Kia ora Jonathan, I was going to try and throw the political spanner into predicting future environment scenarios. As you allude to, the speed and extent of the current reversal of measures protecting Aotearoa's environment have stunned even cynical folk like me. That this is when we need to intensify efforts to make our environment resilient to climate change extremes spits in the face of science. But then I thought through how our leading environmental ministry invested in environmental capacity of non-government communities prior to change of government. That capacity and motivation while unlikely to be refunded in next couple of years has a momentum and sustainability that flip flop governments will struggle to dismantle or make redundant. So if I understand a Stoic philosophy approach, we could add in such a large negative government pressure, prepare for it and model measures to counter it. Might need social science help but preparation for such alternative bad futures makes me hopeful science can counter short-term selfish politics. Thanks for the stretch.
Kia ora Dave. Good to hear from you! I love your thinking here. Yes, this is absolutely one form of embracing the future-focused and resilience-focused thinking I'm alluding to. We're certainly at the mercy of government cycles and NZ is experiencing the depth of that flip-flop right now. It's hard to comprehend just how far that swing is going! But yes, perhaps there are ways to build resilience into the socio-ecological system by empowering communities to a level that can buffer the sorts of governmental swings we're experiencing at the moment. There are lots of ways to build resilience -- e.g. into governance, social systems, ecosystems, infrastructure and so on. Thanks for your interesting discussion!
Kia ora Jonathan, I was going to try and throw the political spanner into predicting future environment scenarios. As you allude to, the speed and extent of the current reversal of measures protecting Aotearoa's environment have stunned even cynical folk like me. That this is when we need to intensify efforts to make our environment resilient to climate change extremes spits in the face of science. But then I thought through how our leading environmental ministry invested in environmental capacity of non-government communities prior to change of government. That capacity and motivation while unlikely to be refunded in next couple of years has a momentum and sustainability that flip flop governments will struggle to dismantle or make redundant. So if I understand a Stoic philosophy approach, we could add in such a large negative government pressure, prepare for it and model measures to counter it. Might need social science help but preparation for such alternative bad futures makes me hopeful science can counter short-term selfish politics. Thanks for the stretch.
Kia ora Dave. Good to hear from you! I love your thinking here. Yes, this is absolutely one form of embracing the future-focused and resilience-focused thinking I'm alluding to. We're certainly at the mercy of government cycles and NZ is experiencing the depth of that flip-flop right now. It's hard to comprehend just how far that swing is going! But yes, perhaps there are ways to build resilience into the socio-ecological system by empowering communities to a level that can buffer the sorts of governmental swings we're experiencing at the moment. There are lots of ways to build resilience -- e.g. into governance, social systems, ecosystems, infrastructure and so on. Thanks for your interesting discussion!