Fostering Social Sustainability: A View from the Trenches / Tools for Social Change

Carl Jeffry Goebel
April 28, 2006
Portland State University

Goebel, C. J. (in press). “Fostering Social Sustainability: A View from the Trenches / Tools for Social Change.” Unpublished Book Chapter in King, M., Dujon, V., & Dillard, J. (eds) Understanding the Social Dimension of Sustainability, manuscript submitted for publication. Portland State University.

Copyright © Carl Jeffry Goebel 2007

As the problems arising from conventional policies of resource exploitation, social planning, geo-political administration, and population shift place increasing strain on existing protocols for finding and implementing solutions, the necessity for elaborating new models of change grows ever more critical. First World countries, holders of the lion’s share of global wealth, are simultaneously the greatest consumers of the world’s resources. At the same time, drawing on their legacy of rational humanism with its master problem-solving methodology based on logical, binary, and confrontational scheme, these same First World cultures are also the engineers of strategies for defining, diagnosing, and treating problems in the social, ecological, and political spheres. The results are not entirely satisfying – as the continuing saga of conflict, aggression, and acute economic and social inequality reminds us.

Nevertheless, the same cultural institutions that foster conventional approaches also permit the emergence, at the periphery, of more intuitive, holistic methodologies that hold considerable promise in the area of natural and social sustainability. Indeed, a robust theory of social sustainability has been taking shape for the last twenty years and, slowly, in scattered pockets of experimentation, has been yielding concrete, positive results.

The objective of this chapter is to review some key concepts of a theory of social sustainability and to offer a number of case studies examining various kinds of communities in crisis, which have been helped — sometimes subtly and sometimes dramatically— to achieve productive and harmonious conflict resolution. These case studies can be viewed as a laboratory for testing the efficacy of insights into individual, group, and community psychology; the effectiveness of various non-aggressive and non-confrontational intervention techniques; and, finally, the possibility and feasibility of modeling win-win social interactions in a variety of conflict and scarcity scenarios. The case studies are drawn from the author’s fieldwork and span a period of 20 years. They were undertaken at various stages in a systematic, long-term program of applied research that poses, at its core, three sets of questions:

1. How might one go about social change?

2. What elements are key to producing social change?

3. What gaps exist in our current knowledge and current “science” of social change?

These case studies span the following range of experiences:

1. Resolving labor, environmental, and profitability issues on a Hawaiian ranch;

2. Resolving an environmental conflict between representatives of the forest industry and environmentalists in northern California;

3. Resolving multi-tribal conflict, resource management, and treaty rights of a large Pacific Northwest Indian reservation;

4. Resolving scarcity and ethnicity conflicts in multi-ethnic Islamic West African rural region;

5. Resolving jurisdictional, environmental, and scarcity conflict in a bureaucratic setting.

As I have moved from case to case, I have been able to identify a number of key elements that appear to be critical to fostering sustainability. The five case studies cover a broad demographic (from illiterate African villagers to highly specialized scientists; from low status adolescents to high prestige tribal elders; etc.). They spanned geographical territories (Pacific Northwest, Northern California, West Africa, Hawaii) and a range of environmental and financial variables. Yet throughout this broad spectrum of variables, a number of invariant, constant elements recurred. These may be schematically summarized as follows:

Fig. 1

In other words, every scenario of conflict can be reduced to five invariable elements: the contesting constituencies; the PIECE or chunk of reality – i.e. resources; power; prestige–over which they disagree; what each party in the conflict conceives as its objective, i.e. what it wants; the language or terms in which each party articulates its needs; and finally, the existence of a contact or channel of communication and arbitration between/among the contestants. The non-conventional or holistic theoretical models that I am about to present as constituting an emerging theory of social sustainability all, in one way or another, take into account this set of constant elements.

Each of the interventions offered an opportunity to test the viability of four novel conceptual models, which turned out to be particularly productive in offering methods and concrete mechanisms that could be adapted for engaging the “actors” or the “players” [the above “constituencies”] in each of the crisis situations involving “contested realm.” The interventions are:

1. From “invention” to “innovation:” or what does it take to make a new idea into a new deal.

2. Sustainable decision-making: or what are the mechanics of making decisions;

3. How structures produce consistent outcomes: or how you can’t get round spaghetti out of square holes

4. How altering structures yields desirable outcomes: or how changing the pasta machine will get you the round spaghetti you wanted.

