Sunday 28 March 2010

Networks

The theory

After the opening announcement of the site to a mailing list composed of contacts accumulated in about five years, there were a number of responses and questions, but the most common was: "Who are you?" The main reason for that was that I forgot to sign the email introducing the site, but a second reason was that some of the contacts, like the editor of the Transition Network newsletter, were weak contacts that had long ago forgotten about me and never knew much to start with.

Which only goes to show the importance of networks. Before even wanting to read or listen anything, we want to know how to relate to it. For most people it's extremely hard even to decide whether they like or dislike something if they don't know what it's connected to.

What is a network? It's just a way of looking at any bunch of things or living creatures. If you decide that, instead of looking at each element, you are more interested in studying how they relate to each other in some way, you will call it a network. If the elements are computers, you call it a computer network; if they are living creatures, you may call it a food web; and if they are people, you call it a social network.

When you talk about networks, you call each element a node, and each relation a link. "Relation" can mean a lot of things. It may be that the two nodes can communicate with each other. It may mean that something physical goes from one to the other, for example, food or supplies of materials.

Nodes are represented with dots, while links are represented with lines or arrows. You then look at the picture and sometimes the picture gives you a better understanding of what's happening there.

Networks may take many shapes. You can see some examples below:


There are a few things that you can learn straight away from looking at the shape of a network:
  • If there is a long chain, you know that anything that is passed along that chain (information, food, materials) has a risk of being lost or degraded in some way at each step, and the transmission from one end to the other will be slow.
  • Nodes that have many links are always special. Those nodes are the ones that have the best access to information, food, etc. On the other hand, links often need some kind of maintenance. A node with a lot of links may spend a lot of time, energy, money, or other resources, just keeping those links working.
  • Different kinds of networks work well for different situations. It's very easy to add new nodes to a star, where all are connected to the central node, but the central node is critical for the network, and if it goes, the whole network goes. A fully connected network gives all the nodes as much connection as they could possibly have, but it's often too complex and costly (in money, time, energy or other resources) to put into practice.
The practice

Experiment 1

If you are a human being, you are part of many social networks (and if you are not a human being, please tell me all about it). You relate to other people and groups of people in a number of ways. If you are reading this, you probably are involved in some kind of "green" activity, and chances are, you aren't doing it entirely on your own, you are relating to a number of other people and organizations. A good understanding of the shape of those relationships can help you a lot if you think you will ever need to do a big, coordinated effort together.

This is an exercise I tried to do once in a workshop. It wasn't too interesting because there weren't enough people involved; if you want to try it, make an effort to get as many people involved as you can.

1. On a big piece of paper, write the names of all the groups of people involved in this area that you know of. Don't write a list, use all the space in the paper, and try to put close together those groups that you think work closely with each other. It will be useful if under each name you draw a circle that in some way represents the "manpower" of the group. A single person working a couple of hours a week should be a tiny dot, while a big organization with lots of people working full-time in this area should be a huge circle.
2. If you find that after writing all the groups, the paper got a bit messy, don't be afraid to re-do it in a neater way. If you think it's messy now, after the next steps it can become a real tangle. Best to tidy up early.
3. Draw links between the groups in different colors. A red link means that there is at least one person working in both groups. A black link means that the two groups work closely: there is a meeting between members of both groups at least once a week. A green link (it's best if you do this with a thinner line) means that the two groups collaborate in some way, but not closely.

What do you see there? A few things you may want to think about:
  • Many red links but few black links indicate a weakness. A red link is often kept by only one person. If this person goes, the link goes. Are there any ways that at least some of the red links can be turned black?
  • It's normal that there are many more green links than black or red, but if black and red are extremely few, the network is also weak and it will be difficult to coordinate. Are there any ways to turn some of those green links black?
  • If you look only at the red and black links, is the network disconnected into several smaller networks? In that case, it may become difficult to coordinate between those separate collectives. Can you create black links that connect the different smaller networks?
  • Look at the nodes with many links. How big are they? Big nodes can manage well a lot of links, but small nodes will have trouble with many links. Are there ways of making those well-connected small nodes bigger, or fusing those nodes with another one they connect to with a black or red link, or distributing the load among several nodes?
Experiment 2

If you grow food, an understanding of food webs can help you control pests without using pesticides (or using a lot less of them). You are probably aware that a way of eliminating pests is introducing their natural predators, but it isn't enough to understand that. What is the natural predator going to eat after they have eaten your pest? Are there enemies of this natural predator in the environment? If so, are there too many (the predator won't survive in big enough numbers) or too few (you may be creating a whole new problem there!)? Don't think only about the one link you care about (predator eating pest), think of all the other links that this predator is going to have with the rest of the environment.

Most people who give some thought to the whole food web end up introducing their chosen predator anyway, but make a decision to observe a lot more carefully what happens after the introduction. That's permaculture for you!

