Resilience in Times of Change
Exploring the Many Ways We Are Resilient
One Sky engaged social change agents and concerned citizens about what it means to be resilient in times of turbulent change, particulalry with climate change and peak oil. Through using scenario planning, systems thinking and community conversations, the One Sky team created a model for engaging community on such topics. Here, we describe in brief this model and provide a Guide for use in other communities elsewhere.
Purpose
The purpose of this Guide is to share the methodology and model One Sky used to engage community on climate change adaptation with other practitioners and communities who may be interested to begin similar processes. The seven steps give a overall guide, with One Sky’s activities provided as examples. Our hope is that the reader will apply the steps in his or her own context as needed, allowing for creativity and responsiveness to whatever is arising in their own communities.
History
In July 2011, One Sky convened a small group of people to look at the issue of energy, resilience, climate change and conservation in British Columbia’s Northwest region. For two days we discussed the potential changes and adaptations we will have to go through if energy prices continue to increase, if climate change predications turn out to be accurate and if our economy continues to be affected by globalization. What piqued our interest as a group was the “business as usual” scenario. If the world continues on its current path what will our region look like in ten to fifteen or even fifty years? Our conclusion is that we simply don’t know but it will likely be very, very different!
Resilience is central to adaptation in these coming times. But understanding how best to increase or foster resilience requires a better understanding of the coming scenario. On September 8th and 9th, 2011, with the support of B.C. Hydro, we hosted a second meeting along with the Bulkley Valley Research Centre, the Office of the Wet’suwet’en and the Northwest Community College. This engaged people in a process of exploring and examining, so to better understand, potential scenarios in a context of 1) a changed climate based on current understanding of the impact of climate change for our region, and 2) the evolution of “peak oil” and or the use of non conventional fossil fuel. All this is of course embedded in the continued globalization of our economies and the impact of increasing demographics on our region. These scenarios are predicted to take place over the coming 25 years in a significant way, and through the exercise, we sought to better understand how the possible scenarios for how it might play out.
The gathering was think tank to better understand local perspectives on the issues of resilience, leadership and conservation in the energy sector. From this, we have built out a model or methodology that could be useful in other municipalities in Canada, or in other places in the world.
Why Scenarios?
Scenario planning, also called scenario thinking or scenario analysis, is a strategic planning method that some organizations use to make flexible long-term plans. It has a history of use in the military as well as the corporate sector. More recently, it has been brought into the Millennium Assessment and other social change processes, including climate change adaptation planning. Since the timelines for planning for climate change adaptation, and the factors and conditions that need to be accounted for, require a thought-experiment rigorous enough to expand our thinking beyond it’s normal range, scenario planning is an excellent option as a planning tool.
Scenario planning may involve aspects of systems thinking, specifically the recognition that many factors may combine in complex ways to create sometime surprising futures (due to non-linear feedback loops). The method also allows the inclusion of factors that are difficult to formalize, such as novel insights about the future, deep shifts in values, unprecedented regulations or inventions.
Research from developmental psychology suggests that most adults’ minds don’t usually conceptualize 25 year timelines, and so often when considering the impacts of climate change, it is difficult to imagine the kinds of changes that may occur in that large a time envelope. We also don’t naturally consider the multifaceted impacts of changes, and tend to focus on that which we are attuned to (usually things in our immediate lives or aspects of the discipline we were trained in).
So, when a group comes together to craft scenarios, not only are they themselves building their capacity and awareness of the possible ‘future histories’, but they are also doing the leg-work of mapping out these future histories for others to benefit from. Those who come after and make use of these narratives get a quick easy snapshot of the future histories that are possible. Scenario planning gets around the difficulties of a large time envelope and the challenging multifaceted nature of the issues, and presents data in an accessible and useful way.
The Guide
Please download here the Guide compiled through the process of this work, keeping in mind that it will require a flexibility of mind and creativity to stay responsive to the issues arising in your own region and community.
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