HOW TO SOLVE COMPLEX PROBLEMS

Positive Deviance Analysis

When solving complex problems, it sometimes pays to start with what is working rather than figure out what is not…By Tom Connor

Find the “Bright Spot” that has already solved the problem

When solving problems there are four frames from which you can approach the solution. Systems centric, problem centric, solutions centric and solver centric.

A solution centric approach, such as “Bright spot” analysis or positive deviance analysis, is particularly useful for complex systems with lots of interactions (like social issues). In these systems there are so many variables it can be very difficult, and frequently counter-productive, to apply a problem centric approach such as root cause analysis.

Positive deviance analysis was developed by Monique and Jerry Sternin, who needed to turn around the health of a local Vietnamese community where they were aid workers. They noticed that

In every community, organization, or social group, there are individuals whose exceptional behaviours or practices enable them to get better results than their neighbours with the exact same resources. Without realizing it, these “positive deviants” have discovered the path to success for the entire group — that is, if their secrets can be analysed, isolated, and then shared with the rest of the group.

An SSIR article summarises the results when they adopted this approach:

They … observed the food preparation, cooking, and serving behaviours of these six families, called “positive deviants,” and found a few consistent yet rare behaviours. Parents of well-nourished children collected tiny shrimps, crabs, and snails from rice paddies and added them to the food, along with the greens from sweet potatoes. Although these foods were readily available, they were typically not eaten because they were considered unsafe for children. The positive deviants also fed their children multiple smaller meals, which allowed small stomachs to hold and digest more food each day.

The Sternins and the rest of their group worked with the positive deviants to offer cooking classes to the families of children suffering from malnutrition. By the end of the program’s first year, 80 percent of the 1,000 children enrolled in the program were adequately nourished. In addition, the effort had been replicated within 14 villages across Vietnam.

So, when should you apply the positive deviance approach?

  • the problem is not exclusively technical and requires behavioural or/and social change
  • the problem is “intractable” — other solutions haven’t worked
  • positive deviants are thought to exist
  • there is a sponsorship and local leadership commitment to address the issue

(Ref — The Power of Positive Deviance — Richard Pascale, Jerry Sternin, and Monique Sternin)

In their book “Switch”, Chip and Dan Heath outline the process to go about a Bright Spot analysis

  1. Gather the data
  2. Study the data to find bright spot / unusually positive performers
  3. Make sure you understand the normal way things are done
  4. Study the bright spots to see what they are doing differently
  5. make sure none of those practices are exceptional in some way (ie extra money or resources)
  6. Find a way to reproduce the practices of the bright spots among other people

Some shortcuts that might help you identify positive deviant behaviour.

  • Ask the exception question — when does the problem you are fighting not happen?
  • Ask the miracle question — You wake up in the morning and your problems are solved. What’s the first small sign that things have changed?
  • Make sure the bright spot is about you — Bright spots are specific to you and your team. Where are YOU succeeding now, or where have YOU succeeded before? By pinpointing those moments, you can avoid triggering the “not invented here” reaction.
  • What is working today and how can you do more of it?

Jane Bozarth recommends a great way to start identifying bright spots is to flip the question you are asking. Is there someone in the community already exhibiting the desired behaviour? What is enabling them to outperform? What resources are they tapping into that others are not?

  • Not “Why are staph infections so high in the hospital?” but “Why are staph infections lower on the third floor?”
  • Not “Why are sales down in Regions 6 and 9?” but “Why are sales up in Region 4?”
  • Not “Why do so few graduates of our leadership academy get promoted?” but “Why did these seven graduates get promoted?”
  • Why is the accident rate lower in _______? Why is the turnover rate lower in ______? Why are there fewer ethics complaints about ______ division?
  • Not “how do we get more females in leadership roles” but “Why have these female executives succeeded and thrived through their careers?”

A practical example of applying this process is provided by Dave McKinsey in his book Strategic story telling.

…Go out and interview the top ten performers. Rather than asking them what they do or what they would do in the abstract, apply an anthropological approach by asking them to walk you step- by- step through a recent transaction they completed. How did they first identify the prospect? How did they make first contact? What resources did they bring to bear during the sales process? Who was involved in the decision? How did they close the transaction? As you interview multiple people, you will start to hear patterns. Rather than asking the ineffective question, “What are your best practices?” you are discovering best practices by listening for behaviours common among successful people. Most bright spot analyses stop there. However, the best go through the exact same anthropological interview processes with the bottom performers. That step is critical because bright spots are behaviours top performers apply that bottom performers do not.

