An eclectic update

Over the past weeks, internet activity on the theme of resilience has begun to hot up. I have a 'google alert' set to tell me every time someone writes a blog, or creates a web entry, which mentions the term. I also track some relevant blog feeds - such as World Changing and Resillience Alliance - as well as relying on many good friends who are helping to develop thinking on genuinely integrative approaches to cultivating resilience, from local community actions through to state and international level work. This process of sensing the field has also accelerated for me in the last couple of months now I am travelling widely across the UK and Rep. Ireland, connecting with many intersecting networks as I do so.

This entry is really just a list of bullet points of useful resources/ideas that you might find helpful to share:
- The Resillience Alliance held a gathering in April and has many talks up on the net. The presenters are, by and large, thinkers who have been in the field a long while. It would be exciting to find ways to connect this wisdom with the fiery energy of social change/community activist/organisational change folk. [thanks Anna for the link to the WorldChanging blog]

- Christine King has published a research paper on community resilience ... reconnecting people and food, and people with people in Systems Research and Behavioural Science 25, 11-124 (208) [thanks Tony for the paper!]

- Hazel Blears (writing in a Local Government Association report, 2007), Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government, affirms that

All my life I've been a firm believer in local activism. My whole political
approach, fashioned on the streets and estates of Salford, is anchored in
localism and devolution. I've seen how genuine empowerment can bring
positive change and build the resilience necessary to prevent problems such
as anti-social behaviour, which left unchallenged will blight communities. I
believe that the best experts, advocates and leaders for local communities
are people within local communities themselves. It's they who know most
about community problems, and they who are best able to provide common sense
solutions.

Although this analysis falls short of a deeper understanding of the implications of resilience thinking for community development, it's a healthy sign that doors are open to the conversations we all need to be having [thanks Alastair for the quote]

- WWF UK have recently published a report which tackles behaviour change issues in building a resilient society. Essentially, I read this report as advocating opening deliberative spaces where people are able (as Erich Fromm observed so many years ago) to evolve beyond consumerist identities of 'having' toward 'being'... an awakening into care, compassion and insight into the interconnectedness of the web of life and the necessary to respond to the challenge of climate change by complementing the behaviour change tools of the dominant paradigm (social marketing etc.) with the cultivation of 'communities of meaning' and practice such as those that I and many others are involved in facilitating. The report stops short of calling for community development programmes which encourage people to 'unpack' the dynamics of economic growth and consumerism (or perhaps they have yet to adequately connect with this rich tradition?), alongside experiential work (in nature, using meditation, as well as the more hard-headed strategic planning of using power tools to create community ownership of resilience responses...). It does call for increased 'self determination' which I see as exactly the positive, resilience-based commuity of practice agenda we need to be collectively on the road towards.

Over the next months, I'm working on a synthesis paper pulling together the many strands I've begun to track in this blog. In the meantime, look out for new links and update posts like this.

The Transition Handbook... we all need a copy yesterday...

A review copy of Rob Hopkin's Transition Handbook arrived in the post on Thursday. It's due to be published in mid-March. My advice is to get hold of a copy, as soon as you possibly can; the first print-run is sure to sell out. It's £12.95 in paperback, available from Rob's transition culture website.

The clarity, vision and sheer optimism of the writing in this book is exhilarating. After a framing chapter rehearsing just why 'hydrocarbon twins' of peak oil and climate change mean that the only sane response is to build resilience, and fast, Rob offers a very practical feast of the core skills and strategic thinking that has helped the transition movement explode in the last couple of years across the UK. I have no doubt that this will rapidly become a core skills manual for building community resilience, and a basis for building a rapid movement for social change that will soon reach even the laggards in our institutions and governments.

As I read, I feel very at home - the book uses 'head, heart and hands' sections to move from analysis to understanding the psychology of change to an exuberent exploration of how an 'abundance' mindset can unlock phenomenal collective action - time and again Rob emphasises just what a positive focus on (re)building resilience can achieve. Rob has synthesized (and credits) three decades of pioneering, solutions-based innovators, including some good friends such as Chris Johnstone, whose understanding of the psychology of addiction is summarised comprises chapter 6. Here also are pictures from a 'world cafe' event at a convergence event run by friends at Cultivate Centre, Dublin and a lots of great stories from Totnes and the many other towns that are already well down the transition path...

When Rob says in his book that by the time I read it, the movement will have already grown... I know this is true as there are initiatives in Glasgow, Edinburgh, Grangemouth, Fife and a host more Scottish communities that haven't yet made it onto the transition site or the book. The first Scottish Transition gathering will happen on Friday, 25th July, as part of the Big Tent Festival here in Falkland, Fife, and I'll be playing a role there. For more info, contact Eva.

