Balancing Individualism and Collectivism

This paper begins with the understanding that the global commons is under threat. In the light hereof, I consider why it is important to appreciate Indigenous styles of collectively oriented knowing, where selves are understood as “selves-in-relation” to one another and to all living and nonliving things, as part of the web of life. I suggest that often accounts of the Anthropocene (as proposed by various authors postulating this concept) do not accentuate how the forcefulness of human impact on the world (by virtue of humans manipulating and extracting resources) can be regarded as rooted in Western-oriented supposedly rational styles of knowing and calculating, which to date have been historically dominant. This approach to knowing and being-in-the-world is ill equipped to incorporate a conception of our existing as humans in relation to others, including to all that exists. Indigenous thinking as expounded by various Indigenous authors across the globe (which I define as I proceed with the paper) starts with the premise of connectivity of life forces, and therefore with the assumption that we, as humans, are called upon to play a responsible role in our caring for each other and for the earth. Working in terms of the notion of care does not mean that we are less rational, but on the contrary that we recognize that our existence is contingent on our supporting, and being supported by others (including nonliving entities). This in turn implies an attitude of respecting how “individual” well-being is a function of the well-being of the whole. Based on these considerations, I propound in the paper that planetary stewardship should not be envisaged as applicable only now that we have entered the epoch named by some as the Anthropocene, where the human power to manipulate the environment has become a global geological force in its own right. Instead, we need to question the way in which this power has hitherto been used, and the (dominant) worldview that enabled the use of such power as a manipulative enterprise. Such questioning allows us to reconsider the values in terms of which the Anthropocene can be approached, by taking on board—and indeed foregrounding—Indigenous views, and bases, of stewardship. The paper concludes with some considerations of how diverse knowledge systems can be brought into communication/integrated towards enhanced ecosystem governance.

This paper compares crisis narratives and descriptions of the Anthropocene to the institutional and substantive changes that have been brought on the way by the creation of the Banking and Energy Union in the EU. From the aims alone, it becomes clear that both the Banking and the Energy Union were born out of the political desire to make each of the systems more robust, but that the visions themselves fall short of significant substantive change or a reinvention of the system. Whilst the explanation of this is almost entirely political, some of the reasons also have to do with the functioning and the mechanisms of the law. The law, in particular public law, stands and falls with formal legal principles, has a particular difficulty dealing with, defining and coming up with solutions for risk whilst staying true to formal principles such as certainty and proportionality. Risk detection requires the introduction of new procedures and agencies (institutions). The mitigation of risks requires a multicontexual and multipolar balancing of rights and interests. Both proceduralism and a complex act of balancing can guarantee the integrity of law and its methodology, but they do not bring about substantive change. This paper sees a third method of risk mitigation in the creation of new institutions (such as the Energy Union, but also the United Nation or NATO). This is perceived as the creation of something that is larger than the threat it addresses (‘super structures’), but substantively ends up enforcing little more than the “lowest common denominator”. This paper, therefore, suggests abandoning such methodological approaches and changing the principles on which the EU and the law of the common market is based instead. It proposes a “first best” and a “second best” solution. The first is the introduction of new and prevalent aims and principles and an actual change of the economic system. The second (though more likely solution) proposes a mere extension of the goals of the European union, which results in a careful act of balance between more sustainability and the development of the liberal common market project.

