#ISSS2016 Boulder

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.

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?

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

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.