I am also bringing my sense of the importance of this emerging movement to my new work with the Carnegie UK Trust (see my previous post). As Mark Lynas (author of Six Degrees) says in a quote on the back of the Transition Handbook:

This is much more than a book. It is a manual for a movement. And not just any movement, but one which - in avoiding the civilisational collapse threatened by the twin crises of peak oil and climate change - could prove to be the most important social force humanity has ever seen.

The movement that the transition towns handbook contributes to is already a rising force, worldwide. This is about positive change toward cultivating resilience as perhaps the only sane response to awareness of the precipice we collectively stand upon. Thanks Rob for this gift, and for reminding me of Mary Oliver's poem, The Summer Day:

Tell me, what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?

Cultivating Rural Resilience with Carnegie UK Trust

This blog post is an attempt to update old friends as well as new colleagues a bit about the opportunity to join Carnegie UK Trust as a Facilitator of a Community of Practice to support catalysers of innovative rural development for resilient communities across the UK and Republic of Ireland.

I begin to explore what will be involved, and share a bit about how I'm managing the transition.

In recent blog entries at http://www.community.nickwilding.com/, I've talked of launching two new blogs - one for local friends pioneering a 'Transition Fife' initiative, and this one focussing on how to cultivate resilience more generally. I've published reports from the Rural Leadership Programme and Get Your Voice Heard projects; explored Otto Scharma's 'Theory U' of transformational learning processes; and thought about how consultancy might be conducted with authenticity and integrity, drawing on some thinking from Buddhist Pema Chodron.

As I read back, I notice a pattern running through these posts - which connects to a lot of my work for over ten years. It is an underlying conviction that I'd like to contribute to a massive acceleration of action and learning by couragous souls who, instead of running from the implications of climate change/peak oil/eco-social collapse... are stepping up to the challenge in positive and creative and practical ways. Most recently, I have begun focusing more intently on what it takes to cultivate resilience, in practical ways, through leadership and community development programmes.

Working like crazy across several sectors in the last few years, I have become aware of many allies who are developing a similar analysis and passion - within NGOs, businesses, philanthropic organisations, even Quangos....

Time after time I find myself having conversations peppered with statements like

"we know we need a radical shift; we know nobody else is going to do this for us; we might as well step up the the plate, get courageous, and go for it.... because the time is now, not in ten years ..."

In September 2007, on the back of the emerging success and learning from the Rural Leadership Programme (RLP), I was invited by a key funder of the programme - the Carnegie UK Trust - to facilitate their annual convention of their 'rural action research programme'. We gathered in Aviemore for two days with over a hundred folk, and I wrote a blog entry reflecting on this here.

At that convention, it became clear that a good many of these 'fiery spirits' wanted the Trust to commit to catalyse a 'Community of Practice' (CoP) to support cross-fertilisation, as well as stepping up the policy impact, of our collective inspiration and practical success. The message is that transformation is possible, and in many cases already happening. And that this transformation is about a 'paradigm shift' into an asset-based, ecological and participatory way of getting innovative stuff done. The proof is not in theories but in living examples of inspiring projects that can then tell great stories to decision makers who can upscale the lessons and therefore impact of this new way of working.

The flip side of this message was that too much of this work still remains under the radar (and therefore not well supported) of the 'old paradigm', structures of funding, policy etc. which feel 'stuck' and lagging way behind the excitement of a leading edge of innovation which has some real answers.

The point of a Community of Practice in innovative rural development would therefore be to both support those innovators to connect and learn even faster, as well as catalysing the creation, through rigorous action research, of convincing stories with which to help shift the 'mainstream'.

The Carnegie Trustees responded to this call by making a five-year commitment to resource this Community of Practice, including creating the post of CoP Facilitator. As well as the 'bottom up' action research, the idea is to continue to hone and develop an holistic model of what sustainable, asset-based rural development could look like (being the key output from an extensive Rural Commission of the great and good sponsored by Carnegie over the past five years).

Although I couldn't be sure I'd get the job, I did have a real sense that I could bring a lot to the position and wrote an application (along with my CV) that tried to reflect this. I have pulled out my three summary paragraphs from the application to share here:

I have been focussed for many years on supporting the emergence of resilient, healthy communities in the context of global justice and ecological sustainability. I’m aware that rural communities are diverse and face significant challenges, even before we factor in likely major future shocks from climate change and energy price escalation (due to peak oil etc.). Working across the UK and Ireland will challenge me to learn rapidly about the contextual differences across jurisdictions (most of my work to date has been in Scotland).