The impact of climate change has been underestimated and the way in which built capital is valued at the expense of social and environmental capital has resulted in development and urbanization processes that threaten food, energy and water security. These issues were discussed and raised at a previous conference on sustainability hosted with Universitas Nasional in 2015, Jakarta where I presented a plenary paper. This issue was also addressed by delegates from the West Java Provincial Government who attended a 10-day leadership workshop at Flinders University. Workshops at the Ministry of Finance, Ministry of Religion and Ministry of Social Affairs in 2013 and 2014 and workshops with members of the Indonesian Research Consortium in 2016 have resulted in establishing the basis for this research. This research is in several stages and this is stage one in Indonesia. The objective is to develop a way to enhance the management of carbon footprints by participants. This chapter discusses the following: ∙ Design and preparation for a participatory action research project based on engagement with staff at Universitas Nasionale, Padjadjaran, Indonesian State Islamic University and West Java Provincial Council and Wirasoft, Sydney. ∙ Processes to date that have involved developing a research consortium with universities and Wirasoft. The participatory process supports the design of a Participatory Action Research Programme to be implemented in three stages across Depok (a highly urbanized area with a diverse population), Jatinangor (an area that is becoming increasingly suburban) and Cianjur (a food production area). The fourfold aim of this PAR research in public policy and administration is to: ∙ Develop and pilot processes for public education and engagement to address the rights and responsibilities of ecological citizens through participatory public education. The approach to the research will be to pilot the engagement software and to test the understanding that people have of social, economic and environmental challenges before and after using the software. ∙ Work with people to find local solutions and to explore what works, why and how and what does not work why and how. It will do so by exploring the following hypothesis: The greater the level of public participation (a) the greater the understanding of UN Development Goals, (b) the greater the personal application of the goals. ∙ Address the low carbon challenge by finding ways to regenerate the way we live in cities and to be mindful that the United Nations Sustainability Development Goals do not go far enough to prevent food, energy and water insecurity in unliveable environments. It addresses and considers food, energy and water security by enabling people to engage in local governance at the local level. ∙ Extend the previously funded research by the Local Government Association, entitled: “Decision Making Software to address mitigation and adaptation to climate change” (Ethics Protocol 5262) (The research was conducted from 2010 and completed in 2012 and the results were published in 2014 in the form of two Springer volumes. The results of the de-identified data have been published by Systems Research and Behavioural Science and by Springer. McIntyre-Mills, J. 2012a “Anthropocentricism and wellbeing: a way out of the lobster pot?” Syst. Research and Behavioural Science. Published online in Wiley Online Library. (wileyonlinelibrary.com) DOI:10.​1002/​sres.​2131 (A ranking ABDC Australian Business Deans Council Journal Quality List). McIntyre-Mills, J and de Vries, D. 2012b. “Transformation from Wall Street to Well-being” Syst. Research and Behavioural Science First published online: 10 OCT 2012 DOI: 10.​1002/​sres.​2133 (A ranking ABDC Australian Business Deans Council Journal Quality List). McIntyre-Mills, J. with De Vries and Binchai, N. 2014, “From Wall Street to Wellbeing” Springer, New York, 253 pp. ISBN 978-1-4899-7465-5). McIntyre-Mills, J. 2014b, “Systemic Ethics and non-anthropocentric stewardship” Springer, New York, 270 pp.). Thus the research will: ∙ Deepen our understanding of how people perceive local climate challenges and experiences. ∙ Explore the social influences habits and a range of behaviours that potentially shape consumption. ∙ Test the kinds of face-to-face and digital public engagement that could encourage people to explore ways to live simply and well. The research is low risk and the data will be collected by Assoc. Prof Janet McIntyre and co-researchers. The research will be conducted through focus groups, interviews hosted via the participating organizations and a web-based survey.

The current way of life is unsustainable (Papadimitriou in The coming ‘tsunami of debt’. The Guardian.com, Sunday 15 June 2014 17.58 BST 2014) and in a bid to maintain the status quo—profit is extracted from people and the environment. The challenge of scaling up efforts to engage people in an alternative form of democracy and governance is that currently the response to social, economic and environmental challenges is that internationally politics is being shaped by so-called realist politics (Beardsworth in Cosmopolitanism and international relations theory. Polity, Cambridge 2011) based on (a) competition for resources, (b) the notion that profit and loss, win and lose is contained/carried by ‘the other’ and (c) Huntington’s ‘clash of cultures’ thesis rather than an understanding of our interlinked, co-created and co-determined fate.

