#ISSS2016 Boulder

2790 Sustainability of this civilization is only a wishful thinking without frank analysis of, followed by strategic plans to deal with, the competing value systems currently playing on the stage of the international politics. High profile keywords here are refuges, terrorism, China Threat, globalization, and “conflict of civilization” (even we do not quite agree with the term in Huntington’s original sense). Among the major competitors with our current mainstream value system are Chinmunism (Hu, 2010), i.e. the so-called Chinese way of order (including social order, state order and world order, with cultural genes traceable back to Chin’ Dynasty 2000 years ago and to Communist movement from 1917 to 1990), and the Islamist Ideology or Islam fundamentalism (e.g. Goldberg, 2015) that becomes a high profile issue in media and our lives for obvious reasons. A guestimated of 50%+ of Chinese-speaking people (700 million) might support a Chinmunistic world view, and in at least 25 countries that 50%+ of Muslims prefer the Sharia Law to be the law of their land (PEW Research, 2013). The authors have noted, among many differences of the text and the context of the two sets of ideas and values, i.e. one sets up of the ruling paradigm for China in 2000 years, and another defines a desirable world of “Umma”, there is an interesting commonality between them: They all aimed at reducing the diversity, complexity, and the degree of freedom of the society they take control, an interesting case for Ashby’s Law of Requisite Variety. This paper compares the similarities and differences of these two value systems to facilitate the readers to draw their own conclusions and decide for their own actions.

2767 The nonprofit and public sectors are constantly challenged to create greater impact with fewer and fewer resources. The recession of 2008 has resulted in less funding for both sectors and increased demand for their programs and services, pushing many organizations to the brink. With the likelihood of change in the current state slim, nonprofits and public agencies are eager for new approaches that will enable them to create greater value from existing resources in a socially responsible manner. This paper introduces one possible tool, which was adapted from Carol Sanford’s stakeholder pentad introduced in her book, The Responsible Business: Reimagining Sustainability and Success. Sanford’s pentad is intended to shift a business’s focus away from measuring success based purely on financial returns to one of a quintuple bottom line centered on developing relationships with the following five sets of stakeholders: customers, co-creators, earth, community, and investors. The pentad for the nonprofit and public sectors includes a slightly different set of stakeholders: beneficiaries, co-creators, earth/humanity, community, and investors/funders. Beneficiaries are those for whom programs and services are provided. Co-creators are those with whom non-profits and agencies partner and may include volunteers, staff, partnering organizations, and other stakeholders. Earth/humanity is the pentad point of the global, long-term perspective and is based in relationship to earth and to humanity. The community point in the pentad refers to how an organization’s actions impact the community, and the local perspective and social context in which they operate. The investors and funders for nonprofits and public agencies are local, state, and federal funders, taxpayers, donors, foundations, and board members, without whom these organizations could not realize their visions. Attention to these five stakeholder groups creates a strong sense of resilience in the organization’s community. A case example of how to apply the nonprofit and public sectors pentad to an existing organization is outlined in this paper. It is described through Sanford’s four phases for reconstructing an organization already steeped in its processes and culture. These four phases are (1) cultural evolution, (2) strategic direction, (3) capacity building, and (4) work redesign. This approach will enable nonprofits and public agencies to thrive in the face of scarcity and high demand. Keywords: Carol Sanford; stakeholders; stakeholder engagement; nonprofit sector; public sector; living systems; sustainability; resilience; cultural evolution; strategic direction; capacity building; work redesign; critical systemic thinking; human service organizations  

2764 “Qualitative accounting” is almost an oxymoron. The word ‘accounting’ includes the word ‘count’, and we cannot count qualities. More precisely, we cannot meaningfully add qualities to each other, a quality cannot be measured by a standard unit. Therefore, aggregating qualities for the purposes of accounting might sound like sleight of hand, or deceptive advertising. Fear not. The result will turn out to be quite robust, given a modicum of intelligence and sensitivity. The method is original and useful. The structure of the paper is given by the following sections: (1) an introduction to the topic, by looking at each word in the title, (2) we look at the UN mandate which will be used as an example to illustrate the method, (3) an explanation of the first part of method: working with the UN mandate, (4) the second part of the method: two orders of sensitivity used for reflection, and why this adds to the robustness of the method (5) broadening the conceptions underlying the method and lastly (6) uses of the method for policy. The following is the virtual address for some computer software that does the calculations for you, so that you can experiment with the parameters and indicators. The software was developed by Dolsy Smith http://gwdev-dsmith.wrlc.org:8083/gunas_test.html. The site is free to the public and is offered as an intellectual service.

