do you ever have a feeling that light is
speeding up I’m not just talking about
haven’t worked the scientists who study
big global processes talk about
something called the great acceleration
since the middle of the last century
we’ve seen a five-fold increase in the
urban population a tenfold increase in
economic output at the same time we see
massive decreases in poverty but that
comes as well with substantial growing
inequality it comes with significant
risks the great acceleration also
describes a range of very terrifying
trends they have to do with the
expansion of deforestation for example
of soil degradation loss of biodiversity
and greenhouse gas emissions so for many
people in the world today who are living
in environments that depend directly on
the natural resource base their
livelihoods and for food this is not
some hypothetical future the risks that
we’re talking about are risks that
people do every day and it may seem that
if you have the financial ability to
travel to choose where you want to live
to import your food that you can
distance yourself from these sorts of
risks that you can distance yourself
from those who are living on the edge
but Nature has a way of catching up we
saw that very dramatically quite
recently in terms of the massive storms
that came through the group the
Caribbean that hit Texas in Florida in
the wealthiest country on this planet
today we have environmental refugees so
these are problems that affect all of us
wherever we live whatever source of
resources we have and the question is
where do we go from here
are we headed towards a future that
looks something like the movie Mad Max
is it the future in which we’ll see more
and more brutal struggles for survival
or will we find a way to adapt
collectively will we find a way to shift
our economies our social systems so that
we take better care of our environment
and create a better future for all I’d
like to think of it as a fork in the
road are we headed towards conflict or
cooperation this is the kind of thing
that societies confront repeatedly
and if we think about it what created
the crises that we’re living through now
is the whole accumulation of human
choices so this fork in the road is
people and the choices that we have made
got us into these problems then it’s
people and the choices we will make that
can decide whether we’ll get out so it
has a social scientist I asked what is
it that changes people’s behavior and I
like to boil it down to keep it simple
to say there are three big things the
first is coercion okay that’s about laws
rules limits and what happens what are
the consequences when you don’t follow
those rules say take for example a
company where we say you’re not allowed
to emit certain chemicals into the
environment into the air if you break
those rules that can be fines you can be
shut down is the head of a company you
do it knowingly and you put in jail but
some forms of coercion are pretty small
little mentions things like you go to
the store and you take your reusable
bags get a little discount or do you buy
an electric car and you get a tax break
the biggest environmental policy success
on global level that we’ve seen in the
last couple decades is about the
reduction in ozone depleting emissions
coercion works
it is the main tool public policy to say
we set rules we set limits for the
common good the second the factor in
influencing people’s behaviour to change
is conviction this one is about beliefs
how many vegetarians do we have in the
audience today several for some people
the choice to be a vegetarian or to eat
less meat is an acknowledgement of the
environmental footprint that we make as
individuals and in fact the food that
you eat your choice is about what to me
or one of the most important ways in
which even training work increase your
own environmental footprint other people
might make a similar choice but for
reasons of faith or for health whatever
it is though that’s a matter of
individual learning you for conviction
why do you think is that in Paris
195 governments were able to come
together and reached an agreement to
reduce greenhouse gas emissions
was it because it was new scientific
evidence a little bit but there had been
strong evidence already for many years
the biggest change was that around the
globe people became more strongly aware
of the risks of climate change and
propelled their governments to do
something about it to reach an agreement
together so these two elements coercion
and conviction can actually work
together if people feel strongly enough
they can make or influence others to
change even as base to companies and
governments and decision between
governments so some people they say well
that’s about it that’s the end of the
story for me that’s another important
way to shift behavior that doesn’t
require everyone to agree and that can
still lead to big changes and that’s
collaboration and so what that means you
might think well it’s just when people
already agree and they decide to work
together but I’m talking about something
rather specific here in this context of
environmental change in risk the kind of
collaboration that we need is the kind
that recognizes people’s differences and
nevertheless enables us to be able to
work together to solve big problems even
when we can’t necessarily agree
