Feelings from Leverage Points 2019

Inspired by Donella Meadows’ work on Leverage Points (places in complex systems where a small shift may lead to fundamental system changes), the #leverage2019 conference explored sustainability transformation for a better future. For three days in cold Lüneburg (Northern Germany), great minds and spirits from a variety of fields and places came together to rethink knowledge, reconnect people and nature, restructure institutions, inspired by systems thinking, embracing complexity, emerging ideas and transformative research practices. Inspirations, feelings and discoveries.

Left: Heuristic Model of the Leverage Points Concept (adapted from Abson et al. 2017), Right: Leveraging the doughnut, Illustration by Karen O’Brien

Day 1 — Explore: What are the deep or neglected leverage points for sustainability transformations?

In a building where no room is square, trees and pouffes are installed in the main foyer (“the forest”), colorful games await players in the corners of the hallways alongside participatory maps while music plays in the background. Unlike any other academical conference I’ve attended, this one feels particularly human and coherent, serving (delicious) vegan meals, offering kids’ care and even a quiet meditation room. Clever minds sharing kindly and humanly — “This is the Academia I love” I thought, and I felt comfortable, comfortable to be vulnerable, where creative magic happens.

An atmosphere fostering creative and kind interactions. My Swedish colleagues seemed less surprised about this cosy atmosphere, apparently common at European system-thinkers conferences.

« This is the end of the world as we know it ».

I felt inspired by the opening keynotes by Ioan Fazey sparkling with energy and magic tales and by Elena Benett, who leads a marvellous initiative gathering Seeds of a Good Anthropocene.

In Fantasia (1940), when the sorciere apprentice loses control of the brooms he bewitched to clean by themselves, it’s a catastrophe!.. Until the wizard comes and magically fixes it all. In our tale, there’s no wizard.

Reconciling Science & Spirituality

I discovered about Inner Sustainability, and felt whole, conciliating a lot of what makes me feel at home in my intentional community house (where 25 wonderful beings share their journeys of personal healing, spiritual growth & social transformation), and my professional life as a researcher data scientist, which brought me here.

A lot of this wasn’t new to me: Eco-psychology, Deep Ecology, Eco-feminism, the incredible Work That Reconnects by Joanna Macy…, but it was really novel to see these topics approached and formalised from a researcher perspective. Shifting the paradigm by truth and love?

Questioning paradigms: Humans as part of Nature

I work for the Natural Capital Project, where our mission is to shine a light on the benefits people get from nature. There’s an ongoing thorny debate on whether to call those Ecosystem Services (ES) or Nature’s Contributions to People (NCP). Both options are somewhat problematic though, as they emphasize the distinction between people and nature. Aren’t people part of nature?

I’ve had challenges with this phrasing for a while (but don’t have a satisfying alternative either). Although modeling ES (or NCP!) is absolutely not “putting a dollar tag on nature” (and Anne Guerry explains it very eloquently: Nature is priceless, so let’s value it!), after all, we do work on quantifying “Natural Capital”, to “correct capitalism myopia”. Meanwhile, we live the stories that we tell, but how could we deeply change our story — if we tell it in capitalist words?

« We cannot solve the problems with the same thinking we have created it »

said Albert Einstein. Could we combine new desirable narratives with the capitalist-friendly terminology to anchor the pathways to better futures in the present?

Day 2 — Navigate: How do we navigate complexity?

By the end of the first day, it seemed like the assembly was ready to “pull the levers”, but this second day is ambiguously positioned between still exploring and not really acting. I heard loads of buzz words today, one of them being self-organization, I’ll let them self-organize:

Despite lots of insights, I deplore that no clear reasoning or conclusion emerged (for me at least). Universities aren’t fit to solve today’s challenges, suggests Ray Ison from The Open University, but in a quite academical-text-dense-powerpoint presentation. In another talk (otherwise fascinating) on wicked problems, a slide titled Best practices recommends “Better communication” (avoid academical jargon), and in the next bullet point “Epistemological Pluralism”. Walk your talk?

