Let's use food to explain the environmental issues

On BBC Springwatch this week they explained the importance of plankton in feeding the world. Well not quite, they said that without plankton we wouldn't be able eat fish and chips.

This got me thinking - the sign of a good programme - and I wondered to what extent did understanding food chains appear in the national curriculum. So I looked it up.

The answer is not much. There's reference in the Science Curriculum to constructing 'simple food chains' and there are further references to understanding where mammals get their food from but it doesn't appear to go far enough (although I'm sure individual teachers do).

Springwatch hit the nail on the head, plankton is the start of a food chain that ends on our plate. Failure to look after the whole food chain has potentially dire consequences for us humans.

Understanding the food change is not just about understanding the building blocks of our own survival, it is also vital if we are to tackle issues such as climate change and biodiversity loss.

We all understand food, we can relate to it. Let's exploit our relationship with food to explain and put into context some of the environmental issues that we're struggling to communicate.

 

What can Kotter teach us about being more sustainable?

Today I received an email from Harvard Business Review promoting the combined works of Professor John Kotter who is well known for his views on Leading Change within businesses.

To my mind the challenge that we face in society with regards to living more sustainably, addressing climate change and biodiversity loss requires a 'change programme'.

We need to change our behaviour, our attitudes and the way we live. Businesses have been managing change programmes in the workplace for years so I thought I would review Kotter's 8 Steps and see if they could work for these big national and international issues.

Below is from Kotter's website with my comments in bold.

Step 1: Establishing a Sense of Urgency

Help others see the need for change and they will be convinced of the importance of acting immediately.

The way I see it, it’s governments, some in the media, and business leaders that need to be convinced. The sense of urgency is well documented, not least in UN and Government sponsored reports that they choose not to act on.

Step 2: Creating the Guiding Coalition

Assemble a group with enough power to lead the change effort, and encourage the group to work as a team.

Plenty of groups have been set up but you need to listen to their advice and recommendations. And empower them to act, not come up with excuses NOT to implement their suggestions.

Step 3: Developing a Change Vision

Create a vision to help direct the change effort, and develop strategies for achieving that vision. 

That’s a rounded vision, a holistic vision, not just one focussed on a single issue like economic growth.

Step 4: Communicating the Vision for Buy-in

Make sure as many as possible understand and accept the vision and the strategy.

Seems sensible enough, although you may want to prioritise efforts towards those decision makers who are more cynical and could undermine your strategy, such as politicians and certain parts of the media.

Step 5: Empowering Broad-based Action

Remove obstacles to change, change systems or structures that seriously undermine the vision, and encourage risk-taking and nontraditional ideas, activities, and actions.

Remove obstacles, change systems if they don’t work with the strategy and encourage people. Less is more. No need to spend hundreds of millions on IT systems or create working groups to procrastinate and create unecessary processes. 

Step 6: Generating Short-term Wins

Plan for achievements that can easily be made visible, follow-through with those achievements and recognize and reward employees who were involved.

But only if they are recognised as short-term wins and not tokenistic gestures that appear to show progress but haven’t really achieved very much at all.

Step 7: Never Letting Up

Use increased credibility to change systems, structures, and policies that don't fit the vision, also hire, promote, and develop employees who can implement the vision, and finally reinvigorate the process with new projects, themes, and change agents. 

In other words let those that can make change happen, make it a reality. Don’t stifle them, don’t create process that will impede them and don't take them off the job until it’s complete.

Step 8: Incorporating Changes into the Culture

Articulate the connections between the new behaviors and organizational success, and develop the means to ensure leadership development and succession.

Don’t let a future Prime Minister, Secretary of State or CEO cock it all up and undo everything at a later date.

 

To value or not to value

In The Guardian this week George Monbiot argues that you cannot put a price on nature and Tony Juniper responds by saying that valuing nature is the only way to afford it some protection.

Actually they are both right.

In a capitalist world that measures success by growth and therefore unsustainable consumption, monetary metrics is the only language that the boardroom and cabinet office understand. Therefore we have to put a price on nature just to get it on the agenda. What we cannot allow to happen is for the value to be 'bargain basement' or 'but one get one free'.

However the problems associated with value would not arise if we really did appreciate nature for its own sake. A number of us see beauty in nature and are heartened at the return of migrating birds or seeing a species of flower or butterfly for the first time that year but far too many people only see beauty in branding, personalities, cars, phones, computer games and apps.

Putting a monetary value on nature isn't a panacea, it isn't suddenly going to reverse the trend of habitat loss but it might make people stop for a second and think about nature. Something that Daniel Kahneman, author of Thinking Fast Thinking Slow, calls System 2 thinking, which means we give a situation proper consideration rather than just jumping to a quick conclusion, such as "It's only a tree."

The longer term challenge is to help people understand that nature is foundation of all life, not just the economy.