This chapter focuses on the ways in which educational and curriculum reforms in post-apartheid South Africa have attempted to tackle the national problem of poor learner achievement in literacy and language through the development of school workbooks which provide one lesson per day to support teaching and learning. In addition to addressing the pedagogical and curricula challenges, the developers of the workbooks strove to extend the pedagogy by infusing it with ethical values of social and environmental justice so as to form a parallel curriculum. The chapter location considers the teaching of values from an Ubuntu perspective, which is predicated on communal relationships and extends to include relationships in the animal and eco-environment. The chapter includes various pictorial codes from the materials to illustrate the issues raised. The legacy of apartheid left severe backlogs in education in general, and specifically with regard to literacy and language - necessitating curriculum support for learners in all public schools. In addition to addressing the pedagogical and curricula challenges, the post-apartheid project of social integration made it imperative for the designers of the workbooks to extend the pedagogy so as to infuse ethical values of social and environmental justice. While the books aimed to teach the overt curriculum (language and literacy), they were designed in such a way to ensure that the covert curriculum supported the values of democracy, Ubuntu, inclusivity (race, class, gender, ability and both urban and rural identity). In addition, the overt and covert messages strove to explore the children’s relationship with the planet and the animal- and eco-environment—striving at all times to ensure these sophisticated concepts were accessible to a target population of children aged from 4–13 years.

There is wide scientific consensus that global warming is taking place due to the emission of greenhouse gases and it is predicted that developing countries will both suffer the economic impacts to a greater extent and will likely be less able to adapt to changes (McGuigan et al. in Assessing impacts in developing countries and the initiatives of the international community. The Overseas Development Institute, London 2002: 3). There is growing recognition that a global response is required, with ‘real change and real action’ (McGuigan et al. 2002, pp. 30–31), yet the international, national and local responses required to address climate change and poverty are not straightforward as the question of how to simultaneously reduce the impact of human life on the earth and mitigate the effects of this impact on the world’s poorest people is a wicked policy problem. While it is widely recognised that an increased engagement across stakeholder groups is required to address climate change and poverty, currently no framework for conceptualising how to manage diverse worldviews across stakeholder groups to both frame the problem and devise solutions has been forthcoming.

Educating children and young people on how to care for the environment is the focus of this paper. Today’s children will encounter the adverse effects of global population growth and subsequent pollution by adults at the expense of the environment. Thus it is important to draw children’s attention to carbon footprints and climatic changes. Through participation they will have opportunities to learn more about the implications of the way we choose to live our lives in the short, medium and long terms. Children learn about their rights and responsibilities by being given the opportunity to express their ideas and to translate policy into practice through small scale interventions that make a difference to this generation and succeeding ones. Such interventions can include lessons on recycling, use and re-use of resources, composting, organic and ethical farming, water and energy conservation techniques and much more. The essence of this paper has been extracted from my Participatory Action Research (PAR) on the life chances of children and young people in institutional care in Sri Lanka. This PAR largely employs qualitative investigations to manipulate the information collected during the study in order to assess and evaluate the findings. During the PAR, it was identified that some children’s homes have initiated a few enhanced ecosystem governance practices that redress problems associated with the worst aspects of industrialisation. These practices promote the harmonious coexistence of humanity and nature and have adopted the concerns of critical systemic thinking with consequent improvement of human well-being and ecosystem health. The potential of these homes to provide education for these vulnerable children by improving their ability to deliver stewardship responsibilities towards the environment should never be underestimated.

Climate change has become one of the most important global development issues in the current global political context. The impact of a changing climate is witnessed daily across nations north and south as a result of industrialization, greenhouse gas emissions, deforestation, fossil fuel burning, and other human activities (Mignaquy, Gender perspectives on climate change, 2014: 3). It impedes basic human livelihoods to the extent that the lack of food, shelter, energy, water and problems in access to education and health impedes sustainable development. Climate change triggers other environmental problems affecting both food security and human security such as: flooding, storms, drought, desertification, deforestation, sea level rises, the melting of glaciers, increased soil salinity, and decreased availability of fresh water (Dankelman et al. Gender, climate change and human security: lessons from Bangladesh, Ghana and Senegal, ELIAMEP:WEDO, 1–71, 2008: 5). It is also a global threat to ensure sustainable international development. In the strategies for survival and sustainability, women hold a central role nowhere more so than in the global south where communities of the working poor struggle to meet basic needs and where climate change exacerbates existing constraints to sustainable development. This study will explore the gender-specific implications of climate change. Although climate change impacts globally, its impact is not equal everywhere due to geographical location, socioeconomic conditions, political will, poverty, and race and gender inequality. Consequently our case study Bangladesh is illustrative of the intersectionality of experience, needs and outcomes that need to be negotiated on the road to a global environmentally sustainable future

