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Pitch

Enable patchwork and dialogic collaborative solutions via self-adapting problem/solution space ontologies, (mis)matchmaking and governance.

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Description

 

Executive summary

It seems implausible that there is a silver bullet approach/perspective to solving climate change entire or for even one element in isolation. In normal situations we use our experience of the world, relationships, and inner life to find a way forward. With a truly complex problem, this is not possible, since one person cannot have all the correct experience, relationships, and intellect to address the whole. A patchwork solution, however, where component approaches are carefully crafted through multiple talents and perspectives; where the whole pattern is understood; where individual contributions are recruited and positioned in ways they can do the most good both individually and in sync with others; and where associated skills are preserved, shared and improved -will have a much better chance of success. Thus, society can evolve in a way that is more aware of it’s: constraints, impacts, and future potential.

The passion leverage approach seeks to provide a conceptual framework to facilitate collaboration on climate change, collaboratively developing ontological structures to document the problem space of climate change and leveraging these with governance to make dialog around solutions more effective. In today’s world there seems to be no shortage of good ideas and good will, but instead a shortage in dialog and inclusive thinking necessary to convert good individual ideas into shared visions more insightful and grounded and thus more actionable than what one perspective can produce.

Team

Chris Smerald, is an actuary involved in solving complex risk management and insurance problems in London. pljom is a personal initiative with a mission to inspire and equip people for inclusive thinking and action in their own communities and lives, tipped into action by a ringside seat at the financial crisis.

What

Consider three perspectives within the climate change space:

John, who has strong business management experience, has a brilliant idea that could go a long way towards solving climate change: a private sector economic incentive mechanism that brings into transactional economic decisions externalities not currently accounted for and, as a side effect of the change, actually reduces economic inefficiencies. However, the approach is broadly impractical since it requires a certain level of enforced cooperation and does not work well for small, composite assembled or perishable goods due to large amounts of research, investment and culture change required.

Ferhet, a research student who really understands motivational psychology, who has ideas on government planning and financial incentives around resource security for the economically vulnerable – with energy and water as key concerns, but lacks scientific knowledge.

A Canadian university research team explores improved packaging that is reconfigurable and reusable but proves impractical to return to source for reuse, thus despite a significant residual value it cannot be competitive with cheaper but more wasteful one-time packaging.

Normally, these parties would stick within their scope of experience or converse within the silos of their professions -but this may lead to dead-ends. However, if each saw how their respective ideas overlapped they might decide to join up and forge something completely new that works in a way that none alone could imagine, Eureka!, or arrive at a joint insight that enriches another group’s effort.  Of course they might not overlap sufficiently or the ideas be of sufficient individual worth, but dialog will uncover this and give better clarity on: what is individually wrong, what further dialogic combinations would be beneficial or how to do better matchmaking for others. It is my premise that good problem mapping, talent matching and selfless dialog, could enhance creativity and problem solving in ways that random exchange can only scratch the surface of. Putting things into a Bohmian context: the crucial issue facing mankind may not be climate change, but rather a lack of dialog and openness to dialog on issues like climate change -perhaps exacerbated by the complexity and specialization within our own lives that we can barely handle which leads us to shut others out. By managing complexities better and exposing common threads, we may be made more apt to work together and smarter. 

There are three collaborative elements to the passion leverage approach:

·         a problem encompassing ontology (collaboratively evolved from a seed ontology) used as a means to map out the totality of the climate change issue and keep people, proposals and issues in perspective of each other and the whole;

·         match/mismatch-making to join up people with similar / different perspectives where it is desirable ; and

·         collaboration governance rules and tools that adapt in a collaborative way to facilitate the actual dialogic collaboration needed to deeply solve climate change problems.

This approach differs in degree from the current online collaborative approaches (which attract cellular contributions and filter and refine them, but are only loosely structured) because of the addition of a strong evolving taxonomy that will provide focus and challenge for individual contributions and aid in the organization of true dialog (creating shared meaning from divergent perspectives) that is often rare though usually powerful. The particular desired goal is to forge an organizational structure that puts the individual cellular contributions in perspective of the whole and each other -so seed ideas can be merged or refined and taken to the next level. This approach is relatively simple to initiate and can be applied to other problems or sub-problems, perhaps even tying climate change with other issue areas such as conflict or poverty. It will be a huge step forward if the climate change problem were mapped out fully, including the human dimension, and if current approaches were plotted against the problem set, even if the dialogic elements of the approach were “parked”. This would show overlaps and gaps in a way that would identify challenging “groan zone” areas and focus rethinking to get through them.