For more information this basic field guide approach to positive deviance is a great source.

Leaving the final word to the originators (Pascale, Strenin and Sternin) –

The job is to guide the PD process as it unfolds… Leadership begins with framing the challenge in a compelling way to engage others in generating an alternative future. Next, the task is to catalyse a conversation, … and ensure the group takes ownership of its quest. The hardest part is to listen, pay attention, trust the process and the “wisdom of crowds,” and permit the emergent potential of the community to express itself. A weathered marble tablet in Xian, China, commemorates the wisdom of Taoist sage, Lao-Tzu. A loose translation … captures the essence of leadership in the positive deviance context with eloquent simplicity:

Learn from the people
Plan with the people
Begin with what they have
Build on what they know

Of the best leaders
When the task is accomplished
The people all remark
We have done it ourselves

Should We Abandon the Concept of Climate Refugee?

Climate change is expected to force millions of people to relocate this century, as rising seas inundate small islands and intolerable heat makes life impossible in tropical regions. But is the world really facing a mounting climate refugee crisis?

It is entirely reasonable to assume that as climate change intensifies, it will result in more human migration and displacement. Images of Bangladeshis seeking refuge from the latest cyclone or Californians fleeing suburban wildfires affirm a sense that climate change is driving the next great migration. And yet the great paradox of climate migration is that there is no such as thing as a “climate migrant” or “climate refugee”.

These are socially constructed categories. They may appear to reflect the world as it is. But when we peel back their veneer, we find, instead, a world of power and vested interests. Diagnosing this power is a matter of pressing urgency for anyone concerned with the politics of climate change today.

The main issue is climate change itself. When the impacts of climate change, such as extreme weather or wildfires, are used to explain socio-political phenomena like migration, they obscure the underlying historical conditions of those they affect.

Climate modelling, among other scientific research, has helped illuminate the horrors that await as global heating accelerates. A recent study found that between 12,000 and 19,000 children died due to extreme heat across Africa each year between 2011 and 2019. If emissions continue to rise, this grim annual toll could double by 2050, the researchers claim.

Scientists publish regular estimates of how much sea levels will rise according to different scenarios, such as whether emissions increase or fall and how fast, and if certain Antarctic ice shelves collapse and unleash vast quantities of stored water. But forecasting the consequences is trickier.

“The idea that rising seas will force millions to move, unleashing a refugee crisis like no other, has now become commonplace. It’s a narrative that the media are fond of, but that does not mean it is based on evidence,” says Sonja Ayeb-Karlsson, a senior researcher at the Institute for Environment and Human Security at United Nations University. “Everything we have learned so far suggests that decisions to migrate are far more complex than a simple flight response.”

Rather than leaving, a person living in a low-lying area may be just as likely to stay and adapt, by building struts to raise their home above the water, for instance. People who will be forced to migrate or resettle receive more attention than those left behind, Ayeb-Karlsson argues. “The so-called ‘trapped’ populations can be just as vulnerable as those on the move, if not more so,” she says.

David Durand-Delacre, a PhD candidate in geography at the University of Cambridge, was part of a team that published a commentary on “climate migration myths” in 2019. He says that accuracy is important, as warnings about the disruption climate change will cause can backfire badly. 

“Predictions of mass climate migration make for attention-grabbing headlines. For more than two decades, commentators have predicted ‘waves’ and ‘rising tides’ of people forced to move by climate change. Recently, a think-tank report warned the climate crisis could displace 1.2 billion people by 2050,” Durand-Delacre says, writing in 2020.

“Our main concern is that alarming headlines about mass climate migrations risk leading to more walls, not fewer. Indeed, many on the right and far right are now setting aside their climate denialism and linking climate action to ideas of territory and ethnic purity.

“In this context of growing climate nationalism, even the most well-intentioned narratives risk feeding fear-based stories of invasion when they present climate migration as unprecedented and massive, urgent and destabilising,” he says.