I’m convinced that the vision outlined in the accompanying documents around supporting innovation, transformative learning and a genuinely effective community of practice based around ‘third places’ and virtual learning … can succeed by trusting in the positive energy of those ‘fiery spirits’ whose grounded, community-based visions will prove themselves again and again over the coming years. As I have the opportunity to connect with, listen to and have ‘conversations that matter’ with more of these key allies in coming months, the shape, content and culture of what’s needed to support the emerging of a really inspirational CoP (or CoPs) will become clearer.

The prospect of joining Carnegie UK Trust to work at a greater scale that has been possible for me before, within the context of the Trust’s emerging vision for change and the people who are making it happen, bringing my practical experience and skills to the service of rural sustainability innovators across the UK and Ireland… is really exciting and energising.

I went on to describe the substance of some of the ingredients of what I thought could comprise the face to face meetings of an effective community of practice. This is really a summary of ten years' experiements working with grassroots community organisations, as well as creating leadership development programmes for professionals and activists from all sectors. So, my starting advice to myself includes (in no particular order):

• be crystal clear about the purpose of the Community of Practice, and each event/area of work happening under its umbrella. This includes figuring out what the 'practice' is that folk share, and clarity about the domain (the area) within which we are working;
  
• invest in developing culture of mutuality, trust, authenticity and collaboration by evolving guidelines of participation through the evolving process which CoP participants are invited to sign up to;
• host events where we will actively support the local economy (eg by seeking out locally-owned/run accommodation etc.);
• find wild places to experience which can help ground everyone in the bigger ecological picture, to help us 'come to our senses';
• arrange for delicious, local organic food wherever possible, sometimes involving the group cooking for itself (great way to get to know each other);
• embed action research input and practice opportunities within the programme;
• use self-organising learning practices where appropriate (for example, 'world cafe' and 'open space')
• work with conflict both within and outwith the group process, as appropriate;
• insist on enough time and space (helped by walks in nature etc.) to help participants to slow down and connect meaningfully with each other;
• collaboratively invite inspiring content/speakers, as well as drawing from the experience of participants themselves;
• get out and do stuff (eg visit places, offer something back to local hosts);
• and if at all possible arrange a rockin' ceilidh of music and poems and stories and dancing (any excuse to get the fiddle/guitar out, really).
• and that's just a start ... the other critical component being to develop simple, attractive on-line ways for folk to stay connected and 'buzzing' between the face-to-face meetings; and my sense is that a raft of new 'web 2' technologies can be called on to support this, from blogging to webcam teleconferencing to 'googledocs' type applications, all of which I've been experimenting with, and which many other organisations and networks are actively developing too.
• and that's just a starter brainstorm ....

I got an interview for the post in late January. On my way home, I found myself thinking that this would be both inspiring and daunting in equal measure... not something any one person could ever hope to pull off alone... so I'd have to trust in finding allies to work with this project from the very beginning.

Since being offered (and accepting) the job, there's been a huge amount more to think through.

First has been to double check that I understand the scale of the challenge this job entails. Equally importantly has been to double check that I'm confident there is sufficient commitment from Carnegie trustees to genuinely support a much longer-term process of social change work than is usually possible in short-term funding cycles.

Although I arrived with a healthy sceptism that a longer-term perspective would really be possible, borne from years of attempting to prise open such spaces within local government, agencies etc... I'm now convinced that Carnegie trustees genuinely want to make longer-term commitments to chart new waters to catalyse social change, way beyond the old paternalistic funder/funded relationships which have tended to generate unhelpful dependencies, perhaps demoralising more communities than this traditional model of philanthropy ever helped.

Shifting the internal culture is one thing, however; the legacy of being understood as a traditional grant-giver, and stakeholders' associated expectations, will be another significant challenge I imagine. There is plenty to inquire about in to what extent it will be possible to 'facilitate' from a position based within a powerful organisation with a lot of history, even as it is consciously searching to find new ways of investing in it's core purpose of 'changing minds, changing lives'. It will take me some time before I begin to grasp the opportunities and pitfalls of a post that whilst being a step closer to influencing policy, may also take me a step farther away from grounded connection to rural community activism and the levels of direct accountability I'm used to in this work.

I can also see several other challenges ahead as well. This post involves a huge professional learning curve to attempt to work effectively and with integrity across England, Wales, Cornwall, Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland.

It seems helpful to write this publicly here. This blog and others that may evolve as part of the CoP can help to cultivate a degree of transparency about this role and the challenges it throws up. This might help me to genuinely engage with and build trusting relationships with the people and projects who are rightly wary of the traditional dynamics of colonisating 'top down' approaches that all too often, however well-intentioned, can end up appropriating or neutering the democratising energy that is so often the driver of positive change toward community sustainability.

