Protecting the global commons: citizens do it better than economics

The winners of this year’s Nobel prize for economics have rewarded research into effective governance which lies outside traditional economic models.

In particular, laureate Elinor Ostrom has shown how community-driven projects can be more efficient than privatisation or nationalisation. User-managed examples of common property – rivers, woods, lakes etc – derive better outcomes than predicted by standard [economic] theories.

I have long thought this to be the case, but had never thought to wonder whether it could be proven.

Olstrom makes the link between citizens organising to protect an important asset, and climate change: “A lot of people are waiting for more international co-operation … there is this assumption that there are public officials who are geniuses, and that the rest of us are not.”

Links:

Guardian news article

Nobel prize committee citation for Elinor Ostrom

 

Encouraging sustainable behaviour

What helps people adopt sustainable behaviours?

It has long been known that information is not enough when it comes to campaigns on obesity, smoking, teenage pregnancies etc – and the same is true for promoting efforts against climate change.

Research suggests that some messages work better than others (http://coinet.org.uk/news/2009-10-06/psychology-sustainable-behaviour). By way of summary:

1. People don’t worry about things they can’t see (or even imagine). Doomsday scenarios don’t work. More succesful are messages which talk about pollution, or about the things they care about: their health, their family, their happiness.
2. Sometimes people know they have to change but don’t know how to. Community Based Social Marketing (see also this explainer), created in response to non-effective “information-only” campaigns, identifies a goal, behaviour to support that goal, and situations that will trigger the behaviour. If… then… For example, to change to catching the bus on Fridays: IF it’s Thursday evening, THEN set the alarm for earlier next morning; IF an umbrella is by the door, THEN it won’t matter if it’s raining, etc.
3. Use social norms positively. If people are told that their behaviour is socially approved (rather than simply receiving a pat on the back) they are more likely to continue it.
4. Those who make a public commitment are more likely to stick to it in the longer-term. Even a sticker in a window or on the phone makes a difference. And those who feel supported by friends and colleagues are more likely to change their behaviour than those who try to go it alone.
5. Financial interest can prompt pro-environment behaviours – but it won’t on its own make people be pro-environment at other times if financial reasons are absent. It makes people view themselves as ‘the sort of person who saves money’; they don’t switch to thinking of themselves as ‘the kind of person who acts sustainably’.

I find this an interesting list. I could imagine saying: I work with people who are responding to what’s happening in their communities, and in the places they go on holiday to. If you’re interested in reducing your energy use, then come along to our “sharing ideas” event. And so on. There are much better ways than these sentences, of course; this is just a start for me.

I’m also interested to learn whether these type of messages work in other situations too – for example, inviting members of an organisation to engage in a change process or a conflict resolution process (“This is about helping make the office a happier place…”; “Tell us about the changes you’d like to see…”).

Can you comment from your own experience with organisations?

More on collaborative working

In my previous post, I used the analogy of star-formation to discuss one aspect of consortia-building. I want now to turn to poetry as a means of highlighting another side of working in closer partnership.

Try these lines from an e.e.cumming’s poem (the lower-case letters are the poet’s conventional style):

love’s function is to fabricate unknownness

…

how lucky lovers are (whose selves abide

under whatever shall discovered be)

I understand these lines to say that one purpose of a relationship is to make space in which something as yet unknown may emerge. And having emerged (‘whatever shall discovered be’), how lucky lovers – friends – organisational partners are, whose relationship is strong enough to survive, be strengthened by, and to make use of what they have created between them.

Put this way, the link to consortia becomes clearer: we do not know what will emerge from the process, but the starting intention is to find out if we have a relationship strong enough to hold the fruits of collaboration.

What becomes possible to achieve, may in the end be what no-one chooses to sustain. But if one begins with an adventurous “It makes sense to be in the same room for the moment, let’s see what happens as we continue…”, then I believe the partners will have much greater capacity to abide under – and develop further – their mutual creation.

Framework’s core membership is meeting later this month to explore the world of collaborative working and consortia-building. If you want to know the outcomes of our discussion – or to suggest poetry or other resources we should be paying attention to! – please do be in touch; your ideas would be warmly welcomed.

The poetry quoted above is taken from “love’s function is to fabricate unknownness” in Selected Poems 1923-1958 e.e. cummings, Faber and Faber 1969, page 34.

Taking our lives in our hands

I heard recently of an eighty-year old who had given up his car and who was now doing all his local journeys by bicycle instead. Someone in the discussion said: “He’d better watch out -   he’s taking his life in his hands.”

