Hidden synergies

The way to sustainable community is not clear - it is hidden among things we already know

Remote Indigenous outstation, East Kimberley region, Western Australia: Image Dr Matthew Parnell with community permission.

Reflection

This is a paper I presented at the Community Technology conference at Murdoch University, Perth, in 2001. I was the first paper I produced exploring themes that would inform my PhD research, and the first piece of work I presented in front of my supervisors, Professor Peter Newman and Dr Laura Stocker. Needless to say, their feedback was “interesting”!

Reading the paper nearly 25 years later, and in spite of my obvious enthusiastic naivety, I’m struck by how much ideas in this paper have persisted and are being more widely discussed in the broader sustainability and regeneration movements now.

With respect to my current work with practitioners in the regenerative practice and culture zeitgeist, many of the ideas discussed in this early paper come up frequently in contemporary discussion, although often in the context of regeneration being “beyond sustainability” because sustainability is merely “less bad”. People can have a hard time accepting that these issues were being considered in the forefront of the sustainability movement 25 years ago and more.

This is particularly ironic, because even though I was (and am still) fully on board with sustainability as a model for human development and environmental protection and restoration, at the time, I was also severely critiquing then current sustainability practice as lacking both a depth of culture and a systems perspective informed by such ideas such as connection to land, interconnectedness between people, the importance of local action, the influence of indigenous worldviews, and understanding of complex socio-technical systems.

At the time I raised many contentions about the problematic intent of sustainability, leading to my position at the time that sustainability practice needed a deeper approach; yet I never described sustainability as a mantra of “less bad, keep things as they are” that’s often raised in the regenerative literature and by regenerative practitioners repeating this mantra as if it was fact!

Having said that, over the last 25 years my ideas and approach have developed substantially further, having been tested in my practice and teaching, and through substantial reflection. The development of one’s personal practice never stops.

I hope you enjoy this early piece of mine!

Introduction

To help small communities to move to a more sustainable basis, this paper proposes a different theoretical approach. The key contentions of this approach are derived from reflections on the author’s personal experience in working with indigenous and other communities in Australia and form the theoretical basis of a doctoral research program being carried out through the Institute of Sustainability and Technology Policy at Murdoch University.

In much of the recent sustainability literature, there is considerable emphasis on the use of technology to solve fundamental problems. Further, there is a belief that the combination of technology and government policy provides the key. Much of the language used in the sustainability agenda uses words like “could” and “should” as a presage to a recommended practice change, usually with respect to technology (Beatley, 1997; UNEP, 1992; ACF2000). This way of thinking excludes consideration of a range of social issues that provide momentum to actual human activities and behaviours that supports the movement to more sustainable communities.

The research focuses on the small community. The small community provides a counterpoint to globalisation as demonstrated by such phenomena as economic rationalism, information technologies, genetic engineering and biotechnology. These phenomena are beyond the control of most communities and are in many ways making sustainability more problematic: improvements in local sustainability are matched by a myriad of unsustainable actions and developments on a global scale.

This paper contends that there are ways to sustainability, but they are not chiefly determined by technology and policy. These ways are much closer to the actions and behaviours of individuals in small communities, and are perhaps hidden amongst things we already know, which we haven’t yet connected in a meaningful and useful way.

Contentions

The role of the small community

The small community is where most of us live: the village, the suburb, the inner city block, the remote community, homeland or outstation, the small country town or provincial city. Many of us work in our small community or a nearby small community.

In the global economy, we spend more of our time at work and not necessarily with our families, friends and neighbours, and so we often create community within our workplace. Our lives are simple in essence, yet we live them in complex ways, often as a result of the global pressures and consumer seductions weighing upon us.

For most of us, we rely on the quality of our personal relationships to provide some meaning to our lives. It is in the small-scale arenas of our lives where the opportunity to experience community exists. This is where personal relationships are most effective and social capital is strongest (Putnam, 2000; Kelly and Sewell 1988). This is where we display our behaviours, our cultures, our beliefs and our personal capacities. This is where the capacity to sustain any path or action is strongest and consequently where the change of behaviours necessary to further the sustainability agenda will be most effectively fostered.

