on access to farming in the forest and accessing the resources as a problem and wanted the restrictions to be loosened. Agyei et al. (2019) and Eshun and Tonto (2014) further noted that the romantic view projected about ecotourism sometimes conceal the challenges and conflicts it generated in the communities. They add that at the BFMS for example, the Mona monkeys frequent homes in search of food especially during the harmattan season which is the dry season when the sources of their diet in the Sanctuary are limited. They cite Attuquayefio and Gyampoh (2010) who similarly reached the conclusion that the plight of the local communities is further worsened by the Mona monkeys who have been encouraged to abandon their natural eating habits as a result of the visitors feeding them. Another issue that emerged during the interview is the illegal hunting that some people in the community engage in. It was reported that members of some religious sects do not respect the laws and hunt illegally in the sanctuary. When they are caught, they are dealt with harshly by the law and community which also creates tension among such close-knit societies. The findings have implications for communities, governments and local municipalities to find niches within their traditions and cultures that can be applied for the sustainable development of their communities as these two communities have done.

Significance and Implications The study sheds light and makes significant contribution to the field of indigenous knowledge and cultural systems which are sometimes regarded as backward and unscientific irrespective of the fact that the belief system is achieving results that are needed for livelihoods and sustainable development. The belief system that is applied in the two communities has also attracted researchers from Ghana and other parts of the world who are conducting various types of investigations to try to understand the phenomenon. It is clear also that the sanctuary has contributed immensely to the conservation of the environment by creating viable economic spin offs for the communities. This endeavour shows how communities can use their culture and belief systems to create sustainable ecotourism projects. The authorities should take note of the conflict situations that sometimes emerge from ecotourism endeavours. In the FBMS’s case, some of the conflict and challenges revolve around the nuisance and inconveniences the animals cause to the community such as stealing food from homes, destruction of property and crops just to name a few. It appears the sanctuary is becoming small for increasing number of monkeys, which is causing the frequent visits to the communities. The community

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and the authorities may have to meet and find a way in which more land can be acquired to increase the sanctuary. This is not going to be easy as some members of the communities are already complaining about the land that is currently allocated to the sanctuary. However, a way forward to address the issue could be through a participatory development project that aims to enhance amicable multispecies relationships to enable monkeys to live within their habitat alongside the visitors and local farmers. One of the ways forward could be to develop a tourism education or information centre where the rules about feeding monkeys are explained. Another possibility is to develop monkey proof enclosures for some of the crops. The monkey priest with a committee could help to protect the monkeys by running education programs on ways to manage the monkey human interactions and about why the monkeys are vital for the ecological cycle of re-generating the forests. They play a key role in fertilising the forests as they will eat fruits and leaves and their faeces will fertilise the young plants. The forests, in turn help with carbon capture, serve as windbreak, and play a vital role as the green lungs of the planet. Besides these, if the forest is not there, the monkeys will run away.

References Abayie-Boaten, A. (1998). Traditional conservation practices: Ghana’s example. Institute of African Studies Research Review, 14(1), 42–51. Agyei, F. Y., Afrifa, A. B., & Agyei-Ohemeng, J. (2019). Human–monkey conflict and community wildlife management: The case of Boabeng-Fiema monkey sanctuary and fringed communities in Ghana. International Journal of Biosciences, 14(6), 302–311. Amanor, K. S. (1994). The new frontier: Farmers’ responses to land degradation; A West Africa case-study. London: Zed Books. Arhin, S. (2008). Complementing legislation: The role of cultural practices in the conservation of wildlife-examples from Ghana. Journal of Animal Law, 4, 93–98. Attuquayefio, D. K., & Fobil, J. N. (2005). An overview of wildlife conservation in Ghana: Challenges nd prospects. West African Journal of Applied Ecology, 7, 1–18. Attuquayefio, D. K., & Gyampoh, S. (2010). The Boabeng-Fiema Monkey Sanctuary, Ghana: A case for blending traditional and introduced wildlife conservation systems. West African Journal of Applied Ecology, 17, 1–10. Eshun, G. (2010). Ecotourism development in Ghana: A postcolonial study with focus on BoabengFiema Monkey Sanctuary and Kakum National Park. Thesis submitted to the University of Leicester, Department of Geography for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. Eshun, G. (2014). Towards the dual mandate of ecotourism in Africa: A comparative study from Ghana. African Insight, 44(3), 164–184. Eshun, G., & Page, S. (2013, December 15–17). Revisiting ecotourism in Africa: A case study of BFMS and Kakum National Park, in Ghana. Paper presented at the 2nd World Tourism and Hospitality Research, Rosen College, Florida, USA. Eshun, G., & Tonto, J. N. P. (2014). Community-based ecotourism: Its socio-economic impacts at Boabeng-Fiema Monkey Sanctuary, Ghana. Bulletin of Geography: Socio-Economic Series, No. 26, 2014, 67–81. Gyasi, G. A. (1997). Background and objectives of the production and pressure and environmental changes in Southern Forest-Savanna Zone. In G. A. Gyasi & J. J. Uitto (Eds.), Environment,

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Biodiversity and Agricultural Change in West Africa: Perspectives from Ghana. Tokyo: United Nations University Press. Holder, A., & Ruhanen, L. (2017). Identifying the relative importance of culture in Indigenous tourism experiences: Ethnographic evidence from Australia. Tourism Recreation Research, 42, 1–11. Honey, M. (2008). Ecotourism and sustainable development: Who owns paradise? (2nd ed.). Washington, DC: Island Press. Kiss, A. (2004). Is community-based ecotourism a good use of biodiversity conservation funds? Trends in Ecology and Evolution, 19(5), 232–237. Kunasekaran, P., et al. (2017). Measuring sustainable indigenous tourism indicators: A case of Mah Meri ethnic group in Carey Island, Malaysia. Sustainability, 9(1256), 1–20. Murphy, P. E. (1983). Tourism as a community industry: An ecological model of tourism development. Tourism Management, 4(3), 180–193. Ntiamoa-Baidu, Y. (1995). Indigenous vs. introduced biodiversity conservation strategies: The case of protected area systems in Ghana. Afr. Biodiversity Series No. 1. Biodiversity Support Program, Washington, DC. Odada, E., Oyebande, L., & Oguntola, J. (2006). Lake Chad: Experiences and lessons learned brief . World Lakes. http://www.worldlakes.org/uploads/06_lake_chad_27february2006.pdf. Rizzo, J. (2015). A shrinking lake and a rising insurgency migratory responses to environmental degradation and violence in the lake Chad Basin. Rogerson, C. M., & Visser, G. (2004). Tourism and development issues in contemporary South Africa. Pretoria: Africa Institute of South Africa. Saj, T. L., & Sicotte, S. (2006). Traditional taboos in biological conservation: The case of Colobus vellerosus. Social Science Information, 45, 285–310. Stone, M., & Rogerson, C. M. (2011). Community-based natural resource management and tourism: Nata bird sanctuary, Botswana. Tourism Review International, 15, 159–169. Tosun, C. (2000). Limits to community participation in the tourism: Development process in developing countries. Tourism Management, 21, 613–633. Vishwanatha, S., & Chandrashekara, B. (2014). An analysis of socio-cultural impacts of ecotourism in Kodagu District. American Journal of Research Communication, 2(7), 135–147.

Akwasi Arko-Achemfuor is an Associate Professor in the Department of Adult Basic Education and Youth Development in the College of Education, University of South Africa. His areas of research interest include entrepreneurship and entrepreneurship education, youth development, learner support in distance education, and Indigenous knowledge systems.

Chapter 23

Agent Orange, Women of the Resistance and Reproductive Rights: A Tale of Deliberate Human and Environmental Devastation in Vietnam Yvonne Corcoran-Nantes Abstract Between 1961 and 1971 millions of tonnes of chemical defoliant code name Agent Orange were sprayed onto the forests and cultivable land in both Central and Southern Viet Nam in the focal points of resistance against the occupying US forces. The policy was to remove the dense forest coverage which hid the members of the People’s Army of Viet Nam and destroy the land and crops feeding the Viet Nam population. The devastation which ensued involved severely damaging not only the land on which the population depended but also the capacity of men and women to reproduce the next generation. Here we consider Shiva’s arguments with respect to the bifurcation of the control of human beings and their physical and biological reproduction. This chapter will focus principally on the experience of women of the resistance in attempting to avoid chemical contamination and its impact on their lives and those of their family and community in the post war period. Keywords Women · Resistance · Destruction · Agent Orange · Chemical warfare · Justice · Human rights

In nature’s economy the currency is not money, it is life Vandana Shiva (2005)1

1

Earth Democracy: Justice, Sustainability and Peace, p. 33, Zed Books: London.

All information and data in this chapter come from primary sources arising from research undertaken in Viet Nam 2016–2018 unless otherwise stated. All quotes are from interviews with female respondents—women of the resistance. Y. Corcoran-Nantes (B) College of Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences, Flinders University, Adelaide, SA, Australia e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2021 J. J. McIntyre-Mills and Y. Corcoran-Nantes (eds.), From Polarisation to Multispecies Relationships, Contemporary Systems Thinking, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-33-6884-2_23

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Introduction It is often believed that war operates under its own set of rules or those dictated by the warring parties. Damage to human beings the environment or to the multispecies living and surviving on the planet are frequently collateral damage which we are expected to accept as part and parcel of militarised politics. Justice and law are seemingly deferred or at least held in suspended animation while sentient beings are the ‘onlookers’, often as non-participants in the affray. The prioritisation of the human over the ostensibly non-human places us in a contentious position because it denies a survivalist symbiosis.2 A capacity to protect all interdependent living things, among which there is no such thing as damage limitation, is a priori because all damage triggers a chain reaction which threatens sentient and non-sentient existence simply because as co-dependents in an interdependent environment the damage is all encompassing whereby sooner or later it involves the very survival of the planet.3 The rules of engagement are applied arbitrarily, if at all, whereby the ends justify the means. As Thadani and Ayyagari argue, International Humanitarian Law incorporates various Conventions which encompass diverse aspects of war and the way that war is waged. Moreover, the International Court of Justice (ICJ) considers the question of the environment encompassing living organisms as well as the environmental composite land, water and air and the impact of and the use of lethal and chemical weapons on these spheres and the dependent ‘living organisms’ that exist within them (2015). They also underline the observations of the International Court of Justice that ‘the environment is not an abstraction but represents the living space, the quality of life and very health of human beings, including generations unborn’ (cited in Thadani & Ayyagari, 2015: 285). It is here that our story begins and ends. Between 1961 and 1971 millions of tonnes of chemical defoliant code name Agent Orange were sprayed onto the forests and cultivable land in both Central and Southern Viet Nam in the focal points of resistance against the occupying US forces. The policy was to remove the dense jungle and mangrove canopies which hid the members of the People’s Army of Viet Nam and destroy the land and crops feeding the Vietnamese population. The devastation which ensued involved severely damaging not only the land on which the population depended but also the capacity of men and women to reproduce the next generation. Here the author considers Shiva’s arguments with respect to the bifurcation of the control of human beings and their physical and biological reproduction. It is worthy of note, at this conjecture, that while her work was an important initiator in the trajectory of eco-feminist intellectual considerations, theorisation, and activism with respect to gender and the environment, sustainability, climate change and disaster it has not been without its critics. Resurreccion whose work lines up with some 2 There

are those who argue that plants and trees constitute sentient beings, not an argument that will be forwarded here. See especially Mancuso and Viola (2015) and Wohlleben (2016). 3 See chapters in this volume by Romm and Lethole and McIntyre-Mills on Systemic Ethics for an in-depth consideration of ethnic cultural links, influences, and practices of the exercise of a duty of care to the biophysical world.

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of the best in feminist political ecology, clearly delineates the evolution of feminist debate in the field coupled with some insights from her own fieldwork in an excellent article entitled Gender and the Environment in the Global South (2017)4 Shiva’s work puts gender frontline and centre in her analysis, breaking down the specific gender relations which shape women’s lives and experience along with the global patriarchy and western positioning that underwrite their ‘claim to know’ with the codicil of exactly what that knowing does or does not constitute as pivotal. While there is a real sense of universality in the gender experiences identified in her work there is no in-depth critical analysis of intersectionality or the cultural specificity of gender relations which impact on the gender division of labour and gender experience. The value of her perspective, however, is not only her focus on women and the environment but also the centrality of the biotech industry such as Monsanto, Dow Chemicals and others not only in environmental destruction but most especially in provisioning and facilitating chemical warfare and ecocide.5 Thus, this chapter will focus principally on the experience of women of the resistance in attempting to avoid chemical contamination and its impact on their lives and those of their family and community in the post war period.

The Nexus Between Reproduction and Production One of most important social justice activists in the world fighting against GMO and scientific agriculture is seed saving pioneer and ecofeminist Vandana Shiva. Her seminal work published in 1989 entitled Staying Alive: Women, Ecology and Survival in India set out clearly her philosophy which focused on the question of sustaining life on planet earth through supporting and preserving the environment. For Shiva, the only way that all sentient and non-sentient beings were to survive in the future was to cultivate the earth, embrace biodiversity and employ agricultural practices that support and nurture the environment. The emphasis is on the relationship between human beings and biodiversity, of seed saving and organic farming with women’s role as the primary producers and reproducers being pivotal to the survival of the human race and the multispecies environment which underwrites the survival of the planet now and for future generations (Corcoran-Nantes, 2019). Shiva argues that it is women that have fed the world for centuries through food production, processing, and preparation. In the past there was a clear relationship between nutrition, biodiversity, and high total output but in the present feeding the world has become ‘divorced’ from those who actively do it. Through a clear global political positioning this is, by many, believed to depend on global agribusiness and biotechnology corporations. According to Shiva this represents a ‘monoculture of 4 See

also, for example Braidotti (2018), Gaard (2015), and Resurreccion (2013). term was first used by Professor Arthur W. Galston at a Conference on War and National Responsibility where he proposed the development of an international agreement for the prohibition of ‘ecocide’ (Weisberg, 1970).

5 This

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the mind’ whereby the food we produce and eat is being designed by transnationals and male ‘western experts’ due to a belief in a more efficient biotechnological type agriculture based on genetically modified seed production of essential crops such as rice, corn, wheat and soy (Shiva, 1993). This mentality she argued would not only threaten the female led global food production underwritten by mixed cropping but the destruction of female knowledge. Furthermore, all knowledge’s outside of the ‘dominant view’ of progress and wealth are discarded, the indigenous, the ethnic, the ‘rational vs the irrational’ and the material vs the spiritual (See also McIntyre-Mills, 2014, 2017, and in this volume Romm and Lethole). For Shiva (1989) such a sacrifice is untenable: The intellectual heritage for ecological survival lies with those who are experts in survival. They have the knowledge and experience to extricate us from the ecological cul-de-sac that the western masculinist mind has manoeuvred us into. And while Third World women have privileged access to survival expertise, their knowledge is inclusive, not exclusive. The ecological categories with which they think and act can become the categories of liberation for all, for men as well as for women, for the west as well as the non-west, and for the human as well as the non-human elements of the earth. (214)

Of considerable concern to Shiva was the hijacking of agricultural practice and replacing it with laboratory produced synthetic seed and agrochemicals changing the face of agriculture for the future and the dearth of biodiversity. The enemy is biotechnological companies that stole indigenous knowledge, polluted the land and water sources. Foremost among them was Monsanto the very company which produced, and continues to produce, the toxic defoliants and Dioxin poison responsible for polluting the environment but most especially for its use over a decade in the chemical warfare against the Vietnamese population in the American war on Viet Nam.

Operation Ranch Hand—Ecocide in Viet Nam It is often believed that the use of chemical weapons as modus operandi in conventional warfare is a modern phenomenon but some forms of the use of chemicals in political conflicts and wars have existed since ancient times. The militarisation of chemistry beginning with the use of poisons, sulphur-based weaponry, chlorine gas to what we now term biological weaponry has been devastating in both execution and effect. Yet the taking of chemical agents used in farming and food production in unprecedented quantities to destroy the forests and crops and a biodiverse environment was used to devastating effect in the American War in Viet Nam. Yet this act of war was not without precedent. The British Army was one of the first to ‘successfully’ apply agro-toxics in chemical warfare and the first to mix and use a compound similar to Agent Orange and use it against insurgent food crops and to discover their location in the forest they bombed the jungles of Malay during the offensive in 1953 (Stellman et al., 2003: 681; Bonneuil & Fressoz, 2017: 130). Garrity (2014) published a letter from the National Archives which clearly defines the purpose and intent of the actions:

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Garrity (2014) Internal UK government letter responding to allegations in the press that the use of herbicides in Malaysia amounts to chemical warfare. Source National Archives. It is clear from the above letter that the proponents/protagonists of this travesty are very clear with respect to what they are doing but since then there has been no investigation or testing concerning the numbers of people affected or the extent of environmental destruction/pollution in the Malay offensive (Garrity, 2014). In the case of Viet Nam, the American offensive and the use of herbicides was far more calculated than previously thought. A study by Stellman et al. (2003) offered new evidence and calculations based on a re-interrogation of written evidence, data and logbooks which is to date the most accurate analysis of the offensive prefaced by the following: Here we present revised estimates, developed using more-complete data. The spray inventory is expanded by more than seven million litres, in particular with heavily dioxin contaminated herbicides. Estimates for the amount of dioxin sprayed are almost doubled. Hamlet census data reveal that millions of Vietnamese were likely to have been sprayed upon directly. (681)

This investigation revealed that testing in the use of defoliants in chemical warfare began in the US in 1959. The first barrels were shipped to Viet Nam in late 1962 when the use of defoliants began. From that point the different percentile calibrations of the ratio of dioxin to other chemical herbicidal agents began until they arrived at a concoction that was sufficiently toxic to, on the one hand, meet effective levels of defoliation of forests, and vegetation while on the other effect crop destruction and cut off the food supply in order to expose and debilitate the Vietnamese ‘enemy’.

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Moreover, it intentionally targeted cultivated land, crops and rice production fundamental to sustain the Vietnamese population but most especially members of the resistance and the People’s Army of Viet Nam [PAVN].6 Furthermore, ‘an estimated 85 per cent of the ammunitions used by the US army were targeted not at the enemy but at the environment sheltering them: forests, fields, cattle, water reserves, roads and dikes’ (Bonneuil & Fressoz, 2017: 128). This campaign was named Operation Ranch Hand and was undertaken between 1962 and 1971. Operation Ranch Hand was without question one of the largest and devastating campaigns of environmental destruction ever undertaken. It was all encompassing, constituting an all-out assault on human beings and wildlife in the pathways of regional and topographic targeting. The operation dispensed an estimated 73 million litres of toxic herbicides over strategic locations primarily located in central and southern Viet Nam of which up to 45 million litres was Agent Orange (Stellman et al., 2003; Von Meding, 2017). An exact estimate of Vietnamese people that were affected by the chemical onslaught is difficult to assess due to the incomplete annual population census’s across the strategic unique hamlets affected but it is generally agreed that at least 2.1 million and up to 4.8 million people were present and affected by the spraying. These figures do not include American army personnel present and working in the target areas. Operation Ranch Hand contaminated 40% of arable land (Bonneuil & Fressoz, 2017: 130), 1.7 million hectares of forest and mangrove (Tucker, 2012: 331), caused the death of many animal species and immutable mutagenic effects in human beings across generations. The unremitting ecocide emanating from the American war in Viet Nam poisoned the soil, river systems, lakes and the rice paddies facilitating the permeation of the food chain by toxic chemicals. The US occupation was aware of what they were doing and the possible effects of its ‘herbicidal program’ but proceeded anyway. The American propaganda machine was convincing, and every effort was made to advise the population that the spraying was harmless to humans and animals, that it would not contaminate crops or enter the water supply. One informant in Da Nang explained that the information they were given was very convincing because farmers were familiar with the use of insecticides and weed killers although they were used infrequently and in small quantities: We just took the same precautions, just in case, washed our hands well, wash the greens or the rice several times before cooking. We didn’t imagine that the American spraying was different. How wrong could we be? How could we know that our children and grandchildren would become victims of the American occupation?7

Even the US soldiers on the ground operating in the areas affected by Agent Orange were suitably convinced that the chemicals being used were harmless especially those who were actively assigned to Operation Ranch Hand.8 An insider report 6 This

included the North Vietnamese Army or (NVA) and the Liberation Army of South Viet Nam (LASV). The latter frequently referred to as the Viet Cong by the American Army. 7 Interview Da Nang, July 2018. 8 Not all spraying was undertaken by planes but also on the ground where soldiers would hand spray small areas from backpacks or trucks around base perimeters or roads.

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states that the herbicide solution used was six to twenty five times stronger than the recommended dosage. Unbeknown: …to the tens of thousands of American soldiers and Vietnamese civilians who were living, eating and bathing in a virtual omnipresent mist of the rainbow herbicides…. Some of the troops in Viet Nam used the empty Agent Orange drums for barbecue pits. Others stored watermelons and potatoes in them. Still others rigged the residue laden drums for showers. (US Veteran Staff Report, 1990, emphasis mine)

Worthy of note is the findings of Stellman et al. (2003) that the 55-gallon (208 litre) drums returned from the spraying mission with two litres of residue still in them and that even after three rinses 20% toxicity remained. But as Sills (2014) notes in his book Toxic War, Operation Ranch Hand was frequently ‘off target’ as spray drift extended the environmental damage to food crops further afield: Crops could be inadvertently killed in different ways: Some of the sprayed forests contained hidden, temporary gardens. Farmers in the Mekong delta often planted their paddies and gardens alongside roads and canals that also happened to be defoliation targets. Herbicides dripping from leaking spray valves landed on crops growing under the aircraft’s flight path. And herbicides used for defoliation sometimes drifted to cultivated areas. It’s impossible to determine exactly how much food in Vietnam was contaminated by herbicides. Crop destruction, both intentional and accidental, may well have been the most important source of dioxin exposure to the people in Vietnam, including American soldiers, but much of it remains virtually unrecorded. (80)

As a military strategy clearing forest and jungle in order to expose enemy locations and activities had no grounding in reality. The successful resistance to American occupation rode on the back of non-conventional warfare waged against them—total normalcy in the day and military activities and engagement throughout the night. As one of the helicopter pilots of Operation Ranch Hand recalled: Another problem was that….the VC “owned the night.” They were most likely to travel and attack in darkness, when increased visibility from defoliation wouldn’t be much help. Even worse, the spray missions had accidentally destroyed commercial crops and fruit trees. The local civilians were furious, and the Viet Cong enjoyed a propaganda windfall. (Sills, 2014: 34)

The realities of Operation Ranch Hand by 1970 were omnipresent and in that year such was the concern that the US Congress insisted that the Ministry of Defence engage the National Academy of Sciences to investigate ecological and physiological effects of the use of Agent Orange (Stellman et al. 2003: 681). The controversy over the use of chemical warfare in Viet Nam and most especially with respect to the herbicides used in the US war led to an almost total ban on domestic use. Sadly, far too late for the US administration on the ground to stop or to undo the biological and environmental devastation wrought by the American War on Viet Nam.

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Women and Agent Orange Women were a very large contingent among the resistance during the war but there were certain areas in which women predominated such as construction and food production where they constituted 75% of the labour. Working outside in the daytime they were frequently in strategic locations where bombing and herbicide spraying sorties were frequent and there were few places to hide. In Central and Southern Viet Nam where Operation Ranch Hand focussed, its operations were directly aimed at crops grown in the hamlets which were the main source of food for both the local population and the fighters in the forests and mountains. While certain crops could be moved into the forests, as the onslaught of chemical spraying entrenched itself as a weapon of war, the rice paddies and corn production could not. Thus, many women worked in the field producing subsistence crops during the day and were active in the resistance movement at night. From the very initiation of Operation Ranch Hand women were clear that the enemy were spraying chemicals, but it was not clear to them how poisonous it might be. Despite the ensuing US propaganda telling them it was harmless, still they tried to take precautions, minimal though they might have been, to protect themselves but mostly the children. Over time it was clear that the herbicide spray was invasive creating physiological responses in those who were exposed to it: When we were out in the fields working, we could hear the planes coming. The spray planes had a louder, different sound. We would immediately send the children into the houses and shut the door while we continued to work in the fields…we pulled our scarves over our mouths and noses, the spray made your eyes sting, sometimes you would catch your breath or cough9

In the Mekong spraying began early in the war and it never seemed to stop: In the beginning no one said what it was they were spraying only later we were told it was called Agent Orange. At the time though we knew that it was some kind of poison because it started to kill the crops. When we heard the planes coming some would jump into the trenches we built around the fields, others of us carried on working because we had to make it look like we were just peasant farmers working in the fields not resistance fighters. If we weren’t covered the spray would give you a burning feeling on your arms, and your eyes hurt and watered. Some people came out in a rash which was difficult to get rid of and others had headaches.10

As one army doctor put it most succinctly to Minh Chuyen in the book Family of Fallen Leaves: Stories of Agent Orange by Viet Namese Writers: As a physician of the military forces of Viet Nam, when I lived with the troops in the jungles, dozens of times American planes attacked us spraying dioxin over a vast area. We knew it was dangerous, but the Agent Orange mist enveloped the whole Truong Son mountain range. We had no place to hide; we could only stand and wait for the blow of death. (Chuyen, 2010: 161). 9 Interview,

Hue, July 2016. Mekong Delta, January 2016.

10 Interview,

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Women who were part of the resistance located in the mountains and forests encountered little respite from the relentless toxic spraying operations. There was nowhere to escape to beyond the camouflage netting or canvas awnings under which they often slept. They knew that this was mere damage limitation in the face of the poison raining down on them. For the most part the militias would try to camp near rivers or streams which provided water for washing, cooking and bathing. It was also useful for hiding when in the exposed areas of the riverbanks and several respondents stated that they would submerge themselves in the water to hide when bombing, herbicide spraying, or reconnaissance planes and helicopters passed overhead. As one respondent stated: The banks of the rivers and streams were usually in the open. When we were near them, we would go back and forth collecting water, sometimes washing clothes or (menstrual) cloths. Sometimes we had to walk quite a way to get there so we would do as much as we could and then make our way back to camp. When we heard the aircraft in the distance there was nowhere to go but in the water. I would grab a reed or hollow stalk to breathe through while I was under the water till danger had passed.11 When I think about it now…. there we were bathing in contaminated water, contaminating our clothes by washing them there. We collected rainwater that dripped from the trees and passed across the leaves that had been sprayed with chemicals and poison. No matter how hard we tried to escape bit by bit we were making ourselves sick and we have the shame of taking the war home with us.12

Sometimes there was simply nowhere to go. Women messengers and spies would go on foot or by bicycle in the guise of taking foodstuffs to the hamlets or visiting relatives. On the open roads there was no refuge and much of this work was carried out during the day when it would not raise suspicion. Travelling at night was far more precarious and so daytime was preferred. Fortunately, I travelled around a lot as a messenger but even during the day there were risks. The spraying aircraft would swoop down low and sprayed the crops that run alongside of the road. I’d pull my blouse up over my face and my Non la (leaf hat) down as far as I could whether I was walking or on a bike. Not looking suspicious was more important than protecting yourself.

Without question the principal target of Operation Ranch Hand was to disrupt and radically diminish the food supplies to the Vietnamese population and the fighting forces and the resistance. Early on the Americans were unable to discriminate between one and the other and those troops on the ground, despite communiqués from Washington to avoid damaging the civilian population there was no attempt or even pretence that the military were doing so. Forest and mountain sides became denuded in the heavily hit areas, crops swiftly diminished and in some areas were virtually non-existent as the environmental damage and Dioxin created barren lands out of fertile soil. Even in areas that were not heavily targeted crop production diminished offering ever-decreasing outputs most especially of rice—a staple in the Vietnamese diet and 11 Interview, 12 Interview,

Hue, July 2016. Hanoi, July 2018.

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the most exposed crop of peasant farmers. Viet Nam, a nett exporter of rice, found itself unable to adequately feed its population. In the war, the priority was feeding the fighting forces but the difficulties of transporting foodstuffs unhindered grew exponentially. As one informant ironically said ‘rice became more precious than money or gold’. Carts and wagons when stopped on the roads or hamlets in target areas would be raided for rice or have it confiscated. As another informant stated: We had to save all the rice we could. Most went to the liberation fighters but when we couldn’t get it to them, we hid it in a secret spot for when they could come down from the mountains and get it. In our houses we never kept more rice than we needed for one meal. The rest we put in clay pots and buried underground away from the house. Rice was a rich reward for enemy informants so in our hamlet we made sure there was nothing for them to take or to arouse suspicion which would attract enemy raids on our village… It happened to a hamlet nearby and they burnt it to the ground and killed everyone they could find there.13

The result was sub nutrition and the pauperisation of large sectors of the Vietnamese population. Not least the food producers themselves as young women especially would move to urban areas to work to raise money for food for their families. In the post war period peasant farmers were forced back on to the land to employ their skills in the reconstruction of the country and the revival of the agricultural economy. A daunting task in the face of a devastated eco system.

Agent Orange and the Children of the ‘Significant Ghost’14 Beyond the visible forms of ecological devastation both the victors and the vanquished were destined to take a less visible but more toxic mutagenic effect of Agent Orange home from the war with them. The key immutable chemical in Agent Orange—dioxin is now acknowledged to be one of the most highly toxic chemical compounds created by humans. Dioxin worked through the human biological system affecting the endocrinological balance creating terminal and chronic systemic illness while effectively permeating male and female reproductive systems. Initially it seemed that illnesses suffered by returning US and Viet Nam veterans in the post war years, most incurable and some terminal, were ‘coincidental’ rather than a product of the ecocide inflicted in the American war on Viet Nam. The cases of cancer, chloracne, diabetes II, cardiovascular conditions, Parkinson’s disease and peripheral neuropathy all of which were occurring in rates far higher than those expected in the age cohort of 25–35 years of age. As the toll of illness mounted among veterans joining the dots, as it were, was not so hard although official investigations and research were consistently hampered and delayed in the US, in Viet Nam when the claims for war disability pensions were filed in the succeeding years

13 Interview,

Hue, July 2017. was an expression used by a US ambassador to Viet Nam in the post war years to describe the lingering presence of Agent Orange and its consequences in US-Viet Nam relations. 14 This

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the illnesses that veterans were presenting with followed a clear pattern as did the places where they served. Following this was the emergence of high rates of spontaneous abortions and the birth of Veteran’s children with severe congenital abnormalities unheard of and unseen before the war period. Meanwhile, among veterans in the US, similar stories emerged particularly amongst those directly assigned to Operation Ranch Hand. For those who wrote about Agent Orange and the travesty of the mutagenic effects on Veterans and their families, this came very close to home as those with no members of their extended kin active in the resistance were extremely rare: For them, the suffering caused by Agent Orange was tangible, real, and pervasive: more than 2 million Vietnamese currently receive an Agent Orange benefit from the government, and it is estimated that more than 3 million suffer from related illnesses with various degrees of debilitation. Many of those 3 million are the children and grandchildren of the men and women initially exposed. In a country of approximately 89 million, that’s more than 3 percent of the present-day population. (Waugh, 2010: 11)

For the young veterans of Viet Nam, many in their mid-twenties having deferred marriage and having children, the very high expectations they had in the post war period were often shattered replaced by fear and uncertainty as children were being born to some veterans with serious birth defects both physical and intellectual such as spina bifida, cerebral palsy, missing or deformed limbs or internal organs and severe learning difficulties. For veterans getting married and having a child became a calculated risk as female veterans, in particular, frequently married male veterans increasing the potential risk of difficulties in getting pregnant, bearing a child to full term or having a child with physical or intellectual disabilities. For the many members of the resistance that came from the North and served in Central and Southern Viet Nam it was possible to obfuscate the actual locations in which they had actively served, much more difficult for those whose families lived in the geographical areas that were ‘hotspots’ in the war. For some women both joy and sadness co-existed in married life after the war: I got married some years after the war to a widower with a child who was also a veteran….most men I had met till then didn’t want a strong woman for a wife, they wanted someone to look after them and serve them. That wasn’t for me. My husband also served in the war. His first wife had died leaving him with a son severely damaged by Agent Orange. Both of us must look after him and care for him. He can’t do anything for himself. I had hoped to have a child but it wasn’t to be. My husband and I tried for a child but my pregnancies ended with me miscarrying or a stillbirth. In the end we just gave up….So I have no child because of the war and Agent Orange.15 I was so excited getting married after the war. My husband and I served in the South but in different units and different locations. I was really happy when I got pregnant then when I went into labour and the baby was born the nurses took him away, he wasn’t crying. They told me he was stillborn but I wanted to see him, they said that it would upset me too much but I insisted…when they brought him to me it didn’t look like a baby at all I couldn’t believe that something like that could come out of my body. I cried for days. I decided I wasn’t going to have any more children I just couldn’t go through that again. 15 Interview,

Hanoi, July 2016.

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There were women who, for various reasons, actively chose not to marry. Delaying marriage gave them an opportunity to see what might happen to veterans who have children after being exposed to Agent Orange during the war. I was told that in the North there was a small village where ten women veterans who, having been exposed to Agent Orange, had chosen neither to marry nor have children, Then there were women who were visibly physically damaged by serving in areas where incessant spraying had contaminated the environment in which the unit was stationed: I served in Agent Orange territory so I knew even then that there could be consequences for me, the spring we bathed and washed our clothes in was contaminated. You could tell because the water was cloudy, not clear and even though we used purification tablets, it wasn’t going to make that much difference. Many people lost their hair. When I returned home my mother cried, she hardly recognised me. I had no hair, I was 30yrs of age, not a good age for marriage, my skin didn’t look healthy, I didn’t look beautiful (sic) and I was very sick. Who would want to marry a woman that looked like that? There were other women who returned from the war like that and in my district, there were 115 women that never married because they were affected by the war. We knew we were contaminated so we were scared to get married, men not so much.16

The mutagenic effects for those who had been in contact with Agent Orange were initially apparent some couples had children with congenital illnesses and physical deformities while others did not, even within the same family. It was soon acknowledged that the effects of Dioxin contamination were passed on from one generation to another and in some cases it skipped a generation. Members of Vietnamese families who had been stationed in areas sprayed by Agent Orange and those who lived in those locations were most at risk. In Hanoi, Vietnamese youth were increasingly encouraged to take a different approach to marriage, those who had family members damaged by Agent Orange or in which grandparents or great grandparents were known to have been located in Agent Orange hotspots were not seen as ideal partners with respect to marriage and children. Young women would often get themselves tested when in the first trimester of pregnancy with respect to dioxin levels in the blood and if positive many would terminate pregnancy at that point. As children damaged by Agent Orange were still be appearing in the fourth generation of Vietnamese families there is concern that these practices will increase as women who give birth to children damaged by Dioxin found themselves alone to raise those children as husbands and partners walked away.

Environmental Eulogy for a Conflict It is almost half a century since the American war in Viet Nam ended and the consequences of the use of chemical warfare against the Vietnamese people, both civilian and military, should be considered a crime against humanity and as Gauger et al. (2012) argue ‘ecocide is the missing 5th crime against Peace’. The principal component of the chemical compound Agent Orange is dioxin it is often described as one 16 Interview,

Hanoi, July 2017.

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of the most toxic chemicals on the planet. It permeates the structures of all living things, destroys, or adulterates everything in its path and the biodiverse environment that people depend on to live and survive. Black (2019) offers a clear insight into the magnitude and longevity of dioxin in Viet Nam: In the language of science, dioxin is hydrophobic and lipophilic: it hates water and loves fat. It sinks into the sediment at the bottom of water bodies, where it attaches to organic matter, moving up the food chain from plankton to small aquatic animals and finally to fish. In soil, it ends up in free-range chickens and ducks and their eggs. It becomes steadily more concentrated at each stage, a process known as bioaccumulation. Eighty-seven percent of dioxin enters the body through ingestion, before migrating into fatty tissue, the liver, and breast milk. (Black, 2019)

For those who survived the war there were few guarantees how or if they would survive the peace. As Waugh (2010) succinctly puts it: ….dioxin also moved inside human bodies. Vietnamese civilian refugees, volunteers, and soldiers alike returned home after the war, often traveling all the way across the country. Many of them knew immediately upon exposure to Agent Orange that something was wrong…. Like their former enemies, they soon began to discover that making it home alive did not mean they had survived the war. (5)

As the post war years passed the sheer extent of the human and ecological tragedy unfolded. Decade after decade American veterans of the war filed class actions against the US government, and finally moved to prosecute, unsuccessfully, the chemical companies such as Monsanto, Dow chemicals and others for the violation of international law which prohibited the use of chemical weapons such as Agent Orange. For the Vietnamese population damaged by Agent Orange there was no recognition or redress in the US legal system as the Vietnamese Victims of Agent Orange, formed in 2003, continued to fight for recognition and compensation from the US government through its legal system but to date to no avail. In 2012, at a point when American veterans of the Viet Nam were finally receiving compensation for the medical consequences of their conscripted service there is still little hope on the horizon that Viet Nam veterans might receive similar consideration. In the same year the US government and NGOs engaged in the clean-up of the US bases in Da Nang and Bien Hoa now virtual toxic dumps littered with the remnants of its chemical warfare against the population from where Operation Ranch Hand was launched. In the post war years, the remains of the toxic cargoes have already entered the soil, the water and the food chain and no one can predict when or even if it will ever dissipate. The task of the clean-up as Black (2019) argues is unimaginably difficult: Both U.S. and Vietnamese officials call it one of the biggest and most complex environmental remediation projects in the world. It will involve the treatment of enough contaminated soils and sediments to fill 200 Olympic-size swimming pools, and it will cost at least $390 million, and possibly much more.

The American war in Viet Nam was a bonanza for the chemical companies that could barely keep up with the demand for the toxic defoliants and herbicides demanded by the US military, the leader among them being Agent Orange. Of little surprise should be the complicity of Monsanto which provided most of the Agent Orange used in

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Viet Nam and became the most resistant to recognising any claim for restitution or compensation. As Sills (2014) remarked: No matter which formula they decided upon, Monsanto was going to pay more than any other defendant. It had sold the most Orange to the military, and its product was nearly as dirty as Diamond’s. As a result, Monsanto was more willing than the rest of the defendants to try the case, and it balked at any talk of settlement. (618)

It is a pattern that Monsanto followed for succeeding decades as it continues to produce toxic herbicides such as glyphostate which damage human health, native fauna, wildlife, and all elements of the environment with impunity. The litany of cases taken against the company, now a derivative of Bayer, is incalculable as billions of dollars have been spent meeting and fighting compensation claims while instituting a no-fault clause for those that have been successful. Vandana Shiva continues to fight the company and decry its role in the destruction of living eco systems.17 Her arguments with respect to the sidelining of women and the importance of the role of women in food production, on the one hand responsible for the physical and biological reproduction of their families while on the other facing physical exclusion or marginalisation in public decision making processes apply equally to our case study here. For the women of Viet Nam, veterans of the war of independence, the victory was bittersweet. Many women still live with the sacrifice of war, the toxic assault on their capacity to feed their families, to care for war damaged family members, including their damaged offspring, as the weight of the peace lies on their shoulders; consistently facing the herculean task of exercising a duty of care which extends beyond the walls of their homes into the streets, their community and the very psyche of National endeavour and restitution.

References Black, G. (2019). Fifty years after, a daunting cleanup of Vietnam’s toxic legacy. Yale Environment 360. https://e360.yale.edu/features/fifty-years-after-a-daunting-cleanup-of-vietnam-toxiclegacy-dioxin-agent-orange. Bonneuil, C., & Fressoz, J. B. (2017). The shock of the anthropocene: The earth, history and us. London: Verso. Braidotti, R. (2018). A theoretical framework for the critical posthumanities. Theory, Culture and Society, 36, 31–61. Chuyen. M. (2010). ‘Le Cao Dai and the Agent Orange Sufferers’. In Charles Waugh (Ed.). Family of fallen leaves: Stories of agent orange by viet namese writers. University of Georgia Press. Corcoran-Nantes, Y. (2019). Gender, climate change and sustainable development: The unhappy marriage of engendering policy ad practice. In J. J. McIntyre-Mills & N. R. A. Romm (Eds.), Mixed methods and cross disciplinary research: Towards cultivating eco-systemic living (pp. 349–361). Cham, Switzerland: Springer. Gaard, G. (2015). Ecofeminism and climate change. Women’s Studies International Forum, 49, 20–33. 17 Shiva

successfully sued Monsanto in 1999.

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Garrity, A. (2014). ‘The UK’s use of Agent Orange in Malaysia’ in Toxics Blog. The Toxic Remnants of War Project. https://www.toxicremnantsofwar.info/uk-agent-orange-malaysia/. Seen 22 June 2020. Gauger, A., Ravatel-Furnel, M. P., Kulbicki, L., Short, D., & Higgins, P. (2012). Ecocide is the missing 5th crime against peace. UNSPECIFIED. London: Human Rights Consortium. Mancuso, S., & Viola, A. (2015). Brilliant green: The surprising history and science of plant intelligence. Washington, DC: Island Press. McIntyre-Mills, J. (2014). Systemic ethics and non-anthropocentric stewardship: Implications for transdisciplinarity and cosmopolitan politics. Contemporary Systems Series. New York: Springer. McIntyre-Mills, J. (2017). Planetary passport. Switzerland: Springer. Resurreccion, B. P. (2013). Persistent women and environment linkages in climate change and sustainable development agendas. Women’s Studies International Forum, 40, 33–43. Resurreccion, B. (2017). Gender and the environment and in the global south: From ‘women, environment, and development’ to feminist political ecology. In S. Macgregor (Ed.), Routledge handbook of gender and environment (pp. 71–85). New York: Routledge. Shiva, V. (1989). Staying alive: Women, ecology and survival in India. London: Zed Books. Shiva, V. (1993). Monocultures of the mind: Perspectives on biodiversity and biotechnology. London: Zed Books. Shiva, V. (2005). Earth democracy: Justice, sustainability and peace. Boston, MA: Southend Press. Sills, P. (2014). Toxic war: The story of Agent Orange. Nashville: Vanderbilt University Press. Stellman, J. M., Stellman, S. T., Christian, R., Weber, T., & Tomasillo, C. (2003). The extent and patterns of usage of AGENT Orange and other herbicides in Viet Nam. Nature, 422, 681–687. Thadani, K., & Ayyagari, R. (2015). Law of armed conflict and the environment. Environmental Policy and the Law, 45(6), 285–290. Thuyet, N. L. T., & Johansson, A. (2001). Impact of chemical warfare with Agent Orange on women’s reproductive lives in Viet Nam: A pilot study. Reproductive Health Matters, 9(18), 156–164. Tucker, R. P. (2012). War and environment. In J. R. McNeill & E. S. Mauldlin (Eds.), A companion to global environment companion (pp. 319–339). Chichester: Blackwell. US Veteran Staff Report. (1990, November). The story of Agent Orange. https://www.11thcavnam. com/main/story_of_agent_orange.htm. Von Meding, J. (2017, October 4). Agent Orange, exposed: How US chemical warfare in Viet Nam unleashed a slow-moving disaster. The Conversation. Waugh, C. (2010). Family of fallen leaves: Stories of Agent Orange by Viet Namese writers. Athens, GA: University of Georgia Press. Weisberg, B. (1970). Ecocide in Indochina. San Francisco: Canfield Press. Wohlleben, P. (2016). The hidden life of trees: What they feel, how they communicate-discoveries from a secret world. Carlton, VIC, Australia: Black Inc.

Yvonne Corcoran-Nantes is Associate Professor (Adjunct) and Principal Research Fellow in the Social Sciences at Flinders University. She is also an International Gender Consultant working with major INGOS and engages with some of the major issues facing women globally.

Chapter 24

Reflections on the Changing Role of Women in a Post Disaster Environment, Central Sulawesi Indonesia Harnida W. Adda, Yvonne Corcoran-Nantes, and Pricylia Chintya Dewi Buntuang Abstract This study aims to analyze the changes in women’s socio-economic roles in the wake of the Tsunami and earthquake which hit Palu City in Central Sulawesi in 2018. There were twenty informants in this study, all were women directly affected by the disaster who had previously managed businesses. The study was designed qualitatively by identifying informants with a purposive sampling technique. The results showed that the socio-economic role of women after the disaster experienced a substantive shift. Women that were economically affected by the disaster must struggle to meet their household needs because businesses that were previously jointly managed with their husbands had to be closed either due to seismic damage or that they no longer had customers. Some women lost their husbands and this was a disincentive to opening their businesses again; while to restart a new business, they were constrained by a lack of access to venture capital despite the fact that some of them now sell cakes and food. This situation certainly has an impact on family income so that socially, the women in this study no longer have the time and opportunity to socialize because their main focus is on meeting the basic needs of the family. Currently, many women must assume the role of head of the family. They have difficulty in getting a new job because they do not have the contacts or network needed to get a decent job. Some women, initiated income generating activities that enabled them to work mostly from home. Of this group some managed independently, and others collaborated with fellow residents of temporary settlements. This initiative strengthened the ties among women as head of the family and revealed a clear determination to fulfil the socio-economic roles previously undertaken by their husbands. Keywords Women · Economy · Social · Employment · Business · Natural disaster H. W. Adda · P. C. D. Buntuang Tadulako University, Palu, Indonesia Y. Corcoran-Nantes (B) College of Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences, Flinders University, Adelaide, SA, Australia e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2021 J. J. McIntyre-Mills and Y. Corcoran-Nantes (eds.), From Polarisation to Multispecies Relationships, Contemporary Systems Thinking, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-33-6884-2_24

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Introduction Disasters have mostly been analyzed and viewed from a western point of view and certainly more research and an extensive analysis has been undertaken with respect to disasters occurring in the western world as ‘unusual’ events. Thus, solutions and remedies are often imposed and financed from a western standpoint whereby the bifurcation of occurring disasters in the western and non-western world drives a critical analysis of events. Gaillard et al (2017) argue that: In this sense, discourses on disasters have often underscored the extraordinary dimension of natural hazards affecting regions of the world believed to be ‘over-populated’, ‘underdeveloped’, ‘un-informed’, ‘un-planned’, and ‘un-prepared’. A clear and brutal border is manufactured therefore between regions of the world that are supposed to be safe—that is, the West and its allies—and those regularly struck by harmful events—that is, the rest of the world. (429–430)

Disasters whether ‘natural’ or ‘manmade’ have multifarious effects and the locations of impact affect diverse sectors of society in different ways. In a post disaster scenario, solutions need to be intersectional most especially with respect to access to resources and support because the opportunities for access to, and use of, resources underlines existing inequalities within the society. Thus, it tends to disadvantage certain groups so that they are more vulnerable to the effects of, in this case, a natural disaster. The earthquake and subsequent tsunami which in 2017 devastated Palu, Central Sulawesi is our case study here to underwrite the experience of those most affected by the disaster and in the post-disaster handling of socio-economic reconstruction are women and girls. Even more so when we consider the persistent circumscribed social mores and behavioral gender norms in society which have an impact on and define gender relations and the gender division of labour in a society (Gaillard et al., 2017; Corcoran-Nantes, 2019 & Ginige et al., 2014). Consequently, this offers different perspectives on the experiential impact of disasters for men and women and ironically, often making women the victims rather than the principal stakeholders and drivers in post disaster reconstruction. Overall, social and environmental change, together with a system of cultural and patriarchal power, create a situation whereby the effects and fallout of disasters tend to fall disproportionately on women. Gender norms also underwrite the power of households to adapt to change, especially in a post disaster restoration (Perez et al., 2015; Cutter 2017; in Moreno & Shaw, 2018). Women and girls also experience more intangible and even unimaginable losses as they are directly or indirectly affected by, and arising from, the disaster, including violence and trauma, pressure to get married early, the loss of educational opportunities, and an increased workload. Their burden not only increased but also became more diverse, assuming responsibilities women had never anticipated. Therefore, they suffer from ‘multiple disasters’ whose impacts are more real for women and girls, which can create new disasters for women if post-disaster management is not carried out comprehensively.

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Although women and girls are considered a ‘vulnerable’ group in relation to postdisaster impacts, there is a need to recognize their capacity to respond and survive in new conditions. Raising awareness of this will contribute to improved gender equality, accelerate and inform the post-disaster recovery process and help reduce the impact of future disasters. Women’s resilience transforms new behavioral patterns as disaster obliges them to increase their capacities in caretaking, communicating, organizing communal activities, and building new partnerships, not only among women but also in conjunction with men.

The Women of Central Sulawesi The role of women in the development of the Indonesian nation is very important and a national asset. Women are a significant contributor to economic development, both as an agent of change and a subject of development. Women’s participation in economic growth is crucial not only to reduce poverty levels among women, but also as a solid foundation in other sectors (Satya, 2012). The role of women in the national economy is fundamental given that they constitute over half of Indonesia’s population. The situation is enhanced by Indonesia’s allocation of 5% of its total budget to the task of empowering women through investing in gender and development (Aninda, 2018). The contribution of women in the current economic climate can reduce income inequality and increase economic diversification, which can ensure economic resilience (Satya, 2012). Encouraged by the role of women as agents of development that should be considered in economic development, women today are educated, have the same rights as men to have occupational access in their field of interest (Anugrah, 2017). Yet, despite progress, women still must face conditions where they do not have the same opportunities as men to engage in economic activity (Satya, 2012). However, economic independence, especially in the informal productive business sector, gives women greater power and position in domestic relations, family and social environment (Adda & Corcoran-Nantes, 2019). Women are an important human resource for development in Indonesia. When women succeed in demonstrating their social and economic value, they not only illuminate their standing as individuals and citizens but also elevate their family status. This happens because they maintain a cultural status as women while making a significant contribution to the family income and subsistence (Anugrah, 2017). Regarding gender, Central Sulawesi, as in other regions of Indonesia, is a highly patriarchal society in which men are deferred to and expected to be, the principal breadwinners in their households. Nonetheless, women have been taught to support themselves from an early age and contribute to family subsistence. Regardless of their contribution to managing the family unit, women, especially those in rural areas, still have a lower status than men. Within the culturally circumscribed gender relations women are primarily responsible for domestic tasks and take charge in some spheres but they are not permitted to take control of the entire decision-making

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process in either public or private spheres. Their autonomy mostly encompasses taking care of the house and the children. For instance, although many women manage their families’ money, rural housewives, in particular, commonly do not have full authority to spend money on things other than their families’ basic needs, such as food and clothing. However, in the aftermath of the economic and nature crisis, which significantly changed the financial situation of most households’ women have been expected to further engage in family matters and to contribute a larger share of the income to support their families. While there are culturally imposed limitations with respect to gendered social values and norms and individual capacities, women are able to demonstrate a not insubstantial contribution to development, both at both national and regional levels, especially when disasters occur (Aninda, 2018). Central Sulawesi has a unique mix of socio-cultural values due to the cultural specificity of indigenous ethnic groups and multiple migrant ethnic groups from other areas. The ethnic groups include the Bugis, Manadonese, Balinese, Sumatran, and Javanese, as well as Chinese and Arab. The interaction between indigenous and immigrant people of various ethnic and religious groups infuses local traditions with new knowledge. Moreover, the diversity of Central Sulawesi and the strength of its local social customs are significant in integrating and shaping the socioeconomic circumstances of people in the region. In the aftermath of a disaster, regardless of their ethnic background, women’s participation in the economy is indispensable. Disasters produce many difficulties but especially socio-economic problems that have a substantive impact on the family and the community such as the loss of economic resources and the loss of property. As a result of disasters, women are the most afflicted members of the community. Women suffer most when disaster strikes because domestic duties are not only about themselves but also their direct responsibility to care for and protect the more vulnerable members of the household, including children, the elderly and the disabled. For women in the Boxing Day Tsunami of 2004 this responsibility led to the high number of women losing their lives in their attempt to protect and move their vulnerable family members out of harm’s way (Ginige et al., 2014; Oxfam, 2005). Ironically, women experience greater suffering due to disasters and disaster management, notwithstanding differences in gender status which has marginalized women giving them an inferior bargaining position. Disasters make women more vulnerable to poverty. Increasing the number of women who are effectively household heads, after losing the ‘main’ breadwinner and losing their source of income, households with female household heads are extremely vulnerable to poverty. Women, when married in Indonesia, are positioned as housewives who are primarily responsible for productive unpaid domestic work and household management rather than being positioned as ‘breadwinners’.1 This research focuses on the changing role of women in socio-economic change, especially after the earthquake and tsunami disaster in Palu City. Disasters paralyze the economy, whereby regional income decreases, unemployment increases, and 1 Worthy of note here is that even when women earn more than men in productive paid employment

men are still considered to be the de jure ‘breadwinners’ and heads of household.

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investment ceases (Angriani, 2018). In the social sector many education and health facilities are damaged. On September 28, 2018 there was an earthquake, of more than 7 on the Richter Scale, followed by a tsunami and liquefaction that rocked Palu, Sigi and Donggala, leaving long-lasting suffering and trauma for the local community, especially for women and children. Various social problems have since arisen, such as increasing cases of child marriage, narcotics trafficking, sexual violence, disruption of children’s education, and women’s rights related to separate sanitation facilities. Successive studies over the years have confirmed that women and girls are the most affected by natural disasters in ways similar to post conflict situations. As Prescott (2018) notes: Although it is understood that armed conflict and natural disasters have gender differentiated impacts upon populations that are not identical, extreme weather events could have a gendered shock effect similar to armed conflict’s impacts on women and girls in many respects. The impact timeline is dramatically foreshortened, and particularly in poor communities, resources that provide resilience capabilities among the civilian population in times of gradual climate change, such as harvested and portable food or jewellery to sell so that such food could be bought, are quickly consumed. This heightens women’s and girls’ risks to the impacts in the other areas such as food security and health are have confirmed. (53)

Moreover, the social sector can both directly and indirectly affect and cripple the economy in view of the deprivations caused by disasters. With large scale damage and loss, a comprehensive economic recovery requires sizeable inputs over a protracted period. The pivotal impediment problem for women and girls and their survival is limited access to resources. Although the situation of women has improved postdisaster, in terms of their participation in the labour force, women still have limited access to resources such as social networks, transportation, information, skills, control of natural and economic resources, individual mobility, housing, and employment. Limited access has an impact on the process of mitigation and recovery due to disaster thus marginalization has led to greater suffering for women when disaster strikes. Women’s household management includes a duty of care for children, elderly parents, and family members who may also have physical limitations. Women, unlike men, do not have the autonomy to relocate to find work after experiencing a disaster; while men can move freely and leave the household without being bound by domestic duties and responsibilities. The situation of women in terms of culture, the capacity to save themselves and the lack of mobility places them in a vulnerable situation when dealing with disasters (Kibria, 2016; Ashraf & Azad, 2015). Such conditions greatly affect the role of women in the economy, especially female entrepreneurs, who were affected by the earthquake and tsunami, because to recover it requires time, energy and thought, and, in addition, it requires a sizable amount of capital to be able to get back up and survive to sustain economic growth. In addition, the gender imbalance between women and men in the economy highlights the inequity of the post disaster situation whereby men are prioritized with respect to the benefits of family health insurance, property ownership, and credit (Aninda, 2018). Local government has encouraged the establishment of many special programs that are intended to empower women. These new policies have had positive effects on

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rural women, who constitute more than half of the Indonesian population. Concomitantly, governmental structural changes have led to a shift in values and culture that have benefited women and their families. Such conditions open access to the increasing role of women in socio-economic change. Social change can be in the form of social entrepreneurship which has the power to achieve social transformation (Muhammad, 2018). Entrepreneurs are people who have innovative solutions to overcome social problems. They are ambitious and persistent individuals, who do not rely on the business world and government to realize their ideas or direct systematic change on a larger scale. For this reason, it is necessary to conduct research related to the socio-economic condition of women after the disaster to discover how far the social role of women has changed after the earthquake and tsunami in Palu City.

Gender Relations and Socio-Economic Change in Central Sulawesi This qualitative study was designed to consider the individual experiences of women in the post disaster reconstruction in Palu. The cohort of this study are women entrepreneurs who had businesses that were operating successfully before the earthquake and tsunami. There were twenty informants in this study who were selected by using a purposive sampling technique all of whom predominantly live in the city of Palu. Women in this study are those who before the disaster, had a source of income that was managed together with their husbands. Some of these women are widows and others were forced to leave their families and move to other areas to make a living. In the absence of husbands, those women must assume the de jure role of head of the family. The method used is descriptive in which the researcher analyzes the reality experienced by the target group through data presented in verbal and non-verbal form. Research data collection used interview techniques, document tracking and observation. The informants were asked to provide responses based on their personal view of their experience. In this case, the components of personal experience are based on three principles, namely: (a) attitude, what is the attitude of this person when facing certain situations; (b) beliefs, namely the belief and acceptance of what is considered right and (c) values, namely the values that guide someone in taking the necessary actions required (Beebe et al., 2010). All these issues are influenced by gender relations in different cultural/ethnic contexts which in turn shapes the gender division of labour in both public and private spheres. In the field of employment, women find it difficult to advance due to the existence of various socio-cultural values that influence employment practices. These factors create barriers that block the integration of women into advanced levels in the formal labour market (ILO, 2012). Even in areas where the family lineage is descended from a line of women by which women inherit a resilient autonomy in family and social relations, women’s domestic work is still prioritized. Irrespective of any paid work

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that women do outside of the home, household management, family care duties and domestic subsistence tasks are expected to take precedence over paid work outside of the home. Moreover, in some cases this limits women’s access to other social and economic activities beyond the household. The gender division of labor between men and women illustrates the position of women in relation to indirect (domestic) productive work and direct (public) productive work (Hubeis, 2010; Ahdiah, 2013). The analysis can be construed as follows: a.

b.

c.

d.

e.

The role of tradition places women as central to the reproductive function of caring for the household, giving birth, and caring for children, and nurturing their husbands. Arguably, women devote 100% of their lives to their families after they get married. The gender division of labor places women at home and men outside the home from a traditional perspective. In a period of transition or flux, tradition still determines the gender division of tasks, but the task maintaining harmony and managing domestic affairs remains the responsibility of women. A dual role divides a woman’s life into two; aligning the domestic and public roles. A husband’s support will make women stronger and their lack of support will cause anxiety or even lead to open or hidden conflicts in the household. An egalitarian role takes up women’s time and attention as applied to outside activities. Moral support and the level of concern from men is essential to avoid conflicts of interest in the allocation of roles. A more contemporary role is the result of women’s choice to be independent in solitude. The number of women who have the privilege of full independence in making choices is still limited and will encounter obstacles along with the increasingly strong domination of men over women due to male traditions and egos.

Clearly, these roles will greatly influence the strategies that women apply in overcoming or reducing the difficulties which they are presented with based on their level of education, employment, health, and income level (Khaerani, 2017). Changes in social structure patterns occur not due to modernization alone but from ‘natural’ factors and events such as earthquakes and environmental disasters. Social change itself can be interpreted as change to social institutions in a society that affect its social system (Fahlia et al., 2019). The socioeconomic impact can be seen from three aspects including business opportunities, increased income, and labour (Kurniawan, 2015). While social conditions include the level of education and environmental conditions of residence, economic conditions include the level of income, level of expenditure, the fulfillment of the necessities of life and ownership of assets of economic value (Suryani, 2006). The socioeconomic condition is a condition or position which is socially regulated and defines a person in a certain position in the structure of society. There are elements which become an entry point for women to develop their socio- economic independence (Riswan, 2012). First, the community and women’s groups, engaged in the socio-economic and religious fields of the community that has been formed can be further encouraged. Second, work that can be undertaken

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through joint and personal business assistance such as impromptu traders, both in temporary settlements and in the disaster area, as well as business unit groups that were formed after a disaster. Third, the family, which functions as a strong social base of community strength and resilience in responding to and arising after a disaster. Thus, collaboration from various parties, including government agencies and private institutions, needs to be undertaken and further studies advanced considering that research on a post disaster society should be ongoing because the dynamics of the community always change over time. New programs and policies organized by local organizations and governments go beyond rural areas; these programs and policies promote women’s entrepreneurship throughout the country. Some programs, such as women’s empowerment programs in small to medium enterprises, provide training for women who run their own home-based businesses in order to improve their individual capacities as good entrepreneurs. Opportunities to contribute in a variety of ways to society empowers women, to reconstruct their self-identity to include other aspects of their roles, beyond being housewives and/or mothers. Programs such as these originate from a more democratic atmosphere of the nation and they change perspectives on gender relations and the role and status of women in the family.

The Post Disaster Transformation of Women’s Socio-Economic Roles The significant number of natural disasters in Indonesia must also be understood with respect to the existing urgency of increasing resilience and the capacity to adapt and remain firm in difficult conditions and situations. This is especially so for a business in dealing with operational risks. From another perspective, this depends on the capacity of local efforts to rise immediately, from the impact of disasters and this will help post-disaster recovery in the region. The 7.4 SR earthquake, with a depth of 10 km, north of Palu City, Central Sulawesi Province was followed by a catastrophic tsunami and extensive liquefaction in some districts such as Petobo, Balaroa, and Jono Oge on 28 September 2018 led to the evacuation of the population. The main infrastructure was extensively damaged which extended to public and social facilities including schools, hospitals, and shopping centers in Palu City and surrounding towns. Damage results in the reduction of social and economic activities such as education, health, and public service offices resulting in the decreased productivity of people in the affected location. When an area is paralyzed by a disaster, such as a tsunami or earthquake followed by a liquefaction in Palu, Central Sulawesi, the community suffers extensive losses due to the paralysis of the area where they work and operate. This includes the changing economic and social role of female entrepreneurs. Changes in their socioeconomic roles in the city of Palu can be analyzed through business opportunities, increasing income, and labor capacity.