W Andrew Baldwin, an associate professor in human geography at Durham University, argues that we should abandon the concept of climate refugees altogether:

“The great paradox of climate migration is that there is no such as thing as a ‘climate migrant’ or ‘climate refugee’. These are socially constructed categories. They may appear to reflect the world as it is. But when we peel back their veneer, we find, instead, a world of power and vested interests,” he says.

The impacts of climate change, such as wildfires and floods, may be the trigger in someone’s decision to leave their home and find refuge elsewhere. But when climate change is the only explanation, the historical reasons why some people are so vulnerable to upheaval are obscured, Baldwin argues.

“Take, for example, coastal Bangladesh. For decades, shrimp farming and, more recently, soft-shell crab farming have radically transformed the region. Promoted by institutions like the World Bank, these are forms of economic development that have earned Bangladesh much needed foreign currency. But they have also devastated the coastal environment, dispossessed local smallholders of land, and forced generations of rural people into precarious forms of wage labour.

“People in wealthier countries might demand their governments do more to ensure ‘climate justice’ in places like Bangladesh. But when we say rural-to-urban migration in Bangladesh is down to climate change, we diminish this important history.”

In another example, Baldwin explains how labelling an exodus from wildfire-prone regions of California in the US as a “climate migration” tells only half the story.

“The uncomfortable fact is that the suburban landscape in California, however normalised it now appears, is the culmination of settler colonial history, white flight from city centres, lax planning laws and a dominant car culture,” he says.

“…To say this migration is because of climate change obscures the fact that it is white suburban families who tend to have accrued enough wealth over the generations to move away from hazards like floods and fires.”

“Bangladesh and California are not remotely equivalent,” Baldwin continues. “Yet in both cases, when climate change is used to explain socio-political phenomena like migration, social inequality is naturalised.”

Author – Jack Marley, Environment commissioning editor of the Conversation

OUR economy is killing us.

 Even before the pandemic and the cost-of-living crisis, rates of healthy life expectancy were falling in Scotland. People living in the poorest areas in the UK were dying younger because of deliberate cuts to social security and public services. Now, each week sees a new headline about the rising tide of destitution.

At the same time, the dangers of runaway climate change – already making life unliveable for many in Africa, Asia and Latin America – suddenly feel close to home as temperatures soared to 35C in Scotland last week. Extreme heat poses a major health risk, especially to those with respiratory or heart conditions. Hot days see 12,000 extra people hospitalised across the UK and the number of elderly people dying during heatwaves is growing rapidly.

Both the cost-of-living crisis and climate change stem from deliberate choices our governments have made about the way we provide for our collective needs.

With one in four children growing up in poverty, wages often failing to cover our basic needs and a stubborn reliance on fossil fuels that overheat our planet, isn’t it time we redesigned our economy?

The Scottish Government’s new 10-Year Strategy for Economic Transformation includes the welcome aspiration to become a Wellbeing Economy. But its substance is rooted in the same outdated logic that has got us here; that continually growing Gross Domestic Product (GDP) – the amount of goods and services we produce – will benefit all of us.

The UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) recently joined the chorus of voices arguing that GDP is a “poor metric of human wellbeing”. A wildfire that destroys your home is good for GDP because construction creates “economic activity”, while caring for loved ones has no value in GDP.

In a Wellbeing Economy we would ask first, how can we ensure every one of us has what we need to live a dignified life while protecting the environment we rely on?

It is unfathomable that an economy in service of people and planet would leave families to choose between heating and eating while oil and gas company profits soar. BP’s CEO has likened his company to a “cash machine” generating returns for already-wealthy investors. A Wellbeing Economy would nurture enterprises, business models and industries that actually serve humanity, use regulation to rein in businesses that cause harm and invest in long-term, preventative measures like insulating our homes, so they are less energy-intensive and costly to heat.

The Scottish Government’s first Wellbeing Economy Monitor examines more meaningful measures of our economic performance, such as poverty, low pay, preventable deaths, and biodiversity loss. But this data will only be useful if it informs key decisions such as budgets, infrastructure projects and the type of support delivered to businesses.

We cannot afford to wait another day to start reprogramming our economy.

 By Frances Rayner is Comms Lead at Wellbeing Economy

MYTHS AND CLIMATE DENIAL from MPs in NZSC?

 Is this why this and recent governments have failed to address the empirical evidence  of global warming?

The constituency of South Thanet according to recent data, had just 4mm of rain in July – making it one of the driest in the UK.

