John Rueter
DRAFT
2006.03.16

key words: sustainability, complex vision, Spain

1. Introduction: The complex vision

The word "sustainability" means many different things to different people. Even some individuals may use multiple definitions to describe the area of sustainability. I have described four descriptions of sustainability: steady state, pulsing, multi-scale and emergent (multiple-models.html). In this paper I use the term "complex vision" to describe the state of sustainability as the result of iterative and dynamic interactions. I consider this description to include all of the other levels. For example, a steady-state system that is considered to be sustainable is a sub-set of all the sustainable systems.

In this complex view, sustainability emerges from a symphony of actors interacting with a myriad of processes across a wide range of scales. The actors include humans, all forms of traditional capital (physical, economic or human) and all or any part of nature. The interactions can be general or specific, one actor influencing an an entire class or a very specific individual transaction. The most important scales will be from human daily time scales to those of growth, continuation or collapse of entire civilizations. In this view, the state of "sustainability" is not necessarily an outcome of good planning with solid economic, social and ecological goals and objectives. As an emergent property, the behaviors of the agents that contribute to that state can have very different quality of rules and values.

Almost in the sense of the precautionary principle, I am suggesting the question, "what if sustainability is an emergent behavior?" (see sustainability-emergent.html). How would we modify our behavior (what we study, what we do, and how we govern ourselves) to avoid the consequences of considering sustainability to be a simple problem? I consider the three central questions to understanding sustainability to be: 1) How do we THINK we are doing? Parsing this question to be both, how do we think about our environment and what do we use as evidence that we are progressing or slipping. 2) What actors are involved in sustainability? What people, objects, processes and connections do we need to pay attention to? 3) Putting these two questions together to consider how will (as humans) will have to connect to the information in our environment to change our behavior. As I approach these questions myself, my prior knowledge answers the three questions as: 1) we that we think the environment is run by cause and effect, 2) we are only paying attention to human economics and 3) we believe that we should collect more information, process it and come up with better goals and objectives. My contribution to correct these short-sighted views of sustainability is to attempt to teach differently.

I believe that it will be extremely difficult to reach a dynamic sustainabile condition (see extremely-difficult-path.html). It will take an understanding of the strong view of natural capital sustainability, many different views of how to account for sustainability, and finally, and most importantly to the extremely difficult view, the only way to reach sustainability is to evolve regulation from within by "unfolding" from current strengths.

2. Teaching and learning about complexity

This paper describes how I propose to teach about this complex version of sustainability. I am assuming that the pedagogy should be true to the way we learn about sustainability, not a condensed version of what we have learned. This means that I need to craft inductive exercises for students to explore their world. My main emphasis is that in order to teach and learn about complex systems the students need to have five principle components (teaching-complexity.html):

1. The students need to develop a large repertoire of metaphors that can be applied to complex systems.
2. Each student needs to experience the rich and thick nature of complex systems personally.
3. Simulations, either as multi-player games or interactive computer models, can help students get a feel for the multiple possible paths and outcomes of these systems.
4. Students need to observe and collect data from systems without the biases and filters imposed by deductive, general laws.
5. Students will make relationships within the data to create information which will then be examined for relationships.

I am applying this approach to a specific course that will study sustainability by doing a comparison between Portland, Oregon and a triangular region of Spain bordered by Madrid, Salamanca and Placentia. In this combination of 200 and 300 level courses, the focus will mainly be on the first three components; metaphors, rich descriptions and simulations. Students will be have short field trips and assignments in Portland and will be immersed in the Spanish landscape for about 20 days.

2. Seeing patterns and metaphors of complexity

Each of the patterns in the following list is presented as an example of a particular process, the pattern serves as a metaphor for the complex interactions that formed it. All of these patterns could undoubtedly be generated by multiple processes which could be illuminated by looking at the pattern from separate angles or views (see viewers). The purpose of this list however is to provide a catalog (non-exhaustive, of course) of complex processes which the student can access and use language to describe through application of the metaphor. List 2 lists eight patterns and gives an at least one example process that can generate this pattern for each. A full description of the pattern, metaphor, examples, simulations and application to environmental sustainability is given on separate pages.

Table 1: Major Pattern, Metaphors and Complex processes. The metaphors and examples are well understood interactions that can generate this pattern. Each metaphor has a heuristic value in that it should help generate questions about what are the key features of an interaction that generates similar patterns.