Listening to the land

It has been stated that western culture has lost the ability to “listen to the land” (Mander, 1991; Sinatra and Murphy, 1999; Nannup, 2000). This is not a metaphor but a practical, meaningful and ancient skill, and still alive in the indigenous domain. By listening, we can gain some of our data about managing ecology and landscape (”country”) from the land itself (Nannup, 2000). The roots of our current unsustainable behaviours lie in this lost capacity.

Ecological sustainability issues such as ecological carrying capacity of landscape, resource sources and waste sinks are intimately related to long-term natural cycles that do not conform to the short-term cycles of a global economy (Brand, 1999). While science is able to listen to these cycles and to quantify their effects, the listening is only being done by a small sector of society; it must be done by most of us.

Learning to listen to the land is not about appropriating an indigenous way of life; our post-modern western global culture is not capable of that. It is also not assuming that all indigenous people can listen to the land – colonialism and assimilation policies have taken away learning opportunities. It is mostly about taking inspiration and guidance from the deeper, living aspects of how indigenous people connect with their country, so that we can create new development paradigms that are based on an intimate understanding of natural cycles.

Placemaking

A subtext to the concept of listening to the land is tied up with how contemporary western culture views placemaking. Home and place has become commodified and defined by work opportunity, economic advantage, affordability, style and preferred social identity rather than the spirit of a place and our deep connection to it. (Marcus, 1995) We skate across the landscape, spending short periods of time in one place, selling up and moving on. While this can open us to a global view of the environment and the variety of bioregions and landscapes and the variety of cultures therein, it tends to limit our ability to engender deep connection to place. Indigenous people can teach the rest of us this deep connection to place, if we stay in country for long enough and listen (Nannup, 2000).

Reverse technology transfer

In Australia, the development of physical infrastructure in remote indigenous communities is determined largely by the orthodox western-centred view that is focussed on transferring sophisticated, so-called superior technology to communities that may have little or no experience with these technologies.

This research turns this view around to contend that issues of sustaining technology in remote indigenous communities are similar to the problems of sustainability for the technologically advanced mainstream. Its just that the issues are more obvious in remote indigenous communities and the technologically advanced mainstream have become very good at hiding and denying their technical failures (Yencken and Wilkinson, 2000). Thus the failure of technology in remote indigenous communities is as much an early warning for the technologically advanced mainstream as it is an indicator of the problems of technology transfer.

Things we know

The above contentions are linked to issues that are broadly known to us. These issues are to do with culture, our relationships, our technical responses to problems, the basis of economy and how we learn what we know. These issues and their synergistic effect are not often considered in terms of the sustainability agenda.

Culture and the culture of sustainability

We live in a multi-cultural society, and most of us are happy to enjoy the fruits of the meeting of cultures. But maybe our cross-cultural awareness is restricted to the comfortable and the shallow. For many, multi-culturalism has contributed to a harmonious society; for others, it has heightened their fear of difference. The curious thing about culture is that we are not conscious of it until confronted by difference. We tend to live our lives without being demonstrative of our culture, unless we are in a situation to compare cultural experience.

Placing culture at the heart of the sustainability agenda raises many questions. Do cultural factors create obstacles to the adoption of sustainable behaviours? Do cultural factors help people sustain behaviours and technologies? How do they do this?

It may even be considered a racist issue to talk of sustainability in terms of culture, given that race and culture are entwined. But culture can be considered without reference to race – it can relate to ways of thinking and behaving that arise out of experiences other than race. And given that our behaviours are at the core of our unsustainable way of life, we should consider whether behaviour arises out of given, largely fixed cultural factors. It may be worth asking whether culture is an agreed set of behaviours, in which case the agreements can be changed in response to the needs of the times. And the need of our time is the movement to sustainability. As a consequence of these factors, it is contended here that the cultural/behavioural mix has the potential to foster sustainable development.

A further conundrum is that these questions indicate that we are trying to solve problems of sustainability from within the Western cultural paradigm that created much of the problem in the first place. There is a great opportunity here for the indigenous worldview to inform the Western cultural paradigm to help foster a behavioural/cultural change. There is a compelling necessity to develop ways to a culture of sustainability where the other sustainability factors can dwell and thrive: in effect, a cultural revolution (Mander, 1991). This culture must be capable of crossing cultural boundaries.