so has
let me give a couple of examples about
eight years ago I started working with a
group in Cambodia for the Coalition for
Cambodian fisheries it’s a civil society
network and this is a place where people
depend upon fishery resources as a key
part of life but for many people often
the forest it’s the most important way
to make a living and to get food for
their family so when people had been
working for years in these communities
to petition the government to say can we
have more fishing grounds can we have
access to these other areas that are
given instead for commercial use they
had reached success what we did was we
worked through a dialogue process that
said ok let’s bring together first at
the local level all the key groups
involved fishers of course but also the
police the local government the
environment officers the military police
and let’s try to understand together
what are the roots of the problem and
how can we address those what are the
possible actions that can help to
improve the situation and one of the
things that came to come to this
dialogue process was that local groups
found new roots to influence
policymakers at the national level and
in the permit
and as a result they were able to secure
the first release in a decade of one of
these commercial fishery areas to
community math and in Kaaawa
so that in the following year based on
the success the whole collection
organizations and civil society groups
around this huge dome they stopped the
great lake cambodia became so he’s been
pressing for this kind of change and
indeed not long after the government
made a huge shift the largest shift in
freshwater fish early access and all of
Asia from commercial to community
management and that has meant a big for
hundreds of thousand people
resource the community that was at the
center of this has also become a pioneer
in helping to protect the resource
working jointly with local employers
another example is from the western part
of India Gujarat state and this is an
area that hits suffered from a great
deal of deforestation and decreases in
soil fertility it’s an area where you’ve
got people who are living on the edge
because it’s becoming more and more
difficult to make a good living from
farming there’s a wonderful group called
a foundation for ecological security
that works in Wichita and what they’ve
done is they’ve worked again with local
communities with all of the key actors
involved and found ways to rehabilitate
these degraded lands so what you see
here is a picture before and after this
key effort community-based effort to say
we’ll take responsibility for these
resources if we can have some certainty
that we’ll be able to reap the benefits
this fruit has now extended the approach
working in 7,000 villages in India in
eight states to promote common property
management plan land water forests as a
way of recovering not only the
environment but also local animals is
selling to reduce poverty and reduce the
vulnerability the families face when
confronting environmental change
so these couple examples point to the
fact that the collaborative process can
yield results but it doesn’t happen by
accident the approach that I’ve been
working with is something I call
collaborating for resilience and this
means working through a stepwise process
with all of the key actors involved
around a compelling central purpose to
try to see what can we understand
together about the roots of conflict or
conflict risk in the future what can we
do to explore the different routes the
different actions to address those and
the consequences
and finally what kind of choices can we
make out of his individuals or its
groups aligned together to be able to
really affect significant change so the
beauty of this and the power of it is
that it’s quite distinct from a
requirement that we reach full consensus
that everybody is heading in the same
direction oftentimes that’s just too
difficult instead if we look to
understand jointly the roots of conflict
over environmental resources then we can
better find pathways out together it’s
with an acknowledgement and
understanding of that collective problem
then we can reach collective action not
all in the same direction but working
together in groups with a common
understanding over all what the problems
are going to face and that can be enough
that can be enough to influence big
changes
so this great acceleration that we’re
living in the middle of nobody can say
they’re sure where it’s headed that some
like even lost the head of Tesla and
SpaceX have said the risks are so great
that we’re undermining our ability to
sustain life on Earth that we really
ought to have a plan B we ought to look
at colonizing space that’s a pretty grim
future that means the only who comes to
survive are the Earth’s environmental
refugees
personally I rather than Atlantic to
working on solutions that provide a
decent future for all on this little
planet that we share together
and what that acquires is not just
scientific innovation so that’s really
important it also requires innovation in
our social and economic systems it
requires institutional innovation and
this at its core means that we have to
get better as individuals as communities
societies as countries as a globe at the
art and the science of leverage
[Applause]