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The process of recovery and the reconstruction of the area affected by the earthquake and tsunami in Central Sulawesi opened up business opportunities. In addition, logistical and non-logistical assistance entering the Palu, Sigi, Donggala, and surrounding areas in Central Sulawesi facilitated community enthusiasm to continue to subsist in the post-disaster period. Nevertheless, women entrepreneurs were subject to limitations in developing their businesses due to limited access to business capital and a damaged business infrastructure. Business capital was crucial to improve the economy of the community, especially for women who already had businesses and were affected by the earthquake and tsunami. Interviews with several women entrepreneurs revealed that social limitations and the loss of assets made it difficult for them to rebuild the business that they had previously run. Many women owned businesses before the earthquake and tsunami, but after the disaster, many of them were obliged to close them, some turned to establishing small businesses, such as opening retail kiosks or selling simple food in the temporary shelter. Other interviews also claimed that women entrepreneurs in Palu City had difficulty finding financial support or capital to reopen businesses. Before the disaster, they were able to sell handicrafts or household furniture and generate a monthly turnover of between Rp. 15.000.000 and Rp. 20.000.000.2 However, changes in economic and social conditions occur very quickly. People who had a high turnover before the disaster suddenly went bankrupt, so many began to seek other business opportunities in the temporary shelters requiring only a minimum investment of capital. Sartika (57), one of the informants who resides in the temporary shelter of Pantoloan Ova, North Palu, whose husband died in the tsunami, confessed that her livelihood was lost when her house, in the nearby Port of Pantoloan, was destroyed by the tsunami. Before the earthquake, Sartika and some of her neighbours, were selling from ships in the Pantoloan Harbor. Now, her residence is too far from the port. ‘I want to continue working, but I live far from the port’ (Sartika). Her situation deteriorated in widowhood as her husband helped her a lot. ‘In the past, my husband would help me prepare the sale and take the food that would be sold to the port’ Sartika said. After the disaster, many women traders in Pantoloan had tried to engage in selling again, income generating activities requiring a minimum investment. However, since they are not allowed to sell on the ship, the business did not last long. ‘sellers are not allowed to sell on the ship; unlike before the disaster, we were still allowed’ Ratna (45) explained. She started selling chicken satay and rice at the port, but her sales were sometimes zero as the Port is not as active as it used to be. As a result, her capital, which she borrowed from her family, did not offer a good return. To continue to earn a living she works as a casual labourer at the Port with a salary of approximately Rp 50.000 per day. She is doing this when the ships enter twice a month. Ratna also lost her husband in the tsunami. At this time, the economy of Palu City has slowly begun to recover, and this situation has impacted on the socio-economic conditions of the population. The economic recovery in Palu after the earthquake was supported by the rise of small 2 The

rate is approximately 1AUD = 9,735 IDR.

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traders and medium-scale retailers. Many of them are now selling on a small scale to help their family and they need to expand their social networks to open business opportunities that can be managed according to their present circumstances. However, the situation, albeit improved has not been able to restore the family’s economic conditions. Some women in this study revealed that their husbands had moved away to other areas in search of work, and are still hesitant to return because they are comfortable in their new jobs in neighbouring cities, such as Makassar and Manado, and in their hometowns on the island of Sumatra and Java. They continue to wait until the situation improves to reunite with the family. Meanwhile, some of the women have taken advantage of the situation and get shipments of goods from their husband and family in Java to be resold in Palu, even in small quantities this can guarantee family subsistence levels. Efforts to reactivate the livelihoods of women affected by the earthquake and tsunami have been carried out through developing and strengthening capacity to manage microbusinesses as the changing socio-economic responsibility of society changes in various ways. With regards to income, several informants stated that their business income after the disaster in Palu City dropped dramatically, in many cases the income turnover was very small, and some had even decided to close their business. One factor that contributes to this situation was relocation. As businesses were relocated in the highlands, the sales in the new location were not the same as previously, on the beach. The lack of visitors resulted in a reduced daily income and in some cases their activity was in deficit. This situation made the women continue to think about innovation regarding ways to attract the interest of visitors to come and buy food they were selling such as fried bananas, roasted corn, Sarabba, fried potatoes, and other ‘fast’ foods. Opening new businesses in their preferred location was not possible since the socio-economic circumstances of women entrepreneurs was in turmoil due to the lack of capital and enthusiasm to start a business again. There were respondents s who previously owned large businesses such as furniture shops, cafes, restaurants, and the like with a monthly income of Rp. 20.000.000—but now they are no longer able to obtain such an income. Some women decided to take the risk and go back to their previous home due to its strategic location. For example, Masida (66 years old) and Nurwasia (40 years old) had small kiosks of fresh vegetables and they can make approximately Rp. 300.000,—per day with a profit of around Rp. 50.000, per day according to Nurwasia. Even though their kiosks were damaged along with their houses, Masida and Nurwasia decided to return to their former homes in order to reopen their businesses, even though they were aware that the risk was high, because the location is in the tsunami red zone. This could pose another potential hazard because it would encourage others to do the same, while the location is extremely vulnerable to disaster and identified by the government as a red zone. Human resources are one of the important considerations in opening and developing a business, because the existence of labour can help in the operation of a business. Business continuity is determined by access to adequate resources, both staff and other supporting resources such as land, buildings, machinery, and capital. The availability of workers is very important because they can help businesses to develop. The

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interviews concluded that, the labor situation in the city of Palu has changed and it greatly affects the development of their businesses. After the disaster, many of the businesses managed by women went bankrupt as they were no longer able to open because they ran out of capital. As a result, they are no longer able to financially support a workforce. Now, many of the workers are unemployed because the women entrepreneurs find it difficult to re-employ them. Thus, the women entrepreneurs had to make every effort to rely on themselves to support the businesses that are reopened. In addition, several interviewees stated that there were workers who no longer came to work due to deep trauma. Thus, there were female entrepreneurs who worked with a modest labour force, but some were only assisted by their family because to find new workers certainly requires a high income, while after the earthquake and tsunami, their business turnover had decreased. In a village called Wombo Kalongo, women who before the earthquake were small-scale home-based entrepreneurs, are now mostly hired employees to process shallots into fried onions, typical souvenirs of Central Sulawesi. They are paid Rp. 35.000 per basket to process the shallots harvested behind their own home. One informant Masturi (56) said, This was due to difficulties in raising capital because of the expensive seeds. In the past, we bought seedlings only once. Now the price of seeds is Rp. 35.000 per kg, if it grows well it can only give 10 kg.

Housewives, who suffer the same fate as Masturi, are able to process four baskets or the equivalent of 16 kilograms of shallots daily. However, they experience difficulties due to the women’s different background and skills. They have had to learn to acquire the skills needed to produce a good quality product. Before the tsunami struck, Fazira (33) worked processing the fish her late husband, a fisherman, caught. At present, Fazira is ‘forced’ to work as a waste picker from the remnants of the damaged buildings. ‘We have to survive by collecting plastic and iron materials for sale, because there is no other way, as long as it is halal’ she said. Then, Fazira hired two of her neighbours. But now, post disaster, they lived far from each other and it is difficult to invite others to come to work. One informant, Hapsah, underwent a transformation of social roles due to events experienced by her daughter who was forced to get married at a very young age. Hapsah agreed to marry off her child even though she was 14 years old and was still in junior high school. Since marriages were conducted with neighbours in temporary settlements, Hapsah’s daughter had to quit school. Initially, according to Hapsah, she felt ashamed because of her daughter’s status. However, life must go on. Now she manages to sell food with her daughter. Now Hapsah’s burden is not only to sustain her household but she must also support her daughter’s household who is married to a casual low-income construction worker. She recalls: of course this situation is hard for me…my husband who used to accompany and share the burden with me has passed away. But I will continue to try hard and I am sure I can make it, even though it’s difficult ….

Overall, women who used to be full-time housewives and unpaid before the disaster had the chance to enter the labor market and contribute to their family’s

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economic activity. Depending upon their individual domestic situations, some women were forced by circumstances to find employment, while others were able to enter the labour force voluntarily. Following a ‘family crisis’, women are needed to contribute financially to the family welfare. Women whose contributions were usually invisible behind their domestic roles became involved in financial affairs more than they typically had in the past. As women’s economic roles changed, the crisis helped shape a new culture, especially regarding gender relations in Central Sulawesi. The role of women was no longer constrained by the traditional values and customs which tended to limit women’s participation in economic and public life. The ability of women to deal with the associated risks and responsibilities in their micro businesses was a clear indication of women’s capacity to advance. In addition, aligned with their economic role, the ability of women in communicating and negotiating also improved. They not only limited their networks with fellow women, but they also needed to build a good partnership in businesses with men. The need to establish relationships with other parties, especially to undertake their business, makes women hone their communication skills as they are required to be good negotiators or bargain for the resources needed. The similarity in ethnic background is no longer the only factor supporting the smooth process of communication. More than that, sharing the same fate and experiences facilitates communication between them. However, sensitivity as a victim of circumstance may constitute an obstacle in communication hence an ability to control emotions and choose the right words, will have a positive impact on growing their businesses.

Conclusion The study indicates that the socio-economic roles of women in the aftermath of the earthquake and tsunami in Palu City have been transformed as these women are now assuming the role as a de facto or de jure head of household. Acting as the head of the family means that they must carry out the roles previously assumed by their husbands and this influences their economic situation and social life. On the one hand, as single parents, these women must take responsibility for their domestic affairs to care for and protect themselves and their children at home. On the other hand, they must also maintain their households by finding sources of income that are pioneered by efforts to utilize the business opportunities that arise. This situation is holding them back from carrying out the social roles they once had, for example gathering regularly for social activities, recitation activities or just socializing with family and relatives. The social role that they are obliged to undertake at present is related to building networks and partnerships to sustain livelihoods. Good relations with other women and families in temporary settlements open opportunities for cooperation in terms of small businesses even though they still need to increase their financial capacity so they can develop their businesses.

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The other side of the disaster is the emergence of opportunities for women to demonstrate their capacity and skills. At present they are required to carry out increasingly complex roles that are no longer restricted to the domestic sphere. Many women in the post-disaster period are no longer merely assisting in productive efforts but have become major players and stakeholders in the financial wellbeing of their families. The ethos of women post-disaster is capable of transforming gender practices into more balanced and democratic relationships. In other words, the status of women is no longer limited to domestic affairs. Women now have the opportunity to take an independent active role in the public domain according to their capabilities and resources, so that they could be equal partners with men in future development and change. The biggest challenge faced by women entrepreneurs affected by natural disasters in Central Sulawesi is not just opening up businesses but developing businesses that are being reopened so that they are able to generate an adequate income to finance their businesses and meet increasing family needs. In addition, building and strengthening networks are also vital to support their efforts to maintain a good living. This expectation was also followed by efforts to improve their capacity by mastering the hard and soft skills needed, including readjusting to a new socio-economic role to maintain their livelihood. To deal with the situation, these women entrepreneurs possess self-determination in developing and opening business opportunities despite the deep trauma of the disaster to restore their economic endeavours through which they are socially strengthened.

References Adda, H., & Corcoran-Nantes, Y. (2019). Strengthening social reform in rural areas through women’s self-employment. In J. McIntyre-Mills & N. R. A Romm (Eds.) Mixed methods and cross disciplinary research: Towards cultivating eco-systemic living (pp. 333–348). Switzerland: Springer Nature. Ahdiah, I. (2013). Peran-Peran Perempuan dalam Masyarakat. Jurnal Academica, 5(2), 1085–1092. Angriani, D. (2018). Memulihkan Ekonomi Pascabencana. Medcom.id. Diambil dari. https://www. medcom.id/ekonomi/analisa-ekonomi/RkjRqWVk-memulihkan-ekonomi-pascabencana. Aninda, N. (2018). Ekonomi Global: Saatnya Mendorong Peran Perempuan. Bisnis.com. Diambil dari. https://surabaya.bisnis.com/read/20180804/433/824137/ekonomi-global-saatnyamendorong-peran-perempuan. Anugrah, W. D. (2017). Partisipasi Perempuan dalam Pembangunan Ekonomi. Tanjung Pinang Pos. Diambil dari http://tanjungpinangpos.id/partisipasi-perempuan-dalam-pembangunan-ekonomi/ Desember18. Ashraf, M. A., & Azad, M. A. K. (2015). Gender issues in disaster: Understanding the relationships of vulnerability, preparedness and capacity. Environment and Ecology Research, 3(5), 136–142. Beebe, S. A., Beebe Susan J., & Diana K. Ivy. (2010). Communication principles for a lifetime. Boston, MA: Pearson. Corcoran-Nantes, Y. (2019). Gender, climate change and sustainable development: The unhappy marriage of policy and practice. In J. McIntyre-Mills & N. R. A Romm (Eds.), Mixed methods and cross disciplinary research: Towards cultivating eco-systemic living (pp. 349–360). Switzerland: Springer Nature.

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Cutter, Susan L. (2017). The forgotten casulaties redux: Women, children and disaster risk in Global Environemntal Change, 42(1)‚ 117–121. Fahlia, Irawan, E., & Tasmin, R. (2019). Analisis Dampak Perubahan Perilaku Sosial Ekonomi Masyarakat Desa Mapin Rea Pasca Bencana Gempa Bumi. Jurnal Ekonomi dan Bisnis Indonesia, 4(1), 51–55. Gaillard, J. C., Sanz, K., Balgos, B. C., Dalisay, S. N. M., Gorman-Murray, A., Smith, F., et al. (2017). Beyond men and women: A critical perspective on gender and disaster. Disasters, 41(3), 429–447. Ginige, K., Amaratunga, D., & Haigh, R. (2014). Tackling women’s vulnerabilities through integrating a gender perspective into a disaster risk reduction in the built environment. Procedia Economics and Finance, 18, 327–335. Hubeis, A. V. S. (2010). Pemberdayaan Perempuan dari Masa ke Masa. Bogor: IPB Press. ILO. (2012). Labour and social trends in Indonesia 2011: Promoting job-rich growth in provinces (pp. 1–58). Jakarta: Labour Office. Khaerani, N. S. (2017). Peran Wanita dalam Perubahan Sosial Melalui Kepemimpinan Posdaya. SOSIETAS, 7(1), 371–375. Kibria, G. (2016). Why are women in developing countries more Vulnerable to climate change? Climate change implications on women with reference to food, water, energy, health, and disaster security. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/267072733_Why_Are_Women_in_Develo ping_Countries_More_Vulnerable_to_Climate_Change_Climate_Change_Implications_on_ Women_with_Reference_to_Food_Water_Energy_Health_and_Disaster_Security, https://doi. org/10.13140/RG.2.1.2577.9683. Kurniawan, W. (2015). Dampak sosial ekonomi pembangunan pariwisata umbul sidomukti kecamatan bandungan kabupaten semarang. Economics Development Analysis Journal, 4(4), 443–541. Moreno Romero, J., & Shaw, D. (2018). Women’s empowerment following disaster: A longitudinal study of social change. Natural Hazards, 92, 205–224. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11069018-3204-4. Muhammad, F. (2018). Kewirausahaan Sosial Menjadi Sumber Harapan. Warta Ekonomi.co.id. Diambil dari. https://www.wartaekonomi.co.id/read178483. Oxfam. (2005). The Tsunami’s impact on women. UK: Oxfam GB. Prescott, J. M. (2018). Armed conflict: Women and climate change. New York, NY: Routledge. Riswan, Y. (2012). Perempuan dan Bencana: Memberdayakan Potensi Sosial dan Ekonomi Perempuan Korban Banjir Lahar Dingin Merapi. Kawistara, 2(2), 165–177. Satya, Y. (2012). Perempuan Sebagai Pendorong Pertumbuhan Ekonomi—Dukungan Melalui Program CSR Sangat Diperlukan. Harian Ekonomi Neraca. Diambil dari http://www.neraca. co.id/article/21638. Suryani, N. (2006). Pengaruh kondisi sosial dan ekonomi orang tua terhadap motivasi melanjutkan pendidikan ke perguruan tinggi. Dinamika Pendidikan, 2(1), 189–205.

Harnida W. Adda is currently the coordinator of Management Study Program in Tadulako University, Indonesia. Apart from teaching, she also undertakes and publishes research on issues relate to human resources and gender relations. Yvonne Corcoran-Nantes (Ph.D. Sociology) is an International Gender Consultant and a Principal Research Fellow in the Social Sciences and Adjunct Associate Professor at Flinders University. She is also an Associate of the Gender Consortium at Flinders University and Research Fellow, Centre for Research and Participatory Development Research, Universitas Padjadjaran, Indonesia. She engages with some of the major issues facing women globally and specialises in gender specific research in non-western countries in the field of development and international

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politics, dealing with issues such as gender equality, human rights, gender-based violence, sustainable development, terrorism and conflict. She wrote a seminal work on Central Asian women entitled Lost Voices: Central Asian Women Confronting Transition which was published by Zed Books and is now in its 12th edition. She is presently working on a book about women resistance fighters in the American War in Vietnam. Pricylia Chintya Dewi Buntuang is a lecturer in Management Department of Tadulako University, Palu Indonesia. She is active in reviewing and doing research related to the concepts of management in organization and government, disaster management, crisis management and leadership in Central Sulawesi.

Chapter 25

Vignette: At the Margins Janet J. McIntyre-Mills

I spent the evening at a Mama Mia concert in Adelaide with friends. The audience predictably clapped loudly for the hard-working cast. My friend commented that this was not the case when they attended the Lion King with her young son in Singapore: “We were surprised because it was spectacular. But no one (else) clapped. We did and we felt that we had made a faux pas, I wonder why?”

She went on to speculate: “I would have thought that they would have clapped, not like the cold English”. I wondered1 for a while about why people regarded clapping to be inappropriate. I thought about church services and how sacred events do not require clapping. Perhaps the event was seen in this way in Singapore? Certainly, the subject matter deals with the sense of the sacred. Sometimes silence and stillness can show respect and awe. I think that perhaps this could explain it. Later on it was pointed out by 1

My friend had heard about the stereotype ‘hot and cold cultures’ (Lanier, 2000) and said she and her son found it most helpful when meeting people from a range of different cultures. Her son was doing an internship at the time with the United Nations. I commented that Hofstede et al. (2010) who studied cultures also tried to find more complex patterns. But some would argue that even his more sophisticated patterns could be stereotyped. He characterized cultures in terms of their attitude towards: (1) ‘Power distance’ whether people kept their distance or connected with people who are higher or lower in the social hierarchy. ‘Uncertainty avoidance—whether cultures are very organised and careful about risk taking. (2) ‘Individualism versus collectivism’—whether the focus is on the individual or the group. (3) ‘Masculinity versus female’ views on the world. (4) ‘Time orientation’—whether the culture focuses on the present, past or future and the extent that the time dimensions are regarded as discrete.

J. J. McIntyre-Mills (B) University of South Africa in the College of Education, Tshwane, South Africa e-mail: [email protected]; [email protected] Adelaide University, College of Professions Main North Terrace, Adelaide, Australia College of Business, Government and Law, Flinders University, Sturt, SA, Australia © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2021 J. J. McIntyre-Mills and Y. Corcoran-Nantes (eds.), From Polarisation to Multispecies Relationships, Contemporary Systems Thinking, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-33-6884-2_25

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my colleague Yvonne that the Covid-19 front-line workers were clapped (which has become a practice in many parts of the world). Over the same weekend I read Lyall Watson’s ‘Gifts of Unknown Things’ and serendipitously attended a talk about the life of Sir Hubert Wilkins. Perhaps the serendipity is self-created as I am interested in explorers who venture into new territories—both conceptual and spatial. According to Nasht (2012), Hubert Wilkins was self-taught as an ethnographer and explorer. He mapped the north and south pole by flying over them and providing careful bearings for the navigator. He did this for 14 hours relying on his own stamina, eyesight and accuracy. This is just one of his feats, along with his journey by submarine to mention just a few. According to Andrews (2011): He shot the world’s first movie footage from an aircraft (while strapped to its fuselage); and was the first to fly over both polar ice caps. He was the only member of the media ever to win medals for gallantry (during World War I); the first man to attempt to take a submarine under the North Pole; a spy for the British in Soviet Russia and the Americans in the Far East; and an enlightened friend to Aboriginal people in outback Australia. Yet this South Australian farm boy is barely acknowledged here in his homeland.

Lyall Watson describes time spent on a remote island near Bali and his experience where time and space were joined through ritual dances to celebrate the rice crop and to manage the weather. The ripple effects of ritual help to bind together the agricultural community and support their capability to grow and learn together. Watson describes the way in which the young people he taught linked colour and sound without thinking it at all strange and how there seemed to be agreement on the colours associated with sounds. He also describes how one young woman in particular had the ability to connect with the natural world in ways that could only be described in metaphysical terms as they were outside the bounds of physics. As a biologist and zoologist, Watson was a keen observer. He could be said to embody what Whitehead (2018) calls ‘Living Theory Research’. In his case he applied all his energy to studying ecology, by drawing together many ways of knowing including ethnography, auto-ethnography, botany, physics, zoology and metaphysics. In his carefully described ethnography of life on the island of Bali he turns the lens onto science and the nature of knowledge and the process of knowing. Dolphins forage in the rivers of the Amazon during high tide (Watson, 1976: 151): During this time in the trees, the dolphins must be able to form and retain detailed topographic maps of the areas in which they forage. When the waters recede, they often do so very rapidly, and the dolphins have to make their way back to the river through as much as a hundred miles of tricky territory in a short time. There is no time for following the flow or trusting to trial and error. Fish that do that get trapped…

He stresses that: we are all the eyes and ears of the world; and we think the world’s thoughts. (Watson, 1976: 36)

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The new quantum physics acknowledges that the states of nature are in a process of being and becoming and that the observer shapes the situation. Bohm stresses that ‘we are the earth’2 and that out thinking matters because we shape it positively or negatively. The work of David Bohm was side-lined for years as a blacklisted academic who had been ousted as a so-called suspected communist. As a marginal academic he conducted his own research (Olwell, 1999)3 and had worked with Krishnamurti and had dialogues with the Dalai Lama. Their conversations revealed that Buddhist philosophy and the ideas of Bohm had in common (Dalai Lama, 2005) the notion that our thinking shapes reality. Bohm’s ideas were disregarded, but now his ideas about the so-called ‘implicate order’ of the universe are once more of interest. Simplistically, Bohm argued that all life has consciousness.4 Watson (1976: 43) then goes on to make the point that formal education can lead to our losing our sense of connection with the rest of the living system of which we are a strand. Recognizing sacred spaces and places can help to re-connect with nature (1976: 198). He discussed the way in which Aboriginal Australians (138) understand the earth as a giant organism and this is increasingly recognized as an appropriate way in which to see ourselves in relation to the earth. We are all part of one large organism and interdependent. The skills of the dowser or the diviner in recognizing water or powerful energy is discussed at length and that this recognition can be retuned or returned through contemplation and stillness. Just as a hologram has enfolded many spaces in each part of it, so the sacred space can help us tap into a sense of our place in the whole system. Consciousness is about making connections—it is what makes us alive. The pathways in the brain that connect the neurons help to achieve life, but consciousness and awareness can be spread across many cells as Candace Pert (1999) recognized in ‘the molecules of emotion’. Watson shared the experience of a fisherman who could ‘hear’ under water through feeling the vibrations of the fish and also the changes in the current. His sensitivity saved their lives as they managed to leave the area before a very large wave system developed that would have crashed their small boat into a reef. The capability to read the environment is well known to the San and the Khoi who read the tracks to find food in the Kalahari as they had been displaced into every more inhospitable areas by the Xhosa and the Dutch and then by the British. The ability to track and trace patterns is an evolutionary skill that enabled Dolphins to move from shallow areas to the ocean. It is a skill that remains in many small tidal fish (Watson, 1976: 151) who are able to leap from pool to pool to return to the ocean. 2 David

Bohm speaks about Wholeness and Fragmentation, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v= mDKB7GcHNac. 3 Olwell, R. 1999. “Physical Isolation and Marginalization in Physics: David Bohm’s Cold War Exile.” The University of Chicago Press Isis 90.4 738-56. Web. 4 https://www.newscientist.com/article/2078251-quantum-weirdness-may-hide-an-orderly-realityafter-all/#ixzz6Khd5XxUQ.

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The pathways to conscious wellbeing can be collectively developed through enabling people to share what works, why and how. This is enabling quantum physics so that human beings can be a positive change and thus reducing the size of carbon footprints and sharing ways to live sustainably and well. Balance and responsibility (Watson, 1976: 226) have been lost in the modern cities of the world. Perhaps in Singapore the full message of the Lion King—namely the consciousness of all living things was considered a sacred message and perhaps the raised awareness was celebrated with awe and silence in this context, but in other contexts have clapped for the Covid-19 frontliners. The notion of protecting the commons is increasingly important and it requires collective as well as individual responsibility along with a sense of all being equally responsible for the present and for future generations. A sense of historical responsibility is part of the need to do things differently as is the sense that the earth is our mother and we should nurture her, because she nurtures us. The loss of respect for nature is linked with what Boulding (1966) called an unsustainable approach based on making the earth produce short term profits at the expense of future generations of living systems. Allowing for excessive resources at the expense of future generations is simply not sustainable. Boulding is also correct about the importance of values in shaping transformation for the better or worse. Unlike Inglehart’s (1997) notion of a ‘cultural shift’, my understanding of the potential for cultural change is rooted in an organic appreciation of cross cutting power dynamics and the potential for bringing about change. Whitehead (2018: 21) poses the following questions in Living Theory Research as a way of life: ‘How Do I Improve My Practice?’ He explores the dilemma that we are part of our subject matter and that the context shapes the answer as much as the values of the person asking the question. He cites the conversation between Deleuz and Foucault: You were the first to teach us something absolutely fundamental: the indignity of speaking for others. We ridiculed representation and said it was finished, but we failed to draw the consequences of this ‘theoretical’ conversion – to appreciate the theoretical fact that only those directly concerned can speak in a practical way on their own behalf. (Foucault & Gordon, 1980)

Researchers who wish to strive towards understanding the way in which an area of concern is perceived by others faces the dilemma that by working with others they actually change the situation for the better or worse. Thus, it is vital to start research from assumption that an attempt will be made to achieve social and environmental justice. Theory needs to be open to change and responsive to the people and the context, hence the importance of what Haraway calls ‘situated knowledge’. The process of achieving this is however rather elusive as university and research environments are still organized in terms of disciplines based on objective criteria of excellence and key performance indicators determined by administrative agendas. Neoliberal cost saving does not sit well with Living theory or research as a way of life. However, I think that Whitehead’s approach of immersion and self-reflection

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is the only way to learn. The Pathways to wellbeing approach is simply a way to do this on an everyday basis. The notion that by asking questions we create ripples in a pond is the way in which research can be understood. As a university academic, teacher and community facilitator I have tried to apply myself to each situation in ways that help people to realise their goals and to ask their own questions. In this book I discuss ways in which we try to get people to ask this question in their own lives and to share their answers: How should I live my life? How can we improve the choices we make? The question pertains in this context to how can we live our lives in ways that promote social and environmental justice. The participatory action research project will work across South Africa, a new democracy that faces the challenge of state capture and the potential to become a failed state. It has high rates of urbanization and unemployment for those aged 17–24. Indonesia is an emergent democracy that also faces the challenge of providing jobs for a young population and the need to create a better balance between rural and urban areas to ensure food, water and energy security. The third case study is Australia, a mature democracy that not only faces the challenges of climate change and the related challenges of water and energy insecurity, it also faces challenges of social inclusion as Aboriginal Australians stress the need for recognition as first Australians in the Constitution. The aim is to address democracy and governance challenges in the age of the Anthropocene where commodification of people and the planet pose an existential risk. The way forward is to reframe democracy and governance in ways that rethink relationships and that re-frame governance structures.

References and Bibliography Andrews, M. (2011). Hubert who? Harper and Collins: Imprint ABC Books. Bohm, D. (1973). Quantum theory as an indication of a new order in physics: Implicate and explicate order in physical law. Foundation Physics, 3, 139. https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00708436. Boulding, K. (1966). Space ship earth the economics of the coming spaceship earth Kenneth E. Boulding. In H. Jarrett (Ed.), Environmental quality in a growing economy (pp. 3–14). Baltimore, MD: Resources for the Future/Johns Hopkins University Press. Foucault, M., & Gordon, C. (Eds.). (1980). Power/Knowledge. Harvester: Brighton. Hofstede, G. (2013). https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lTY6LH9WdZ4. Wolters World Published on 18 Oct 2013. Hofstede, G., & Hofstede, G. J. (2005). “Pyramids, machines, markets, and families: Organizing across nations” from Cultures and organizations: Software of the mind. New York: McGraw Hill. Hofstede, G., Hofstede, G. J., & Minkov, M. (2010). Cultures and organisations: Software of the mind: Intercultural co-operation and its importance for survival. New York: McGraw Hill. Inglehart, R. (1997). Modernization and postmodernization: Cultural, economic and political change in 43 societies. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Lanier, S. A. (2000). ‘Foreign to familiar: A guide to understanding hot—And cold—Climate cultures. Hagerstown: McDougal. Lama, D. (2005). The universe in a single atom: The convergence of science and spirituality. New york: Harmony. Nasht, S. (2012). The last explorer: Hubert Wilkins, hero of the great age of polar exploration.

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Perinbanayagam, R. (1986). The meaning of uncertainty and the uncertainty of meaning. Symbolic Interaction, 9, 105–128. https://doi.org/10.1525/si.1986.9.1.105. Pert, C. (1999). The molecules of emotion: Why you feel the way you feel. New York: Simon and Schuster Wilkins, H. 1923–1925 Undiscovered Australia. United Nations Research Institute for social development. (2017). Beyond the Nation State: how can regional social policy contribute to achieving the sustainable development goals? Watson, L. (1976). Gifts of unknown things. Kent: Hodder and Stoughton. Whitehead, J. (2018). Living theory research as a way of life. Brown Dog books.

Janet J. McIntyre-Mills is Honorary Professor in the College of Education at University of South Africa, Tshwane, South Africa; Visiting Research Fellow at Adelaide University in the College of Professions Main North Terrace; and Adjunct Associate Professor in College of Business Government and Law at Flinders University, Sturt Campus, Adelaide.

Chapter 26

Biopolitics and Food Security to Protect Social and Environmental Justice Janet J. McIntyre-Mills

Abstract Foucault’s lectures on bio politics open the possibility of exploring the way in which government can be seen as a form of governance—to control human beings, other animals and the environment on which we are co-dependent. In many ways he begins to explore the area that Haraway developed in her work on the relationships of power and the importance of situated meanings. The chapter stresses the importance of human agency and stewardship of the commons defined as a process of sharing resources through balancing individual and collective needs to achieve more socially and environmentally just decisions for the protection of living systems in this generation and the next. The entanglement of human beings and other animals and their habitat is a starting point for extending a cosmopolitan argument as to why post national governance is vital to address existential risks to food security. Keywords Thinking · Habitat · Bio politics · Food security

Introduction and Statement of the Problem Foucault (2008) spoke of biopolitics in a series of lectures. The kernel of these lectures is that political practice shapes biology. Food security requires thinking about bio politics in terms of the following core questions: ● ● ● ● ●

What does food security entail for different species? How does food security relate to human, animal and plant security? Why are multiple species relevant to food security? Who decides what constitutes food? What is our relationship as human beings to food and the supply of food?

J. J. McIntyre-Mills (B) University of South Africa in the College of Education, Tshwane, South Africa e-mail: [email protected]; [email protected] Adelaide University, College of Professions Main North Terrace, Adelaide, Australia College of Business, Government and Law, Flinders University, Sturt, SA, Australia © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2021 J. J. McIntyre-Mills and Y. Corcoran-Nantes (eds.), From Polarisation to Multispecies Relationships, Contemporary Systems Thinking, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-33-6884-2_26

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Each of these questions will be considered at the outset and explored through this paper. All species form one food web and a break down for one species will have ripple effects on food security across the web of life. Human beings have been top predators and have consumed the planet to excess (Urry, 2010), posing an existential risk (Bostrom, 2011) for all life. The taken for granted ideas about what constitutes food needs to be re-thought with both current and future generations in mind so that the size of our footprint is reduced, and the food choices are sustainable. The panic surrounding the supply of food as COVID-19 gained pandemic proportions on 12 March 2020 as I wrote this paper underlines the importance of the political context of the production, consumption and distribution of food. The trafficking of wild life and the conditions in which caged animals are kept are significant, even if this is not proven to be central in the COVID-19 epidemic, just as so-called bird flu, swine flu and ‘mad cows disease’ are the result of the way in which poultry, cattle and pigs were farmed and the way in which offal was mixed into the food of cattle resulting in Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (see Chapter 3). The multispecies relationships impacted epidemiology. If the capabilities of sentient beings had been taken into account and they were farmed in conditions that maximised their health it would have prevented multispecies morbidity and mortality. The social, economic and environmental laws that have allowed sentient beings to be confined and commodified are in need of revision as current regulations are inadequate. This short essay will explore Foucault’s (2008) notion of bio politics and the central contradiction it reveals. Neo-liberal forms of capitalism have resulted in enclosing tracks of land for farming. The result has been to deprive the free ranging herds of wild herbivores from moving across the land. It has, for example deprived elephants of their habitat which has resulted in clashes between humans and animals over territory (see Ariyadasa et al., 2017). Miller’s (2010: 57) paper stresses that Foucault’s lectures on the birth of bio politics should really have referred more explicitly to neo-liberalism: Dominant in world thought for three decades, neoliberalism was nothing less arrogant than ‘a whole way of being and thinking’, an attempt to create ‘an enterprise society’ through the preteens that the latter was a natural (but never achieved) state of affairs, even as competition was imposed as a framework of regulating everyday life in the most subtly comprehensive statism imaginable. (pp. 145, 147, 218)

Let me begin with defining my terms. Food can be seen as comprising animal organisms (bodies) and plant organisms. Access to food depends on demographic populations of diverse species remaining viable in their preferred habitats or being able to adapt to new habitats and or changing conditions. What are the implications of loss for humans and other animals caused by the wide-ranging changes made in the era of the Anthropocene and what can be done to prevent this loss? Braidotti (2018: 23) defines the Anthropocene by citing the originator of the term, Paul Crutzen as follows: the current geological era as dominated by human action through technological mediation, consumerism and destruction of the resources of planet earth. It was officially adopted by the International Geological Congress in South Africa in August 2016.

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As Lemke (2015: 3) stresses: Recently social and political theory has demonstrated a renewed theoretical interest in matter and materiality. The ‘new materialism’, as it is sometimes called (see e.g. Herd, 2004, Ahmed, 2008, Cole and Frost, 2010a), does not represent a homogenous style of though or a single theoretical position but encompasses a plurality of different approaches…

This chapter critiques Foucault’s anthropocentric approach and instead makes a case for a non-anthropocentric approach to governance that: ● ● ● ●

extends the liberative potential of his notion of bio politics by emphasizing the need to extend the social contract to protect the marginalized and the voiceless (including sentient beings) and emphasises the need to protect the commons following Bollier and Helfrich (2012: xvii) who explain: The commons is a ‘discourse’ which helps get us outside the market economy ‘and helps us represent different more wholesome ways of being. It allows us to more clearly identify the value of inalienability – protection against the marketisation of everything. Relationships with nature are not required to be economic, extractive and exploitative; they can be constructive and harmonious. For people of the global South, for whom the commons tend to be more of a lived, everyday reality than a metaphor, the language of the commons is the basis for a new vision of development…. notwithstanding the longstanding smear of the commons as ‘tragedy’, the commons, properly understood, is in fact highly generative. It creates enormous stores of value…the commons tend to express its bounty through living flows of social and ecological activity, not fixed countable stocks of capital and inventory.

Recent work by Hay and Beaverstock (2016) illustrate that the gaps between rich and poor, the powerful and the powerless have become wider and wider. The greatest challenges are the consequences of continuing to frame relationships across-species in the same way. This has implications for the way we live and the need to change our way of life through living sustainably.1 What was inconceivable a few weeks prior to the entry of the top predator Covid-19 is now acceptable. 1 This

has been discussed previously in ‘Planetary Passport’ (McIntyre-Mills, 2017) that aims to support the implementation of the United Nations Development Goals through fostering human development and capabilities by means of a Stewardship and Resilience Index. How can it be used not merely to map and record food, energy and water consumption decisions at a local household level, but to support local governance from below by residents by considering food, energy and water security as everyday issues? The research links participatory democracy and governance with the development of human capabilities through enabling people to check the extent to which they are addressing the Sustainable Development Goals by means of a raft of indicators that together create a Stewardship and Resilience measure. These dimensions together impact on so-called ‘wellbeing stocks’ (Stiglitz et al., 2010) comprising social, cultural, political, economic and environmental dimensions to support current and future generations of life. Human Development needs to protect these wellbeing stocks but how to encourage people to reduce consumption in ways that protect both people and the planet is the conundrum. Wellbeing is now widely located in mainstream transdisciplinary literature that re-frames what we value as a society. ‘Wellbeing stocks’ are the basis for re-evaluating the way socio-economic decisions are made and how these affect the environment.

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Social distancing has become a way of life until a vaccine is found and borders around the world are now closed with the support of open-minded citizens. Drawing boundaries between species and those classified as citizens and non-citizens is problematic, particularly in a context where human rights violations can be ignored as the world enters a war footing against the virus. Cochrane (2012) makes the point that rights and interests of human beings are often placed above those of animals in a world of scarce resources. However, once it is acknowledged that anthropocentric interests can undermine the common good, the argument can be made that architectures of governance need to support not only the rights of citizens, those who do not have citizenship rights and sentients without a voice. Not only is the transport of all animals’ long distances cruel and abhorrent to those who have the capability to empathise with the suffering of others, it does not make sense in terms of the common good. Lowering the size of our carbon footprint requires that food should be eaten locally. The decision to suspend the license of one of the companies involved in live animal export was a small step to address the abuse of animals. This limited victory does not address the underlying issue of the need to protect the rights of sentient beings and their habitat (Swartz, 2018). As stressed elsewhere (McIntyre-Mills, 2014), the shipping of sheep by Emmanuel from Australia to the Middle East for slaughter raised an outcry because of a whistle blower who exposed the plight of sheep dying of thirst and heat. Alan Savory (2014, 2018) argues that ruminants are important for processing grass and for fertilising the land and that reducing the numbers of animals is the wrong approach to the problem. Others argue that sheep and cattle are part of the ecological problem in Australia because they graze the grass too low and in fact, agriculture and food sustainability would be better served if those who feel they must eat meat relied on the local indigenous kangaroos. These local ruminants are better suited to fertilising the soil. This point has been made by Flannery (2005, 2012) on species extinction associated with over grazing and the lack of stewardship by colonial governments. A critical review of the nature of the problem would require re-considering the colonial agricultural decisions to ‘run sheep’ in one of the driest continents on earth, where other animals are better suited, such as Kangaroos. Food choices should consider the amount of energy and water used in production and the associated costs to the environment. From the perspective of preserving humane standards in agriculture and also minimising the size of our carbon footprint, the transport of sheep and cattle makes no sense, other than providing short term profits, whilst the opportunity costs of pain and increased size of our carbon footprint will also be carried by young people in this generation and the next. The capabilities approach of Martha Nussbaum (2011) provides a conceptual basis for defining what could be regarded as a life worth living. Her ten capabilities list the systemic interconnections across mental and physical health and wellbeing, the right to a voice, the right to re-creation and the right to engage with others safely. She stresses that a full or complete life requires connecting with nature and other sentient beings as well as the right to a sense of place and property. In this way, she reveals her understanding that quality of life for human beings cannot be anthropocentric.

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She stresses that sentient beings have rights, simply because they are sentient not because they are useful. Foucault’s analysis of the way government controls and invades conceptual territory is underestimated.2 The way we think is shaped by the way powerful institutions determine what constitutes knowledge. Who and what we include in our circle of compassion needs to be extended. As stressed in Chapters 1 and 3 of this volume, the notion that rights and dignity should be accorded to human beings, sentient beings and the earth has been stressed by activists and academics who are re-learning that we are part of one living system. In many ways Foucault’s conceptualization is a product of his time and place and needs to be seen as a starting point for a discussion on biopolitics in the Anthropocene. Lemke cites Foucault’s notion on bio politics as follows: The things government must be concerned about… are men (sic) in their relationships, bonds, and complex involvements with things like wealth, resources, means of subsistence, and, of course the territory with its borders, qualities, climate, dryness, fertility, and so on. ‘Things’ are men (sic) in their relationships with things like customs, habits, ways of acting and thinking. Finally, they are men in their relationships with things like accidents, misfortunes, famine, epidemics, and death. (2007: 96)

His words remain relevant today as discourses around biopolitics are shaped by governments reacting to convergent social, economic and environmental challenges. The commodification of people, animals and plants is the focus of this chapter along with the enclosure of the commons. While neo-liberalism stresses freedom and pluralism, an examination of case studies shows that tolerance for diversity and freedom has decreased in the so-called era of the surveillance state. Thus Chapters 14, 15, 17, 18, 19, 35 and 37 make a plea for more monitoring ‘from below’ to hold governments and markets to account. This essay locates the writer in the text and reflects on her place at the intersections of Australia, South Africa and Indonesia. As a citizen of Australia and South Africa and an engaged facilitator across all three spaces. The trading legacy of the Dutch East India Company and the Royal African Company, for example also shaped trade and relationships and has resulted in wide ranging changes, not the least of which was the introduction of disease, the destruction of habitat and the elimination of some species. The scope for this chapter is broadly to consider past policies and current opportunities to reframe taxonomies, not foreign policy per se, but it is worth bearing in mind that the Foreign Policy White Paper (2017: 17) stresses: Australia’s national interests are best advanced by an evolution of the international system that is anchored in international law, support for the rights and freedoms in United Nations declarations, and the principles of good governance, transparency and accountability.

2 Jerry

Nadler (2018) gave an impassioned plea in an article about separation of children from their parents at the Mexican border saying: ‘These children are not animals’. Whilst I sympathise greatly with his sentiments about the rights of children and adults, human beings are indeed animals who also require the right to a life worth living and whose inherent rights ought to be protected.

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Reframing taxonomies needs to be informed by the problems associated with TRIPS (see Chapters 26 and 33), the importance of the UN Declaration of the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (2007) and the Sendai Risk Platform (2015–2030) which shows that Indigenous people and their habitat are being destroyed, regional populations face losses caused by drought, fires and floods which impact their ability to produce food. Food security is at risk as city populations face lock downs in city areas such as Wuhan or Milan. As COVID-19 reaches pandemic proportions the risks to the food supply chain increase. A close reading of the Australian Foreign Affairs Report (2017) cited by the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade stresses the importance of the market. Even the most cursory reading shows that neo-liberalism is taken for granted and that flexible, responsive market approaches are regarded as givens for government policy. The notion that neo-liberalism is benign and in the interests of ‘progress’ is another wide-spread assumption in all public sectors, including at every level of education. The lectures by Foucault on the paradoxical role of neo-liberalism, is that it preaches open markets and supports its arguments on the basis of open democracy, open trade and open borders (for trade) but paradoxically empirical records demonstrate that historically it has operated by achieving the exact opposite, namely the enclosure of the commons and the exploitation of people and nature.

“Everyone Knows That the Fish Rots from the Head”: The Market Has Prevailed Over the State and Civil Society Without the capability to think critically the state will rot. The Cape Malay descendants of slaves brought to the Cape by the Dutch have a pithy saying when confronted by corruption. A fisherman who rang a talk back program in Cape Town about the recent exposure of widespread theft (Cowan, 2018) from a bank in South Africa (set up to help the poor), summed it up as follows: “almal weet (everyone knows) a vis (fish) rots from the head.” The so-called ‘liberative potential’ (in the sense used by Gouldner, 1971) of human agency is the capability to think critically and analytically. The liberative potential of a post humanist approach is that it decentres the presumption of anthropocentrism at the expense of the environment, but it runs the risk of throwing out the baby of critical discernment and stewardship with the water of anthropocentric self-interest. The anthropocentric approach that assumes human beings are separate from other animals is questioned by post humanism. However, the possibility of losing the ‘baby of ethics and human rights’ with the ‘bath water of anthropocentrism’ is the risk we face. Instead, I propose that we adopt an approach guided by systemic ethics. (McIntyre-Mills, 2014).

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The pragmatism of considering ‘if then’ scenarios before making decisions is important. A transformative research approach to food ethics needs to be based on everyday decision making informed by ‘if then’ scenarios to guide daily praxis. This approach supports critical praxis. The argument made by Arendt in ‘the banality of evil’ is that all Germans were equally responsible for the evil perpetrated and that Eichmann, because they did not think critically and they did not speak up. Thus, Eichmann was not a lone monster responsible for the holocaust and the inequities acted upon human beings in camp hospitals. Haraway (1992) has already stressed that the voiceless become the objects of power and experimentation, ranging from laboratories that test rats, primates and human beings. The rabbits were Polish women used for experimentation by the Nazis. They survived because they were hidden within the camps. The women of Ravensbruk bravely hid the women for 3 months within the women’s camp. Thus, they defied the Nazis without a weapon but with courage to redefine the situation. The book by Kelly (2016) and the forthcoming documentary by Fitzgerald is based on documentary evidence of the way these 63 women were experimented on by Nazi researchers. The name ‘rabbits’ was derived from their laboratory status and by the fact that those who recovered hopped, because they were lame from the experimentation that introduced infections into inflicted wounds. Caroline Ferriday, an American heiress ran a campaign to help to address some of their needs after the Second World War. Greenfield (2000) stresses that consciousness is a continuum and that human beings share 98% of their genome with laboratory rats. The implications for social justice to our extended family of primates and other animals as become more pressing as we can no longer plead ignorance. Arendt’s argument concerning the ‘banality of evil’ becomes even clearer when we can no longer deny that laboratory animals, animals en route to slaughter and animals at slaughterhouses feel pain. What does that mean for those who eat meat? Surely it means that animals deserve (at the very least) a respectful pain-free death and decent conditions up to and at the end of their lives? It also means that meat eaters should reduce their meat intake as the methane emissions from cattle and other herbivores associated with meat production make the carbon footprint of meat consumers higher. Thus, collectively and individually meat eaters need to take responsibility for their actions taken against both animals and fellow human beings who have to bear the burden of higher emissions. From the point of view of sustainability this is unacceptable as the methane levels associated with food production for a growing urban population is problematic. Herbivores and other farmed animals that are increasingly raised on food lots in factory conditions live lives that do not fulfil the conditions of a life worth living as sentients who have rights simply by virtue of their being sentient (Nussbaum, 2006, 2011). If people are at the bottom of society, they can be commodified as laborers without feelings and treated like ‘beasts of burden’. However, once we accept that all sentient animals share capabilities then the need to extend the social contract to include young people, the disabled asylum seekers and the voiceless sentient animal. Conflict

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and competition for resources leads to displacement across national borders. And within nation states migration from rural to urban areas increased. Within rural areas competition for resources can also occur and the vulnerable are increasingly preyed upon by traffickers (Finn, 2016). Urbanization results in loss of habitat and increased competition for scarce resources. It is no coincidence that the number of accusations of witchcraft have increased in villages impacted by climate change (Association for Women’s Rights in Development, 2015). The geography of conflict overlaps with the geography of poverty and hunger. The voices of people at the margins introduce the challenges addressed in this chapter that aims to: ● Address the complex needs of the most vulnerable and the interconnections across resilience, food, water and the innovation opportunity for social inclusion through better rural-urban economies in line with the UN Sustainable Development Goals. ● Makes the case that critical agency is vital to understand, monitor and evaluate everyday social, economic and environmental strategies that enable human functioning (Nussbaum, 2011) through critical engagement. The argument set out in this paper is based on a critical heuristics approach that strives to make policy decisions based on considering the consequences for living systems in the short, medium and long term. It does not deny the need to strive towards a priori norms to ensure that sentient beings are not commodified and subjected to lives not worth living. The Paris Agenda (2015) whilst hailed as a breakthrough for global security does not go far enough, according to many of the latest estimates (Ricke et al., 2018; IPPC, 2018). Rolling back adherence to this international agenda is worrying and is evident in the way that food, energy and water security are seen as issues that can be addressed through nation states, rather than as post national coalitions working in share biospheres. The political potential of scaling up the Aarhus Convention (1998) which requires that (a) all members of the EU have access to information, (b) the right to speak out on environmental issues and (c) to be heard, has been discussed (Florini, 2003) has been discussed and extended in ‘Planetary Passport’ (McIntyre-Mills, 2017) in which I discuss the potential of a critical heuristic approach towards a new form of governance and democracy. The book discusses ways in which already existing policy and small pilots point the way forward to alternative forms of engagement that enable participants to consider and balance the implications of their decisions at the local and post national regional level. This essay combines the insights detailed by Florini (2003) with the potential of a more widely applied policy architecture for scaled up local governance as detailed by UN Local Agenda 21. I suggest that this requires that triple bottom line accounting and accountability be applied regionally in ways that engage local residents in thinking through the implications of their decisions as detailed in Chapters 5, 10, 14, 15 and 17 of this volume. This would enable local residents and members of a wider post national region to have a say in matters that impact on social and environmental justice.

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The chapter locates policy on food security at the intersections of a range of social, cultural, political, economic and environmental literature in the arts, humanities, social and natural sciences on living systems of which we are a strand and of which we need to see ourselves as stewards. Environmental changes associated with increased risk of drought and consequent food and water insecurity pose a global ‘existential risk’ (Bostrom, 2011). More People (UNHCR, 2014), plants and animals (Ricke et al., 2018) than ever before confront environmentally induced displacement from rural areas and face destitution as a result of social, economic and environmental challenges associated with conflict and climate change. It is women, children and other vulnerable members of the population that are most severely affected by water and food insecurity in disaster prone regions (Figueres, 2015) and face the cascading risks associated with displacement in urban settlements. Capitalism has delivered an apparent rise in living standards for many and the narrative that we believe is that the current way of life today is better. This is true for the elite and still true for increasingly squeezed middle classes. But it is not true for the majority of the world’s population. They do not appear in news media and many are silenced through fear. Statistics show that the gap between the rich and poor is wider than ever before and the rich are richer than ever before. The size of companies is larger than ever before. Miller’s (2010: 57) paper stresses that Foucault’s lectures on the birth of bio politics should really have referred more explicitly to neo-liberalism: Dominant in world thought for three decades, neoliberalism was nothing less arrogant than ‘a whole way of being and thinking’, an attempt to create ‘an enterprise society’ through the pretence that the latter was a natural (but never achieved) state of affairs, even as competition was imposed as a framework of regulating everyday life in the most subtly comprehensive statism imaginable. (pp. 145, 147, 218)

Hannah Arendt stressed that in Germany the state normalised evil. Obedience to the state, resulted in disregard for the rights of many human beings. The notion that Kantian ethics or ‘the moral law’ could be misinterpreted to mean—the Führer’s law was the result of the loss of all critical engagement by the public. Unless it is possible to hold organisations to account, states can act with impunity. The big issues of the day, namely poverty and climate change cannot be addressed without collective responsibility. Hence, the argument that new architectures for democracy and governance are needed based on: ● A priori norms—that ecological citizenship ought to protect current and future generations of living systems. ● A posteriori—measures of the extent to which UN Sustainable Development goals are upheld and the Sendai Risk platform addressed. Both these UN documents are based on the notion that individuals and organisations need to act in concert to address the goals across national boundaries.

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Conflict and Competition for Scarce Resources as Habitat Is Lost What does food security have to do with bio politics? Everything, food is organic—the flesh of plants or animals. The position of species in a food chain is often determined by their power and the extent to which they are able to respond collectively. A lone herbivore is easy prey for a hungry carnivore, but a large stampede of herbivores provides safety for many. A lone population of plant, animals or a lone marginalized human group has to struggle for a niche. In South Africa movement across the border from Zimbabwe via the Northern Province of Limpopo has resulted in increased levels of conflict between locals and those seen as outsiders and since the outbreak of Covid 19 accusations are on the rise.3 Displacement, dispossession and loss remain challenges for biopolitics today in a post-colonial era, but the convergent social, economic and environmental collapse needs to be studied through the historical lens of state- market relationships and their impact on people and habitat. Global capitalism has a long history and the next section gives a brief insight into the role food and water played in setting in train widespread changes. The Dutch and the British regarded the Cape as a refuelling station essential for opening up trade routes. The discussion is on empire, resistance and hierarchy with a focus on transnational empires that have used exploitative approaches to maximize profit.4 Foucault stresses that the birth of bio politics needs to be understood in terms of the state per se and the way the state shapes living systems, although he does not say it quite like that. Foucault (2008: 77–78) stresses 3 In this paper I show how the most marginalized in some of the poorest parts of the world are preyed

upon by the more powerful. In Limpopo the immigrants from Zimbabwe are viewed with antipathy and defined as other, as pollutants and often as evil. They are seen as dysfunctional because they are perceived as taking away scarce resources. The work of Mary Douglas on the sacred and profane continues to be relevant in the contact of modern-day witchcraft accusations (Cimric, 2010). The Pagan Alliance (2020) highlights that in the Eastern Cape an 83 year old woman and her son were blamed for a death in their community. As Covid-19 deaths mount, this alliance stresses that more people in South Africa and other parts of Africa will suffer. If people are at the bottom of society, they can be commodified as laborers without feelings and treated like ‘beasts of burden’. However, once we accept that all sentient animals share capabilities then the need to extend the social contract to include young people, the disabled asylum seekers and the voiceless sentient animal. Conflict and competition for resources leads to displacement across national borders. And within nation states migration from rural to urban areas increased. Within rural areas competition for resources can also occur and the vulnerable are increasingly preyed upon by traffickers (Finn, 2016). Urbanization results in loss of habitat and increased competition for scarce resources. It is no coincidence that the number of accusations of witchcraft have increased in villages where rainfall has been lower than usual and where the soil is infertile (Association for Women’s Rights in Development, 2015). The geography of conflict overlaps with the geography of poverty and hunger. 4 The Bechuanas/Swazis, for example provide an example of an independent group with sovereign states who are not subject to Colonial rule. The question is to what extent the approaches to agriculture, development and habitat management were similar and different? Unfortunately, the reach of capitalism has made little difference in terms of environmental outcomes.

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the state is nothing else but the effect, the profile, the mobile shape of a perpetual stratification (etatisation) or stratifications, in the sense of incessant transactions which modify, or move, or drastically change, or insidiously shift sources of finance, modes of investment, decision making centres, forms and types of control, relationships between local power, the central authority, and so on. In short, the state has no heart, as we all know, but not just in the sense that it has no feelings, either good or bad, but it has no heart in the sense that it has no interior. The state is nothing else but the mobile effect of a regime of multiple governmentalities.

Refueling Stations for Trade Food and Water at the Cape and the Interior The refuelling station at the Cape provided water and fresh food on the long voyages to trade in spices and goods from the East. The Dutch East India Company is one of the first capitalist initiatives linked with a stock market. It illustrates the roots of capitalism. The VOC was formed to enable expanding the market and spreading risk. It was competitive right from the start, as it tried to take market opportunities away from the Portuguese. The size and power of the VOC can be understood by realizing that it is larger than Apple, one of the largest companies shaping the market. According to Salt (2018)5 : Although Apple is the world’s most valuable company, I suspect in relative terms (meaning controlled share of global wealth at a point in time) the Dutch East India Company based in Amsterdam and operating from 1602 to 1800 was much bigger at US 8 trillion in today’s values according to Time magazine. The VOC’s tentacles reached Australia before European settlement with the wreck of its shop the Batavia off the West Australian cost in 1628.

The vignettes sketches the way in which market capitalism has played out through the role of trade, supported by the creation of state apparatus that evolved in tandem with the expanding market system and the risks that it poses for living systems. The will to know and the will to power, paradoxically underpin the market incentive. The ‘freedoms’ to control people, other animals and nature have a price for living systems of which we are a strand. Oppression and resilience need to be understood through focusing on the impact on the most vulnerable, namely women, young people, sentient beings and the environment. Historical and recent accounts of resilience and resistance to racism, speciesism is important in re-framing the current approach to economics. We need to focus on food, energy and mobility as major challenges for the next century (Rifkin, 2011). Donaldson and Kymlicka (2011) stress the need to protect the habitat of domestic, liminal and wild animals in ‘Zoopolis’. Once we accept that as human animals, we are interdependent and need to protect and share habitat then we will focus on new forms 5 Salt,

B. 2018. Rise of the new golden cities of global corporate power. Decisions taken in the boardrooms of New York and Beijing may affect how you live. The Weekend Australian 22-23 Inquirer. https://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/inquirer/rise-of-the-new-golden-cities-of-globalcorporate-power/news-story/91cdff221b3a8820fc06249b39d62b9e.

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of governance. The need to better balance rural and urban areas is a focus of current research (two volumes forthcoming, Springer 2018). Multi species ethnography and history of bio politics and bio policy and power needs to inform why the space is so contested today and how it shapes the current economy.

Box: The Place of ‘Sweet Water’ and the Camissa People The Cape was a source of food, water and profit for the Dutch from 1652. It illustrates the roots of capitalism. The VOC was formed to enable expanding the market and spreading risk. It was competitive right from the start with a focus on exploitative approaches to maximize profit. An understanding of loss of habitat requires exploring spatial and conceptual boundaries of oppression and resistance. This is the rationale for the research—to explore the epistemic narrative of profit and some of the roots of transnational capitalism. Both company staff and the local people were exploited or enslaved. Protest led to incarceration. Climate change has amplified the competition for resources in the Cape that has become a destination for migrants from North Africa and DRC. In the detailed history of the Cape written by historian and public intellectual Tarig Mellet as an on line resource called: “The Camissa People” he explains that Stellenbosch and Franschhoek developed because the Huguenots were allowed to settle at the Cape because Van Reinbeck’s wife was a Huguenot and advocated for their right to settle there. He explains that many of the Huguenots who had been persecuted were awarded land by Simon Van Der Stel, the Governor and that they in turn became slave owners and successful wine growers. The elephants that used the valley as a crossing between the mountains were dispossessed of habitat that became the vineyards of the wine industry according to historical records on the Franschhoek area. Tarig Mellet details the notorious ‘tot system’ in which was widely used by masters to control workers on the vineyards in the Cape. He explains that in the Cape the domestic and agricultural slaves and the skilled craftsmen came from Batavia,6 Madagascar and other Portuguese colonies. According to the archival research by Tariq they were considered better workers than the local indigenous people who were hunted out of their territory. He also details that Simon Van Der Stel came from Madagascar was pro agriculture and provided land to free burghers of all backgrounds. Tarig Mellet explains that Van der Stel was Eurasian and ironically would have been labelled ‘coloured’ by the Apartheid government. He explains that some of the slave owners were also Eurasian and some of the early farmers were African slave owners along with the Huguenot slave owners. Paradoxically although the roots of Apartheid sprang from the Franschhoek Valley, it was one of the most integrated 6 Batavia, Indonesia—Bandung and environs (Ciangur and Alamendah are discussed in this volume

in order to compare and contrast successful and unsuccessful strategies at the local level)—these are written up in a brief vignette that discussed empire, and resistance.

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places in the early days of the Cape colony. He explains that as time passed the Dutch Reform Church regulated relationships, and these became law supported by Christian National Education. In post-Apartheid South Africa, universal education through the national curriculum has s made an effort to redress this heritage through stressing the notion of interdependency and solidarity as detailed in the approach to curriculum development (McKay, 2018) addresses both gender mainstreaming and the UN Sustainable Development Goals in the Rainbow Nation (see Mabunda and McKay Chapter 16 of this volume). Hopeful examples of pilots and policy to support so-called re-generative economics (Pauli, 2010) are discussed in Chapters 17 and 18 of this volume. The Dutch farmers from the Cape moved to the interior when the British took over from the Dutch. The so-called ‘Trek Boers’ in turn oppressed the local people and exploited existing rivalries between tribes to entrench their own power and political agenda. They used slave labour to develop the farms, known as ‘inboekelinge’. Morton (2005) explains that after 1852 slavery was illegal and so the euphemism of ‘indentured’ or ‘apprenticed’ labour was used as a way to enslave young people, children and women captured in battles. The fate of these orphaned children and their conditions of work, according to Morton (2005) depended on the status of their owners. Morton (2005: 200) cites Khama 111 to sum up what slavery meant: ‘We are Kaffirs [to you] which means we are dogs or monkeys to be shot down or otherwise ill-treated as you may find convenient,’ wrote Khama III to ZAR Commandant L.M. Du Plessis from the Ngwato capital of Shoshong. ‘[You are] wicked men…buying and selling black people for less money than they sell their horses and cows and treat them worse than their dogs.’

