Sustainability

A nice video presentation by Elinor Ostrom on the Tragedy of the Commons with ideas that link to possible solutions. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ByXM47Ri1Kc

In the presentation she is going to suggest that humans have achieved sustainability through multi-tiered management systems operating at multiple scales (like an ecosystem). These humans must be acting with a rich place-based knowledge of the larger ecosystem.

She says people can determine how much to use, and in what seasons to use if they are familiar with the resource. They argue out, discuss, and adapt their rules over time. They come to trust one another. That if we enhance ways for people to develop rules that match the systems they are living within and studying, sustainable management is possible.

The kinds of institutions she discusses relate to my previous post about how top-down political control within natural resource agencies limits the overall intelligence and adaptability of the agency.

But my question here is how do we build these institutions within communities of people that are currently disconnected from their local places by modern lifestyles, attitudes, and industrial production? For example, if you're not a producer of food, fiber, or medicine it's easy to be unaware of intimate ecological connection. And there are plenty of people who produce food, fiber, and medicine in this culture that behave in ways that lead to tragedy of the commons. We modern inheritors of empire are different kinds of human beings who do not define ourselves in relation to the non-human. We have a retarded sense of being in the larger self-system.

How to get from here to there? It won't all be through rational information sharing. It necessarily will be through the senses, the lived bodily experience within a context that allows tenderness and openness toward the other. It can't be through imposed knowledge (like mandatory trainings) unless we want to breed resistance. Although when a community organizes itself a certain way it doesn't feel imposed, but more like common sense. It has to be through observation and feeling that is gained at the ground level while in relationship. I assume this knowledge can't be just a luxury to be consumed by the upper middle class, for where will the motivation come from to keep progressing?

But then, how do we get from here to there without the collapse of separating survival systems happening first? How do we prevent collapse? It sounds so flaky, but the answer that comes to mind is biophilia or in other words, love. We all have survival needs even if not dire at present. We're depressed when our needs aren't met. People seek solutions.

The solutions could be the ones that truly restore health rather than band-aids or distractions. The solutions must involve reconnection with a larger sense of self and purpose in relation to the non-human. It's now a matter of planetary survival.