2792 The authors compare three collaborative action research projects aimed at generative systems change. The goal of the article is to reflect on the dialogic methodologies they employed, the impacts and outcomes experienced by the participants as leaders and innovators of systemic change, and the evolution of the authors’ own practices as facilitators and catalysts of change. Wilson reflects on a three-year action research project in peri-urban Mexico on sustainable community development. Focusing on the emergent edge of the evolving system of local-state relationships, she recounts the changing attitudes, emotions, and behaviors of the public sector professionals and local community leaders engaged in the project. Wilson reflects on the sense of vulnerability and insecurity raised by the dialogic methodology she used, and the impact on her own practice and sense of self in the presence of these tensions. Bush explores a year of engagement within two urban systems within Asheville NC: public housing and community schools. Using distributed ethnography, he follows public housing's resident leadership’s efforts at self-organizing governance and an Ashoka Change-Maker School’s experience in spreading its educational approach. Offering propositions about leadership for resilience in urban systems, he reflects on the challenges to and evolution of self-awareness for individuals, organizations, systems, and himself as a practitioner-researcher. Walsh reflects on her praxis in regenerative development from 2006 to 2015 in the context of environmental gentrification in a neighborhood in Austin, Texas. To become an instrument of critical, creative, and collaborative change, she developed and fostered regenerative dialogue for green home repair and a community food forest. Walsh reflects on the ways this approach supported her and the residents in harnessing the generative potential of social conflict and vulnerability. The comparative analysis of the three stories concludes with propositions for leadership practices that foster thrivability in complex social systems. 1. Banzhaf, H. S., & McCormick, E. (2006). Moving Beyond Cleanup: Identifying the Crucibles of Environmental Gentrification. SSRN eLibrary. Retrieved from http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=990074 2. Harvey, D. (2008). The Right to the City. New Left Review, (53), 23–40. 3. Hazy, J. & Uhl-Bien, M. (2015). Towards operationalizing complexity leadership: How generative, administrative and community-building leadership practices enact organizational outcomes. Leadership Vol. 11(1) 79–104 DOI: 10.1177/1742715013511483 4. Snowden, David (2002). Complex Acts of Knowing: paradox and descriptive self-awareness. Journal of Knowledge Management. Volume 6 . Number 2. 2002 . pp. 100±111 DOI: 10.1108/13673270210424639 Keywords: social systems design, leadership, thrivability, urban systems, generative dialogue