The way through must be to start by connecting consciously with the many folk who are already connected with Carnegie Rural Programme, as well as others who may be tempted to join the CoP. My question will be 'how, exactly, can I be of service'?

As well as beginning to think all this through, I have also been thinking hard about the impacts of this decision on my consultancy business, and with my work with the Centre for Human Ecology.

Turning down the heat on Nick Wilding Consulting

Is a move away from my action research/facilitation consultancy business that has really been taking off was really such a good idea?

Although, in the last year, the business has been growing fast with lots of invitations to work with folk, it's hard to crack the reactive nature of consultancy, which militates against keeping coherent focus in one area to really make an impact. I can bring the aspects of action research consulting I find most rewarding - the face-to-face 'critical friend' mentoring and co-inquiring - into my new role.

I have decided to keep the business on the backburner; there's no need to shut up shop, just turn down the heat for a while. I can honour the commitments I've made to existing clients; and there may be times when I am able to respond to ad hoc invitations. Overall, making a contribution with significantly more coherence than job-by-job work, and the opportunity to work on large scale social and policy change as well is too good to turn down.

An opportunity to re-envision the MSc Human Ecology as I step away

The harder decision, in applying for the post, was about whether I could see myself - if I was successful - stepping away from my work co-running the Masters' degree in Human Ecology for the CHE. This has been and continues to be a place where I've been able to stay connected with many exciting 'leading edges' of sustainability thinking for over a decade; the opportunity to work every year with 15 livewires - including many mature professionals stepping out from work for a year to radically reconsider how to deepen their vocation and become 'servant leaders' for social justice and ecological sustainability - has been a challenging and humbling experience over and over again.... like being in a perpetual learning accelerator machine. In short, CHE still meets my needs for a long-term community of good friends, tough questions, and depth inquiry which I value and want to keep contributing to. It's where I've learned about what a Community of Practice can be, and been my incubator as a facilitator and action researcher.

So, I've re-joined the CHE Board of Directors, and will actively look for opportunities to continue contributing to the MSc as well as thesis supervision where this can add value to my work with Carnegie. As I step away from the central holding role I've played for five years, Im also working with my fellow Directors to facilitate a healthy transition as the course evolves again, opening up space for CHE graduates to step forward in the way I was able to. There is some powerful personal work on letting go connected with this process...

... The long and short of this story is that I will start 'officially' in mid-April 2008. If you are or know a 'fiery spirit' who is grounded and visionary all at once, working away for resilience in rural development, let them know to look out for a new Community of Practice that Carnegie UK Trust is developing... it could be just what they are looking for!

More resilience thinking

This is an update blog; telling a brief story of further thought-adventures into resilience, helped along by the continuing conversations which I wrote about last week... please, keep connecting...

Cultivating Mindbody Resilience through becoming present

There is now a solid tradition of ecopsychology research which challenges us to connect with the wild - in ourselves, as well in the more-than-human world. A central theme of some of this work is embodiment; becoming present to the extended ways of knowing available as we learn to tune into ourselves as bodies, through which we, in turn, can learn (or re-learn, taking a perspective that honours the indigenous that dwells in our hearts and bones still), to tune into the cosmos, to the feedback systems that we must hear to adapt and survice.

I am greatful to Helen Jeans, a recent graduate from the Centre for Human Ecology, who sent me the following quotes from her ecopsychology work during the course:

The body subverted
Although the contents of the mind develop from the body’s perception of the world a ‘curious inversion’ has taken place in ‘scientific culture’ so that ideas have become primary and felt experience secondary (Abram 1997, p.34).

Kidner believes this ‘curious inversion’ has enabled a power relationship to transplant the reciprocal relationship of the natural world. Instead of mutuality we now have domination with an associated value system in which, quoting Val Plumwood, the civilised is preferred over wild, modern over primitive, human over animal, conscious over unconscious, rational over irrational, culture over nature, mind over body (Kidner 2001, pp.9-10). The body is now dominated by the mind. For Kidner a kind of vicious circle is set up in which the ‘disembodied intellect’ is unable to find its way out of its own trap (ibid p.9).

This sense of ‘stuckness’ is echoed by Sewall who believes that in being defended against the body and its senses, western society has denied its ‘profound coexistence with the world’ (Sewall 1999, pp.83-84). She suggests this disembodiment results in ennui in which ‘Every place feels more or less the same. The distinctions are lost and wherever we are becomes close to nowhere. We move on.’ (Sewall 1999, p.85). She continues, ‘Divorced (from our bodies) we do not know our whole selves. In our desire for full self-knowledge and in the imbalance and uncertainty that arise in the absence of an embodied sense of being at home in the world, we feel an amorphous need to know something.’ (Sewall 1999, p.90). In this state we grasp at facts and labels that provide a sense of security and control and in so doing alienate ourselves even further (Sewall 1999, p.90-91).

