The team at Energy Consumers Australia have shared videos and resources from last month’s 2023 Foresighting Forum online.
You can watch a video recording of my interactive keynote for attendees on YouTube.
Tag: environment
Energy Consumers Australia: Foresighting Forum Quick Watch
The team at Energy Consumers Australia have released a short Q&A video covering aspects of my recent keynote on dealing with uncertainty in sociotechnical systems.
You can find more from the recent Energy Consumers Australia 2023 Foresighting Forum here.
Fast, deep, and uncertain: the currents of thought and feeling
“Big whorls have little whorls which feed on their velocity,
Lewis Fry Richardson
And little whorls have lesser whorls and so on to viscosity“
These lines appear in Sarah Dry‘s tremendous book Waters of the World, a work of history which explores how scientists, researchers, and passionate amateurs gradually pieced together an understanding of our global climate system. The story spans continents and generations; some of its characters collaborate or compete, while others work alone, unaware of the wider context in which their endeavours might be received. Some don’t even live to see the difference that their research will make to the world. There are false starts and dead ends. Politics, from the sweep of colonialism to the pettiness of institutional squabbles, plays its part; and for all that this is a tale of systematic observation and theorisation, it’s no less deeply human for that. As one of Dry’s scientists, Joanne Simpson, put it:
“I think I am generally perceived as a pretty cool character. Nothing could be farther from the truth. To understand how a woman, or a man, for that matter, creates original work in any field, it is necessary to penetrate the emotional masks, and my masks have intentionally been hard to penetrate.”
Dry’s book, and particularly its chapter on “Fast Water”, exploring the currents of the ocean’s depths, makes me think of the ways that emotions can swirl around us and within us when we address difficult issues, alone or together.
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Everyday resilience: Rural communities as agents of change
I’m very pleased to have played a small part in this work on the future of Irish peatlands: geographers Kate Flood, Marie Mahon, and John McDonagh of the University of Galway have published a new article on “Everyday resilience: Rural communities as agents of change in peatland social-ecological systems“.
Their project included “Bog Scenarios” developed frugally with local communities. These used the past, present, and future of the peatlands to explore change through time including past events at the site; how the bog is currently changing; and hopes for the future.
Read more in the Journal of Rural Studies.
PUSH SUMMIT Podcast with Rowan Drury, Malin Leth, Anders Mildner
Altitude Meetings’ PUSH Summit on climate and democracy is currently taking place in the Swedish city of Malmö and online.
I joined sustainability consultant Rowan Drury, Malin Leth from Håll Sverige Rent – the Keep Sweden Tidy organisation, and Altitude’s own Anders Mildner to discuss issues of system change, futures thinking, strategy, and sustainability.
You can listen to the half-hour podcast here and watch my short online presentation to PUSH SUMMIT here.
PUSH SUMMIT in Malmö and online
To launch Altitude Meetings’ PUSH SUMMIT exploring issues of democracy and sustainability in times of uncertainty, I spoke with Anders Mildner about scenarios, foresight, and some of the findings from the IMAJINE project.
See more from the PUSH SUMMIT, which takes place in Malmö, Sweden, and online, here.
Foresight & The Environment of Democracy @ 2022 Council for European Studies Conference
I’m presenting twice at the online portion of the Council for European Studies’ conference in June.
First, National University of Ireland, Galway’s Marie Mahon, Monash Sustainable Development Institute’s David Robertson, and I will talk about “Reimagining Environmental Futures” based on the IMAJINE scenarios for the future of European regional inequality.
Then Malka Older of Arizona State University and I will present a paper on “Agency, Accountability, and Imagined Futures: Exploring Democracy and Environmental Stewardship Through Speculative Fiction and Foresight”.
Early bird registration continues until April 11th and the last day to register is May 10th. Find out more at the conference website.
Sustainability, Scenarios, and Spatial Justice: IMAJINE at Resilience.org
Over at Resilience.org, the blog of the Post-Carbon Institute, Marie Mahon of the National University of Ireland Galway, David Robertson of Monash Sustainable Development Institute, and I discuss the sustainability implications of the IMAJINE scenarios for the future of European regional inequality.
I especially valued David’s comments on the Metaverse-like SILICON SCAFFOLD scenario, where “Near-infinite virtual geographies undermine the notion of ‘limits’ or ‘planetary boundaries’[…and t]he resources we use as we navigate digital worlds are hidden from us.” Will notions of sustainability be fundamentally recast and reframed by the generations which succeed us? How will future circumstances cause those frames and the values which define them to change?
The mission of Resilience is to “envision a world of resilient communities and re-localized economies that thrive within ecological bounds.”
Read more about IMAJINE’s contribution to that discussion here.
Interview with Paul Bowers, Part 2: Bureaucratic Radicalism
Late in November 2020, I caught up with Paul Bowers, CEO of the Australian sustainability organisation Renew, for a brief chat. (You can read the first part here).
Renew evolved from the Alternative Technology Association of Australia, and today it advocates for sustainable living in homes and communities across the nation. In the second part of our conversation, Paul and I spoke about systemic change, revolution and reform, and encouraging the choice to live sustainably.
You’ve written on “bureaucratic radicalism“, which seems to speak to this issue of what happens when the green hackers of the 80s find themselves represented on federal committees and contributing to the building code.
Bureaucratic radicalism was my attempt to think through how you systematize good practice, and using existing power structures in order to do that. My first thought is to consider what we need to learn from First Nations peoples, from communities where environmental sustainability and good practice is part of what you learn from childhood.
Read moreInterview with Paul Bowers, Part 1: What do you do when the revolution is over?
Late in November 2020, I caught up with Paul Bowers, CEO of the Australian sustainability organisation Renew, for a brief chat.
Renew, which evolved from the Alternative Technology Association of Australia, advocates for sustainable living in homes and communities across the nation. Paul, following a storied career in the Australian museums & galleries sector, joined Renew as CEO in March.
In our conversation, we talked about Paul’s journey across sectors, the nature of creativity, the challenges of a sustainability organisation’s evolving mission, and the opportunities which await.
Matt:
You joined Renew in March. What’s it like taking up a CEO role in the midst of a crisis like this?
Paul:
For me, the idea of being in charge of an organization while not being in lockdown feels strange! Because I knew nothing else, it became normal so quickly. On the third or fourth day of my role, I had to shut the office and put in place rules and procedures for working from home.
We’ve been doing that for seven months, over two lockdowns. We’re only just starting to go back to the office now.
It’s much easier to apply the technical and functional requirements of management and leadership at a distance. What’s hard is putting the emotional aspect back in, especially when that’s a relationship of one to many. I’m very happy and open when it comes to one-to-one emotional relationships, but having to hold that relationship to an entire community – and on an unfamiliar medium too – was hard.
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matt finch / mechanical dolphin 
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