2775 The denigration of the world’s ecosystems has been driven by the economic imperatives of insatiable multi-national corporations whose goals are to concentrate the ownership and control of global resources in a progressively narrowing band of society. The impacts of this denigration are understood as crises called, ozone depletion, global warming, sea-level rise, extreme weather events, water scarcity, and the shrinking polar ice regions. These challenges involve significant degrees of complexity in our rapidly changing world. Engaging societies and communities in the meaningful changes of behaviour necessary to halt and reverse the denigration of our life-supporting ecosystems is extremely difficult, given that the majority of these societies are a significant part of the problem. They rely almost universally on the same epistemological basis of understanding the world as the multi-national corporations that are destroying it. In many ways, these societies support the behaviours of the multi-national corporations through their consumerism and political systems of representation. Decision making frameworks based on systems thinking can facilitate enhanced understandings of sustainability and potentially enlighten societies to behave differently. However to do so they must communicate an understanding of complexity that engages society at the level of values and beliefs, as these determine actions. They must also be transparent, inclusive, contextually relevant, and based on epistemological concepts that are much more strongly aligned with sustainability. The epistemologies of Indigenous Peoples are based on principles of interconnectedness, holism, relevance over long periods of time, inter-generational equity, and uniqueness to place. Indigenous Peoples have out of necessity had to develop ways of retaining their values and beliefs while accommodating the enforced changes associated with the destructive colonisation processes experienced in many parts of the world. The Waitangi Tribunal was born of the first recognition of New Zealand’s 1840 founding document in the Treaty of Waitangi Act 1975. This tribunal was established to avoid further transgressions of the Treaty. Many early claims were about environmental degradation while others related to the retention of cultural values, knowledge and language. Claims all identified impacts upon mauri, life supporting capacity. Indigenous concepts raised in hearings included; retention of intrinsic values / mauri; spiritual and cultural values; obligations to enhance mauri; and implications for future generations. Often successful, these claims resulted in significant rethinking of projects and ultimately informed changes in law. The Resource Management Act (1991) has the purpose of promoting sustainable development taking into account environmental, social, cultural and economic well-being of society. However while the ground-breaking new law incorporated numerous indigenous concepts, it stopped short of actually including mauri. The Mauri Model Decision Making Framework allows Indigenous Peoples to contribute understanding based on their own knowledge so that they can be effectively included in resource management decision making processes. The Framework adds a strengthened decision making context due to its ability to incorporate culturally relevant knowledge seamlessly alongside scientific understandings of a situation, incorporating both quantitative and qualitative data consistently into the same assessment. When mauri is defined as the life supporting capacity of the air, water and soil the theoretical basis is created for relevance in terms of New Zealand law, and a means to measure and evaluate impacts in a holistic way then exists. Thus through integrating systems techniques and the indigenous concept, Mauri, the Mauri Model Decision Making Framework creates a new approach to cross-cultural communication and action. Independent research has assessed the Mauri Model as an exemplar against Bellagio STAMP and it is now included in curricula in engineering, planning and international studies at the University of Auckland, as well as being an online resource.

2795 Civilization in its science-enabled industrial form highlights and gives exponential growth to forms of agency and motivation so removed from the dynamics of eco-systemic mutual constraint that the troubled culture-nature interface has finally assumed the proportions of a sustainability crisis. With the emergence about 12,000 years ago of agriculture and the subsequent rise of the complex, settled societies we refer to as “civilization,” our models of ourselves and of the world transformed in ways that decisively separated the character of human agency and motivation from the behaviors by which other forms of life make a living. The science-enabled Industrial Revolution made central and self-aware the long-nurtured civilized thrust to control and shape the world to our purposes, refining that mindset into what Jacques Ellul has described as the “technological mind,” the probing seach for an improved way of doing whatever we turn our minds to. With this mentality technology has moved to center stage both as our first resort in approaching any kind of problem and as our chief lever for economic growth. We have collapsed the constraints of space and time and the world of nature is quite outflanked by the speed and power with which thoughts and plans in the human mind can reshape and modify environments from the expectations structured into the way other species make a living. This puts a new and critical weight on the thoughts, feelings, and motivation of the human mind-and-heart. All living beings are motivated to act in order to achieve and maintain well-being. But human motivation is far from the direct response to needs and dangers common to other forms of life. Our motivation as action is mediated by technology, and our technology loops back to shape our motivation. As a well-being guided response our motivation is mediated by money, which offers none of the inherent guidance of actual well-being. The “better” achievement of whatever that is the animating thrust of technology promises an open-ended more: more productivity, more speed, more convenience, more ease. And at the heart of money is another more, the profit motive that guides us to proud achievements and likewise to humiliating dysfunction. We market the promise of the technological “more” for profit, and the drive for more profit powerfully fuels the technological drive for all sorts of innovation. Thus the incremental thrusts embedded in technology and money work in synergy to bring us to the exponential burst of transformation in culture and the natural world. In the process guidance of real well-being becomes hit or miss, distorted by a thirst for and expectation of novelty stoked by endless advertising or overshadowed in the anxious pursuit of profit. Seeing the deep structures that have brought civilization so rapidly to such an innovative and world-transforming peak reveals no easy answers: we cannot simply change ourselves without the difficult and uncertain process of reconfiguring elements structured into civilization that make us the kind of unpredictable and uncontrollable species we are at present. But it helps to know there are other ways available, perhaps even other ways of doing a civilization. If those alternatives are in any way open to our deliberate contrivance, that deliberation will have to include serious reflection on how the way we maintain our well-being has come to fit so ill with the well-being as pursued in the rest of the community of life. For humans, understanding is the guide to moving into a better future. Keywords: civilization, technology, money, motivation, Neo-lithic Revolution, Industrial Revolution