Relationships and connectedness: significance for sustainability

A common theme in critiques of contemporary Western culture is the decline of community, the loss of connectedness to others and the reduced quality of personal relationships (Putnam, 2000). The pace of modern life, the reliance on high technology, the global consumer culture, work and economic pressures may all be contributing factors to the decline of community. We have forgotten that we are interdependent in a social sense.

Further, the lessons of ecology and bio-diversity stress the interdependence of land, climate and biology, and our place within the whole. So, not only can’t we sustain our sense of community, we can’t sustain the landscape within which our communities must live. It follows that an important aspect of a sustainable culture is a higher degree of interdependence and connectedness.

The ideas of social capital stress qualities such as trust and reciprocity in addition to connectedness. They don’t indicate a causal relationship between abundant social capital and sustainability: a community may exhibit extensive connectedness in the undertaking of a joint enterprise that can be environmentally destructive. We see this in many small communities that have been founded upon the exploitation of a single natural resource.

Is the decline of social capital an impediment to furthering the sustainability agenda? It is reasonable to assume that to build social capital is to foster sustainability –interconnectedness may make it easier to make the necessary cultural and behavioural changes. However, since the concept of social capital as a useful way of looking at communities has only emerged in the last ten years or so, the linking of the concept to the sustainability agenda is in its nascent stages, let alone the linking of it to a cross-cultural situation. It bears further examination.

The technical fix: problem-solving as an obstacle to sustainability

Most symptoms of our current unsustainable world are physical and can, for the most part, be quantified and debated as items of fact. Such symptoms usually have a technological source: the coal-fired power station, run-off from agriculture, exploitation of fisheries and so on. The technological worldview would then propose that these symptoms are best dealt with by better or cleaner technology: a technical fix. That is, as identified above in the discussion of cultural factors, the sustainability problem is again to be solved by the paradigm that helped to create it. This is a common theme in just about any writing in the sustainability debate: technology will solve the problem, and behaviours need not change.

We run the risk of problem-solving our way down inappropriate paths in the pursuit of sustainability. It will certainly speed the sustainability debate towards some fairly hard limits. And maybe then, we might realise that our behaviours must change, regardless of the technological approach available.

The experience of the remote Indigenous community highlights the problems with the technical fix approach. Remote communities have experienced waves of technical fixes that have failed to deliver the outcomes of safe, adequate housing, safe water, reliable power and a healthy living environment. This is not to say that the technologies are failures per se, but the lack of consideration at the design and consultation stage of a range of local social factors is a significant contributor to the failures (Pholeros et al, 1994). Such experience shows that transfer of any technology, green or otherwise, to any domain will not be successful or useful without careful consideration of local cultural and social factors.

Place and oikonomia: economy as a process of place making

The discussion about a sense of place and caring for country should include consideration of economy as part of the process of placemaking. Given that the Greek oikos, (house) and oikonomia, (management of a household over the long term for all family members [Hawken, 1993]) are the root words of economy, it stands to reason that economics is an integral part of placemaking and being on country.

Further, in the contemporary world, economy is what allows people to dwell in a place. It also, on the other hand, is responsible for the continued degrading of our places and their broader ecological footprints through a narrow view of accounting that does not place value on natural, human and social capital (Hawken et al, 1999).

Unless placemaking is sustainable, if not restorative, the economic system will be one of diminishing returns. New views of economics are needed for small communities that are connected to the global economy but are not forced into unsustainable practices by imposed structures. This is a tricky balancing act for small communities. It is particularly problematic for remote indigenous communities who are disadvantaged through lack of economic opportunity and welfare dependency, yet need an economic basis for their communities. For example, remote indigenous communities are developing networks in the international art market to maximise their economic returns for reinvestment in maintaining their country (Warlpawun, 2000).

If the economic basis of placemaking is considered in terms of the indigenous practice of listening to the land and caring for country, perhaps communities will voluntarily limit development for long-term sustainability.

The learning community and personal capacity building

In the sustainability context, our communities undergo a considerable amount of education but very little learning. Given that the global ecological crisis has been part of our awareness for several decades now, and that we still have not changed our behaviours much in response, it appears that we are not learning the lessons needed to move to a sustainable world. From a practical point of view, to further the movement to sustainability, learning must be considered as a completely different issue from education.