It is also the constituency of Craig Mackinlay, MP, a former Ukipper turned Conservative, who has regularly voted against measures to tackle climate change. As leader of the Net Zero Scrutiny Group (NZSC), a group of Tory backbenchers challenging the government’s net zero policies as “uncosted fairytales”, Mackinlay’s strong views are regularly expounded in a blog and in interviews.

They include describing net zero as an “elite delusion”. It would, he told the Daily Telegraph, “take this government down”. The rush to net zero”, he has tweeted, created the “madness in the energy market”. He is against a windfall tax on energy companies, and has dismissed the Cop26 summit as a “Glasgow jamboree”. Many of his constituents it seems from this media post in the Guardian did not understand what net zero meant

HALFWAY TO 2030: HOW is the UK PERFORMING on IMPLEMENTING THE GLOBAL GOALS?

Early findings from the UN Global Compact Network UK’s Measuring Up 2.0 report suggest that the UK is only performing well on 21% of the Targets that are relevant to the domestic delivery of the Sustainable Development Goals in the UK. In the past four years there has been no change in the performance against 64 Targets and the UK has regressed in at least 14 areas. Regrettably one of these is Target 4.7;   widely recognised as a hugely important “means of implementation”(MOI) of all the SDGs.

The UK government via the Department for Education launched its sustainability and climate change strategy in April 2022. Although it has been welcomed as evidence that the government has acted towards meeting Target 4.7, it has been widely criticised for its limitations in coverage, lacking an implementation plan and to commit to integrating sustainability and climate change content across the curricula. Hence this misses a critical opportunity to put the climate emergency and ecological crisis at the heart of the education system for all students. 

As lead author for SDG4 I would like to thank my colleagues who so skilfully supported drafting the chapter over the past few months-namely Professor William Scott, Suzanna Jones, Charlotte Jackson, and Sam Redding. I would also like to thank Jessica Lobo-from Global Compact- for her unstinting and positive encouragement throughout the drafting process.

In 2015, the UK Government joined every other country in the world and committed to the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). The Goals provide a holistic framework to eradicate poverty, reduce inequalities, combat catastrophic climate change, and protect our natural environment by 2030. Yet with just seven years to go, and already halfway through the 2030Agenda, the UK is far from achieving the Goals.

This year, the UN Global Compact Network UK is working with stakeholders to review how the UK is performing against the 17 SDGs and 169 Targets, the wider policy context, and the historical trends that affect us achieving the Goals. The preliminary findings indicate that 131 of the Targets are relevant to the domestic delivery of the Sustainable Development Goals in the UK. Of these Targets, the UN Global Compact Network UK found that the UK is only performing well on 21% of them. There are gaps in policy or inadequate performance for 59% of them, and 12% where there is little to no policy in place to address the Target and where performance is poor or even declining. Compared to an exercise in 2018, these results suggest improvements in 24 Targets, regression in 14 Targets, and no change in 64 of the Targets which were rated amber or red. The remaining 8% of Targets were considered to have gaps in available or appropriate data to measure the UK’s performance, and the time lag in data does not yet reveal the full extent to which Covid-19 has impacted progress on the agenda.

The 17 Goals provide us with an internationally agreed framework, which also works at national, regional, and local levels, alongside and reinforcing existing plans and commitments. They enable Government to work cross-departmentally and with stakeholders to create programmes and policies that are aligned with the needs of our economy, society, and environment both domestically and internationally.

The full Measuring Up 2.0 publication will be launched in September and will identify how and where the Government, and other organisations, should focus efforts for the remainder of this

SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT GOALS -ALL TALK NO ACTION

In September 2015, leaders from 193 countries gathered in the UN assembly hall in New York to plan nothing less than “transforming our world”. This was the birth of the sustainable development goals, which aimed to “free the human race from the tyranny of poverty and want and to heal and secure our planet”.

There are 17 sustainable development goals, or SDGs, encompassing 169 more detailed targets and over 200 measures of progress.

To give just a few examples of the 169 targets under these overarching goals, governments agreed, by 2030, to halve the proportion of people in poverty, end hunger, ensure all children complete a quality education for free, raise the income of the poorest 40% of each country’s population at a rate above the national average, and significantly increase funding to conserve and sustainably use biodiversity and ecosystems. The list goes on.