The Aboriginal Sociocultural Survey into the value of environmental water to Aboriginal populations living in Australia’s Murray–Darling Basin is an example of a research tool that both accurately analyses cultural values while also communicating the same values to decision-makers whose cultures—including research cultures—are very different from those whose values are being communicated. Using a participatory post-positivist methodology the survey produced results that demonstrated a direct link between environmental water and Aboriginal socioeconomic well-being in Aboriginal terms. It created results that strengthen Aboriginal voices in natural resource management and Aboriginal socioeconomic development. Some mainstream observers queried its validity on the grounds of bias as the results lacked statistical variation. The paper looks into the validity of the challenge. It raises the ethical risk of non-Aboriginal interventions un-self-critically creating community fragmentation and approaches to sampling that weaken the authority of Traditional Owners. Non-Aboriginal researchers at the Murray–Darling Basin Authority agreed that if asked about the value of water, other interest groups would be likely to produce a similarly unified result. In so doing and in the context of an emerging social contract regarding relationships between Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal populations in Australia, the collective Aboriginal understanding that “water is life” has been positioned in the Northern Basin Review’s decision-making framework to reach a sustainable balance of water uses for the health and well-being of all life in the Basin.

Epochs have occurred throughout the history of the earth. A move from one epoch to the next can be considered to occur when there is a major transition which has a geological impact on all of life. A transition from the Holocene to the Anthropocene is now considered to have occurred in about the year 1800 with the Industrial Revolution. Dramatic changes to global conditions have occurred in a little over 200 years since then, with the consequent impact on the environment and all living things. Along with a geological change, a cultural transition has occurred. An individualistically oriented style of thinking has come to prominence with an objectification and exploitation of the environment. Yet, among Indigenous cultures, this change has not taken place. They retain a collectivist style of thinking and behavior and a deep respect for the land and all it contains. One of the values we can gain as participants in the Anthropocene is a recognition of these different types of knowledge existing in cohabitation, a comfortableness with an individualistic and relational identity occurring alongside each other. How much more valuable for this epoch to become an inclusive era when the collectivist perspectives from Indigenous cultures are appreciated alongside individualistic perspectives of developed nations?

From a systemic point of view, it can be understood that the physical environment is important to every living being because it supports and protects life. The physical environment contains the ecosystem in which humans, animals and trees interact. All living organisms depend on the physical environment for survival which is why the environment must be protected. With the increase in world population, pollution, and climate change, environmental conservation has become the dominant concern of everyone: individuals, communities, nations, governments and international organisations. From time immemorial the indigenous people of Bono Takyiman in Ghana have depended on their cultural beliefs and practices to conserve the physical environment. Although the indigenous conservation approach of the Bono is based on traditions, the practice is in tandem with modern scientific methods of environmental protection. In fact the indigenous people seem to be ahead of others in environmental awareness and the general concerns of environmental degradation. Using the relevant literature and the author’s lived experience of environmental conservation, this chapter discusses two major approaches which the indigenous people of Bono Takyiman employ in protection of the physical environment. In this chapter, I set out to share with others from so-called developed and developing countries alike this indigenous orientation to saving the environment. I discuss the worthiness of the approach and I consider lessons that can be learned from it for our way of addressing the Anthropocene.

