I live at the open end of a fjord called Átl’ka7tsem/Howe Sound, on the south coast of British Columbia. It is a broad mouthed inlet that narrows as you head 45 kilometers up towards Squamish. It is home to a small archipelago of islands and some small villages and towns. The inlet has been recovering from massive industrial abuse for most of the last 100 years, mostly from horrendas mining and logging practices, and now we have herring, sea lions, seals, whales, dolphins and porpoises and even more important sea life, like extremely rare glass sponge reefs and healthy plankton blooms. showing up in ever increasing numbers. You can read more about this amazing place and its citizen-led recovery at the Howe Sound Marine Guide Átl’?a7tsem/Howe Sound Marine Stewardship Initiative website. This place is so special that last year the inlet was named Canada 19th UNESCO Biosphere Reserve.
The inlet forms most of the southern half of Skwxwú7mesh-ulh Temíxw and the Skwxwú7mesh Úxwumixw (Squamish Nation Government) is playing an increasingly important role in the jurisdiction and stewardship of this place, as is right. The Nation is the only government whose jurisdiction maps most precisely on the whole of the ecosystem, from mountain tops to the ocean floor from the source to the Strait of Georgia, and they are the government with by far the longest tenure in this place, dating back tens of thousands of years, into time immemorial. The deepest stories about this place extend into the Squamish period of history that was dominated by the Transformer brothers Xaay Xaays and the supernatural beings that formed and transformed the earth.
Next week, the proponents of Woodfibre LNG will be presenting to our Council on Bowen Island. I’m not sure what they will say, but I do know that it is important to be on the record opposing the project. This blog post will be my submission to Council.
I am opposed to any new fossil fuel infrastructure development. Anything that helps add to the amount of fossils fuels being burned is a contribution towards the increasingly likely potential that we will propagate an extinction level event on our home planet.
The Skwxwú7mesh Úxwumixw has entered into a benefits agreement with Woodfibre LNG and the Skwxwú7mesh Úxwumixw environmental review process has approved the construction of the project. The company has worked with the Nation to mitigate the impact of the development at Swiyát, which is an especially significant place for herring spawning. I want to go on record as saying that I don’t blame the Skwxwú7mesh Úxwumixw one bit for this decision. They have been clear from the beginning taht development in the territories needs to to meet their standards, and this development has done that. They have been transparent about their process and they have made decisions in the best interests of the Nation.
Since European contact, the Skwxwú7mesh Úxwumixw and its constituent communities and leaders have been systemically and deliberately denied the opportunity to benefit from economic activity within the territory. The fact that they have asserted this right and signed an impact agreement worth more than $1 billion is good. In fact, it is surprising and shocking that ANY economic activity at all happens within Squamish Nation territories without some benefit accruing to the Nation.
Skwxwú7mesh Úxwumixw. is entirely within its rights to review and approve the project from the perspective of their. environmental and economic interests. This is a key part of the principle of free prior and informed consent recognized under the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples and it stand as an example to all of us who operate in these territories. If you aren’t already contributing something to the Nation as a person who “lives, works and plays” here, then it might be time to consider how you too can share your benefits with the traditional and historic owners of this territory.
The major objection I have to Woodfibre LNG is the fact that it introduces new fossil fuels into the earth’s atmosphere, at a time when we are confronting an existential crises on this planet. Woodfibre LNG will tell you that this is a clean project because it uses hydroelectricity for its operations. However, it fails to take any responsibility for the amount of LNG being shipped through the facility and burned in the world. This is like saying there has never been a fatality in a bomb factory, and therefore there has never been a more benign bomb factory. It fails to take into account the cumulative effect of the burning of new amounts of liquid natural gas over the lifetime of the project. I have asked the company what the estimates are for the amount of carbon added to the atmosphere from the gas shipped through Woodfibre, and if they reply I will update this post to reflect that. At the very least, the facility is intended to ship 2.7 million tons of LNG a year which, when burned, will produce about 2.76 times that amount, or 7,452,000 tons of CO2 without taking into consideration the supply chain emissions, or more importantly direct leaks and emissions of methane into the atmosphere. That Woodfibre is run on electricity is merely one dent an overall supply chain that uses and emits the gas that it mines.