Sustainable development goals are found wherever UN bureaucrats and international diplomats meet. You’ll see the 17 flags of the SDGs in the lush gardens of the UN headquarters in New York. Posters listing the SDGs hang in government offices all around the world. Dozens of international meetings are held to discuss them each year. The UN even announced an international decade of action for achieving the goals.

In this article for Conversation the Dutch author raises this question: ” And yet, it is fair to ask: do these global goals actually change anything? Do they tangibly influence the actions of governments, business leaders, mayors, UN bureaucrats and university presidents?” For the last few years, a growing community of social scientists has considered this question.

With 61 colleagues from around the world, they analysed more than 3,000 academic studies that scrutinised aspects of the SDGs. Their findings are published in the journal Nature Sustainability, and a more detailed assessment will soon be published as a book. Because they believe it is important to share what they found with everyone, both publications will be free to download and read.

Unfortunately, their findings are disheartening. The SDGs have infiltrated the things people say, think and write about global sustainability challenges. Governments mention the SDGs in their national reports to the UN, and some have set up coordinating units to implement them. Multinational corporations like to refer to the SDGs as well – especially those goals that are least disruptive to their commercial activities, like SDG 8 which calls on governments to “sustain per capita economic growth in accordance with national circumstances”. And unsurprisingly, UN organisations are all formally supportive of the SDGs.

https://theconversation.com/un-sustainable-development-goals-failing-to-have-meaningful-impact-our-research-warns-185269

#sustainabledevelopment #education #biodiversity #change

Amping up Community Energy in the Derbyshire Dales

There is a growing appetite for the development of community energy programmes across the UK- Currently over 400 proactive programmes exist in the UK according to Community Energy England( CEE State of the Sector Report : https://communityenergyengland.org ) which  have generated over £3 Million of community benefits. In Derbyshire there are currently 5 Rural Community Energy Funded(RCEF) programmes. These include Derbyshire Dales Community Energy programme in Matlock and the Derbyshire Dales; Arkwright Society programme at Cromford Mill; Hope Valley Community Energy; Solar EV Car charging in Belper; Heat network programme in Brassington. There are at least 2 others being considered -a Hydro scheme in Darley Abbey and another similar scheme in Belper. Just like the pioneering Georgian engineers such as Arkwright and Smedley- who used the abundant rivers and streams to power the industrial revolution in the Derwent Valley- these renewable energy democracy pioneers are seeking ways to ramp up the application of solar energy in our schools and businesses.

New investment partner supercharges plans for Dales community energy scheme

Plans for a social renewable energy scheme in Matlock have been supercharged by a new partner organisation which has identified potential to harness up to 1million Watts of solar electricity from sites in the district

Derbyshire Dales Community Energy (DDCE) has enlisted the support of Shropshire cooperative Sharenergy to help guide the process, drawing on its experience of raising more than £20million through community share offers linked to similar initiatives all over the UK.

The first two Matlock rooftop sites, Highfields School and Twiggs on Bakewell Road, have already passed feasibility assessments with a view to delivering 220 kilowatts of capacity, equivalent to around 25 average households – but Sharenergy says there is scope to go far beyond that.

A DDCE spokesperson said: “Sharenergy have identified an ambitious opportunity for us to ensure the longevity and stability of the group. The plan is to take community energy in Derbyshire to the next level by attempting to install 1MW worth of solar photovoltaics.

The project partners plan to install the first two solar arrays on top of buildings in Matlock in 2023.

“This will not only be providing a great amount of renewable energy, but also will make DDCE more resilient to the potential risks associated with small scale solar PV.”

They added: “There are a few sites in the pipeline that could potentially work well, but nothing is set in stone.

“One of the main factors is that a good solar site doesn’t only need roof space for the PV installation. For a community project to be financially viable it’s important that a large portion of the energy generated by the solar is also consumed on site.”

If all goes according to plan, DDCE expects to release shares this autumn, funding the first two installations in early 2023.

DDCE volunteers have also been busy working to set up a community energy hub which could link all the existing, and potential new, projects around Derbyshire, so they can coordinate resources and mutual support.

The ultimate aim is to widen the uptake of community energy activities across the county to realise the net zero carbon targets of county and district councils, and act as a catalyst encouraging wider community action.