Sunday 7 March 2010

Introduction to (eco)systems thinking

The theory

One of the most classic Einstein quotes is: "You cannot solve a problem from the same consciousness that created it. You must learn to see the world anew." I was quoted it once in a permaculture workshop, by somebody who was utterly convinced she was telling me something I didn't know. I suppose the moral of the story is that before preaching your Bible to the savages, check out the wisdom they may have already.

So, you may or may not be aware of this already: To make the world more sustainable, one of the main things needed is a major change in mindset. The difference between the way most people think now most of the time and (eco)systems thinking is simple but powerful, and it's the same difference as between traditional biology and ecology.

Biology studies living organisms: their structure, function, growth, origin, evolution and classification. This is very much the same way we think about most things: separate entities that may have parts, histories, etc. When we want to know more, we take a closer view and/or try to freeze the movement that is going on and study the static picture in detail at our own leisure.

Ecology studies the interactions of living organisms with each other and their environment, their distribution and dynamics. It's like taking a step back: you aren't looking any more at separate entities, but at the whole web of life. Instead of looking closer, separating things and freezing the movement, you are trying to step back and take in the big picture all at once, and see exactly how everything is moving and everything affects everything else. If you aren't used to this, you can feel dizzy very quickly!

Let's look at a couple of examples from ecology to get a first taste about how to think in systems. The first one, a graph that shows a cyclical ecological sucession. Ecological sucession is the name for the changes in the composition and structure of an ecological community.



The text inside the cycle isn't very readable, but don't worry, it's mostly Latin anyway. The main idea is simple: instead of looking at each plant and animal separately, this is looking at the whole history of what happens in this particular plot of land across time. And it doesn't take a lot to see that the process is similar to many others that you may have seen, not just in nature but wherever you have seen simple and complex systems alternating.

The second example is what's called a food web. This tries to show the relationships between different living creatures in an ecosystem - specifically, what eats what:



Looking at it as a web some things become immediately clear: what happens if the numbers of Arctic cod suddenly declined? You can tell with only a glance that it would be havoc for just about every other big living organism in the Arctic.

The practice

There is nothing to stop you from doing this same exercise of stepping back and looking at relationships and evolution instead of separate entities at one moment in time, in any practical problem that you are trying to solve, and see if that gives you any new insights.

Get a piece of paper and try to do a diagram of what is happening, either as time passes or in relationships, to any situation that you are trying to change. A few examples of experiments you may want to try:

1. If you are part of an organization, try to do a map of all the organizations you relate to, and how everyone relates to everyone else. An arrow (A->B) is used to mean "A is necessary for B". You may want to use different colors to show different types of links. What patterns emerge?

2. If you are in a situation that seems to be going in circles and going nowhere, make a drawing of the circle with all the steps. Can you see at any step the possibility of choosing a different path?

3. If you have a project and you are running into a major obstacle, try this. First, ask yourself: what is the obstacle? Chances are, you will choose either a person, or a group of people, or a rather concrete thing, like "money" or "stupid regulations". Try to think in terms of interactions and a bigger picture instead of an isolated obstacle. Ask yourself, what is wrong about the interaction I have with this person/money/this obstacle? Who needs who or what? Are there any more elements in the environment that I can bring to change this interaction? What would need to happen so that I could do the things I can't do now?

In future posts I intend to go in much more detail and give you very specific tools and examples. For the moment, enjoy this first taster!


Site map

This reflects the topics I'd like to touch on eventually... No guarantees that things will develop as expected. Things will progress depending on what readers ask and would like me to touch on, not necessarily following the order below.

If you find this list confusing, it's because my thoughts lend themselves naturally to being organized in a tree shape. If anybody can think of a way of making it clearer, I'd be immensely grateful.