We should not be building new fossil fuel infrastructure at all at this point in time. We have long since passed the the time when we should have stopped. All of us now need to stand in the face of our descendents and the future impacts of life on the planet and admit that at the very least, we didn’t do enough in a timely manner to address this issue. But some of us will need to say more. That even when we knew what negative impact we could expect from the short term gain we championed, we did it anyway.
Many settler organizations in Canada wonder how they can make meaningful strides on reconciliation with Indigenous Nations. Let me show you perhaps the easiest and most meaningful way you can do this. (I am not a lawyer, but there is no reason why this can’t work, and I’m currently working with a couple of organizations to make this happen).
In British Columbia, the Societies Act governs the operation of non-profit societies through which many organizations are operated. The Act has a whole section on what to do when the Society is needs to fold or be dissolved. Section 124 of this Act says that when a Society is dissolved, the assets of a Society can be distributed after all the debts are settled. Societies can make a by-law, kind of like an organizational Will, that specifies who receives these assets: Here is 124.2 (b).
The stipulation is that the entity receiving the asset needs to be a qualified recipient, which means another Society, or a co-op or a charity. And guess what? Most First Nations in Canada are qualified recipients. You can check here.
So what this means is that if your Society owns land as an asset you can create a by-law that says when you are dissolved as a Society the land you own is returned to the local First Nation in whose territory you are operating. You can make that by-law right now. And THAT means that if every Society operating in BC did that, over time, a lot of land would be returned to First Nations when it was no longer used by a Society. Of course you can always give that #LandBack now, but at the very least, you could make a by-law today.
There are many options you have about directing your assets after dissolution. You could simply give everything – land, buildings, and other assets to the local First Nations. Or if you are concerned about a continuity of care or purpose, you might imagine a future where your operations and purpose continue through another operating Society, but the land is returned to the First Nations and rented back, and you could specify that. The key is to work with the local First Nation to plan for that future together and explore what that means for the present day.
So THAT means 2 things:
1. when you tell the host Nation that you are doing this, you enter into a long term relationship that is all about how you will steward this land while you are using it so that as the last settler organization to own it, you return it in a healthy state, because it’s kind to return stolen property in at least as good a shape as it was in when it was taken. And,
2: when you do your territorial acknowledgement you can truly say “we are on Indigenous land and we are in relationship with the local host Nation to return this land to them.” This is such an easy thing to do. You can do it right now.
Imagine if this happened overnight. Over the next few years, land that is currently used to provide services and care for communities would flow back into the hands of First Nations and in the meantime relationships would be strengthened and responsibilities enacted. It’s such a powerful thing to do. And it is probably the easiest way to participate in the most meaningful action you can to engage in the reconciliation agenda. Give #LandBack.
(And here is some good legal advice from lawyers who want to help you dissolve your Society well.)
For about the past ten years or so I’ve been playing with various ways to teach Cynefin to groups. In every instance I start with some kind of experiential exercise to help people notice that there are different kinds of problems and situations that require us to act in different kinds of ways.
I have a couple of posts on different p[hysical exercises you can do with groups when you are face to face, and they are documented here and here. My little obsession with gamifying Cynefin led to being invited to contribute a chapter on this process in the Cynefin book as well.
Working on-line the past few years, I’ve tried a few exercises as well. The other day in teaching the framework I went through these instructions. (Number four I borrowed from Ciaran Camman.)
- Find something in your space that you can operate or solve so easily that a child could do it. When you find it think about how you might even automate it.
- Next, find something in your space that, if it failed, you would have to call in an expert to fix it for you. Notice how that is similar or different from the previous item.
- Now find something in your space that, if it failed, it would be a disaster and whatever you had planned for the day would go out the window, becasue you would have to deal with it. If it did fail, what’s the very first thing you would do?
- Finally, find something in your space that you are using for a different purpose other than the one it was intended for. If you were to give it a new name to reflect it’s new function, what would you call it?