1. Social Sustainability – from Invention to Innovation

Peter Senge in his book The Fifth Discipline[1] differentiates between the concepts of inventing and innovating. He contrasts the human powered flight of the Wright Brothers versus the DC-3 airplane. The Wright Brothers’ airplane was the first mechanical device that enabled humans to fly. Though the machine made it possible for one person to fly the distance of a football field, this invention was not very practical for society.

The practical version arrived only with the DC-3, thereby marking the innovation of powered flight. The DC-3 improved on the Wright brothers’ invention in five basic ways that made flying practical AND a BENEFIT to society at large. The Boeing 247, on the other hand, which was developed at about the same time, had only four of the five elements necessary for innovative flight and consequently that particular model of the airplane never acquired societal value.

The same principle holds true for the decision-making capabilities for fostering sustainability. Walter Shewhart, the “grandfather of Total Quality Management” known for his Statistical Process Control methods to aid managers in making scientific, efficient, economical decisions, developed a model combining creative management thinking with statistical analysis that he called the PDSA cycle.[2] The PDSA cycle involved the four continuous steps of Plan, Do, Study, and Act.

Subsequently, William Edwards Deming applied the Shewhart Cycle to his radical transformation of the management process in his widely applied principles for transforming business effectiveness by continually moving toward enhanced quality outcomes.[3] In this instance, the “Shewhart Cycle” model is the invention of a decision-making process that guides humans toward a higher level of existence, while Deming’s principles are the innovation that resulted in such sweeping changes as the post-World War II economic miracle of Japan, for example.

2. Sustainable Decision-Making

Building on and modifying the work of Shewhart and Deming, Allan Savory, the wildlife biologist from Zimbabwe who went on to be the founder of the Holistic Management International Institute, developed a decision-making model that seeks to move humans toward sustainability.[4] The steps in this model include defining the “whole that is under management;” defining the holistic goal for that management whole; assessing the present and past situations; proposing, testing and making decisions to take action toward the holistic goal; and, finally, monitoring and evaluating results to ensure that decisions are indeed moving toward the holistic goal.

This model is focused on fostering sustainability, primarily at the ranch and farm level in desertifying land conditions, where there is one primary decision-maker who can engage others. Savory points out the importance of all steps being developed so that decisions are simultaneously socially, economically and ecologically sound.

Savory insists that when defining what makes up the “whole under management,” the first step is to consider the land area under management. Only then can one move to identifying the people who are affected or who affect decisions on that land area. Finally, one identifies the resources available for use in the development of the management.

A goal is holistic when it is developed on the basis of the entire community’s vision of the desired Quality of Life and the desired values of the community – or in our terminology, constituency –associated with the whole under management. The holistic approach next requires that the constituents evaluate the social and financial abilities at their disposal that will enable them to support the quality of life they desire. Finally, the holistic plan must take into account the social and ecological means to sustain the quality of life indefinitely; in other words, the plan describes the terms and conditions of sustainability. An example of the formulation of a holistic goal–given in Appendix 1—is taken from the author’s work and was developed with the direct involvement of over 700 Confederated Tribes of the Colville Reservation.

One of the lessons that became clear through this work with the Colville Native Americans is that many scientists, environmental activists, and legislators, as well as the general public, tend to assume that the ecosystem requires human intervention, interference, and manipulation to survive. This, however, as the Native Americans demonstrated, at least in part, appears to be another instance of human arrogance. The ecosystem, after all, exists outside of and prior to human conceptions of value. Human priorities about the survival of certain species — such as the salmon or the spotted owl, for example — are rooted in an exclusively Homo sapiens frame of reference. For us, the survival or disappearance of the spotted owl is a matter of the quality of life, not life itself. And yet, the survival or disappearance of a species entails much deeper issues: to wit – the potential that species loss has for posing a fatal threat to the ability of humans to survive AT ALL in a radically modified life-support system, in other words, on Earth.