1.1. Trust the system, not the people
2.1.1. Watch
2.1.2. Think
2.1.3.1. Wants and needs
2.1.3.3. Trade-offs
2.1.4. Choose
2.1.5. Do
2.3. The long run
2.4.1. Why things go wrong: Rational reasons
2.4.1.1. Prisoner's dilemma
2.4.1.1. Double bind
2.4.3. Wicked problems and super-wicked problems
2.4.4. Steps to change
3.1. How to think about networks: who and what
3.1.1. Cultures are networks
3.2.1. Getting into somebody else's shoes
3.3.1. Links and time
3.3.1.1. Strong and weak ties
3.3.2. Influence
3.3.2.2. Principles of influence
3.3.2.3. The balance of power
3.3.2.3.1. A lever or a bridge?
3.3.2.3.2. Ways of empowering people
3.3.2.4.1. Communications breakdown: the cycle of silence
3.4.1. Random and scale-free networks
3.4.1.1. What is a hub?
3.4.2.1. Communication methods
3.4.2.1.1. Few-to-few (interactive)
3.4.2.1.2. Few-to-many (passive)
3.4.3. Creating and maintaining coordination
3.5. Mapping networks
3.5.1. Seeing what is not there
4.1.1. What is a city?
4.1.1.1. Individual, local, global actions
4.2.1. The difference between good and bad groups
4.3.1. Magic numbers for small groups
4.3.2. Magic numbers for big groups
4.4. The wheel of life in groups
4.4.1. Steps to change in a group
4.4.2. Decision-making in groups
4.4.2.1. Independent and full group decisions
4.4.3. Planning: loops within loops
4.4.3.1. The levels of a plan: aligment
4.4.3.1.1. Activity
4.4.3.1.2. Result
4.4.3.1.3. The plan
4.4.3.1.4. The goals
4.4.3.2. The bones, the flesh and the dress
4.3.3.2.1. Rules of thumb for design
4.4.3.3. Motives in a group
4.4.3.3.1. The right kind of encouragement
4.4.3.3.2. Effort, result and personal goals
4.4.3.3.3. Eliminate negative and create positive
4.4.4. Characteristics of a good team
4.5. An effective group inside its environment
5.1.1. What happens when connectivity goes up?
5.1.2. What happens when connectivity goes down?
5.2.1. What happens when complexity goes up?
5.2.2. What happens when complexity goes down?
5.3. Resilience
5.3.1. How does resilience go up?
5.3.2. How does resilience go down?
5.4. Connectivity, complexity and resilience in examples
5.5. Connectivity and complexity in networks
5.6. Connectivity, complexity, resilience and cycles
5.6.1. The wheel of life drawn with axes
5.6.2. Cyclical sucession (or adaptive cycle)
5.7. Death: when the wheel of life stops








What is ecological transition?

Ecological transition is just a name for a simple idea.

Einstein said once: "You cannot solve a problem from the same consciousness that created it. You must learn to see the world anew."

The world has a big, serious problem right now, and it's so big that it doesn't have a single name. There are names for aspects of it. Some talk about climate change. Some talk about fossil fuel depletion. Those that see how big the problem is may tell you that we are reaching the limits to growth on our planet, and relate it to population figures, inequality, ecological imbalances... If you have read Blessed Unrest by Paul Hawken, you have a rough idea of how big the whole issue is.

Many have noticed that you need a different mindset to deal with these problems. Many agree that some kind of collective action is needed to deal with them.

But you don't see very often a coherent framework, some place that helps you understand the theory, see how socio-ecosystems work, and apply that knowledge to your day-to-day actions when you are trying to find local solutions to the global problem.

This site is an attempt to provide that coherent framework. It will need your input to grow, especially your questions and showcases of your successful results.

Why do I call it ecological transition? Several reasons:
  • I had to choose something. It's kind of hard to talk about things that don't have a name!
  • I think "ecological transition" is the best way to define the state of the world right now. Of course, the world is always changing, but at this particular point, the whole ecology of the planet is at a bifurcation point: we either figure out how to keep it within reasonable limits compatible with civilization and without any dramatic loss of human life, or we don't. Either way, it's going to be an ecological transition.
  • "Ecological transition" is a technical term in ecology, that refers to either an ecotone (ecological transition zone, known to laymen as a "fringe", where the most interesting stuff happens), or a move to a different ecosystem. Both seem to apply to the idea of moving towards a sustainable world.
  • It's a nod to the Transition Towns movement, that I was involved in for quite a while.
  • It lends itself to funky abbreviations, like EcoT. Well, I like that one!
On the early days, it's going to be a bit difficult for visitors to see which things I see as part of what I'm attempting to do here, and which things are out of scope. I'm not trying to explain the whole world here, only big chunks of it! Please be patient with me, and don't get too upset if your favorite subject never comes up.

As a general guide, ecological transition IS:
  • A way of understanding ecology and society
  • A collection of practical recipes to help collectives make the world more sustainable
  • Focused on general solutions that can be applied in many places and circumstances, rather than very specific ones
  • Focused on solutions for cities, rather than eco-villages or individuals
  • Public domain - you can use this information in any way you like, and you don't need even to give any credit to this site.
Ecological transition IS NOT:
  • An organization or political movement
  • A guide for individuals - it's mostly focused on collective action
  • A fixed set of knowledge or a brand name - you can use the term if you like it, and you can expand on the ideas here in any way you find worthwhile.
Ecological transition MIGHT BECOME at some point in the future:
  • Some kind of social movement (like feminism, or open source, or your favorite ideology)
  • Some kind of certification (like fairtrade)
Don't forget, this will need your input. Without it, there is absolutely no point in it. Please send in your questions, showcase what you are proud of, and help it be something worth sharing.