2842 We are at the turning point of an era with a huge potential of change in which humanity can decide to finally address the failures of our economic, social, governance and belief systems. However the current narrative build around the hopes of being saved by science and technology is getting more and more traction into a society in which digitalization, the illusion of zero marginal costs, sharing economies and big data seems to be the answer to our most pressing problems. This is ironical, since science and technology (S&T) have been not only central to the development model followed by human societies in the last centuries but often very effective instruments of mass destruction, environmental degradation and social exclusion. S&T have been definitely part of the problem, a key component of our model of economic development, and not only an exogenous factor as considered by mainstream economics, which anyway recognize their crucial role to improve productivity and sustain long-term growth. But they are also deemed to be the core of the solution, a paradoxical vision grounded in the idea that finding a technical fix is a good way to avoid the less comfortable question of how power and wealth are distributed in society and with what consequences. In particular the younger generation seems to be distracted by the excitement about technological and scientific new developments and its untapped potential. Addressing the systemic underlying root causes which are the real drivers of our problems is too complex compared to building the new app and the social enterprise that goes with it. While for previous generations changing the world for the better would require also political and social innovations, now it seems that S&T has even displaced every other source of hope. The launching of the latest digital artifact creates a widespread frenziness, but also a true and exciting entrepreneurial spirit is mobilized by the potential of technologies to address human challenges. In a sense, we put S&T at the core of societal evolution, or to say the least we do not conceive any transformation without them playing a significant role, and this is also why we think they should rescue us from all disasters, even those provoked by ourselves. In light of these developments I would like to emphasize the following questions in my contribution to ISSS 2016: How can we go beyond a paradigm of “S&T solutionism” and channel the huge potential these developments will bring? How can we change the route towards a future in which humanity has to adapt to digitalization and its consequences, instead of putting digitalisation at the service of humanity?

2791 What our media named as terrorism today are perceived as revolution by some. What we call revolution in mainland China and Russia, are no less violent and cruel than terrorism too. This paper observes and identifies the roots, the triggering historic events, the similarities among the differences, of the two huge phenomena and their two driving ideologies, i.e. the Extreme Islamism and the Bloody Communism, that have deep influence to our time and our daily life. As one of our subject has been just fading away into history (not really) and another is still going on while this paper is being written, we highlight the similarities or even isomorph of these two violent social phenomena, raising a question behind such similarity – what are the driven forces that enable these phenomena to emerge, or, why on this planet a certain number of people are doomed to believe, engage, fight for, and victimized by such pathological ideologies?

2884 This paper looks at the development of Ecological Economic theory through the lens of second-order cybernetics. Ecological Economics aims to integrate Ecological and Economic disciplines while maintaining their distinction. This is required for the concept of “scale” which relates the size of the ecosystem with the size of the economy. Beyond the dynamic and complicated nature of these systems; this task is also conceptually difficult. How can the ecosystem be part of the economy but also distinct from it? How can the economic system be part of the ecosystem and also distinct? Which is the correct framing? While Ecological Economics was conceived in the era of “open systems” and “sub-systems”, second order systems theory may shed light on the paradoxes which naturally arise from this perspective. As second-order systems theory would suggest, this fundamental paradox of observation results in a circularity. This circularity can be illustrated by attempts within Ecological Economics to generate definitions of sustainability; most notoriously through valuation of ecosystem services but also within alternative social and ecologically based models. This yields a tension between a desire for objectivity and submission to relativity. Thus, authors within the field are calling for clarity regarding ontological and epistemological commitments. Second-order systems theory operates within this territory even if it does so on its own terms. By embracing this circularity with second-order cybernetics, a few possibilities open up. Primarily, it is my interest that the “organization” of the Ecological Economy be considered; such that the diversity of activities which considered within the domain of Ecological Economics become coordinated. As a student of both Ecological Economics and systems theory, I have been fascinated by the ongoing efforts within Ecological Economics to construct a perspective. This offers a great example of recursive cybernetics with natural tensions between variety and order.