Of course the first thing corresponds to the Clear domain in Cynefin where everything is simple and obvious and automation is possible. The second thing is complicated,and requires expertise and analysis to fix. The third thing is chaotic and requires the establishment of immediate action to get a handle on the situation. And the fourth thing is Complex and is an example of exaptive practice and how that changes the identity of a thing to the point where it’s possible that you won’t even recognize it anymore. When I taught this the other day, I referenced a 5 centimeter thick History of Ireland that I used for years as a monitor stand. When I went to lend that book to someone I couldn’t find it, despite that fact that I had been looking at it for YEARS.
i like teaching Cynfin as a framework that helps us to know how to make decisions and act. In the online world it’s often hard to study action in embodied ways, as we are so static and disconnected. But this seemed to do the trick and the participants in the course really got it.
Oh and just a note, I generally do the Complexity exercise last, because when I teach Cynefin, I am usually doing so as an introduction to complexity and so I leave us on the complex domain so we can talk about that more. This is also how I first had Cynefin presented to me – through Dave Snowden’s classing “How to Organize a Children’s Party” in which he actually starts with Chaos.
This morning the wind and rain continue here in the islands of the south coast of British Columbia. It has been a wet fall and winter – perhaps the wettest since the time of the Flood stories – and this is the coldest May we’ve had for a long time, which brings its own hazards. It’s all down to an extended La Nina event that pipes cool water into the north Pacific and keeps the air masses cold and turbulent, resulting in reliable patterns of convection, instability and therefore precipitation and windy weather weather.
I live in a very rainy part of the world, and so to really love living here, one has to love the rain. This morning as I took my coffee to sit by the sea, I was struck by just how immersed I was in water. The sea of course, which bathes the shoreline and brings all kind of nutrients into our inlet. The creek beside me, channelling the rain from the mountain into the bay, delivering different nutrients back to the shore line. The rain that was falling into my coffee cup, spattering against my hood. And my breath, precipitating in small clouds that echoed their larger cousins across the channel, covering the mountains on the mainland. An entire symphony of sound all played on the same instrument.
For me, actually, water is my favourite image of God. If you are a spiritual or religious person, your engagement with the Divine is of course fraught with reductionist peril. As Lao Tzu wrote in the very first line of a book about the Tao, “The Tao that can be spoken is not the eternal Tao.” It’s a disclaimer. He says, “look, everything I am about to write here isn’t the things I am actually writing about, so take that under advisement.” One must be very cautious talking about images of God, the Creator, the Divine. Every name severly limits your experience of that which you are trying to talk about. Whatever name or image you have is like trying to watch Barcelona FC play through a tiny keyhole, in the outside door of the Camp Nou.
And yet, the image that works best for me is “water.” It brings life, and it can sweep it away. It can induce terror and soothe the soul. One can go for a hair raising boat trip from which you barely escape alive and then heal yourself with a soothing cup of tea and a bath. Water also has a characteristic of non-duality which gives it an important characteristic as it relates to my spiritual practice. As our atmosphere is made of water vapour, and so are we, it is true to say that “I am in the water and the water is in me.”
To end, here is a poem by William Stafford that I used in our fifth Complexity from the Inside Out course this morning, borrowed from a blog post by my buddy Tenneson. It points towards this non-dual whole I am talking about.
Being a Person
William Stafford
Be a person here. Stand by the river, invoke
the owls. Invoke winter, then spring.
Let any season that wants to come here make its own
call. After that sound goes away, wait.
A slow bubble rises through the earth
and begins to include sky, stars, all space,
even the outracing, expanding thought.
Come back and hear the little sound again.
Suddenly this dream you are having matches
everyone’s dream, and the result is the world.
If a different call came there wouldn’t be any
world, or you, or the river, or the owls calling.
How you stand here is important. How you
listen for the next things to happen. How you breathe.
Yesterday was spent working with my friend and colleague Ciaran Camman yesterday on a design for a workshop on evaluation in complexity. We had the utter joy of being able to be together, having a high bandwidth human experience, which enabled us to really dive into some interesting existential questions after which we were famished and so we retreated to Kulinarya Filipino Eatery for dinner, feasting on Crispy Binagoongan and Batil Patong.