The Acholi customary land tenure system is one of the most ecologically sustainable forms of land resource utilization in the arable and semi-arid parts of northern Uganda. It is regulated by a complex regime of rights under the authority of traditional leaders, and informed by traditional ecological knowledge of the environment, to manage the diversity of land utilization by farmers and pastoralist communities. The traditional leaders would exclude pastoralists from open access to land resources to give farmers the opportunity to grow crops and after the harvest period, pastoralists can access the vast open rangeland for grazing cattle. This suggests that regulating land access to different occupational groups can prevent land conflict, ensure maximum land resource utilization and sustain the natural cycle of ecological health for communal benefit through prevention of land conflicts. The chapter uses this example to argue that Hardin’s agenda regarding the universal “tragedy of the commons” is flawed without solid substantive basis.

This paper is based on a PhD project seeking to develop a unique participatory and inclusive urban governance of model of Nairobi city in Kenya. This paper, therefore sets to address the gap in the life chances between the haves and have nots in the city of Nairobi by using a participatory action research (PAR) approach in the course of rapid untamed urbanization. The paper moves to discuss contemporary challenges associated with such development and how they can be mitigated for a sustainable future. The paper is based on the hypothesis that the more an urban governance scheme is participatory and inclusive; a. the greater the life chances of citizens and b. the more sustainable the urban development process.

Drivers of land-use change processes include but are not limited to agricultural innovation and reforms, demography and policy changes, and external conservation trends. Research on land-use changes has concentrated on developing both spatially focused models and reductionist approaches. However, reductionist science has shown itself to be incapable of providing the complete and accurate information required to successfully address nature situations involving human values. This research proposes a shift towards “systems thinking” to capture the real motives behind land-use decision-making, in addition to understanding the interconnections between a given system’s elements and its dynamics in relation to the environment. The objective of this paper is to introduce an analytical framework that will assist in analysing land-use change dynamics, in addition to presenting a discussion as to why a paradigm shift towards systems thinking in land-use research is necessary. In addition, because changes occur not only spatially, but temporally, a historical approach is used to recognize this changing state. Land-use decisions are heavily influenced by drivers such as social constructions and needs, values and emotions, and the personal history of each decision-maker. Those drivers (internal to the human condition) are reflected in the individual landowner and land manager cognitive representations of reality. The framework guide the researcher in understanding individual incentives and motivations and to aggregate it at a collective level, by identifying which of these drivers contributes to the creation of a collective bond. Further efforts are required to understand all motives behind decision-making and the co-evolution of human and natural systems. To this end, the analysis of dynamics of space, time, and human choice play a crucial role.

This paper is based on a PhD project that strives to assess the performance of decentralised drinking water management in the city of Nauli, Indonesia. The implementation of decentralised government system followed by decentralising some functions including drinking water services is unsatisfactory in providing access to drinking water for all residents in the city of Nauli. Nauli Municipality that has just split up as an autonomous local government under the decentralised government system in Indonesia is facing conflicts in providing water provision to the society, since there are three public water companies in this region: City PDAM, District PDAM, and Provincial BLUD. Furthermore, these governments and their water companies seem to forget the main objective of government in water provision as stated in the Indonesia Constitution: to fully control the water and manage it for meeting the people’s needs. The aim of this research is to apply Ulrich’s critical systems heuristics (CSH) to address the following research questions: (i) how effective is the current decentralised water management system? and (ii) how the current system can be improved and what ought to be done?

The chapter explores the disempowered role of women in rural development planning in Mindanao, Philippines. It argues that women are excluded from opportunities to participate actively in making development decisions as a result of the rise in multinationals who take over small farms and combine them into plantations growing only one crop. These monocultural growing techniques exclude the knowledge that women have about the role of diverse crops and the diverse (including wild) fauna and flora on which many Indigenous people depend for their food security. The repression and ‘weeding out’ of women’s knowledge by multinationals builds upon the patriarchal domination of decision-making. The result is that the knowledge of women about seed diversity, wild fauna and flora is being lost. Following Shiva, a case is made for the representation of women in public decision-making at the community and regional level so that women’s policy suggestions (based on their experience as farmers) is listened to, respected and acted upon, in order to preserve diversity. It is argued that active participation at the community, local government and state government levels should be encouraged to preserve diverse living systems as well as the life chances of the most disadvantaged women and their children. Moser’s framework is used to analyse inequality in the existing gender division of labour while Kabeer’s social relations approach is used as a lens to critique the existing gender inequality in various institutions spanning the household, community, state and market level. This qualitative research was conducted in the rural and Indigenous communities of Mindanao in 2013. A total of 105 participants were interviewed through theoretical sampling. This study used participant observation, interviews and focus group discussions. The Human Ethics clearance is 6046.