Chapters 17 and 18 discuss the way in which education within and beyond the walls of universities and schools has fostered community opportunities to grow leadership. At the invitation of the University of South Africa, I joined a group to travel to Vryberg in the North West Province to undertake a rapid appraisal and to assess ways to support community outreach. An understanding of the interior of South Africa requires an appreciation of the Great Trek made by Dutch farmers who wished to escape the yoke of British colonialism and it also requires some understanding of the impact of the British colonial war against the Dutch to gain access to the mineral wealth in the interior. The so-called ‘Boer War’ needs to be understood in the context of shoring up British imperialism and a source of wealth. Eales (2015) underlines that attempts by the Boer leaders to end the conflict early on were undermined (deliberately) by Milner. The brunt of the war was felt not only by the women and children of the Dutch farmers but also by the farm workers and the African people living in the Boer Republics. The scorched earth policy left the entire population destitute and at the height of the conflict the British Press, particularly the Times portrayed the forced incarceration in concentration camps as a means to protect non-combatants. The full extent of the mortality and morbidity was not revealed in the reports by Emily Hobhouse who concentrated on the camps for white women and children. It is estimated that 14%

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of the population of the white camps died and that the mortality rate was higher in the black camps. (Eales, 2015: 257, 274–275). Eales cites statistics for the white and black camps for 1901 and 1902 which show a steady rise. After the end of the war occupation of the camps continued as people had nowhere else to live. Hobhouse was ostracized by the British establishment until further studies underlined the accuracy of her reports. She was befriended by Ghandi (Eales, 2015: 266) who particularly admired her work after the war when she developed textile industries to support job creation for the women. Her discussion on spinning and weaving helped to inspire his own work and he learned to spin as a result of her discussion about the importance of developing local skills as a way to develop local employment opportunities, rather than relying on British textile industries. Hobhouse wrote a speech for the inauguration of the memorial to the women and children who lost their lives during the war and underlined that the whites had suffered alongside the black people in the Boer republics, but this message was not heard by those who attended the consecration of the memorial (Eales, 2015: 266).

Cutting to the Chase Sometimes very pressing issues need to be addressed through a u turn based on changing our values. What is the potential of the double hermeneutic for re-framing epistemic governance and biopolitics? What does this mean? Abstract questions such as the one above are only excusable if they are immediately explained and used to prompt carefully unpacked arguments. Thinking shapes policy and practice and it can be used to re-think policy and practice. Thinking matters quite literally. It shapes our current and future lives and fortunately we can learn from history and the present if we have the will to change. The role of the role of the Dutch, for example in Suriname can be summed up by the fact that slaves were threatened that they would be sold to plantation owners there and when I visited Suriname in 1988 I was told how escaped slaves set up an enclave in the forest. The past was revisited at the time of the civil war in Suriname, where the so-called ‘bush rebels’ continue to resist the centre of power in Suriname. Climate change has amplified the competition for resources in the Cape that is a destination for migrants from North Africa and DRC. Urbanization rates in Africa and Asia will place increasing pressure on food security. This short introduction sketches the role of trading companies and the impact it made on South Africa and Indonesia. The role of the Dutch East India Company and The Royal African company was to make profits for the company and to support the national interest of the respective nation states. The statue of Colston who made his money from the slave trade with Africa remains at the heart of Bristol, despite protests over the years.7 The history of slavery underpins the wealth of Bristol along with many other seaports and the families who 7 https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2014/jun/09/edward-colston-bristol-statue-slavery.

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shored up wealth from the proceeds of the inhumane trade. The central location without a discussion of the context of slavery is more than problematic, as I have discussed elsewhere (McIntyre-Mills, 2017).Whilst the statue of Rhodes has been decentred, the statue of Colston (who made his money from the slave trade with Africa remains at the heart of Bristol) despite protests over the years.8 In Australia the recent articles by Paul Daly has led to much needed debate.9 Nevertheless, it should not deflect attention from the need to remember history so that we learn from the past. Unlike Bristol where the statue of the slave trader Colston linked with the Royal African company continues to stand with impunity, the University of Cape Town students have succeeded in removing colonial heroes who inflicted pain on the inhabitants. Parkes (2018) sums up the issues in Bristol as follows: The city council is proposing to put a plaque on the statue which will recognise and acknowledge the people Colston and others in the city enslaved. It’s a move that has been a long time coming, says Ros Martin, one of the driving forces behind the Countering Colston campaign group. The plaque is good but we need it to be part of an ongoing examination of historical narrative and a change of attitudes and culture. What we want goes beyond tokenism - we want institutions and organisations in the city to examine their history and acknowledge their individual roles in the slave trade and beyond.

As stressed elsewhere Australians need to learn from history so they do not repeat its mistakes (McIntyre-Mills and Romm, 2019). Inscriptions on statues do matter, because they could raise awareness so that the plea made at Uluru is honoured as a step towards reconciliation. This is an issue that has received media attention in the wake of the conflict over the removal of statues of confederate leaders (who supported slavery in the Southern States of America).10 In South Africa, the removal of the statue of Rhodes from its central position opposite Jameson Hall has been highlighted as a step towards de-colonising University of Cape Town.11 Max Price, the VC of UCT mentioned the colonial legacy of UCT in an inaugural speech of a sociology professor. He stressed at an interdisciplinary symposium that voices that have not been heard need to be given the space to be heard and colonial versions need to be decentred. But the issue of the need to de-colonise education remains on the agenda.

8 https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2014/jun/09/edward-colston-bristol-statue-slavery. 9 https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/postcolonial-blog/2017/aug/25/statues-are-not-his tory-here-are-six-in-australia-that-need-rethinking. 10 These statues have been used as rallying points for white nationalism in USA. Their loss has been criticized by 54% of Americans. If statues are not lost but merely de-centred through being placed in museums then history could be explained and public education could be served. See https://www.theguardian.com/global/video/2017/aug/22/battle-over-confederate-sta tues-united-states-video-explainer. 11 http://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-32236922. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/ apr/09/university-cape-town-removes-statue-cecil-rhodes-celebration-afrikaner-protest#img-1.

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The paper makes the case that a post humanist approach is inadequate to protect food security because values are intrinsic to ethics and to critical discernment. Without the capacity to think critically and analytically the state can implement and normalize evil. Monitoring from below is vital for democracy (Keane, 2009; McIntyre-Mills, 2006, 2017) through questioning, enabling and protecting the rights of the vulnerable and through promoting responsibilities of the local people to promote social and environmental justice through stewardship.

Box: Vignette: The Khoi and San of Fish Hoek Gatvol Capetonians’ express their ‘Khoisan ancestry’ (Jacobs and Levonson, 2018) and that as First People they should be recognized as African people. They stress that this group is trying to revive an ‘imagined national identity’. But Tarig Mellet (2018) stresses that the ANC needs to acknowledge that so-called ‘coloured’ people need to be recognized as African people. Any person with an indigenous ancestor has a right to consider themselves as Indigenous. Tariq Mellet goes on to stress that whether one is Cape Khoi, Nama, Korana, Herero, San, Damara or Swazi, Xhosa or Sotho, the diverse identities are Indigenous to Africa. Mellet12 stresses that the Khoisan identity should be used with caution as it was constructed by racist zoological and anthropological researchers in 1928 who used remains from internment camps and prisons as the war in Namibia made collecting animal specimens difficult. He cites Schultze: I could make use of the victims of war and take parts from fresh native corpses, which made a welcome addition to the study of the living body. Imprisoned Hottentots were often available to me.

Tariq Mellet13 links his slave roots with his historical study of the entangled lives of people at the Cape. He explains that: Ironically Adrian Van der Stel was married to a freed slave Maria Lievers. Simon Vander Stel grew up in Batavia and in Mauritius and can be regarded as a Eurasian Governor representing the VOC… He supported the interracial community in Franschhoek and for a few decades the valley was a cosmopolitan place with families of freed slaves from Africa and Mauritius, living alongside families who had fled France as Huguenots. It was only when action was taken by some Dutch Colonists trying to get rid of the governor, Adam Tas14 that an apartheid type bill was introduced by a Dutch enclave in the valley.

12 https://camissapeople.wordpress.com/camissa/. 13 https://camissapeople.wordpress.com/camissa/. 14 Tariq

Mellet cites at https://camissapeople.wordpress.com/the-camissa-embrace-ch5/ cites Tas A.; The Diary of Adam Tas 1706–1706; Fouché, Leo, 1880–1949; Paterson, Alfred Croom (1914) https://archive.org/details/diaryofadamtas00tasa; https://archive.org/details/precisofarchives16cap eialaTopicsStel,WillemAdriaanvander,1664–1723,Archives--SoutAfricaCapeofGoodHope,Cap eofGoodHope(SouthAfrica)--HistorySources.

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In his heritage site Tariq Mellet15 also stresses that Groot Constantia was owned by Anna de Koningh, a freed slave. The family from the days of Adriaan Van der Stel, father to Simon and his son Willem, in turn were closely linked with leading families with a mixed heritage. The Fish Hoek Galley hosted a rally for the Khoi San of Fish Hoek. A series of speeches were given by men and women who represented the first nation of the Cape. They stressed that their families had walked the beaches and that the colonists had pushed them into the Kalahari. On the Cape flats local people compete with those from the Eastern Cape who are seen as interlopers as they compete for housing and employment. The Democratic Alliance and the African National Council are seen to be equally remiss in ignoring the needs of this group. The targeting of Patricia de Lille for corruption is viewed with suspicion as partly a result of pandering to a different electorate. I was welcomed by a preacher and a small girl shared with me that her mother was one of the singers and that an aunt was a Khoi Queen and an uncle a Khoi King. I commented that perhaps she was a Khoi princess. She agreed and showed me the necklace made with beads from an ostrich egg. Drumming summoned the dignitaries to attention and the owner of the Fish Hoek Galley took the microphone beneath the thatched Kho hut. She explained returning the land to the people should include the Khoi. The Cape Town City Council has suggested that their license should not be renewed. The rally against this (potential decision) was filmed and the new Khoi hut was said to be the first of many that were to be built. The Khoisan are a distinct group whose identity has been ignored by the Xhosa (who enslaved them) and the Dutch who hunted them. Their ancestors were exposed to new diseases, such as smallpox that took a heavy toll on their numbers. Another speaker stressed that the colonists nearly exterminated the Khoi, but they survived. He used the analogy of ‘doom’ the means by which pest controllers remove insects from one’s house. His address was less conciliatory than the first speakers who welcomed everyone. The visibly emotional owner of the restaurant went on to explain that she had: Invested more than 20 million here to make this a family beach. We built the car parks; we provided the space for families to meet outside the restaurant. I could have been rich, but I gave this to the people. Our profits have enabled children from Ocean View to attend high school and some to attend university. Now they want us to go and will not renew our license.

A Khoi queen stressed that she had been given a sign that she was indeed an ancestor and recognized when a Cape Cobra appeared when she visited the Kalahari Desert. It swayed and danced as she danced. In the shadows she saw lions and they lay down and watched. Another leader stood up and said that all women were welcomed and that all the people present probably shared Khoi genes if they had lived for a long time at the Cape. He stressed that: ‘Khoi means people’. But she stressed that the land should be returned to the Khoi who should not be driven away. 15 https://camissapeople.wordpress.com/camissa/.

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The young girl who shared our table told me how she had seen her uncle shot the week before in Ocean View. The women who usually worked at Ocean View as a volunteer asked if she was being helped and the child confirmed that she was receiving counselling. An annoyed white middle-class volunteer came to tell me that one of the speakers ignored her despite the fact that she worked regularly in Ocean View. She said: “This is all politics.” But clearly, she did not understand the depth of the divides between her life chances and those of the speakers, for instance In the following article16 Lengwadishang Ramphele describes an interview with a journalist: What I witnessed in terms of people getting on with their lives in the middle of what can only be described as a gang war is just indescribable resilience from the people of Ocean View.

Govan Whittles, a journalist with Mail & Guardian stressed: When people are saying there are regular echoes of gunshots in Ocean View there are not lying. During the day you hear the gun shots going off and in the evening is the same thing.

The Mail and Guardian published an article (Wood, 2018)17 on the need to put aside race and to concentrate on narrowing the class divides in South Africa. Clearly class and race do matter to some in the group, but others stressed that Khoi means ‘people’ and this included everyone present. Women’s Day (9 August) marks the march by more than 20,000 women to the Union Buildings in 1956 to protest the ‘pass laws’. It is the same day that India celebrates the passive resistance against the British (Shukla, 2018).18 The speech delivered by Malema, stressed that by women, he meant ‘Black women’. Thus, the race card was played openly on Women’s Day. It could be argued that this is a fair point and that his polemic on the rights of black women and that the high rate of rape has to be stopped as it destroys women’s lives was apt, given the recent suicide by a young Rhodes University student19 who had been raped by her boyfriend. The tensions in South African society can be read in the following vignettes of those at the margins of the new South Africa. I was told by an associate that her daughter aged 16 would marry a young Xhosa man as she was pregnant. A termination of the pregnancy had been offered by the local hospital and support was offered by the school. But her mother said her daughter refused and moved away from home until she had convinced her mother that she would keep her child. She explained that the issue was partly about an inter-racial marriage between so-called 16 http://www.capetalk.co.za/articles/312568/journalist-describes-night-in-gang-infested-ocean-

view-cape-town. 17 Wood, T. 2018 Class exists, but can we say the same of race? Mail and Guardian, August 10–16,

page 29. 18 Shukla,

A. 2018 National woman’s day recalls the date India stood up to colonial power. Cape Times, August 10, page 11. 19 Smit, S. 2018. Rhodes rages after suicide. Mail and Guardian, August 10–16, page 8.

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Cape Coloured and a Xhosa, but it was also matter of culture and poverty, summed it up as follows: When she realizes she will be eating pap not salads she will want to come home. Then I will have to raise the child and I am old. There are no jobs for her unless she studies… how stupid…She has a room of her own and a TV …She only had two weeks for a termination and now it is too late…

Her daughter returned home and to school and the child is being raised by her devoted family who are helping one another.

Box: Vignettes of Resistance, De-Colonization and Re-Generation ‘My Turn to Eat the Resources’ This is the pithy title given by Mugabushaka (2012) in his thesis on competing for resources in the DRC. In South Africa the xenophobia towards outsiders from the DRC, Zimbabwe and ‘up North’ are perceived to be ‘stealing jobs or other resources results in an excuse for mob violence. The collective executions are reminiscent of the ‘necklace murders ‘of those perceived to be traitors during the Apartheid era. However, in urban areas such as Ocean View, a survival strategy for poverty is trafficking in drugs and prostitution. The gang violence results in as multiple murders or attacks per month20 in 2018 and in 2017, 29 people were murdered. 2009 Murder Sexual offence Attempted murder

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A small girl who was attending a rally to mark the launch of an education project on the role of the first Indigenous inhabitants at the Cape, a Khoi identity protest in Fish Hoek—confided that she had seen her uncle shot in front of her a couple of weeks prior to the event. The purpose of the rally was to raise awareness that the Camissa people of the Cape have a right to land and to a voice. The case has been made that the current ANC government does not give enough attention (or recognition to the 20 https://www.news24.com/Tags/Topics/gang_violence;

http://www.capetalk.co.za/articles/273 320/ocean-view-residents-seek-police-intervention-to-end-gang-violence.

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Khoi and the San and other indigenous people). The UNDRIP (2007) stresses the need for all Indigenous people to have a voice. Critics of these protests stress that ethic nationalism is problematic and this is not in line with Mandela’s vision of the Rainbow Nation. The counter response is that the ANC has defined African in a way that excludes the Camissa who were the original traders with those who came by coast and needed the ‘sweet waters’ from the streams or the African tribes who came from the north. The owner of the Fish Hoek Galley, a popular restaurant on the beach where the protest was held identifies as Khoi and is married to a German. We thank the people of Fish Hoek for their support. Some people come here every day …. We do not know where they get the money….

The majority of their patrons are overseas visitors who come by the busload for lunches of prawns, crayfish and line fish. The package tours are mostly from Asia. Local patrons fill the informal section for light meals and to indulge in the daily coffee culture that has taken hold in Cape Town. The wealthier retirees occupy their usual tables and watch the passers-by and the entrepreneurs making sand sculptures for donations. Musicians take up position at lunchtime and join with some of the staff in singing. They are part of a choir that practices together. Food choices, affordability and food as recreation are key themes will need to be reconsidered in the wake of Covid-19. The bus tours have stopped and the restaurant has closed which will have ripple effects on the local economy from the male fisherman who provide fish to the female staff in the restaurant. Fishing is an exclusively male primary industry and they have to rent sections of fishing boats. They carefully follow the signals made by the shark and shoal spotters up on the hillside above the bay. All these workers will be impacted (Fig. 26.1). Men and women work for the council, clean the beach each day, ensuring that dog faeces are removed along with the kelp that has been washed up onto the beach. Women serve in service industries as waitresses, cooks, domestic workers and cleaners at the restaurant, shops and homes in the area. The potential for the unemployed to develop their own green enterprises could be explored using the resources from the sea. Those who work at the margins include car park attendants who eke out a living from donations made by patrons attending the restaurant. Others earn a living from donations for their sand sculptures or for their singing of Cape songs and other popular tunes to the patrons. The restaurant owners have held the lease for their space on the beach for 20 years said previously that they believe that they are being driven out by sectional interests. The Cape Town Municipality has allowed a month-by-month lease. The vignette is shared because it brings together the social, economic and environmental challenges that are convergent. The competition for land and resources continues to be waged at the edge of the Cape on the beaches overlooking the Pacific Ocean: We are descendants of the first people and yet we are not recognized.

Identity politics remain important in the Cape as the descendants of the first nation compete for employment and recognition in rapidly urbanising Cape Town.

26 Biopolitics and Food Security to Protect Social … Fig. 26.1 Trawl net fishing on Fish Hoek Beach

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On the 10th of January 2019 a bill was presented to parliament recognizing the rights of the Khoisan people, but it was criticized by the DA for not being carefully discussed. Currently the ANC only recognize the first nation as so-called ‘coloured people’ as opposed to recognizing that they are First Nations.

Box: Vignette: Clifton Beach and Resisting Enclosing the Commons Saturday 12 January 2018 is the anniversary of ANC and it is the day on which the ANC will announce their plans for the election at the Moses Mabida Stadium in Durban. The policy emphasis is on employment linked with Vocational Education and Training. The need for a range of alternative ways of learning has become more pressing as the lack of places in primary, secondary and tertiary schools indicates. More than 60,000 students, for example tried to enrol at the University of Cape Town, but there were places for only 4200 students. Alternative pathways are needed to ensure that a range of skills and trades can be developed to support a sustainable green economy as stressed at the Page Ministerial Conference in Cape Town (10–11 January 2019). It is New Year’s Day, 2019 and time to reflect on the closing events of the year. According to Cloete (2018)21 . The Black People’s National Crisis Committee decided to sacrifice a sheep on 4th Beach to cleanse the beach of racism on the 29th of December in response to the actions of a private security company called Professional Protection Alternatives who asked people to leave the beach after 8 p.m. at night. It is suggested that the company is acting at the behest of local residents with the support of the City Council and former mayor Patricia De Lille has asked for answers. The ANC has expressed support for the Crisis Committee and stressed that beaches are for the public. Mitchley (2018) stressed that Mayor Plato has reiterated that the security company did not act on the behalf of the City Council and that the beaches are indeed open to all. In traditional Africa culture animal sacrifice is considered a way to appease the ancestors. It underlines that the beaches are also for African people and that their customs matter. The sacrifice as a means to communicate with the ancestors is a common practice associated with healing ceremonies in Africa. More pressing is the issue of unemployment raised in the articles entitled: ‘Walk for change in hope that Ramaphosa will listen’ in which the protest by young people from Kwazulu Natal was aimed at raising awareness of the need for affordable education and jobs. In ‘The year that shook the nation’ the details of the state capture 21 Cloete, N. 2018. Call to rename Clifton 4th ‘Chief burial’. Weekend Argus, 29–30 December, pages 22–24. But this event coincided with ex-President Zuma using the political situation to say he would release an album of struggle songs. The revival of the struggle songs is to preserve history, but also to provide a profile for the ousted former president and a way to balance the influence of the Economic Freedom Fighters.

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are rehearsed along with the problems associated with encouraging foreign investment in South Africa. Ramalaine (2018: 14) expresses the opinion that government elites need to start putting the needs of the people first and that too little has been done to make a difference in the lives of the working poor and the vast numbers of unemployed: South Africa can do without a crop of dishonest and embedded elites who straddle the spheres of politics, religion, academics, business, civil society, the judiciary and the media, who more than often arrogate the right to economically benefit from the junkets of apartheid masters, and equally to speak for and reprimand the masses …If we are serious about change, the country needs a more honest organized labour fraternity, not a group of political power hobnobs who pride themselves sharing on social media their latest Porsche …. and where they have gone for holidays, in the name of the workers….

Whilst I sat looking at the horizon, my friend spoke of how she felt about the response at Clifton. It was interesting to hear about the event through the eyes of an animal rights activist who had also played her role during the Apartheid era to promote social justice. Her focus was on the unnecessary violence towards the slaughter of a sheep. I agreed but suggested that this also needed to be understood as symbolic and a cultural response in line with other ceremonies, such as ‘inkomo ye silo’ (a cow for the ancestors) that I had witnessed in Cape Town whilst undertaking post graduate research at the University of Cape Town. It needed to be understood at a number of levels: ● Confronting racism by showing traditional culture to those who had no understanding of the continuity between the living and their ancestors who had experienced racism in the past. It also provides a reminder of the biblical sacrifice of a lamb, instead of human sacrifice, a rather unfortunate incident mentioned in the old testament where God tests Abraham by asking him to sacrifice his son Isaac! ● At another level the slaughter of the lamb is also a way to draw the line in the sand, quite literally by spilling blood. The violence in the message was clear to all who witnessed the slaughter. I said I found the ceremonies abhorrent but understood it as a commentary on the outrage people felt. As I wrote a draft of this vignette, I recalled my visit to the Eastern Cape area in early 2020. Grahamstown, Bathurst and Bedford are small towns. This is frontier country where settlers fought to Xhosa for their land and displaced them. The frontier is still marked at the Settler museum in Grahamstown where some of the busts to the settlers have been displaced. The tensions of land are now replaced with the tensions of water insecurity. I saw long queues of people waited in line for a chance to fill their plastic 25 litre bottles from a spring outside Grahamstown. Farming methods on frontier farms are tough on staff and animals. Both are commodified in this hard-dry place where extracting profit remains central for survival. I cannot write about how I feel about the lack of kinship shown towards farm animals treated as commodities. The lamb who died on a farm in the Eastern Cape was treated as a commodity, not as a fellow creature to be nurtured. Thus, the outrage needs to be rooted in re-membering and understanding, without condoning cruelty.

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Lazzarato, M. (2009). Neoliberalism in action inequality, insecurity and the reconstitution of the social theory. Culture & Society 2009 (SAGE, Los Angeles, London, New Delhi, and Singapore), 26(6): 109–133. https://doi.org/10.1177/0263276409350283. Lemke, T. (2015). New materialisms: Foucault and the ‘Government of Things.’ Theory, Culture & Society, 32(4): 3–25. https://doi.org/10.1177/0263276413519340. McKay, V. I. (2018). Introducing a parallel curriculum to enhance social and environmental awareness in South African school workbooks. In J. J. McIntyre-Mills, N. R. A. Romm, & Y. Corcoran-Nantes (Eds.), Balancing individualism and collectivism: Social and environmental justice (pp. 97–122). New York: Springer. McIntyre-Mills, J. (2004). Facilitating critical systemic praxis (CSP) by means of experiential learning and conceptual tools. Systems Research and Behavioural Science, 21, 37–61. McIntyre-Mills, J. (2006). Systemic governance and accountability: Working and re-working the conceptual and spatial boundaries of international relations and governance. C. West Churchman and Related Works Series (Vol. 3., p. 434). London: Springer. McIntyre-Mills, J. (2014). Systemic ethics and non-anthropocentric stewardship. New York: Springer. McIntyre-Mills, J. (2017). Planetary passport: Re-presentation, accountability and re-generation. Springer International Publishing. McIntyre-Mills, J. (2018). Policy design for non-anthropocentric pathways to protect biodiversity and regenerate the land. International Journal of Educational Development in Africa. https://doi. org/10.25159/2312-3540/2865. McIntyre-Mills, J., & De Vries, D. (2011). Identity, democracy and sustainability: Facing up to convergent social, economic and environmental challenges. Litchfield Park: Emergent Publications. McIntyre-Mills, J., & Romm, N. R. A. (2019). Mixed methods and cross disciplinary research: Towards cultivating eco-systemic living. New York: Springer. McIntyre-Mills, J. with Van Gigch, J. Series Editor. (2006). Rescuing the enlightenment from itself: Critical and systemic implications for democracy. C. West Churchman Series (Vol. 1). London. McIntyre-Mills, J., De Vries, D., & Binchai, N. (2014). Transformation from wall street to wellbeing. New York: Springer. McIntyre-Mills, J., Romm, N. R. A., & Corcoran-Nantes, Y. (Eds.). (2018). Mixed methods and cross disciplinary research: Towards cultivating eco-systemic living. London: Springer. Miller, T. (2010). Michel Foucault, the birth of bio politics: Lectures at the College de France, 1978– 79. International Journal of Cultural Policy, 16(1), 56–57. https://doi.org/10.1080/102866309029 71637. Security, Territory, Population: Lectures at the College de France 1977. https://www.ama zon.com/Security-Territory-Population-Lectures-1977-1978/dp/0312203608Security, Territory, Population: Lectures at the College de France 1977–1978 [Michel Foucault, Michel Senellart, François Ewald, Alessandro Fontana, Arnold I]. Mitchley, A. (2018). Security company had ‘no authority’ at Clifton—Plato declares Cape Town Beaches ‘open to all’. News 24.com. https://www.news24.com/news24/southafrica/news/sec urity-company-had-no-authority-at-clifton-plato-declares-cape-town-beaches-open-to-all-201 81228. Mokati, N. (2018, December 29–30). Walk for change in hope that Ramaphosa will listen. Weekend Argus, p. 13. Morton, F. (2005). Female inboekelinge in the South African republic, 1850–1880. Slavery and abolition, 26(2), 199–215. Mtshali, S., & Kumalo, T. (2018, December 29–30). The year that shook the nation. Weekend Argus, p. 13. Mugabushaka, J. (2012). Governance, democracy and development challenges in DRC. PhD thesis, Flinders University. Nadler, J. (2018). These children are not animals. https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/video/ 2018/jun/19/these-children-are-not-animals-us-house-decriesseparation-policy-video. Nussbaum, M. (2006), Frontiers of justice. London. Harvard University Press.

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Nussbaum, M. (2011). Creating capabilities: The human development approach. London: The Belknap Press. Pagan Rights Alliance. (2020). https://paganrightsalliance.org/remember-their-names/. Parkes. (2018, February 28). Edward Colston: The slave trader dividing Bristol. BBC News. Pather, R., & Whittles, G. (2018, June 1). Gatvol Capetonians stir up tensions. Mail and Guardian. Pauli, G. (2010). The blue economy: Report to the club of Rome. Paradigm Publications. Ramalaine, C. (2018, December 29–30). Thoughts on the new dawn. Weekend Argus, p. 14. Rayner, A. (2017). Natural inclusion. In J. J. McIntyre-Mills, N. Romm, & Y. Corcoran-Nantes (Eds.), Balancing individualism and collectivism: Social and environmental justice (pp. 461–470). London: Springer. Reynolds, M. (2011). Critical thinking and systems thinking: Towards a critical literacy for systems thinking in practice. In Critical Thinking. Ricke, K., Drouet, L., Caldeira, K., & Tavoni, M. (2018, September 24). Country-level social cost of carbon. Nature Climate Change. www.nature.com/natureclimatechange. Published: https:// www.nature.com/articles/s41558-018-0282-y. Rifkin, J. (2011). Third Industrial Revolution: How lateral power is transforming energy, the economy, and the world. New York: St. Martin’s Press. Romm, N. R. A. (2018, November 8–10). Sustainable development towards an inclusive wellbeing: Some possibilities emanating from South Africa. Paper for Sustainable Development Conference, Vietnam, Hanoi Forum. Savory, A. (2014). Holistic management. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=kvpeLFrk5io#fauxfulls creen. Savory, A. (2018). Running out of time. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q7pI7IYaJLI. Scott, J. (1998). Seeing like a state. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. Shai, K. B. (2017). South African state capture: A symbiotic affair between business and state going bad(?). Insight on Africa, 9(1), 62–75. https://doi.org/10.1177/0975087816674584. Shukla, A. (2018, August 10). National woman’s day recalls the date India stood up to colonial power. Cape Times, p. 11. Stiglitz, J., Sen, A. & Fitoussi, J. P. (2010). Mis-measuring our Lives: Why the GDP Doesn’t Add up. New York: The New Press. Singer, P. (2002). One world: The ethics of globalization. Yale University Press. Singh, K. (2019). Bring me my recording contract: Jacob Zuma to make struggle song album. News 24. www.news24.com. Swartz, D. (2018). Australia’s largest live sheep exporter Emanuel Exports’ license suspended. Report posted on Australian Broadcasting Website. Accessed 26 June 2018. Tarig Mellet, P. (2018). Stop called us coloured and denying us our divers African identities. Mail and Guardian. United Nations. (2014). World urbanisation prospects: The 2014 revision https://esa. un.org/unpd/wup/publications/files/wup2014-highlights.Pdf; https://doi.org/10.1080/23738871. 2017.1400084. United Nations Declaration of the rights of Indigenous peoples. (2007). https://www.humanrights. gov.au/publications/un-declaration-rights-indigenous-peoples-1Documents/Issues/IPeoples/ UNDRIPManualForNHRIs.pdf. United Nations Office for Disaster Risk Reduction. (2015–2030). Sendai Framework. http://www. preventionweb.net/drr-framework/sendai-framework/. United Nations Paris Climate Change. (2015). Conference of the parties twenty-first session Paris, 30 November to 11 December 2015. https://unfccc.int/resource/docs/2015/cop21/eng/l09r01.pdf. Wood, T. (2018, August 10–16). Class exists, but can we say the same of race? Mail and Guardian, p. 29.

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Web References http://www.news.uwa.edu.au/201204034491/research/talking-plants. https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-bristol-42404825. https://www.sahistory.org.za/…/convict-stations-labour-cape-colony. https://www.sahistory.org.za/…/history-luckhoff-high-school-1932-1969. https://www.sahistory.org.za/article/dutch-settlement. https://www.sahistory.org.za/places/frenchhoek. https://www.sahistory.org.za/places/groot-berg-river. https://www.sahistory.org.za/topic/impact-colonialism. Stellenbosch University | South African History Online. The Dutch Settlement | South African History Online. The impact of colonialism | South African History Online. www.sahistory.org.za/place/stellenbosch-university. http://users.ox.ac.uk/~kgroup/research/research.shtml. http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0308521X13001480. https://doi.org/10.1080/13527258.2011.602981.

Janet J. McIntyre-Mills is Honorary Professor in the College of Education at University of South Africa, Tshwane, South Africa; Visiting Research Fellow at Adelaide University in the College of Professions Main North Terrace; and Adjunct Associate Professor in College of Business Government and Law at Flinders University, Sturt Campus, Adelaide.

Chapter 27

Vignette: Cannibalising the South Pacific Janet J. McIntyre-Mills

Consumption to the extent that it is unsustainable is not new. Excessive consumption has consequences as many failed economies (and systems of governance) bear testimony as detailed in the ‘Life and death of democracy’ (Keane, 2009). Democracy (as we know it) needs to be revised. This has been stressed elsewhere (Keane, 2009; McIntyre-Mills, 2014, 2017). But how to engage with other people and cultures and to enable people to respond to the consequences of our actions is the challenge. The notion of seeing the people or the land as a commodity that could be enclosed as plantations and sold was alien in the South Pacific. The consumption and overconsumption of resources by Western capitalists, however, is nowhere more apparent than on Nauru, the capital city for New Caledonia. The island, a so-called ‘French territory’ has been denuded of most of its forests. First it was used as a penal colony, then it was deforested and mined. Now that the forests have gone Grand Terres is mined for nickel which can only support the economy for the next couple of decades. Our guide confided that attempts are being made to re-vegetate with seeds from local vegetation, but there has been little success to date. The cathedral of St Joseph’s on Noumea was built by convicts1 between 1887 and 1897. She explained that the statue of Joan of Arc outside annoys the local Kanaks who say that this saint has nothing to do with Noumea. Similarly, the plaque has been 1 2

https://www.newcaledonia.travel/au/noumea/saint-josephs-cathedral. https://www.worldstatesmen.org/New_Caledonia.htm.

J. J. McIntyre-Mills (B) University of South Africa in the College of Education, Tshwane, South Africa e-mail: [email protected]; [email protected] Adelaide University, College of Professions Main North Terrace, Adelaide, Australia College of Business, Government and Law, Flinders University, Sturt, SA, Australia

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2021 J. J. McIntyre-Mills and Y. Corcoran-Nantes (eds.), From Polarisation to Multispecies Relationships, Contemporary Systems Thinking, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-33-6884-2_27

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Photo 27.1 Catholic church on the left where the statue of Joan of Arc appears near the entrance and the central square highlighting Kanak elders (Source: Author’s own photograph)

removed from the statue in Olry Square. The Kanaks do not want to be reminded of the arrival of Admiral Jean-Baptiste Olry2 when they were colonised in 1854. This was followed in 1878 by a Kanak rebellion. My guide said that if the local vote was successful then they would cede from France and that the statue of the coloniser would be removed from the square She explained that although Noumea gets a great deal of support from the European Union, the Kanaks would prefer to regain their independence. The local meeting place in the square highlights local culture and local ancestors and this is where meetings are held that honour the Kanak history (Photo 27.1). The British in Australia also have colonial relationship with New Caledonia and other South Pacific Islanders, such as Vanuatu and Fiji. The Kanaks were ‘black birded’3 or pirated by colonists to work on the Queensland cotton and sugar plantations, according to Higgenbothan (2017) who continues as follows: “Emelda Davis, president of the organisation Australian South Sea Islanders Port Jackson, said her grandfather was kidnapped from the island of Tanna in Vanuatu as a 12-year-old boy.” “He was put on a boat with no say — couldn’t say goodbye to his family — and sent to Australia to work on the Queensland sugar farms,” she said. Although they were paid, their wages were lower than for other workers,”

According to Higgenbothan who cites the work of Professor Clive Moore, University of Queensland who studies South Sea Islander history. He explains that ironically,

3 Higgenbothan,

W. 2017. https://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-09-17/blackbirding-australias-his tory-of-kidnapping-pacific-islanders/8860754.

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Photo 27.2 A treeless landscape (Source: Author’s own photograph)

they were sent back under the white Australia policy,4 which stressed the emphasis on white immigration to Australia. Noumea is one of the world’s largest nickel suppliers. The landscape is barren now (Photos 27.2 and 27.3).

The Deforestation of Noumea Christian Dior has acknowledged the right of Indigenous people’s contribution to knowledge. The TRIPS5 agreement has provided minimal protection for Indigenous people as it removed the moral right of authors, according to Whimp and Busse (2000: 13).6 4 https://www.nma.gov.au/defining-moments/resources/end-of-the-white-australia-policy,

“One of the first pieces of legislation enacted by the parliament of the newly federated Australian nation was the Immigration Restriction Act 1901. This Act, known as the ‘White Australia policy’, aimed to not only restrict numbers of non-white migrants to Australia, but also to deport ‘undesirable’ migrants who were already in the country.” 5 Correa (2002: 1) explains that: “The Doha Declaration on the TRIPS Agreement and Public Health, adopted by the WTO Ministerial Conference in November 2001, which affirms that the TRIPS Agreement should be interpreted and implemented so as to protect public health and promote access to medicines for all, marked a watershed in international trade demonstrating that a rulesbased trading system should be compatible with public health interests. The Declaration enshrines the principle WHO has publicly advocated and advanced over the last four years, namely the reaffirmation of the right of WTO Members to make full use of the safeguard provisions of the TRIPS Agreement to protect public health and enhance access to medicines” (my emphasis). 6 According to Whimp (2000) in her chapter (143–168) on ‘Access to genetic resources: legal and policy issues’ cites Gervais (1998: 78) with reference to TRIPS. She explains that the removal of the moral rights of authors from legal rights was a win for the Anglo-American legal system.

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Photo 27.3 This is the local vegetation on a nearby island (Source: Author’s own photograph)

Kathy Whimp explains that the law allows the removal of legal rights, but then suggests that moral protection be provided, which seems a cynical option, because property rights are based on possession, creativity and discovery in Western Law. By invoking discovery as a right to dispossess others, colonial countries dismissed the different notion of relationships to kin and nature. Whimp and Busse stress in their introduction to a seminar on ‘Protection of Intellectual, Biological and Property Rights in PNG’ that anthropologists have neglected the notion of property. Another aspect which was not emphasized is the notion of consumption and what constitutes the right to consume and the nature of consumption. The idea of consumption as a property right flowing from the continuous ownership of land and the right to decide the way the item is used was foreign to many in South Pacific (in which Australia is one of the largest islands). The idea that traditional economies (and societies) always know best is too simplistic, as Whimp and Busse (2000) stress, but we certainly do need to re-learn the art of living simply and accepting the notion of living within limits. The scale of destruction caused by consuming the planet (Urry, 2010; IPPC, 2018) to extinction (Bostrom, 2011) is part of the problem, the other is the growing size of the human population at the expense of other living systems on which we rely. She cites ‘Standards concerning the availability, scope and use of Intellectual Property Rights’: “Article 27 allows member states to prohibit the patenting of ‘plants and animals other than microorganisms, and essentially biological processes for the production of plants or animals other than non-biological or microbiological processes’. But Article 27 also states that ‘Members shall provide for the protection of plant varieties either by patents or by effective sui generis [special purpose] system or by any combination thereof’”.

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The option of course is to create alternative forms of mass survival through creating alternative forms of food is a technocratic solution that would alter life as we know it. So, although naïve pictures of traditional ways of life are unhelpful, the notion of living in harmony with a range of life forms is vital to sustain. The notion of trade was not foreign in the island nations, nor was the notion of competition or winners or losers. Geismar (2014) refers to the practice of sand drawing known as ‘droing’ to connect with the ancestors, according to the Vanuatu guide. At a practical level it also provided a means to remember stories, communicate across diverse language groups in the island archipelago as so many groups had different languages and the ability to convey meaning through sand drawings helped at a practical level to enable mutual understanding or to trade items. The symbolism helped to convey meaning. It underlined the belief in the afterlife and the need to communicate and in some instances appease the ancestors. The symbols concentrate on the basics pertaining to survival. Food, water and energy symbols provide shared webs of meaning. We need to move beyond the notion of the right to consume to the notion of shared responsibility for a shared future. Changing narratives is indeed the way forward through laws and everyday practice to protect the commons. The islands of the South Pacific or Melanesia and Polynesia need to be understood not as sub regions but in terms of a wider region (D’Arcy, 2003) across which people, plants and animals travelled and changed over time to adapt to local environments. Bensusan (1862) mentions that Fijian language is rich and that it has links with the Malaysian language which belies his statement that Fijians were isolated from other regional cultures. Western Colonisers entered the region and shaped the people, the animals and plants in a way that had never occurred before. The notion of being one with nature was changed by a new religion, Christianity and a new form of economy, namely ‘capitalism’. The London missionaries arrived on Latouka before the Catholics and thus the majority are Protestants on this island. But the Catholics arrived first in French Caledonia. In Suva, Vanuatu the competition between the French and the British was for control of the resources of the island. The nation was settled by a shared ‘protectorate’. Bensusan (1862: 50) comments with reference to the Fijian islands: It is by foreign commerce and capital that the resources of these islands must be developed, and a sufficient degree of material prosperity attained.

Ironically this statement follows Bensusan’s perception (1862: 50) that they have ‘few wants’, ‘plenty of leisure and no desire to work as they are able to rely on the bountiful resources’. The notion of living life to the full and accepting that life continues after death provided a fatalistic attitude. Men and women whose health is failing or who have been considered to have lived long enough were buried (Bensusan, 1862; Frazer, 1913) as it was believed that life continued after death and Frazer (1913: 423) stressed that they believed that

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the spiritual life commences where the corporeal existence terminates. With these views it is natural that they should desire to pass through this change before their mental and bodily powers are so enfeebled by age as to deprive them of their capacity for enjoyment.

He continues that: To this motive must be added the contempt which attaches to physical weakness among a nation of warriors and the wrongs and insults which await those who are no longer able to protect themselves.

Aloha means to connect with others in harmony, it is the expression used in Hawaii and explained by Allen (1982) in “The betrayal of Liliuokalani: Last Queen of Hawaii 1838–1917: “‘Aloha’ was a recognition of life in another. If there was life there was mana, goodness and wisdom, and if there was goodness and wisdom there was god-quality. One had to recognize the ‘god of life’ in another before saying ‘Aloha,’ but this was easy. Life was everywhere”.

The rule of the chiefs remains important and we were told how the local chiefs meet regularly to discuss local issues and then report to the more senior provincial chiefs. The entrance to the meeting hut is low, so that people bow when they come into the presence of the chief. Although locals can use materials to build their homes, the scarce timber from which the chief’s meeting hut is made cannot be used by others. The female guide made no mention of old customs pertaining to women’s rights. But on Savu the male guide to a cultural tour gleefully told a bus full of tourists en route to the faux village, that in the past it was common for the women of chiefs to be buried with their husbands and this was outlawed when the missionaries arrived. In fact, this was more widespread and linked with the notion of immortality. He also stressed that women were not allowed to drink kava but that they could elect to be killed first. Apparently, the women made the choice ‘voluntarily’ to avoid being ostracised. Further research reveals that this practice was more widespread and applied to the frail and in some instances to males who were not deemed to be worthy. Charles Wilkes (1845)7 elaborates on this theme and Frazer (1913) discusses the islander notion of immortality and the need to die before becoming too frail in the Gifford lectures.8 According to Major Alfred Hills (1927: 47) a member of the Central Board of Health of South Australia in his pamphlet titled: “A Cruise among Former Cannibal Islands” in which he describes his voyage through the lenses of colonialism:

7 https://ethicsofsuicide.lib.utah.edu/tradition/indigenous-cultures/oceanic-cultures/fiji2/. 8 He

cites John Jackson’s account of the burying alive of a young Fijian man by his father. He explains that a young boy who was ill and wasting away chose to die, to avoid being ridiculed for his weakness. Frazer (1913) in the Gifford Lectures explains that the Fijians believed in an afterlife and in a form of re-generation and that death was not considered the end of the cycle, but a way to transition to a new state of being. The guide then went on to explain (unself consciously) that cannibalism was widespread and that raids could result in capture and death for all, except for the women.

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“Kava-drinking is one of the most ancient and honoured customs of the South Sea Islands. It is associated with most of the Religious and State functions. By it the supremacy of the head chief and the status of the lesser chiefs is recognized. When a new Governor arrives at Fiji his authority is recognized by a ceremonial kava-drinking, which all the chiefs attend, and thus show their loyalty and allegiance to the British Government. Before a battle, a kava-drinking ceremony, where possible, took place at the grave of the chief’s ancestor and his aid was invoked. Solemn oaths of fidelity were taken with one hand resting on the kava bowl, as we place it on the Bible….”

He continues (1927: 50) his dated discourse reveals an attempt at cultural relativism filtered through a perspective on cannibalism, which today sounds absurd: “The cannibal simply antedated the most modern medical method of treating disease and restoring health. The latest method of biochemistry and organotherapy finds out what secretions of the glands of the body are wanting in the blood and body tissues…”

It made me reflect that hopefully what passes for acceptable relationships spanning multiple species today will (in the not too distant future) be seen to be a dated form of cannibalising the planet (Photo 27.4). Dravuni Island is part of the Fijian Archipelago and I spent a few hours walking along the beach, meeting the local school teachers and some of the women entrepreneurs selling sarongs on the beaches or offering to braid hair or to provide a massage for 20 dollars. The pigs in the enclosures on Dravuni Island were audible and poignant, despite the lack of empathy from passers-by. Too many in too small a cage (Cochrane, 2012; De Waal, 2009). Whereas previously free ranging wild pigs would have had a better quality of life, the farmed creatures have little or no quality of life (Donaldson and

Photo 27.4 The children meet members of service clubs visiting in Dec 2019 (Source: Author’s own photograph)

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Kymlicka, 2011). They are regarded as a main source of protein along with chickens and fish in this ‘Island Paradise’ The coconuts also provide a nourishing drink and coconut flesh is added to most meals along with local yams and spinach type greens (Photos 27.5 and 27.6). Photo 27.5 Pigs in an enclosure far too small to accommodate movement or any quality of life (Source: Author’s own photograph)

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Photo 27.6 Entrepreneurs on Dravuni island before the outbreak of Covid-19 (Source: Author’s own photograph)

The cruise ships visit Dravuni a few times a year and they provide a source of income for the locals who rely mostly on subsistence farming. In some ways the visits of cruise ships support a culture of interdependence on the outside world without allowing it to intrude for more than few hours per visit. There is no tourism development and instead the entrepreneurs on the beach set up a range of informal stores providing sarongs, coconuts and hair braiding, for example. Visits to the islands by tourists and members of service clubs aboard visiting tourism ships whilst of a short duration could have long lasting effects, such as introducing and spreading Covid-19 on many of these remote islands. The cruise ships that visited these islands will not be travelling soon as crews and passengers succumb to the disease in their close confines. The role of cruise ships polluting the ocean and adding to the size of our carbon footprint has been raised as an issue that has been denied,9 but there is evidence that places where ships no longer visit are less polluted.10 Perhaps the islands will once again become places that are remote, rather than regularly visited tourism destinations?

9 https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/mar/20/nature-is-taking-back-venice-wildlife-

returns-to-tourist-free-city; https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/apr/14/cruiseships-coronavirus-passengers-future. 10 https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/mar/20/nature-is-taking-back-venice-wildlifereturns-to-tourist-free-city.

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But the ethics of consumption needs to be revisited as I reflect on colonisation, cannibalism and the price of being the top predator ousted from position by the corona virus. David Attenborough11 reminds us that human beings are superfluous on the planet, but insects are not! The ‘banality of evil (Arendt, 1963; Butler, 2011) is widespread’, perhaps the pause in consumption required by Covid-19 will enable us to reflect critically (Reynolds, 2011) on our lives and the ‘existential risks’ (Bostrom, 2011) posed by ‘business as usual’. Perhaps we will decide to re-draw the boundaries of what is considered to be a form of property and instead think of what constitutes morally acceptable multispecies relationships. This will require a new form of law underpinned by non-anthropocentric, systemic ethics. (McIntyre-Mills, 2014)

References Alivizatou, M. (2012). Debating heritage authenticity: Custom and development at the Vanuatu Cultural Centre 1. International Journal of Heritage Studies, 124–143 | Received 13 Apr 2011, Accepted 01 July 2011, Published online: 11 Oct 2011 Volume 18, 2012, Issue 2. Allen, H. (1982). The betrayal of Liliuokalani: Last Queen of Hawaii 1838–1917. Honolulu: Mutual Publishing. Arendt, H. (1963). Eichmann in Jerusalem: A report on the banality of Evil. New York: Viking Press. Bateson, G. (1972). Steps to an ecology of mind. New York: Ballantine. Bensusan, M. (1862). The Journal of the Royal Geographical Society of London, 32, 42–50. Published by: Wiley on behalf of The Royal Geographical Society (with the Institute of British Geographers). Bostrom, N. (2011). Existential risk prevention as the most important task for humanity. www.exi stential-risk.org. Bourdieu, P. (1999). The weight of the world. Oxford: Polity. Butler, J. (2011). Hannah Arendt’s challenge to Adolf Eichmann. https://www.theguardian.com/ commentisfree/2011/aug/29/hannah-arendt-adolf-eichmann-banality-of-evil. Cochrane, A. (2012). From human rights to sentient rights. Critical Review of International Social and Political Philosophy, 16(5), 655–675. https://doi.org/10.1080/13698230.2012.691235. Correa, C. M. (2002). Implications of the Doha Declaration on the TRIPS Agreement and Public Health World Health Organisation. http://apps.who.int/medicinedocs/pdf/s2301e/s2301e.pdf. D’Arcy, P. (2003). Cultural divisions and Island environments since the time of Dumont d’Urville. The Journal of Pacific History, 38(2), 217–235. https://doi.org/10.1080/0022334032000120549. De Waal, F. (2009). The age of empathy: Nature’s lessons for a kinder society. New York: Harmony Books. Deacon, A. B., & Wedgwood, C. H. (1929). Notes on some Islands of the New Hebrides. Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland, 59, 461–515. Donaldson, S., & Kymlicka, W. (2011). Zoopolis: A political theory of animal rights. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Frazer, J. G. (1913). The belief in immortality and the worship of the dead. Gifford Lectures 1911–1912. Lecture 19 in The belief in Immortality among the natives of Eastern

11 https://www.abc.net.au/classic/the-margaret-throsby-interviews/sir-david-attenborough-interv

iewed-by-margaret-throsby/11757192.

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Melanesia Macmillan. London. See https://www.giffordlectures.org/books/belief-immortalityand-worship-dead/lecture-2-savage-conception-death. Geismar, H. (2014). Drawing it out Visual Anthropology Review, 30(2), 97–113. ISSN 1058–7187, online ISSN 1548-7458. Gervais, D. (1998). The TRIPS agreement: Drafting history and analysis. London: Sweet and Maxwell. Hills, A. W. (1927). A cruise among former Cannibal Islands: Fiji, Tonga, Samoa: A glimpse at the countries, people, customs and legends. Thomas and Co: Adelaide. http://www.ipcc.ch/pdf/session48/pr_181008_P48_spm_en.pdf. IPPC Report. (2018). https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/oct/08/world-leaders-havemoral-obligation-to-act-after-un-climate-report. Keane J. (2009). The life and death of democracy. London: Simon and Schuster. McIntyre-Mills, J. (2014). Systemic Ethics and non-anthropocentric stewardship. New York: Springer. McIntyre-Mills, J. (2017). Planetary passport: Re-presentation. Accountability and Re-generation: Springer International Publishing. McIntyre-Mills, J., De Vries, & Binchai, N. (2014). Transformation from Wall Street to Wellbeing: Joining up the dots through participatory democracy and governance to mitigate the causes and adapt to the effects of climate change. New York: Springer. Reynolds, M. (2011). Critical thinking and systems thinking: Towards a critical literacy for systems thinking in practice. In C. P. Horvath & J. M. Forte (Eds.), Critical thinking (pp. 37–68). New York: Nova Science Publishers. Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/1798397. Accessed 24 Nov 2019 04:57 UTC. TRIPS Standards concerning the availability, scope and use of Intellectual Property Rights. https:// www.wto.org/english/docs_e/legal_e/27-trips_04c_e.htm. United Nations Declaration of the rights of Indigenous Peoples. (2007). https://www.humanrights. gov.au/publications/un-declaration-rights-indigenous-peoples-1. Urry, J. (2010). Consuming the planet to excess. Theory, Culture & Society, 27(2–3), 191–212. https://doi.org/10.1177/0263276409355999. Weir, A. A. S., Chappell, J., & Kacelnik, A. (2002). Shaping of hooks in New Caledonian crows. Science, 297(5583), 81. https://doi.org/10.1126/science.1073433.pmid12169726. Whimp, K. (2000). Access to genetic resources: Legal and policy issues 143–168. In K. Whimp & M. Busse (Eds.), Protection of intellectual, biological & cultural property in Papua New Guinea. https://press-files.anu.edu.au/downloads/press/p229831/pdf/book.pdf. Available as ebook in 2013. Whimp, K., & Busse, M. (2000). Protection of intellectual, biological & cultural property in Papua New Guinea. https://press-files.anu.edu.au/downloads/press/p229831/pdf/book.pdf. Available as ebook in 2013. Williams, T. (1858). Deaths of the old chief and his wives. Fiji and the Fijians (London: Alexander Heylan, Vol. 1, 1858; London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1870), pp. 160–176. Allen.

Web Links http://users.ox.ac.uk/~kgroup/research/research.shtml. https://doi.org/10.1080/13527258.2011.602981. https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-12-07/christian-dior-reaches-secret-agreement-with-new-cal edonia/11773612. Interview with Michael Franjieh, Teaching fellow at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), University of London, UK. https://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/archived/lin guafranca/2012-11-17/4369388.

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Janet J. McIntyre-Mills is Honorary Professor in the College of Education at University of South Africa, Tshwane, South Africa; Visiting Research Fellow at Adelaide University in the College of Professions Main North Terrace; and Adjunct Associate Professor in College of Business Government and Law at Flinders University, Sturt Campus, Adelaide.

Chapter 28

Systemic Praxis: Steps Towards Re-generation Janet J. McIntyre-Mills, N. R. A. Romm, Akwasi Arko-Achemfuor, and J. Karel

Abstract This chapter explores some examples of systemic thinking and practice to support re-generative development. By re-generative development we mean developing opportunities that support people and the living systems on which they depend. We need to understand our connectedness and protect people and the environment. Our thinking shapes the material world in which we live. Candace Pert and Susan Greenfield have made these points. This consciousness is about ‘both and’ thinking that balances individual and collective needs. Keywords Systemic · Re-generate · Development

Introduction The challenge is to change governance and to ‘enhance the couplings between nature and society’ (Stokols, 2018: 243) in positive, not negative ways. In 2020 bush fires in Australia devastated local habitat and underlined the need for re-generation for social, economic and environmental wellbeing. Stokols (2018: 271) goes on to stress that: “The adaptive capacity of the human environment system depends on ecological resilience, or adaptive coupling between society and nature.” This chapter is informed by conversations with the community engagement agents comprising Norma Romm, Akwasi Arko-Achemfuor, Joyce Karel in South Africa as well as the community facilitators in Australia and Indonesia. The chapter refers to a joint forthcoming joint chapter entitled “Systemic thinking for re-generative development” (Romm & McIntyre-Mills, 2021, forthcoming). J. J. McIntyre-Mills (B) University of South Africa in the College of Education, Tshwane, South Africa e-mail: [email protected]; [email protected] Adelaide University, College of Professions Main North Terrace, Adelaide, Australia College of Business, Government and Law, Flinders University, Sturt, SA, Australia N. R. A. Romm · A. Arko-Achemfuor · J. Karel University of South Africa, Pretoria, South Africa © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2021 J. J. McIntyre-Mills and Y. Corcoran-Nantes (eds.), From Polarisation to Multispecies Relationships, Contemporary Systems Thinking, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-33-6884-2_28

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This is as much an intellectual as a spiritual journey: either way it requires both a behavioral and a value change based on systemic praxis (see Midgely, 2017, for example). To ‘rescue the enlightenment from itself’ (McIntyre-Mills and Van Gigch, 2006), we need to realize that there are many ways of knowing. Logic, empiricism, idealism, dialectic and pragmatism (as West Churchman suggested) are some of the ways in which we can know the world. But these ways of knowing are situated (in the sense used by Donna Haraway). Churchman had great insight, but he lived the life of a white, middle class male academic. Our thinking and practice are always limited by our embodied selves and by our experiences. Churchman stressed the need to ‘think about our thinking’ and to engage with others through questioning our line of inquiry. This is a good start as is his emphasis on striving for ideals (shaped by norms) but also open to testing out ideas by considering the lived experiences of others. He could also have explicitly talked about gendered knowing, species knowing and also about the way in which ‘the ecology of mind’ can be extended by thinking about the consequences of decisions for this generation of living systems and the next. Churchman stressed that the systems approach is not only about making holistic, universal maps of the world. It is also about appreciating diversity and he discussed many ways of knowing, but these need to be extended if we are to ‘rescue the enlightenment from itself’ (McIntyre-Mills et al., 2006). An appreciation of animal knowing, plant knowing, the value of the arts and being able to appreciate ‘art in nature’ is a starting point for extending the hierarchy of knowledge that Kenneth Boulding alluded to in his Skeleton of Knowledge (1956). The transformation of values from individual human knowing to appreciation of collective knowledge and responsibility and then the leap to appreciation that anthropocentric knowing is far too limited and non-anthropocentrism requires ecological knowing. Gregory Bateson (1972) stresses that level one learning entails working within one paradigm, level two learning entails working across paradigms and level 3 learning entails ‘abduction’ or setting aside old paradigms to create new integrated ways of knowing. This is what is needed to address the current convergent social, economic and environmental challenges. The work of systemic thinkers needs to continue to work at level 3 to address both social and environmental justice. I was re-introduced to Karen Barad’s work through reading Norma Romm’s contribution, Chap. 12 of this volume and reminded that Barad’s notion of ontology as continuous flows and that our perceptions shape the world are very similar in many respects to the work of David Bohm, Donna Haraway and Deborah Bird Rose (2013, who cites Barad) on being and becoming. These insights also echo aspects of the insights of Deleuze and Guattari (Bogue, 1989) who to the best of my understanding) stress that love and desire (and their opposites) radiate out rhizomatically in many ways to shape lives (see Chap. 3). As stressed in Chap. 1, research has shown that forms of communication (and consciousness) span one celled organisms to complex sentient beings, including human beings (Meijer, 2016; Stephens et al., 2019, Chapters 1 and 3). Similarly, the work of Alan Rayner (2010) on natural inclusion (see Chap. 36) stresses the oneness of nature and that our being meets another simply because we

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are both waves and particles and not separate. The commons can be defined as the shared fabric of life on which all living systems depend. Barton and Grant’s health map (2006) reflects on the way in which health needs to be supported by means of systemic intervention, although they do not stress the notion that balancing individual and collective needs rests on supporting the commons. It also requires many ways of knowing including spirituality or connecting with other plants and animals that may in fact be enabled through the kind of communication that has been called spirituality through intuition, feeling the energy or electrical currents between plants and animals and human beings.1 Many indigenous cultures already apply ecological knowing as a way of life. The two case studies stress the importance of drawing on local wisdom to re-invigorate academic knowledge by appreciating diversity and why people see the world in different ways through: ● listening to their stories, ● engaging with stakeholders through respectful dialogue, questioning and ● justifying the re-drawing of boundaries in terms of new insights about the nature of relationships that take into account the social, economic and environmental context. The paper addresses ecological living by talking about spirituality and social interconnectedness to support non- anthropocentric approaches to living sustainably and feeding forward. The following case studies address alternative ways of relating to nature and aspects of systemic living Stokols (2018: 40) stresses the importance of ecological living and this is explored in the two case studies that highlight aspects of systemic praxis. By considering the vignettes a range of lessons for systemic intervention are raised ranging from the value of in-depth fieldwork in re-shaping ontology, to working with facilitators who have developed relationships of trust over several years through serving the community as teachers and community development facilitators.

Vignette 1: Local Wisdom to Re-generate Academic Thinking This fieldwork was conducted over a period of three years (see McIntyre-Mills, 2003) providing a thick description (Geertz, 1973) of political dynamics in Alice Springs and the surrounding region, included working with the Alice Springs Housing Co-op run by Tangentyere Council for diverse language groups in Alice Springs enabled a far deeper understanding of the strong relationships between people and country. The first author reflects on mentoring by Olive Veverbrants and Peter Turner who shared ‘hawk’ and ‘eagle dreaming’, respectively taught me the notion that kinship could be shared with the natural world and that their birth totems were given to them by their mother and adopted mother’s respectively. 1 Talking

plants—Futuris, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p75Jw7gkmuQ.

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The case study gave me insights into a world view that shared a sense of continuity with all living systems. Alice Springs is known as Mpantwe or caterpillar dreaming. The caterpillar dreaming story (McIntyre-Mills, 2003) connects the story of the rebirth of mpwantwe (caterpillar) who hatches on the ghost gums growing in the landscape of the McDonald Ranges. The grove of ghost gums is the habitat of the caterpillars which is opposite the gap in the McDonald Ranges. The gap symbolizes the gap between cultures and the very different way of life experienced by the Arrernte post colonization. To me, the McDonald Ranges could also be seen (quite literally) as two giant caterpillars meeting in the Alice. But then perhaps I was beginning to see the world with a little more imagination as a result of mentoring in Alice Springs. The potential for rebirth and transformation into butterflies or ‘yeperenye’ was explained to me by my mentor Olive Veverbrants, named for Olive Pink by her mother. Olive Pink was one of the first to appreciate both the culture and the land in Central Australia. As a social anthropologist, botanist and activist for social justice she was marginalised. The poem ‘My Town’ (in McIntyre-Mills, 2003) describes this sense of sadness as nature is destroyed by colonialism, modernization and a disregard for the dignity and culture of Aboriginal people. Olive Veverbrants (in McIntyre-Mills & Veverbrants, 2009) details her heritage and explains how her Arrernte grandmother was the partner of Ah Hong, a market gardener and how she travelled to China. She is perhaps the first Aboriginal person to learn Mandarin. She asked me to write up an article based on her life based on our conversations and tapes that she had made when she asked her mother questions as a basis for writing up her story. Olive’s health was deteriorating and so she was unable to document some of the stories her mother shared. We wanted to call her story “Chicken Hawk”, because her mother chose this bird of prey as Olive’s totem, because it has a loud clear voice, excellent eye sight over wide distances and is good at hunting, so unlikely to go hungry. The article in which the vignette appears is called: ‘Political construction of identity in Central Australia: reconstructing identity through narratives and genealogy’: The first narrative is about Gloria Lee, daughter of an Arrernte mother, from Tempe Down, a cattle station. The second is about Olive, named after Olive Pink (a social anthropologist) by her observant mother.