Sewall suggests we even lose our capacity to adapt to the needs of the future. Severed from our senses we ‘easily miss the signals, the signs for adaptation, for co-evolving with the world-earth system as it is now, today. But reading the signs is a matter of survival…’ (Sewall, Laura (1999) ‘Sight and Sensibility: The Ecology of Perception’ (New York: Penguin Putman)).

The depth emerging from this analysis is both gripping and sobering; I am drawn again to questions of the extent to which my mindbody is numbed to the delicate energetic cycles of reciprocity; and then to questions of practices that can help heal this disconnection, day by day. I spent Monday evening with local Falkland friends, reflecting on the potential of transition towns and the spirituality that might help this along. I came away with something to do - of not waking up to the catalysms of the today programme on radio 4, but to a more intentional practice of staying whole in a transition from bed to the day...

Cultivating a politics of resilience through life-projects
As I write this piece, another email arrives, from Justin Kenrick, with the following quote:
Mario Blaser pg. 40

"Given that one cannot have certainty about the results of interacting with others (humans and non-humans), the most sensible way of relating to others is always to try to conserve the ability to respond to change - in other words to follow a politics of resilence"

I search google for Mario Blaser and 'politics of resilience', and feel an upsurge of connection and flow as I begin to read, despite the academese... here is a connection to a wild ontology (way of being in the world) of indigenous 'life projects', building resilience as alternative to the divisions and devisiveness of the late stages of neo-liberal economic globalisation which are tearing our earth to shreds. This is the kind of knowing that ecopsychologists are reaching toward; this time, resilience is framed within an indigenous world-view, from this place reaches deep into the earth to bring alive our voiced-over wild souls:

I see life projects as a politics and epistemology of resilience that assume relations, flows and openendedness as their ontological ground. There is a growing literature that has shown how Indigenous non-dualist ontologies open up an ‘intellectual landscape . . . in which states and substances are replaced by processes and relations’ (Descola and Palsson 1996: 12; also the contributors to Descola and Palsson 1996; Ingold 2000)...

An important body of literature has been devoted to how the lived experience embodied in [stories, prayers and rituals] is conducive, in practice, to the regeneration of ecosystems upon which Indigenous peoples depend (see Grim 2001; Ingold 2000). In his chapter, Peter Harries-Jones discusses how these embodied traditions constitute forms of ‘life-politics’ that are in direct opposition to ‘wild globalization’. These life-politics, which are attuned to the cycles of recursion (regeneration) of the environment, actively try to bring disturbances caused by human action within a range that can be absorbed within those cycles. Harries-Jones sees the concept of resilience as a promising bridge between these life-politics and the science of ecology. I also find the concept very appropriate for describing the politics of life projects.

The concept of resilience is connected to the central characteristics of the epistemologies and politics of life projects. According to Harries-Jones, the concept ‘embodies inherent unpredictability and unknown outcomes of interactions between ecosystems and the human societies’; thus it refers to ‘the conservation of the ability to respond to change’. I argue that, in contrast to modern epistemology and politics, unpredictability and unknown outcomes of interactions are taken as ontological conditions in the epistemologies and politics of life projects....

James Bay Cree cosmology sets human lives and animals in a world of persons bound by relationships of reciprocity and respect, a way of relating that Cree hunters extend even to those who deny respect to others, for to do otherwise because one insists one knows better is to reduce further the fabric of relationships that is the world itself. Knowledge in these ontological conditions cannot even be intended to be absolute. Knowledge is knowledge in context; it is relative. Given that one cannot have certainty about the results of interacting with others (humans and non-humans), the most sensible way of relating to others is always to try to conserve the ability to respond to change–in other words, to follow a politics of resilience.

Cultivating resilience through finding voice

I've been preparing again this week to welcome students from the MSc Human Ecology to Falkland in January for a workshop called Finding Voice. At the heart of our work together is an inquiry into practices of re-connection - with our creativity (when was that 'voiced over'?); with our wild selves; with healing communities from inter-generational trauma. Ultimately we are interested in becoming more fully ourselves; more fully human, able to stay present, strong, resilient with the burden of awareness of how the world is today. This is work at emotional and spiritual depth; what's an appropriate role for the 'head' knowing in relation to this...?

