Eiffel Over

Tag: DonellaMeadows

  • Preaching to the unconverted

    Cognitive dissonance is when we know something to be true but we don’t act as if it is true.

    In the built environment sector, the cognitive dissonance is that the living world knows how to operate complex systems much more effectively than engineers (and other humans) do. And yet, the living world is not revered and not held as a reference point.

    Imagine if the opposite were true, if we held deep reverence for the most sophisticated of operating system on the planet, this respect would be reflected in:

    • The stories we tell about new ideas and innovation.
    • The design references we put on the wall or use as inspiration.
    • The metrics we track to measure successful outcomes.
    • The way we relate to and engage with living systems.
    • The way we make design decisions.

    In short, deep respect for the living world would be reflected in our culture, which is another word for ‘how things get done’.

    But we know this isn’t the case. 

    Of course, we know the important, long-term work is to shift the culture in engineering and construction to see humans as part of a larger web of life. This is the work of changing paradigms and goals, which Donella Meadows tells us are the highest points of leverage in a system. Movements like Engineers Declare are doing great work at this level.

    But the reality is that most organisations in our sector do not have an ecocentric culture. We have the opportunity to influence people every day, but only if we can help them with the challenges they face. 

    The goal of regenerative design is for humans and the living world to survive, thrive and coevolve. But this isn’t the goal of most people running projects today. Their goals are usually much more occupied with the present: budgets, deadlines, dwindling resources and growing uncertainty. 

    This isn’t a criticism, but an observation. 

    So we need to find a bridge, a way to meet people where they are, tools that help tackle the challenges of today in ways that are compatible with a thriving future. A language that translates into both today’s conversations and tomorrow’s. 

    If we can use a shared language, we can start to close this cognitive dissonance, not by telling people they are wrong, but by meeting people and projects where they are.

    This work is about earning trust, building empathy, finding common ground and helping people do their jobs today in a way that sets the foundations for systems change tomorrow.

  • No more fish in the sea

    Somehow the topics of my posts have returned to the subject of the sea. It is apparently a rich subject to trawl.  Sorry, I couldn’t resist the pun, but it is exactly to trawling that I am heading. 

    Yesterday I used Donella Meadows’s fish stocks example to show how humans can harvest a living resource while enabling it to thrive. A key to enabling this system to work is the balancing feedback loop between supply and the people doing the harvest. When the catch gets too low, the boats go home, and the fish can restore their population.

    But what happens when that balancing feedback loop is broken? 

    Let us imagine an entrepreneurial fisher who, noticing that their catch was diminishing, decides to invest in a much bigger net. Now their catch goes up and it is worthwhile for them to stay at sea for longer. Other boat captains do the same, and the fleet stays out much longer. 

    Now, rather than the fish population having time to replenish itself, it is further depleted. When the fish are further apart, their rate of reproduction diminishes. 

    Here, trawling is breaking the balancing feedback loop between supply and harvesters. So, instead of stopping, fishing continues and the population becomes so low that it is not able to grow back. It has become what is known as a ‘desertified state’, a vulnerable situation in which a living system can no longer thrive. 

    Clearly, this is a simplified version of a much more complex system. But hopefully it serves to illustrate that in thinking about how we scale up options, we need to think about how we might inadvertently be breaking the feedback loops that enable our activities to operate within the living system’s limits.

  • Plenty more fish in the sea

    Yesterday’s post on the fish écluses on the Île de Ré speaks to the idea of creating straightforward connections between the resources that humans need to live and thrive. 

    As engineers (and other humans) we need to find ways to harvest the materials and energy we need in balance with what the living and mineral world can sustain. So to help us understand how this can work I’m sharing Donella Meadows’s example of fish stocks to help see how humans can live as part of a sustainable system of supply.

    Meadows’s model concerns the local fish population in an area of sea. Left to its own devices, the fish population is stable because there is only so much food to go around. Too many fish, less food per fish, some fish die. Too few fish, more food per fish, they reproduce more. This feedback loop stays in equilibrium around a mean.