2872 Historically, the evolution of supply chain management passed in four stages: the physical distribution management (1960s); the logistics management (1970s-1980s), the SCM (1980s-1990s) and the Green Supply chain Management (1990- Till now). Green supply chain management (GSCM) integrates environmental thinking into supply chain management; from conceptual product design to the delivery of final product to the consumers, and also involves end-of-life management. The implementation of GSCM is supported by few factors which are known as GSCM drivers. The aim of this paper is to study the state of green supply chain in the Lebanese food industry and investigate focally on the drivers affecting GSCM. To approach this investigation, we selected four companies due to their size in the Lebanese food industry.

2833 Business´ owners want their enterprises are profitable, and that profits stay forever. In other words, they want business economic and financially sustainable. Citizens want business socially responsible, and also environmentally careful, and contribute to recover it. The liquid societies (Bauman, 2000) create and destroy markets very quickly, and shareholders demand CEOs adapts their enterprises to those changes, maintaining profitable. Corruption scandals promote strong society claims, demand ethic behaviors. There are more sights about the environment. Paris signature authorities tell “these are not enough” (Paris Climate Agreement, 2016). There are theoretical papers about each of these aspects, but there aren’t a holistic view trying to find systemic answers. How have enterprises that are simultaneously sustainable, ethically behavior in all domains, and environmentally responsible: Are enough to choose a CEO who can make the triple goals? Can move the enterprise with a consulting work to the triple ends? Must promulgate laws, with strong penalties, to force enterprises to obtain the triple line? Is it necessary to (re-) design the enterprise to put on the way to the triple results? The first three questions are not enough. To choose a CEO with those capabilities is possible only for a few numbers of organizations, if it is possible. Consulting is, by definition, limited in time, and it needs a corporation’s behavior for the entire life. And if we have laws about, they cannot explain how to do it. It’s necessary that ALL the company, their members and all around collaborate and coordinate to have a chance to arrive. In recent times there are proposals to a new way of enterprises, with linked profit business with social impact and environment, call hybrid organizations. They try to generate at the same time, economic, social and environmental value (triple bottom line). Combine the current concepts of sustainability and systemic impact on all the dimensions requires a new design. In general, it is observed that the treatment of comprehensive way concerned is omitted. It focuses from one or another aspect, emphasis on certain features, but not about taking the overall design, which makes it difficult to appear companies at the same time achieve sustainability on all fronts. Those that exist are shown as successful examples, but is veiled how they succeeded, and the small number shown not allow inferring a viable design. It is about advancing the design companies that meet all requirements and work in line with the systemic dimensions that define Sustainability. Design tools and business models wide target. How to design organizations broad objectives that are sustainable from economic, social and environmental perspective, taking into account its surroundings and prospects? Cybernetic models available, such as VSM, systemic tools developed in recent decades, as models of Ackoff, Ulrich, Jackson, Checkland, Bosch, among others, suggest that counted with enough devices to address the design of this new type of companies. It is necessary to consider the behaviors of businessmen, culture and expectations, since what is being proposed are, to some extent, a Copernican shift in the way of acting and directing companies. It is necessary to consider that it will be necessary not only explain the design, especially its possible results and advantages compared to traditional. Today, when Millennium Development Goals post 2015 seeking simultaneously to defeat the scourge of poverty, and lead humanity to sustainable development, we must make all the productive forces in each place are aligned to work simultaneously on all fronts: economic, social, environmental, etc. This requires having previously developed academic responses, otherwise treated no objectives or goals but mere wishful thinking. Perhaps this is a small step in the right direction.