Olive lived for some years in the home of her mother called the Gloria Lee Centre. It was powered by solar energy long before it became popular. …Ah Hong was the youngest son of a Cantonese weaver and net maker. They lived in the village of Zhong Shan … on the Pearl River. He was educated unlike some of his older brothers and came to Australia to construct the railway. He worked on the mines and wanted to buy land but was prevented. Instead he became a market gardener providing provisions by horse and cart to the miners and providing an eating house and accommodation for the bush rangers. His own wife remained in China. His Aboriginal partner, Gloria’s

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mother was an Arrernte woman. She died in childbirth and Gloria spent her life in Alice living at the home of her father and visiting her mother’s people who camped near the town. She listened to stories about massacres and observed the divisions between Aboriginal and non–Aboriginal people constructed by a refusal by white people to openly recognize their families. In her story, narrated to her own daughter Olive, she reflects ironically on the way the first schoolteacher constructed names for the half caste children, so as not to offend the white fathers. She also tells of the fights over partners and the absurdity of the divisions that were sometimes set aside when the white fathers were proud of the half caste sons, such as the magistrate who recognized his son who served in the Light Horse Cavalry in the First World War… (McIntyre-Mills & Veverbrants, 2009: 76). The research on the power dynamics in a divided town, the quality of life and life chances in Alice Springs has been detailed elsewhere (McIntyre-Mills, 2003). The indepth case study, called Critical Systemic Praxis for social and environmental justice (2003) drew on qualitative and quantitative data and was informed key informants, such as my mentor Olive Veverbrants. Olive’s poem is shared below for its systemic insights: Extract from Looking at my Town’ Poem by Olive Veverbrants (2001). Out of work teenagers Black Madonnas, straight hair scraped in severe bun Keeping busy in the Plazø. Security ‘heavies’ patrol up and down. Shade, shade We all look for shade To park under So we don’t return to an oven. The sun beats down Hot bitumen Catching and swallowing dust and debris In its melting face. The entire continent spoiled. Yet the original inhabitants kept the equilibrium for sixty thousand years. The land was their Mother. Early morning and every evening pristine galahs in pink and gray gather on telegraph wires and parkland lawns chattering till they swoop the next day. Tiny orange-breasted finches settle on garden wire supports changing notes of music written by an unseen hand; and on the nature strip fast-food containers and plastic bags, contents intact (didn’t make it to the tip)

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discarded VE green-cans amongst dust and burrs. The once proud, lean, healthy desert people outcasts now, lookers on, passing time in alcoholic haze or rage. One year follows another. Death intervenes. Multiple grief is the name. Funerals are the game that breaks the monotony. Oh kwmentyeye Women keening, backdrop to this spectacle. Nothing draws a crowd like a funeral. Three the week before last, church packed to overflowing, Always; as many outside as in. Solemn elders, chief mourners Sisters, auntie’s, grannies, quiet children in funereal best. The congregation sings a hymn in Arrernte. Tears flow. I am one with my people The Lutheran pastor cradles the grievers. The church bell tolls. We wanted to call the study of Alice Springs: ‘Caterpillar dreaming: Butterfly being’, but this did not meet the requirements of the series that published the manuscript that explored some of the challenges faced by the Aboriginal community, including the challenges faced by the members of Tangentyere Council who facilitated the running of a co-operative. The numbers of people in the Town Camps run by this Housing Co-op fluctuated depending on visitors from remote regions. Nevertheless, the co-operative provided a means by which local families could express their individual concerns and find a way through the issues, such as setting up the Night Patrol to protect people and to reduce alcohol associated violence (McIntyre-Mills, 2003). Social wellbeing and spirituality were enhanced by enabling families to work together on problem solving. This helped to balance the problems associated with overcrowding, unemployment, hopelessness and a sense of social exclusion. But the ability to engage with stakeholders in the wider Alice Community was less successful and required a court case to ensure that services were provided by the Alice Springs Town Council to the town camps. Further litigation occurred through the Liquor Commission hearings and finally some years later an inquiry, called ‘Little Children’ are Sacred’,2 was used to support the management of town camps by the military, resulting in wide spread criticism of racist intervention as alcohol misuse and family related violence is widespread in the Northern Territory and across Australia. 2 Ampe

Akelyernemane Meke Mekarle “Little Children are Sacred” Little Children are Sacred (2007), https://www.humanrights.gov.au/sites/default/files/57.4%20%E2%80%9CLittle% 20Children%20are%20Sacred%E2%80%9D%20report.pdf.

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Vignette 2: A Hub for Community Engagement in South Africa: Praxis Approach to Support Social and Environmental Justice The participatory action research approach to protect living systems can be called transformative (Mertens, 2010, 2017, 2019; McIntyre-Mills, 2019; Romm, 2015). The vignette provides a more detailed account of the engagement process led by University of South Africa as part of an ongoing community engagement process which was summarised in a joint paper.3 We visited Tiger Kloof (TK) Educational Institution, where Lesego (founder of Bokamoso Impact Investments) graduated and continues to be a board member. The institution was set up at the request of the Botswanan royal family to develop leaders. The school closed during the dark days of Apartheid but re-opened to continue its legacy “to create young leaders”, to cite the TG history website. The school’s conceptual structure was built on the principles of leadership and collaboration and the physical structure of local stone enabled the school to survive the unofficial advice to pull it down—according to one informant—so the stones could be used elsewhere. It was also mentioned that local stones were used in order to teach the value of the local environment and symbolized strength of spirit. The historical school buildings and 3 A shorter version of the vignette appears as McIntyre-Mills, J. Karel, Arko-Achemfuor, A., Romm,

N.R.A. Serolong, L. in the International Journal of Transformation Research IJTR 2019; 6(1): 10–19, entitled: Efforts to inspire transformative research with farmers in a small town in the North West Province of South Africa, The rationale for this article was to discuss community engagement and the potential for Vocational Educational Training (VET) and Research rooted in concerns regarding food, water and energy security. In this case, the VET is provided through the University of South Africa’s (Unisa’s) Adult Basic Education and Youth Development Department and through Bokamoso Impact Investments. It is based on a learning community approach that uses learning networks (Jones, 2004) to bring people together to pool resources in order to help to protect local habitat for living systems (Chilisa, 2017; Wenger et al., 2009). The transformative research approach (e.g., Mertens, 2010, 2017) uses mixed methods, or indeed any method(s), with consciously transformative intent—and applies a learning community approach (Wenger et al., 2009) to cross fertilize ideas across stakeholders who bring different skills and resources to the project (McIntyre-Mills et al., 2018; McIntyre-Mills, 2019a, b). The rapid appraisal review of progress to date, involved all the authors who contributed to this article. The article focuses on the importance of addressing the needs of farmers in regions that are increasingly vulnerable to climate change. The team is facilitated by Professor Arko-Achemfuor, third author, who is the project leader for Community Engagement in Adult Basic Education and Training at the College of Education at Unisa. Arko-Achemfuor (2013) has undertaken research on how partnerships foster vocational education and training. The late Joyce Karel is an academic, skilled translator from Setswana into English, a community development facilitator and adult educator who draws on Indigenous wisdom and her experience as a farmer, educator and community organizer. Janet McIntyre and Norma Romm offer their insights drawn from local and international contexts. Weaving together strands of knowledge and experience through dialogue to protect biodiversity and ecological living is the focus of this research using a community of practice (COP) to which all the authors contribute. COP refers to a group of people who self-organize together to achieve a common goal through the reciprocal sharing and managing of resources locally, nationally and internationally (Wenger et al., 2002). Lesego Serolong contributed to the article based on her insights gained through setting up Bokamoso’s social enterprises, combined with her training locally and internationally.

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the beautiful location help to inspire learners to understand their interconnectedness and dependency on nature. Climate change, habitat loss, rapid urbanization and opportunities for women and young people will become increasingly important policy issues for peace and human security. The team members raised the question about the rights of women and gender dynamics in the community. International networks (supported by coalitions across municipalities) can help to make a difference by sharing ideas and contributing to changing policies towards eco systemic living by drawing on local wisdom (Cruz et al., 2009; Max-Neef, 1991; Midgley et al., 2007; Stokols, 2018). In Indonesia the “One village, one product” (OVAP, Morihiko Hiramatsu— Governor of Oita prefecture, 1979; Yogyakarta, 2014) has been successfully established as a policy directive for Indonesia. This research takes the approach further by developing a learning community approach as a step towards further empowering women in order to reduce their economic vulnerability (McIntyre-Mills et al., 2019), but the process needs to be extended to expand women’s role in the decision-making process in Indonesia and South Africa as the patriarchal structures in village society are prevalent although less so in Manyeledi as it is headed by a particularly enlightened chief, with some female counsellors as advisors. The expression of agency by women appeared central to the success of the project (Photo 28.1). The Tiger Kloof Educational Institute was originally founded by the London Missionary Society in 1904 at the request of the Botswanan Royal Family through Queen Victoria. The school has a very proud history of inspiring leaders. Two of the past presidents of Botswana attended this school as did the mother of Bishop Desmond Tutu. The school provides education for children from the age of 3 years. Four hundred and thirty students are aged between 15 and 19 years and two hundred students are in lower or primary school. The stone buildings would not be out of place in an English village. But the curriculum is suited to Africa as its focus is on social and environmental justice. The public school on private property follows the government curriculum but adds the philosophy of service and draws on the supportive network of Photo 28.1 From left to right, Joyce Karel, Janet McIntyre, Norma Romm and Akwasi Arko Achemfuor (Source: Taken on our behalf by a passerby)

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the international Round Square Schools. They host exchange programs for students from other schools and inspire students to think of themselves as part of the wider world. They mentioned that the past president of the United States, Obama had attended a round square school in Jakarta and I confirmed that I had visited this international school. The director stressed that she wished to focus on vocational educational training and re-open the building program if they could get more support: “We look at how we partner with communities. Education is supposed to transform communities. Unemployment is very often just the result of lack of skills.”

The head teacher continued that she wanted to develop a small enterprise making solar lamps and stoves. She thought this would be an effective business venture and that the students could assemble them. It would provide lighting for the nearby informal settlement. It could also help to prevent some of the deforestation on the institution’s property that resulted from the residents chopping down wood for fires at night. The school runs a program to provide sport for the children from the informal settlements and for the street children. They have a scholarship fund for 135 orphans and vulnerable children who cannot pay school fees at the secondary level. Bursaries are provided for students as well as some of the staff salaries., although the school is public, it is subsidized by the private sector and supported by the Round Square Network of Schools. The ideological pillars that underpin the mission of the school are based on Round Square ideals which include; Internationalism, Service, Democracy, Leadership, Service to the community and the environment. Thus, the principles link with the philosophy of Ubuntu in the broadest sense of the term. The head teacher stressed that they have no bursaries for students in the primary school. They rely on the full fees from the majority of students to subsidize the bursaries. One of their graduates (an orphan) became a very successful scholar and attended the London School of Economics and also went to study in America where she married an American who has returned to South Africa to run a successful grain storage Agri Business. She said that they had successfully implemented a biodigester fuelled by cow dung from the institution’s farm and waste from the school kitchen. This helps to reduce their fuel bill. It was donated to them by the South African National Energy Department. The department also donated some solar powered water geysers. Another private company also provided support for them as a form of social action to contribute to social justice and reducing the costs associated with running the school… L.F runs the computing classes for the school for 14 years and is assistant to the head mistress. We met another VET trainer who explained that he worked with students to take vegetables to the elderly and infirm and also to those with extreme mental disabilities. He said he gets the staff to work with this group and only a few closely supervised students as it requires specific skills. The school was closed down during the Apartheid era. It re-opened in 1992 as a Public school on private property. It is part of the International Round Square network which supports member schools

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and their communities/focused on helping the community. Service to the community and the environment resonate with the notion of Ubuntu. We arrived at Tiger Kloof School and were told by Prof Arko-Achemfuor to look for/at the clock tower which is situated on top of the dining hall He was excited about our visit as he spent 4 and half very happy years as the deputy headmaster at the school. He emphasized that the School had been founded by the London Missionary Society in 1904, in response to a request to Queen Victoria by the then Bechuanaland Protectorate. It is a public school and it is based on private trust land. Mr. Matthews was responsible for enabling the re-opening of the school and establishing the trust that enabled the school to get back access to the land and buy back most of it. Arko explained that during the apartheid era it was taken over by the government and Verwoerd ensured that the school closed in 1966 and was regarded as a ‘black spot’ by Verwoerd (ref). The land was sold to a farmer who was asked to destroy the buildings. This did not occur because they were built of stone. Then at the end of the apartheid era, the land was bought back, and the school re-opened as part of the Round Square network of schools. The motto of the school is to “create new paths in learning, doing and serving”. On arrival at the Tiger Kloof School we were welcomed by the director, who had previously been the kindergarten teacher, but over the years had taken on a very active role running the institution. Her husband was responsible for all the school maintenance and for training students in building skills. We came here in 1993, because my husband was appointed to renovate the buildings [after the end of the apartheid era]. We try to be unselfish and to make a difference through our work here.

She stressed that she is a Rotarian and that much can be achieved through the help of the Rotary Club. The club donated the first school bus. School services include providing visits to the old age home and some fresh vegetables as well as cooked meals. They also provide service to the Disabled. They supply them with nappies and also food. They train students to help and improve their skills, but they also need to ensure the safety of the students. Initially we did not get all the land back they got 1200 ha and now they have the rest part of which we lease back. We are not a commercial farm, but we are having some few cattle and developing a full business plan for commercial farming of cattle.

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Caption: Tiger Kloof School. Source: First author’s photograph The Tiger Kloof School,4 built from natural stone provides an example of social networks, caring and outreach to support a co-operative run by a group of residents in Vryburg, some of whom are disabled. They have succeeded in developing a successful permaculture plot that enables them to produce vegetables such as carrots, cabbages, local spinach for their own household use and to sell the surplus produce to others. Maxwell, the community farming facilitator is guided by his philosophy of working with and respecting people, the earth, plants and living creatures—from cow dung and earthworms that help to make the compost—to birds that help remove insects. His strategy is to breed Nguni cattle with hardy local cattle so that they can be farmed on a sustainable rotational grazing cycle. He stressed that ruminants require grass rather than feedlots. This reduces the carbon impact and is better for human and animal health. His mission is to teach the principle of permaculture and he explains how to make fertilizer from cow dung and water.

Narratives of Hope: Putting Vryburg and Manyeledi on the Map The IPCC (2018) report makes it clear that global warming will exceed the 1.5% benchmark and this has specific implications for Africa. Glasser (2018) stresses that globally we face cascading risks. One of these will be the impact of using unsustainable farming practices to produce large food crops in vulnerable food growing regions that face increased risks of drought, fires and floods. He then cites 45–80% of Africa will be affected by climate change and that this will impact food security. One such area is the North West Province of South Africa (just south of Botswana at the edge of the Kalahari Desert). It has a low average rainfall and climate change

4 https://www.tigerkloof.com/.

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has made the farming on marginal farming land more challenging than in previous years resulting in unemployment.5 This section considers the potential opportunities to address the challenge to support cross-sectoral collaboration by public, private and civil society partners to contribute to addressing the SDGs 1 (no poverty), 11 (sustainable communities) and 17 (partnerships to achieve goal 1 and 11). Challenges are intertwined across the social, environmental and economic spheres (UNRISD, 2017; Glasser, 2018; IPCC, 2018).

Farming, Food Security and Rights Embedding VET Training Through Setting up a Community of Practice to Address Shared Concerns The development approach that Tiger Kloof espouses through gender mainstreaming and caring for sentient beings and the protection of diverse habitats in the region has much in common with aspects of the work on animal rights and habitat protection underlined by Donaldson and Kymlicka (2011). A form of ‘capabilities approach’ (Nussbaum, 2011) informs the approach espoused by the community development leader, Maxwell. The links across Tiger Kloof, Tlakgameng and Manyeledi were created by the community leaders who know each other and through Lesego a graduate of Tiger Kloof (who although was not taught by Maxwell) is aware of his interest and knowledge in sustainable development. This has partly shaped and inspired her approach to enabling the community at Manyeledi. Narratives are the way in which we explored the concerns raised by participants. As stressed elsewhere (McIntyre-Mills et al., 2019). Schaffer and Smith (2004) stress that complex social justice concerns are best explored through narratives in order to 5 South

Africa’s unemployment rate increased to 26,7% in the first quarter of 2019. This is a 0.5% increase. The North West Province has an overall unemployment rate of 26.6%. It is worth pointing out that even though the overall unemployment in the NW Province is lower than in Gauteng which has an unemployment rate of 29% (South African Market Insights, 2019 it has the highest unemployment rate nationally, namely, 40.3% for young people aged 15–24 who are not in employment or training. This is (officially) the highest rate of employment for this age group in South Africa. But the rate of unemployment for this category is equally high for this age group. The reason for working with Bokamoso in their project in Manyeledi, in the NW Province was to explore how transformative research collaboration across Unisa, NGOs, and the private sector (led by a visionary leader, Lesego) could make a difference by creating more employment opportunities in regional and rural areas geared to focus on sustainable farming for a sustainable future. One of the greatest challenges has been to address the so-called “not in employment education or training” category that covers young people aged 15–24 and to work with the wider community to ensure that this most vulnerable group is given more education, training and employment opportunities. Consensus exists within the Adult Basic Education, Training and Youth Development Department at Unisa about its identity as a facilitator of learning that is linked to scholarship and research to foster active community engagement and critical pedagogy (as Giroux, 2004, 2011, puts it).

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achieve collaborative engagement based on the capabilities approach (Yap & Yu, 2016). Nussbaum is an essentialist who stresses the basic conditions for a life worth living for all sentient beings. She stresses that sentient beings have rights simply because they are sentient. I agree with her that these capabilities provide a priori guidelines for ethics. However, I also believe (along with Amartya Sen and Churchman) that we need to consider the pragmatic, a posteriori consequence of our decisions. Wild game can be protected (many conservationists argue) by insisting that they are a better source of food. Space for farming should then not be extended at the expense of space for wild animals. Although Donaldson and Kymlicka (2011) did not stress these points in their book Zoopolis, they certainly did stress the importance of habitat for domestic and farmed animals, space for liminal and wild animals. The protection of local habitat is most important according to Flannery (ref) and Aboriginal Australians carefully understood management of the bush. And we would suggest that ‘spiritual renewal’ (2012: 294) through art, nature and gardens’ has much resonance with the views of Indigenous informants who engaged in permaculture training with Maxwell at Tiger Kloof School.

Narratives from Tigerkloof and Tlakgameng One of the people with whom we had a long interview was Maxwell. Masasi, who runs an environmental programme for the school children (from Tiger Kloof and surrounding schools): I came in 2006 to Tiger Kloof and the then director gave me the mandate to run the holistic farm and to run train the trainer programs. I was supposed to have an effect on young people by introducing them to the environment in general and sustainable farming in particular. My training was traditional horticulture and the use of herbicides, but I started to realize that science did not do the right thing for the environment. I was taught to give maize to cows, but maize is not for cows, they need to eat grass; ruminants are designed to graze. Their stomachs require grass if they are to be healthy. I started to learn more about the environment and permaculture and I taught young people and I did an intensive training programme with a permaculture specialist here. I teach land care to year 8 and 9 learners. I also train the community development workers to train others in situ. I tell them that if they are illiterate and innumerate, they cannot lead. I teach them to understand new roles and to develop their lives. The Community Development Workers are key people in the community If you have gold bullion this side of the scale or/and the world globe on this side … which?? will you choose? … The animal is the one to sequestrate carbon … we need to increase planting … they are fertilized by animals and [we ought} not [to be] feeding the animals by feedlots ….. I went to college in Zimbabwe, but this was a conventional university … I was an agricultural instructor but after that, I was the curator of the seed bank in Zimbabwe … even the varieties that were there during the time of Rhodes…. I could find seeds from a particular date and I could provide them to researchers and ask them to return the seeds to me – but more in a bottle… the management of cattle and rotational grazing makes sense…

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MM went on to explain: Feedlots are not sustainable … this is huge… I use only grass. The cow has four stomachs. They are designed to work on grass … we are saying to hell with grass and this is a problem. Which one do you choose… if you choose to sell the globe, what do you have you have the gold in the hand …? But the cow can sequestrate carbon from the environment… when they have grazed we have more grass… the cattle fertilize the ground. Grass is indeed best for cattle. Healthy cattle need healthy grass and carnivores who eat their meat will be healthier. Cattle manure is a good fertilizer, but overgrazing by introduced species has been a problem in many places, particularly Australia. Kangaroos are better suited to local conditions …. Others argue that sheep and cattle are part of the ecological problem in Australia because they graze the grass too low and in fact, agriculture and food sustainability would be better served if those who feel they must eat meat relied on the local indigenous kangaroos. These local ruminants are better suited to fertilising the soil.

This point has been made by Flannery (2005, 2012) on species extinction associated with over grazing and the lack of stewardship by colonial governments. Alan Savory (2014, 2018) argues that ruminants are important for processing grass and for fertilising the land and that reducing the numbers of animals is the wrong approach to the problem. In terms of animal rights, it makes sense to care about their wellbeing and certainly in terms of Nussbaum’s 10 capabilities, this is important as well. Animals have rights as sentient beings to eat food that is appropriate for their digestion. One thing is clear and that is that Savory’s ideas appeal greatly to the meat industry. It can be argued that feedlots are indeed harmful for the health of animals (including human animals) (see Ketcham, 2017). Often the feedlots also rely on antibiotics to ‘enhance’ the health of animals. Current notions of farming using factory farms that deny the capabilities of sentient beings have been criticized by Nussbaum (2006) on the basis of the abuse of essential capabilities for a life worth living. Sentient beings have rights simply because they are sentient. Singer (2002) a pragmatist argues that the farming conditions are unacceptable because they cause pain to sentient beings. The impact of drought on agricultural animals has been felt across Australia and Africa. Wildlife has been displaced and dispossessed and this also results in people leaving the land and migrating to the cities. ….We create a community leader who then goes and trains others. They can contact me so I can help them. I do not always go there to them. I. run training camps for the Dept. of Agriculture and Training for emerging farmers. MM

He also runs Junior land care camps and teaches the year 8 and 9 students across the district and adds to the curriculum by teaching them more about permaculture that he learned whilst living in Zimbabwe from a visionary hunter/farmer and from a local farmer in Vryburg, who mentored him intensively for a month. M. stressed that he avoids insecticide and tries to do holistic farming. His passion is breeding Nguni cattle, but he was heartbroken when told that he needed to stop doing this because the cattle are unsuited for the meat market. He is now breeding a hybrid, large animal.

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I cross the Nguni with the Aberdeen … We had 250 Nguni cattle in 2014… we were producing beautiful cows but the board and the people who matter did not think that they were competitive [with the other larger breeds]” and they put an end to the work he was doing … …..so now I am cross breeding with Aberdeen Angus and at 10 months they are competitive …but now I do not buy any supplements …. So, this is sustainable … we do not use feedlots… … it is not sustainable in terms of global environmental health… I use only grass …

He explained that some of the land belonging to the Tiger Kloof farm has been leased out to the Kabi solar plant. They are thinking of also running sheep on this land, but sheep are easy to steal.

He stressed that grass fed cattle could help with carbon sequestration and that the dung can be used as sustainable fertilizer and as fuel for bio digesters. His inspiration in Zimbabwe was Alan Savory: Alan Savory was under Ian Douglas Smith – an unconventional man, but I connected with him and learned all about holistic management.

The cattle farming project is close to the heart of M. who said he would have left Tiger Kloof after the decision to halt the Nguni cattle project, but he needed to continue working there as he has to support his children who are still at university. He said he had just come to terms with this. His program to teach permaculture to the students keeps him inspired and he trains the Community Development Workers how to make fertilizer and how to grow vegetables. He also teaches the philosophy of permaculture and the importance of feeding cattle on grass, not in feedlots! Goats, cattle and all farmed herbivores are emitters of methane as are wild herbivores (Herrero et al., 2016).6 Some argue that meat eaters should try to rely mostly on wild game as they are more likely to have evolved to survive on local habitat. Wild game can be protected (many conservationists argue) by insisting that they are a better source of food. Space for farming should then not be extended at the expense of space for wild animals. Although Donaldson and Kymlicka (2011) did not stress these points in their book Zoopolis, they certainly did stress the importance of habitat for domestic and farmed animals, space for liminal and wild animals. The protection of local habitat is most important according to Flannery (2012) and management of the bush was carefully understood by Aboriginal Australians. Each case study needs to be informed by local knowledge and not assume answers. One thing is clear and that is that Savory’s ideas appeal greatly to the meat industry. But one point is clear and that is that feedlots are harmful for the health of animals (including human animals). Often the food lots also rely on antibiotics to ‘enhance’ the health of animals. Maxwell said: Feedlots are not sustainable … this is huge… I use only grass. The cow has four stomachs. They are designed to work on grass … we are saying to hell with grass and this is a problem… 6 https://theconversation.com/to-reduce-greenhouse-gases-from-cows-and-sheep-we-need-to-

look-at-the-big-picture-56509.

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Which one do you choose… if you choose to sell the globe, what do you have you have the gold in the hand …? But the cow can sequestrate carbon from the environment… when they have grazed we have more grass… the cattle fertilize the ground.

M considers grass to be the best food to maintain healthy cattle., despite some views to the contrary, concerning the methane levels of different herbivores relying on natural versus introduced food lots. Other controversies address indigenous wild herbivores versus introduced, farmed herbivores ranging from cows to goats. M stressed that healthy cattle need healthy grass and carnivores who eat their meat will be healthier. He stressed that cattle manure is a good fertilizer and that herbivores help to fertilise the soil and to reduce desertification. Flannery (2012) argued that overgrazing by introduced species has been a problem in many places, particularly Australia. Local indigenous herbivores, such as kangaroos are better suited to local conditions. In terms of animal rights, it makes sense to care about their wellbeing and their capability to live a life worth living (Nussbaum, 2011). Animals have rights as sentient beings to eat food that is appropriate for their digestion. But leaping from the notion that cattle per se can save the world is Savory’s approach and he has been criticized by scientists who point out that Savory’s ideas support the conservative status quo. Thus, the points made by Savory, his ardent follower Maxwell and his detractors need to be disentangled: On the plus side, Savory is quite right to stress the importance of careful stocking, timing and rotation and the avoidance of feed lots. These are mitigating factors that decrease desertification. It is clear that promoting cattle farming to meat eaters and cattle farmers is a popular message. It means cattle farmers can promote the virtues of cattle without worrying about criticisms from the green vegan lobbyists! It is also fair to say that Savory has inspired community engagement by farmers on land management. Ecologically, surely restoring tracks of land to herbivores could be a step forward? Indigenous herbivores such as kangaroos in Australia or the wide range of buck in South Africa are good sources of protein (for those who wish to eat some meat), they fertilize the soil and provide tourism attraction. On the negative side, Savory’s argument can be interpreted as supporting overstocking of cattle by farmers who do not fully appreciate the extent to which they need to manage the timing and rotation of the cows. Stokols’ (2018) explains that social ecology can be regarded as a form of governance. The paper by Herrero et al. (2016) appears to argue that managing herbivores requires achieving the right balance in the right context to minimise impact of emissions whilst managing the land carefully and encouraging a shift towards relying less heavily on meat as a source of protein. It can be further argued that it requires concerted efforts to pass laws that change behaviour and then shift values. But the point needs to be made, whose values will prevail? Careful negotiation and shared decisions are needed to manage scarce resources. The capability to engage with one another in ways that protect both human rights and the rights of sentient beings who are unable to advocate for themselves, requires extending the boundaries of rights and responsibilities (see Nussbaum, 2011; McIntyre-Mills, 2014, 2017).

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Indigenous herds may well have played a role in improving the quality of the land by moving from place to place and fertilising the land. Indigenous kangaroos in Australia, spring buck in South Africa could, for example provide better, more nutritious and more sustainable meat for those who continue to include meat in their diets. This requires ensuring that indigenous animals remain in their grass lands and that these be protected. The potential for a permaculture approach to planting vegetables in an arid region has been extended by a graduate of the Tiger Kloof School. One of the community development workers, trained by Maxwell has trained others in the Vryburg community and they hope to extend the work with support from socially minded businesses to enable them to build a biodigester for each street in their neighbourhood, for example. This idea evolved through conversations with the researchers. A graduate of Tiger Kloof, Lesego Serolong has helped to support the setting up of small farm in Manyeledi, close to the border of Botswana. The chief Kgosiyagae has provided land to enable the farming. The co-operative approach in the community has the potential to be translated into a fully functioning social enterprise. The aim expressed by the founder, L. supports the community to achieve resilience and to enable those who benefit from her social enterprise to feed forward to the next generation. We met with one of the Community workers, Mr. Theko Lehela. who trained at Unisa ABET Department and Youth Development as a community development worker (CDW). He is one of the beneficiaries from the training at Tiger Kloof under the supervision of Maxwell. Mr. L. was actively involved with community projects in Tlakgameng. Skills that they gained from Tiger Kloof Educational Institute have been shared with other community members. Since he obtained his qualification as community worker, he has been actively involved helping the community to produce their own vegetables. He draws on his knowledge of traditional indigenous practices. For example, he explained the way in which local trees, such as the Camelthorn (Mokala) can be used for fodder during drought as they are the most resistant to climate change. Mohatlha, another local tree has a range of medicinal properties, such as enhancing the fertility of animals. Through sharing information Tlakgameng has developed a closer relationship with the land and a greater understanding of the importance of protecting the trees. Mr. L. also spoke to the chief about the issue of scarce trees and as a result of this intervention members of the community must first obtain permission from the chief before they decide to cut trees. He also teaches the community how to make their own organic manure based on liquid manure (Mosutelo) and vegetables leaves which he stresses need to be brewed before being used on the vegetable plots. The community organizer also discussed recipes for making organic pesticides out of onion, garlic pepper and mixing the ingredients that are left for 2 weeks. In this way he encourages the management of pests whilst avoiding damage to other species. We then met with a family who is one of the beneficiaries of the Tiger Kloof training and they introduced us to Mr. R. B. who built the local school. He is also the chairperson of the local group that manages the vegetable garden run by the disabled. As a wheelchair user from birth, he is an active builder and role model for the group.

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He explained the challenge of growing vegetables with minimal access to water. He expressed interest in the potential for biogas and or solar to run a water pump. M. also helps the school achieve their outreach to the community and to care for the community by providing vegetables for the soup kitchen run by the primary school with the help of donations from the international school’s service projects. He teaches the students to re-use, recycle and to make compost. His success in training CDWs to appreciate permaculture was underlined when we met his graduate called L.T who said that he owed a great deal to M. He explained that he had learned how to rotate cattle so that they do not over graze a paddock. He also explained that the Camelthorn tree could be used to feed the cattle and goats. We also visited the project workers that M had trained to grow vegetables. The Tlakgameng Co-operative enables both able bodied and disabled people to work together. We were introduced to a successful builder, Mr. R.B. who had worked for over 20 years on successful building projects. He had worked on the Tiger Kloof School as well in 1994. He had been born without the use of his legs and he managed to lay bricks very successfully and he stressed that he could climb ladders, despite needing a wheelchair. He pointed out several buildings in the neighourhood that he had built and explained how he had built his own home. He stressed that the demonstration garden needed a fence to keep out predators and that he would be pleased to build a biodigester for the community garden to enable them to save fuel in their neighbouring houses. We also visited the home of the local diviner who runs a permaculture garden and supports the work of the co-operative. We were shown around the garden by her son.

Narratives from Manyeledi The visit7 was well timed as this region had faced civil unrest just a few months previously, because of the high levels of unemployment in the 15–24 age group and the lack of services. Cyril Ramaphosa (The President of South Africa) had to return from his visit to the Commonwealth Conference in Britain, because of the scale of the protests against the ANC-led government in the NW Province (Photo 28.2). Manyeledi is a remote rural area where most residents are unemployed and survive on farming and social grants. Few people are employed or working in the major town Vryburg as domestic workers, drivers and laborers. Those that are working leave their children with their parents. The majority of the grandparents who look after children are illiterate and are unable to assist them with homework. Manyeledi (a 2-hour drive from Vryburg) is located in the Dr. Ruth Segomotsi Mompati District Municipality (one of the four districts of the NW Province)—where people had protested a few months prior to our visit—about the lack of services such as water and the lack of employment opportunities. The road to Manyeledi from Vryburg travels through a 7 Four of the authors (the first four of this article) visited Manyeledi on the day after Barack Obama

delivered the Mandela Memorial lecture.

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Photo 28.2 Dry rocky landscape provides some grazing for goats, source : first author’s own photograph

changing landscape. The trees give way to dry low scrub. Goats provided the only sign of life amongst the dry grass and white stones. The grass is ideal for thatching, commented Prof Arko-Achemfuor. And the stones could provide excellent building material. Some very attractive rondavels appeared over the horizon and demonstrated the aesthetic beauty of clay, stone and thatch houses. We arrived at about 4 p.m. at Victoria’s Roadhouse. One of our travelling companions suggested a walk and we agreed to walk within the compound fence. Victoria runs a hairdressing salon from her home to supplement the business from the guest house. Opposite her house a shack bore the sign: hairdressing as well, indicating a competitive small business environment. The team who engaged in field visits was facilitated by Professor ArkoAchemfuor, who is the project leader for Community Engagement in Adult Basic Education and Training at the College of Education at UNISA.8

8 As detailed elsewhere in our joint article that explores the existing practices that are used by villagers to improve their socio-economic status like unemployment, food shortages and illiteracy ( see McIntyre-Mills et al., 2019). In this paper we stress that UNISA provides Open Distance Learning (ODL) that produces scholarship and research, to foster community engagement. UNISA has vested interest in the way the community workers that were trained at ABET and Youth Development department at Unisa were collaborating with other institutions to develop and to improve the lives of community members. The engagement processes explore the collaboration between community workers and other institutions in improving the lives of people in the region, including Tlakgameng and Manyeledi villages. The area is well known by L. as she attended t Tigerkloof school and is a Board Member of the TG Educational Institution that provides outreach to this community (as well as others). As part of her own initiative to enhance the capabilities of farmers in Manyeledi, with a view to forming a farming co-operative. L. contacted Professor Arko-Achemfuor (past vice principal of TK and now Associate Professor in Unisa’s Department of Adult Basic Education and Training) to assist her in providing literacy training and support for the potential farmers. The focus of the programme is basic literacy and numeracy, entrepreneurship, bookkeeping and a sound sense of what is required to bring about development. Later they asked for additional training for entrepreneurship, bookkeeping and how to grow and manage different agricultural products to

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We9 visited Manyeledi on the day after the Barak Obama delivered the Mandela Memorial lecture. The visit was well timed as this region had faced civil unrest just a few months previously. Cyril Ramaphosa (The President of South Africa) had to return from his visit to the Commonwealth Conference in Britain, because of the scale of the protests against the ANC government in the North West Province. The area was brought to the attention of Bokamoso Impact Investments, which was founded by Lesego Serolong, a former student of the school and Board Member of the Tiger Kloof Educational Institution. Given her interest in developing the community, L.S. contacted Professor Akwasi Arko- Achemfuor, (past vice principal of Tiger Kloof and now Associate Professor in the University of South Africa’s Dept. of Adult Basic Education and Training) to assist her in providing literacy training and support for the potential farmers. The focus of the program is entrepreneurship, bookkeeping and a sound sense of what is required to bring about development. Later they asked for additional training and Professor Akwasi followed up on this invitation. Smiley (who works with L.) asked if UNISA could set up a more formal professional development course for entrepreneurship, bookkeeping and how to grow and manage different agricultural products to ensure food security.10 The aim was to visit the community and to listen to their concerns about agricultural development in their area. The advice to the community draws on Kabeer’s (1999, 2015) approach to institutional power dynamics by extending the learning organisation and learning community approach through a participatory action research project that provides support ‘living systems’ (Wadsworth, 2010).

ensure food security. The awareness that life in big cities is threatened by high levels of unemployment that can become so-called food deserts for the vulnerable is what prompted Lesego, with the community, to facilitate the farming project here. 9 The visit to the community involved the following team: Joyce Karel, as an academic, skilled translator from Setswana into English, a community development facilitator and adult educator at the University of South Africa (Unisa), who draws on Indigenous wisdom and her experience; myself (who visited from Australia); Norma Romm and Akwasi Arko-Achemfuor, both professors in the Department of Adult Education and Youth Development at Unisa. 10 As detailed in our joint article (McIntyre-Mills et al., 2019) the programme started in 2015. The article details that the community comprises about 4941 people, of which 48% is male and 52% is female: “Of the twenty five farmers who have been trained to date, nine are male and sixteen are female. The farmers are aged 25–68 years of age. In addition, an active after school programme (supported through Unisa) is run three times per week to support homework from reception to year 12 and to nurture their basic reading, writing and literacy skills. It is attended by 45 students (aged 11–14 years) who attend on a regular basis. It was considered a vital part of the programme by the members of the community who attended our review and it was a key point stressed by three of the senior women. A gender mainstreaming approach (Kabeer, 1999, 2015) informed by applied learning appropriate to local lived experience (Freire, 1974) ensures ….that women are given opportunities to work in decision making roles. Another important point made was the need to subsidise an ‘after school meal’ to enable the children to concentrate on their studies. This was immediately put into place by Professor Arko-Achemfuor who organised the purchase and delivery of supplies after the meeting. All the courses comply with the national Curriculum and Assessment Policy Statement (CAPS) introduced by the Department of Basic Education for all the subjects listed in the National Curriculum Statement for Grades from reception to year 12. …”

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A group awaited our arrival and we were shown around by the trainer and Chris (recently appointed as an agricultural manager). Nearby we saw the Eskom pump for water and the cleared plot of land that had been generously donated for the purpose of growing vegetables and fruit. The harshness of the landscape was revealed in the scraped patch, denuded of the resilient grass. We made a note to ourselves that windbreaks were needed and that the cleared bush should be returned as mulch to prevent the wind blowing away the topsoil. Olive trees could be a useful complement to the honey that they were producing successfully from the hives and would provide good wind breaks. Bottling olives could be a good training project. The spirit of enthusiasm at that time for the new project was infectious and clearly the group had learned the principles of co-operative farming, although it was not a functioning co-op. The community of farmers had succeeded in rearing healthy goats that thrived on the local vegetation. They were being encouraged to take on mixed farming and a form of market gardening. In this instance, what works was being replaced with industrial scale vegetable farming in marginal countryside. We were told that the work was shared and the profits (if any) would be shared.11 Pragmatically the challenge is to find a way to achieve better outcomes that draw on local wisdom and experience to re-generate the community and the environment on which they depend. Regarding the July 2018 visit on which this article reports, the Manyeledi community group awaited our arrival and we were shown around by the trainer and Chris (recently appointed as an agricultural manager). Nearby we saw the Eskom pump for water and the cleared plot of land that had been generously donated for the purpose of growing vegetables and fruit by the chief of the village and his council. The harshness of the landscape was revealed in the scraped patch, denuded of the resilient grass. We made a note to ourselves that windbreaks were needed and that the cleared bush should be returned as mulch to prevent the wind blowing away the topsoil. Olive trees could be a useful complement to the honey that they were producing successfully from the hives and would provide good wind breaks. During our visit of July 2018, we saw the small seedlings and heard of their disappointment when the soaring temperatures that year, coupled with the water table having fallen, destroyed some of their watermelon crop just before they were ready to harvest the crop. A little more investigation revealed that they did not have a ready market or enough transport. They also did not have shade or netting to protect the crops. The problem was that the truck that was meant to transport the watermelons broke down—so lots of the watermelons could not be sold. However, some were sold to the local community.

11 We

saw the small seedlings and heard of their disappointment when the soaring temperatures destroyed some of their watermelon crop just before they were ready to harvest the crop. A little more investigation revealed that they did not have a ready market or enough transport at the time. They also did not have shade or netting to protect the fruit. The problem was that the truck that was meant to transport the watermelons broke down—so lots of the watermelons could not be sold. However, some were sold to the local community.

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The challenges of surviving changing climatic conditions is highlighted in the following narratives from Manyeledi on the border of Botswana and North West Province of South Africa: I live in the house nearby. I have my own plot of about 200 metres …. I did plant some watermelons that I managed to sell on credit at a cattle auction. I am still waiting to be paid. I have my own borehole and a pump and electricity to pump water. But I have problems with birds and grasshoppers….I also got a 5000-litre tank and then bought another. I intend to plant watermelon again and spinach. I need to have shade and I do not want birds and grasshoppers on the crops again. My name is Q. I am one of the four actively involved in planting last year. One challenge is to get water. We had to travel to the village to get water. We did plant, but the plants were destroyed by extreme weather. It reached over 42 degrees Celsius. Another problem is the lack of transport. Bokomoso provided seeds, fertilizer and chemicals, but we lost heavily because it was so hot. Also, the car was used to transport the watermelons got broken. We could not afford the car costs to fix it. Our children expected us to succeed, but we got nothing, because of the weather. But despite this we are going on. When we started from the outset there was a group of one or two. People decided to withdraw. We went back to them and said: We are trying to get electricity and this is worth going on. Eskom promised us electricity. This will help. We asked them to return because they had already been trained. It is our wish that we use the knowledge that we gained from Bokomoso. We pray God will bless our project. Manyeledi is our garden. We are pleading that they come back to the project. It is the only thing that will make us known around the world. I am the junior chief’s wife, my name is M. … We are trying to make our place well known around the world. The children can earn and get bursaries through Bokomiso. If we can go on, then the unemployment can be reduced. The challenges are there are no nets. Tomatoes were damaged, but I produced onions and Lucerne. The birds did not eat them. … My name is L. I have had many benefits from ‘Social Enterprise B’. I am a graduate from the second group. I was inspired. I know that I can grow cabbages for ShopRite. This was new for me. One of the challenges was the watermelons. We reduced the price to sell. Also, we do not have enough contact time to train the school children who end late. After school they have to go home to eat. They need to eat lunch and we do not have lunch to give them. We are also afraid to release them late after they have worked here. We know the problems in today’s world. The feeding scheme at the school is at break time set at 11 am but by 2 p.m. they are hungry. So, they must eat and return. They do not bring food here. It is not automatic that they get three meals per day. I am the senior chief’s wife. My name is M… I am a delegate from the Chief’s kraal. Yes, you are providing skills for adults and children and grandchildren. It needs people who can support them. Who will provide services? Please include each and every one in the family… I am also the chief’s delegate. We need more classes and more learning so that the children can progress. The parents give good comments about the children’s work. They are in multigrade classrooms. Teachers cannot reach all learners and the after-school program helps the children and it should go on and on and on to help the children. I am the junior chief’s wife. To add to what others, say. I am impressed by Lerato’s efforts. Could you please ladies from UNISA, we should think when we are eating, she is not getting a stipend. We need to think of a salary for her. So, they are doing the training and growing things but actually running at a loss. They are diligent and persisting with a track that is unsustainable.

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I gained a lot from L’s teaching so now I am one of the best at counting and maths skills. I do not want the knowledge to end here and I want more education. They [adults and children] need other skills and levels must be extended. They have others in the village that need training and skills. I am Mr. G. I have been here for two months. It is good to stay with the people here. The people from Eskom will finish the lines and the people here will not need to travel to collect water. Farmers need water….The chief Kgosiyagae and his counsellors are also passionate about the development of the community and he gave land to this project.

The chief stressed that they needed to fence the area. He also stressed that the water from the new bore hole would be used for the vegetables and that the cattle and goats need to use another. But the removal of the ground cover on which the goats graze is problematic as the wind blew away the topsoil. The expensive electrical pump for watering plants is unsustainable as is the ground water supply. The milking of goats and the making of goat cheese is a better option and more sustainable.

Practical Directions As Reynold’s (2008, 2011) stresses both universalism and diversity can be seen as ways of framing or making sense of the world. The re-framing process can be assisted through questioning and exploring world views, in order to make practical decisions that enhance social and environmental justice. The potential to set up scenario training using classroom simulation to develop critical thinking and to explore ways to live sustainably as well as enabling the participants to learn more about the UN Sustainable Development Goals and how to ensure that the provenance of the products is mapped could be a way forward (see Chaps. 15 and 17 this volume). The potential to extend the project through developing supportive training and adding value to honey was discussed. According to Prof Akwasi, this was being explored and a pilot project had commenced (Photo 28.3). Assoc Prof Ida Widianingsih (on a visit in 2019 to UNISA) stressed that she was in the process of creating employment in Bandung as part of the community outreach program run by Universitas Padjadjaran.12 The facilitator at Tiger Kloof previously managed a seedbank in Zimbabwe and expressed the importance of seedbanks. as well as action to set up employment to develop solar lamps and stoves to prevent loss of trees which is a common problem stressed by the director Mrs du Toit. By ensuring that local products are organic, businesses and non-government organizations such as Tiger Kloof Institute can support social and environmental justice. To conclude, practical interventions need to support social and or environmental justice in ways that are valued by community stakeholders. Most importantly it has 12 http://www.unpad.ac.id/2020/01/perdana-di-kota-bandung-unpad-kembangkan-budidaya-

lebah/.

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Photo 28.3 Preparing the hives and displaying the honey. Photo supplied by project participants

broken the cycle of isolation and enabled members of the community to extend their networks locally and internationally to achieve their goal ‘to place Manyeledi on the map’. We suggest that some of the further “outcomes” of this research, imaginatively considered, could: ● Inform regional social policy, in order to underpin the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). It is hoped that the engagement in the region will result in a successful model that could inspire others in South Africa on how to engage locally and through local coalitions (Arko-Achemfuor, 2019; Flood & Romm, 2018). ● Enable collaboration that adds to our understanding on the Indigenous production, consumption and re- distribution cycle and the potential to adapt and scale up the “one resilient village, one re-generative businesses” as a regional model to underpin the UN SDGs. Further research is needed to provide a lens for understanding the intersection of ecological humanities and ethics (Braidotti, 2018; Bird Rose & Fincher, 2015; Dobson & Eckersley, 2006; McIntyre-Mills, 2014; McIntyre-Mills et al., 2017; Raikhel, 2010), informed by a critical reading of development (Gibson-Graham & Miller, 2015), capabilities studies (Nussbaum, 2011) and on what it means to live in a non-anthropocentric manner. ● Extend a Vocational Education and Training approach to engagement using, in part, a gender mainstreaming approach that foregrounds opportunities for women and children in remote areas with few employment opportunities and high levels of poverty. Policy research needs to promote opportunities for women and their children in South Africa, in line with the policy agenda announced during Women’s Week in South Africa by the African National Council to enable women to realize

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their full leadership potential at home, in the workplace, as community leaders, and as a voice in government. It is suggested that setting up an Eco Village could enable participatory action research on education, employment and tourism (see Chap. 17, this volume).

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Veverbrants, O. (2001). ‘Looking at my Town’ Poem by Olive Veverbrants (2001) as Foreword in McIntyre-Mills, J. J. ( 2003) Critical Systemic Praxis for Social and Environmental Justice. London: Springer. Wadsworth, Y. (2010). Building in research and evaluation: Human inquiry for living systems. Sydney: Allen and Unwin. Walker, P. (2013). Research in relationship with humans, the spirit world, and the natural world. In D. M. Mertens, F. Cram, & B. Chilisa (Eds.), Indigenous pathways into social research (pp. 299– 316). Walnut Creek, C: Left Coast Press. Wane, N. N., Akena, F. A., & Ilmi, A. A. (Eds.). (2009). Spiritual discourse in the academy. New York: Peter Lang. Watson, L. (1973). Super Nature. New York: Anchor Press. Wenger, E. (1998). Communities of practice: Learning, meaning and identity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Wenger, E., McDermott, R., & Snyder, W. (2002). Cultivating communities of practice: A guide to managing knowledge. Harvard: Harvard Business School Press. Wenger, E., White, N., & Smith, J. (2009). Digital habitats: Stewarding technology for communities. Portland: CP Square. Tiger Kloof. History undated. https://www.tigerkloof.com/history.html. To reduce greenhouse gases from cows and sheep, we need to look at the big picture. http://thecon versation.com/to-reduce-greenhouse-gases-from-cows-and-sheep-we-need-to-look-at-the-bigpicture-56509. Yap, M., & Yu, E. (2016). Operationalising the capability approach: Developing culturally relevant indicators of indigenous wellbeing. Oxford Development Studies, 44(3), 315–331.

Janet J. McIntyre-Mills is Honorary Professor in the College of Education at University of South Africa, Tshwane, South Africa; Visiting Research Fellow at Adelaide University in the College of Professions Main North Terrace; and Adjunct Associate Professor in College of Business Government and Law at Flinders University, Sturt Campus, Adelaide. Norma R. A. Romm is Research Professor in the Department of Adult Basic Education and Youth Development, the University of South Africa. She has sole-authored four books; co-authored 3 books; co-edited five books and published over 100 research articles. Akwasi Arko-Achemfuor is Professor in the Department of Adult Basic Education and Youth Development in the College of Education, University of South Africa. His areas of research interest include entrepreneurship and entrepreneurship education, youth development, learner support in distance education, and Indigenous knowledge systems. Joyce Karel was a lecturer at University of South Africa with a community development and leadership track record and an experienced translator.

Chapter 29

Crisis! What Crisis? Robert L. Flood

Abstract Conventional wisdom of economic isms worldwide is growth. Warnings for decades about the limits to growth have not been fully addressed by the powers that be. Warnings are becoming reality and now well advanced is loss of biodiversity, ecosystem collapse, and mass extinction. Likely consequences for humans, on the one hand, are starvation and disease and, on the other hand, are diminishment of the human spirit. Hope lies with grassroots people movements that challenge conventional wisdom of the dominant group, and systemic appreciation of the problems with sophisticated mixed methods to address them. Keywords Limits to growth · Conventional wisdom · Mixed methods · Mass extinction · Human psyche · Dehumanisation

The destiny of humans cannot be separated from the destiny of Earth. Thomas Berry (2015)

I began my undergraduate degree in ‘Systems and Management’ at City University, London, in 1979. Of the many course books that I read in the first year, two stand out above all others: The Limits to Growth by the Club of Rome (see update in Meadows et al. 2004), and Tools for Thought by Conrad Hal Waddington (1977). Limits presents system dynamics model simulations of exponential economic and population growth and some of the possible consequences of this, such as resource depletion, food shortages, waste mountains, and ultimate collapse. By today’s standards, the model, and the computer power to drive the model, respectively, were simple and primitive, but the message was profound. There were many disparaging criticisms of Limits, about it being simplistic, not considering human ingenuity to solve problems ‘on the go’, and that the models were a poor representation of reality. Of course, models of that era and even of today cannot precisely represent and simulate the consequences of human activity. The critics miss the fundamental point of it all, that growth cannot go on forever, that there must be some limits, and that this is no more than common systemic sense. R. L. Flood (B) Norwegian University of Science and Technology, Trondheim, Norway © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2021 J. J. McIntyre-Mills and Y. Corcoran-Nantes (eds.), From Polarisation to Multispecies Relationships, Contemporary Systems Thinking, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-33-6884-2_29

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Tools presents the scientific techniques of its time in a readily understandable fashion and was quite suited, for example, to a first-year undergraduate student. Its focus is complexity and dealing with complexity, with a focus on cybernetics and systems. Tools engaged with Limits in a highly constructive fashion, addressing the ‘complex of complexes’ and the difficulties in knowing which interactions to model, how these interactions change over time, and the uncertainties in model outcomes. BUT it stressed that the models help us to learn about types of behaviour that might happen, possible outcomes, and that these behaviours and outcomes are further ingredients for thought, not failings of a model. More than anything else, though, and having a mind that responds to reason rather than convention, Waddington’s dislike of the conventional wisdom of the dominant group, or, as he phrased it, COWDUNG, resonated strongly with my thoughts—a dislike for the unquestioning adherence to convention. Convention engaging with critique could make a healthy collaboration. Convention, however, does not engage with critique, indeed it resists it, and resists with might. So, here we are in the modern day, 40 years on from my undergraduate years, COWDUNG still prevails, and we are facing the same fundamental problem—the limits to growth and the need for adequate tools for thought. Predictions in Limits may not have been exact, or fall in the given timescale, but now we can see that the kinds of behaviour and outcome generated by the models were more than mildly prophetic. Even so, the convention of growth continues, and continues in the various forms of capitalism, communism, and most other economic isms as practiced worldwide. The way of dealing with the problems of growth, we are told, is more of what caused the problems of growth in the first place… I hold my head in despair. There is cause for optimism. In the past 40 years the resistance to COWDUNG has grown. We now have sophisticated systemic appreciations of social, technical, and environmental issues, and a diversity of systemic methods by which to address them, as evidenced in Mixed Methods and Cross Disciplinary Research (McIntyreMills & Romm, 2019) and contributions herein. Equally heartening are the increasingly potent global people grassroots movements. The combination of grassroots people power and systemic tools for thought coming from professional communities promises to combine to challenge and bring about change to the practices of COWDUNG. The combination provides the opportunity for change and the tools to facilitate change. As humans we are born of the Earth, nourished by the Earth, and healed by the Earth. Thomas Berry (2015)

There are many pressing issues to tackle but, to my mind, a fundamental issue in all of this is the need to redress our understanding of the relationship between humankind and the natural world. COWDUNG has it that humankind is somehow distanced even separated from the natural world, the natural world is a resource to be exploited by humankind, and it is fine that the result is a worldwide humanscape. The kind of humanscape that we are creating involves a mass extinction event. We are witnessing the early stages of mass extinction in the squeezing out of the

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megafauna of the open plains, the megafauna of the oceans, and the megaforests with their great diversity of wildlife. One could ask, ‘Does this really matter?’ After all, there have been five mass extinction events over the past 450 million years. To boot, the head of NASA SETI, NASA’s search for extra-terrestrial intelligence, during a lecture that I attended in the early 1980s, pointed out that over 99.9% of all species that have lived on Earth are now extinct. So, is there really, really a problem with the current human-driven mass extinction? Well, yes, there are several deadly problems. For a start, when part of an ecosystem is extinguished, the cycle of life is broken, and the ecosystem collapses. It is a simple systemic fact. Here is a good example. New sources of food are needed to feed the ever-growing human population. The fishing industry has identified krill as abundant and offering fatty acids and other nutrients suited to the human diet. Krill are small crustaceans found across the world’s oceans and are particularly abundant in cool waters such as around Antarctica. Consequences if harvested in moderation may not be a great worry, but excessive localised harvesting, which evidence indicates may have already happened, will break the food chain and the whole ecosystem that incorporates the krill will collapse because there is no food for creatures positioned higher up the food chain. Consequently, we lose krill, fish, dolphins, whales, and seabirds. The fishing industry is notorious for thoughtless unnecessary harm that it causes to ocean wildlife. Fisheries once targeted tuna using nets without regard for other wildlife and consequently killed thousands of dolphins. People protest stopped this practice, but the fishing industry then blundered forward, switching to longline fishing. Longline bycatch involves 10s of thousands of albatrosses and petrels attracted by bait attached to the hooks, but albatrosses and petrels become hooked and drown as the line sinks and drags them under. Of 25 albatross taxa, 21 of them are threatened with extinction. Save the Albatross campaign is attempting to educate the industry worldwide with mitigation techniques, but even if the campaign is successful, a third of the world’s longline fishing remains illegal and out of control. Some exploited ecosystems survive, at least in one form or another, though with a much-reduced biodiversity. The World Health Organisation recognises that biodiversity plays a crucial role in human nutrition as it is necessary for food production by ensuring productivity of soils and protection of the genetic diversity necessary for nature to remain in balance. Reducing biodiversity creates ‘more of less’, larger numbers of fewer species, and is playing a dangerous game with the balance of nature and, as systemic models indicate, in such circumstances the behaviour and outcomes are extremely uncertain. In human food production, it creates the opportunity for disease to run rampant and destroy a monoculture like a wheat crop that feeds millions of people. Play with the balance of nature and nature tends to kick back. The 2020 Covid 19 crisis is a systemic warning, a warning of the highest order, that the humanscape that COWDUNG is creating on Earth is something that the balancing forces of nature will have a say on. Population explosions of species are always moderated by nature; by starvation when populations become too large for

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available/potential food availability/supply, or by disease, or by both. As said in Limits in the 1970s, there are limits to growth. If we lived on the moon, our minds and emotions, our speech, our imagination, and sense of the divine would be limited to the lunar landscape. Thomas Berry (2015)

There is another kind of consequence of mass extinction, one that penetrates deep into our very being. Human beings are not aliens transported to Earth. Human beings are of Earth, emerging as a species on Earth over millions of years, made up from and made viable by the elements and systemic processes of Earth (Berry 1981, 2009, 2015). The single most important recognition given to me by Thomas Berry is that each one of us humans as a self-aware being is a formation of the Universe looking back at the Universe. We are indeed the Universe looking at itself. The human psyche, the human spirit, the emotional health of humans, will be diminished in equal or greater scale than the rapidly diminishing diversity in life and systemic processes that formed and support us. It is a process of dehumanisation. Mental well-being and the human spirit cannot be sustained as the diversity of nature that gave birth to us becomes ever more like a lunar landscape; as we replace diversity with uniformity, living processes with inanimate structures, and lose touch with the natural world of which we are an integral part. Losing touch with the natural world happens, not just by destroying it, but also by distancing ourselves from it, by relocating ourselves to a virtual world, by trivialising and masking the fate of the natural world. Dwell for a moment on the following example. Orangutans have no future in the wild as their home, the megaforest of Borneo, is logged from coast to coast. Yet, with sickening irony, an Orangutan is used in a TV advert to promote an energy company. Under the banner ‘Seeing energy through fresh eyes’ we ‘See Maya, the majestic Orangutan…’—here trivialised with a human name—‘…make her way from the rainforest into our urban world.’ The fate of the natural world is masked by false images of a healthy rainforest, but there is little rainforest left in much of Borneo and consequently few Orangutans. The nature of Orangutans is wrongly portrayed. Orangutans do not think like humans and Orangutans do not belong in the human urban world. The degree of ignorance in the advert is astounding and scary. And a final thought. Solutions to resource shortage include mining resources on other planets and colonising Mars. Such ideas, once the fantasy of boffins and eccentrics, are today technologically feasible and part of the future strategy of COWDUNGers. Bringing resources to Earth does not solve the problem of a human population growing out of control; transporting some of the population to Mars does not solve the problem of killing the human psyche and spirit. The human psyche and spirit did not fare well in the Covid 19 crisis during lockdown. Easing of restrictions, for example, in England, led to a rush to the countryside and coastal regions as people knowingly or unawares reconnected with the natural world. So, how would the human psyche and spirit fare if our minds and emotions, our speech, our imagination, and sense of the divine were limited to the Martian landscape?

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References Berry, T. (1981). Spirituality and ecology: Presentation and reflections delivered at the Cathedral of St. John the divine in New York City. http://thomasberry.org/publications-and-media/spiritual ity-and-ecology-november-8-1981. Berry, T. (2009). The sacred universe: Earth, spirituality and religion in the 21st century. New York: Columbia University Press. Berry, T. (2015). The dream of the earth. Berkeley: Reprint Counterpoint. McIntyre-Mills, J., & Romm, N. R. A. (2019). Mixed methods and cross disciplinary research: Towards cultivating eco-systemic living. New York: Springer. Meadows, D. H., Meadows, D. L., Randers, J., & Behrens, W. W. (1972). The limits to growth. New York: Universe Books. Meadows, D. H., Randers, J., & Meadows, D. L. (2004). The limits to growth: The 30 year update. Vermont: Chelsea Green Publishing. Waddington, C. A. (1977). Tools for thought. Denver, CO: Paladin.

Robert L. Flood is Professor of Action Research at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology, Trondheim, Norway. Previous posts include the Chair in Management Sciences at Hull University, England. He is Chief Editor of Systemic Practice and Action Research and writes regular editorial articles in this capacity. He is author of six books, editor of four books and widely published in refereed journals.

Chapter 30

Vignette: Creating Common Ground Janet J. McIntyre-Mills

Abstract The vignette was written to remember and celebrate the work of a colleague whose thinking and practice inspired nurturing people and places. Keywords Common ground · Narratives re-membering · Praxis

Common Ground For the purposes of this volume it means creating shared space and extending hospitality through balancing individual and shared interests. In this chapter I draw together some reflections on a colleague who tried to apply this approach to his teaching, research and relationships. The words were written for the purpose of a talk given in memory of Jim Schiller.

J. J. McIntyre-Mills (B) University of South Africa in the College of Education, Tshwane, South Africa e-mail: [email protected]; [email protected] Adelaide University, College of Professions Main North Terrace, Adelaide, Australia College of Business, Government and Law, Flinders University, Sturt, SA, Australia © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2021 J. J. McIntyre-Mills and Y. Corcoran-Nantes (eds.), From Polarisation to Multispecies Relationships, Contemporary Systems Thinking, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-33-6884-2_30

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Remembering a Colleague and Celebrating His Praxis I have been asked to say a few words about our colleague Jim Schiller at a memorial service held at Oasis, Flinders University in 2018.1 When I think of the Indonesianist Jim Schiller, I remember a life well lived. What is a measure of a life? Being remembered with fondness? If the measure of a life is that it inspires others, then Jim passes that test with flying colours. Jim Schiller was an erudite man, always willing to share his insights in an unassuming way. His generous spirit gave confidence to his students and colleagues.

Living by Example Jim was honest about the fact that ‘an academic’s work is never done. So, one may as well enjoy it!’ Jim lived his role as a teacher and researcher. He made time for unhurried conversations over coffee and welcomed respectful disagreement, in order to develop a thesis. He made time for everyone, paused and included passersby. The mark of a good ethnographer and a gracious human being. Like all good ethnographers, he knew that research takes time. It is grounded in keen observation and patient listening. The storyteller must first gather the strands of their own experience to make their own points and feelings clear. Listening carefully is a key skill for a good ethnographer. He modelled this skill well. He studied the complicated issues of the day, poverty and climate change, power and greed leading to dispossession, deforestation and displacement. He understood the value of the detailed case study on what it means to survive on the streets of Solo, or Jakarta. He understood how traders negotiated for space. What it means to be driven the edge of the city and how the fines of the traders ironically support the salaries of the bureaucrats. The irony of Solo traders negotiating for access to space in the city to sell their good—hemmed in by a police presence. The paradoxes of engaging with power emerged from this and many other vignettes we discussed. Out of the crumpled chrysalis of many iterations, a thesis would emerge.