Cultivating Regional Resilience

My final 'resilience' update is the surfacing of a complex and potentially important if overly 'heady' approach, hosted by UCC Berkeley and funded by the MacArthur Foundation, to understanding the systems dynamics of resilient regions.

I started the cyber-journey by googling 'politics of resilience' and found the 'greater democracy' blog, which led me to Mike McDonald's work on Disaster Knowledge Management Systems and a definition of resilience from the United Nations International Strategy for Disaster Reduction:

The capacity of a system, community or society potentially exposed to hazards to adapt, by resisting or changing in order to reach and maintain an acceptable level of functioning and structure. This is determined by the degree to which the social system is capable of organizing itself to increase its capacity for learning from past disasters for better future protection and to improve risk reduction measures.

From here, I found links to a solid and well-funded programme called Building Regional Resilience - sponsored by the MacArthur Foundation with Building Resilient Regions Progamme, Berkeley

Resilience: Because regions are subject to economic and demographic shocks over which they have little control, the network focuses on regional resilience. Resilience represents a capacity to address short-term problems in ways that generate long-term success. The network seeks to show how particular features of regional governance—the actors, cultures, policies, and institutions of a region—contribute to resilience. What are the points of intervention, the type of actions, collaborations, policies, or institutions that contribute to regional resilience?

This is collaborative research work focussed on regions on the USA through a resilience lens; a full list of their papers is here. This is powerful, synthesising work applying ecosystems science concepts to regional planning; I sense it is also more than that.

How would it be to bring Mario Blaser into conversation with the folk from MacArthur and the Resilient Regions Network? Could the connected resilience of Blaser's politics connect with the rational models of the UCC researchers? And how about asking Justin and David Abram along, to help lead a journey beyond our heads, possibly out of the city, and to sink our collective teeth into the sensuous more-than-human continuum of life on earth? What would we bring back? More connected head-heart-hand practices for cultivating resilience?

lighting the resilience touchpaper through conversation with friends...

Since I created this blog two weeks ago, I've been bending peoples ears, testing the water. I want to write about some of the conversations I've had... also an experiment to see if a blog entry like this might help these conversations to continue.

My question, most of the time, was 'what's your gut response to my sense that what is needed now, more than anything, is to cultivate resilience'?

I write as I remember, perhaps the most recent conversations first.

David Abram spoke at Scottish Natural Heritage's spectacular 'morethanus' event in Inverness last week. David's deeply focussed message was for stories, and more stories, and not written down, but stories of our local places, told as we walk those local places, grafted onto the taproots of indigenous animism. Told with voices that growl up from within our animal body. His force-of-nature story-telling of the magic of the wild; of written language's divorce from oral connectivity between living beings in living places and the indigenous within us all... resonated at angry-love depth with Jay Griffith's 'Wild', and bounced off Mark Lynas' deep cry for climate sanity.

I hear that his call is about connecting language back to real beings; that depth connection with place and the more-than-human is the essential work for human ecologists, vital for resilience practice. David was able to visit us on his way home, suggested I check out Bill McKibbon's 'Deep Economy'. In our late-evening conversation, I also heard again a call for wild-words, and earthed stories, that can become more of my/our work in the world. As I write, I suddenly become aware of the paradox of writing these words into this blog... writing into cyber-space, hosted on a server thousands of miles away... is this in itself destructive of the consciousness that David was calling forth?

Mark Lynas was in a different place; a place of no time to delay; a place of the immense power of the local even in the face of our knowledge, dimly perceived, that we are living through earth's, fastest and biggest extinction event ever. Ever. His response to resilience was '... and vulnerability...', that the tremendous vulnerability of our ecosystems as they are at the present; the coral reefs and forests on the point of death.

After the SNH event, I talked with Tess Darwin, a friend from Falkland and also a visionary, working away within SNH, about the transformative potential of this work which SNH could support. Could wild-unwritten-place-based-storytelling be a core of a resilience strategy for the hundreds of communities of human and more-than-human communities that SNH has a mission to support?

Justin called by yesterday; we teach together on the 'Finding Voice' workshop I run every year here in Falkland, Fife for the Centre for Human Ecology Masters' programme; he's a trickster, calling himself and by extension me and you... to presence in our lives, with the way the world is. One of Abram's sensitive souls... working and living in two separate cities, with three young children.... responding to resilience by showing just how much the structures of work and family life work to cut away this life-force; and inquiring what it would take to create a far more resilient life...

Tara, my partner, has been unendingly positive; an amplifying and encouraging mirror to say 'you've had some daft ideas in your time, but this one isn't daft, this is for real, and it's needed'...