2882 Systemic wishes for the Chinese New Year is the blessing to each other in China in the beginning of each year. According to the Five Aggregate Human Mind system developed by Buddha, our minds are composed of five systems. Systemic Healthcare should be about balancing each one of these systems, and balancing between the systems. The ultimate goal is to live healthily so that we can work and play and achieve our tasks in life. In this paper, we try to classify the Traditional Chinese healthcare therapies according to these five aggregates to help human to become physically strong, emotionally happy, mentally kind, behaviorally charitable, and spiritually enlightened. The basic essentials in life include clothing, food, housing and transportation. In the Confucian classic, one of the disciples once said “Food and sex are basic instincts of human beings”. The desire for food ensures the physical survival of oneself, and the instinct on sexual desire makes sure the continuation of the family, clan and race. In order to have a stable flow, better basic essentials are required. They are usually related to the following four-character blessing phrases. These desires stimulate the research into efficient and effective methods for good survival and continuity, and part of the Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) Healthcare is about physical body healthcare. Here we will try to match it with the physical component of the Five Aggregate Human Mind System developed by Buddha. TCM healthcare can be divided into three different secret ingredients. The goal of emotional healthcare is to remain undisturbed by negative emotions thus falling into a vicious cycle. One should instead consistently concentrate on positive emotions, gradually and naturally resulting in the distillation of happy emotions and pleasant bodily sensations. Mental Healthcare aims to improve one’s habitual love and hate tendencies. We should eliminate feelings of jealousy for the rich and contempt for the poor. One should also forsake employing improper means purely to succeed. Nor should one selfishly seek pleasure at the expense of the feelings of others. In contrast we should develop our love towards the four pure characteristics in the teaching of Buddha, and relinquish the three evil toxic characteristics of human, namely craving, aversion and ignorance. The four pure characteristics can be simply understood as “unconditional love” towards others, mercy on the elderly and weak, sympathetic joy of sharing, and acceptance of the reality of life and human relations. Behavioral Healthcare is about our action, and we try to match it with the “Action Aggregate” of the Five Aggregate Human Mind system of the teaching of Buddha. Buddha divides the Action Aggregate into three different kinds, namely the bodily action, the verbal action and the mental intention action (brain wave? energy field?). The teachings of Buddha include: “Do not withhold an action because it will only do little good, and do not perform an action because it will only do little evil”. Therefore we should choose only charitable actions with goodwill. Only such actions could achieve the traditional Chinese wish of “Everyone embraced in one harmonious Qi”. The definition of being healthy by the World Health Organization, WHO, includes healthiness in three aspects, namely the physical, mental and “social”. Spiritual Healthcare is about the improvement of our in-born characteristics, possibly hidden in our physical DNA or our energetic “spirits” fields (Aura?). We now try to match this with the “Observation Aggregate” of the Five Aggregate Human Mind system in the teaching of Buddha. Here we must put our foundation in the fundamental teaching of Buddha in the “Four Nobel Truth”, guided especially by the “Right View” and “Right Thought” in the “Eight-Fold Nobel Path”, which is the fourth part of the Noble Truth.

2898 How can knowledge be created (incentivised) and distributed (shared socially) when it is what economists define as a public good - it is very expensive to produce, its use by any one person leaves no less for anyone else and it is generally difficult to sustain property rights over? In economic terms the marginal cost of distributing knowledge is zero and as marginal cost should equal price for optimality, price should be zero. Clearly if the price were zero there will be no incentive for anyone to produce it. So what is to be done? To charge for it on a per use basis is hard as it can be cheaply and costless transferred from one person to another. Despite this it is undoubtedly been made available in ever increasing quantities and quality. Universities were one traditional way of creating new knowledge in the public domain. These were supported out of general taxation or endowment and scholars working in them were expected to make their ideas available free to all who might be interested. Modern academic capitalism seeking to establish IPR in academically produced knowledge undermines that. These essence of creative advance in knowledge is that the ideas of all are available to all to do with what they will. If for commercial reasons sharing in this way may be undesirable and if it does not occur then a particular line of inquiry will be blocked of and in the longer term this could kill creativity.