    Now, the local fishing fleet gets involved. By harvesting a small number of fish, the population goes down, increasing the reproduction rate of the remaining fish, and the population returns to what it was. Fish too much, however, and the fish are further apart. Fish that are further apart take longer to reproduce! And so for a while, there are few fish, the nets are empty and the boats go back to port. During this time the fish population recovers, and eventually the boats can go back to sea.

    This simplified model beautifully illustrates how humans can harvest what they need while still living within the ecosystem’s limits.  The key characteristics here are a living system that regenerates itself – the fish; and a feedback loop between supply and those doing the harvest. Simply, when the catch is too low, the boats go home. 

    This feedback loop between supply and harvesting is what interests us in regenerative design. It is what allows us to harvest abundance, and even create abundance, all while living within the ecosystem’s limits. 

  • Stone circles on the beach

    Hundreds of years ago, the inhabitants of the Île de Ré, just off France’s Atlantic coast, developed an ingenious way to catch fish. At low tide, they built large stone circles, say 20 metres or more in diameter, and formed by a rock wall about 50cm high. At high tide these stone circles are completely submerged. But as the tide falls, water remains trapped in them, and so do the fish swimming in that water. At low tide the water eventually drains out of the walls, leaving the fish lying on the beach, for the local fishers to just pick up.

    These stone circles, or ‘écluses’ in French, were very effective in providing a local food supply. So much so that during the Napoleonic Wars, recruiting officers for the army tried to destroy the walls in an attempt to starve the local population and force them into joining the army. Later, the owners of commercial fishing fleets sought to have them shut down as they proved a risk to their own market domination.

    Through a regenerative lens, in this example we see:

    • A local population connected to a local source of supply. 
    • A low-tech method for harvest that the community itself can build and adapt.
    • The resilience that local supply can provide (and therefore why the army and larger commercial operations sought to remove it).
    • A scale of operation that is necessarily limited – they can only harvest fish that swim over the beach; there’s literally plenty more fish in the sea. This is in contrast to the super trawlers that can take far more than their fair share.

    Community, ecology, supply and resilience. These are the sorts of stacked, multiple benefits that we are seeking to create through regenerative design.

    Today, groups of volunteers are protecting and rebuilding the walls. Perhaps for posterity. And, or, perhaps they see a time in the future when harvesting in this way may return stacked, multiple benefits to their community and ecosystem.

  • Five books for getting into regenerative thinking

    This post has moved.
    It now lives on the Constructivist website: read the updated version →

    Eiffel Over is now my stage for engineering-related clowning, singing, dancing and writing — you’ll find my professional writing on design and regenerative thinking over at Constructivist.

    This week we updated the Regenerative Design Lab reading list and included five books that we think are a good way into regenerative thinking for engineers (and other humans). As far as I can remember, the word regenerative is hardly mentioned in any of them. But what I think they do between them is create a holistic view of people as part of a complex, living world. And from there, to think about how we work with, rather than against that interdependence.

    From What is to What If –  Rob Hopkins

    How the climate crisis is a crisis of the imagination and the work we need to do to imagine a thriving future. A brilliant, far-seeing book, with an excellent podcast series to accompany it.

    Braiding Sweetgrass – Robin Wall Kimmerer

    This book creates a bridge between Indigenous and scientific thinking. The short essay format makes this an easy book to dip into and return to.

    Thinking in Systems – Donella Meadows

    A great way into systems thinking, and for the early members of the lab, the way into exploring regenerative design, even though these are not terms Meadows uses.

    Doughnut Economics – Kate Raworth

    The book that launched the famous model linking social foundations with planetary boundaries, it is full of clear-thinking models for breaking free of the unlimited-growth paradigm.

    The Hidden Life of Trees – Peter Wohlleben

    Sheds light on how trees communicate with each other, collaborate and work with shared intelligence. Shows how living systems are interconnected and use feedback loops to respond to environmental change. Helps us shift from an anthropocentric to ecocentric view of how ecosystems work.

    These are the entry points. The full reading list on the Constructivist website has a set of more in-depth and regenerative-specific books to follow on with.