The workhorse of this approach is the ontology/taxonomy of which I have developed a seed -which would be adapted collaboratively as ideas and perspectives challenge it and make it more inclusive. The idea is that collaboration around defining the ontology will help define what issues a good (cellular) solution should encompass, and the resultant taxonomy will help describe all aspects of the climate change problem (albeit In summary form) to provide focus in developing solutions and to assist in comparing and improving ideas. Written ideas would have a multiple category header which shows its relevant taxonomic classifications with room for additional qualifying/ranking fields (i.e., a 1-4 scale) and freeform descriptions. Qualifying/ranking fields would cover things like perceived importance, completeness, stand-alone-ability, uniqueness, and etc. Optional descriptions would help explain nuances and thinking behind choosing a particular classification or ranking and perhaps what part of the idea is relevant for the classification. Each element of the idea or its header could be discussed and challenged by others, leading to greater transparency and uniformity. Just by mandating that each contribution contain a keyword tagline one could mark a brave beginning to the battle over chaos (and even the tag could be challenged by others). This would be one up on tag clouds which do not always reflect importance (of course a tag cloud based on header information could be quite useful). The start ontology/taxonomy is in a separate section below.

So, once the taxonomy is created and ideas are tagged, then what? First, there will be some objective measure possible of an idea’s completeness and it will be possible to group or sort ideas according to different criteria and know the level of overlap with other ideas. Next is a matter of choice. Information is either archived for later use, or better, collaboration is sought either: with people of broadly similar ideas and background for purpose of a deep unifying dive, or with others of more diverse background whose ideas overlap only a moderate amount with a goal to forge something completely new. For diverse based dialog small groups may be ideal, say 3-6 persons -allowing some diversity, inhibiting single person dominance, and minimizing the challenge of working through multiple perspectives. For narrower dialog, small or large groups may be effective as they begin with more common focus and participants are surer of their ground. And in brainstorming (like for the ontology/taxonomy development or general vision alignment for instance using World Cafe http://www.theworldcafecommunity.org/  or other structured dialog approaches), from a few to many can be effective as long as someone is willing to keep good records and organize it at the end. The idea of (mis)matchmaking is to assist groups to form around either diverse, but moderately overlapping ideas/perspectives or around largely similar ideas. People can choose what they want to be included in or people can invite those who they think would help go either wide or deep.

Considering perspective(s) is especially important as this has a keen bearing on solutions. For example, in a simple two person conflict situation the solution may be: victory for one over the other, a compromise between both (usually accompanied by a partial change in perspective by one or both), continued conflict, or a change in perspective where the parties learn to live with their differences (for interesting reading see St Ethelburgas Centre “disagreement Success” model http://stethelburgas.org/ ). Of course with climate change there are innumerable perspectives -so perspective in solution is especially important.

Tools and governance around dialog are also important. People need a “safe space” that nurtures respect and transparency and allows for safe challenge, but also has sufficient boundaries for individual and small group privacy and protection from unwanted naïve input and trolls. They also need ideas on how they might interact, when they might need a change and ways to learn from others: success stories, tips, and tricks (for example, according to Olivier Zara in “The management of Collective Intelligence” an ideal online dialog lasts about 25 days!). Basic functionality includes discussion rooms (open and closed), access to teleconferencing, blog capability, a central database of contributor biographic information with standardized “tags” to enhance search-ability (whatever they care to share), idea libraries also taxonomically tagged, news alerts, a version controlled taxonomy (and an evolving wiki taxonomy as well), vote and debate capability, a library of tips and real life examples of success or failure, facilitators, moderators, and all the usual social media trappings. An important point is that any space should be inclusive to all approaches and perspectives. People need to feel free to contribute in a way they are comfortable with, but can be encouraged by example to try new ways of interacting with others and there can be real efficiencies to individual concentrated effort, but there is a keen need for more coordinated deep dives as well. There is also a role for reductionist perspectives as a contributor to the agglomeration process (i.e., two steps forward and one step back).

But we need to think very big and fast and work efficiently at times of crisis and linear thinking can only go so far. We rise to the current crisis by enabling inclusive dialog that is geared towards encouraging the generation and transformative agglomeration of solutions (and perspectives) around climate change and around associated problems - such as sustainability and human happiness or security.

The main ontological headings chosen are:

 

Mission – What is the goal? e.g., to help build a sustainable future for humankind, while preserving or improving overall quality of life and the biosphere.

Who –in terms of a specific association (e.g., belief, membership, interest and etc.) of an individual or group that is targeted for change;

Motivations (and Anti-Motivations) of the Who as to what drives their current and future behaviour for different time scales: past, present, near future, far future;

How –what process is envisaged to change the status quo (with at most indirect impact on the environment)?;

What -practical applications that directly impact the environment or our ability to survive in it.;

Goals –What will success me measured by the achievement of?

Knowledge –what research and development is needed in the areas of the ecosystem, economy, technology, management, human issues, and etc.?

Roadblocks / Dependencies –practicalities that hinder finding or applying a solution.

Etc. – There is always something else not thought of advance to be added later.

The categories are personal judgement based, but the elements come from reviewing current and past CoLab proposals; a “news” ontology from http://www.idiom.at and miscellaneous web list browsing.

The seed ontology is below. In its self a good example of the limits of one viewpoint, but hopefully enough to get people started in bringing it towards fullness.