While most New Zealanders take safe drinking water for granted, rural communities can lack access to safe drinking water placing them at increased risk of waterborne illnesses. Many these rural communities lack the finance or technical expertise needed to improve drinking water quality. This vignette details the findings from a cross-cultural collaborative evaluation of a central government pilot to improve drinking quality in a Māori (indigenous people of New Zealand) community.

The concept of moral authority facilitates a deeper understanding of the fluid interconnections that exist between what are seemingly separate spheres of women’s lives. Moral authority highlights the way in which agency, power, culture and meaning impact on the daily experience of life. This article examines the gendered notions of moral authority that protect women’s political spaces and identity within the context of marriage in Colonial Kenya. For women under colonial rule in Kenya, the use of moral authority provided not only a sense of personal power but a method of confronting powerful menfolk and undermining the colonial regime. In exploiting the implied power of moral authority that came from being a wife, or a mother, or via links with the spirit world, women confronted those who encroached on their rights and livelihoods. The colonial experience tested women’s survival instincts and the capacity to challenge the injustice that would serve to undermine their socio-economic status in a colonised nation, and most importantly, reshape personal and social relations within their ethnic community.

Women’s voices and actions resonate throughout the African colonial archives, on which this research is based, ever evolving, articulating and resonating in contemporary manifestations of spirituality. This article applies the inside/outsider analogy employed by Trinh Minh Ha in the analysis of both colonial and postcolonial gender relations and demonstrate that irrespective of the ‘location’ of women as the ‘native other’ they were able to have a voice and command respect (Minh Ha 1997). The marginalization of women first by the colonial western outsiders and second by the, usually, male insiders of their ethnic group and cultural communities leaves them as Minh Ha would say ‘not quite insiders and not quite outsiders’(Minh Ha 1997: p. 418). Not voiceless, not powerless but located outside of hub of institutional power women were able to subvert, challenge and resist.

For the emergence of a Demosensual [R]evolutionary Eutopia in the twenty-first century, we ought to transcend the totalitarian, elitist approaches of political, financial, and societal policies and the obsolete social design methods, with innovative democratic practices, that will enable citizens from all walks of life, in participating in meaningful, authentic, demosensual dialogue. This chapter is inspired by the foundation for a locally based, but globally connected capability that transcends the conventional approach of Systems Science and marks the emergence of a new epoch for engaging stakeholders in social design practices. Demoscopio Center of the Science of Dialogic Design, Innovation and Entrepreneurship has been officially approved and adopted by the City Council of the Municipality of Heraklion, which is the capital of the Greek island of Crete, and a historical and culturally sensitive center, since the Minoan era. It is the culmination of 50 years of work of visionary systems thinkers, such as Harold Lasswell, Hasan Ozbekhan, John N. Warfield, and Alexander N. Christakis. Demoscopio is the contemporary reenactment of the Ancient Athenian Agora of the fifth-century B.C, with advanced technological and methodological means. It represents an innovative way to talk the walk, and walk the talk! It is the [r]evolutionary scientific implementation of the complementarity among the “Three Phases of Science” for fostering cooperation, enhancing communication, and activating social networking among citizens, innovators, and entrepreneurs. It offers the opportunity for co-designing resolutions for complex issues, through evolutionary learning and applications of the Science of Dialogic Design. It is the innovation for innovations, entrepreneurial development, democratic eutopia, for thinking globally, [inter]acting locally and making an impact glocally.