speeding up I’m not just talking about
haven’t worked the scientists who study
big global processes talk about
something called the great acceleration
since the middle of the last century
we’ve seen a five-fold increase in the
urban population a tenfold increase in
economic output at the same time we see
massive decreases in poverty but that
comes as well with substantial growing
inequality it comes with significant
risks the great acceleration also
describes a range of very terrifying
trends they have to do with the
expansion of deforestation for example
of soil degradation loss of biodiversity
and greenhouse gas emissions so for many
people in the world today who are living
in environments that depend directly on
the natural resource base their
livelihoods and for food this is not
some hypothetical future the risks that
we’re talking about are risks that
people do every day and it may seem that
if you have the financial ability to
travel to choose where you want to live
to import your food that you can
distance yourself from these sorts of
risks that you can distance yourself
from those who are living on the edge
but Nature has a way of catching up we
saw that very dramatically quite
recently in terms of the massive storms
that came through the group the
Caribbean that hit Texas in Florida in
the wealthiest country on this planet
today we have environmental refugees so
these are problems that affect all of us
wherever we live whatever source of
resources we have and the question is
where do we go from here
are we headed towards a future that
looks something like the movie Mad Max
is it the future in which we’ll see more
and more brutal struggles for survival
or will we find a way to adapt
collectively will we find a way to shift
our economies our social systems so that
we take better care of our environment
and create a better future for all I’d
like to think of it as a fork in the
road are we headed towards conflict or
cooperation this is the kind of thing
that societies confront repeatedly
and if we think about it what created
the crises that we’re living through now
is the whole accumulation of human
choices so this fork in the road is
people and the choices that we have made
got us into these problems then it’s
people and the choices we will make that
can decide whether we’ll get out so it
has a social scientist I asked what is
it that changes people’s behavior and I
like to boil it down to keep it simple
to say there are three big things the
first is coercion okay that’s about laws
rules limits and what happens what are
the consequences when you don’t follow
those rules say take for example a
company where we say you’re not allowed
to emit certain chemicals into the
environment into the air if you break
those rules that can be fines you can be
shut down is the head of a company you
do it knowingly and you put in jail but
some forms of coercion are pretty small
little mentions things like you go to
the store and you take your reusable
bags get a little discount or do you buy
an electric car and you get a tax break
the biggest environmental policy success
on global level that we’ve seen in the
last couple decades is about the
reduction in ozone depleting emissions
coercion works
it is the main tool public policy to say
we set rules we set limits for the
common good the second the factor in
influencing people’s behaviour to change
is conviction this one is about beliefs
how many vegetarians do we have in the
audience today several for some people
the choice to be a vegetarian or to eat
less meat is an acknowledgement of the
environmental footprint that we make as
individuals and in fact the food that
you eat your choice is about what to me
or one of the most important ways in
which even training work increase your
own environmental footprint other people
might make a similar choice but for
reasons of faith or for health whatever
it is though that’s a matter of
individual learning you for conviction
why do you think is that in Paris
195 governments were able to come
together and reached an agreement to
reduce greenhouse gas emissions
was it because it was new scientific
evidence a little bit but there had been
strong evidence already for many years
the biggest change was that around the
globe people became more strongly aware
of the risks of climate change and
propelled their governments to do
something about it to reach an agreement
together so these two elements coercion
and conviction can actually work
together if people feel strongly enough
they can make or influence others to
change even as base to companies and
governments and decision between
governments so some people they say well
that’s about it that’s the end of the
story for me that’s another important
way to shift behavior that doesn’t
require everyone to agree and that can
still lead to big changes and that’s
collaboration and so what that means you
might think well it’s just when people
already agree and they decide to work
together but I’m talking about something
rather specific here in this context of
environmental change in risk the kind of
collaboration that we need is the kind
that recognizes people’s differences and
nevertheless enables us to be able to
work together to solve big problems even
when we can’t necessarily agree
so has
let me give a couple of examples about