Mission:

To help build a sustainable future for humankind, while preserving or improving overall quality of life and the biosphere.

Supporting mission 1

Etc.

 

Who/Where

Individual

Small Group

Local

Regional

National

International

 

Motivations (Why)

Past / Present / Near Term / Future

Security

Prosperity

Quality Of Life

Faith / Love

Empathy

Fear

Inertia / Passive Compulsion

Coercion

Generosity

Interest

Logic & Planning

Risk Reduction

Social Responsibility / Duty

Etc.

 

Anti-Motivations

Greed / Vested Interest

Pride

Ignorance

Distrust

Inertia

Ambiguities

Feel Left Out

Etc.

 

How

Ecology Research

Technology

Behavioral Change

Personal Development

Communication & Information

Build Trust And Safe Spaces

Examples & Perspective

Transition Management

Transparency Of Impacts & Motivation

Stakeholder Dialog

Resource Management

Co Creation

Political Process

Foreign / Military Policy

Economic Policy

Domestic Policy

Regulatory Policy

Mitigation Policy

Adaptation Policy

Science Policy (Eco / Techno)

Symbolic Policy

Targets

Investment

Impact Modelling Tools (Human, Eco, Econom, Etc.)

Scenario Analysis

Prioritization

Disaster Contingency Planning

Demilitarization

Risk Reduction (Hinderers To Gains)

Etc.

 

What

Reduce Consumption Of Products

Increase Recycling And Recyclability

Energy Conservation

Waste Reduction

Sequester Carbon

Improvement Of The Environment

Resource Management

Prospecting

Reconfigure Materials Used Per Product

Adapt To Climate

Mitigate Climate

Relocation

Improve Land Use

Population Management

Etc.

Extra Dimension: Currently Practical / Feasible / Hypothetical

 

Goals

Fairness

Revere Global Warming

Preserve Biodiversity

Reduce Extreme Weather

Sustainable Resource Use

Neutral Or Improved Nuclear Or Conflict Hazard

Stabilize Situation

Avoid Dangerous Side Effects

 

Ecosystem Research

Understand Individual Disruption Agents

Understand Specific Environmental Impacts

Understand Partial Ecosystems

Understand Composite Ecosystems

Model Ecosystem(/Elements)

Model Intervention Impacts

Scenario Analysis

Land Use/Protection Strategies

 

Eco Technology

Clean Energy

Emission Reduction

Sequesterization

Energy Conservation

Recycle Extraction Efficiency

 

Economic Research

Understand Individual Economic Drivers

Understand Individual Economic Impacts

Understand Economic Sub-Systems

Understand Composite Economy

Model Economy(/Elements)

 

Other

Risk Management

Resource Management

Energy Management

Cooperation Mechanisms

Economic Mechanisms

Free Market Mechanisms

 

 

Roadblocks / Dependencies

 Unclear Mission

Identifying Target Beneficiaries / 'Customers'

Bundling Of Products & Services for Beneficiaries

Beneficiary / Customer Access Channels

Lack of Helpers/Collaborators

Lack of Dialog

Missing Mechanisms

Lack of Coordination Ability

Gaps in Knowledge

Gaps in Application

Gaps in Modelling

Gaps in Law / Policy

Errors in Understanding

Skills Shortage

Infrastructure Shortage

Capital Shortage

Resource Shortage

Location / Logistics

Lack of Mechanisms

Conflict

Competition

Business Knowledge

Etc.

 

Teams are asked to select a greenhouse gas emission target for their region/country, noting the target year and projected emissions expressed as a percentage of the 2005 baseline.

This is hard to do at present, but I would expect slow to start with later steep effect.

 
You will also want to outline actions by which the region/country you have selected can transition to the green economy or to an alternative vision of the future that you would propose instead.

Multiple actions will be possible under this approach -practically limitless.

Emissions target

·       % change & dates

Key enablers

·       National/international policy

National policy is needed towards promoting and developing communication technology, community governance and social communication. A general communication strategy around the policy and its practical application will be an important element, especially if it is a template policy rather than something directly supported –since only a small part of society is generally open to active change (especially to conversion of one’s own point of view) and instead changes internal perspective only as the external environment changes around them. International policy will need to develop comparable but different policies as countries are not individuals and their behaviors have different drivers.  

·       Change behaviour

In addition to policies and government programs, grassroots changes to behaviour are necessary and perhaps more important than policies, since change will ultimately come from individuals who provide leadership, and people who respond positively to this. Tools and examples to aid leaders and followers will be the key. The tools are the sort discussed in this proposal.

·       Political movement / education

I would put political movement with national/international policy as the means and aims are macro focused. Education is crucial, but the trick is not to teach people the right path, instead help them so they can navigate a path more knowledgably and help educate the educators and others.

·       Financing

Financing will be by key stakeholder groups and charitable sources.

·       New energy

This is more something enabled vs. directly addressed.