The food was great and as usual our conversation wandered all over the place and at some point – possibly when we were standing outside a small rehearsal space listening through an open window to a jazz combo swinging nicely inside, the thought came to me: “forget about your theory of change…what is your theory of stability?”
It occurred to us that in the non-profit and philanthropic world, we are constantly asked for a theory of change which is intended to explain how our intervention will change things for the better. There is a trap in this of course, that these theories are often linear and predictive, which is the antithesis of complexity as a theory of change, and in fact, in most cases the only answer to the question “Please describe your theory of change?” should rightly be “complexity.” I even wrote a post about that once which should serve as a companion to this one.
Interestingly however, I have never heard anyone ask “What is your theory of stability?” and that strikes me as a fundamental question to address fs one is to be making change, especially in a complex system. For instance, if you are looking at a set of unhealthy patterns in a system, like racial discrimination or persistent and chronic poverty or disparate health outcomes among different populations, it strikes me as really important that you talk about WHY you think those situations are stable over time. What is your theory about what keeps them in place? This is important because what you believe about how to create stability will affect HOW to design and act to create new stability. And that can be fraught with category errors.
To me this is where the work around constraints really hits home. And so to recap, typically I introduce this work with folks as:
- Connections. Links between agents in a context
- Exchanges. What flow across the connections between agents and how it flows.
- Attractors. The forces in a system that inspire or influence patterns of behaviour
- Boundaries. The forces that create a context or a container for behaviour
When we spot stable patterns in a system, we can look at the constraints that are keeping them in place and try changing one or more to see what kinds of results we get. That is the essence of complexity as a theory of change. But what is the mechanism used to create stability?
Cynefin is helpful here as it describes different types of systems and different kinds of ways to both make change AND to stabilize things. So here is a Cynefin framework with the constraints and action language rephrased to help us think through a theory of stability for a project:
As always, knowing which domain you are working in will help you think about how the problem you are working on is constrained. From there, I think it’s worth asking “How do you think the stability in this situation is functioning?” It is very important to note that if you are indeed working in complexity, you need to avoid taking action to disrupt and stabilize the system as if you are working in the complicated domain. Is that situation really be held together by someone who is controlling things and pulling the strings?
The question is not “What is the root cause of the fentanyl crisis?” but rather “What is maintaining the stability of the fentanyl crisis? And how?” One could be tempted to answer something like “someone is controlling the drug supply, or is actively preventing us from making that supply safer.” In complexity, your theory of stability is as much a hypothesis as your theory of change, and it seems crucially important that we begin change initiatives by also questioning whether we have the stability mechanisms right. In a complex and emergent context it is highly unlikely that the emergent phenomena that we are trying to change are produced by a single actor doing a single thing. And yet, I recognognize the seduction of that thinking, which critically influences the action I will take.
So that’s important for starting, but a theory of stability is alos critical for understanding how any positive work done in the initiative will be sustained. Funding cycles, for example, are powerful periodic attractors for change making meaning that they often dictate the time frame in which a problem needs to be solved and they alos dictate the pace and cadence of the work to solve it. They also dictate the stability strategy.
Many foundations are happy to fund a community group that is aiming to double literacy rates in vulnerable communities and will support a set of interventions to do so. But when the goal is hit, the work doesn’t end, and who is willing to invest in a stability strategy that is also complex? High literacy rates are maintained in some places not because there is a well funded literacy program. Literacy is an emergent outcome of privilege and wealth, among other constraints, that help maintain a stable pattern of high degrees of literacy. There are certainly deeper and less visible constraints that enable concentrations of wealth and privilege including historical policy choices that limit access to housing finances, like redlining certain neighbourhood and people to restrict their access to credit.
So when you find practices that support increased literacy rates, what are the constraints that you can work with to enable the continued emergence of these outcomes? And what happens if, after the intervention funding ends, the needle starts turning downward again?
So I’m just thinking out loud here but the takeaway from this post is this:
- Think about your theory of change
- Think about what domain your work lies in.
- Look at the patterns you are trying to change and ask why they are stable to begin with.
- Test ideas to shift these patterns AND test your ideas about stability.
- Consider changing not only the conditions of the system you are working with, but also changing the ways by which beneficial patterns are stabilized and maintained.
Thoughts?