For more details, contact derbyshiredalescommunityenergy@gmail.com.

Replacing Sustainable Development: Potential Frameworks for International Cooperation in an Era of Increasing Crises and Disasters.

Jem Bendell

This preprint(full paper in the link below this abstract)written by Professor Jem Bendell outlines his thinking on the impact of the SDGs . It’s not comfortable reading but nor is what’s happening across the globe in terms of fires, floods and huge changes in weather events as well as the increasing evidence of polar melt -all of which say to me we are in an existential crisis.And, do those who are impacted have a voice in this crisis ?

Disasters. Preprints 2022, 2022050180 (doi: 10.20944/preprints202205.0180.v1). Bendell, J. Replacing Sustainable Development: Potential Frameworks for International Cooperation in an Era of Increasing Crises and Disasters. Preprints 2022, 2022050180 (doi: 10.20944/preprints202205.0180.v1).Copy

Abstract

This transdisciplinary review of research about international cooperation on social and environmental change builds the case for replacing Sustainable Development as the dominant framework for an era of increasing crises and disasters. The review is the output of an intentional exploration of recent studies in multiple subject areas, based on the authors’ decades of work in related fields since the Rio Earth Summit 30 years ago (rather than a keyword search of databases). It summarizes the research which documents failure to progress towards the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Consequently, the extensive scholarship critiquing the conceptual framework behind those ‘Global Goals’, and the economic ideology they arose from and support, is used to explain that failure. Although the pandemic set back the SDGs, it further revealed the inappropriate strategy behind those goals. This suggests the Global Goals constitute an ‘own-goal’ scored against people and nature. From this conclusion, alternative frameworks for organizing action on social and environmental issues become more important and are therefore briefly reviewed. It is argued that such a future framework must relate a new eco-social contract between citizen and state and engage existing organizations and capabilities that are relevant to an increasingly disrupted world. Therefore, the case is made for considering an upgraded form of Disaster Risk Management (DRM) as an overarching framework. The proposed upgrades include detaching from economic ideologies and recognizing that a wider Meta disaster from climate chaos may reduce the future availability of external support. Therefore, self-reliant resilience and locally led adaptation are identified as important to the future of DRM. Some options for professionals continuing to use the term sustainability, such as this journal, are discussed.

https://www.preprints.org/manuscript/202205.0180/v1

EARTH SUMMIT REFLECTIONS

This coming week is the 30th anniversary of the Rio Earth Summit (which launched the sustainable development paradigm) and the 50th anniversary of the Stockholm conference (which alerted world leaders to environmental dilemmas). Such anniversaries previously brought much fanfare from the UN. Not this year. The backsliding on poverty and the environment is so shocking and undermining of the efforts and ideologies of our elite institutions, that these milestones might not get much attention. As one of the 600+ signatories of the initial international scholars’ warning from November 2020, I am keen to highlight these milestones so that what we might learn from decades of political failure. #RioPlus30 #Stockholm50 #StockholmAt50 #StockholmPlus50 #sdgFailure.

It’s the Economy Stupid!

2018 and 2019 launched a wide range of dire warning about the fragility of our planetary systems, notably David Attenborough’s speech at COP 24 on climate change and another dire warning about the alarming loss of planetary biodiversity from the UN’s biodiversity chief, Christiana Pascal Palmer. All of which cries out for a global call for action to exert immense pressure on our governments to set ambitious global targets.

Yet our political systems seem incapable of responding at scale and urgency to this existential crisis.  Our government was one of the first to sign up to the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs or Global Goals) in 2015. The 17 Global Goals and associated targets represent an unprecedented opportunity to tackle the root causes of climate change, biodiversity loss, eliminate extreme poverty and put the world on a more sustainable path. And yet three years after the goals were agreed, the UK government does not have a compelling and coherent plan on how the UK is going to achieve them. The government has made a commitment to report on the UK’s progress at the UN in New York in July 2019. This is closely followed by the UN SDG Heads of State Summit on the 24 and 25 September. The UN SDG Summit will be one of three high-level events taking place in September, along with the 2019 Climate Summit and the High-level Dialogue on Financing for Development. These events will be mutually reinforcing in identifying areas for action to accelerate the progress towards sustainable development.