Description: We need to examine the foundation of our global economic system that assumes unlimited growth in a finite world, to consider the paradigms of regenerative capital, steady-state economics, and innovation. This means considering no-growth and negative-growth models, and perhaps shifting our concept of growth from quantity to quality, from extraction to investment in natural and human capital.

Chair: Alec Tsoucatos and Mila Popovitch

The Earth is full of Economies and the Earth is a system that is not growing in size, therefore what the Earth contains cannot grow indefinitely without harming another part.  We must discover therefore, other kinds of economic systems that do not have growth as the primary goal. The “engineering constraints” must be non-growing economies that nevertheless provide for human and non-human wellbeing. What sources can we find for inspiration and insight to travel this very new, exhilarating and formidable trail?  What are the consequences for teaching economics and policy recommendations?

Description: We need to examine the foundation of our global economic system that assumes unlimited growth in a finite world, to consider the paradigms of regenerative capital, steady-state economics, and innovation. This means considering no-growth and negative-growth models, and perhaps shifting our concept of growth from quantity to quality, from extraction to investment in natural and human capital.

Chair: Alec Tsoucatos and Mila Popovitch

Ancient and native cultures have a direct experiential knowledge of whole systems and what is a sustainable natural balance. What are the lessons and how do we incorporate them into modern science, leadership, and society?

In the face of unprecedented global change, Pope Francis recently challenged people of all faiths to unite together for what he called "integral ecology." Is his appeal compelling? What of a similar nature has been said in other faith traditions and what is new about this appeal? This interfaith panel discussion on global sustainability will explore a variety of faith perspectives that may contrast or correlate with the Pope's Laudato Si': On Care for Our Common Home. Scholars and religious leaders representing diverse faith traditions will engage with one another to discuss the roots and meanings of "integral ecology" and this contemporary call to action.

2905 System thinking is about seeing things as a whole, as unity. However the seeing could happen from different points of view according to their corresponding perspectives. As a result, there is a diversity of system thinking. This diversity provides the foundation to unite the different perspectives in order to advance to the next level of system thinking, the special systemic properties of the observers and decision makers. In this discussion panel, we present the Health and System Thinking from different perspectives, both theoretical and clinical, both microscopic and macroscopic, as well as both Eastern and Western. These include system thinking from Energy medicine, Traditional Chinese Medicine, Indian Ayurvedic Medicine, Micro-systemic environment of cancer cells, and Mathematical systemic view of acupuncture
 Coordinators: 1. Traditional Chinese Medicine: Thomas WONG 2. Energy medicine: Dr Dominique Surel https://www.linkedin.com/in/dr-dominique-surel-2a081b
 Invited practitioners for in person or on video discussion: 1. Indian Ayurvedic Medicine by Dr. Shim 2. Micro-systemic environment of cancer cells by Gary Smith https://uk.linkedin.com/in/gary-smith-5338aa4 3. Mathematical systemic view of acupuncture by Kent Palmer https://www.linkedin.com/in/kent-palmer-95bb767

Each speaker will have a 5-10min talk about their work relating to health and system thinking. Then we will have discussions and questions concentrating on the theme of how “Unity in Diversity” may apply.


2788 The proposed presentation will present the theoretical findings of my master’s thesis, as well as their practical application to youth engagement programming around the world. The presentation will first outline a traditional rites of passage framework as it relates to community-based engagement of youth. Research from the fields of psychology, anthropology, experiential education, and systems dynamics will be presented to demonstrate the importance of such practices in healthy youth and community development. The challenges that contemporary outdoor youth engagement programs are encountering will be explored, highlighting the specific system obstacles they face in effective implementation. The presentation will progress to present a research backed, theoretical model for the development of community-based outdoor rites of passage programming. The proposed model involves active community mentorship networks, locally based preparation and reintegration of participants by community members, and self-directed adolescent design of rites of passage experiences. Lastly, I will discuss the practical application of this model in various youth engagement initiatives around the world. The audience will be engaged to both share their own outdoor rites of passage experiences, as well as contribute tangible additions to the emerging new model of community-based outdoor youth engagement. Future research on the relationship of such programming to asset building communities will be proposed and discussed at the end of the presentation.