1 Geoff

Boyce discussed the notion of hospitality at an interfaith symposium hosted by Flinders University Oasis on 24–25 September 2018. He stressed the need to hospitality at a time when so much of the time is spent competing, striving and living in fear that the next set of requirements are met. The notion of making time to enable engaging and connecting with others was stressed as important, particularly for international students who need to connect with local Australian students. The difference between interfaith and multipath was explained as making friends through hospitality and avoiding parallel engagement of many faiths. In order to maintain the interfaith community, it has been presented as a health and wellbeing community spanning physical, mental and spiritual health. The notion that faith and spirituality could be lost if the process becomes too secular was raised by one of the Indonesian students who was concerned that this trend of secularization could lead to a loss of spirituality. The pragmatic approach has been that by preserving some common ground at the university in Oasis, it could be used for many purposes.

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A thesis by Sudarmo on life in the streets if Solo. The smell of cooking, The sound of chickens, The pulse of people and place. This is partly what ethnography is about. It provides layered insights that can inform our understanding of other places (without if course prescribing solutions—these must be found in each context) whilst bringing some insights to bear on other issues in other places. By reading some of these theses, we can learn about power, resistance, governance form above met by ingenuity from below.

The Gift Let us celebrate the life of Jim by remembering what he stood for: ● Enjoying being an academic. Connecting with people and being interested in others. He connected with colleagues and with students through being generous with his time. It was good to see Jim each day—his door was open and he was always open for a chat and actually looked pleased to see people! ● His patience and ability to appear unhurried He always made time to talk about current affairs with interest. He was present and engaged whenever we met. If he gave a compliment—you knew he meant it. You also knew when he was teasing—but always gentle. You could ask advice and he would be honest and kind at the same time. A gentle soul. I liked him. He made me feel better for having met him. He was one of the academics (and people) you meet whom you know would treat you as an end in yourself and not a means to an end. I have very fond memories of sitting over lunch or tea with Jim and talking—what I liked about Jim is that he always included passersby and actually practiced his belief in democracy. His conversations were stimulating (always polite) and capable of introducing irony and humor to make a point! Time spent working with him was energizing. Laughter was often an ingredient along with a sense that we were lucky to do what we loved doing. Supervising students with Jim was a pleasure, because he invested time in enabling students to grow as academics. He also shared the idea that by believing in people they would succeed. The many students who graduated are a testimony to his recipe for teaching, research and living a good life. Besides, he gave me confidence too—he said: Oh if you understand the role of the Dutch in the Cape you will understand (some aspects of) Indonesia.

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His wry humor however was not lost on me. So much is peculiar and specific to people and place and cannot be universalized.

‘Thick Descriptions’ Jim was a social anthropologist and political scientist who made sense. He concentrated on the local context, doing in depth research and then asked what lessons could be learned to inform a wider understanding of trends. But he always avoided grand generalizations and retained a healthy sense of humility. It takes time and humility to do good ethnography. A careful eye and a deep knowledge of culture. From the details of a good ethnography insights about politics and power emerge, how survival in cities plays out. Solo is a reminder of downtown Tshwane (South Africa). The confiscation of fruit and vegetables by cops on their way home on Friday evening. The normalizing of the everyday abuse was a lesson that emerges from the pages of Sudarmo’s thesis.

‘Seeing Like a State’ One of the references that Jim recommended to Sudarmo, Lisman and me was ‘Seeing like a state’, by John Scott. The attempts to control forests through monoculture. The weeding out of diverse plants and ideas is the danger of governance that pretends to support liberal ideas and diversity, but actually leads to enclosures of the commons and a narrowing of the mind.

Japura and the Local Context Jim focused on the local. He allowed the details of how the Japura furniture makers tried to address the protection of forests. If carpenters and cabinetmakers rely on forests, they need to be protected. Not for Jim the hubris of generalization based on opinion. All his work was grounded in the particular, the complex and the local. A pragmatic message for conservationists of the Knysna Forest in South Africa (and the few remaining elephants) is that the furniture makers who craft beautiful teak and yellow wood furniture need the ecology of the forest and the community that protects it to survive. By being grounded in place, we can provide gems of insight for others.

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A Lesson on Ethics, Fieldwork and Cock Fighting I remember the other great lesson that Jim taught drawn from Clifford Geertz’s ‘Thick Description’. The title was also a source of humour. Jim did not take himself too seriously. The joke was shared as a way to ensure that student has understood that this meant spending time, providing detailed, fine grained stories of life with all its complexities and paradoxes. Thin description is flat and lifeless and based on limited fieldwork.

Connecting with Others Geertz told how he was getting nowhere with his research until he became fully engaged as a participant observer and broke the rules by attending an illegal cockfight. I do not know what our ethics committee would make of this?

I protested (after a close reading of the shared text which Sudarmo read too) that the practice was indeed appalling. However, of course, this is not the point that Clifford Geertz was making—it was the need to connect with people. Sudarmo shared that he understood the insider view because he had sold birds at the bird market alongside the street sellers. For Jim, the evolution of an argument from the detailed field notes took place over cups of coffee and collegial conversation with students. This was an essential part of the journey. It was enjoyable. Jim clearly enjoyed being an academic. He knew it was a privilege. The journey of daily discovery through reading, listening to students (who were always treated with respect) comparing news reports. They were all grist for his ethnographic mind. Our discussion led to many different areas including the many ethical pitfalls of research, human and animal rights and that research is indeed a ‘rite of passage’ and it remains a challenge for seasoned researchers and it will always be a challenge for new researchers doing their first major piece of work. A student emailed me from Indonesia to say that ‘getting interviews is difficult’. I responded that “Yes, it is difficult!’ I recalled the fieldwork story detailed by Clifford Geertz who spent many months developing relationships with people in Bali. On one occasion he attended an illegal gathering and fled when it was raided. He was given a place to hide and after this experience he was recognized by the people. He was able to learn what cock fighting meant to the local Balinese and people were more prepared to speak to him.

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Asking Questions About Water Security What does the uneasy partnership between the French and British water company and the provincial government tells us about corporatization? ● What does it tell us about the importance of upholding Article 33 of the Indonesian Constitution? The land, the waters and the natural resources within shall be under the powers of the state and shall be used for the benefit of the people?

● What does it tell us about the rights and responsibilities etched in the constitution? ● What does it tell us about water security in big cities? ● What does it tell us about the way people survive when they cannot afford the cost of a basic need? The stories of cracks made in clay pipes (accidently on purpose) tell of one way to afford water. Those who could afford to do so sank boreholes, sometimes very close to latrines. Lisman’s thesis addressed the challenges for water security ranging from cost and corporatization to strategies to enhance affordability—of water contamination and ecoli, industrial chemicals and rising levels of salinity tell of sinkholes and subsidence.

Inviting Further Insights Ethnographies provide context and invite further insight and study. Sudarmos’s thesis built on the insights of Hetifahs’s thesis and Lisman’s thesis provided insights for Jackwin’s thesis on the continued commodification of water. Lisman is now a senior lecturer at Uni of Indonesia and Jackwin who worked in the City of Kupang in East Nusa Tenggara Province. His graduate Praktino who holds office in government after leading Ganja Madam all play an important role in building on the lessons they learned. It was good to meet Sudarmo in Solo after many years in 2016. He is now Head of Department Associate Professor of the Study Program of Public Administration at Universitas Sebelas Maret of development and marginalization; community and collaborative governance of disadvantaged groups. Hetifah won federal office after she set up the Bandung Trust and provided opportunities for another of our students who has become an entrepreneur. There were no cardboard survey participants in Jim’s world—they were fully rounded individuals with stories, feelings and human bodies. He took an interest in the health of his students and in the lives of his colleagues. Struggling street traders emerged from the pages of the theses—full lives spent cooking in the street, sleeping under carts to keep their spaces, women were forced to the outskirts near the rubbish dumps.

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Sudarmo was asked to think about how the work of Mary Douglas could inform his analysis. Then I shared Sudarmo work with Riswanda who worked on prostitution and now I am sharing it with a student from Kenya who is working on marginalization in Nairobi and who occupy the outer margins of society. And so the journey continues. Our students take the ethnography of Indonesia forward. This is the measure of a good academic, he made sense and his analyses were clear! Certainly, his good sense rubbed off as the legacy of his students will live on. Well done Jim, your energy continues. The gift of generosity requires reciprocity. Every social anthropologist knows that.

Restructuring the Commons: A Reflection C. S. Lewis (1944) uses ironical letters between Screw Tape and Wormwood to make a point about why inclusion is better than exclusion. The letters are instructions on how to win the souls of human beings away from the lofty, warm fuzzy ‘Enemy’ and attract them to the sensible secular way. The letters can be read as instructions on how to destroy love, co-operation and care. The plan is based on limiting and restricting and above all competing. Rayner (2017: 463) quotes a section of letter 18 written by uncle Screwtape to his nephew Wormood (C. S. Lewis, 1944) to make his concluding points in ‘Balancing Individualism and Collectivism”. The complete quote below is included here as it summarises the philosophy of neoliberalism versus the philosophy of the commons: The whole philosophy of Hell rests on recognition of the axiom that one thing is not another thing, and, specially, that one self is not another self. My good is my good and your good is yours. What one gains another loses. Even an inanimate object is what it is by excluding all other objects from the space it occupies; if it expands, it does so by thrusting other objects aside or by absorbing them. A self does the same. With beasts the absorption takes the form of eating; for us, it means the sucking of will and freedom out of a weaker self into a stronger. “To be” means “to be in competition. Now the Enemy’s philosophy is nothing more nor less than one continued attempt to evade this very obvious truth. …He introduces into matter that obscene invention the organism, in which the parts are perverted from their natural destiny of competition and made to co-operate.

What would a world look like and feel like if we were to apply the philosophy of co-operation for the common good?

References and Bibliography Bachriadi, D. (2011). Between discourse and action: Agrarian reform and rural social movements in Indonesia post-1965. Centre for Development Studies, Flinders University. https://theses.fli nders.edu.au/view/4ae09ddd-78af-485b-87b0-01147957c468/1.

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Geertz, C. (1960, June 7). Science, 131(3416), 1801–1802. https://doi.org/10.1126/science.131. 3416.1801. Geertz, C. (1973). Thick description: Towards an interpretative theory of culture. In C. Geertz (Ed.), The interpretation of cultures, selected essays. New York: Basic Books. Lewis, C. S. (1944). Screw tape letters. London: Geoffrey Bles, Centenary Press. Rayner, A. (2017). Natural inclusion. In J. J. McIntyre-Mills, N. R. A. Romm, & Y. Corcoran-Nantes (Eds.), Balancing individualism and collectivism: Social and environmental justice (pp. 461–470). London: Springer. https://en.wikiversity.org/wiki/Natural_Inclusion. Schiller, J. (1999). The 1997 elections: “Festival of democracy” or costly “Fiction”? Occasional Paper. Centre for Asia Pacific Initiatives, University of Victoria, Issue 22. Available at http:// www.uvic.ca/research/centres/capi/assets/docs/Schiller_Indonesian_Elections.pdf. Accessed 10 Dec 2014. Schiller, J. (2004). What is an election? A local perspective on Indonesia’s 2004 representative elections. Canberra, the 19th Biennial Conference of the Asian Studies Association of Australia. Available at http://trove.nla.gov.au/work/37730094?q&sort¼holdings+desc&_¼144 9140456405&versionId¼209501540. Accessed 10 Dec 2014. Scott, J. (1998). Seeing like a state. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. Van Gennep, A. and the Rise of French Sociology of Religion Author(s): Wouter W. Belier Source: Numen, 41(2) (May 1994), 141–162. Published by: Brill Stable. https://www.jstor.org/stable/327 0257. Accessed 1 Oct 2018. 00:40 UTC/The Rites of Passage. Arnold van Gennep. Translated by M. Vizedom & G. L. Caffee. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1960, 198 pp.

Janet J. McIntyre-Mills is Honorary Professor in the College of Education at University of South Africa, Tshwane, South Africa; Visiting Research Fellow of the College of Professions Main North Terrace at Adelaide University; and Adjunct Associate Professor in the College of Business Government and Law at Flinders University, Sturt Campus, Adelaide.

Chapter 31

Advancing a Modern Ethos for Oneness with All Life Through Archaic Story T. Flanagan

Abstract Protecting, preserving, or restoring the nature of the ecosystem that has sustained humanity’s rise into the Anthropocene has become more than an existential necessity. This mission today is a matter of species survival. The earth, in its prodigal pragmatism, cares not for the survival of any specific species. Five cycles of great species extinctions mark our measures of geologic time. An Anthropocene extinction may well be part of an earthly tradition. Many might choose to believe that our actions are irrelevant. Such a belief, detached from a sense of oneness with the earth, is immune to direct assault with ominous yet distant presentation of global trends reported to us and also debated by technocratic experts. Voices around us tend to sooth us into embracing the status quo. They encourage us to continue forward, accumulate the blessings of our individual successes, and hold on to an archaic belief that, through some uncertain mechanism, the good among us shall survive (in one world or another). We have is an intuitive sense for justice. This sense appears early and broadly, not only in young children but also in social animals of varying species. Great tragedies like epidemics, wars, and species extinction tell a different tale. While we can be agents of justice, should we so choose, we cannot presume to be beneficiaries of justice based on being “good.” Justice tends to extend itself only to those who visibly “do” good. And here is a central challenge for the people of the world. In the context of a oneness with the earth, what does “doing good” mean? Is such an ethos sufficient as an individual ethos, or must such an ethos become a cultural ethos? And if a culture must change, how might it change? Keywords Oneness · Narrative · Continuity

T. Flanagan (B) Wesleyan University, Middletown, CT, USA e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2021 J. J. McIntyre-Mills and Y. Corcoran-Nantes (eds.), From Polarisation to Multispecies Relationships, Contemporary Systems Thinking, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-33-6884-2_31

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Introduction Human Belief Systems Need to Preserve Distinct Perspectives and also Share Common Ground Diverse beliefs exist behind our cultural ethos. They are deeply rooted in the many different cultural understandings that are distributed throughout our planet. These understandings weave our identities into distinct civic, political, and religious positions. Can we expect the emergence of sufficient cultural solidarity with respect to our common bond to a oneness with the earth? Can we hope to create and share a coherent understanding of the nature and implications of such a bond? Can we use our bond to the oneness of the earth as a compass to guide the continually transforming cultures that sustain us? For some of us, the leap toward a oneness with the earth can feel like a small step, while for others, such a leap toward a oneness with an inanimate rock spinning through space that, for all that we know of the moment, is fully lifeless, will seem a huge and risky step to take. Sensing the earth as a living presence echoes of cultures which, with the chauvinism of modernity, seem to have been “primitive.” This sense of animism seems to be beneath us, and not worthy of our lofty aspirations. We might too easily convince ourselves that we have left such superstition behind us. Robert Bellah, a sociologist writing about the historical record of succession of archaic, ancient, and modern ages, makes the point that while one age emerges from prior age, all ages coexist within us going forward. We carry even the archaic age with its enacted and mythic representations, with in currents so deep that we remain unaware of how they influence us. We may be more than what we were, in our lives or in the life of our species, but we are not less than what we were. We still have archaic impulses to feel danger in the unknown shadows that exist at the fringe of understandings. We steer a course toward the path that feels less risky, less uncertain and more strongly framed by our beliefs in how the world is supposed to be. Sometimes, though without predictably certainty, our shell of embraced security, cracks a bit. Sometimes the shell shatters fully. When it cracks, the poet songwriter Leonard Cohen would say, “There is a crack in everything. That is how the light gets in.” When our shell shatters, we can find ourselves “ adrift and moorless on the pathways of the night.” In such moments, we might use the light to find our way back to a heartfelt path or find a new compass to guide us. If we sense that our course is bringing us to a dangerous end, we can pray for, hope for, or work for, moments such as these. But when such moments, through our design or through the circumstances of a greater design, what do we do to reconfigure ourselves as our wounds mend? There is a great instinct to fix cracks and reassemble views back into an original shape, hoping that the fractures we experience are anomalies in life rather than a message from life. We cannot, nor should we expect others, to abandon views around which their personal and collective identities are centered. We can, at best, remind ourselves of stories which, over time, had come to make us feel the wholeness, the oneness, of a community. When we consider such stories, the one

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thing that we all could do together, each from our own different cultural ethos, is to begin with stories from our archaic past. We could do this not to displace our present, but rather to rediscover it. If this a choice that we might make, what type of archaic story of oneness might we share in an effort to being with our feet all standing on a common ground?

Creating a Unitive Experience Through a Universally-Understandable, Archaic Moral Fable I am not going to pretend that I have the “one” story which might provide a path for rediscovering our common beliefs. I can offer an example of such story, but the example that I will offer may not resonate with all people of all cultures. There may be no single story that will create such a resonance. There may not be a desire to find a bridge that links all belief systems to a oneness with the common ground upon which we all walk. Such a story may yet need to be crafted. I feel that I can offer an approximation, a step toward common ground, through a story. My view is that many of us will not be able to feel a oneness with the earth without first feeling a oneness with species other than our own. Science might provide evidence for such a commonality, however, science trades in theoretic representations, and our deeper roots negotiate reality with felt experiences and mythic representations. Poets have cast their lanterns toward such stories for thousands of years. Homer tells us that Odysseus, when returning from war, was first recognized not by his family, friends nor neighbors, but by his dog’s affections for him—a bond that denied the distance across species. The poet and anthropological biologist Loren Eiseley recounted the event this way: The magic that gleams an instant between Argos and Odysseus (an aging dog and his longabsent master) is both the recognition of diversity and the need for affection across the illusions of form. It is nature’s cry to homeless, far wandering, insatiable man. Do not forget your brethren or the green wood from which you sprang. To do so would invite disaster.

For reflection in this context, and within the broader theme of “recognizing multispecies relationships”. I offer reference to a story of uncertain antiquity from native American culture. Several years ago, LaDonna Harris of the Comanche nation shared with me an ancient teaching story in the form of an epic poem called “Who Speaks for Wolf”. Paula Underwood (2013) presents this poem with the following preface: This Iroquois (Haudenosaunee) tale, though thousands of years old, was passed from an Erie elder to an Oneida healer named Tsilikomah around 1800. She in turn handed it on to her grandson, as did he to his own son. This man, Perry Leonard Underwood, taught the story to his daughter Paula, who gave it written form.

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Who Speaks for Wolf? Long ago Our People grew in number so that where we were Was no longer enough Many young men Were sent out from among us To seek a new place Where the People might be who-they-were They searched And they returned Each with a place selected Each determined his place was best And so it was That the People had a decision to make: Which of the many was most appropriate Now, at that time There was one among the People To whom Wolf was brother He was so much Wolf’s brother That he would sing their song to them And they would answer him He was so much Wolf’s brother That their young Would sometimes follow him through the forest And it seemed they meant to learn from him So it was, at this time That the People gave that One a special name They called him Wolf’s brother And if any sought to learn about Wolf If any were curious Or wanted to learn to sing Wolf’s song They would sit beside him And describe their curiosity Hoping for a reply As I have said The People sought a new place in the forest They listened closely to each of the young men

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As they spoke of hills and trees Of clearing sand running water Of deer and squirrel and berries They listened to hear which place Might be drier in rain More protected in winter And where our Three Sisters Corn, Beans, and Squash Might find a place to their liking They listened And they chose Before they chose They listened to each young man Before they chose They listened to each among them He who understood the flow of waters She who understood Long House construction He who understood the storms of winter She who understood Three Sisters To each of these they listened Until they reached agreement And the Eldest among them Finally rose and said: “so be it— for so it is” “but wait” “Someone cautioned— Where is Wolf’s Brother?” “Who, then, speaks for wolf?” But The people were decided And their mind was firm And the first people were sent To choose a site for the first Long House To clear a space for our Three Sisters To mold the land so that water Would run away from our dwelling So that all would be secure within And then Wolf’s brother returned He asked about the New Place And said at once that we must choose another

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“You have chosen the Center Place For a great community of Wolf” But we answered him That many had already gone And that it could not wisely be changed And that surely Wolf could make way for us As we sometimes make way for Wolf But Wolf’s Brother counseled— “I think that you will find That it is too small a place for both And that it will require more work Than change would presently require” But the people closed their ears And would not reconsider When the New Place was ready All the People rose up as one And took those things they found of value And looked at last upon their new home Now consider how it was for them This New Place Had cool summers and winter protection And fast-moving streams And forests around us Filled with deer and squirrel There was room even for our Three Beloved Sisters And the people saw that this was good And did not see Wolf watching from the shadows! But as time passed They began to see— For someone would bring deer or squirrel And hang him from a tree And go for something to contain the meat But would return To find nothing hanging from the tree And wolf beyond At first This seemed to us an appropriate exchange— Some food fora place to live But It soon became apparent that it was more than this— For Wolf would sometimes walk between the dwellings That we had fashioned for ourselves

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And the women grew concerned For the safety of the little ones Thinking of this They devised for a while an agreement with Wolf Whereby the women would gather together At the edge of our village And put out food for Wolf and his brothers But it was soon apparent That this meant too much food And also Wolf grew bolder Coming into look for food So that it was worse than before We had no wish to tame wolf And so Hearing the wailing of the women The men devised a system Whereby some among them Were always alert to drive off Wolf And wolf was soon his old untamed self But They soon discovered That this required so much energy That there was little left for winter preparations And the Long Cold began to look longer and colder With each passing day Then The men counseled together To choose a different course They saw That neither providing Wolf with food Nor driving him off Gave the People a life that was pleasing They saw That Wolf and the People Could not live comfortably together In such a small space They saw That it was possible To hunt down this Wolf People

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Until they were no more But they also saw That this would require much energy over many years They saw, too, That such a task would change the People: They would become Wolf Killers A People who took life only to sustain their own Would become a People who took life Rather than move a little It did not seem to them That they wanted to become such a people At last One of the Eldest of the People Spoke what was in every mind: “It would seem That Wolf’s Brother’s vision Was sharper than our own To live here indeed requires more work now Than change would have made necessary” Now this would be a simple telling Of a people who decided to move Once winter was past Except That from this The people learned a great lesson It is a lesson We have never forgotten For At the end of their Council One of the Eldest rose again and said: “Let us learn from this So that not again Need the People build only to move Let us not again think we will gain energy Only to lose more than we gain We have learned to choose a place Where winter storms are less Rather than rebuild

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We have learned to choose a place Where water does not stand Rather than sustain sickness Let us now learn to consider wolf!” And so it was That the People devised among themselves A way of asking each other questions Whenever a decision was to be made On a New Place or a New Way We sought to perceive the flow of energy Through each new possibility And how much was enough And how much was too much Until at last Someone would rise And ask the old, old question To remind us of things We do not yet see clearly enough to remember “Tell me now my brothers Tell me now my sisters Who speaks for wolf?”

The Power of Myth Over Theory in Shifting an Ethos to Changing Times The lesson of “Who Speaks for Wolf” builds upon a mythic capacity for communing with the non-human spirit of animal life, and through this capacity the opportunity to improve choices made my human minds. The myth looks through eyes that are close to the earth itself. A comparable modern myth might have the human community still looking for insight from non-human spirit, although the communion would most likely not be a personification of earthly origin. It can be argued that, in essence, archaic and modern mythic learning stories have more in common than they hold as difference. A meta-story could be imagined which might harmonize them. Such a meta-story, however, may exist within spoken, or unspoken, oral traditions yet fall outside of any sacred text. For most of human history, mythic story played the dominate role in shaping culture. Around 500 BCE, a shift in culture began to emerge across nations interacting across the Mediterranean and West Axial spheres of exchange. This shift was a move toward legitimate social inquiry about the way things

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were and the way that they might otherwise be. It was an unsettling shift. Scholars refer to this time as the Axial Period, and its emergence as the Axial Shift. With this new culture of thinking, stories acquired a requirement to explain themselves is some form of causal way. If the causes were inquired upon and found to be wanting, the story lost energy. Moving some stories beyond earthly inquiry, through the agency of Devine mystery, protected these stories and thereby preserved their moral lessons. Religion rose as a practice of extraordinary imagining and belief, moving beyond the more earthy experience of questions and feelings. When pressed into dire circumstances by the ordinary world, individuals could personally reach out to an extraordinary world for reprieve—the earthly world left behind to fend for itself. The bridge between a world as it seems to be and a world as it seems it should be requires stepping into an imaginary realm where rules as we know them become relaxed and structures as we have experienced them can become reconfigure. Without a means of leaping into an “imaginal” reality, we cannot make decision about preferred futures. The essential role that imagination must play in finding our ways into the future has been powerfully stated by the ethicist Hasan Ozbekhan: The future is profoundly different. Here the mind does not encounter given happenings to limit and guide it. It must, so to speak, fill the whole vast and empty canvas with imaginings, with wishes and goals and novel alternative configurations that somehow possess reality and represent shared, or at least shareable, values. Into this creative effort the present will necessarily Intrude, but ideally, as in the case of the past, this intrusion should be made in full recognition that the outlooks, general views, strivings and techniques that it represents are its own. … Such an effort of conception, of imaginative futures’ creation, is admittedly very difficult. It requires intellectual and emotional qualities of pure creativity and original synthesis. It calls for the ability to define goals and norms, to embody different sets of envisioned situations into evolving constructs, to abstract different alternatives from them, and to choose among such alternatives. It depends on one’s capacity to distinguish between what is constant and what variable., and to deal with large numbers of relevant, interconnected, but causally unrelated, variables. Finally, if it is to satisfy the above requirements, the resulting construct will necessarily be different from the present state of the system and this difference must symbolize some good, or virtue, that the present lacks.

People cannot be drawn into an imagining space without an explicit invitation to relax their views of the world as it is. This is difficult for many people who feel that it is the serious frame of mind, rather than a more playful frame of mind, that must guide us. When we, as cultures of the world, “feel” that our world is moving into a healthy future, then, yes, staying on the rails and moving forward seems like the practical choice. If the world does not feel to be wounded, broken, or falling apart, why change course? Why look for new ways? If there is a collectively unconscious feeling of pain in the world, however, this is a feeling that we should not seek to repress in the name of preserving a hurtful trajectory. The invitation to move into a “imaginal” space for rethinking our shared futures requires some sign, some signal, some expression, for joining in a unitive experience of a possible future. Story provides this invitation. Unlike our theoretical narratives, which are hostage to the continuous war of factualization and falsification, our mythic stories ask only

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that they “feel” somehow based upon a plausible or potentially plausible underlying truth. It is through revived, refreshed, or entirely new mythic stories that we must invite each other into imagining better paths into the shared future. It is through such stories that we must rediscover the underlying truth of our oneness with life on earth, and through that unitive experience, our oneness with the earth itself. Reviving an earth focused mythic belief does not require abandoning a sense of heavenly reality. I am confident that mythic narratives can reconcile both domains, for humanity certainly needs both its experience of ordinary life and its experiences of extraordinary life. What I am proposing in this paragraph is that through our affinity to animals, our ability to give and to feel an exchange of loving affection with animals—a sense of awe with the beauty of animals—we set ourselves onto path of greater oneness with the world. We cannot be pressured into a sense of oneness with theoretical argument, regardless of how profoundly such argument might be. We need to open ourselves up to the possibility of sensing a greater oneness around us. Does such a shift in cultural attitude from independence into an attitude of broad interdependence, including a feeling for an interdependence with the earth itself, suggest that we are entering a new Axial Age? Does the idea of thinking with a collective, diversified mind rather than framing conclusions through our individual minds signal a culture of a new way of thinking? Yes, for an axial age is not an era of new beliefs, but rather an age of a new way of coming to our beliefs. None of this is likely until our mythic stories revitalize a sense of coming to understandings through the inclusion of truly diverse perspectives. This is not a matter of arguing across diverse perspectives, but rather about assembling an argument through the use of diverse perspectives. Today, in the twenty-first century, social capacities are emerging to enable genuinely collective thinking. The challenge for our culture is not to argue for the legitimacy of specific approaches, but rather to welcome the ides of shifting from our reliance upon the strength of induvial minds and embracing the notion of shaping human futures through our shared thinking. The cultural shift is a shift from a culture of collective debate (which arguably has brought us to the brink of fracture) to a culture of collective design. The epic story—the parable—of Who Speaks for Wolf brings us to considering our options.

Next Steps in Nurturing a Modern Global Ethos We cannot understand our situation without relying upon our language. If our language is riddled with terms that spark division and divisiveness, we need to agree to re-tool our language. This will take time. Changing our language can follow changes in the nature of stories that we share. We are socialized through the stories that we share. It is not simple task to get a new story into a culture, and to urge that culture to diffuse across a planet. Modern examples of where new epic story have touch people globally include Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings, Lucas’s Star Wars, and Rowling’s Harry Potter. There are others for sure, but not as many as there may

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yet need to be. With each season of epic stories, there follows a generation whose disposition for a new ethos shift. Notions of “the fellowship,” “the force” and “the chosen one” re-energize latent myths that bend the mind toward struggle for large scale change and better futures. These stories set the disposition for seeking new paths. Setting hopes for finding new paths would be cruel if we lacked substantive means for finding new paths. But to find both new paths and also to engage a new age of collective-thinking raises a challenge that is new to our times. Technocratic cultures across the globe have evolved ways of thinking from within elite teams of people tuned to the possibilities of technology. A trajectory is in place which leads us to “feel” that if some is technologically possible, then it is also socially justifiable. Technology pulls humanity along technocratic trajectories. This is the nature of both aging and emerging technology. Technocratic cultures are planning cultures wherein the future is an extrapolate of the past, and where the past is taken as the assets base upon which the future is properly constructed. The new Axial Age, if it is to emerge, must offer something which, rather than confronting planning, adds depth to the possibilities of planning. The emerging Axial Age needs to usher in a period of inclusive, collaborative design—design not for the purpose of making decisions, but rather design for the purpose of discovering real options for decision-making. An inclusive design culture, one an appetite for something really new has been cultivated, is within reach. We can, if we so choose, imaging together what the design culture of a new Axial Age might look like. In a variety of thinking circles, an inclusive group of diversified perspective holders would be convened to participate in jointly thinking about some challenge. The challenge that they focus their design energies upon will nominated by a broader community of fellow citizens. With the focus and the diversified group of designers specified, design activity would begin by collecting a rich menu of observations that would need to be considered to capture a clear view of a situation. Each individual perspective holder would contribute observations drawn from their own direct experience living within the situation under consideration. Old age traditions would then pit the designers against each other in contest for the superiority of some observations over others. The new Axial tradition would not do this. Rather, the new culture of inclusive thinking would start by accepting that each observation was fully legitimate by virtue of its importance within the context of any diversified perspective. The goal would not be do judge, but rather to explore. First, then, the designers would ask non-judgmental, clarifying questions of each other. When observations are understood (to a first approximation), designers would then begin exploring the relationship among the ideas. Preferences would be requested for which observation to begin the exploration with, and observations would be considered in a pair-wise fashion, asking if addressing the issue raised by one specific observation would “significantly” influence the capacity for resolving the issue represented by a second observation. An open discussion would allow all perspective holders to affirm or question the “significance” of an enabling influence of addressing one observation upon the ability to address a second observation.

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Instances where strongly significant influence is felt to exist would be tracked. If a strongly significant influence is not felt to exist, then such a finding does not constitute a negative mark against any observation. The process of exploring strong influences across a system of related observations results in a means for presenting a flow of influence as a tree-like graph. The designers consider such a graph in terms of their individual and collective sense of the “truth” that it represents. If the graphic view of the system of influence is felt to be a fair representation of truth, then it is restated as a story about how influence flows through a complex system. In such a story, influence is a mythic agent which, through its action, gives substance and shared understanding to a complex situation or opportunity. Such a story is not an argument whose strength would rest upon its resistance to falsification. Rather it is an epic story of inclusive co-design of new understanding and the emergence of new meaning. With a plurality of collective “thinking engines” of this type in a culture, some stories will rub against each other and beg for resolution, and others will reinforce each other and fuel confidence in the truth value of a new understanding. In such a culture, social cohesion that relies on shared meaning will draw its meaning from the interaction of minds embodied in different life perspectives. These new meanings will remain flexible, but also resilient. They can be re-thought and yet also will be resistant to catastrophic fracture—because their truth value will be drawn from a social substance that is greater than that of any single dimension of thought. The role of the individual mind will find new value in its capacity to contribute to the understanding of the collective mind. Ok, some will say, we already do this—within our own narrow silos of expertise. Yes, of course, but this is a remnant from the tribal, silo wars of the debate culture that rose from the prior Axil Shift.

Conclusion Come gather round poets wherever you roam and admit that your feelings are not entirely your own. You are embedded in a culture of thought, some antique and some still emerging. The civic landscape is being over-written with ever increasing pace. Our old stories have been stripped of meaning by a mechanical logic that has promised us all a better life. Our language is filtered to carry a singular view most rapidly. Through the phrase and meter of your poetry, we can hope to sense depth beyond words that seem too familiar to us today. It is certainly as important how we speak—and how we listen—as it is about what we say. When we move too far, and too rapidly, from our observations of our grounded experiences, we move into an abstract world of theory which may be true for us all, in a measure, and yet also useless to us all, in an equal measure. Theory, we are sure to discover, will prove far more helpful in suggesting how we might do something that it can possibly be for us to discover what to do. We need to hold confidence that we can reach for theory thinking when we need it and hold fast to our traditional need for mythic thinking so that we can move into the future without triggering a way among conflicting meanings. As our understandings change over time, our cultural ethos too can change over time. The

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challenge for us is clinging together with sufficient elastic cohesion to take the most benefit from the differences among us. And as we move forward thinking together across diverse perspective, we must remember the wisdom from the archaic Haudenosaunee story—and ask ourselves “Who speaks for wolf.” The story reminds us that the skill for speaking such a voice comes from a rare perspective that is tuned to considerations that might, at first, feel alien to us. If we surrender ourselves to the task of listening to the otherness of all voices, we can hope to avoid some avoidable hardships. It is through this shift to a modern ethos for thinking with a oneness across diverse perspectives that we can rediscover the energy that still pulses with the earths power of archaic story. Recognizing multispecies relationships will be easier once we embrace an ethos for working with multi-perspective understandings. This leap is supported when we come to recognize that we already do have the capacities to manage such a leap (Christakis & Bausch, 2006; Flanagan & Christakis, 2010; Flanagan & Lindell, 2018).

References Bellah, R. N. (2011). Religion in human evolution: From the paleolithic to the axial age. Belknap Press. Christakis, A. N., & Bausch, K. C. (2006). How people harness their collective wisdom and power to construct the future in co-laboratories of democracy. Information Age Publishing, Inc. Cohen, L. (1992). Anthem. The Future. Columbia Records. Eiseley, L. (1969). The unexpected universe (p. 16). Harcourt Brace Jovanovich. Flanagan, T. R., & Christakis, A. N. (2010). The talking point: Creating an environment for exploring complex meaning (TR Flanagan and AN Christakis). Charlotte, NC: Information Age Publishing, Inc. Flanagan, T. R., & Lindell, C. H. (2018). The Coherence factor: Linking emotion and cognition when individuals think as a group. Charlotte, NC: Information Age Publishing Inc. Lucas, G. (1977). Star wars: From the adventures of Luke Skywalker. Random House Publishing Group. Ozbekhan, H. (1969). Toward a general theory of planning. Management and Behavioral Science Center (p. 87). University of Pennsylvania. Rowling, J. R. (1997). Philosopher’s stone . Bloomsbury. Tolkien, J. R. R. (1954). Lord of the rings. Houghton Mifflin. Underwood, P. (2013). Who speaks for Wolf. In J. Clark (Ed.), Wolf (pp. 201–213). Quemadura Studio, Ypsilanti, MI. https://wolfbookdotorg.files.wordpress.com/2013/11/wolf.pdf.

Tom Flanagan is an academic, public intellectual and member of Institute for 21st Century Agoras.

Chapter 32

Vignette: Relationships, Narrative and Memory Janet J. McIntyre-Mills

Abstract This chapter draws on personal experiences, memories, narratives and conversations about what it means to be a settler. Memories are imperfect and they highlight was is important to the person who is re-membering. Quite literally weaving the threads of the narrative that make sense and meaning for the author. A settler comes to a region, but those who are born there may or may not become settlers. They can share a sense of place that is neither exogenous (from elsewhere) or indigenous and perhaps can best be called a sense of hybridity and interconnectedness. In any event that is my endogenous approach to sense making to stitch together the patchwork quilt of my life and connections. Keywords Relationships · Narratives and memory I was born in Bulawayo, Zimbabwe as my father was a young architect working there until signs of a civil war made him return to South Africa. My links with the land developed as a small child taking walks on my grandfather’s hobby farm and spending long holidays with my cousins on a farm in the Eastern Cape. As I explained at the outset of this volume I have lived and worked in South Africa, Australia and I have strong connections with many of my graduates who now live and work in a range of places including Indonesia which of course is yet another colonial link with South Africa through the Dutch whom my ancestor George Thompson describes will ill-disguised concern for their treatment of the ‘natives’ without accepting that Britain was equally complicit. Historical representations of British relationships with the land reveal one of dispossession, displacement, extraction and profit.

J. J. McIntyre-Mills (B) University of South Africa in the College of Education, Tshwane, South Africa e-mail: [email protected]; [email protected] Adelaide University, College of Professions Main North Terrace, Adelaide, Australia College of Business, Government and Law, Flinders University, Sturt, SA, Australia © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2021 J. J. McIntyre-Mills and Y. Corcoran-Nantes (eds.), From Polarisation to Multispecies Relationships, Contemporary Systems Thinking, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-33-6884-2_32

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If we consider the role of British settler colonists in Australia, New Zealand, South Africa and Canada the notion of finding opportunities for the British nation1 was uppermost in the minds of colonial explorers who spent time in the colonies in the service of the empire. George Thompson was one such researcher linked with the London Geographical society who undertook his travels in the 1820s after the arrival of the British settlers. He travelled on horseback and made astute notes for the British Government on all that he saw whilst intervening wherever possible to support what he considered to be social justice and was regarded with affection: According to Thompson (1827: 65–66)2 : Our horses, which we had tied up within a few yards of us, seemed to enjoy our company, lying down with the greatest confidence near our fire. Poor animals! We had rode them fifty miles this day, and as far on each of the preceding, so that they stood in great need of rest; and during the journey they had seldom had an opportunity of feeding …We hailed the first dawn of morning with no common pleasure…On looking round our station, we perceived, by the fresh traces of lions and hyaenas, that numbers of these ferocious animals had been prowling around within two hundred yards of us during the darkness, being prevented solely by our watchfires from making their supper of us… we immediately saddled up as we had neither grass nor water to refresh our horses…

Nevertheless Thompson (1827: 52) stresses the problem of displacement and dispossession: In this vicinity we passed an old herdsman tending his master’s flocks, who looked like the last of his race. He was not a Gonaqua, but he well remembered the days, he said, when the tribe and his own were the masters of the country, and pastured their flocks and herds, or hunted buffalo and eland on the banks of the Fish River. Now the white men claim the entire property of the soil and have even deprived the original possessors of the privilege of living free upon roots and game. They are accounted an inferior race, and born to servitude…But happier times are now dawning upon them; and in the new arrangements about to be introduced, and the better code of laws soon to be conferred upon the colony, the Hottentot race will find, I trust, that their case has not been overlooked by the beneficent Government of England.

He cites (1827: 53) the poetry of Pringle on the plight of the Hottentots to underline the case he made to the so-called “Right Honourable, The Earl of Bathurst, K.G, His Majesty’s Secretary for the Colonies. His reference to his hopes of improvement are underlined by the way in which he makes his plea to authorities. He played a role in striving for freedom of the press and for his day could be regarded as progressive in his attitude towards the rights of people and the environment. The visit recently to South Africa to the Grahamstown 1820 settler monument underlines this. My guide (a cousin) kindly showed me the statues of his ancestor and commented that they some of the settler statues had been moved. I commented that perhaps this was part of the decentering movement across South Africa and we agreed that the settlers whose ancestors were responsible for slaughter must surely be embarrassed today if they saw their ancestors displayed prominently. I thought and commented at the time that it was preferable to have a family on the right side 1 http://worldpopulationreview.com/countries/british-commonwealth-countries/. 2 Thompson,

1827 a later edition produced by the Van Riebeek Society (1967).

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of history. My great grandfather’s ancestor George Thompson wrote ‘Travels in Southern Africa’. He was on the right side of history in that he had supported social justice, helped intervene in a frontier war between the Bechuanas and the Mantatees to prevent the slaughter of prisoners. He also helped secure the freedom of a slave (1827, volume 1: 265), but a closer reading reveals another troubling aspect: reached late at night, the encampment of a boor named Burgers, who, was related to the master of Arend, the runaway slave whom I met in the Bechuana country.3 With this person I made arrangements for purchasing Arend’s freedom from his owner.

In a footnote Thompson states: this was ultimately effected through the friendly agency of Captain Stockenstrom; though not without considerable delay and difficulty; for the master finding an Englishman interested in obtaining the slave’s freedom stood out stoutly, a long while, for 4000 rix dollars (about double the slaves value, had he been in his hands), but at length he agreed to take 1500 rix dollars; and poor Arend is now a freeman, having honourably repaid the purchase money by remitting ivory to Cape Town.

An analysis of the text shows how complicit Thompson was in the economy by paying the slave owner and supporting (albeit tacitly) the hunting for ivory to enable Arend to buy his freedom! The British Commonwealth remains important as Jacinda Ardern attended the last meeting and made an important statement by wearing a Maori cloak and spoke about the importance of the first nations in general, the importance and symbolism of the relationship between the crown and Maori (despite the inequality and the inadequacy of the Treaty of Waitangi) it provides the basis for a relationship that at least does not treat the land as “Terra Nullius’ as is the case in Australia. It is for this reason that Aboriginal Australians believe that a Treaty is important. Ramaphosa (President of South Africa) recently attended ‘Towards a common future: Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting’, London in April 20184 ; but had to return hastily because of the unrest in the North West Province where people were protesting about the lack of infrastructure and jobs. The recent Gini coefficient for 2020 in South Africa (is 0.625)5 in comparison with Australia 30.3. for South Africa underlines the gap between rich and poor and shows that the inequalities in South Africa are amongst the highest in the world.6 This is of personal interest to me as we were about to commence a review of a community engagement project in the region (as detailed in this volume). Similarly, the conversation with Michael (the day before Uluru was closed to climbers) reveals personal memories and attitudes: 3 The

Bechuanas/Griquas who fled as slaves and set up their own group. They escaped from the Dutch and the British who eventually decreed the end of slavery by December 1834. However, the reality of slavery continued through the indentured labour system in the interior. Batavia was a source of tea and spices (and the Chinese are currently taking over the tea plantations). 4 https://www.chogm2018.org.uk/. 5 https://worldpopulationreview.com/countries/gini-coefficient-by-country/. 6 This is a legacy of colonization and the more recent State Capture discussed elsewhere (…).

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I climbed Uluru as a boy, we did not know that it was a problem. My mother’s brother as you know was married to J. and her ancestor mapped Ayers Rock7 ! Yes, I remember J. telling us about it. Of course, the notion of mapping and ‘discovery’ was all about ‘opening up the country’ for settlers. Yes, he was the first settler to climb it, but surely you read the notices that the elders would prefer you’re not climbing? No, every one visited to climb the rock. It was considered the thing to do as a tourist. So, the relationship with the rock was one of a thing to climb and this experience of conquering was not explicit, but implicit in your relationship with the rock. No one thought about it in the way you are talking. Rock climbing is a sport and it was seen as an aspect of tourism.

Uluru is a sacred site for the Anungu people of the Central Desert. For years they stressed they would prefer that people respected the site by not climbing. This morning I listened to the ABC news. The announcer said that many tourists were using the opportunity to climb Uluru for the last time, but that strong winds could lead to an earlier closure.8 According to the daily news website9 : “Uluru custodian Leroy Lester10 said there were several reasons the Anangu wanted the climb closed. “Mainly because it’s a sacred site and mainly because for safety reasons, pollution on top, no toilets up there and E. coli killing all the organisms, all the frogs and everything,” he told the ABC. “And it’s very, very dangerous.”

He went on to explain that the defiance of the wishes represented ‘a clash of cultures’ in Australia: “A different culture, conquer and divide, you can’t blame them. It’s in their genes, that Anglo-Saxon way”.

Mr. Wyatt commented that it was necessary to reflect on these differences and perhaps learn that the place is sacred. These are very apt comments that illustrate how cultural views have diverged as part of the colonial venture to conquer, divide, enclose and rule. For example, Cromwell Drive was indeed aptly named in Alice 7 “William Christie Gosse describes Ayers Rock (Uluru) as he approaches it for the first time, the first white man to do so. It appeared to him as a strangely shaped hill with its upper portion riddled with caves. He was surprised to find that it was a single huge rock. He named it after Sir Henry Ayers, then Premier of South Australia. The following day, 20 July 1873, he continued his exploration of the site and discovered several waterholes and springs. With his cameleer, Khamran, Gosse climbed the Rock and viewed the surrounding country” William Gosse. https://www.samemory.sa.gov.au/ site/page.cfm?u=77&c=7213. 8 https://mobile.abc.net.au/news/2019-07-10/uluru-climb-closure-breaking-point-overflow-tou rists-waste/11296256. 9 https://thenewdaily.com.au/news/state/nt/2019/10/25/winds-close-uluru-early/. 10 https://thenewdaily.com.au/news/state/nt/2019/10/25/winds-close-uluru-early/.

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Springs. Oliver Cromwell was known for his conquering skills and the building of the tarmac road on the caterpillar dreaming site, known as Mpantwe, or caterpillar dreaming. Yesterday I went to the Tarnathi art exhibition in Adelaide. According to the notes at the Tarnanthi Art exhibition, tarnanthi means: ‘to rise, come forth, spring up or appear.’ It ‘heralds the animation of new ideas and new beginnings such as the rising of the sun, a universal metaphor across cultures for the agency of imagination.’ The art gallery is near one of the meeting places in Adelaide where the Kuarna people have met for hundreds of years. For the exhibition, the concept was to flow the artworks together in circular form…like the cycles of Yeperenye (Caterpillar Ancestral Story)…to connect these paintings together so the people can have a look at how we see the land, the Country and to have the families connect as well. The aim is to help people connect, and to keep ‘culture strong.’ The exhibition notes outside the Adelaide art gallery state that Adelaide was always a: Gathering people, ideas and culture to Kuarna Tarndanyannga, the place of the red kangaroo, situated on the banks of Karrawirra Pari, the red gum forest river.

The first gallery explains how the plains were where the Kuarna people nurtured the land which produced a range of food from roots to grasses, but the enclosure of the lands into farming areas resulted in preventing access to their traditional lands, in the gallery notes the diary and papers of Reverend Lancelot Threlkeld provides a key account of the type of violence expressed by the squatters expressing the desire to “shoot…and manure the ground with their carcasses …” The notes continue that “Women and children should especially be shot as the most certain method of getting rid of the race.”11 A visit to the nearby State Library provided copies of the report of an early exploration by Gillen in 1901–1902 and the later exploration by Wilkins published in 1928. Both journals illustrate the use value approach to the land and albeit ‘comparatively open minds for the times’ and some willingness to learn from other cultures, but nevertheless on their terms, namely the mission to open up the land and find ways to profit from it. In the case of Wilkins who wrote in his diary published originally in 1928 (see Wilkins, 1928: 26), he felt a connection to the landscape and to the creatures he was hunting and collecting as specimens for the British Museum: Sitting perfectly still, I waited until they came within twenty yards of where I sat. keen to begin my work of collecting specimens, I raised my gun, but as I did so the biggest of the kangaroos turned towards me, and a little ‘joey’ peeped out from its mother’s pouch. I needed such a one for my collection, but anxious as I was to begin my work, I lowered my gun and watched the curious creatures with admiration. I could not shoot these trustful things, and for twenty minutes I watched them drink and chase each other round the water hole. 11 Lancelot Threlkeld, Australian Reminiscences and Papers of LE Threlkeld, vol. 1. ed Niel Gunson,

Institute of Aboriginal Affairs, Canberra, 1974, pg. 49.

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Wilkins learned much from the Aboriginal people with whom he grew up in the mid North of South Australia in what is known as the Goyder Region. The Goyder line marked the limit for graziers. Beyond the Goyder line the grazing deteriorated. It was in this harsh landscape that he grew up and where he learned to ask questions about climate and how to predict weather patterns. These were pressing concerns for his parents who faced poverty and as one of 13 children, he knew that full impact of a good season versus a dry season. Wilkins work is varied spanning photography, geography, mapping. As a polymath he relied on his intellect and his instincts which enabled him to survive in sand and ice deserts, to fly over uncharted territory and to traverse under tracts of ice. He learned from the indigenous people and made himself less than popular by saying that colonisers should live more harmoniously on the land. He fell short of acknowledging that grazing sheep is inappropriate as kangaroos are better suited to the land. The next step is to honour the way of life of the local people and to learn and apply a more sustainable way of life. As one enters the Australian Art Gallery, one is confronted by Berlinde. De Bruyckere’s more than life size sculpture of two martyred horses suspended by their hooves is called: ‘We are all flesh’.12 According to the notes its “portrayal of suffering references Christian martyrdoms…” But Christianity (as portrayed in the gospels) does not place humanity alongside animals. St. Francis of Assisi13 is the exception to this rule as he saw his relationship as one of kindred, rather than dominion over others or nature. According to an entry in Encyclopaedia Britannica14 : Francis considered all nature as the mirror of God and as so many steps to God. He called all creatures his “brothers” and “sisters,” and, in the most endearing stories about him, preached to the birds and persuaded a wolf to stop attacking the people of the town of Gubbio and their livestock if the townspeople agreed to feed the wolf.

The canticle to nature shows his kinship with all nature: Be praised, my Lord, through all your creatures, especially through my lord Brother Sun, who brings the day; and you give light through him. And he is beautiful and radiant in all his splendor! Of you, Most High, he bears the likeness…Be praised, my Lord, through our sister Mother Earth, who feeds us and rules us, and produces various fruits with colored flowers and herbs…..

Lama Thubten Yeshe stresses (2001: 37): “the nature of attachment is suffering.” He explains that the “selfless service to others” is “a form of Bodhicitta”, which is non-hierarchical and “an attitude dedicated to all universal living beings” (Yeshe, 2001: 23). In Buddhism all sentient beings are regarded with compassion, simply because they are sentient, not because they have a use value. 12 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bIUPVa87pEY. 13 St.

Francis of Assisi: his life and writings as recorded by his contemporaries 1959 Mowbray and o. with a translated by Sherley-Price, L. plus foreword. https://archive.org/details/stfrancisofassis02 7907mbp/page/n45. The Canticle of the Sun by Francis of Assisi translated from the Umbrian text by Bill Barrett. http://www2.webster.edu/~barrettb/materials/canticle.htm. 14 https://www.britannica.com/biography/Saint-Francis-of-Assisi.

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Buddhism requires non attachment. Lama Yeshe (2001: 35–36) says: Attachment is a symptom of this sick world. This world is sick because of attachment…oil producing countries are sick because of attachment. Am I communicating with you or not? … from a Buddhist point of view, it is very difficult for a person to experience non attachment…

He then stresses that he saw this amongst some Christian monks and then went on to say that recognizing progress in others (including those who practice other religions) is important. The virtue-based argument in Buddhism is that if one is compassionate one ought not to eat meat as killing causes suffering. A consequentialist argument in Buddhism is that in the cycle of life we experience all points of the continuous cycle of consciousness, from plant to animal to human animal and that all life is part of this sacred cycle. The role of a compassionate person is to reduce suffering and practice loving kindness Finnigan (2018)15 sums it up as follows: Several virtue-based arguments are also advanced in favour of vegetarianism. Some argue that it is not compassionate to eat meat. In La˙nk¯avat¯aras¯utra, it is reasoned that animals feel fear when threatened by a hunter with death and so, out of compassion for this kind of suffering, one should refrain from eating meat. The La˙nk¯avat¯aras¯utra also presents a version of the modified virtue-based argument, claiming that eating meat poses an obstacle to the development of loving-kindness (maitri) and compassion (karun.a¯ ).

Buddhism and (perhaps Assisi’s version of Christianity) do not support speciesism. Assisi embraced living simply in poverty and ensured that women could participate in the ministry and teaching. Similarly, Buddhism sees a role for non-attachment and non sexism. The notion of hierarchical taxonomy and commodification of the other is at the root of capital’s justification for extracting profit. The cycle of life and death and a sense of continuation across generations of living systems is understood by first nations and despite the limitations of the story based on the perspectives of a male anthropologist, Walter Baldwin Spencer and Francis Gillen who was the local telegraph station master in Central Australia.16 But given the limits of their participant observation as men they did not hear the women’s 15 Finnigan,

B. 2018 ‘Buddhism and the moral status of animals.’ Nov 2018. https://www.abc.net. au/religion/buddhism-and-the-moral-status-of-animals/10518728. 16 There are two origins to totem story this is one (based on Gillen’s notes edited by Jones, 2017: 162) about how people transformed in the dreamtime (Alcheringa) from plant to animal to human: “The Arunta belief is that every man and woman was changed in the Alcheringa from an animal or plant into a human creature, sometimes [a] perfect man but more often an imperfectly formed or rudimentary man who was subsequently completed either by certain spirits called Ungam-bikulla or some other great Alcheringa men whose mission it was to go about the country perfecting their species. The other is that the ancestors of for example the animal totem of the great lizard Amulyila did not come from the animal, it was the other way around, so that the life form that gave birth predates the human and the animal:

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stories (Bell, 1993) about how women could choose their totems according to what they saw when the foetus first moved. They could thus shape some of the connections for their child.

Conclusion Balancing individual human rights and collective species rights is one of the central challenges for democracy and governance. Learning to read and write requires learning the letters of the alphabet and the shared system of numbers that has enabled the development of the arts, humanities, sciences and mathematics. Learning critical systemic literacy requires many ways of knowing. The research aims to strengthen institutional capacity by drawing on local wisdom. Our fragile interdependence requires a ‘recognition of our hybridity and interconnectedness’ (McIntyre-Mills, 2014) within the web of life. The book explores taxonomies of rights, relationships and responsibilities across cultures to understand human, plant and animal relationships with a focus on understanding the implications for commodification and consumption. Thus, current structures need to be revised through balancing individual needs and collective responsibilities as detailed in ‘Planetary Passport’ (2017) to ensure local contextual responses to the global challenges of displacement and loss of habitat.

References and Bibliography Bell, D. (1993). Daughters of the dreaming. University of Minnesota Press. Brady, I. C., & Cunningham, L. (2021). “St. Francis of Assisi”. Encyclopedia Britannica, 8 Jan 2021. https://www.britannica.com/biography/Saint-Francis-of-Assisi. Accessed 20 March 2021. Finnigan, B. (2018). Buddhism and the moral status of animals, Nov 2018. https://www.abc.net.au/ religion/buddhism-and-the-moral-status-of-animals/10518728. Francis of Assisi Cantico di Frate Sole (c. 1225); “Canticle of Brother Sun” by Francis of Assisi translated from the Umbrian text by Bill Barrett. http://www2.webster.edu/~barrettb/materials/ canticle.htm. St Francis lived from 1182–1226. Jones, P. (2017). Gillen’s modest record: His journal of the Spencer-Gillen anthropological expedition across Australia, 1901–1902. The friends of the State Library of Australia, Adelaide. Lama Thubten Yeshe. (2001). The essence of Tibetan Buddhism: The three principal aspects of the path and an introduction to Tantra. Edited by Nicholas Ribush. Lama Yeshe Wisdom Archive. Boston. www.LamaYeshe.comhttps://www.abc.net.au/religion/buddhism-and-the-moral-statusof-animals/10518728.

From the bodies of each man spirits (Kurinna) issues and these spirits are the ancestors—the real Alcheringa men- of the men of these totems…” For instance, the sons of the lizard were the ancestors of the lizards… This is the solid bed rock of the origin of totemism…”

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McIntyre-Mills, J. (2014). Systemic ethics and non-anthropocentric stewardship. New York: Springer. Ricoeur, P. (1984). Time and narrative. Chicago: University of Chicago, 1984. Print. Sherley-Price, L. (1959). St Francis of Assisi: His life and writings as recorded by his contemporaries. Harper and Brothers. New York translated by Sherley-Price, L. plus foreword. https://arc hive.org/details/stfrancisofassis027907mbp/page/n45. Thompson, G. (1827). Travels in Southern Africa. London: Henry Colburn. Wilkins, H. (1928). Undiscovered Australia: Being an account of an expedition to tropical Australia to collect specimens of the rarer native fauna for the British Museum, 1923–1925. Published on 18 Oct 2013/2016.

Janet J. McIntyre-Mills is Honorary Professor in the College of Education at University of South Africa, Tshwane, South Africa; Visiting Research Fellow of the College of Professions Main North Terrace at Adelaide University; and Adjunct Associate Professor in the College of Business Government and Law at Flinders University, Sturt Campus, Adelaide.

Chapter 33

Vignette: Knackered ‘We are all Flesh’ Janet J. McIntyre-Mills

Horse racing, champagne and gambling are regarded as harmless fun Australia. Only ‘wowsers’1 complain about them, right? Today grey hound racing has been band in Australia because dog lovers exposed the cruelty of the sport and the thuggery to the animals who suffered miserable lives. Horse racing is no different. Horses are whipped, drugged and dumped when they are no longer useful winners. The Four Corners2 report aired on the Australian Broadcasting Station estimates that around 10,000 horses are sent to the abattoir for human meat or to the knackeries for animal food. The measured response from racing Australia was that they would ensure that standards were adhered to within the industry. But any attempt to suggest that the abuse was unknown, until exposed is false.3

1

Wowser’ is an Australian expression equivalent to ‘kill-joy’. https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-10-18/slaughter-abuse-of-racehorses-undermines-industryanimal-welfare/11603834. 3 https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-10-24/racing-nsw-told-about-prohibited-thoroughbred-sales2018-emails/11633132. 4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VLeLx-Hu5uo. ‘You’re going to die, you maggot’: Abattoir investigated after racehorse cruelty | ABC News. 5 It is possible to eat healthy vegetable diets and those who like meat can opt for protein replacements made of soy or algae or some other bean supplement. ‘Yuck’, I hear you saying. Well this is also the way of the future, so you may as well get used to it. How on earth can a growing population continue to eat meat when the size of our carbon footprint is growing? 2

J. J. McIntyre-Mills (B) University of South Africa in the College of Education, Tshwane, South Africa e-mail: [email protected]; [email protected] Adelaide University, College of Professions Main North Terrace, Adelaide, Australia College of Business, Government and Law, Flinders University, Sturt, SA, Australia © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2021 J. J. McIntyre-Mills and Y. Corcoran-Nantes (eds.), From Polarisation to Multispecies Relationships, Contemporary Systems Thinking, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-33-6884-2_33

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The relationship that Australians have with animals is paradoxical. They love their pets but feed them with food produced in knackeries. The footage shows not merely a lack of care but viciousness in the dispatching of animals.4 This is the pointy end of vicious capitalism. People gamble to try to get ahead and discard animals. People without scruples or without care and desperate are involved in abattoirs. Those who like to ‘have a flutter’ perhaps did not know of the misery of grey hound racing until it was exposed. Now those who like to sport silly hats or elegant ones for that matter and dress up for a bit of fun at the races know that there are risks not only to the jockeys who fall to their deaths and the horses who are shot, because they have broken limbs, but the everyday misery of a horse that is merely treated as a commodity is denied. ‘Horses like to run,’ is the general idea, without realising the stress that they are under. Yes, Australia loves the winners, but as the years pass and the horses age, they disappear. The 4 corners program followed up on the winners who disappeared. Some are left in paddocks underfed and others are sent to be processed into horse meat. The intelligence of horses is recognized and their ability to form strong bonds. But this has not prevented their abuse by owners who discard them, once their winning days are over. The outrage that most Australians felt when they viewed the footage was anticipated by the Four corners team. The documentary was followed by help line and beyond blue numbers for counselling. I watched sections on iView, but simply could not watch all the footage. My mirror neurons fired in anger, sympathy, pain and outrage. How dare we continue to allow the racing industry to discuss policy that ought to be put in place, or that those who sold off their horses for horse meat were not following the code or the rules. It is more serious that that. Horses, like all sentient beings have rights and they have been breached. It is time for Animal Rights to be taken seriously. It is not enough to suggest that tracking of horses (or sheep or cattle for that matter) could solve the problem. Laws should be put in place to ensure that maltreatment of sentient beings is punished in the same way as maltreatment of human beings. Buddhists and Hindu religions do not place human beings above other sentient beings, they are part of one web or circle. Assisi tried to redeem the Christian notion of a hierarchy in living systems referring to animals and nature as if they kin. This notion is shared with many first nations (who ideally) see the connections across all nature. Of course, it would be naïve to suggest that maltreatment does not occur (also in the name of protecting rights, such as right to fish) and thus the right to bludgeon seals inhumanely as occurred in South Australia. An episode that was embarrassing for those who always wish to place first nations as an example of how-to live-in harmony with nature.