Growth in all of its forms is one of the greatest conundrums facing humanity in the 21 century. It can improve our living standards and health and well-being. Yet as a recent global photographic competition (www.prixpictet.com) has depicted in graphic detail the dizzying growth of our cities and their dependency on scarce resources along with the relentless growth of the world’s population, all of which now threatens our very existence. We face a global environmental catastrophe in land use, food production and resource use which could undermine existing fragile economies and the sustainability of our civilisation.

And our politicians search relentlessly for solutions which will re-energise economic growth, with little evidence to date that their interventions are making any fundamental difference. So it’s not surprising that some of the worlds’ so – called sustainability experts have also found it impossible to reach any consensus on whether sustainable consumption and economic growth are compatible

But some recent analysis of the UK’s Material Flow Accounts for 2001-2009 suggest we are using less stuff now than the previous decade (Guardian 1/11/11- The Only way is Down http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/blog/2011/nov/01/peak-stuff-consumption-data ).

It seems that the grand total of stuff we use (minerals, fuel, wood etc) in the UK amounts to roughly 2 billion tonnes per year about 30 tonnes for each and every one of us. For our former London Mayor’s benefit that’s as heavy as 4 Route Master buses!

This data is potentially good news because it implies at least as I read it that we may have “decoupled “economic growth from material consumption. Genuine decoupling has been seen by many of us as unachievable. But is this really de-materialisation and hence the emergence of a Green Economy or as others have suggested is it the dawn of de-growth?

Whatever the answer our unsustainable lifestyles and commitment to perpetual economic growth are major political and social obstacles because they have become the major drivers of climate change on Earth. Jason Hickel recently suggested that the solution is “about changing the way our economy operates” (Guardian: 5 March-2020).

Climate breakdown: ‘It’s the economy, stupid!’ | Guest blog, Stephen Martin and Stephen Sterling

EU PLANS to ACCELERATE RENEWABLES

Europe’s plan to slash Russian fossil fuel imports and accelerate renewable energy production will test its ability to find the minerals, metals and other components that are needed for a dramatic shift to clean power. 

The plan, outlined by the European Commission, would speed the continent toward a historic transition to wind and solar energy, while diversifying its sources of natural gas and expanding energy efficiency.

But it could come at a high cost. The rapid switch to renewables will depend on Europe’s ability to mine or import the materials that are needed for clean energy technology, like copper, lithium, and cobalt. And it comes as supply chains strain against rising demand for renewable energy globally. 

“What we’re talking about doing is going from variable cost volatility on hydrocarbons to fixed-cost volatility on transition metals and minerals, going from the limitations on European domestic capacity to produce hydrocarbons to limitations on European domestic capacity to manufacture and deploy full value-chain renewables,” said Kevin Book, managing director of ClearView Energy Partners LLC. 

“These are risk-shifting choices, and a lot of the details will matter,” he added. 

The plan builds on a package of legislation that would reduce Europe’s greenhouse gas emissions 55 percent by 2030 and reach net zero by mid-century. It aims to accelerate renewable energy to 45 percent of the E.U. energy mix by 2030, up from 40 percent now. That would bring total renewable energy generation to more than 1,200 gigawatts within eight years.

If the E.U. achieves its near-term targets, the European Commission estimates that it would cut two-thirds of its current gas imports by the end of this year, with a goal to end them completely well before the end of the decade. 

“Today, we are taking our ambition yet to another level to make sure that we become independent from Russian fossil fuels as quickly as possible,” said European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen.

Some experts say more details will be needed to determine whether those plans are achievable. Europe could face shortages of the materials needed for its clean energy transition, or risk forming new dependencies on unsustainable suppliers, according to a report commissioned by the metals industry group Eurometaux and written by the Belgium-based research university KU Leuven.

It found that the E.U. target of zeroing out emissions by 2050 would require around 35 percent more copper and aluminium than it consumes today, and around 45 percent more silicon — a key component in solar panels. At the same time, lithium demand could grow by 35 times, to more than 800,000 tons, and as much as 26 times more rare earth elements will be needed. Cobalt and nickel demand could rise by 330 percent and 100 percent, respectively. 

Those materials are needed to produce electric vehicles, batteries, wind turbines and solar panels — all of which are key to meeting Europe’s ambitious emissions-cutting targets.

An international energy strategy, recently released , acknowledged those supply chain risks.