Pattern	Metaphors/Examples
a. linear	linear dose-response
b. increasing slope	population growth light or heat with distance
c. pulsing	predator-prey interactions resource bubbles
d. threshold	toxic dose response fisheries collapse vegetation in a shallow lake
e. fractal	tree branching river basin erosion
f. spatial patchiness	landscape mosaic even, clumped, random
g. network resilience	food web response to stress
h. symmetry and centers	phylotaxis Piazza St. Mark
i. multi-agent behavior	swarming flocking stigmergy

Table 2: Icon and short description of each pattern. (Each of these will be presented as a page the gives a more complete description, a well recognized metaphor, several examples and a simulation that generates the pattern.)

	a. Linear patterns occur in nature but also as correlations in data description and analysis. Unless the object is a linear relationship to time, this type of relationship is often interpreted as being incremental and reversible. For example, a little increase in exposure results in a little increase in the environmental damage and if that exposure is removed, the damage will stop or even be reversed.
	b. Exponential patterns are named after the best fit exact equation for many of these interactions such as population growth or radioactive decay. The underlying process is iterative change by a set ratio, i.e. the simple relationship of one time to the next is the same ratio. Variations on this iterative model include the logistic equation (stated iteratively), heat flux, diffusion, and other processes that can be related to a constant ratio. An interesting point is that an iterative model may be both a better fit numerically and mechanistically for population growth for a medium number of organisms that have a reproductive life cycle.
	c. Pulsing. In a oversimplified model of resource production and use, a common pattern of behavior is for the resource to increase, leading to increased consumption, leading to decreased resource and finally decreased consumer. The pulse of a resources can be seen in many systems including historical fuel consumption (wood, charcoal, coal, and oil). One key feature of this metaphor for natural systems is that it is assumed that it is possible for the producer to recover and pulse again later, i.e. that this is can be a dynamic but sustainable system.
	d. Threshold and catastrophe. Sand piles are a good metaphor for how stress can build up on a developing pile until there is an avalanche. You can't really predict when the a landslide will take place.
	e. Fractal
	f. Spatial patchiness
	g. Network resilience in response to stress
	h. Filling in from strong centers
	i. Swarms and Flocks.

4. Applying the complex vision to adaptive management of natural resources

These patterns will be applied to a broader discussion of trying to identify patterns that are "sustainable" and extended to a discussion of how we (as humans) can try to manage complex systems for sustainable health (notes - managing.html).

more here

5. Learning activities

In this course, each pattern/metaphor is presented as a set of images,a description and examples. The ten patterns are presented over about 5 hours of class time, giving about 30 minutes to present and work through each pattern. In between classes students are supposed to find examples of that pattern in the local environment, use a metaphor to describe the process and move beyond the metaphor to describe the particulars of their example pattern and process.

I think that the students will have to be convinced of several benefits of looking for these patterns including. I suspect that they will question whether or not this is really a different way of looking at the environment or if it is already contained in the current disciplines. For example, many texts present a linear and threshold dose responses to be just different parameterizations of the same problem. This may be true if the response is reversible, however if the threshold pattern represents an underlying hysteresis (catastrophe) the underlying processes are very different and the management approach to dealing with these systems is very different. Another key question that I am anticipating is how you can apply a pattern to a system when there are many ways that process can play out and, elatedly, how can you ever "prove" that the system response was "caused" by that particular mechanism. My response to this will be to show them how different models (i.e. multiple models for the underlying processes) can strengthen the adaptive learning and management program. A good starting example of this is to consider what you would want to know about a system that you thought was going to reach a steady-state carrying capacity as determined by the logistic equation compared to what you would pay attention to if you thought it could be either a logistic steady-state or a pulsing system. Slight variations would have much more significance in the second approach.

activity type 1: Observe each of the patterns in the environment. Make a drawing or a picture of the pattern. Describe several mechanisms that could have created this pattern, including at least one "complex" version. For this assignment "complex" means that it has multiple interacting actors in an iterative and dynamic process.

activity type 2: Find a process or feature of your local community that is sustainable and describe it by applying complex metaphors.

activity type 3: Identify any single and small scale question that relates to sustainability. For example this might be how to increase neighborhood recycling or how to reduce automobile traffic in one area of a city. Propose two views of how this process is controlled, one simple control and another as a complex interaction. Identify what aspects of these two views are the same and which are different. What do you think would be key features to follow or evidence for the complex view.

6. Assessment and Grading

All classroom activities should include embedded learning assessment, evaluation and grading of student effort and learning. Since the point of the course is to address these patterns to understanding sustainability, the students should gain practice and get feedback on how these patterns apply.

In the past, I have used Blooms taxonomy to frame assessment rubrics in my discipline based classes. Given the nature of this course is for general education, outside of the disciplines, I agree with David Orr (Ecological Literacy 1992) when he suggests some very important learning objectives that should be part of a liberal education that are an alternative to Bloom's vision. The three most important are:

a. first hand knowledge about something

b. learn how to live in a place

c. learn connectedness instead of separateness

Orr's goal is that students "will not be merely well-read. Rather, they will be ecologically literate citizens able to distinguish health from its opposite and to live accordingly. If we adopt these as our educational goals, we will need new set of assessment and grading approaches.

key components

in class and while traveling, students will provide information just at the right time

students will be able to recognize a healthy system from an unhealthy system

students will indicate that they have developed a personal strategy to contribute to sustainability

 

7. References

Alexander

Bak

Collander

D'Arcy

Gibson

Mandelbrot

Reed

Reed