Tara was making soup for our guest last night when I popped into the village to join about thirty local folk to hear from Ben, from Totness transition towns movement. His gentle, paced way of describing the twin, converging apocalypses of climate change and peak oil... and their implication of re-localisation... left many in the room convinced and shaken. Tara and I have been living here for three years; this is the first time so many over-lapping groups friends and a wider network has come together in the village, organised by my friend and colleague at the Rural Leadership Programme Sibongile Pradhan. It was partly Rob Hopkins' presentation on this 'energy descent' movement that stung me into heightened resilience-awareness two weeks ago; Ben, too, was gently insistent that this one crucial factor at the heart of the movement's blistering global spread over the last year. Ninian, friend and Laird here at Falkland Centre for Stewardship, turned in recognition of our conversation last week (with Helen Lawrenson, the Development Director) where these local friends agreed with me that 'what else is there to do?'. I sense Ben's visit has been profoundly helpful in perhaps catalysing the first 'transition village Falkland' next January. Could we lead the way in Scotland?

Good friend and colleague Verene Nicolas told me that she's been dwelling on resilience for many months; that there is a book by this name in France which has captured the mood of the times and been hugely influential in France for the past couple of years. I sensed from both Alastair McIntosh and her, that evening, an affirmation that this is another doorway into spiritual service; another way of seeing the integrity of the community activism they embody in their home in Govan, Glasgow and way beyond.

I've chewed the ears of many more folk; Roddie, outdoor education specialist as morethanus, picked up that he was left in no doubt by our conversation that resilience in on the burner; Peter Merry, 'spiral dynamics' wizard in the Netherlands and motivator behind the Centre for Human Emergence, Netherlands, wrote a supportive email with multiple references to global-level resilience work - it's going to be a good while before I've digested all this; in the meantime, several of the links are up on the resilienceblog.

I play in a string quintet with Katherine, Sarah, Aby, and Peter; we've a gig coming up in a couple of weeks; I think I heard Katherine say that resilience 'makes sense' to her. Thankyou musical friends...

Finally, Mary-Jayne Rust gave a powerful talk to the London Guild of Psychotherapists two weeks ago, and invited me out to a coffee afterwards with her friends Viola and Zita.

As we talked about the resilience of the martial artist, centred, strong and flowing, not brittle; able to bend with change and stay alive with and embodied in the moment; and as I talked about local resilience as being those powerful webs of connection to a tribe, even if it's not in one place... we all seemed alive, engaged, enthused by life.

These are the kind of conversations I'd love to have more of; what other kinds of conversations are worth having just now?

a call to cultivate resilience

Climate tipping point? Where next?

The IPCC fourth report on climate change, published last Saturday, significantly strengthened its emphasis on the dangers of runaway ('beyond tipping point') climate change. See the guardian's summary graphic (PDF). There's also a brilliant cartoon-book 'Funny Weather' that brings all this to life by Kate Evans - see it here.

In a powerfully moving presentation before several hundred people at the 'Be the Change' in London last Thursday, David Wasdell, an IPCC reviewer and past whistleblower on political corruption and the IPCC process, outline the contents of a new book on climate feedback systems.

In short, the book shows how 'vicious circles' of positive feedback loops in climate change systems are amplifying each other. The warmer the atmosphere gets, the more carbon dioxide is released, which warms up the atmosphere more, etc.. And they are not balanced with enough counter-cycles such as global dimming, to dampen the effects significantly. Jim Lovelock's Revenge of Gaia is beginning to seem not so far fetched after all.

Examples of feedback loops include:
Arctic ice melt 2007
We saw an arctic ice melt last summer (2007) at a pace many times greater than the IPCC expected. As ice melts, there is less ice to reflect sunlight so more warmth is absorbed, melting more ice.
Siberian methane thaw has begun
When Siberian permafrost melts, carbon buried since the Pleistocene era is bubbling to the surface of lakes, and dissipating into the atmosphere as methane, a greenhouse gas 23 times more potent than carbon dioxide Siberia has warmed faster than anywhere else on Earth - average temperatures have increased 3°C in the last 40 years: Sergei Kirpotin of Tomsk State University describes permafrost melting as an "ecological landslide that is probably irreversible". He says the entire western Siberian sub-Arctic region has begun to melt in the last three or four years. Larry Smith of the University of California Los Angeles, has estimated that the western Siberian bog alone contains 70 billion tonnes of methane, which is 25 percent of all methans stored on the land surface

The other major potential source of methane lies under the sea. Methane clathrates, also called methane ice, is a solid form of water that contains a large amount of methane within its crystal structure. If the sea warms up too much, it could release massive amounts of methane. This has been hypothesized as a cause of past extinction events.