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Horses in Australia have played a vital role to ‘open up’ Australia. So many perished (and were eaten), so many were used as beasts of burden and transport. They were perceived as useful animals, as in useful for human beings. The how dare you lecture that was given recently by Greta Thunberg to the UN, needs to be echoed as a how dare you treat helpless creatures this way? Meat eating is unsustainable and cruel and unnecessary.5 Horse racing is merely a form of gambling, for some it is a fun past time, for some an addiction, a rare few make money out of betting on a winner and the majority of jockeys see it as a way of life. The criminal fraternity thrive around the edges of the industry or perhaps are right in the midst of it. The horses are a commodity in an industry. But the industry’s days ought to be numbered. Just as grey hound racing ended in Australia so horse racing must end. Today cock fighting and dog fighting are regarded as abhorrent. This shows some progress! But animal transportation for industrial scale slaughter in Australia and overseas continues. The shipping of sentient beings as live meat continues and will be seen (hopefully) in the near future for what it is, disgraceful cruelty and a profligate contribution to carbon waste. If people must gamble, dress up and drink, then so be it, but the races need to be digital. But even in this thought experiment I would suggest a role for the so-called ‘nanny state’ to ensure that the vulnerable with addictions are not allowed to be exploited. There are so many outlets for entertainment, must it be at the expense of other being’s happiness? Previously the sport in Roman arenas would involve gladiators fighting each other and animals, they would engage in mock battles to the death. Now such sport is regarded as outrageous. Surely, we can allow our mirror neurons to tell us that treating animals in ways that terrify them is unacceptable. Who can say that the trembling horse waiting for slaughter does not know what awaits him? Yes, horses were sent to die in wars (along with their riders), but surely now there is little justification. Is this a ‘wowser’ viewpoint? Yes, quite possibly from the point of view of ‘punters’, but horses would be glad to have wowsers on their side, or for that matter any other voiceless creature or commodified human being who is tired and, to use the Australian expression, ‘knackered’ after a long week in the office, factory or other place of work. This is a good expression to sum up the exhaustion of a worker who has been treated like a commodity in the capitalist system where surplus value comes from blood, sweat and tears. What is the problem presented to be?

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A lack of supervision of the industrialised slaughter is not the solution, it is the wide-ranging change to the way in which we relate to others (including all sentient beings) and the environment. It is also a result of the capitalist notion that the commodification of nature, people, animals and plants is acceptable. It is not acceptable in ethical, moral or for that matter demographic terms. There are simply too many urban based people who think that they have the right to meat diets. Human beings evolved as omnivores and we can (and should) be creative in developing alternative sources of protein. The Caufield cup in Melbourne was the site of protests against horse racing on Sunday the 20th October. But this was too little too late, nevertheless it did help to shape the news feed for the following Saturday night. Their messages contrasted with the lead article in the Weekend Australian (Oct 19–20th) on ‘Lane way to glory’6 which discussed racing syndicates and the efforts made by groups of amateurs from the Australian’s gentleman’s club! The notion that there is anything gentle about the behaviour of the industry would be ludicrous if the images of the suffering of horses had not been so graphic. Trainers and owners suggest that the industry needs better supervision. A racing commentator and one-time racehorse owner said he felt ashamed about the way horses are neglected when they leave the industry. But the problem goes deeper than this, animals are treated as commodities with a use value when they are winning, not as sentient beings with rights, simply because they share the same web of life as us.

Janet J. McIntyre-Mills is Honorary Professor in the College of Education at University of South Africa, Tshwane, South Africa; Visiting Research Fellow at Adelaide University in the College of Professions Main North Terrace; and Adjunct Associate Professor in College of Business Government and Law at Flinders University, Sturt Campus, Adelaide.

6 Stensholt,

J. 2019. Lane way to glory: establishment blue bloods in bid to conquer rival city’s Everest. Weekend Australian, page 1.

Chapter 34

Vignette: Emergence Re-generation and Hope in the Context of Extinctions Re-Generation and Hope in the Context of Extinctions Janet J. McIntyre-Mills

The notion that regular small adjustments are all it takes to enable one bird to fly in harmony with a flock, gives me hope that despite the challenges posed by climate change and Covid-19 it is possible to do things differently. All it would take is for each of us to make small adjustments in the way we live. Based on the rules of reciprocity, many species have learned that co-operation is as important for evolutionary survival as competition. Just as a cell can emerge into complex life forms through small adjustments, so can each individual co-operate in the interests of collective survival.1 New forms of praxis are inevitable if we are to have a hope of survival. Just as a bloated vampire bat knows it needs to share with its fellow bats who have been unsuccessful hunting (see Dawkins, 2019), so human beings will need to learn to share water, food and energy with those who are less fortunate. Furthermore, if we appreciate that bats (like rats) are capable of complex forms of communication and that they show empathy for their associates who are hungry and share food, then we too ought to accord them rights, simply by virtue of their sentience. I write this note for as I followed the news of devastating fires in Australia. Mass extinctions of fruit bats and koalas who are unable to withstand days of high temperature underline that sharing habitat will become increasingly important as human and animal refugees seek sanctuary. The images of the Koalas seeking water

1 See Dawkins (2019) explanation of emergence drawing on computer simulations of bottom up creativity.

J. J. McIntyre-Mills (B) University of South Africa in the College of Education, Tshwane, South Africa e-mail: [email protected]; [email protected] Adelaide University, College of Professions Main North Terrace, Adelaide, Australia College of Business, Government and Law, Flinders University, Sturt, SA, Australia © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2021 J. J. McIntyre-Mills and Y. Corcoran-Nantes (eds.), From Polarisation to Multispecies Relationships, Contemporary Systems Thinking, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-33-6884-2_34

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in domestic gardens and from a group of cyclists on a road have caught the attention of the internet viewers. Similarly, the large numbers of human beings displaced through fires and waiting for evacuation on the beach in the state of Victoria echo the displacements of people fleeing natural disasters in many parts of the world. Although I agree with many of the points made by Dawkins about the need to believe in the capability of human beings to be rational and caring (without having to evoke god) it needs to be acknowledged that a sense of meaning and a belief in God is fairly universal. Belief and mindfulness or prayer buttresses and sustains in trying times. If people can grasp the potential of selflessness and ‘bottom up’ creativity and the way in which transformation can be achieved (through caring and compassion) then perhaps there is hope for the future in a ‘participatory universe’ where the rules of physics are guided by caring norms. Although HH, the Dalai Lama (2005) does not mention Dawkins work by name he refers to the notion that spirituality and the many sciences need to be explored in more depth: Perhaps people in 2020 and beyond will be able to realise that we are just one strand of emergent life in a rich, interdependent tapestry? New patterns of behaviour can be created if each one of us chooses to take that step. Invoking a shared sense of the common good and a shared sense of our creativity can be achieved by agnostics, atheists and deists. As long as we are able to accept that each person or culture can be free and diverse to the extent that our thinking and behaviour does not undermine the rights of others. Abstract notions can be portrayed in new narratives, the one for 2020 needs to be based on a sense of humility and care.

Rebalancing Rights and Responsibilities Rights need to be reframed as do responsibilities so that the economy and the market are seen not as an eternality but as part of the global commons on which this generation and the nest depends. Arendt, according to Butler (2011: 1) By writing about Eichmann, Arendt (1963) was trying to understand… a crime against humanity, one that would acknowledge the destruction of Jews, Gypsies, gay people, communists, the disabled and the ill. Just as the failure to think was a failure to take into account the necessity and value that makes thinking possible, so the destruction and displacement of whole populations was an attack not only on those specific groups, but on humanity itself. As a result, Arendt objected to a specific nation- state conducting a trial of Eichmann exclusively in the name of its own population.

The nation state per se is part of the problem. It is one of the boundaries that need to be addressed. If we agree with Arendt that “the consequences of non-thinking is genocidal, or certainly can be…” (Butler, 2011: 2) then we need to teach critical thinking skills as a basis for democratic engagement.

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‘The will to power’ and total control form above—based on total obedience— enabled the management of populations and the eradication of diversity in order to purify and strengthen the Aryan Race. The Total or Final Solution was the basis for Nazism as expressed in the ideology of National Socialism. Collective responsibility for evil needed to be acknowledged, not merely the guilt of one man. The German population ceased to think critically and to engage with the state or to raise questions as why factories should be powered by the death camps. So, what has the banality of evil got to do with bio politics and food security, is the obvious question? The answer is that biopolitics refers to neoliberal notions of freedom. Balancing individual and collective responsibility require critical thought and engagement by people on an everyday basis to prevent the banality of evil from recurring. In this paper, I explore why social and environmental justice needs to be served by systemic ethics (McIntyre-Mills, 2014) supported by systemic intervention. This requires agency to ensure that individual needs and collective responsibly are balanced. The case is made that liberalism has progressed too far in undermining collective responsibility. The result is a form of state control and governance that is more closely linked with the market than with civil society. Minzberg (2015) stresses that radical renewal requires rebalancing society, I would argue that power politics need to be addressed and that Foucault’s approach to critical theory is vital. But one ingredient is missing and that is the ability to draw the line based on critical systemic intervention. The critical heuristics approach is vital to address the banality of evil which now passes as commonplace governance. Today the markets are open but conceptual and spatial (geographical) borders are closed. This is the paradox that goes UN named in the name of ‘good governance and border protection’. In situations where children can be wrested from the arms of their parents in the name of a neo-liberal economy is problematic. More people are displaced today than during the Second World War. More animals and plants have been displaced than ever. According to the previous United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, Guterres (UNHCR, 2014), for the first time since the Second World War, the global figure for displaced persons has now passed 50 million and, by 2050, this figure could be as high as 150 million (Rusbridger, 2015: 13). The social and environment challenges have been exploited by people traffickers in Africa, for example where slavery has become more visible than ever in Libya as desperate people fall into the hands of traffickers who sell them, ‘like goats’ in the market place.2 The notion that sentient beings have rights is not even on the horizon in some socio-political contexts. In line with the Paris Declaration (1997), public administration needs to be framed together with co-researchers with local lived experience. The workshop at Flinders University and the Symposium at UnPAd in West Java3 explored the challenge of increased urbanization and movement towards cities and the implications it has for 2 http://www.aljazeera.com/news/2017/12/outrageous-reality-libya-171201085605212.html. 3 This

workshop is linked with partnership development in Indonesia. UNPAD (University of Padjadjaran) is co-hosting the symposium that follows.

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the life chances of unemployed women who become increasingly vulnerable to trafficking. In Indonesia the rate of urbanization is faster than other Asian countries: According to the World Bank: “Indonesia is undergoing a historic transformation from a rural to an urban economy. The country’s cities are growing faster than in other Asian countries at a rate of 4.1% per year. By 2025 – in less than 10 years – Indonesia can expect to have 68% of its population living in cities”. http://www. worldbank.org/en/news/feature/2016/06/14/indonesia-urban-story. The UN 2030 Agenda4 is: the new global framework to help eradicate poverty and achieve sustainable development by 2030. It includes an ambitious set of 17 Sustainable Development Goals…. The 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development sets out the global framework to eradicate poverty and achieve sustainable development by 2030.

A critical reading of the capabilities approach could stress that Nussbaum’s (2011) approach does not take into account power dynamics or the institutional power wielded by the minority (McIntyre-Mills et al., 2018) who use the state, the legal system and the market to protect their own interests at the expense of others. Trafficking human beings and transportation of animals, confining them in conditions that undermine their capability to live a life worth living. This is one of the Frontiers to Justice (Nussbaum, 2006) that need to be addressed. Nussbaum (2006, 2011) is an essentialist who stresses the basic conditions for a life worth living for all sentient beings. She stresses that sentient beings have rights simply because they are sentient. These capabilities provide a priori guidelines for ethical decision making. But Amartya Sen (2000, 2009) and Churchman (1972, 1979) stress that we need to also consider the pragmatic, a posteriori consequences of our decisions. The challenge is to change governance and to ‘enhance the couplings between nature and society’ (Stokols, 2018: 243) in positive, not negative ways. Stokols (2018: 271) goes on to stress that: The adaptive capacity of the human environment system depends on ecological resilience, or adaptive coupling between society and nature.

This is as much an intellectual as a spiritual journey: either way it requires both a behavioural and a value change. The Pathways to Wellbeing project proposes a new architecture for democracy and governance to protect the commons and has been piloted as a proof of concept with NGO and Local Government and discussed as a wider post national approach that extends Nussbaum’s human rights approach from human dignity to instead consider the importance of enabling sentient beings to live a life worth living. She thus extends the social contract to include sentient beings and stresses that we need to be able to enjoy and connect with nature. Churchman’s questioning approach (Design of Inquiring Systems’, DIS) is an approach based on critical heuristics or ‘what if questions’ that can be extended by means of scenarios to enhance engagement in decision making, in order to test out 4 http://europa.eu/rapid/press-release_MEMO-15-5709_en.htm.

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ideas with those who have lived experience. The Systemic Interventionist approach detailed in this paper is based on working on ‘what if scenarios’ with people. West Churchman summed up CSH by saying there is no such thing as a total system, and that the systems approach begins when first we try to see the world through the eyes of another and that systems thinking is a good idea as long as we do not assume that we have all the answers. He stresses that our values filter the way we see the world and that we are part of the system we are studying. Reynolds (2008, 2011) System of systems thinking elegantly sums up the 3 elements: A. Framework for understanding complex interrelationships, B. Framework for practice when engaging with different perspectives, C. Framework for responsibility taking into account A and B. Those of us who call ourselves ‘critical systemic thinkers’ are not seeking a total, unified system. We realize this would be hubris and quite problematic as a starting point for engaging in a responsible development that seeks to work with diverse stakeholders on complex, wicked problems, which by definition comprise many interrelated variables that are seen differently by different stakeholders. Openness to the ideas of others is important to continuously revise and adjust the way in which we live our lives in relation to one another and the environment. But we also need to accept that limiting carbon emissions will require a dramatic adaptation to reduce the harmful effects of climate change (Meadows & Randers, 1992; IPCC, 2018). To ‘rescue enlightenment from itself’ (McIntyre-Mills & Van Gigch, 2006), we need to realize that there are many ways of knowing. Logic, empiricism, idealism, dialectic and pragmatism (as West Churchman suggested) are some of the ways in which we can know the world. But these ways of knowing are situated (in the sense used by Donna Haraway). Churchman discussed many ways of knowing, but these need to be extended if we are to ‘rescue the enlightenment from itself’.5 An appreciation of animal knowing, plant knowing, the value of the arts and being able to appreciate ‘art in nature’ is a starting point for extending the hierarchy of knowledge that Kenneth Boulding alluded to in his Skeleton of Knowledge (1956). Transformation of values from individual human knowing to appreciation of collective knowledge and responsibility and then the leap to appreciation that anthropocentric knowing is far too limited and non-anthropocentrism requires ecological knowing. The work of systemic thinkers who have extended our ways of knowing to take into account Bateson’s (1972) level 1, 2 and 3 learning include those who take on 5 Churchman

had great insight but he lived the life of a white, middle class male academic. Our thinking and practice is always limited by our embodied selves and by our experiences. Churchman stressed the need to ‘think about our thinking’ and to engage with others through questioning our design of inquiry. This is a good start as is his emphasis on striving for ideals (shaped by norms) but also being open to testing out ideas by considering the lived experiences of others. He could also have explicitly talked about gendered knowing, species knowing and also about the way in which the ecology of mind is extended by thinking about the consequences of decisions for this generation of living systems and the next. Churchman stressed that the systems approach is not only about making holistic, universal maps of the world. It is also about appreciating diversity.

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board the need to apply thinking to practice in a responsible manner that addresses both social and environmental justice. In this paper I apply critical systemic thinking to extend the capabilities approach to the rights non-anthropocentric living systems. As Watson (1973: 4) stresses: Living systems are governed by the second law of thermodynamics …Living systems consist of highly organized matter; they create order out of disorder, but it is a constant battle against the process of disruption. Order is maintained by bringing in energy from outside to keep the system going. So biochemical systems exchange matter with their surroundings all the time, they are open, thermodynamic processes, as opposed to the closed, thermostatic structures of ordinary chemical reactions. This is the secret of life. It means that there is a continuous communication not only between living things and their environment, but among all things living in that environment.

As such a systemic ethics needs to be applied to all living systems based on the a priori right to a life worth living and the a posteriori responsibility to consider the consequences of their actions for other living systems as stewards. This is linked with human rights and has been stressed by deep ecologists, eco systemic thinkers such as Haraway (1991), Shiva (2012) and Wadsworth (2011) and critical thinkers such as West Churchman (1972). Hannah Arendt stresses that critical thought is core to social justice. This is not the same as a post humanist approach, because it assumes the individual and collective role of responsible human beings. But what is missing in Arendt’s work is an understanding of our ecological interconnectedness. This comes through drawing on the work of Donna Haraway who understands that ‘we are the boundaries’ and that all knowledge is situated. To address the ethical risks associated with partial knowledge we need to think about our thinking and we need to take action as ecological citizens (Shiva, 2012). Another critical systemic thinker who has extended our ways of knowing and included the environmental context is Gregory Bateson (1972) who stressed the importance of level 1, 2 and 3 learning to include those who take on board the need to apply thinking to practice in a responsible manner that addresses both social and environmental justice. The essay traces the way in which market capitalism has played out through the role of trade, supported by the creation of state apparatus that evolved in tandem with the expanding market system and the risks that it poses for living systems. The will to know and the will to power, paradoxically underpin the market incentive. The ‘freedoms’ to control people, other animals and nature have a price for living systems of which we are a strand. Neoliberalism has delivered freedom within democracies for some citizens, namely the elite with power and capital as well as the fully employed who have some job security. For non-citizens, those too young to vote and the 99% who do not have the freedoms enjoyed by the elites, the notion of rights and responsibilities needs to be unpacked. The right to make decisions that are in the interests of the minority and at the expense of the majority needs to be explored. Voting in a democratically elected government requires ensuring that the right to a life worth living is secured within the state and its region. The notion that decisions about carbon emissions is one that a

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single nationally elected government can make decisions that impact the life chances of all living systems needs to be addressed. Supporting lower carbon emissions as required for human security necessitates working across national boundaries and with the support of the public, private and civil society sectors. Researchers need to consider the social, economic and environmental aspects of their proposed area of concern and to consider to what extent different stakeholders have different ideas about what constitutes good governance At this point, I introduce the importance of ensuring that areas of concern are not gender blind or blind to ageism, or racism or a range of disabilities, for example.

Extending Solidarity and ‘Natural Inclusion’6 We can redefine these boundaries because we are the boundaries—according to Haraway. The only problem is that some have more power to decide than others. The responsibility to protect children wrested from the arms of their parents at the Mexican border lies not with the children or their parents, but with the voters—the public and civil society who need to defend the rights of those who are outside the mantle of the social contract. The responsibility to protect animals subjected to transportation as part of the so-called live meat trade lies with voters who need to redraw the boundaries of what is acceptable decent treatment of animals and what constitutes unacceptable commodification of sentient beings. John Scott (1998) in ‘Seeing like a State’ takes the approach at which Foucault hints by giving detailed examples of the way in which the state has crushed diversity—from designing monocultures in forestry to ironing out diverse political opinions. I argue that if we accept the concept of the banality of evil—the notion that everyday decisions by many can collectively result in a normalization and acceptance of evil—then we have to re-think many of the aspects of governance and democracy that we take for granted today. If we can accept that climate, change is the result of collective decisions that constitute a normalization of living beyond our limits what does that mean for democracy and governance? If we can accept that more people than ever before have been displaced, what does that mean for human ethics and the nation that neoliberal governments should close borders? If we can accept that it is now scientifically proven that genetically human beings share 98% of their genes with a lab rat and even more with the primates that are experimented on—how can we justify inflicting pain or denying rights to human beings and other sentient animals? If we can accept that the boundaries between 6 Rayner,

A. 2017. Natural Inclusion in McIntyre-Mills, J. J., Romm, N., and Corcoran-Nantes, Y., McIntyre-Mills, J. J. Romm, N. R. A. and Corcoran-Nantes, Y. Balancing Individualism and Collectivism: Social and Environmental Justice. Springer. London, pp. 461–470. Rayner, A. https://en.wikiversity.org/wiki/Natural_Inclusion.

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people are constructed on the basis of will and power, then we can accept that people have the right and the responsibility to do something about injustice, because ‘we are the boundaries’ as stresses. According to the UN the majority of the world’s population will be in Africa and Indonesia.7 I argue that climate change impacts environments leading to displacement of plants, animals and people as cities encroach or droughts, floods, fires render areas unable to provide a liveable environment. This has profound ethical implications for everyday living choices. According to the Nuccitelli (2018 who cites Ricke) and correctly emphasizes that as a warm country it is in its interests to address global warming and climate change: Ricke et al. (2018: 1) explain: Following the recommendations of the recent report by the US National Academies, we executed our calculations of the social cost of carbon through a process with four distinct components: a socio-economic module wherein the future evolution of the economy, which includes the projected emissions of CO2, is characterized without the impact of climate change; a climate module wherein the earth system responds to emissions of CO2 and other anthropogenic forcing; a damages module, wherein the economy’s response to changes in the Earth system are quantified; and a discounting module, wherein a time series of future damages is compressed into a single present value. In our analysis, we explored uncertainties associated with each module at the global and country level. We focused only on climate impacts and did not carry out a fully-fledged cost–benefit analysis, which would require modelling mitigation costs.

Rescuing the Enlightenment from Itself Through Recognition of Our Interconnectedness and Human Agency In ‘Rescuing the enlightenment from itself’ (McIntyre-Mills, 2006), I discussed the potential for critical thinking to enable people to think through their rights and responsibilities. Critical reflection is the only thing that will enable people to avoid stepping back from their responsibilities to engage actively as citizens (not only of nation states, but as citizens of the world) who care about what is going on across the border. In the ‘Banality of Evil’, Hannah Arendt stresses that this is the only faculty that will prevent other occurrences of collective evil—that resulted in death camps where prisoners were processed under factory like conditions in Nazi Germany. The issue of responsibility was collectively shared and the right to deny responsibility, because of following orders was set aside as an unacceptable conclusion in 7 A recent United Nations report projects that by 2050 most of the global urban population is expected

to be located in Asia (52%) and Africa (21%) (United Nations, 2014: 11). The study areas selected take significance from the predictions made in this UN report. According to the previous United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, Guterres (UNHCR, 2014), for the first time since the Second World War, the global figure for displaced persons has now passed 50 million and, by 2050, this figure could be as high as 150 million (Rusbridger, 2015: 13). stressed that currently more people are displaced than during the Second World War.

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the summing up by Hannah Arendt at Eichmann’s Trial. She blamed Eichmann but also the system that enabled him to operate with impunity. But she did not leave it as a reified system, she talked about the collective responsibility of the entire German nation. In frontiers of justice (Nussbaum, 2006) outlines these points, but does not develop and argument to support the safe passage of all living systems from one generation of stewards to the next. So, this paper strives to extend her argument. Safe passage for human and other animals in the wake of disasters (social and natural) will become increasingly commonplace and can be regarded as the so-called ‘new normal’. To rescue enlightenment from itself, we need to realize that there are many ways of knowing, but to protect food security ethical decision making is essential. Nussbaum’s capability approach is core to human agency for food security along with respect and stewardship of voiceless sentient beings. Her work dovetails quite well with Donaldson and Kymlicka (2011) in Zoopolis. Protecting habitat for human animals and other living systems is the logical next step to prevent existential risks to all. Safe passage across habitats in post national regions flows from this argument on new forms of architecture for governance. Ways of knowing as listed by Churchman such as Logic, empiricism, idealism, dialectic and pragmatism need to be extended to include other ways of knowing by drawing on nature. Wadsworth (2010: xxvii) poses the question: “what would a more life-enhancing system of research and evaluation look like?”

She then goes on to say: “Although still dimly perceived by many, some of it ironically reflects some very ancient wisdom, now converging with some breath-taking new knowledge from physics, biology, mathematics, engineering, psychology and sociology in a transdisciplinary picture that may promise to give not just hitherto elites but all of us a whole new way of thinking about ‘how we can be with each other’ and our worlds…. (xxvii) By taking a magnifying glass to ‘the system’, we begin to detect a vast web of energized micro-interactions between us (and everything else); including all the daily familiar highly interpersonal and environmental inquiry interactions – what we notice, pick up on, see and hear and say to each other, all our inner and outer conversations to make sense of it all, how we feel, what we conclude from our experiences, what we remember, what we think and don’t think, what we know, believe, value, expect and not expect, what we speak up about, what we remain silent about, how we draw conclusions and reach new ones, and then calculate, decide, plan and try out the new implications: what we actually do next, and where we go, who with and why…Indeed’ the system’ appears to turn out, in important ways, to comprise what seems like the highly ‘individual and personal’ in the here and now—but which gets writ larger and constituted as the patterns of social activities of groups, organisations and ‘the collective. And these in turn get writ larger still as communities, institutions, societies, international global ties, epochs, the cosmos and history”.

The recent research at the University of Florence and at the University of Western Australia by on extending human capabilities to understand the way in which plants ‘talk to one another’ extends some of the points made earlier by Lyall Watson (1976) in his contentious work that explores the boundaries of science and folklore.

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A University of Western Australia news report8 explains that Dr Monica Gagliano has teamed with colleagues Professor Daniel Robert at the University of Bristol (UK) and Professor Stefano Mancuso at the University of Florence.9 The team at Florence state in this video that they aim ‘to make use of the knowledge’ and that they are using cyborg simulations of plant behaviour as well as aiming to use plants as readers of a range of environmental signals that can together be decoded by sensors. The notion that plants can be used and are useful needs to be extended by also appreciating their spiritual significance, for instance as the Balinese wrap fig trees in a simple cloth to signify their significance spiritually and by offering symbolic gifts to them. They regard plants such as bamboo, rice and figs with reverence (Tng, 2014). Rayner (2017: 468) explains natural inclusion as follows: We need to move on from viewing evolution in terms of abstract selection by an extrinsic arbiter, to understanding evolution as an intrinsic process of natural inclusion, i.e. the fluid dynamics, co-creative transformation of all through all in a receptive special neighbourhood. Underlying the move is a simple but fundamental shift in the way we perceive all natural, tangible phenomena, including ourselves, as local expressions of a mutually inclusive relationship between energy and space as distinctive informative and receptive presences…

Rayner (2017: 463) quotes C.S. Lewis as follows: “The whole Philosophy of Hell …rests on a recognition of the axiom that one thing is not another thing, and specifically, that one self is not another self. My good is my good and your good is yours…’ To be’ means to be in competition”. (C.S. Lewis ‘The Screwtape Letters’)

Human capabilities can be extended through indigenous ways of knowing and being. These ways respect the interdependency of living systems, by expressing this relationship as family, spiritual connection and a sense of awe. According to Romm (2018): “Harris and Wasilewski meanwhile refer more generally to Indigenous views, which they argue need to be strengthened and revitalized across the globe, including in Indigenous cultural settings. They define relationality by referring to the metaphor of a family. They state that “relationship” can be understood in the: … profound sense that we human beings are related, not only to each other, but to all things, animals, plants, rocks—in fact, to the very stuff the stars are made of. This relationship is a kinship relationship …. We thus live in a family that includes all creation”. (2004: 492)

The last word will be given to His Holiness the Dalai Lama (2005: 51) who said: “I once asked my physicist friend David Bohm this question: From the perspective of modern science, apart from the question of misrepresentation, what is wrong with the belief in the independent existence of things? His response was telling. He said that if we examine the various ideologies that tend to divide humanity, such as racism, extreme nationalism, and the Marxist class struggle, one of the key factors of their origin is the tendency to perceive things as inherently divided and disconnected. From this misconception springs the belief that each of these divisions is essentially independent and self-existent…” 8 http://www.news.uwa.edu.au/201204034491/research/talking-plants. 9 Talking

plants—Futuris. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p75Jw7gkmuQ.

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Our interdependency on living systems requires a rethinking of ethics, democracy and governance to protect the web of life. This requires an appreciation of the role of the mind in shaping the life chances of current and future generations. The focus on empiricism and materialism to the exclusion of the nature of consciousness is one that needs to be balanced by greater humility and appreciation of the many ways of knowing and an appreciation for the areas of convergence that could help us to protect multispecies relationships.

References Arendt, H. (1963). Eichmann in Jerusalem: A report on the Banality of Evil. New York: Viking Press. Bateson, G. (1972). Steps to an ecology of mind. New York: Ballantine. Boulding, K. E. (1956). General systems theory—the skeleton of science. Management Science, 2, 197–208 Butler J. (2011, 28 May). Precarious life: The obligations of proximity. The Neale Wheeler Watson Lecture, Nobel Museum, Svenska. Available at www.youtube.com/watch?v=KJT69A QtDtg. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Dawkins, R. (2019). Outgrowing god: A beginners guide. London: Bantam. Dalai Lama, XIV Bstan-’dzin-rgya-mtsho. (2005). The Universe in a single atom: The convergence of science and spirituality. New York: Harmony. Donaldson, S., & Kymlicka, W. (2011). Zoopolis: A political theory of animal rights. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Haraway, D. (1991). Cyborgs, simians, and women: The reinvention of nature. London: Free Association Books. Haraway, D. (2008). When species meet. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Haraway, D. (2011). Speculative fabulations for technoculture’s generations: Taking care of unexpected country. Australian Haraway, D. (2015). Anthropocene, capitalocene, plantationocene, chthulucene: Making Kin. Environmental Humanities, 6, 159–165. www.environmentalhumanities.org. ISSN: 2201-1919 Haraway, D. (2016a). Anthropocene, Capitalocene, Chthulucene: Making String Figures with Biologies, Arts and Activisms. Haraway DJ (2016b). Staying with the trouble: Making Kin in the Chthulucene. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Harris, L. D., & Wasilewski, J. (2004). Indigeneity, an alternative worldview: Four R’s (relationship, responsibility, reciprocity, redistribution) vs. two P’s (power and profit). Sharing the journey toward conscious evolution. Systems Research and Behavioral Science, 21(5), 489–503. McIntyre-Mills, J. (2006). Rescuing the Enlightenment from Itself . Critical and Systemic Implications of Democracy, Volume 1 of the ‘C. West Churchman and Related Works Series’. Van Gigch, J (series editor), London: Springer. McIntyre-Mills, J. (2014). Systemic ethics and non-anthropocentric stewardship: Implications for transdisciplinarity and cosmopolitan politics (Contemporary Systems Thinking). New York: Springer International. McIntyre-Mills, J. J., Corcoran-Nantes, Y., & Romm,N. R. A. (Eds.). (2018). Balancing individualism and collectivism: Social and environmental justice (pp. 1–17). New York, NY: Springer. Meadows D., & Randers J. (1992). Beyond the limits: Global collapse of a sustainable future. London: Earthscan Publications.

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Minzberg, H. (2015). Rebalancing society: Radical renewal beyond left, right, and center. Oakland: Berrett-Koehler Publishers, Inc. Nuccitelli, D. (2018). New study finds incredibly high carbon pollution costs—especially for the US and India: As a wealthy, warm country, the US would benefit from implementing a carbon tax to slow global warming. The Guardian. https://www.theguardian.com/environment/climateconsensus-97-per-cent/2018/oct/01/new-study-finds-incredibly-high-carbon-pollution-costs-esp ecially-for-the-us-and-india. Nussbaum, M. (2006). Frontiers of justice. London: Harvard University Press. Nussbaum, M. (2011). Creating capabilities: The human development approach. Cambridge: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press. Rayner, A. (2017). Natural inclusion. In McIntyre-Mills, J, J. Romm, N.R.A. and Corcoran-Nantes, Y. (Eds.), Balancing Individualism and Collectivism: Social and Environmental Justice (pp. 461– 470). London: Springer. Reynolds, M. (2008). Response to paper ‘Systems Thinking’ by D. Cabrera et al.: Systems thinking from a critical systems perspective. Journal of Evaluation and Program Planning, 31(3), 323–325. Reynolds, M. (2011). Critical thinking and systems thinking: Towards a critical literacy for systems thinking in practice in critical thinking. Ricke, K., Drouet, L., Caldeira, K., & Tavoni, M. (2018). Country-level social cost of carbon nature climate change. www.nature.com/natureclimatechange Published: 24 September 2018. https:// www.nature.com/articles/s41558-018-0282-y. Romm, N. R. A. (2018). Responsible research practice. Cham: Springer. Rusbridger, A. (2015). Why we are putting the climate threat to earth front and centre. The Guardian Weekly, 13(3), 15. Scott, J. (1998). Seeing like a state. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. Shiva, V. (2012). Making peace with the earth. Winnipeg: Fernwood Publishing. Stokols, D. (2018). Social ecology in the digital age: Solving complex problems in a globalized world. London: Academic Press. Tng, D. (2014). https://davidtng.wordpress.com/2014/11/30/plants-and-people-in-bali-a-quick-gla nce/. United Nations. (2014). World Urbanisation Prospects: The 2014 Revision https://esa.un.org/unpd/ wup/publications/files/wup2014-highlights.Pdf. Wadsworth ,Y. (1998). What is participatory action research? Action research international http:// www.aral.com.au/ari/p-ywadsworth98.html. Wadsworth, Y. (2010). Building in research and evaluation: Human inquiry for living systems. Sydney: Allen and Unwin. Watson, L. (1973). Super nature. New York: Anchor Press. Watson, L. (1976). Gifts of unknown things. Kent: Hodder and Stoughton.

Janet J. McIntyre-Mills is Honorary Professor in the College of Education at University of South Africa, Tshwane, South Africa; Visiting Research Fellow at Adelaide University in the College of Professions Main North Terrace; and Adjunct Associate Professor in College of Business Government and Law at Flinders University, Sturt Campus, Adelaide.

Chapter 35

Objectifying Intersubjectivity Through Inclusion for a Scientific [R]Evolution: Avoiding Polarization by Engaging Stakeholders for Saliency, Priority and Trust Alexander N. Christakis and Maria Kakoulaki Abstract This chapter addresses the challenge of actualizing a scientific revolution (paradigm shift), as defined by Thomas Kuhn in his seminal book “The structure of Scientific Revolutions ”, for the domain of Intersubjectivity. This domain of science should be distinguished from the domain of objectivity, which is relevant and applicable to the First Phase Science. The unique advantage of objectivity is the universality of observations by diverse observers, i.e., the consensus among all observers regarding their observations. This property of universality is lacking in the intersubjectivity domain. It appears reasonable to identify three distinct and overlapping domains of observational complexity, namely objective, subjective, and intersubjective. Indices for measuring situational complexity are presented and discussed. Measurements of the Situational Complexity Index (SCI) emerge from the engagement of stakeholders/observers in collectively discovering saliency, priority, and trust through inclusion. The SCI from a variety of applications of the methodology of Structured Dialogic Design (SDD) in co-laboratories of democracy demonstrates the effectiveness of the methodology in a number of system design arenas. As a result of the gradual elimination of the intersubjective complexity, stakeholders converge to the objective complexity of a situation. Legitimizing the necessity and the importance of intersubjectivity, as a scientific revolution is considered as critical for the sustainability and the future of the planet. Keywords Paradigm shift · Demosophia · Deliberative democracy · Dialogic design science · Problematique · Intersubjectivity · Situational complexity index · Stakeholder inclusion · Saliency · Priority · Co-laboratory of democracy

A. N. Christakis (B) · M. Kakoulaki Yale University, New Haven, CT, USA © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2021 J. J. McIntyre-Mills and Y. Corcoran-Nantes (eds.), From Polarisation to Multispecies Relationships, Contemporary Systems Thinking, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-33-6884-2_35

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Introduction—A New World Order “Not everything that counts can be counted, and not everything that can be counted… counts.” Albert Einstein

This chapter is dedicated to Dr. Kenneth Bausch, the colleague, the friend, the wonderful human being, who has contributed with his soul and spirit in the world of Systems Science. In our rapidly changing societies -in which fear and misinformation easily spread and hope is a quest—it appears more critical than ever before, to identify the barriers preventing the visioning and attainment of alternative, desirable future(s), which can be co-created collectively and implemented consensually. Today’s world confronts a backsliding of democracy and democratic practices; its horizons seem constrained by growing inequalities, systemic racism, the escalating ecological crisis, the increasing scarcity of resources, and the decline of justice. According to data compiled by the Freedom House (2020), democracy has been in a recession for over a decade, and more countries have lost rather than gained civil and political rights each year. From 2019 to 2020, the world was confronted by the global crisis of the Covid19 pandemic, which spread globally like a wildfire without regard to national and regional boundaries. It impacted millions of people and caused hundreds of thousands of deaths. It forced political leaders to lock down national borders and entire cities, in a futile effort to prevent the infection. A main concern remains that Covid-19 might turn the democratic recession into a depression, with authoritarianism sweeping across the globe like a pandemic. The effectiveness of the response to the Covid-19 pandemic, greatly depends on the level of coordination and cooperation across the different stakeholders involved, and on the active participation of civil society. Furthermore, redefining democracies while responding to this unprecedented health emergency necessitates new models of governance, leadership, adaptability and innovation. The diagnosis, symptoms and medical treatment of the Covid-19 belongs to the objectivity of Health Sciences, based on measurable observer-independent data and statistics. On the other hand, the amelioration of the social, economic, political, and psychological impacts of the pandemic on the citizens of a particular nation, region, or city, and the challenge of creating a new world order when the crisis is over, belong to the “intersubjective domain” of social systems design This domain is capable of a more inclusive approach by taking into account both objective and intersubjective observations i.e. those observations that are dependent on the variety of perspectives and experiences of people. Intersubjectivity makes it imperative to engage citizens, from all walks of life, in deliberations focusing on designing social systems. These deliberations should enhance collaboration, design, anticipation, imagination, and consensus-building among stakeholders. Furthermore, designing a new world order after the pandemic is defeated, should not be founded on projecting past and present data into the future, but on a new database of the future. In order for humankind to accomplish such a formidable design challenge, it must embrace a scientific revolution by objectifying

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intersubjectivity through inclusion of all voices. The revolution implies a shift from the dominance of the paradigm of “evolutionary consciousness,” to that of “conscious evolution”, founded on inclusive deliberative democracy.

From Physics to Ekistic When one of us (Christakis) entered the first year as an undergraduate in the physics department of Princeton University in 1956, he signed up for a course in Optics. Soon thereafter, he was introduced to the notion that the phenomenon of light has a dual nature, i.e., depending on the situation it behaves as a particle or as a wave. He was astonished by this paradoxical explanation; later, he learned that it is acceptable to use an alternative explanation of a phenomenon as long as “it works,” i.e., it helps observers in understanding the phenomenon. It became clear to him that the primary purpose of any scientific theory is its capacity to build consensus among observers. The lesson he learned from the dual nature of light is that a theory that builds consensus “works”, as it is presented later in this chapter by the Demosensus Index, and hence it corresponds to “objective reality.” In a democracy we need to agree to disagree and allow space for diversity of opinion over issues that are seen differently because of different experiences. Sometimes intersectional factors result in power differences and different life chances, so that the world is in very different for different stakeholders. Thus, holding a space for diversity (and biodiversity) is very important as a first step towards building trust through engaging with diverse stakeholders in respectful dialogue that in the process creates common ground. Like many others who have become concerned about social and environmental justice, Christakis first studied theoretical nuclear physics before taking up a career in systems design. In the late 1960s, after graduating from Yale University with a PhD in theoretical nuclear physics, Christakis returned home to Greece and started working at the Democritus Nuclear Physics Laboratory, in Athens. To his surprise, he was asked to become a consultant to the urban development firm of the famous Greek architect Constadinos Doxiadis. His role would be to help Doxiadis develop the new “Science of Human Settlements”, which Doxiadis called “Ekistics.” Doxiadis wanted to introduce in Ekistics the advantages of objectivity and universality applicable to Physics. He was hoping that Ekistics would be capable of reducing the dissonance and lack of consensus prevalent among citizens in accepting and implementing urban development plans. It took Christakis three years to realize the futility of attempting to introduce the type of “objectivity” of physics to Ekistics, which is a social systems design science. The conclusion was that, even though consensus-building would be desirable in Ekistics, it would not be meaningful and attainable by emulating physics. In a democracy it makes sense to strive for consensus but also to allow for diversity to the extent that the views do not undermine the rights of others in this generation and the next (see McIntyre-Mills, 2014, 2017). Christakis remembered learning in Optics that alternative explanations of the phenomenon of light were acceptable as long as

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they build consensus; he thought, why not allow for alternative interpretations of societal phenomena by the inhabitants of a human settlement and support them in building consensus. The shift from the objectivity and universality of physics to the intersubjectivity and interpretive variety of social systems design, has been a continuous challenge for fifty years (Christakis, 1973, 2015; Kakoulaki et al., 2019, 2020). During these years we have collaborated with many prominent systems thinkers, such as Hasan Ozbekhan, Aurelio Peccei, John Warfield, Bela Banathy, Harold Laswell, Kenneth Bausch, and many others. Together they have launched many revolutionary scientific initiatives, such as: the Club of Rome (1970), the Academy for Contemporary Problems (1972), the Center of Interactive Management at the Universities of Virginia and George Mason (1980–1990), the CWA Ltd consultancy (1990–2010), the Institute for twenty-first Century Agoras (2002–2020), and finally the “Demoscopio Center of Structured Democratic Deliberations Innovation and Entrepreneurship” for the City of Heraklion, Crete (Kakoulaki & Christakis, 2018). All these initiatives have a common goal: to accomplish a scientific revolution (paradigm shift) by objectifying, through inclusion, the critical role of the intersubjectivity domain in designing social systems.

The Paradigm Shift Over the years, the success of these revolutionary initiatives has been hindered by the burdens, biases, barriers, and influence of the sciences of objectivity, e.g., physics, chemistry, biology, etc., as well as the dominance of the politics of pseudo-democracy. For example, the prospectus of the Club of Rome (CoR) on the predicament of mankind (Ozbekhan, 1970), addressed the need for a shift to a paradigm recognizing the role of the intersubjectivity domain in social system designing. Unfortunately, the Executive Committee of the CoR rejected this prospectus (Christakis, 1973, 1987). It preferred instead to fund an “objective-science” systems dynamics simulation model, capable of projecting past and present data into the future. This “World Model” as it was called, yielded a study known as The Limits to Growth (Meadows et al., 1972). Useful as this study was in predicting the critical global future to the year 2050, it did not succeed in building a consensus on the predicament of mankind, because it failed to include the voices of the stakeholders. For the last fifty years, the persistent lack of sensitivity and sensibility for the intersubjectivity domain has culminated to the escalation of the forty-nine Continuous Critical Problems (CCPs), that interact strongly to produce the Global Problematique, as described in the CoR prospectus. The set of the CCPs include statements regarding uncontrolled population growth, resource depletion, environmental degradation, food and water starvation, the threat of a nuclear war, localized wars, human rights violations, pseudo-democracy governance, health pandemics, and many more. Today, the most visible manifestation of the escalation of the Problematique is the severe climate change, which is the biggest challenge for the generations to come and

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which will eventually impose the necessity for consensus among different nations, if they wish to avoid the catastrophe. Such a consensus hasn’t been successfully achieved to date by national governments regarding the immigrations issue, or even the novel Covid-19 “invasion”. So, this is the moment for humanity, on a planetary scale, to appreciate these critical events that will accelerate human evolution. This is a potential turning point in history that requires all the knowledge from the Objective Sciences together with the balancing of wisdom from Intersubjectivity domain, in order to achieve resilience, saliency, priority and trust.

Interdisciplinarity The domain of intersubjectivity encompasses also the notion of interdisciplinarity, the practice of which has been endorsed by many scientific and research organizations and the recognition of the wisdom of First Nations (Christakis & Harris, 2004). As a matter of fact, in the 1970s, when the American cities were on fire because of racial injustice, we designed and conducted an experiment on interdisciplinarity. We formed an interdisciplinary team consisting of architects, sociologists, engineers, economists, psychologists, etc., and assigned them the task of designing a hypothetical city of one million people. A social psychiatrist (James Taylor), a system engineer (John Warfield), and Christakis, were given the role of observing the deliberations of this team. After about a year of effort, the team failed to converge to a consensual design for the city (Arnstein & Christakis, 1976). The reason for this failure was diagnosed as the incapacity of the team members to cross disciplinary boundaries. This finding became the trigger for launching a research program with the goal of developing methodological tools to support groups in boundary-spanning dialogue for converging to a consensus (Warfield, 1976, 1994; Warfield & Christakis, 1987). If crossing disciplinary boundaries is so difficult for an interdisciplinary team, imagine the challenge of citizens from different walks of life being able to converge to a consensus on implementing a city master plan. In essence, what Doxiadis wanted Christakis to do with Ekistics was meaningful; however, building a consensus for a city plan cannot, and should not, be attained with the objectivity approach of physics, but with the intersubjectivity approach of the science of dialogic design (Christakis & Bausch, 2006a; Flanagan & Christakis, 2010; Flanagan & Lindell, 2018). This science has been developed with the explicit intent to enable people from all walks of life to design their futures by means of productive, inclusive, and authentic deliberative democracy.

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The Purpose of This Chapter The purpose of this chapter is to make transparent the imperative for a paradigm shift from the First (objective) to the Third (intersubjective) phases of science. First Phase Science was constructed to facilitate an “objectivity approach” in converging to a consensus for the physical sciences. In the intersubjectivity domain of social systems, consensus is not attainable without specially designed methodological support, even in the simpler case of interdisciplinarity. For the last fifty years we have accumulated empirical evidence that Structured Dialogic Design (SDD) co-laboratories enable groups to convergence to a consensus, i.e., “SDD colabs are effective in co-creating intersubjective knowledge by including all voices of stakeholders participating in a dynamic balance and synthesis with objective data.” Structured dialogue works because citizens are engaged in a process that respects and preserves the diversity of all viewpoints, needs, and experiences. The methodology of SDD makes the paradigm shift plausible by including stakeholders in experiencing its effectiveness in every social arena and challenge. Hence, the SDD methodology should be accepted on its merit, just like the dual nature of light was acceptable in Optics because it worked; it is the inclusion during all stages of deliberations that legitimizes the science of dialogue as conceptual and not as empirical such as Physics. Structured Dialogic Design as a scientific methodology of intersubjectivity is validated on its utility for deliberative democracy, and its utility is contingent on its validity.

The Demosophia Paradigm “People can save; they cannot be saved.” Nikos Kazantzakis

The scientific revolution for the development of the science of dialogue and deliberative democracy was initiated in the 1970s (Christakis, 1973). The origins of the revolution can be traced to the failure of the Executive Committee of the Club of Rome to appreciate the predicament of mankind prospectus, as conceptualized by Ozbekhan in his articulation of forty-nine Continuous Critical Problems (CCPs) that interact strongly to produce the Global Problematique (Ozbekhan, 1970). The new paradigm has been called Demosophia, which in Greek means the “wisdom of the people” (Christakis, 1993). This name implies a paradigm shift from “the power of the people”, which is the Greek meaning of the word democracy, to the “wisdom of the people”. The underlying premise of the Demosophia paradigm is that, in light of the escalating complexity of the Problematique, discovering the wisdom of the people is a prerequisite in order for the people to exercise their power wisely. However, on account of the escalating complexity, it is much more difficult to discover the wisdom of the people and to build a consensus today than it was two thousand and five hundred years ago in the Agora of the Athenian democracy. There is evidence

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from the arena (Christakis & Dye, 1999), that without building consensus and coownership of visionary anticipations by the stakeholders of a social system, action plans are not implementable.

Boundary-Spanning Dialogue In the early 1970s, a group of researchers working in the Academy for Contemporary Problems, realized the importance of applying science to the challenge of reinventing the process of the dialogue. After conducting several experiments on complex tasks, such as using a group of experts to design a hypothetical city of one million people, they realized that a new “scientific paradigm” was needed if the experts from diverse disciplines were to be engaged in productive interdisciplinary dialogue. Dr. James Taylor, a social psychiatrist, was retained to observe the deliberations of the interdisciplinary team. Also, two other researchers, John Warfield and Alexander Christakis, were asked to observe the team in order to determine whether any improvements could be made regarding interdisciplinary team effectiveness, communication, and consensus. One of the major findings of the researchers observing the team meetings was that the rate of progress was extremely slow. Each team member would come to the interdisciplinary team meetings with proposals drafted during meetings of the same discipline. For example, the economist would present the results of an employment projection and distribution model for the population of the city. The meetings involving only economists were productive. The participants of these meetings were capable of transforming the individual “mental models” into “a team mental model” representing the consensus of their discipline. The dialogue among the team members of a specific discipline was productive due to the fact that the team used the scientific language of their particular discipline to communicate and agree on single-discipline proposals. The communication breakdowns occur when the team members were engaged in interdisciplinary dialogue, in order to integrate the single-discipline proposals into a coherent, consensual, and comprehensive design for the city. The level of frustration and dissonance among the representatives of each discipline in the interdisciplinary dialogues began to escalate. Some team members started to decline to participate in interdisciplinary meetings or found excuses not to attend. The leader of the interdisciplinary team was changed three times, because selected leaders would resign from the leadership role. As social psychiatrist James Taylor wrote, after observing the deliberations of the interdisciplinary team for over a year (Arnstein & Christakis, 1976): … there appears to be a pressing, well- recognized need for a kind of social intervention, the interdisciplinary team which synthesizes knowledge in order to clarify complex problems. The promise of this social invention is clear, yet in fact no workable model has emerged. The question becomes obvious: why not? That has gone wrong in existing efforts to develop ‘meaningful synthesis’ of ‘pertinent fields of knowledge’?

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The researchers observing the interdisciplinary team realized that many other acute problems—certainly those confronting contemporary social systems and organizations—could not be resolved without the integration of knowledge and expertise originating from different disciplines. However, without empowering the members of interdisciplinary teams to use rigorous and understandable language to communicate across disciplines, just as each team member was capable of practicing within their own discipline, the prospects of designing complex social systems effectively were not good. This discovery prompted the researchers of the Academy for Contemporary Problems to launch a long-range research and development program for the discovery and adoption of the Demosophia paradigm (Christakis & Bausch, 2006b).

On What Counts At the beginning of the chapter we quoted Einstein’s statement regarding measuring and counting, namely: “Not everything that counts can be counted, and not everything that can be counted counts”.

The Demosophia paradigm regards measurement and quantification as useful and meaningful ways for explaining and predicting phenomena, provided they do not dominate to the point of exclusion of qualitative narratives of stakeholders’ perspectives. For example, the system dynamics model that predicted with quantitative indicators the critical future of the world system to the year 2050, (Meadows et al., 1972) was useful; it did not, however, have a significant impact in terms of public policy and/or behavioural changes by political leaders and citizens. The reason is that the findings of the model lacked stakeholder’s consensus and ownership. Especially in the domain of social systems design, the dominance of quantification and mathematical modelling has been historically counterproductive, going as far back as the urban

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development policies of the USA in the decade of the 1960s, when the American cities were burning because of racial discrimination. The dominance of quantitative measures is to a large extent due to the elegance and objectivity of physical sciences, like physics. We have deliberately given the title of this chapter “Objectifying intersubjectivity through inclusion for a scientific revolution.” We argue that objectivity should apply to all situations where observers converge to a consensus, even if there are no quantifiable indices available to measure. In other words, the attainment of consensus should be the criterion for objectivity and not necessarily the capability to quantify observations. The Demosophia paradigm espouses a balancing approach between “what is counted, and does not count,” and “what cannot be counted, and counts.” It is appreciative and sensitive to the domain of intersubjectivity by recognizing the importance of building consensus among a group of observers. Also, the Demosophia paradigm adopts an approach to situational complexity that draws distinctions among objective, subjective, and intersubjective complexities. It has been suggested that a shift to the new paradigm is inevitable because of the inability of organizations, and the society as a whole, to deal with the escalating complexity (Christakis, 1993). This shift is the scientific equivalent to an appreciation of the value of the model of deliberative democracy practiced over two thousand years ago in the Athenian Republic. After fifty years of applying the science of dialogic design in the area, we have concluded that the validation of the Demosophia paradigm depends on the capacity of the science to objectify intersubjectivity. For this to happen, it is necessary that the science continuously engages stakeholders in developing collectively saliency, priority and trust.

The Process Science of Dialogic Design The DOSM developed by John N. Warfield (Warfield, 1987) was founded on drawing distinctions among the four domains of any science, as well as distinction between the corpus and the arena of a science (See Fig. 1). DOSM was conceived in an era when physical proximity dominated communities of science, as contrasted with today’s Internet connections. Roles within the communities of science were typically reinforced through direct conversations. Tension among roles in the corpus and the arena of any science existed. They still persist, some being strongly anchored in a perceived schism between basic and applied science. For example, in physics there has been tension between experimental and theoretical physicists. The DOSM emerged in an effort to recognize this tension and to link the power of its creative friction into a systemic view. The DOSM characterizes “steering functions,” which link foundation, theory, methodology, and applications in a virtuous cycle, as shown in Fig. 1. It calls attention to the flow of experience from applications of the science in the arena upon the foundation of the science, which is to say upon the axiomatic base of the theories supported by the science. It is important that any science explicitly recognizes the

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Fig. 1 The Domain of Science Model (after Warfield, 1987)

axioms upon which it is founded, because disparities discovered in applications of the science must be understood first as a manifestation of an axiomatic understanding or a manifestation of something that has not been considered in prior theories. The Corpus of a Science—or the basis of science consists of an axiomatic “Foundation” (based upon an evolutionary understanding of the “reality” experienced in the arena of practice), and “Theory” (including in the case of dialogic design sets of such theories as, Theory of Mind, Theory of Relations, etc.). The Arena—or the applied science—shares the “Methodology” (which includes approaches for acting upon, with or through theories in the science) from the science and places those methodologies into “Applications,” which interface with and engage the subject of the science (in this case communities of stakeholders engaged in discovering saliency, priority, and trust, in the process of designing, planning, and acting). In this chapter, we will describe very briefly aspects of the Foundation, Methodology, and Applications Domains for the science of dialogic design. For a more elaborate description of the science of dialogue, the interested reader is referred to a book edited by Gary Metcalf and titled Social systems and design.

The Foundation Domain of the Science The Foundation Domain of any science, and especially of a process science such as dialogic design, should include definitions of key terms and axioms upon which the science is constructed. For example, the explanation of the phenomenon of light,

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mentioned in the introduction of this chapter, defined such terms as photon, wave, electromagnetism, etc. We will define below the eight key terms of the science of dialogic design: The eight terminological definitions are inferred from and are complementary with the seven Axioms of the science. These definitions establish the foundational language of the science, and are evolving in accordance with the cyclical diagram of Fig. 1: • Dialogue: The engagement of observers/stakeholders in discovering meaning, understanding, wisdom, and actions for designing their social systems by means of structured inquiry in a co-laboratory of democracy. • Conscious evolution: The engagement of observers/stakeholders in a colaboratory for the purpose of co-creating their ideal futures. • Future: The state of a social system that is significantly different from the state obtained by extrapolating past and present trends and data. • Third Phase Science: All inquiry actions that aim to support observers/stakeholders in constructing high quality observations that make possible the design and implementation of action plans for the conscious evolution of a social system. • Triggering Question (TQ): A prompt framed by a co-laboratory design team, in collaboration with the sponsor of a project, for the purpose of enabling observers/stakeholders of a social system to construct high quality observations. • Elemental Observation: The succinct and content-specific observation by an observer/stakeholder in response to a triggering question during a co-laboratory. • Truth: The convergence of the alternative realities (or pluralities) of a group of stakeholders participating in a co-laboratory to a consensual, ephemeral, and language-sensitive snapshot of the complex situation they are confronting. This situation-specific snapshot is subject to evolutionary learning by iteration. • Problem statement: The appreciation by an observer/stakeholder of the dissonance between his/her belief of “what ought to be” and the observation of “what is.” These statements of stakeholders with diverse perspectives and life-experiences are value-based and culture-sensitive.

The Methodology Domain of the Science Methodologies apply the laws of a science in fashions that assure logical integrity and completeness. Dialogic design science applies the laws of the science in a methodology that guides such activities as stakeholder selection for participating in a colaboratory, framing of triggering questions, performance of the core planning team roles, facilitation of the dialogue during the co-laboratory, and even the publication or implementation of findings and recommendations produced by the community of stakeholders.

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In the early 1970s, and after the failure of the interdisciplinarity experiment with the design of the hypothetical city, the two Academy for Contemporary Problems researchers (Warfield and Christakis) identified seven consensus methods that have been applied extensively over the years to support groups in converging to a consensus. The seven consensus methods were selected on the basis of technical and behavioural criteria, and they are: Nominal Group Technique (NGT), Interpretive Structural Modelling (ISM), Idea Writing, Delphi, Options Field, Options Profile, and Trade-off Analysis (Christakis & Bausch, 2006b). Over the course of the evolution of the science, an early methodology known as Interactive Management (see reviews by Warfield, 1994; Alexander, 2001), developed and practiced at the Center for Interactive Management at George Mason University, where Christakis served as the Director for ten years, was complemented by a computer software called the CogniScope (Christakis, 1996). This methodology has been customized within the application arena by other organizations, such as: (a) the Americans for Indian Opportunities (AIO), and called the Indigenous Leaders Interactive System (ILISTM) (Harris & Wasilewski, 2004), (b) the Future Worlds Center in Cyprus, which retains the name Cogniscope, and (c) the Michigan Department of Education, which has developed an Internet-based platform called Logosofia. All these organizations have been actively applying SDD in their communities of practice. For example, ILIS has been applied to indigenous communities around the world. Many applications of the methodology have been conducted under the leadership of the Institute for the twenty-first Century Agoras in the USA, as well as in collaboration the Future Worlds Center of Cyprus (Schreibman & Christakis, 2007; Bausch, 2008; Flanagan, 2008; Laouri & Christakis, 2008; Flanagan & Christakis, 2010; Kakoulaki & Christakis, 2018). As the science seeks to reach audiences through the use of the Internet, the Logosofia platform has been developed by a group of practitioners in the State of Michigan, under the leadership of Jeff Dietrich (see the chapter by Diedrich and Christakis in this volume), and is being utilized by a variety of non-profit organizations and university researchers in the USA, Canada, Mexico, Greece, and Australia. The interested reader who wants to delve more deeply in the methodology of the science should consult some of the references and applications mentioned in the bibliography.

The Applications Domain of the Science Variations of the generic methodology of the science are used with communities in specific applications. The communities can be corporate or civic, religious or secular, local or international, etc. Such applications of the science typically allow a measure of flexibility to accommodate conditions unique to different communities; however, each application does have its limitations, and use of methodology beyond the validated context of the science, as described by the DOSM in Fig. 1, constitutes an experimental application. The inference is that in experimental applications, limitations of the methodologies may cause failures, which can subsequently contribute

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to challenges of the axioms of the science for evolutionary adjustments in the foundation’s domain. This is, of course, an issue of central concern to the field because while the Corpus exists to enable and to complement the Arena, uninformed application of the methodology compromises the integrity of the community to advance the evolution of the science. The professionally responsible application of the methodology entails three distinct and complementary phases. These are: a.

b.

c.

The Discovery Phase: During this phase the SDD practitioners responsible for the application engages in an inquiry which involves: (a) Conducting interviews with members of the community to explore their alternative understanding and perceptions of the situation to be addressed, (b) Gathering and studying relevant documentation and data, (c) Selecting a Core Planning Team (CPT), which includes at least one member of the community, called the Broker, for guidance in the design of the co-laboratory, (d) Framing a triggering question for focusing the deliberations of the participants during the colab, and (e) Identifying a representative group of participants to the colab, in accordance with the Law of Requisite Variety, i.e., all perspectives should be present at the colab. The Co-Laboratory Phase: This phases focuses on applying the theory and methodology of the science for engaging the stakeholders in a productive, effective, and authentic dialogue, which is based on four distinct and overlapping steps, namely: (a) Generation of ideas in response to the triggering question, (b) Evaluation of the ideas by participants’ voting at various points during the deliberation on their relative saliency, (c) Clustering the set of ideas into affinity groups by employing the similarity relationship, and (d) Mapping the dominant subset of the original set of ideas, by exploring relationships of influence and producing a tree of linkages among them. Follow-up Action Phase: This phase focuses on implementing the findings and recommendations of the group work. For example, if the group work has produced a consensus action plan, then specific activities are assigned to members of the group or the community at large for implementation. This phase might produce the requirement for additional co-laboratories with diverse groups of stakeholders focusing on diverse and sometimes more detailed triggering questions. In many applications, a tapestry of deliberations over time are needed, offering the community the opportunity to conceptualize and implement a continuum of iterative learnings and actions for the resolution of their complex situation.

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Inclusion for Determining Saliency, Priority and Trust “Demosensus is the consensual design of futures, by the people and for the people, through inclusive dialogue beyond borders.” Maria Kakoulaki

During the co-laboratory phase, a group votes repeatedly on the relative saliency of the ideas and their mutual influence. Voting on relative saliency takes place at the following steps of the colab process: (a) after the generation of the ideas, (b) after the authors clarify their meanings, (c) after categorizing the ideas into affinity clusters, and (d) after mapping a subset of the ideas to produce an influence tree. Mapping a subset of ideas involves voting repeatedly on their pairwise influence relationships. The sequence of pairwise voting produces efficiently, with the support of the Logosofia platform, an influence tree showing graphically the linkages among the subset of ideas. Based on the voting results on saliency and influence, and using a set of formulas that will be presented below, it is possible to determine: (a) the degree of divergence of viewpoints among the colab participants, (b) the extent of group consensus, and (c) the level of trust and commitment of the stakeholders to their consensual design and action plan.