Education, training, teaching and schooling are part of a paradigm that is separate from the natural cycles that we must learn to experience and understand. Formal methods of education also seem to conflict with real learning that occurs informally, especially when people are motivated to make real changes in their lives.

This is where the focus on the small community is important: there is an immediacy about the effects of unsustainable behaviours; there is also an immediacy about the learning opportunities that arise from these effects. Such behaviours need to be unlearned, and sustainable behaviours learned. The track record indicates that this will only occur through our direct experience: a silted up water hole; a polluted water supply; poor air quality; dramatic fuel price rises; surfing in raw sewage; release of genetically modified organisms and so on can initiate appropriate action and the learning required to change behaviour.

Thus the real issue of learning concerns personal and community capacity building which is the best hope for behavioural and cultural change.

The process of development

Our current modes of development are still very much embedded in a paradigm that doesn’t recognise limits (Meadows et al., 1992). The paradigm is based on a short-term economic view based on quick financial returns and a narrow accounting view as mentioned above.

The paradigm also tends to limit community participation, whether it is in the planning and design of an extractive industry, a new subdivision, a new factory on a greenfield site, a freeway or an agribusiness. Much of the current development paradigm has anti-democratic tendencies; often it takes massive mobilisation of community opinion to put up opposing views to environmentally destructive developments. The movement to sustainable communities allows for greater local democracy than at present – development decision-making must stay as close as possible to the communities affected by such decisions. This is not to say that the dynamism of the business world cannot be part of a sustainability culture, but it must become the servant of a community development paradigm that places small communities and their local ecologies first.

Hidden synergies among the things we already know

Much of the debate on sustainable development is based on isolated treatment of the issues discussed above. It is a fragmented debate which is trying to transform existing development paradigms within the terms dictated by those paradigms. The issues described need to be considered from a different point of view based on their synergistic effect. Although ways to sustainability are hidden in the interrelationship of these issues, they are not readily observed, experienced or given life.

So, how can we bring these things we know to life?

This research is not about to propose solutions at this point, although lessons drawn from the sustainability experience to date indicate it is worth pursuing the space between the ideas:

Small communities provide a human-scale arena for identifying problems and proposing solutions which may be of value to both the small community and the wider world.

A contemporary way of listening to the land will empower people in small communities to be better observers of their landscapes and ecologies, and to focus on socio-technical solutions that are appropriate to local scales and economies.

Indigenous communities in particular demonstrate early warning signs of failure of mainstream and imposed technologies. Their experience in sustaining their communities and maintaining country should inform the development of non-indigenous communities.

An understanding of culture, whether it is the broad culture of an ethnic group or the culture of a segment of society, will help inform the development of appropriate technologies and ways of making technologies available to communities. It will assist in tailoring sustainable technologies to learning processes. It will help to engender a new cultural paradigm of sustainability.

Sustainability is not a state to be reached through the technical fix. It is a dynamic created by behaviour. It is ultimately driven by the personal and the subjective. It is not a fast, straight-line process as commonly practiced. It also must be an extensively participatory process, promoting personal and community capacity. It is a “sea of events and people” (Kelly and Sewell, 1988).

These learning and cultural factors when combined with significant reserves of social capital have potential to contribute to community capacity to manage development in a sustainable way.

The strengthening of communities through development of learning and social capital will contribute to a greater questioning of technology that will reduce reliance on the short-term technical fix approach.

A learning community listening to and responding to their local ecology will better inform the process of placemaking and its economic basis.

A change in our development processes to a more democratic basis will be lead by cultural change brought about by a learning community.

There may be a whole raft of hidden synergistic outcomes awaiting discovery out of the interrelationship of these known sustainability factors. However, in spite of the complexity of the factors discussed in this paper there may not be as much for us to learn as we think.

A change of perspective may be all that is necessary to harness the power of things we already know.

Conclusions

The importance of our small communities in the sustainability agenda lies in the fact that these are the places where a more direct experience of sustainability issues is possible. They are where the success will be most readily observed. Most of these factors discussed here are known to us, but not necessarily in a connected way. If we can give life to the synergistic effect arising from things we already know, and stop the mechanistic, isolated approach to sustainable development embedded in the current way of thinking, we may have a more realistic chance of making our communities of all kinds more sustainable.

All of us “live on Country”, but only some of us know it.

References

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