Natural CO2 sinks losing their capacity to soak up CO2
We know that the Amazon rainforest narrowly escaped significant wildfires last summer after several seasons without enough rain. The Amazon is becomming a 'brittle' ecosystem, unable to withstand shocks, susceptible to irreversable damage. Fewer tress means less CO2 is taken up; which increases the carbon loading in natural carbon sinks to the point of saturation, where they start releasing, rather than storing, carbon. Another positive feedback loop.

Changes in wind patterns over the Southern Ocean resulting from human-induced global warming have brought carbon-rich water toward the surface, reducing the ocean’s ability to absorb excess carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. On land, where plant growth is the major mechanism for drawing carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere, large droughts have reduced the uptake of carbon.

“The new twist here is the demonstration that weakening land and ocean sinks are contributing to the accelerating growth of atmospheric CO2,” says co-author Chris Field, director of global ecology at the Carnegie Institution’s Department of Global Ecology. "that's the thing that is scary about this whole thing. There are lots of mechanisms that tend to be self-perpetuating and relatively few that tend to shut it off."

breaking down to breakthrough.... into resilience?

Our collective senses are beginning to perceive clearly the implications of the rapid changes that are now upon us. However, as Peter Chatalos recently wrote, you might say earth has its own human-induced AIDS, its own immune-deficiency syndrome, which involves a numbing of our sensitivity to the earth's pain. This numbness is evident in the tired old systems of human governance which are not yet tuned keenly enough to the scale of the challenge before us, and therefore play out tired patterns of response, and as this old system becomes fearful of its collapse, it can actively obstruct the innovation we need.

This blog's purpose is to support the emergence of a craft practice of resilience. The resilience pioneers are helping the old systems 'let go' as well as focussing our evolutionary energy on building resilience at every level - to withstand the coming storms whilst enriching our collective humanity, cultivating life-giving cultures of sustainability.

Last weekend, another friend, eco-psychologist Mary-Jayne Rust, presented a paper to the Guild of Psychotherapists recently that called the profession to leave its couch and engage in the corridors of power, equiping us with the psycho-dynamic wherewithall to comprehend the processes of denial and projection which threaten to bury our collective heads deeper into the sand; that a profound understanding of inner resilience and transformation is required.

In her recent book on the psychology of ambiguous loss, Pauline Boss says

"Resiliency is a constant and positive adaptive trait. It is a basic part of our healthy psychological makeup ... it is more than 'bouncing back,' which implies regaining the status quo; rather, it means rising above traumatic and ambiguous losses by not letting them immobilize and living well despite them. Resiliency means flexibility, the opposite of brittleness, and movement, the opposite of paralysis." Loss Trauma and Resilience (2006)

Resilience implies practical action, diverse yet seemlessly connected initiative, married with deep values that reinforce our sense of self-worth, dignity and sensitivity.

There is already a global justice movement which, with largely under-the-radar stealth, is infusing our societies with resiliency from the inside-out. Paul Hawkin's latest work charts, with effervescing energy, the emergence of this movement, and the principles at its heart.

A practical expression of it in the UK is the phenomenal take-up of the 'transition towns' movement... It's been suggested that a reason for the phenomenal take-up of this approach - that enables local people to take responsibility for the 'powerdown' of their community - is its emphasis on cultivating local resilience, from the ground up. When faced by the enormity of climate change, combined with the coming 'peak-oil' crisis where our oil-addicted economies are eating more oil than our reserves can give up, resilience is an idea that can grab you, earth you, connect you to a powerful energy to get up and do something meaningful.

To summarise: at the heart of the resurging, dynamic invigoration of collective capacity is a focussed, determined, exuberent and compassionately grounded cultivation of resilience in relationships at every level - from the personal to the planetary. This resilience is then embodied in the emerging structures of ecologically-sane organisations and institutions.

This blog is therefore offered in service of surfacing, connecting, advocating and catalysing practices of resilience.

resilience

to see clearly
to work with what is
to amplify nature's self-healing properties

... cultivating resilience.

my resilience
our resilience
local resilience
global resilience

... cultivating resilience.

Weaving together an integral approach
finding simplicity beyond complexity

... cultivating resilience.

Resilience as life;
resilience bourne of spiritual strength through hard times;
resilience of elasticity and a capacity to 'bounce back'.

... cultivating resilience.

Resilience in ecology:
ecosystems, full of diversity, far from the brittleness of breakdown.

... cultivating resilience.

Resilient communities, full of solid, trusting relationships and generous hearts.

... cultivating resilience.

Resilient institutions, founded on creativity, learning,
and authentic leadership serving greater purposes of sustainability and social justice.

... cultivating resilience.

What does 'resilience' speak of to you?

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