Box: Measurement Formulas We will now develop some formulas for determining group saliency, priority, and trust. a. The formula for measuring Divergence Index is: D = (V - 5)/(N - 5)

(1)

where: N = the total number of ideas proposed by a group; and V = the number of ideas receiving one or more saliency votes in accordance with individual and subjective judgments of relative saliency. Each participant selects five ideas from the set; this is the reason the number ‘5’ appears in the formula. b. The formula that measures the extent of consensus among the participants (has been named by the authors as “Demosensus Index” which combines the Greek ´ word “Demos > Δημoς = Community” and the Latin “consensus”). Demosensus Community Index is: (DI) = (N - V)/(N - 5)

(2)

c. The formula that measures the Priority Effectiveness Index among the subset of ideas selected for inclusion in the influence tree is (this is the total number of distinct connections among all ideas in the tree and it is an aggregate measure of the leverage each idea exerts on all other ideas to which it is connected):

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(PEI) = K/[R(R - 1) - K]

713

(3)

where: R = the number of ideas receiving two or more saliency votes after the completion of the affinity grouping. This is the subset of ideas that are usually selected for inclusion in the tree of influence; and K = the total number of distinct connections among all the ideas included in the influence tree. The three formulas defined above are instrumental in determining the Situational Complexity Index (SCI) for a complex situation with intersubjective observations. In order to derive the above formulas, it was necessary, as is normally the case in the scientific approach, to make some assumptions of boundary conditions for Eqs. (2), and (3). The boundary conditions are: For Equation (2): When V = N, then DCI = 0, meaning complete lack of consensus for the group; When V = 5, then DCI = 1, meaning one hundred percent consensus for the group. For Equation (3): When K = R(R-1), there exists a singularity for the PEI index, indicating a cyclical pattern of influence among all ideas. Consequently, it is not possible to identify a single idea with the maximum priority effectiveness. When K = R(R-1)/2, then PEI = 1, indicating optimum priority effectiveness, because the pattern of the tree is linear, and the effectiveness of each idea is determined by its position at a single level of the tree; and When K = (R-1) (R-1), then PEI = R-1, which corresponds to the maximum measurable PEI, corresponding to a single idea being connected to all the others, all of which are in a cyclical pattern of mutual influence.

Calculation of Indices for the Average Case From over one-hundred and eighty applications of the SDD methodology during the decade of the 1980s, at the Center for Interactive Management at George Mason University, it was determined that the average number of distinct ideas generated by engaging a variety of groups, was equal to sixty-four (64). We will use this average number of ideas, to calculate values for D, DCI, and PEI. It has also been observed, that when the average N = 64, then: The average number of ideas receiving one or more saliency votes after the completion of the clustering step is V = 32. The average number for the subset of ideas included in the influence tree is R = 15. The average saliency measure V, after the production of the influence tree is equal to 17.

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Employing the above values for N, V, and R, after the completion of the clustering step, we get: Divergence Index 46% D = (32–5)/(64–5)

= 0,46

Demosensus index 54% DCI = (64–32)/(64–5)

= 0,54

After the production of the influence tree, by means of pairwise influence voting, the values of D and DCI are significantly changed, as shown below: Divergence Index 20% D = (17–5)/(64–5)

= 0,20

Demosensus Index 80% DCI = (64–17)/(64–5)

= 0,80

According to the calculations for the average case, what has been accomplished as a result of the structured deliberation is: (a) the reduction of the divergence index from 100% before the colab to 20% after the colab, and (b) the increase of the Demosensus index from 0% before to 80% after the colab. These results are shown graphically in Fig. 2. At the start of the colab the Divergence index (D) is 100%. It is reduced to 44% after the completion of the clustering step. On the other hand, the Demosensus (DCI) index starts at 0%, and after clustering it climbs to 56%. The clustering step of a colab is usually completed after approximately four-and-a-half hours of group

Fig. 2 Displaying the progress over time of Divergence and Demosensus Indices as a group engages in democratic deliberation

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work. Figure 2 also presents that the crossing of the two lines, one for D and the other for DCI, occurs when the divergence of viewpoints is approximately equal to the consensus, i.e., equal to about 50% for each index. Finally, the convergence of the Demosensus index to 80% occurs after the completion of the influence tree step. It usually takes another four hours of group deliberation and voting on the pairwise linkages among the fifteen ideas included in the influence tree, at which point the Demosensus index rises to 80%. These findings have major implications for governmental agencies and other organizations that attempt to engage stakeholders in public hearings and deliberations. The majority of those hearings last about two to three hours; for about eighty percent of this time the participants are subjected to presentations by the officials. After the end of the presentations, the audience is invited to ask questions. The participants are not truly engaged in a dialogue focusing on the complex situation. On the basis of the findings shown in Fig. 2, it takes almost eight hours for building a consensus, even with the disciplined dialogue of the SDD. It follows that the conventional approach to public hearings is not effective and/or sensitive to the voice of stakeholders. For example, in the 1990s, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) of the USA attempted to engage HIV patients in proposing requirements for drug evaluation and research for the treatment of Aids. The FDA executives allocated approximately three hours for this hearing. The Director of the Center for Drug Evaluation and Research (CDER), presented to the attendees, some of whom were HIV patients, the plan for drug development, and invited their feedback. What followed was a lot of noise and disagreements. This hearing resulted in the perpetuation of the dissonance between the FDA and the patients. Finally, for the average case with an R = 15, the number of distinct connections in a linear influence tree pattern, is equal to 105. The Priority Effectiveness Index for this case is: PEI = 105/[15(15-1)–105] = 1

As we mentioned before, this value of PEI corresponds to the optimum pattern for priority effectiveness, because the tree of influence is linear with fifteen levels, and with one idea being assigned to every single level. On the other hand, for the average case of 64 ideas, the maximum PEI occurs when K = 196, and the PEI is: PEI = 196/[15(15-1)–196] = 14

So, to summarize: When K = 0, there are no connections among the members of the subset of ideas and PEI = 0. When K = R(R-1), there exists a singularity, and the ideas are in a cyclical pattern of mutual influence. When K = R(R-1)/2, then the pattern of the tree of influence is linear, and PEI = 1. When K = (R-1) (R-1), we observe the maximum PEI, which is equal to R-1, and the tree is cyclical with R-1 ideas in the cycle.

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Building Trust Our experience tells us that the building of trust among colab participants evolves proportionally to the co-creation of mutual ground for understanding of the complex situation by constructing consensual narratives. Those visions co-created in group settings ought to and should be considered as representing reality, as compared to those individually and non-democratically constructed. As John Lennon, the Beatles singer and musician, said: “A vision generated by oneself is just a vision. B A vision generated by a group of people is a reality.”

Group narratives are real because they represent the community wisdom (Demosophia) of a complex situation, and hence they approximate “the truth,” as it has been defined in the Foundation domain of the science of dialogue, namely: • Truth: The convergence of the alternative realities (or pluralities) of a group of stakeholders participating in a co-laboratory to a consensual, ephemeral, and language-sensitive snapshot of the complex situation they are confronting. This situation-specific snapshot is subject to evolutionary learning by iteration. In accordance with this definition, truth is dependent on the evolutionary emergence of Demosensus. Therefore, we argue that trust is a function of the Demosensus index, as shown graphically in Fig. 3. This Figure corresponds to an actual colab with a group of participants from the FDA. As shown in Fig. 3, the Demosensus curve, after about eight hours of group deliberations with twenty-five participants, rises

Fig. 3 The evolution of Demosensus for an accrual case

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to 70% and the consensual trust of the group to the colab findings was solidified. Testimonials offered by this FDA group, as well as by a plethora of colab participants, provide empirical evidence of how the Demosensus process affects the trust and commitment by communities of stakeholders to the implementation of action plans when they co-create them.

An Assault on Complexity The Foundation Domain of the science of dialogic design, incorporates seven axioms, one of which is the Complexity Axiom attributed to John Warfield: The Complexity Axiom: Designing social systems is a multi-dimensional challenge. It demands that observational variety be respected when engaging observers/stakeholders in dialogue, while making sure that their cognitive limitations are not violated in our effort to strive for comprehensiveness (John Warfield). When a group participates in a colab, each member enters the deliberation with his/her individual “mental model” of the situation. Although complexity is characterized by multi-dimensionality (Warfield & Christakis, 1987), it has been observed in the arena that each group member believes that his/her ideas are necessary and sufficient for capturing the entire dimensionality of a situation. Colab participants are surprised when they discover, during the generation of ideas step, that the total number of ideas proposed in response to a triggering question, are on the average sixty-four. The goal of a successful colab is to integrate the individual “mental models” into a “group mental model” of the complex situation. For this to be achieved it is necessary to protect the authenticity of every idea, as well as to respect the cognitive limitations of every participant. The magic number for the avoidance of cognitive overload is the famous “7” plus or minus 2, discovered by the Harvard psychologist Miller (Miller, 1956). For example, most people remember their seven-digit phone number, but cannot recall their ten-digit credit card number. It is the responsibility of the SDD facilitator, who manages the structured dialogue during a colab, to ensure that the cognitive limitations of every participant are not violated. Failure to do so will result in lack of convergence to a consensual linguistic domain by a group. The challenge facing the SDD facilitator is to: (a) Protect the authenticity of all ideas, (b) avoid compromising the requisite variety of the complex situation, and (c) respect the cognitive limitation of all participants. This is a very difficult balancing task for SDD facilitators, unless they are properly trained.

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The Situational Complexity Index The Situational Complexity Index (SCI) is a measure of the type of complexity emerging in the domain of intersubjectivity. In this domain, in order for groups to build consensus by constructing high quality observations, as required by Third Phase Science, they need methodological support. We discovered this need when we conducted the hypothetical city experiment. For example, the SCI would be observable and measurable when citizens disagree regarding the adoption and implementation of a master plan for their city. The role of SDD in dealing with this type of complexity is to support groups in converging to consensual designs and action plans, through inclusion. The SDD methodology is capable of reducing the measure of SCI, as determined before and after a colab, by up to two-orders of magnitude. Such a reduction of the SCI is obviously not trivial; it is accomplished by objectifying intersubjectivity through the inclusion of stakeholders in disciplined deliberations. Furthermore, SDD enhances significantly the level of commitment, trust, and buy-in of the consensual action plan co-created by groups.

Three Types of Complexity We identify three discrete and overlapping types of complexity (i.e., they are not mutually exclusive). These are: a.

b.

The objective complexity: It applies to First Phase Science, where observations are constructed so that they will be independent of the observer, i.e., there exists consensus among observers of a phenomenon. As an example, one observer in Athens and another in New York city, observing apples falling from trees at different points in time, will report the same observation. Even though there exists consensus regarding the phenomenon, there can still be complexity in explaining it. For example, nuclear physicists have been studying the behavior of electrons, protons, neutrons, and other elementary particles for many decades, in order to understand and explain the nuclear force. Experimental data are gathered and published in peer review journals in order to build a consensus among physicists. Challenging as this type of complexity is for physicists, it has the advantage of converging to a consensus through publications and iterations in scientific journals. The subjective complexity: It applies to Second Phase Science, where the observations are dependent on the observers. Additionally, in this type of complexity, the observer is capable of influencing the observation. The famous “white coat” phenomenon in medicine is a good example of this type. When a doctor measures the blood pressure of a patient, she influences the measurement by increasing the anxiety of the patient. A female doctor measuring the blood pressure of a male patient will probably affect him differently than a male. The subjective complexity may impact seriously the life of an individual, such as in

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719

the case of a cancer patient being confronted with the complexity of choosing between two conflicting treatments for his condition. The intersubjective complexity: It applies to Third Phase Science, where the observations are interdependent, i.e., high quality observations can be constructed by means of inclusion of observers in deliberations in order to build consensus. Without consensus, it is not possible to make progress in resolving issues affecting the lives of stakeholders, such as the implementation of a master plan for a city. This is the type of complexity that the architect Doxiadis was hoping to resolve by asking Christakis in the 1960s to build a model for Ekistics resembling that of physics. Another example of a complex situation is the phenomenon of climate change. In this case, on account of its social, economic, and political impacts on different regions of the planet, there exists an overlap of the objective (First Phase Science) and intersubjective (Third Phase Science) complexities. The objective component of the climate change SCI is relevant to, such sciences as meteorology, chemistry, geology, etc. The intersubjective component is due to value-based dissonances among political leaders, governmental officials, and stakeholders of different countries. The climate change SCI should be addressed by designing and conducting regional co-laboratories of democracy.

Measuring SCI The measurement of the SCI through inclusion, applies to all three types of complexity discussed above. However, it is in the case of the intersubjective complexity that stakeholder inclusion is an imperative in order to support the construction of high-quality observations by groups. It is by conducting group work in colabs that we can gather voting preference data on relative saliency and priority. The data gathered during a colab are measurements of the parameter N, V, R, and K, which are needed for calculating indices such as D, DCI, and PEI, discussed earlier. From this data the value of SCI is determined by employing the formula: SCI = D(N-7) PEI

In the formula, the D is the divergence index, and the N is the total number of observations generated by a group in response to a triggering question (TQ). The responses of the group to the TQ may include independent, dependent, and interdependent observations. The PEI in the SDI formula is the priority effectiveness index. The number “7,” is called the “Warfield number.” It is included in the SCI formula so that in the event the number of observations generated is equal to 7, then the SCI is equal to zero. If the SCI is zero, the situation is not complex, and there is no need for group work (As mentioned before, “7” is the famous magic number of cognitive overloads discovered in 1956, by the psychologist Miller). Table 1 summarizes all the formulas with commentary. Also, boundary conditions for calculating the optimum and the maximum values of PEI and SCI are presented in Table 1.

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Table 1 Calculations of PEI and SCI on the basis of measurements of N, V, R, and K Name

Formula

Explanation

Number of ideas (N)

n/a

Represents the number of ideas generated by participants of the Co-Lab

Number of ideas that received a Vote (V)

n/a

Generated during the prioritization process—each participant identifies her/his top 5 ideas of relative saliency

Number of ideas in Relational pattern (R)

n/a

Total number of ideas selected for influence mapping

Divergence (D)

D = (V-5)/(N-5)

Divergence or “spread-think” in terms of relative saliency voting

Demosensus Index (DCI)

DCI = (N-V)/(N-5)

Consensus of the group over time

Priority Effectiveness Index (PEI)

PEI = K/{R(R-1)-K}

Provides insights to determine an entry point for taking action to address the situation

Priority Effectiveness Index—maximum (PEImax )

PEImax = R-1

Priority Effectiveness Index—optimal (PEIopt )

1

Situational Complexity Index (SCI)

SCI = D*(N-7) *PEI

Situational Complexity Index—Maximum (SCImax )

SCImax = D*(N-7) *(R-1) max

Situational Complexity Index—Optimal (SCIopt )

SCIopt = D*(N-7) *(1) opt

Relationship cardinality—# of n/a distinct interconnections (K)

Denotes the number of distinct inter-connections resulting from the influence voting of the stakeholders

Relationship cardinality—# of Kmax = (R-1) (R-1) distinct interconnections (Kmax ) Relationship cardinality—# of Kopt = R*(R-1)/2 distinct interconnections (Kopt )

A Hypothetical Project for Climate Change Let us now suppose that we apply SDD to a hypothetical project for addressing the climate change Problematique. The Core Planning Team (CPT), consisting of SDD practitioners and a Broker representing the sponsor of the project, after the completion of the discovery phase, frames a triggering question, which reads:

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“What are issues that we should be focusing on for the next five years, in order to make progress in the definition and resolution of the anticipated climate crisis?”

Employing this TQ, the CPT selects a representative group of stakeholders with the requisite variety of perspectives to participate in the colab. In the climate change colab the selected group should include social scientists, physical scientists, politicians, medical doctors, and other types of citizens. Suppose now that after the generation of issues by the group, the measure of SCI at the start of the colab is equal to 4,000. This is a reasonable estimate in light of the calculations for the average case of sixty-four ideas. Let us also assume that after eight hours of group work, the SCI is reduced by two orders of magnitude, i.e., it is equal to 40. In light of the fact that the SCI has been reduced to a final value of 40, it appears reasonable to assert that this residue value of the SCI is probably a measure of the objective component of the overall complexity. In other words, the group deliberations managed to remove most of the intersubjective dissonances and were helpful to the group in converging to a final consensus value of SCI equal to 40, representing primarily the objective complexity of the climate change situation. In this manner, the original group with stakeholders from all walks of life, has minimized the intersubjective complexity and brought to the surface aspects of the objective complexity. At this point of the project, it is appropriate for the community of stakeholders to delegate to expert scientists the task of dealing with the objective complexity, employing methodologies of First Phase Science. The description of this hypothetical project exemplifies what we mean by the title of this chapter, namely “Objectifying intersubjectivity though inclusion for a scientific revolution.” A similar approach is applicable and relevant to other global issues for which we might be encountering dissonance in the intersubjectivity domain. Interestingly enough, in the case of the corona-virus pandemic of 2020, there was not an intersubjective dissonance at the outset, probably because of the threat for human lives. The initial response to the pandemic focused on protecting public health, disregarding the economic and social costs. The emergence of a challenging trade-off between public health and economic sustainability became a serious political issue for many countries after the pandemic was defeated. It is this type of issue that requires stakeholder engagement for determining saliency, priority and trust, and, hence avoiding polarization.

Measurements from the Arena of Practice (Colabs 1995–2005) The values of N, V, R, and K, shown in Table 2, correspond to the type of colab focusing on dentification of barriers or challenges of the complex situation. The values of V correspond to the saliency preferences of the participants after the step of clarification of ideas, and before the step of classification.

Sponsor

FDA

NMFS

FDA

Schering-Plough Research Institute

HRPI

HRPI

FDA

Project

Strategic Plan for Office of Regulatory Affairs Cincinnati District

Action Plan for Turtle Exclusion Device (TED Compliance Rules

Redesigning the Office of Chief Counsel

Action Plan for a Drug Development Project

Action Plan for the Development of XY234

Achieving 1994 Performance for HRPI

Administrative Management Files Project

110

146

123

107

80

82

95

Number of Ideas (N)

Table 2 Measurement from the arena of practice

39

50

36

31

71

53

63

Number of ideas that received 1 vote (V)

25

39

30

22

21

13

19

Number of ideas in the tree (R)

594

1432

249

342

357

74

312

Number of distinct connections (K)

(0.32) (0.68)

(0.32) (0.68)

(0.26) (0.74)

(0.25) (0.75)

(0.88) (0.12)

(0.62) (0.38)

(0.64) (0.36)

Divergence (D) (DCI)

Singular

1290

124

71

366

42

586

Situational Complexity Index (SCI)

(continued)

CYCLICAL

29

0.41

2.85

5.7

0.9

10.40

PEI Formula

722 Alexander N. Christakis and Maria Kakoulaki

80

103.50

MINIMUM

AVERAGE

85

146

FDA

Good Review Practices (GRP) Initiative

Number of Ideas (N)

MAXIMUM

Sponsor

Project

Table 2 (continued)

48.63

31

71

46

Number of ideas that received 1 vote (V)

23.75

13

30

21

Number of ideas in the tree (R)

466.75

74

1432

374

Number of distinct connections (K)

(0.48) (0.52)

0.25

0.88

(0.51) (0.49)

Divergence (D) (DCI)

332

42

1290

318

Situational Complexity Index (SCI)

8.2

0.41

29

8

PEI Formula

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Observations from Table 2 1. 2.

3.

4.

5.

6.

7.

The Divergence index D, is the complement of the Demosensus Index (DCI), i.e., as the value of the divergence decreases the value of DCI increases; For the eight cases reported in this Table, the average divergence after clarification and before classification is 48 percent. This average happens to be in agreement with the average obtained from eighty-one applications performed at the Center for Interactive Management at George Mason University in the decade of the 1980s. It also agrees with the crossing of the tow lines, one representing the Divergence and the other the Demosensus in Fig. 2; The number of ideas generated by the participants, N, ranges from a maximum of 146 to a minimum of 80, which is indicative of the variety of stakeholders’ perspectives represented in these eight colabs. Also, the average N being equal to 103, shows the kind of situations emerging in the intersubjectivity domain of science requiring the application of SDD; The value of PEI ranges from a maximum of 29, to a minimum of 0.41, with the value of 29 corresponding to the case of maximum complexity with an SCI equal to 1,290, and the 0.41 corresponding to an SCI equal to 124; The value of SCI ranges from a maximum of 1,290 to a minimum of 42. However, we also have identified a case with a singularity SCI, i.e., the tree of influence among the 25 ideas was almost completely cyclical, i.e., each idea influences all other members of the set; Even though SCI is proportional to the value of PEI, as shown in the SCI formula, those tow indices are not correlated, i.e., a high PEI does not necessarily imply a high SCI, because the SCI is impacted by the value of the divergence D; The average value of SCI equal to 338, which is about one third of the maximum value of SCI. The value of SCI, if calculated using the entries of the averages in the Average row of the Table, is 352, and the optimum SCI obtained if the tree were linear is equal to approximately 43. All these values of the SCI seem to indicate that the eight cases reported in the Table were confronting high complexity situations, with substantial intersubjectivity that required the intervention of the methodology of SDD to help the observers converge to a consensus.

Conclusions Another Axiom of the Foundation Domain of the science of dialogic design is the Engagement Axiom, attributed to Hasan Ozbekhan, which states: “Designing social systems, such as health care, education, cities, communities, without the authentic engagement of the stakeholders is unethical, and results in inferior plans that are not implementable” (Hasan Ozbekhan). Stakeholder inclusion is a necessary and sufficient condition for designing superior and implementable action plans for the people and by the people. The Demosophia

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paradigm, which validates the role of the science of dialogic design, is the prerequisite for the productive inclusion of stakeholders. Avoiding polarization necessitates engaging stakeholders for saliency, priority, and trust. In this chapter we have argued that the imperative of a paradigm shift for the legitimacy of the science of intersubjectivity must be repeatedly demonstrated through inclusion of stakeholders in the arena. However, application of the science of dialogue is dependent on the acceptance of the requirement for a scientific revolution and recognizing the crucial role of deliberative democracy. Without deliberation and inclusion in the resolution of complex situations, such as the climate change, health issues, localized conflicts, and many other Continuous Critical Problems, i.e. the CCPs of the Club of Rome prospectus, the sustainability of the planet remains at risk. The effectiveness of SDD has been demonstrated in thousands of applications with a variety of stakeholders and cultures worldwide. The acceptance of democratic deliberations, even when they prove to be effective with the colab participants, are often confronted with the challenges of overcoming the barriers of conventional First Phase Science. It appears that the prevalence of objectivity, as compared to understanding and accepting intersubjectivity, is still very appealing and occasionally necessary to political, financial, and academic elites globally; it preserves the status quo and the concentration of power in the hands of the few. It is also becoming increasingly apparent that the lack of sensitivity to intersubjectivity perpetuates the dominance of a pseudo-democracy, as compared to the Demosophia Paradigm. It took three hundred years for the Catholic Church to recognize that the sun, and not the earth, was at the center of the planetary system and in the process many who contested the views of the church were interrogated and tortured, whilst women have been kept at arm’s length from the pulpit. Hopefully, the legitimacy of the Demosophia paradigm and the science of intersubjectivity, will not take that long. We are all aware that First Phase scientists predict a climate catastrophe within the next decade. The way to avoid this catastrophe is to objectify intersubjectivity as the modern scientific (r)evolution equivalent to the paradigm shift from the geocentric to the heliocentric planetary system. The data presented in Table 2 from applications of SDD are indicative of the capacity to objectify intersubjectivity. Naturally Inclusive Democracy Naturally inclusive democracy isn’t binary Pitting one against another In stark contrast To pick a winner and dump a loser Naturally inclusive democracy is coming together In creative confluence Around receptive, central silent stillness That gathers each in other’s influence From far to near In vibrant, swelling chorus A swirl of many shades and hues Combining kaleidoscopically

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In symphonic variations Around a central calling That breathes in ceaseless motion Neither for nor against any or many But holding in the balance All in one continuous evolution of soul and spirit In natural communion of diversity Poem by Alan Rayner

References and Bibliography Bausch, K., & Christakis, A. N. (2003). Technology to liberate rather than imprison. Bausch, K., & Christakis, A. N. (2015). With reason and vision: Structured dialogic design, Emergence Publications. Christakis, A. N. (1973). A new policy science paradigm. Futures, 5(6), 543–558. Christakis, A. N. (1987). High technology participative design: The space- based laser, in general systems. John A. Dillon Jr. (Eds.), International Society for the Systems Sciences (Vol. XXX, pp. 69–75). Christakis, A. N. (1988). The Club of Rome revisited in: General systems. W. J. Reckmeyer (Eds.), International Society for the Systems Sciences (Vol. XXXI, pp. 35–38). New York. Christakis, A. N. (1993). The inevitability of demosophia. In I. Tsivacou (Ed.), A challenge for systems thinking: The Aegean seminar (pp. 187–197). Athens, Greece: University of the Aegean Press. Christakis, A. N. (1996). A people science: The CogniScope system approach, systems. Journal of Transdisciplinary Systems Sciences, 1(1), 1–9. Christakis, A. N. (2014). An epic learning journey: From the Club of Rome to dialogic design science and demosophia. In G. Metcalf (Eds.), Social systems and design. Springer Press. Christakis, A. N. (2016). Logosofia Software, Michigan Department of Education. Christakis, A. N. (2018). The evolutionary origins of a good society. New York: Little Brown. Christakis, A. N., & Bausch, K. C. (2002). Technologue: Technology- supported disciplined dialogue. In N. Roberts (Eds.), Transformative power of dialogue. Elsevier Publishing Co. Christakis, A. N., & Bausch, K. C. (2006a). Co-laboratories of democracy: How people harness their collective wisdom to create the future. Information Age Publishing. Christakis, A. N., & Bausch, K. C. (2006b). How people harness their collective wisdom and power to construct the future in co-laboratories of democracy. Information Age Publishing, Inc. Christakis, A. N., & Brahms, S. (2003). Boundary-spanning dialogue for 21st-century agoras. Systems Research and Behavioral Sciences, 20, 371–382. Christakis, A. N., & Dye, K. M. (1999). Collaboration through communicative action: Resolving the systems dilemma through the CogniScope, systems. Journal of Transdisciplinary Systems Sciences, 4(1). Christakis, A. N., & Dye, K. M. (2008). CogniScope: Lessons learned in the Arena, chapter: Dialogue, dialogue as a collective means of design conversation, P. Jenlink & B. H. Banathy (Eds.) (pp. 187–203). Springer. Christakis, A. N., & Harris, L. (2004). Designing a transnational indigenous leaders interaction in the context of globalization: Wisdom of the people forum. Systems Research and Behavioral Sciences. Christakis, A. N., & Warfield. (1983). N. J proposal for the establishment of interactive management of crete, submitted to the Ministry of Coordination, Government of Greece.

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Christakis, A. N., Warfield, J. N., & Keever, D. (1988). Systems design: Generic design theory and methodology. In M. Decleris (Eds.), Systesms Governance, Publisher Ant. N. Sakkoylas, AthensKomotini, Greece (pp. 143–210). Flanagan, T. (2013). Blueprint for a digital observatorium. Montreal, Canada: Worlds Futures Forum. Flanagan, T., & Bausch, K. (2010). A democratic approach to sustainable futures. Emergence Press. Flanagan, T., & Christakis, A. (2010). The talking point: Creating an environment for exploring complex meaning. Charlotte: Information Age Publishing. Flanagan, T., & Lindell, C. (2018). The Coherence factor: Linking emotion and cognition when individuals think in groups. Charlotte: Information Age Publishing. Harris, L. D., & Wasilewski, J. (2004). Indigeneity, an alternative worldview: Four R’s (relationship, responsibility, reciprocity, redistribution) vs. two P’s (power and profit). Sharing the journey toward conscious evolution. Systems Research and Behavioral Science, 21(5), 489–503. Kakoulaki, M. (2011, September 27). Democratic [R]evolution: Alexandros Christakis: A modern Greek Zorba! Democratic [R]evolution. Accessed from http://leregardcretois.blogspot.com/ 2011/09/alexandros-christakis-modern-greek.html. Kakoulaki, M. (2012). The wine villages of Cyprus: From the visionary anticipation to the sustainable development, Cyprus Academy of Public Administration & Nicosia Town Planning Department. Kakoulaki, M. (2015). Dialogue beyond borders documentary based on Interviews Israel, Palestine, Cyprus. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SKwXw6hFpAA. Kakoulaki, M., & Christakis, A. N. (2017). Demoscopio: A Demosensual [R]evolutionary Eutopia. In J. McIntyre & N. Romm (Eds.), Balancing individualism and collectivism for social and environmental justice. Springer. Lasswell, H. D. (1960). The techniques of decision seminars. Midwest Journal of Political Science, 4, 213–236. Lasswell, H. (1963). Strategies of inquiry: The rational use of observation. In H. D. Lasswell (Eds.), The future of political science. New York: Atherton Press. Loye, D. (ed.). Consciousness, the great adventure: Toward a fully human theory of evolution. SUNY Press. Institute for 21st Century Agoras. www.globalagoras.org. McIntyre-Mills, J. (2014). Systemic ethics and non-anthropocentric stewardship. New York: Springer. McIntyre-Mills, J. (2017). Planetary passport. New York: Springer. Ozbekhan, H. (1970). The predicament of mankind. quest for structured responses to growing world-wide complexities and uncertainties. http://quergeist.net/Christakis/predicament.pdf. Ozbekhan, H. (1977). Pertinent excerpts on “Futures Creation” from Part 3, H. Ozbekhan, “Toward A General Theory of Planning,” 47–155 (OEDC Report, Jantsch ed. 1968); explained in A. N. Christakis, A New Policy Science Paradigm, FUTURES, Dec 1973; applied in Ozbekhan, The Future of Paris, in ROYAL SOCIETY OF LONDON, PHILOSOPHICAL TRANSACTIONS SERIES A, at 287, 523. Schreibman, V., & Christakis, A. N. (2007). New Agora: New geometry of languaging and new technology of democracy: The structured dialogue process. International Journal of Applied Systemic Studies, 1(1), 2007. Sennet, R. (1999). The spaces of democracy. Harvard Design Magazine, 8, 68–72. Turkle, S. (2005). Reclaiming conversation-the power of talk in the digital age (p. 4). Penguin Press. Warfield, J. N. (1976). Societal systems: Planning, policy, and complexity. New York: Wiley. Warfield, J. N. (1994). A science of generic design (2nd ed.). Ames, IA: The Iowa State University Press. Warfield, J. N., & Cárdenas, A. Roxana. (1994). A handbook of interactive management. Ames, IA: The Iowa State University Press.

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Alexander N. Christakis and Maria Kakoulaki

Alexander N. Christakis founder of Institute for 21st Century Agoras, Heraklion, Crete, Greece. Maria Kakoulaki Journalist & Systemic Design Facilitator, Community Engagement Specialist ‘Demoscopio’ and Member of the Institute for 21st Century Agora.

Chapter 36

The Natural Inclusion of Diversity in Community: Swirls within Swirls and Variations around a Central Theme A. Rayner

Abstract Drawing on personal experience of early childhood in Kenya and later life in the UK, a contrast is recognised between culturally embedded attitudes of mind that either categorically divide or totally unite human identity from or with its natural neighbourhood. Neither of these attitudes makes consistent natural sense, and both can result in false and damaging conceptions of community organisation and diversity. Nonetheless, each is based on a partial truth, which, if complemented by the other brings awareness of the fundamental evolutionary and ecological principle of ‘natural inclusion’. The implications of this principle are explored as a way to enhance human understanding and flourish more sustainably, compassionately and creatively than many of us currently do. Keywords Natural inclusion · Diversity · Community

Introduction: Divided and United Cultures of Human Exclusion and Inclusion from and in Nature Drawing on my personal experience of early childhood in Kenya in the 1950s and later life in the UK, I will point in this chapter to two contrasting mental attitudes, their perceptual origin and their influence on the way we human beings relate to one another, our surroundings and the diversity of natural communities. Whereas one attitude categorically divides our sense of self- or group- human identity from our natural neighbourhood, the other, when taken to extremes, expunges any sense of individual, group or local differences, thereby unifying ‘all as one’. The former attitude, broadly known philosophically as ‘dualism’, is deeply entrenched in modern rationalistic thought. It is embedded in the foundations of conventional mathematics, scientific method, theism, language, schooling and governance. The latter, broadly

A. Rayner (B) Bath and North East Somerset, Bathford, UK e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2021 J. J. McIntyre-Mills and Y. Corcoran-Nantes (eds.), From Polarisation to Multispecies Relationships, Contemporary Systems Thinking, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-33-6884-2_36

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known as ‘non-dual’, manifests in different guises as monism, holism and nihilism (Photo 36.1). Neither attitude in itself makes consistent natural sense—each is paradoxical in its own way. Yet each is rooted in a partial truth, which, if complemented by the other, offers us a way of understanding, without contradiction, both what all forms of life have in common and how and why they differ. This ‘third way’ of understanding ‘our true nature’ is based on the fundamental evolutionary and ecological principle that I call ‘natural inclusion’.

Photo 36.1 ‘Holding Openness’ (Oil painting on canvas by Alan Rayner, 2005) light as a dynamic natural inclusion of darkness brings an endless diversity of flow-forms to life [See also 3 minute long video presentation at https://youtu.be/BBZhP1waSfs]

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Preview—A Summary of What ‘Natural Inclusion’ Means, What Makes it a Radical Departure From Rationalistic Thought and How it is Relevant to Modern Society Natural inclusion is a fundamental evolutionary principle which enables us to understand the true nature of reality as a varied expression of natural energy flow around and between local receptive centres of space. Or, to put it another way… Beneath the complex surface appearance of reality lies a simple truth: a dance between infinite receptive spatial void and local responsive energetic motion – darkness and light co-creatively combined in myriad variations around a simple, central theme. In this way we can understand how all material bodies, including our own human bodies, from subatomic in scale upwards, come into being and diversify as ‘flow-forms’—mutual inclusions of void space and circulating energy in receptive-responsive relationship. This is ancient spiritual wisdom in a modern scientific guise that appreciates the artfulness of all life on Earth. It is implicit, for example, in aboriginal cultures, Taoism, Hinduism and Gnostic Christianity as well as in the findings of quantum mechanics. We understand our selves and other beings as dynamic inhabitants of one another’s natural spatial and energetic neighbourhood—distinct identities together in receptiveresponsive relationship, not independent entities set apart from one another and our surroundings. Life is not, as we have been misled to believe by abstract thought, a competitive ‘struggle for existence’ in a finite box of space, but a gift of natural energy flow, which we receive gratefully, cherish protectively and pass on eventually in continuous relay. Knowing this we can abide in companionship with one another in natural neighbourhood in a more passionate, compassionate, co-creative and sustainable way than many of us have come to believe is possible. Life makes natural sense, not abstract non-sense. We step beyond the paradoxes of dualism and monism, which respectively isolate and conflate the tangible presence of matter and intangible presence of space from or with each other. We recognise instead that matter and space are distinct but mutually inclusive presences. We liberate ourselves from mental entrapment in the imaginary structures of boxed-in logic into the boundless freedom for movement of space everywhere. We realize that Nature is not an object to connect or disconnect ourselves to or from but a continuous presence we inhabit and express as local energetic swirls. We appreciate both the uniqueness of our local identities and our pooled togetherness in diverse communities of common space: our ‘natural communion’. That is why awareness of natural inclusion is so relevant and needed in today’s globalized society, which, due to the prevalence of abstract thought, has got caught up in a needless Civil War with itself and its ancestral home of Nature.

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Diversity in Community How do you feel about the uniqueness of your self-identity? Do you feel pride or shame? Do you feel ‘special’ in some way, or ‘not good enough’ and under pressure to conform to some norm or ideal? Do you feel ‘superior’ or ‘inferior’? Do you feel isolated and at odds with your neighbours and neighbourhood, or are you inspired by a sense of belonging and ability to contribute to the flourishing of the natural community of life that you inhabit? Individual differences are often perceived by us human beings as a source of conflict and disparity between life forms, including ourselves. This causes us either to aspire individualistically to supremacy in a competitive ‘struggle for existence’ or collectively to subjugate ourselves to some overarching authority or dogma. Capitalist and totalitarian politics and religious fundamentalism result from these tendencies either to ‘out- perform’ others in an anarchic ‘free-for-all’ that lacks social coherence or ‘conform in line’ with others in an ‘ordered uniformity’ that lacks individual creativity (Rayner, 2010). On the other hand, individual differences are widely recognised to be an expression of natural evolutionary creativity and complementary partnership (Rayner, 1997, 2017). Social organisation in ants, bees and Portuguese man o’ war jellyfish, for example, depends on the differentiation of distinctive roles amongst colony members. Sexual specialisation into male and female occurs in many species. Mutualistic symbiosis between radically different kinds of organism is widespread, for example in lichens, mycorrhizas and coral reefs. Our own human bodies would have very limited capabilities if all the cells within them were identical. So too would our human communities if all human individuals were the same. And so too would be the natural ecosystems of the world and their inhabitant communities of many different species of plants, animals, fungi, protists and bacteria co-existing together in diverse and often complex interrelationship. There is a profound truth in the saying that ‘it takes all kinds to make a world’. To imagine otherwise and seek to impose an unnatural uniformity on Nature or human nature, as in certain philosophical and political dogmas, is partial-sighted, cancerous and unsustainable in the long run. Natural inclusionality is a philosophy of life, environment and people, which recognises the evolutionary vitality—NOT irreconcilability—both of individual difference and collective coherence in social organisations from subatomic to galactic scales. This philosophy is in turn founded on awareness of the central underlying principle of natural inclusion (e.g. Rayner, 2010, 2011a, b; 2012, 2017, 2018). This principle can be described in many ways, but in essence it is the mutual inclusion of void space and energetic circulation as co-creative, receptive and responsive presences in all material bodies. In other words, natural inclusionality recognises that our human bodily boundaries, like all material bodily boundaries, are dynamically informed as swirls of energy around receptive centres of void space—as illustrated in my painting, ‘Holding Openness’ (above). We are all, in a sense, hollow-centred ‘hungry holes’ sustained by

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natural energy flow as ‘flow-forms’. Ultimately, we are natural dynamic inclusions of darkness (void) in light (energy). This, then, is what all material bodies have in common. As sentient beings we are aware of this ‘inner hunger’ as a desire for sustenance—a hunger for life that we hold dear until it can no longer be sustained and we are obliged to ‘pass on’ to sustain our offspring and other life forms. This receptive influence or ‘heart of darkness’ in the core of our being is what primarily motivates our behaviour as needful and hence vulnerable creatures. It is a source both of love for the spatial and energetic natural neighbourhood (‘Mother Nature’) from and within which we are born, and fear of what could threaten our source of sustenance from outside. We live on the cusp of attraction to and repulsion from what resides beyond our dynamic bodily boundaries—as relational interfaces between inner world and outer—but can never be totally isolated from it if we are to continue living. Inescapably we are dynamic local inclusions and expressions of our neighbourhood, and so too are all our neighbouring bodies. Both individually and collectively, we are never alone or all one as an entity or ‘whole’ complete and entire of itself: ‘no man is an island’—and neither is any group of men or women. None of this is evident to us if—as is the habit of purely objective or ‘third person’ perception—we confine our attention to what we view as spectators abstracted outside what we are observing. Reality then appears to us as a whole set of whole objects separated from one another by space, time and fixed boundary limits and compelled into motion by external force. It becomes immediately evident, however, as soon as we combine this ‘outsidein’ view with an ‘inside-out’ view that places us within the thick of what we are observing, and ask imaginatively ‘what makes any body distinguishable from its surroundings?’ We then quickly realize that nobody can exist without volume or boundary and so must simultaneously both include and be included in space. Material body and space are hence distinct but mutually inclusive, not mutually exclusive or coextensive, and this comes about through the responsive circulation of energy around a receptive central point or axis of space. We also realize that no material body can exist instantaneously, in ‘zero time’, because it comes into being as the result of energetic movement. All bodies are dynamically informed holes, not rigidly defined wholes. Think of a whirlpool or the ‘eye’ of a storm, and you will get this ‘hole point’, as well as a strong sense of self-identity, ‘I’, as a natural inclusion of spatial and energetic neighbourhood. So much for what all material bodies have in common as dynamic inclusions of receptive void space. What makes them individually different? What makes ‘you’ and ‘I’ individually unique? The answer clearly resides in their dynamically informed boundaries. These boundaries can differ both in their placement or locality, and in their variable composition and resultant variable permeability, rigidity and connectivity, but are always freely permeable to void space as an intangible and hence frictionless receptive presence everywhere. They can differ too in whether the circulation within them is clockwise, anticlockwise or an intertwining combination of both. All material bodies are 100% frictionless space plus circulating energy, NOT part space and part matter/energy.

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Material bodies differ, then, both in where they are—two distinct bodies cannot simultaneously be in exactly the same place—and in the composition and direction of circulation of their energetic boundaries. But they are never isolated from one another’s receptive and responsive influence in continuous void space. With regard to boundary composition, we can recall some important scientific findings. Firstly, we know that light energy is not monochromatic but occurs across a continuous spectrum of different frequencies, not all of which are visible to the naked human eye. We know too, that there is a ‘Periodic Table’ full of chemical elements with differing atomic weights, electronic configurations, chemical reactivity and radioactivity. Atoms of these elements can combine and recombine with one another to form a huge variety of different compounds, especially the organic, carbon-based compounds that contribute to the complex structural and metabolic biochemistry of living organisms like ourselves. We have discovered that this complex biochemistry is catalysed (i.e. speeded up) via the ‘active sites’ as specific receptive spatial configurations in proteins, and that the composition and resultant spatial configuration of these ‘polypeptide’ combinations of amino acids is encoded by the sequence of bases holding together the ‘double helix’ of DNA. With regard to direction of circulation, we know that two discs spinning freely at the same frequency will engage with one another when placed with their circumferences side-by-side if their spins are reciprocal (i.e. clockwise and anticlockwise) but bounce apart or grind to a halt if their spins are identical. By the same token, we know that they will engage when placed with their diameters adjacent if their spins are identical but bounce off or grind into each other if their spins are reciprocal. In both cases there may be some resistance prior to engagement if they are not initially spinning at the same frequency. Any car driver who has misused clutch and gear-choice will be aware of this relationship. Likewise, anyone who has watched ripples spreading radially into one another on the surface of a body of water will be aware of the complex patterns of peaks and troughs that develop from what are described technically as ‘constructive’ and ‘destructive’ interference. So too will someone attempting to tune a TV or radio to the correct frequency of transmission. So too will a suspension bridge builder aware of the danger of catastrophic ‘resonance’ (amplified vibrations) or a piano or guitar tuner using the same phenomenon to match note to tuning fork. There is hence a huge variety of ways in which natural, intrinsically dynamic flowforms can associate with and dissociate from one another into diverse configurations of and within continuous space as recurrent ‘swirls within swirls’ and ‘variations around a central theme’. All this is a matter of common experience and knowledge. And yet its profound significance in understanding the co-creative, receptiveresponsive relationships underlying natural diversity and our own human relationships with one another and our natural surroundings gets overlooked when we use objective perception alone to investigate the fundamental nature of reality. We have been stuck with this abstract exclusion as a predominant way of thinking for far too long, resulting in profound psychological, social and environmental harm as well as philosophical misunderstanding.

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Wider recognition of natural inclusion—which is implicit in much ancient and indigenous wisdom—is long overdue, if we are truly understand how diversity arises in and contributes to the evolutionary organisation, sustainability and transformation of natural communities. But in order to bring that about we are going to need to develop new ways of understanding and describing natural continuity.

Beyond Interconnectedness—Prelude In an egocentric world where people feel increasingly at odds with one another and Nature, the call to find ways to ‘connect’ and ‘reconnect’ has become very strong. Have you heard this call? If so, how do you respond to it? When you hear someone say, ‘we’re all interconnected,’ or ‘let’s reconnect with Nature,’ or ‘Nature is an interconnected web’ do you feel the urge to ‘get out there and do things together?’ Or does it in some way make you want to dive for cover or run for the hills to live a hermit-like existence? Does it fill you with hope for the future of humanity—as a solution to all our personal, social and environmental problems—or does it fill you with worry and doubt? How do you feel about the way the Internet has influenced our lives? Now we humans all around the planet are interconnected via our telecommunications, computers and high-speed road, rail and air links, what costs and benefits do you perceive for the quality of our lives as individuals and groups? Do you feel empowered and more easily heard, or disempowered by the noise of billions clamouring for attention while relatively few are positioned to monopolize the air waves? Do you recognise the vulnerability of networks to internal spread of damaging influences, such as viruses and malevolence, as well as beneficial ones? What do the terms ‘globalisation’ and ‘totalitarianism’ mean to you? I recognise both the value of ‘connecting with others’ and its limitations. As a naturalist, familiar with both the individual and collective organization of natural life forms and communities, I understand the ecological principle of interrelationship. Likewise, I recognise the vitality of degenerative as well as regenerative processes in evolutionary innovation and sustainability. So, I can ‘hear’ and appreciate the call for interconnection, while I am aware that it brings dangers as well as hope and that taking it too far can be a serious impediment to and distraction from responding to a much more profound need. This need is no less than the need for love in life. To understand why the call for connection is both understandable and problematic, we need to recognise this call as a symptom of—NOT a remedy for—what has gone wrong in our relationships with one another and with our natural neighbourhood. It arises from an attitude of mind that isolates self- or group-identity from neighbourhood by divorcing ‘subject’ from ‘object’. This attitude is in its turn the result of an abstract-literal perception of reality in which we see boundaries only from the outside. We hence envisage natural boundaries and space to be barriers to communication, when in reality they serve to contain, channel and permit the transfer

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of energy from one locality to another. Natural boundaries are inter-relational presences, places of in-betweenness that serve to distinguish one locality from another both as containers and conduits. Natural space is a ubiquitous, frictionless presence that freely permits movement. You might recall here how ‘Space’ is regarded in ‘Star Trek’ as the ‘Final Frontier,’ to be breached by Human ‘Enterprise’! Turn that perception around and you have the foundation for the radically new comprehension of reality that I have called ‘natural inclusion’. It is possible to understand natural inclusion by reasoning quite simply from everyday experience. But in order to do so, you may have to lay aside all your preconceptions of reality based on what you have been led to believe is true, and accept instead what you are able to work out and imagine for yourself. You have to liberate your thinking from what has been prescribed and networked by generations before us and get back down to basic principles (literally ab-original principles) that may have been evident to you as a pre-school child at play. That’s what I had to do!

Interlude: The Cage, the Climbing Frame and the Swimming Pool—Bending the Rules of Intangible Mathematical Structure Much of my privileged early childhood in the 1950s was spent playing in a colonial Kenyan garden, which sloped down to the River Nairobi at its bottom. There were trees to climb, lawns on which to run, jump and sprawl and a swimming pool to immerse in. But there was also much to fear. Not only was there some potentially dangerous wildlife, but there was a backcloth of political and tribal unrest. The noun ‘Mau Mau’ was spoken in hushed tones accompanied by tales of savagery that stuck a dissonant chord of terror in my young soul. And, yes, there were dark-skinned African servants and their children to care for me and play with as an extended family. Their living conditions in a hut near the chicken run were a far cry from those in our elevated large house and veranda overlooking all that lay below it. But there was something in their warm, welcoming sense of being at home in their natural neighbourhood, combined with their rhythmic musicality and onomatopoeic language, which contrasted markedly with the feeling of stiff dislocation I experienced within our own household. I felt both at ease and like an intruder in their presence. I remember being startled by the pallid palms of their hands and soles of their feet, which revealed their underlying kinship with my whiteness, despite superficial appearances. Looking back, I recognise the developing awareness I now have of cultural exclusion from and inclusion in human and natural neighbourhood and how this affects our mental attitudes towards one another and our surroundings. Mental dislocation from natural neighbourhood results in varied forms of exploitative tyranny that are all too evident in modern culture. Total self-dissolution into neighbourhood results

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in passive conformity, which prevents us from contributing creatively as unique identities to the communities we inhabit. Years later, having just taken my final exams in ‘natural sciences’ at King’s College, Cambridge, I painted this picture as a recollection of those colonial times, transported into an English context (Photo 36.2). My African experience ended abruptly. One fateful day, I climbed too high up a jacaranda tree, a branch bent and broke under my weight and I was lucky only to suffer a severely broken arm and gashed leg. Not long afterwards my father suffered a stroke and required hospital treatment back in England. Trauma followed upon trauma. Literally overnight I found myself transported from that tropical setting, never to return. And before long I was confined within a London schoolroom trying to decipher the abstract mathematical mysteries of whole numbers, fractions and straight-sided figures. These mysteries converted the boundless freedom for movement of natural space into a three-dimensional cage, and time into a line of separate instants from beginning to end. They did not add up to anything resembling my actual experience of continuous real life outdoors. Nonetheless, they were supposed to define ‘The Laws of Nature’ as a fixed set of rules. They needed to be learned and adhered to, especially as a good, ‘objective’ scientist, if you were not to ‘go wrong’. So that is what I tried to do. But somewhere deep within me would have none of it. I felt once again the sense of being an intruder in a culture that I did not belong within. Only this time, I found myself being treated as such by the culture itself.

Photo 36.2 ‘Tropical Involvement’ (Oil painting on board by Alan Rayner, 1972)

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Photo 36.3 ‘Arid Confrontation’ (Oil painting on board by Alan Rayner, 1973)

A year after painting ‘Tropical Involvement’, as I was embarking on a Ph.D. study on fungal ecology, I made another painting, entitled ‘Arid Confrontation’. This brought my, by now, unconscious discomfort with abstract scientific methodology and mathematics out into open expression (Photo 36.3). There was something about this methodology that cut me as a scientific observer off from the natural world I experienced, delighted in and wanted to understand. The effect was desolate. I felt the need to re-immerse in the flow of what I was observing, and over the years that lay ahead my work departed further and further from the ‘straight and narrow’ path of abstract rationality. Eventually, around the turn of the millennium, I fully realized what it is about the objective view of reality that was causing me so much discomfort. It ignores and/or removes from material form what is actually vital for this form to exist and come to life! Far from being ‘realistic’ or ‘true to life’, it is a restriction to the straight and narrow that can have no tangible existence. And yet it purports to represent just that as a rigid structural framework within and against which to measure and plot the distribution and movement of ‘things’. So, what is it that is being removed or ignored, and what is it that this mathematical structure actually represents? A clue to the answer can be found by questioning what a dimensionless point, a breadth-less line, a depthless surface or a box-frame of depthless surfaces attached to one another can truly amount to. Clearly, they can’t amount to anything substantial because there is no such thing as a substance without thickness! Can you imagine what this natural presence removed or ignored by abstract mathematical definition could be? Perhaps, if you have been following my train of thought

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up to now, you will have guessed. It took a long while for the answer to dawn on me. But when it did, it turned my painfully learned abstract world view outside-in, back to what I knew as a child playing in a Kenyan garden with Africans who felt included in their habitat, and to what countless soulfully aware predecessors overlooked by scientific and mathematical rationalism have known before me. Ironically, the answer to the question of ‘what’s gone absent without leave’ is one and the same intangible stillness of void space that exists eternally and everywhere without limit! This stillness is anything but rigid. Rather it is a receptive presence that freely both permits and attracts movement—as may be apparent when you vacuum clean your carpet! Being insubstantial, it cannot be cut or displaced by moving form, but simply slips silently through it (Rayner, 2011a). So, it dawned on me that material form and immaterial space are neither mutually exclusive nor one and the same as is supposed by abstract thought, but, distinct but mutually inclusive presences. This set the scene for me to develop the new way of understanding evolutionary processes based on what I have called ‘natural inclusion’. This subsumes the abstract concept of ‘natural selection’, which envisages life as a competitive struggle to fit a pre-defined ‘box of space’ called a ‘niche’. The latter concept, and its entourage of ‘social Darwinism’, eugenics and ‘selfish gene theory’ was also a source of great discomfort for me as someone with deeply compassionate values. In order fully to develop my awareness of natural inclusion, however, there was one more imaginative leap I needed to make. I had to work out how material form and immaterial space actually could naturally include each other. This raised the question of how natural boundaries that distinguish material bodies from one another and the space they are immersed in could come into being. Clearly, they could not just pop instantaneously fully formed into existence as ‘something from nothing’—not in my imagination anyway. The realization came to me rather readily as a result of my enjoyment of painting. A blob of paint placed on a canvas remains just that: a blob of paint. To come to life as an image, it needs to flow. Aha! I realized that natural boundaries can only be formed dynamically, as an expression of energy flow, and that can neither happen instantaneously, nor can it come to a stop if the form is not to disappear instantaneously back where it came from. The dynamically bounded form of a whirlpool, for example, disappears if its circulation stops. Natural boundaries are intrinsically dynamic, not rigidly fixed in place. Time cannot be abstracted from material form and neither can space if the form is to exist and persist for more than no time. Gosh! The rigid cage of abstract space and time constructed by conventional mathematics and objective science for material forms to be pushed and pulled around within by external ‘force’ is nothing of the sort! In place of the deterministic rules of abstract ‘lines of force’ and ‘boxed-in’ space, we have intangible guidelines—‘channels of receptive spatial influence’ as inductive ‘attractors’. Energy pulses and circulates responsively along and around these channels between and around all tangible material forms, from subatomic in scale upwards. These forms come to life as ‘flow-forms’—forms made of flow, not

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inert building blocks of mass. Instead of the independence of measurable distance, duration, energy and matter of particulate Newtonian mechanics, and the ‘space-time’ of Einstein’s relativity theories, we have the ‘place-time’ of natural inclusion. Here all material form exists as an intrinsically dynamic locality—a ‘place somewhere’ as an energetic inclusion of space everywhere. The rigid cage becomes an intangible climbing frame for life to flow and blossom around. Space continuously pools all swimmingly together instead of splitting us apart. Knowing ourselves to be centres of receptive-responsive awareness—dynamically enveloped holes, not definitively bounded wholes—compassion for one another as neighbours in natural spatial and energetic neighbourhood becomes second nature, not moral obligation. Neighbourhood in the sense used in this paper refers to the common space in which resources are shared by members of any living system. We look after one another and our environment as we look after ourselves coming into and passing on life in natural relay. We recognise that energy flow is the natural currency of life on Earth, and it ebbs from ‘abundance’ to ‘scarcity’, not the other way around as with money flow in cultures estranged from their neighbourhood (Rayner, 2010). Doesn’t that bending of rules feel infinitely better, more realistic and more creative than struggling to fit ourselves into a predetermined box of our own making? (Photo 36.4).

Back to Beyond Interconnectedness To get back to the problem facing the Star Trek crew, most especially Mr Spock. When we are led to believe that material objects ultimately have sharply definitive boundaries that exclude space, we will envisage space as a distancing ‘gap’ or ‘barrier’ between ‘things’. We will imagine that these things can only be brought into communication with one another by ‘connecting’ them forcefully together. Recall how problematic Newton himself, as an observer objectively detached from what he was observing, found the idea of ‘action at a distance’ implicit in his conception of ‘gravity’? In fact, he went so far as to suggest that God must therefore reside in absolute space. Recall too, how ‘The Age of Reason’ preceding the Industrial Revolution constructed a distanced, rationalistic view of reality. This view dismissed emotion as ‘subjective irrationality’ and treated human beings as no more than sophisticated machines with varying abilities and efficiency. It set the scene for the Darwinian conception of life as a competitive ‘struggle for existence’, along with the rise of capitalism and communism, social discrimination and the devastating arms races and ideological wars of the twentieth century (Rayner, 2010). Does this history sound painfully familiar? This is what results from the fiction that the atomistic logic embedded in the foundations of conventional mathematics and objective science has been telling us and teaching our children for millennia. Added to our natural fear of death, pain and uncertainty, this fiction has served to drive us damagingly adrift from one another and our natural neighbourhood to such

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Photo 36.4 ‘How Compassion Fruits’ (Oil painting on canvas by Alan Rayner, 2008)

an extent that our emotions now cry out for ‘connection’ and ‘healing’ as the only means they can imagine to ‘bridge the gaps’ in our divided psyches and communities. Awareness of natural inclusion enables us to recognise that in reality we were never isolated from or by space in the first place, and couldn’t have been if we were to have any material existence as more than a dimensionless point or dimensionless gathering of points! The very idea that matter and space are mutually exclusive is paradoxical. Space is a receptive, frictionless, intangible presence that pools us together in natural communion and allows free passage of matter and energy. It is not a substance, but what makes substance possible. Pooled together in space we dwell inescapably within one another’s receptive and responsive influence. This influence radiates intangibly through the space between and within our material bodies, whether we are tangibly connected or not. Planets can orbit within the sun’s gravitational and energetic influence without being attached

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to the sun. I symbolise this receptive-responsive influence in my painting and poem, ‘Radiant Receptivity’, below. For me, a flower epitomises radiant receptivity in its invitation to pollinators and attractiveness to us human beings (Photo 36.5). To be a Guiding Light of Life Radiating into Darkness One needs to Receive the Light of Life From out of Darkness Into Flowing, Flowering Form Around the Stillness Within One’s Dark Receptive Heart This Place where Female calls Male receptively Into welcoming Embrace And Male receptively responds In Spirited Congregation

Photo 36.5 ‘Radiant Receptivity’ (Oil painting on board by Alan Rayner, 2020)

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Around the Altar of Her Soul Bringing the Light of Life To Flare from the Fathomless Depth of Being That is Becoming Endlessly None of what I have said above is to deny the importance of natural connections and networking. I mean only to place these phenomena within a much more comprehensive panorama than is afforded by abstract perceptions that isolate or conflate matter from or with space. The formation of tangible linkages between one locality and another (which is what I mean by ‘interconnection’) enables energy to be channelled along pathways between them in a more focussed or concentrated way than is possible otherwise. The stronger these pathways become as conduits, the more they will attract energy away from other possible routes. For example, the first person to cross a field of tall grass will create in their wake a narrow path of least resistance—i.e. a path of less obstructed space—that others will prefer to follow rather than make the effort to form own paths. A self-reinforcing (‘autocatalytic’) process results, in which the original path is widened and flattened. This process therefore both eases passage across the field and constrains its direction. So, the formation of connective conduits can both liberate life and restrict its possibilities for future evolution through a process of reinforcement that imposes increasing conformity with what has gone before. As this happens, the need to stray individually from an established path may be vital to open up new possibilities, but it will require increasing effort until or unless the established path degenerates. This is why I had to free myself from previous thought in order to open my mind up to the possibility of natural inclusion—and why I earlier invited you to do the same. The evolutionary sustainability of a living system requires both collective coherence and individual non-conformity. I was perhaps fortunate at one stage of my life to study arguably the greatest living connectors and network-formers in natural communities, the underworld infrastructure in our forests, grasslands, heathlands and moorlands that links the lives of plants and animals in innumerable and varied ways. I am speaking here of the Fungal Kingdom, a richly diverse group of organisms that typically gather in, conserve, explore for and redistribute the sources of energy they need through systems of cellular tubes. These tubes are called ‘hyphae’. They extend at their tips and branch and fuse with one another to form coherent collective organisations called ‘mycelia’. I once illustrated the varied ecological roles of these ‘great communicators’ in a painting called ‘Fountains of the Forest’ (Photo 36.6): One experiment especially taught me some very important lessons about these natural network-forming systems (Photo 36.7): Here, in this living flow-network, we see a beautifully orchestrated pattern of receptive-responsiveness in changing circumstances that some human organisations might do well to emulate! Where there is nutritional plenty, the fungus branches

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Photo 36.6 Fountains of the Forest (oil painting on board by Alan Rayner, Mycological Research 102, 1441–1449, 1998). ‘a tree is a solar-powered fountain, its sprays supplied through wood-lined conduits and sealed in by bark until their final outburst in leaves … Within and upon its branching, enfolding, water-containing surfaces, and reaching out from there into air and soil are branching, enfolding, water-containing surfaces of finer scale, the mycelial networks of fungi … which provide a communications interface for energy transfer from neighbour to neighbour, from living to dead, and from dead to living’

profusely, producing a large free-surface for absorption through permeable, assimilative boundaries. Where there is scarcity, it enters into a more distributive and redistributive developmental pattern within relatively impermeable or degenerating, non-assimilative boundaries. This is no mathematical construct of individual dots joined by solid lines, but a versatile system of flow-channels formed by growth from one or more local centres. It differs radically from a system of joined threads, like a spider’s web, which is a sticky, immobilizing trap, not an exploratory organization. A special feature is the fusion of some of the branches to form ‘anastomoses’. These convert the organisation from a branching or dendritic structure, with resistances to flow in series, to a true network with resistances in parallel. As anyone who understands electrical circuitry will appreciate, this conversion radically enhances the possibilities for current flow. It is what literally allows the system to ‘mushroom’ creatively from local centres within its midst and around its periphery. That’s an example of real-life interconnectedness for you, in which capacities for generation, preservation, decay and regeneration are all vital to keeping on the move and not getting stuck in gridlock! And both within and beyond this fluid organisation is a vital presence that makes it all possible, but is all too readily overlooked by a

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Photo 36.7 ‘Sustainable development’ in abundance and scarcity, illustrated by mycelial growth of the magpie fungus, Coprinopsis picacea, in a matrix of 25 2 x 2 cm plastic chambers filled alternately with high and low nutrient media. Holes have been cut in the partitions just above the level of the medium. The fungus has been inoculated into the central high nutrient chamber, whence it has produced alternating prolific and condensed patterns of development. Growth linking between chambers has been reinforced into persistent ‘cables’, whereas mycelium unable to extend further has been prone to degenerate (Photograph reproduced by courtesy of Louise Owen and Erica Bower)

mind focused on superficial structure alone—the receptive Grace of infinite Space within our hearts and easing our passage through life! Yes, to get more connected can indeed bring hope for humanity in a world riven by needless opposition and conflict. But we need to recognise how the process can restrict as well as expand our horizons. And we need to recognise too how, if used uncritically, the language of connection can unwittingly bind us into pre-existing dogmas that we need desperately to break free from. For example, the exhortation to ‘re-connect with Nature’ implies that Nature is an object we need to re-attach to. It belies the reality that Nature is a ubiquitous presence that we need to appreciate our dynamic inclusion within, not as ‘part of an interconnected whole’, but as a lively expression of natural energy flow. From Interconnectedness to the Infinity Beyond and Within us! (Photo 36.8)

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Photo 36.8 ‘Swallow Hole’ (Acrylic painting on board by Alan Rayner, 2019)

Beyond Contradiction When two sides contradict each other The Truth Lies Somewhere in Between, Throughout And Everywhere Around In natural circulation Need I Say more?