So, I felt concerned about our (academics) capacity to transform, and transform beyond academia… On the other hand, it was wonderful that not just academia was represented. Charlotte Niekamp, market gardener, invited us to care for, recognize and honor farmers: “Peasantry is dying, but peasantry is not dead!”. Plus, you know you’re in the right place when spirituals healers are part of the conversation! Gogo Dineo Ndlanzi made my soul smile and reminded us that disease (when you’re not at ease) is a spiritual awakening. “We’re spiritual beings, having a human experience”. As we were invited to ask the really hard questions repetitively this week, she reminded us in a rhythmic voice about all the indigenous knowledge to learn from and to get out of comfort zone:

Discomfort is where change comes from.

Wicked problems, complex interdependencies, ever-evolving parameters, non-linear and not solvable questions… Plus, complexity of the system increases as one start analysing it (is academia making complexity more complex?). As we discuss how to be good Earth Stewards, and navigate complexity, we seem to agree that radical listening, letting go, self-organization, humility, empathy and diversity are keys. Embracing complexity, relaxing into it but not letting it become an excuse for not acting!

Graphic facilitation for Knowledge Harvesting

I was particularly excited about the graphic facilitation very present at this conference. Using post-its (renamed golden nuggets for the occasion), drawing walls and an army of students, graphic facilitators take visual notes of the talks — extremely useful as reminder and visual synthesis exhibited in the main foyer. They even take it to the next level when projecting the visuals as they are being drawn, which I would argue is when it becomes too much — as participants lose focus observing the drawings, and interprete the talk through the artist’s lens before their own.

Talented graphic facilitators‘ work. (It made me feel good about my habit of constant doodling and sketching to avoid losing focus during talks!)

Talks are 12 minutes, which is fantastic to get a large plurality of opinions, but we mostly all did a terrible job at it: trying to squeeze as much information as possible, and speaking way too fast about slowing down. By 5pm, when we re-group in plenary, the energy and attendance are particularly low despite the almond-milked coffee we’re all drinking. Everyone is feeling tired.

Day 3 — Act (or Explore, explore, explore?)

I learned about Edible Cities, Horticulture-based healing for prisoners, biomimicry and nested hierarchies as a mean to change worldviews, collective Earth Stewardship full of aliveness, and also the wizard-giant-fairy version of paper-rock-scissors (highly recommended).

Throwing microphones randomly to participants, just like at Google, effectively led to democratic participation. A student calls out researchers for pretending to be objective. Researchers are traditionally supposedly neutral external observers of the system. But one can’t abstract themselves from a system they are part of. Plus, being a both a citizen and a researcher of the sustainability transition entails its share of challenges. It raises interesting questions around when to honor subjectivity, and the place of intuition is the knowledge-creation process.

Just for shits and giggles, another wordcloud of the 112-pages conference program

« It’s not just about matter, it’s about mattering, and you matter more than you think »

I was precisely drawing fractals when Karen O’Brien, IPCC contributor, walked on stage. In an analogy to physics, where we get to weird quantum theory at the sub-atomic level, she shared the theory of quantum social change — which I think I understand it as such: We’re all waves and particles, and we’re connected, beyond just the bits and bytes of information shared through optical fiber. Individuals aren’t 100% separable entities. This “non-local entanglement” implies that social science is essentially based on a mistake (assuming humans obeyed the laws of classical physics). Rather than being deterministic, humans are “walking wave functions”…

So, what if we were underestimating our capacity for social change? From crisis to opportunity, let us choose the stories we tell and the ones we live.

I am because you are and since we are, therefore I am

Thank you Dave Abson & team, feeling grateful for these inspiring 3 days. In fact, they felt more like Explore-Explore-Explore than Explore > Navigate > Act, but I very much enjoyed exploring, and am left with deep questioning and allowing myself to take the time to meditate on them. As Elena Benett pertinently cited one of my favorite quote from Antoine de St Exupéry :

“When you want to build a ship, don’t begin by gathering wood, cutting planks and dividing the work, but rather by awaking in hearts the longing for the endless immensity of the sea”. (freely translated)

Notes