Kanopi: The Abstract
A Masters of Design (MDes) focused on environmental conservation
Recently, I handed in my Masters, which I spent a little over 2 years working on. It began with an enquiry into environmental volunteering experiences, but became something altogether different.
I ended up with the primary direction of the research as:
How might we improve the environmental and social outcomes of biodiversity conservation projects?
I called the research project Kanopi, because I enjoy the metaphor of this research project as a nurturer of all sorts of life.
In the spirit of breaking academic research free of pay-walled journals, and pushing the ideas and findings out into the world, I’ve decided to write a series of articles to communicate key aspects of the research. This first summary article is simply the abstract from my completed thesis, which I will link to when the marking has been completed. If you’re interested in following the series of round ups, just follow this publication.
The Abstract
The environmental conservation sector in New Zealand and Australia is not able to keep pace with the scale of the challenges facing it, causing widespread loss of our planet’s biodiversity and the potential for profound societal challenges due to our reliance on ecosystem services. Many of the issues are interconnected and dynamic, brought about through the downstream effects of population growth and anthropocentric worldviews.
Change is needed in how the conservation sector is able to operate, which better enables the existing sector stakeholders to create positive social and environmental outcomes. However the sector is chronically underfunded, and thus unable to muster the resources or a collective direction to address the systemic challenges alone. The challenges are complex (dynamic and emergent), yet we find the majority of resources poured into planning-based responses that are inadequate due to their reliance on predictive approaches to the unpredictable challenge. The alternative to planning, is prototyping; a culture rooted in experimentation, adaptation and continuous learning, in order to continually re-orientate efforts to a desired future.
This research project has focused on designing a targeted systems change intervention, rooted prototyping culture, which seeks to challenge power dynamics and the mental models of the types of impact that conservation groups can generate. Through systemic and strategic design, I have generated systems sight, crafted strategy, and developed a portfolio of concepts which serve as both technological and socio-cultural ‘Trojan Mice’ to challenge existing paradigms which limit the sector’s ability to reverse biodiversity loss.
Keywords: systems change, systemic design, strategic design, environmental conservation
UPDATE: You can now read the full Thesis online
In the coming months, I’ll aim to share more about different aspects of the project, including key insights, interesting sub-topics and where I’m hoping to take it in the future.
Part of my interest in sharing this openly, is to generate discussion, invite critique, and extend my practice further than the boundaries of the Masters allow. So please do reply to this thread, or over on twitter, if you’re keen to talk more. Thanks in advance!