eight years ago I started working with a
group in Cambodia for the Coalition for
Cambodian fisheries it’s a civil society
network and this is a place where people
depend upon fishery resources as a key
part of life but for many people often
the forest it’s the most important way
to make a living and to get food for
their family so when people had been
working for years in these communities
to petition the government to say can we
have more fishing grounds can we have
access to these other areas that are
given instead for commercial use they
had reached success what we did was we
worked through a dialogue process that
said ok let’s bring together first at
the local level all the key groups
involved fishers of course but also the
police the local government the
environment officers the military police
and let’s try to understand together
what are the roots of the problem and
how can we address those what are the
possible actions that can help to
improve the situation and one of the
things that came to come to this
dialogue process was that local groups
found new roots to influence
policymakers at the national level and
in the permit
and as a result they were able to secure
the first release in a decade of one of
these commercial fishery areas to
community math and in Kaaawa
so that in the following year based on
the success the whole collection
organizations and civil society groups
around this huge dome they stopped the
great lake cambodia became so he’s been
pressing for this kind of change and
indeed not long after the government
made a huge shift the largest shift in
freshwater fish early access and all of
Asia from commercial to community
management and that has meant a big for
hundreds of thousand people
resource the community that was at the
center of this has also become a pioneer
in helping to protect the resource
working jointly with local employers
another example is from the western part
of India Gujarat state and this is an
area that hits suffered from a great
deal of deforestation and decreases in
soil fertility it’s an area where you’ve
got people who are living on the edge
because it’s becoming more and more
difficult to make a good living from
farming there’s a wonderful group called
a foundation for ecological security
that works in Wichita and what they’ve
done is they’ve worked again with local
communities with all of the key actors
involved and found ways to rehabilitate
these degraded lands so what you see
here is a picture before and after this
key effort community-based effort to say
we’ll take responsibility for these
resources if we can have some certainty
that we’ll be able to reap the benefits
this fruit has now extended the approach
working in 7,000 villages in India in
eight states to promote common property
management plan land water forests as a
way of recovering not only the
environment but also local animals is
selling to reduce poverty and reduce the
vulnerability the families face when
confronting environmental change
so these couple examples point to the
fact that the collaborative process can
yield results but it doesn’t happen by
accident the approach that I’ve been
working with is something I call
collaborating for resilience and this
means working through a stepwise process
with all of the key actors involved
around a compelling central purpose to
try to see what can we understand
together about the roots of conflict or
conflict risk in the future what can we
do to explore the different routes the
different actions to address those and
the consequences
and finally what kind of choices can we
make out of his individuals or its
groups aligned together to be able to
really affect significant change so the
beauty of this and the power of it is
that it’s quite distinct from a
requirement that we reach full consensus
that everybody is heading in the same
direction oftentimes that’s just too
difficult instead if we look to
understand jointly the roots of conflict
over environmental resources then we can
better find pathways out together it’s
with an acknowledgement and
understanding of that collective problem
then we can reach collective action not
all in the same direction but working
together in groups with a common
understanding over all what the problems
are going to face and that can be enough
that can be enough to influence big
changes
so this great acceleration that we’re
living in the middle of nobody can say
they’re sure where it’s headed that some
like even lost the head of Tesla and
SpaceX have said the risks are so great
that we’re undermining our ability to
sustain life on Earth that we really
ought to have a plan B we ought to look
at colonizing space that’s a pretty grim
future that means the only who comes to
survive are the Earth’s environmental
refugees
personally I rather than Atlantic to
working on solutions that provide a
decent future for all on this little
planet that we share together
and what that acquires is not just
scientific innovation so that’s really
important it also requires innovation in
our social and economic systems it
requires institutional innovation and
this at its core means that we have to
get better as individuals as communities
societies as countries as a globe at the
art and the science of leverage
[Applause]
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