We all agreed on the risks that the modern cyclist faces. But afterwards, I was struck by the phrase “taking his life in his hands”. We knew the speaker meant that the cyclist was voluntarily putting himself in danger.

Taken literally, however, the phrase actually suggests that he was taking more care of himself than usual. By taking his life in his hands, he was taking responsibility for his own life rather than surrendering it to others. Put this way, the phrase becomes even more incongruous when used to suggest that someone is being careless of their life.

And today I heard the phrase “they had their life in his hands” describing a person in crisis. Again the literal description – of being the person carrying one’s life – differed from the phrase’s usual meaning.

One of the clearest messages to come from the human potential movement has been the need to take more of our lives more often into our hands. We are responsible for who we are, how we respond to what happens to us, and how we cope with the feelings we have about ourselves.

This can be hard to do in organisations, even if we’re the boss. Culture as well as policies and procedures can sometimes chain us down, and create the impression that we have no room for personal choice. External pressures too – not least those of funders – can force the organisation down routes that we would not prefer to take. They even may put the organisation in danger.

If we are very lucky, we each have one person in the world who puts us at the centre of their attention, and who plans all their activities, joys and hopes around us. That person is ourselves. In becoming who we truly are, we take our lives in our hands.

Zebra mediation

Note: This parable is not my own invention; I’d be pleased to hear if anyone knows the author’s identity. Please post a comment if you want a mathematical explanation of the solution.

A great chieftain had died, leaving his herd of seventeen zebras to his three daughters. According to the chieftain’s will, one daughter was to have half of the herd; the next daughter got one-third; and the third daughter one-ninth. These proportions don’t divide very well into seventeen zebras, and the sisters were at loggerheads.

A mediator came by, leading her own zebra. “Would you like to add my zebra to the herd to help resolve the dispute?”, she asked.

Now with eighteen zebras, one daughter could take half – nine zebras; the next daughter took her six zebras (one-third), and the third daughter her one-ninth share, two zebras. Nine plus six plus two means seventeen zebras, and everyone was happy.

“Could I have my zebra back please?”, the mediator asked, and went on her way.

Moral: the mediator brings the process (her zebra). The parties use the process to get what they want, and the process moves on to the next conflict.

Drawing out climate change

The 2008 Ken Sprague Fund’s annual political cartoon competition was on the theme of of global warning and our threatened environment. This cartoon was one of the prize-winning entries, drawn by Tawan Chuntraskawvong of Thailand.

The cartoon depicts not just our present predicament, but also the world-view which holds our society in thrall and which allows our predicament to worsen.

You can see all the shortlisted entries and winners here, although a smaller selection is easier to view at The Guardian’s website.

Truth-saying

In Richard Adams’ Watership Down, a group of travelling rabbits reach what seems to be a perfect rabbit warren. The warren rabbits are well-fed, there is plenty of space, and the nearby farmer controls the rabbits’ natural predators. The farmer even carelessly leaves out carrots and other delicacies that the warren collects.

What seems ideal is in fact slavery: the farmer ‘farms’ the warren, and traps and shoots enough rabbits for his own use. Under the farmer’s protection, the warren has developed unusual rabbit behaviours, and they have lost some of their essential survival skills.

When one of the travelling rabbits lays this truth bare, the travellers are criticised, attacked and driven away. Each of the warren rabbits ‘knows’ at some level the truth of their existence, but all but one of them (who escapes to join the travellers) find it easier to live the illusion than acknowledge the truth.

Truth-sayers in human society sometimes face similar responses. Note that I’m using the early Quakers’ definition of truth: not as doctrine or objective fact, but an individual awareness or understanding drawn from inner attention and group reflection. The founder of the Quakers, George Fox, said that everyone “must come to the truth in their own particulars” – meaning, find the truth for you based on your own experience. Your own ‘truth’, provided it has been worked out, can only be tested by others, but ultimately not denied.

Those who challenge an organisation’s culture or behaviours can encounter difficulties too. ‘Wise as serpents, gentle as doves’ comes to mind, along with the courage of course to say something like “it looks to me as though reality may be this way rather than the way we’ve been thinking it is.” Such people need to be open to challenge, and be willing to adapt their own understanding in the light of the responses they get.

Most importantly, they need to think “What would be useful for my colleagues to hear, and how might they most usefully hear it?” Acting on the answers to these questions is a truth-sayer’s responsibility; how others respond is theirs.