Avoiding the Void How the abhorrence of darkness isolates us from natural communion

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Nature abhors a vacuum And seeks to fill it So the presumption of abstract rationalisation Claims to be true Nature is a vacuum Which it loves to populate With energetic swirls Around receptive centres of itself In heavenly bodies Somewhere temporarily included In a place sometime So the realisation of natural inclusion Recognises

References Rayner, A. (2012). What are natural systems, actually? Advances in System Science and Application, 12, 328–347. Rayner, A. (2017). The origin of life patterns in the natural inclusion of space in flux. Berlin/Heidelberg: Springer. Rayner, A. (2018). The vitality of the intangible: Crossing the threshold from abstract materialism to natural reality. Human Arenas, 1, 9–20. Rayner, A. D. M. (1997). Degrees of freedom—Living in dynamic boundaries. London: Imperial College Press. Rayner, A. D. M. (2010). Inclusionality and sustainability—Attuning with the currency of natural energy flow and how this contrasts with abstract economic rationality. Environmental Economics, 1, 98–108. Rayner, A. D. M. (2011a). Space cannot be cut: Why self-identity naturally includes neighbourhood. Integrative Psychological and Behavioural Science, 45, 161–184. Rayner, A. D. M. (2011b). NaturesScope: Unlocking our natural empathy and creativity—An inspiring new way of relating to our natural origins and one another through natural inclusion. Winchester, UK; Washington, USA: O Books.

Alan Rayner is an evolutionary ecologist, writer and artist, founder of natural inclusion network.

Chapter 37

Executive Summary: Voices from Below in Every Region for Social and Environmental Justice Janet J. McIntyre-Mills

Abstract Balancing individual rights and collective responsibility to this generation of life and the next requires a new form of democracy and governance to protect the common good. This requires considering the consequences of decisions whilst preserving the right to voice and agency to the extent that it does not undermine the rights of the majority in this generation and the next. The case is made that liberalism has progressed too far in undermining collective responsibility. The result is a form of state control and governance that is more closely linked with the market than with civil society. Re-generation requires re-balancing society as Minzberg stresses to address political barriers but also to ensure that rights of the minority do not override the interests of the majority in this generation and the next. This requires a collective effort to re-create social, economic architectures to protect living systems and readdress Bostrom’s notion of ‘existential risk’. Keywords Representation · Accountability and re-generation of living systems

Introduction: Statement of the Problem and Area of Concern The taxonomic categories that divide human beings from the rest of nature are obsolete and need to be reformulated. A new non anthropocentric ethics is required that respects multiple species and in line with many indigenous cultures respects the notion that organic and inorganic life is a continuum on which living systems depend. A version of this paper was given at ‘Democratisation and social challenges in South East Asia’, Universitas Sultan Ageng Tirtayasa, Indonesia. J. J. McIntyre-Mills (B) University of South Africa in the College of Education, Tshwane, South Africa e-mail: [email protected]; [email protected] Adelaide University, College of Professions Main North Terrace, Adelaide, Australia College of Business, Government and Law, Flinders University, Sturt, SA, Australia

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2021 J. J. McIntyre-Mills and Y. Corcoran-Nantes (eds.), From Polarisation to Multispecies Relationships, Contemporary Systems Thinking, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-33-6884-2_37

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The volume addresses the implications of cross-species infections caused by species being thrust into contact as a result of the loss of habitat. Jane Goodall (2020)1 has explained that protecting habitat is central as species that develop immunity within their own habitats should not be thrust into contact through trafficking, cruel containment practices, inappropriate diets for farmed animals, cruel warehousing and marketing creatures has resulted in this pandemic (along with many previous pandemics such as SARS, MERS and mad cows disease). A case is made for a priori rights of all sentient beings and the a posteriori need to monitor social, economic and environmental indicators of wellbeing to enable liveable habitat for human beings, other animals and plants that form a web of organic and inorganic life. The right for plants to exist in biodiverse habitats needs to be recognised if living systems are to have a hope of surviving (Higgins, 2016; Taket et al., 2018). Nonanthropocentric researchers have stressed the need to recognise that many animal sentient beings have empathy, reciprocity and a sense of fairness (De Waal, 2009). The right for animals to live lives that enable them to achieve their capabilities (Nussbaum, 2006) requires recognising their rights, simply because they are sentient. Other researchers go further arguing that all living systems have agency and communicate in some way, from one celled to the most complex organisms (Meijer, 2016; Rayner, 2010, 2017; Stephens et al., 2019). The legal boundaries need to be re-drawn to recognise justice for plants. This has been stressed by both barrister Polly Higgins and physicist Vandana Shiva in making a plea for an Ecocide Law (Higgins et al., 2013) and a recognition of constitutional rights for nature upheld by an Earth Charter. It is now accepted by researchers that consciousness spans single to complex cells and many species (including plants) are able to ‘learn and remember’ (Gagliano et al., 2018) communicate, make decisions and in some instances, for example fungi share resources for the common good of plants within a shared habitat (Rayner, 2010). Peter Wohlleben (see Wohlleben, 2016) a forester and ecologists Suzanne Simard (see Wohlleben & Simard, 2016) and Camille Defrenne (see Simard & Defrenne, 2019)2 also explain the ways trees support one another through communicating through a network that shares chemicals and through hybrid fungi that help to regulate and share nutrients. Co-operation, rather than competition within post national bioregions is needed to ensure food, energy and water security to support life. The need to flatten the curve of the Covid-19 virus and to protect employment and the life chances of the marginalised, the frail and unemployed is central in the debates as to when and how to open up the economy. We make the case in the volume for a new socio-environmental contract that extends the relationship of solidarity to many species and that guides a new form of economics that protects the rights of multiple species and produces goods and 1 https://www.cnn.com/videos/us/2020/03/19/coronavirus-jane-goodall-acfc-full-episode-vpx.cnn. 2 The secret language

of trees—Camille Defrenne and Suzanne Simard, https://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=V4m9SefyRjg.

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services that are not only sustainable, social, economically and environmentally but that they also strive to re-generate people and places by working with nature, rather than working against it. Examples of regenerative farming using bamboo, mushrooms, honey, organic crops and fostering eco-facturing that creates positive cascading effects are detailed in a number of case studies where aspects of ecofacturing have been trialled. The notion that top down versus bottom up options to governance has been discussed as commentators compare the way in which governments have reacted to the convergent social and economic challenges posed by the virus. Sadly, few have seen that the environmental implications of unethical food production are central to the problem. The next epidemic could be associated with seafood,3 given the way in which the ocean has been used as a dumping ground. The case is made for giving more rights to sentient beings, simply because they are sentient and that this requires liveable habitats for them. A move towards vegetarianism and veganism would flatten the potential for pandemics whilst also helping to reduce carbon emissions. A way forward is balancing and protecting oceans, rivers, wild, rural and urban habitat and using ecovillage nodes connected regionally to city hubs. Unless we protect the environment, pandemics will continue to create mass extinctions. Human beings are no longer top predator. Nation states that consider business as usual as the way forward are facing existential risks. To date some democracies (such as New Zealand and Australia) have managed Covid-19 well through providing economic welfare supports for some of their citizens, but Australia in particular needs to re-examine its policies on climate change. America has discovered that it is not succeeding in flattening the curve.4 The international relationships within the region are strained and Australia will need to balance its trade and security relationships with China and USA, respectively. Obama has given a stinging assessment of the current response to Covid-19 and the social media posts exploring conspiracy theories will not help to prevent the next pandemic. What is needed is a new approach to democracy, governance and economics, rooted in an ethic of care and a new Ecocide Law (Higgins et al., 2013) that gives ‘teeth’ to a Global Covenant (Held, 2004) and enables local people to have a say in their local living conditions. The volume makes a case for scaling up a form of the Aarhus Convention (see Florini, 2003) but integrates this with the need for post national regional biospheres that are subject to the Ecocide law which makes it illegal for individuals, companies or nations to destroy the conditions of life. It reflects on the work of Global Agoras to 3 Liam Mannix May 16, 2020—11.30 p.m. https://www.smh.com.au/national/scientists-tried-to-pre

dict-covid-19-here-s-why-they-missed-it-20200515-p54tgb.html. 4 “The US coronavirus response has finally shattered the myth of American exceptionalism Nations around the world have scrambled to respond to the coronavirus pandemic. But the rapid pace at which the crisis has overtaken health systems in the US and the UK has exposed, and perhaps accelerated, the withering health of these democracies. Now, with a president who has touted sunlight and bleach as cures, the US may well resemble the same “outlier” countries it has long believed itself to be above. “We are the outlier,” a career epidemiologist tells “Insider” See Business Insider’s https:// apple.news/Arhxb6eldQhOnUMd9rDa69A.

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support structured dialogues together with members of the Balancing Individualism and Collectivism SIG and related networks. It has been suggested that Global Agoras could integrate Structured Dialogue with pathways to wellbeing to enable a voice for every region in a bid to protect diversity and bio-diversity. The experience of liaising with colleagues on some integrated projects to flatten the curve of unemployment associated with pandemics and climate change through systemic responses that address new approaches to economics and governance. The Asia Pacific Region (of which Australia is a part) will be impacted by climate change. Droughts, floods, cyclones and storm surges have resulted in higher rates of morbidity and mortality for women and children. The approach to addressing sustainable development goals will require appropriate planning and processes across public, private and volunteer sectors before, after and during disasters. Policy and planning to address preventative measures require mitigating and adapting to climate change to enable lowering of emissions, in order to ensure that water, food and energy security is addressed along with meeting basic health and housing needs. This requires addressing social inclusion at all stages of the process. This is central to social and environmental justice. How can we address cross boundary regionalist approaches to the big issues of the day, namely poverty, climate change and pandemics when we continue to work within the boundaries of outdated science? These problems are addressed in the volume by drawing on the lived experiences (Polanyi, 1966, 1968) and situated knowledges (Haraway, 1991, 1992) of many people plus a deep ecological awareness that draws on the consciousness of all living systems of which we are a strand. Representation, accountability and re-generation are the three major challenges of the day. How can we improve the way we live our lives? A plea for a relational approach to protecting living systems is developed in Planetary Passport (McIntyre-Mills, 2017) and ‘Balancing Individualism and Collectivism’ (McIntyre et al., 2017). The critical heuristics approach (see for example, Ulrich & Reynolds 2010) is vital to address the ‘banality of evil ‘which now passes as commonplace governance. Today the markets are open but conceptual and spatial (geographical) borders are closed. This is the paradox that is not addressed in the name of ‘border protection’. The case is made (drawing on Shiva, 1989, 2002, 2012a, 2012b) that sharing resources in common does not lead inevitably to the tragedy of the commons (Hardin, 1968) if the right design conditions prevail (Ostrom, 2008) and reciprocity, trust and ongoing monitoring by engaged local people occurs from below in line with post national conventions to protect people and the planet (Held, 2004) Human capabilities can be extended through indigenous ways of knowing and being. These ways respect the interdependency of living systems, by expressing this relationship as family, spiritual connection and a sense of awe (Harris & Wasilewski, 2004; Romm, 2018). Naess (1995: 10) stresses that insects have been disappearing and that we are unaware of what is going on around us if we do not pause and learn from nature:

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I have seen things happening here, in the environment, which I don’t like. I have seen, for instance, since 1944 or something, we have much less insects. And here at this elevation, insects are always interesting. In the 1940’s, I counted 220 insect species. As amateur. And now I do not find more than forty. Then some would say: ‘That’s because you get old and you don’t see!’ But that’s too great difference! No grasshoppers anymore! I saw one grasshopper last year…

A Way Forward Through Critical Engagement Naess and Haukeland (2002) also stressed that transformation is not impossible: ethical living requires ‘doing small things in a big way’ on an everyday basis. This requires being guided by a priori norms for praxis and considering the consequences of one’s choices through careful consideration aided by means of critical heuristics, also known as thinking in terms of ‘if then scenarios. This process of ethical consideration is known as ‘expanding pragmatism’, in order to consider the consequences for one’s self as well as other living systems. An early prototype to teach and engage participants in learning about ecological citizenship has been developed and tested (McIntyre-Mills et al., 2014).The evaluation of the level of importance of multiple (and simultaneously important issues) is important by reflecting on one’s life in terms of different scenarios and the consequences of these choices. The opposite is true, living lives that do not reflect on our everyday choices supports business as usual and every day social and environmental injustice.5

5 Upstream

and downstream users need to fish in the same river—this principle applies to oceans and to the idea that there are no boundaries when we realize the currents circulate the waste and it enters the food cycle. When we realise that the rubbish dumped in the ocean enters the food chain and plastic and chemicals appear on the dinner plate the notion of interconnectivity is highlighted Similarly, when people understand that feeding farm animals offal results in high risks such as mad cow’s disease at worst or raised levels of antibiotic tolerance because unhealthy animals are fed a diet of antibiotics this brings the nature of the banality of evil to a new level. Systemic ethics requires that as individuals, we have rights but we also have to take responsibility for the common good. Individualism can be used as an excuse for private greed at the expense of the common good. As Whitehead (2018) stresses in ‘living theory’ we need to learn from experience and all experience is situated. Furthermore, we create our futures through the constructive or destructive decisions that we take on a daily basis. We need so-called hybrid methodologies (Hesse Bibber, 2018: 17) to begin a discussion of what constitutes the nature of the problem (ontological issue) and how to go about researching the issue (epistemological concern). It is no surprise that Bolivia, an early signatory to the notion of earth politics and the notion that the constitution should protect the environment and the people who depend on Pachamama or ‘Our earth mother’. A coalition led by Bolivia with active support from Asia and Africa has achieved ‘change from below’ by recognizing that peasants and fisherfolk play a vital role in protecting food security: The United Nations Declaration on the rights of peasants and other people working in rural areas (October 2018) notes that: “The food crisis 2007-2008 provided a context for the United Nations to recognise the discrimination against the peasants and other people working in rural areas…”.

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The Sustainable Development Goals The 17 development goals address social and environmental justice concerns.6 How can policy practitioners address these goals in our post national region spanning Indonesia, Australia and our neighbours? It requires a change in the architectures of democracy and governance. Crossdisciplinary and cross border challenges are intertwined across the social, environmental and economic spheres (UNRISD, 2017; Glasser, 2018; IPCC, 2018). This paper addresses the potential opportunities for regional mapping from below by the public, private and civil society partners who will contribute to addressing the UN Sustainable Development Goals 1 and 5 (no poverty and gender equality), 11 (sustainable communities) and 17 (partnerships to achieve goals 1 and 11) in order to strive to mitigate risks through supporting low carbon living. Regional initiatives need to address issues ranging from food security to child trafficking and habitat protection, if they are to have a hope of expanding to regional “road maps for social development more generally” (UNRISD, 2017). Regional social policy needs to underpin the UN Sustainable Development goals by using policy engagement processes that not only give voice to the marginalised but are underpinned by viable cross sectorial participatory governance processes to support regional development. In line with this regional agenda the paper refers to an ARC proposal to use transformative participatory action approach (Mertens, 2010, 2017) to research whether the community development and community learning approach can help to achieve the three UN Sustainable Development Goals. The focus is on human security associated with climate change and the exponential risks it poses in terms of human security resulting in mass urbanisation, refugee crises leading to instability at a post national regional level in Africa as the temperature rises beyond 1.5 °C. Populism flourishes in this context and needs to be addressed through post national and regional engagement along with the creation of innovative new ways to engage, map and model ways to mitigate and adapt to the nonlinear and exponential risks. The paper addresses the intersection of development, mapping and engagement to support low carbon living and social ecology. It will extend the literature on regenerative community co-operatives based on gender mainstreaming and ecological citizenship to explicitly empower women and young people through practical training to ‘earn while they learn and to grow a future within the region’. Thus, the research will add to our understanding on the Indigenous production, consumption and redistribution cycle and the potential to adapt and scale up the ‘one resilient village, one re-generative business’ concept as a regional model. Unlike post humanist approaches (that decentre the presumption of patriarchy and anthropocentrism, in order to protect the environment) this transformative research stresses the importance of addressing capabilities (Braidotti, 2018; Nussbaum, 2006) to enhance regional sustainability. Significantly, this research proposes that we place sentient beings at the centre of everyday decision making, in order to provide a safe habitat for all living systems 6 https://www.un.org/development/desa/disabilities/envision2030.html.

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and a life worth living. This is in line with one of the last ‘frontiers for justice’ (Nussbaum, 2006). Kabeer’s (1999, 2015) approach to institutional power dynamics by extending the learning organisation and learning community approach through a participatory action research project that provides a learning opportunity for all using a capabilities approach (Nussbaum, 2011) that fosters development through gender mainstreaming and caring for sentient beings and the protection of diverse habitats for wild life in the region vital for their survival (Donaldson & Kymlicka, 2011). The regional approach to ecotourism will protect habitat for the Thabazimbi National Park and provide local opportunities for those who cross the border in the North South migrations that result in high mortality and morbidity rates for women, children and wild life in the Limpopo region from poachers and those who fear loss of livelihood (Cimric, for UNICEF, 2010; Kgalta, 2015). It is estimated that 4 billion people will live in cities and a further 2.5 billion people will become urban dwellers by 2050. Most of the global urban population is expected to be located in two regions—Asia (52%) and Africa (21%) (United Nations, 2014: 11). Increased socio-economic instability in urban areas and intense pressure on food security are risk factors highlighted in the Australian Government’s (2017) Foreign Policy White Paper ‘Opportunity, Security, Strength. In line with the agenda stressed in this report this paper focuses on the importance of promoting opportunities for women and young people within the Indo Pacific and wider region.

Significance and Innovation The gender dynamic within culturally specific gender relations influences the status of, and opportunities for, women in a given community. Women’s political agency is vital. The policy priorities that are the focus of this study are also in line with the regional policy agenda (UNRISD, 2017) to map effective regional social policy pathways that span a wide range of sectors. In Indonesia, the ‘One village, one product’ (OVAP, Morihiko Hiramatsu—Governor of Oita prefecture, 1979, Yogyakarta, 2014) was applied by President Jokowi in 2008–2009. In Alamendah, the learning organisation, community approach has been developed as a step towards empowering women in order to reduce their vulnerability to trafficking, but the process needs to be extended, in order to expand women’s role in the decision-making process and to introduce a range of opportunities that support the capabilities of women and the marginalised (McIntyre-Mills et al., 2018).

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A New Approach to Democracy and Governance A non-anthropocentric approach to democracy and governance that fosters women’s agency is needed to enable monitoring from below and above to ensure that those who are elected are held to account so that they fulfil their role to act as agents of the people and that collective responsibility is indeed taken to protect both People and the Planet. One of the issues that needs to be faced is that too much power has been given to those who have been voted into power. Once elected they ‘forget’ that democratically elected leaders ought to be agents of the people and that the environment is of primary concern, not their personal political careers. Two potential approaches offer ways to improve democracy and governance. These are Structured Dialogue and pathways to wellbeing software (PW) informed by the same logic employed by SD which inspired the development of PW. We adopt an approach guided by systemic ethics and supported by pathways to wellbeing engagement. The pragmatism of considering ‘if then’ scenarios before making decisions is important. This paper aims to: ● Address the complex needs of the most vulnerable and the interconnections across resilience, food, water and the innovation opportunity for social inclusion in line with the UN Sustainable Development Goals. ● Makes the case that critical agency is vital to understand, monitor and evaluate everyday social, economic and environmental strategies that enable sentient functioning (Nussbaum, 2011). Liberalism has progressed too far in undermining collective responsibility. The result is a form of state control and governance that is more closely linked with the market than with civil society. Minzberg (2015) stresses that radical renewal requires rebalancing society. Each voter has the right and the responsibility to think about the consequences of their daily choices for their neighbourhood, province and the wider region to which they are inextricably linked. The ‘banality of evil’ (Arendt, 1962) is associated with denying the pain and suffering caused by taking decisions that erode the planet and prevent the regeneration of living systems. This has been underlined by the landmark declaration by the president of Vanuatu (2018) who stresses that companies and nation states that rely on carbon intensive approaches should pay for the damage they cause to nation states with a low carbon footprint. We argue that critical systemic intervention by residents living in local regions is needed on a daily basis to achieve ecological citizenship. The Aarhus Convention (1998) provides three policy pillars to enable this everyday engagement to occur. The policy pillars (currently relevant only for the EU, but scalable elsewhere) include: ● The right of all residents in the EU to access information ● The right to be heard and the right to take the areas of concern to the European Parliament and then to the European Court if the issues are not satisfactorily addressed.

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As Florini (2003) stresses the policy provides a valuable potential platform for extending democratic rights to residents within and beyond a nation state so that social and environmental justice concerns can be addressed at a post-national regional level.7 The notion that sentient beings have rights is not even on the horizon in some socio-political contexts. In line with the Paris Declaration (1997), public administration needs to be framed together with co-researchers with local lived experience. A multisite symposium held in 2018 (McIntyre-Mills et al., 2019a, 2019b) in Adelaide, South Australia and Bandung, West Java explored the challenge of increased urbanization and movement towards cities and the implications it has for the life chances of unemployed women who become increasingly vulnerable to trafficking. In Indonesia the rate of urbanization is faster than other Asian countries. According to the World Bank: Indonesia is undergoing a historic transformation from a rural to an urban economy. The country’s cities are growing faster than in other Asian countries at a rate of 4.1% per year. By 2025—in less than 10 years—Indonesia can expect to have 68% of its population living in cities.8

The UN 2030 Agenda9 is: the new global framework to help eradicate poverty and achieve sustainable development by 2030. It includes an ambitious set of 17 Sustainable Development Goals…. The 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development sets out the global framework to eradicate poverty and achieve sustainable development by 2030.

A critical reading of the capabilities approach could stress that Nussbaum’s (2011) approach does not take into account power dynamics or the institutional power wielded by a minority (McIntyre-Mills et al., 2018) who use the state, the legal system and the market to protect their own interests at the expense of others. Churchman’s questioning approach (Design of Inquiring Systems’ or DIS) is an approach based on critical heuristics or ‘what if questions’ that can be extended by means of scenarios to enhance engagement in decision making, in order to test out ideas with those who have lived experience. Openness to the ideas of others is important for democracy 7 More

people are displaced today than during the Second World War. More animals and plants have been displaced than ever. According to the previous United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, Guterres (UNHCR, 2014), for the first time since the Second World War, the global figure for displaced persons has now passed 50 million and, by 2050, this figure could be as high as 150 million (Rusbridger, 2015: 13). Highly urbanised, environmentally affected regions have been selected as so-called ‘canary cases’ into address the projected 2050 scenario when most of the global urban population is expected to be located in Asia (52%) and Africa (21%) (United Nations, 2014: 11). The study areas selected take significance from the predictions made in this UN report. They are also the primary focus of this paper and the recent volumes on which it draws, because they face substantial environmental change. The social and environment challenges have been exploited by people traffickers in Africa, for example where slavery has become more visible than ever in Libya as desperate people fall into the hands of traffickers who sell them, ‘like goats’ in the market place, http://www.aljazeera.com/news/2017/12/outrageous-reality-libya-171201085605212.html. 8 http://www.worldbank.org/en/news/feature/2016/06/14/indonesia-urban-story. 9 http://europa.eu/rapid/press-release_MEMO-15-5709_en.htm.

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as is the need to continuously revise and adjust the way in which we live our lives in relation to one another and the environment. The axiom to guide transformative research is that we can be free and diverse to the extent that our freedom and diversity does not undermine the rights of others. But we also need to accept that limiting carbon emissions will require a dramatic adaptation to reduce the harmful effects of climate change (Meadows & Randers, 1992; IPCC, 2018). To ‘rescue enlightenment from itself’ (McIntyre-Mills & Van Gigch, 2006), we need to realize that there are many ways of knowing. Logic, empiricism, idealism, dialectic and pragmatism (as West Churchman suggested) are some of the ways in which we can know the world. But these ways of knowing are situated (in the sense used by Donna Haraway). Churchman had great insight, but our thinking and practice is always limited by our embodied selves and by our experiences. He stressed the need to ‘think about our thinking’ and to engage with others through questioning our design of inquiry. This is a good start as is his emphasis on striving for ideals (shaped by norms) but also being open to testing out ideas by considering the lived experiences of others. He could also have explicitly talked about gendered knowing, species knowing and also about the way in which ‘the ecology of mind’ (Bateson, 1972) is extended by thinking about the consequences of decisions for this generation of living systems and the next. Churchman stressed that the systems approach is not only about making holistic, universal maps of the world. It is also about appreciating diversity. Churchman discussed many ways of knowing but these need to be extended if we are to ‘rescue the enlightenment from itself’ (McIntyre-Mills, 2006). An appreciation of animal knowing, plant knowing, the value of the arts and being able to appreciate ‘art in nature’ is a starting point for extending the hierarchy of knowledge that Kenneth Boulding alluded to in his ‘Skeleton of Knowledge’ (1956). Transformation of values from individual human knowing to appreciation of collective knowledge and responsibility and then the leap to appreciation that anthropocentric knowing is far too limited and non-anthropocentrism requires ecological knowing. Critical systemic thinking needs to extend social and environmental policy to take into account Bateson’s (1972) level 1, 2 and 3 learning to addresses both social and environmental justice. The Paris Agenda (2015)—whilst hailed as a breakthrough for global security—does not go far enough, according to many of the latest estimates (Ricke et al., 2018; IPPC, 2018). Rolling back adherence to this international agenda is worrying and is evident in the way that food, energy and water security are seen as issues that can be addressed through nation states, rather than as post national coalitions working in share biospheres.

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Climate change impacts environments leading to displacement of plants, animals and people as cities encroach or droughts, floods, fires render areas unable to provide a liveable environment.10 This has profound ethical implications for everyday living choices. According to the Nuccitelli (2018 who cites Ricke) and correctly emphasizes that as a warm country it is in its interests to address global warming and climate change. Ricke et al. (2018: 1) explain that they address: a socio-economic, climate, damages and discounting module “wherein a time series of future damages is compressed into a single present value…”.

Critical Systemic Thinking and Agency Is Core to Social and Environmental Justice We face the inconvenient truth that we have normalised every day decisions that can be regarded as evil, because we are consuming resources in excess and we extend the mantle of the social contract to some whilst excluding the rights of non-citizens. Two potential approaches offer hope for the future. These are Structured Dialogue (SD) and pathways to wellbeing software (PW) informed by the same logic employed by SD which inspired the development of PW. New architectures to democracy and governance need to be underpinned by systemic ethics, guided by structured dialogue and supported by block chain pathways. The pragmatism of considering ‘if then’ scenarios before making decisions is important. This paper aims to: ● Address the shared area of concern, namely water, food, energy security and social inclusion in line with the UN Sustainable Development Goals. ● Makes the case that critical agency is vital to understand, monitor and evaluate everyday social, economic and environmental strategies that enable a life worth living (Nussbaum, 2011). Two architectures for participation and scaling up governance will be detailed below:

10 According to the UN the majority of the world’s population will be in Africa and Indonesia. A recent United Nations report projects that by 2050 most of the global urban population is expected to be located in Asia (52%) and Africa (21%) (United Nations, 2014: 11). These selected examples take significance from the predictions made in this UN report and are directly relevant for the case made in this paper that current forms of democracy and governance are no longer relevant. According to the previous United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, Guterres (UNHCR, 2014), for the first time since the Second World War, the global figure for displaced persons has now passed 50 million and, by 2050, this figure could be as high as 150 million (Rusbridger, 2015: 13). The report stressed that currently more people are displaced than during the Second World War.

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New Architectures for Democracy and Governance These new architectures for democracy and governance use readily available tools and software to link local learning communities with regional and post national regional partners and networks. The policies that could make this approach possible already exist (Florini, 2003; McIntyre-Mills et al., 2014; McIntyre-Mills, 2014, 2017)11 : In McIntyre-Mills (2017: 148, 313) I address nodes (people, organisations) to connect them to areas of shared post regional concern (Habermas, 2001) through an on-line Planetary Passport.12 The area of concern which a Global Covenant (Held, 2004) and proposed Planetary Passport to Protect People and the Planet needs to address is poverty, climate change, displacement of people and destruction of habitat. The PP could strive to balance individual and collective needs in line with a Global Covenant. Post national regions could be protected in the form of a nested governance system spanning the local personal level to the household, community, regional and post national regional level. This could (perhaps) be achieved based on co-creating pathways (McIntyre-Mills & De Vries, 2011; McIntyre-Mills & Wirawan, 201713 ) to map and manage local resource systems (Ostrom, 2008) in context ‘from below’ based on self-reflection (through critical heuristics questions) to prompt decision making (Jackson, 2000). Stiglitz et al.’s (2010) wellbeing stocks could be supported by enabling people to ‘be the change’ on a daily basis through the way they choose to live their lives and making social contracts through the on-line system to protect local resource systems. Their footprint can be monitored locally, and they can generate transformation locally. The potential success of this approach is detailed (McIntyre-Mills & De Vries, 2011, 2014) on a pilot of the software and McIntyre-Mills (2019) explores the wider potential for redressing the cascading risks of climate change and how the way in which the management of risks was indeed achieved through the Cape Town Provincial Government’s use of a transparent water management application that succeeded in getting people to change their water usage in a very short period of time through a combination of shame and the wish to ‘do the right thing’ and to share resources in order to prevent ‘day zero’, the day when taps would run dry and the residents of Cape Town would need to stand in queues at approximately 200 proposed water collection points. The problem was caused by the high cost of implementing a 11 See

New architectures to protect living systems and to support the global commons in chapter 5 and 35 of this volume. 12 The decisions are prompted by scenario guidelines. The daily living choices can be guided by means of an on-line engagement tool that helps decision making and enables the monitoring of social, economic and environmental choices. Positive and negative sanctions through monitoring could ensure that resources are fed forward to those in need and in the interests of future generations as detailed below. 13 See the demonstration of the pathways to wellbeing software at https://archive.org/download/pat hway_DEMO_1, pathways to wellbeing https://archive.org/details/VN860546, ethics and design.

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desalination plant along with reservations about the appropriateness of such an option (despite the rising rate of in migration to the Cape). A further issue was the associated political friction between levels of government with different party-political affiliations. The use of structured dialogic design across political interest groups has been shown to be both appropriate and successful (Christakis, 2006; Kakoulaki & Christakis, 2017). The ‘monitoring from below’ approach achieved re-generation of control by the people of a scarce resource. The potential for further monitoring by means of pathways to wellbeing software to achieve social, economic and environmental outcomes for social and environmental justice can be achieved. This is a way to achieve re-generation with people in and beyond the usual structures of governance. This approach extends the social contract to ecological citizens who can log on to a new post national form of governance and democracy. It includes those who are currently excluded from citizenship—the young and the displaced.

Pathways to Wellbeing This application of the logic used in SD extends the UN Local Agenda 21 which requires that socio-cultural, economic and environmental accounting and accountability (triple bottom line) be applied (McIntyre-Mills & De Vries, 2011; McIntyreMills et al., 2014). This would enable local residents and members of a wider post national region to have a say in matters that impact on social and environmental justice. Representation, accountability and re-generation are the three major challenges of the day that need to be addressed by means of a cross boundary regionalist approach to address the big issues of the day, namely poverty and climate change. They require a new approach to democracy and governance to enable monitoring from below and above to ensure that those who are elected are held to account and that collective responsibility is indeed taken to protect the Planet. One of the issues that needs to be faced is that much power has been given to those who have been voted into power that they ‘forget’ that democratically elected leaders ought to be agents of the people and that the environment is of primary concern, not their personal, political careers.

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Can Pathways to Wellbeing Provide a Way Forward to Protect the Marginalised? This could provide the means by which to implement the Sustainable Development Goals from the local, to the regional and post national regions in order to resource the commons (Bollier and Helfrich, 2012).14 By considering social, cultural, economic and environmental concerns in terms of: 1. 2. 3.

What we have (material and non-material terms) What we need What we are prepared to think and do to add/ create and share with the global commons What we are prepared to think and do to discard/ change to help the global commons Turning points for the better and worse

4. 5. 14 See

the demonstration of the pathways to wellbeing software at https://archive.org/download/pat hway_DEMO_1, pathways to wellbeing https://archive.org/details/VN860546, ethics and design Because block chain is a distributed network that can provide tracking, monitoring surveillance from below it can provide a means to empower the landless and the disposed (Nir Kshetri, 2017; Wirawan, 2019). It can also provide a means to balance individual and collective needs (McIntyreMills, 2017) and monitor the fair distribution of resources such as food, energy and water from below (McIntyre-Mills, 2019) trace the origin of foodstuffs and to protect the safety of voiceless sentient beings. According to Al-Saqaf and Seidler (2017: 340): blockchain …ranges from finance to record-keeping and from tracking the flow of goods to verifying the identity of citizens. The fundamental common characteristic that all blockchain based services share is a design that depends on immutability and decentralisation in storing data. Yet, a system based on the community cannot work without the community. Al-Saqaf and Seidler (2017) go on to stress that while much has already been written about blockchain applications and the potential for industry, little research has been undertaken to explore the extent to which user-centric governance and democracy can be enabled through alternative pathways. This section strives to contribute to the literature by exploring blockchain technology’s potential to support social and environmental justice by considering to what extent can ‘decentralisation, transparency, equality and accountability’ (Al-Saqaf & Seidler, 2017: 338) be addressed and to what extent engagement could play a role in: Limiting top down approaches to human rights and the abuse of power through enabling more surveillance ‘from below’ and through. Enhancing the stewardship potential to protect the voiceless, including those without citizenship rights, women, children and animals. Naess and Hankeland et al. (2002) stress that transformation is not impossible: ethical living requires ‘doing small things in a big way’ on an everyday basis. This requires being guided by a priori norms for praxis and considering the consequences of one’s choices through careful consideration aided by means of critical heuristics, also known as thinking in terms of ‘if then scenarios. This process of ethical consideration is known as ‘expanding pragmatism’, in order to consider the consequences for self and other living systems. As stressed in McIntyre-Mills et al. (2014; 2017; 2018: 13): “An early prototype to teach and engage participants in learning about ecological citizenship has been developed and tested” (McIntyre-Mills et al. 2011, 2014).

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Barriers Drop down lists that grow shared resources linked with ‘persons, entities, themes and actions’ (Marc Pierson, 2019, pers comm, International Systems Sciences Blue Jeans Dialogue) at the personal, household, local, national and post national levels.

The evaluation of the level of importance of multiple (and simultaneously important issues) is important by reflecting on one’s life in terms of different scenarios and the consequences of these choices, for example: ● I have the following things in my life—understanding of human rights, respect for biodiversity, responsibility to care for others. ● I need in my life—a home, a sense of safety, a place near public transport and hope for the future. ● I will add to my life—more community support from a range of services and/or more community engagement to lobby for resources; more connection to nature. ● I will discard from my life—a sense of hopelessness, a sense of entitlement, excessive consumption. ● Self-reflect on the turning points for the better or worse—hope that consumption can be replaced with a greater sense of attachment to others and the environment. ● Consider the barriers that currently exist and consider what could be done to transform society and our relationship to the environment. The transformative, transdisciplinary research (Darian-Smith & McCarty, 2017) proposed explores plausible pathways in line with the United Nations (UN) Sustainable Development Goals to enhance wellbeing and resilience for those at risk of displacement and those already displaced. Clearly, this has implications for public policy, human service governance and delivery and the way in which the Paris Climate Change Agreement (2015), UN Sustainable Development Goals (2014) and the UN Sendai Framework (2015–2030) for Disaster Risk Reduction are addressed. Thus Goal 1 (end poverty) with specific implications for food, energy and water security, Goal 5 (gender inequality) and Goal 17 (creating partnerships) are particularly relevant to protecting the most vulnerable, whilst The United Nations Declaration of Rights of Indigenous Peoples (2007) provides a vital pathway for socially inclusive decision-making on habitat protection. Indigenous thinkers such as Chilisa (2012, 2017) stress that our sense of who we are needs to be revised. We are vulnerable and reliant on a shared habitat. The ideas underpinning the UNDRIP stress that Indigenous people need to have the right to express their identity within a sacred space. The challenge will be to scale up this sense of stewardship not only at the local level but also at a post national regional level through understanding that we are stewards of one planet. The earth politics notion of Vandana Shiva is the only logical direction for securing the biospheres for food security of living systems. We live in an increasingly commodified and competitive world. Our research focuses on balancing individualism and collectivism by exploring the food, water and energy consumption choices people make and how these relate to their perceptions

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on ‘wellbeing stocks’. Wellbeing stocks are defined by Stiglitz et al. (2010: 15) in ‘Mis-measuring our lives’ as multidimensional.15 In ‘Planetary Passport (McIntyreMills, 2017) and Wall Street to Wellbeing’ (McIntyre-Mills, 2014) the link between wellbeing stocks and the need to develop everyday decision-making capabilities from: ● the micro household’s level to the meso level of organisations at the local government level and ● the macro level of regional and post regional decision making on food, energy and water consumption was stressed. It is vital to measure a raft of social, cultural political, economic and environmental indicators that pertain specifically to everyday living. Thus, the multivariate research approach is also participatory, because it is important to find out whether the setting of Sustainable Development Goals through public engagement and recording pledges on an interactive digital site could make a difference to consumption choices and whether this public participation impacts on living ethically and well. Instead of merely listing goals and asking people to meet them, the approach is to request people to make a personal pledge to address food, energy and water consumption by thinking through the consequences of their choices in terms of three scenarios, namely Business as Usual, Making Small Adjustments and Living Virtuously and Well in terms of considering: what local residents have, what they need, what they are prepared to add or discard from their lives, the turning points for the better and worse, the barriers and the resources and or services which they could draw upon in their local government area or to which they could contribute. This is important if living systems are to be protected. This requires stewardship based on humility and recognition that the Anthropocene is a result of human intervention. This has implications for social and environmental justice. It needs to be addressed through responses that take into consideration current and future generation of life. This requires the need to revisit the challenges of balancing individual and collective interests. An easy way through is a recognition of the continuity of living systems as conscious interconnected systems. This is more than merely accepting our place in a post human system. It requires capability and agency to intervene in ways that are sustainable for the common good. This requires a post nationalist response to protect biodiversity in terms of a Global Covenant, rather than a narrow social contract within nation states (McIntyre-Mills, 2014).

15 The

definition is as follows: ‘1. Material living standards (income, consumption and wealth), 2. Health, 3. Education, 4. Personal activities including work, 5. Political voice and governance, 6. Social connections and relationships, 7. Environment (present and future conditions), 8. Insecurity, of an economy as well as a physical nature’. This definition of wellbeing stocks fits well with the way in which both Indigenous and Non-Indigenous Australians connect with Country in Australia and elsewhere and the way in which critical systems thinkers and complexity theorists understand inter relationships. The raft of concepts is necessary for defining wellbeing as stressed in several publications by McIntyre-Mills (2003, 2006, 2008, 2011, 2014, 2016).

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Rebalancing Rights and Responsibilities The notion of extending a sense of ‘ecological citizenship’ (McIntyre-Mills, 2017) could foster awareness of the need for democracy to revitalize the balance between the right to consume the planet to extinction and the responsibility to presence the common good. Rights need to be reframed as do responsibilities so that the economy and the market are seen not as an eternality but as part of the global commons on which this generation and the nest depends. If high emitting nations persist in refusing to take responsibility for the impact of their emissions on their neighbours—then we need to think about what that means for current forms of governance. If we can accept that climate, change is the result of collective decisions that constitute a normalization of living beyond our limits what does that mean for democracy and governance? If we can accept that more people than ever before have been displaced, what does that mean for human ethics and the nation that neoliberal governments should close borders? If we can accept that it is now scientifically proven that genetically human beings share 98% of their genes with a lab rat and even more with the primates that are experimented on—how can we justify inflicting pain or denying rights to human beings and other sentient animals? If we can accept that the boundaries between people are constructed on the basis of will and power, then we can accept that people have the right and the responsibility to do something about injustice, because ‘we are the boundaries’ as Haraway (1992) stresses. The big issues of the day, namely poverty and climate change cannot be addressed without collective responsibility. Hence, the argument that new architectures for democracy and governance are needed based on: A priori norms—that ecological citizenship ought to protect current and future generations of living systems. A posteriori measures—of the extent to which UN Sustainable Development goals are upheld and the Sendai Risk plat form addressed. Both these UN documents are based on the notion that individuals and organisations need to act in concert to address the goals across national boundaries.

Proposal Can mapping and identifying (Kshetri, 2017) regional policy opportunities through adapting the ‘One Village one enterprise approach’ to include many socio-ecological enterprises (a) support regional priorities for action across sectors and (b) empower the most marginalised women and children in regional and rural areas? This research informs regional policy to underpin the UN Sustainable Development Goals using engagement processes that give voice to the marginalised whilst informing viable cross-sectoral governance processes to support regional development.

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Significantly, this approach could add to regional understanding on how to engage coalitions to enable the UN Sustainable Development Goals to address climate change through networks (Stokols, 2018: 245) that help map and support practice towards eco systemic living. In terms of innovation, the research informs our understanding of social ecosystems in which human beings are a strand (Bailey, 2006; Miller & Miller, 1992). At a practical level it strives to inform policy on how to protect current and future generations of life in this region. Significantly, this Transformative Research using mixed methods (Mertens, 2017) applies a Participatory Action Research design (Wadsworth, 2010) that will provide data on the viability of a learning community, learning organisation approach. To sum up, our axiological assumption for the transformative user-centric research is that change begins with the voiceless, not with policy elites. Our constructivist ontology is one of understanding indigenous, local viewpoints and our relational epistemology relies on working with people to shape policy and practice using a transformative, unique approach The team contributes uses local knowledge in the furtherance human security through the elegance of distributive, user-centric policy engagement processes that enables cross checking (called block chain) detailed in the literature. The innovative engagement process uses qualitative data to provide weightings of choices in a prototype for distributive networks that have been developed and piloted in Q 1 and 2 publications (see McIntyre-Mills, 2008, 2012a, 2012b, 2017; McIntyre-Mills & de Vries, 2013; McIntyre-Mills et al., 2014). The unique distributive network approach detailed and referenced in the cited literature. The qualitative data provide weightings in a prototype as per ARC LP 560406. The innovative data gathering approach will inform an epistemic community of practice to enable agency by and advocacy for the voiceless locally and internationally. The proposal on re-generative community co-operatives supports the policy agenda underlined by recent UN policy documents and the Australian Foreign Policy (2017) agenda. In terms of innovation we draw on and adapt the principle of the ‘One Village, One Enterprise approach’, decreed by President Jokowi (2014) to enable working across sites to facilitate the mapping of opportunities and the cross fertilisation of ideas. Research needs to ● make a practical a difference through a community development and community learning approach in line with the UN Sustainable Development Goals. ● support gender mainstreaming which explicitly empowers women and young people through practical training to ‘earn while they learn and to grow a future’. Community Vocational Education and Training could be supported by local participating schools, colleges and universities using the entry level practical training with the partner organisations. ● add to the literature on the production, consumption and re-distribution cycle and the potential to adapt and scale up the ‘one resilient village, one re-generative businesses.’ The link between expanding women’s agency and resilience will be explicitly addressed.

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Regional Social Policy Networks for Transformation, According to the Un Need to Underpin the Sustainable Development Goals by Using Processes that Give Voice to the Marginalised The participatory approach needs to be underpinned by viable cross-sectoral governance to support regional development in line with this regional agenda. The outcome could enable decentralised evidence-based policy across sectors to address the SDGs. We need to engage with diverse interest groups and explore the following themes during interviews and representative focus groups on the functioning of the community governance approach to managing the co-operative: (a) sense of purpose, opportunities for engagement in education, employment and leadership, (b) a sense of connection/belonging to a community and an environment, (c) sense of agency and capability to express rights and responsibilities. The community governance approach will monitor the sharing of resources ‘from below’. Because block chain is a distributed network that can provide tracking, monitoring surveillance from below it can provide a means to empower the landless and the dispossessed (Nir Kshetri, 2017). It can also provide a means to balance individual and collective needs (McIntyre-Mills, 2017) and monitor the fair distribution of resources such as food, energy and water from below (McIntyre-Mills, 2018) trace the origin of foodstuffs and encourage people to avoid buying products (Goleman, 2010) that are contaminated or based on cruelty and to protect the safety of voiceless sentient beings. User-centric governance and democracy needs be enabled through alternative pathways by: ● Limiting top down approaches to human rights and the abuse of power through enabling more surveillance ‘from below’ and through. ● Enhancing the stewardship potential to protect the voiceless, including those without citizenship rights, women, children and animals. As stressed in McIntyreMills et al. (2014; McIntyre, 2017; 2018: 13) an early prototype to teach and engage participants in learning about ecological citizenship has been developed and tested (McIntyre-Mills et al. 2014).The evaluation of the level of importance of multiple (and simultaneously important)issues enables reflecting on one’s life in terms of different scenarios and then making informed decisions based on considering the consequences of these choices, for example: the social, economic and environmental implication of denying the challenges, taking deliberate steps towards more sustainable living or striding out in front by ‘being the change’ and demonstrating alternative ways of living. Participants work through options to consider the implications of business as usual for every day social and environmental injustice. They learn to make the link between personal choices and public issues through exploring what they have, what they need, what they need, the barriers and turning points that they can address individually and collectively to make a difference.

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In part the SKYPE chat was prompted by Alexander Christakis sharing the paper by Dryzek et al. (2019) with some of the Global Agoras network. The purpose of the informal skype chat was to: ● discuss ways to ‘resource the commons’ (Bollier & Helfrich, 2012) ● share ideas on strategies to develop robust forms of engagement based on the prototype forms of engagement in which we have been involved for several decades. In the course of this SKYPE chat we covered the current challenges of democracy, namely the lack of engagement with diverse members of the public and the tendency to move towards populist responses resulting in Brexit and the election of Donald Trump, for example. More policy research is needed to explore the life chances of socio-demographic groups by exploring the life chances of the elderly, Baby Boomers in their late fifties to early seventies, Generation X (now middle aged around their late thirties to early fifties), Generation Y in their twenties and thirties who now face cascading social, economic and environmental risks along with their own children, members of Generation Z. Major parties rely on elections, rather than on local everyday place-based engagement with diverse residents (including non-citizens) that could provide daily snapshots for policy makers. Citizen based engagement (whilst vital) needs to be extended to include young people and those currently excluded from the mantle of democracy because they are non-citizens. The need to extend the social contract has been discussed in detail elsewhere (McIntyre-Mills, 2014; McIntyre-Mills et al., 2014). Arguments from the social sciences (Ulrich Beck, Peter Singer, John Urry), economics (Joseph Stiglitz, Amartya Sen), futurists (Nick Bostom) and environmentalists (Elinor Ostrom, Gunther Pauli, Vandana Shiva), concur that we face existential risk (Ulrich Bostrom).

How Can the Commons Be Resourced by Means of Engagement? Robust version of both forms of software could be shared by means of the cloud and downloaded from what Tom Flanagan (2019, pers. comm.) coins ‘Place Book’. The

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pathways to wellbeing prototype software16 enables a gender specific civic census, it enables data mining and presentation of data in terms of spread sheets that map gender, age specific and cultural aspirations and fears in terms of social, economic and environmental indicators of wellbeing. Thus, it enables responding to the UN Sustainable Development Goals and to address the concerns raised by the Sendai Risk Platform. The engagement processes enable policy makers to mine the data and to enable the policy makers to take decisions that respond to the fine grain details of local neighbourhood places. The geographic focus is most important if political parties wish to respond to diverse needs in cities, rust belts and rural regional areas.

Potential Strategy to Enable Participation and Transformation? It was suggested that we locate the Pathways to Wellbeing in a university institution and undertake crowd funding. Instead of cyber security from above, the software could enable monitoring from below (McIntyre-Mills, 2000, 2006). By opening democracy to enable everyday local placed based commentary, the aspirations of local communities can be understood by policy makers. Furthermore, they can hold those they elect to account in between elections. The distributed leger enables the cross checking to occur and makes hacking more difficult. Wirawan stressed in another conversation that the risk associated with some management platforms options is that they can be used as a back door for spy ware.17 Instead, Block chain could enable those who post and share data on specific areas of concern to ensure that the data cannot be changed. This ensures that people can express their ideas, in order to enhance representation, accountability and re-generation of their community/neighbourhood. Thus, block chain could provide a way to help with balancing individual and collective needs (Wirawan & McIntyre-Mills, 2019). The software could be funded on a cost recovery basis by asking for a donation from each user (suggested amount 10 Australian dollars) for enabling the technology 16 https://archive.org/details/pathway_DEMO_1.

pathway_DEMO_1 : janet Mcintyre : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming : Internet Archive archive.org demonstration of pathway

17 Published

on Aug 1, 2018, SUBSCRIBE 2Alexander Christakis et Maria Kakoulaki—Démoscopio and Dialogic Design Science, Conférence présentée lors du colloque Villes intelligentes et durables: Design social, démocratie participative et économie circulaire, le 20 février 2018 à l’Université du Québec à Montréal (UQAM). Site web du colloque: https://tinyurl.com/ycsur7pz/ https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Lr-9aCMUXzI.

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development and testing by working with them. In return they would have access to the pathways to wellbeing software which enables personal and community goals in terms of social, economic and environmental indicators of wellbeing. These can be material and non-material concerns. Cost recovery would be viable if a public, private and NGO organization were to take up the platform and agree to enable the testing, particularly if this is offset by Place Book (potentially linked with Face Book). The value for organizations is that policy makers will then get a better idea of diverse needs of their electorates and service users. Furthermore, the needs of those who are non-voters (young people and temporary residents, asylum seekers, new migrants) can also express their views. Given the level of disengagement and potential for populist discontent caused by the disconnect and distrust in governments this could be particularly helpful to address the issues raised in The Foreign Policy White Paper (2017: 17) that stresses: Australia’s national interests are best advanced by an evolution of the international system that is anchored in international law, support for the rights and freedoms in United Nations declarations, and the principles of good governance, transparency and accountability.

Developing Policy in Partnership The software development is not merely for personal productivity (although it has this potential), it is to resource the commons. By this we mean that the concept is downloadable by users who can raise issues about social and environmental aspirations. These narratives about people, places and their concerns could be available (as big data) to resource social movements and to inform policy makers of what people think at the local level. The Cogniscope is based on Structured Dialogue18 to enable the in-depth meaning making. The process is suitable for 20–40 people to find shared root causes of their perceived areas of concern and to shared ideas about how to move forward. The Cogniscope, supported by the network Global Agoras19 is aimed at finding shared meaning in smaller groups of policy makers who wish to explore areas of concern. They can perhaps take the data mined from place book (as proposed) and think through the root causes. Both forms of software enable the capacity to think through options collectively to find pathways to a more sustainable future. It also enables statements that bring together many prospective service users concerned about local infrastructure needs, 18 iframe

width=“560” height=“315” src=“https://www.youtube.com/embed/wkcKAw6NoKY?sta rt=66” frameborder=“0” allow=“accelerometer; autoplay; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-inpicture” allowfullscreen>. 19 The global agoras website is a repository of a network of academics and practitioners. Global agoras was set up as a resource as a result of a successful grant. The cogniscope software, like the pathways to wellbeing software needs some development expenditure to test it more widely and to iron out some glitches. Training in the use of the cogniscope is required, whereas the pathways to wellbeing software merely requires being able to use drop down menus and basic computing skills.

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such as water and energy security, employment, education and health services across the age cohorts. Examples of areas of concern that could be explored are ways to balance the budget and to meet the pressing needs for services for the different cohorts such as the elderly and young people who need a range of vocational training options. In Australia and the Pacific Region different cohorts in urban and regional areas need to be catered for. It is estimated that 4 billion people will live in cities and a further 2.5 billion people will become urban dwellers by 2050. Most of the global urban population is expected to be located in two regions—Asia (52%) and Africa (21%) (United Nations, 2014: 11). The potential study areas for place-based study are selected in response to the predictions made in UN reports.20 Increased socioeconomic instability in urban areas and intense pressure on food security are risk factors highlighted in the Australian Government’s (2017) Foreign Policy White Paper ‘Opportunity, Security, Strength. In line with the agenda stressed in this report this proposal focuses on the importance of promoting opportunities for women and young people within the Indo Pacific and wider region. Budgeting requires responding to diverse needs and place book civic census could achieve civic renewal by providing snapshots of meaning provided by searchable software that provides SPSS spread sheets. The matching of responses to individual contextual needs is vital and the group agreed that engagement with local people is vital. Elinor Ostrom stressed in her update (2014) to her Nobel Peace Prize lecture (2009) that contextual, poly centric, multi scale responses are best. One size, one flavour does not suit everyone. Matching design responses requires that people have a sense of purpose and they are involved in the process. To sum up the value of the proposal is that it will narrow the gap between service users and providers and enable greater congruence between governments and the people and places they serve. But even more importantly the local wisdom of groups of people who try out new ways of being the change can be shared more widely. One such example is perhaps developing an alternative currency backed by the water standard and litres of water21 rather than being backed by a gold standard. This point 20 United Nations Human Development Index. (2003). A compact among nations to end poverty. New York: UNDP, Oxford University Press. United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (2017). https://www.un.org/development/desa/publications/sdg-report-2017.html. United Nations (2014). World Urbanization Prospects: https://esa.un.org/unpd/wup/publicati ons/files/wup2014-highlights.Pdf. United Nations Declaration of the rights of Indigenous peoples (2007). https://www.humanr ights.gov.au/publications/un-declaration-rights-indigenous-peoples-1. United Nations Office for Disaster Risk Reduction (2017). http://www.preventionweb.net/files/ 55465_globalplatform2017edings.pdf. United Nations Office for Disaster Risk Reduction (2015–2030). Sendai Framework. http:// www.preventionweb.net/drr-framework/sendai-framework/. United Nations Paris Climate Change 2015 Conference of the Parties Twenty-first session Paris, 30 November to 11 December 2015. https://unfccc.int/resource/docs/2015/cop21/eng/l09r01.pdf. United Nations (2014). World Urbanisation Prospects: The 2014 Revision. https://esa.un.org/ unpd/wup/publications/files/wup2014-highlights.Pdf. 21 http://thegreentimes.co.za/category/articles/green-living-articles/.

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has been stressed in South Africa where water insecurity is a very real threat to the way of life in both rural regional areas and in cities of varying sizes. Dryzek et al. (2019 citing Ercan et al., 2019) stress that: A major improvement to the deliberative system would involve enhancing moments and sites of listening and reflection and integrating these into political processes that are currently overwhelmed by a surfeit of expression.

The notion of ‘communicative plenty’ in face to face dialogue held as public fora and online dialogues can provide spaces for expression of ideas, listening, deliberation and collective decision making in terms of policy options or scenarios. These can provide the basis for balancing individual and collective needs. Pilots of both the above means of engagement22 have been undertaken to address the concern raised by Dryzek et al. (2019). A case has been made for finding ways to respond to the diverse needs of residents who face cascading social, economic and environmental risks23 within so-called ‘resource specific settings’ (Ostrom, 2008). 22 Christakis,

A., and Bausch, K. 2006. How People Harness their Collective Wisdom and Power to Construct the Future in Co-laboratories of democracy, Information Age. Greenwich. Gonzalo Bustamante Kuschel (2016): Phronetic science: A Nietzscheanmoment? Journal of Political Power, https://doi.org/10.1080/2158379x.2016.1191160 to link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/ 10.1080/2158379X.2016.1191160, Published online: 10 June 2016. Submit your article to this journal View related articles View Crossmark data (16) (PDF) Phronetic Science: A Nietzschean Moment? Journal of Political Power. http://www.tandfonline.com/eprint/grA2SSemWNHGViP pGSK6/full. Available from: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/297484965_Phronetic_Sci ence_A_Nietzschean_Moment_Journal_of_Political_Power_httpwwwtandfonlinecomeprintgrA 2SSemWNHGViPpGSK6full [accessed Mar 17 2020]. Christakis, A., and Flanagan, T. (2010). The talking point: A collaboration project of 21st Century Agoras. Information Age Publishing. Flanagan T. (2013). Blueprint for a Digital Observatorium. Worlds Futures Forum, Montreal, Canada Flanagan, T. & Christakis A. (2010). The Talking Point: Creating an Environment for Exploring Complex Meaning. Charlotte: Information Age Publishing. 23 Christakis, A. (2006). A retrospective Structural Inquiry into the predicament of Humankind: Prospectus of the Club of Rome. In McIntyre-Mills, J. Ed. Rescuing the Enlightenment from Itself. Critical and Systemic Implications of Democracy, Volume 1 of the ‘C. West Churchman and Related Works Series’. Van Gigch, J (series editor), Springer, London. Christakis, A. N. (1973). A New Policy Science Paradigm, Futures, 5(6), pp. 543–558. Christakis, A. N. (1988). The Club of Rome revisited in: General Systems. W. J. Reckmeyer (ed.), International Society for the Systems Sciences, Vol. XXXI, 35–38, New York. Christakis, A. N., and Brahms, S. (2003). Boundary-Spanning Dialogue for 21st-Century Agoras, Systems Research and Behavioral Sciences, 20, 371–382. McIntyre-Mills, J., Bausch, K, Christakis, A. and de Vries, D. (2008). How can we break the mould: democracy, semiotics and regional governance beyond the nation state? Systems Research and Behavioural Science. Vol. 25, No. 2, 305–22. McIntyre-Mills, J. (2017a). Planetary Passport for representation, accountability and regeneration. Contemporary Systems Series, Springer, Cham, Switzerland. McIntyre-Mills, J. (2017b). Recognising our hybridity and interconnectedness: implications for social and environmental justice Current Sociology. https://uk.sagepub.com/en-gb/journals-permis sions. McIntyre-Mills, J., Romm, NRA, and Corcoran Nantes, Y. (Eds) 2019 Democracy and Governance for Resourcing the Commons: Theory and Practice on Rural-Urban Balance. Springer, Cham.

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With this process, we could support open secure applications to support local engagement to manage water, food and energy security in the interests of local place-based communities. In this way the principle of the Aarhus Convention (1998) which underlines the need for transparency, engagement and freedom of information if we are to protect the environment on which all living systems depend.

Conclusion: Rescuing the Enlightenment from Itself Through Recognition of Our Interconnectedness and Human Agency Systemic ethics needs to be applied to all living systems based on the a priori right to a life worth living and the a posteriori responsibility to consider the consequences of their actions for other living systems as stewards.24 This is linked with human rights and has been stressed by deep ecologists, eco systemic thinkers such as Haraway (1992), Shiva (2012a, 2012b) and Wadsworth (2011) and critical thinkers such as West Churchman (1972). 4 key nodes Person Entity Theme Action—this can be addressed through: Considering social, economic and environmental concerns in terms of: 1. 2. 3. 4. 5.

what we have (material and non-material terms) what we need what we are prepared to think and do to add/ create and share with the global commons what we are prepared to think and do to discard/ change to help the global commons turning points for the better and worse

24 ‘Rescuing the enlightenment from itself” (McIntyre-Mills, 2006), discussed the potential for critical thinking to enable people to think through their rights and responsibilities. Critical reflection is the only thing that will enable people to avoid stepping back from their responsibilities to engage actively as citizens (not only of nation states, but as citizens of the world) who care about what is going on across the border. To rescue enlightenment from itself, we need to realize that there are many ways of knowing, but to protect food security ethical decision making is essential. Nussbaum’s capability approach is core to human agency for food security along with respect and stewardship of voiceless sentient beings. Her work dovetails quite well with Donaldson and Kymlicka (2011) in Zoopolis. Protecting habitat for human animals and other living systems is the logical next step to prevent existential risks to all. Safe passage across habitats in post national regions flows from this argument on new forms of architecture for governance. Ways of knowing as listed by Churchman such as ‘logic, empiricism, idealism, dialectic and pragmatism’ need to be extended to include other ways of knowing by drawing on nature. Wadsworth (2010: xxvii) poses the question as to: “what would a more life-enhancing system of research and evaluation look like?”.

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barriers drop down lists that grow shared resources linked with persons, entities, themes and actions.

This will provide the means by which to implement the Sustainable Development Goals from the local, to the regional and post national regions https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bs2P0wRod8U tragedy of the commons https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xta1vPkSjk4.

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Janet J. McIntyre-Mills is Honorary Professor in the College of Education at University of South Africa, Tshwane, South Africa; Visiting Research Fellow at Adelaide University in the College of Professions Main North Terrace; and Adjunct Associate Professor in College of Business Government and Law at Flinders University, Sturt Campus, Adelaide.

Correction to: From Polarisation to Multispecies Relationships Janet J. McIntyre-Mills and Yvonne Corcoran-Nantes

Correction to: J. J. McIntyre-Mills and Y. Corcoran-Nantes (eds.), From Polarisation to Multispecies Relationships, Contemporary Systems Thinking, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-33-6884-2 The original version of the book was inadvertently published with the reference Reynolds et al. (2011) for chapters 17, 26, 28 and 34, which has now been corrected. The book has been updated with the changes.

The updated version of these chapters can be found at https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-33-6884-2_17 https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-33-6884-2_26 https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-33-6884-2_28 https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-33-6884-2_34

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2021 J. J. McIntyre-Mills and Y. Corcoran-Nantes (eds.), From Polarisation to Multispecies Relationships, Contemporary Systems Thinking, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-33-6884-2_38

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