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DEXTER CHAPIN // ISDC 2011

Teaching Sustainable Systems. DEXTER CHAPIN // ISDC 2011. Teaching Sustainable Systems. historicity. increasing. efficacy. Teaching Sustainable Systems. Our students will live well into the 21 st century; a century likely to be dominated by the three facets of sustainability: Ecology

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DEXTER CHAPIN // ISDC 2011

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  1. Teaching Sustainable Systems DEXTER CHAPIN //ISDC 2011

  2. Teaching Sustainable Systems historicity increasing efficacy

  3. Teaching Sustainable Systems • Our students will live well into the 21st century; a century likely to be dominated by the three facets of sustainability: • Ecology • Economy • Equity • Teaching sustainability has to be about teaching students how to effectively intervene in complex systems to bring about change.

  4. Teaching Sustainable Systems • This teacher’s perspective is that teaching ST/ SD will increase a student’s historicity. • his•to•ric•i•tynoun\,his-tə-`ri-sə-tē\ The ability to effectively intervene to benefit one’s own, or another’s, life. • Three mutually causal elements: • Technical knowledge (how to) • Social, or fiscal, capital (to underwrite) • Worldview (to give meaning to)

  5. Teaching Sustainable Systems • How does ST/SD contribute • to increased historicity? • It’s all about leverage points. • It’s All One Thing (Tim Joy) • The Mind in Nature (Gregory Bateson) • Ashby’s Law (Ross Ashby)

  6. Teaching Sustainable Systems • No system is an island. • Every natural system is nested in a larger system and contains subsystems containing semi-autonomous agents. • All system outputs are inputs for another system • Where you draw the system boundary is a function of the question, not the system. • Expectation: Relationships rather than content will define the system. • Expectation: Some relationships provide leverage for change

  7. Teaching Sustainable Systems • Feedback is integral to a system. • There is mutual causality between the system and its subsystems. • Systems can learn and respond to their own performance to maintain homeostasis or generate change. • Expectation: Viable systems capture, process, and respond to information. • Expectation: Systems must be open to information, and/or energy, and maybe material.

  8. Teaching Sustainable Systems • The whole is more than the sum of parts. • The system’s emergent properties, including output, are allowed but not determined by any one subsystem or agent. • Expectation:Merely listing the parts will never be a sufficient explanation; the world is a wildly surprising place.

  9. Teaching Sustainable Systems • Introducing Model Building • Spend lots of time on what a stock is (or can be). • Link generic structures (linear and exponential growth & decay, convergent, etc.) to specific behaviors over time. • Spend time on selecting and describing first stock and describing behavior over time.

  10. Teaching Sustainable Systems • Examples of Introductory Models • Overshoot, tragedy of the commons model • FishbanksNsa, a generic Fish-Banks model with policy options

  11. Teaching Sustainable Systems historicity increasing efficacy

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