2782 In this paper we discuss how socio-technical intervention in socio-ecological systems can increase understanding of burning issues that drives systems unstable and unbalanced. Using the challenge of drilling oil in the Yasuni National Park ecosystem in Ecuador and balancing it with the diversity of socio-cultural inhabitants in the ecosystem, we show how we can develop a space for evolution of mutual understanding of a CoI (Community of Interest) consisting of multiple system stakeholders and what mechanisms can help us in articulating concrete actions happening across different domains - ranging from scientific findings and publications all the way to artistic and emotional-engaging interventions, evolving in this way from mere transdisciplinary to rather holistic approach of solving complex socio-ecological problem. Paper presents outcomes of the pre-event, at-event, and post-event interventions at the workshop “Which data to look for? How to build thriving knowledge communities?“ related to the BunB conference. Our unique approach was to provide CollaboFramework (consisting of CollaboScience and CollaboArte socio-technical systems) that creates a dialogical space for mapping mutual fuzzy and multi-truth knowledge of known issues and guiding evolution of that initial knowledge through the set of dialogical interactions among stakeholders. CollaboFramework system is a novel approach that unites infrastructure for the collective-knowledge space with the set of socio-technical tools that incrementally evolve that collective-knowledge weaving. With CollaboFramework we recognize uniqueness and complexity of transdisciplinary dialogue of CoIs that aim solving wicked problems. We provide support for modeling personalized socio-technical processes governing each of those communities. Processes coordinate different components of CollaboFramework in the most efficient way for particular CoI and challenges it is facing at the moment. Processes guided with socio-psychological insights help CoIs to converge multidisciplinary knowledge into coherent and landscaped knowledge with the set of insights that will be capable of governing future actions and interventions in the problem-space, namely creating public media and artistic projects that will engage society and let all relevant stakeholders to be heard and recognized. In the future iterations of the CoI events, this will bring additional insights and start another iteration in the spiral of CollaboDialogue and calls for actions. In this paper we discuss how socio-technical intervention in socio-ecological systems can increase understanding of burning issues that drives systems unstable and unbalanced. Using the challenge of drilling oil in the Yasuni National Park ecosystem in Ecuador and balancing it with the diversity of socio-cultural inhabitants in the ecosystem, we show how we can develop a space for evolution of mutual understanding of a CoI (Community of Interest) consisting of multiple system stakeholders and what mechanisms can help us in articulating concrete actions happening across different domains - ranging from scientific findings and publications all the way to artistic and emotional-engaging interventions, evolving in this way from mere transdisciplinary to rather holistic approach of solving complex socio-ecological problem. Paper presents outcomes of the pre-event, at-event, and post-event interventions at the workshop “Which data to look for? How to build thriving knowledge communities?“ related to the BunB conference. Our unique approach was to provide CollaboFramework (consisting of CollaboScience and CollaboArte socio-technical systems) that creates a dialogical space for mapping mutual fuzzy and multi-truth knowledge of known issues and guiding evolution of that initial knowledge through the set of dialogical interactions among stakeholders. CollaboFramework system is a novel approach that unites infrastructure for the collective-knowledge space with the set of socio-technical tools that incrementally evolve that collective-knowledge weaving. With CollaboFramework we recognize uniqueness and complexity of transdisciplinary dialogue of CoIs that aim solving wicked problems. We provide support for modeling personalized socio-technical processes governing each of those communities. Processes coordinate different components of CollaboFramework in the most efficient way for particular CoI and challenges it is facing at the moment. Processes guided with socio-psychological insights help CoIs to converge multidisciplinary knowledge into coherent and landscaped knowledge with the set of insights that will be capable of governing future actions and interventions in the problem-space, namely creating public media and artistic projects that will engage society and let all relevant stakeholders to be heard and recognized. In the future iterations of the CoI events, this will bring additional insights and start another iteration in the spiral of CollaboDialogue and calls for actions.