In the holistic-decision making process, Savory devised seven so-called “holistic decision making tests” in order to further enhance the focus on a whole ecosystem based on human life. Each of these tests is designed to ensure that decisions are socially, economically, and ecologically sound. The “weak link tests” seek to identify the social, financial, and biological elements in the system that prevents steady progress toward the holistic goal. They set up a procedure for conducting a critical evaluation to determine what social conditions are holding up progress toward attaining the holistic goal. They also consider where resources need to be invested and what investments need to be made so as to ensure positive progress toward attaining and sustaining the holistic goal.

By comparison, the current conventional decision-making model uses multiple goals. It often equates or confuses problems with goals. It operates with limited testing criteria, and, perhaps most insidiously, it operates with the assumption that our current knowledge bases need not be monitored (see Appendix 2).

3. Structures and Outcomes: Changing the Path of Least Resistance

Robert Fritz, a leading consultant in the creative process and structural dynamics as the foundation of individual and institutional change identified another important sustainability concept. Fritz argues, in his influential book The Path of Least Resistance, that structure dictates outcomes.[5] What he means by this is that the structures of our institutions, discourse, knowledge into which we are born and within which we operate, direct the outcomes of human effort. In other words, the very ways in which we conceive of change, or of going about implementing our ideas, are already determined by the system of thought, the assumptions, and the ways of doing things in which we think change or enact change. This holds true in all areas of our lives, including in laws and regulations, beliefs, social norms, traditions, cultural values, behavioral codes, “life stories,” and a whole host of other elements. Because they are SYSTEMIC, these structures are extremely difficult– if not impossible– to change. Nonetheless, there are some structures that can be changed, though with a great deal of work, a tremendous effort in consciousness, and vast investment of energy. Once the structure is changed, however, the new form or framework allows the flow of human energy to be channeled toward another, and hopefully, desirable outcome –such as sustainability, or peace.

An example of a structure that seems to be nearly impossible to change was offered by the humanistic psychologist Abraham Maslow in his theory of the Hierarchy of Human Needs.[6] Maslow assumed our needs are arranged in a hierarchy in terms of their potency. Although all needs are instinctive, some are more powerful than others. The lower the need, the more powerful it is. The higher the need, the weaker and more distinctly human it is. Maslow argued that the lower, or basic, needs are similar to those possessed by non-human animals, but that only humans possess the higher needs. On the basis of this hierarchy, Maslow proposes a theory of human motivation for action, arguing that each consecutive set of needs on the vertical hierarchy must be met before an individual will recognize the existence of the progressively higher needs, and will act on meeting them. Thus, the physiological needs must be satisfied before the needs for, respectively, safety, belonging, esteem, and finally, self-actualization.

In an interesting turn, the current environmental movement in the United States appears to generally violate this theory. This is how the Maslow pyramid maps on to the current environmental project in terms of the relationship between proponents of conservation on the one hand, and agriculturalists and ranchers, on the other. In Maslow’s terms, the impulse for conservation is a “self-actualization need” in the short-term, i.e. it stands at the very apex of the pyramid. Ranchers and farmers, on the other hand, are engaged in satisfying physiological needs for survival and security needs. Consequently, farmers and ranchers will not address conservation needs until they have perceived that their basic needs are met. However, and this is a very important however, conservation becomes a physiological need in the long-term as land continues to deteriorate only until humans invest in taking care of the land as a necessity for survival.

This qualification has led several sustainability proponents to investigate strategies for shifting the ways in which humans rank their needs. Economic development models such as the one presented for community economic sustainability by the Rocky Mountain Institute can help foster community well-being and enable individuals to rise higher on Maslow’s Hierarchy. The Rocky Mountain Institute process includes four steps for accomplishing this shift:

1) Plug the leaks;

2) Shore up existing businesses;

3) Create new local businesses;

4) Bring in outside businesses compatible with local values.[7]

Thus, holistic goals can in fact help define the local values on which to base the outside businesses that are compatible.

Another effective economic development model was developed by community development consultant Ernesto Sirolli.[8] Sirolli’s Enterprise Facilitation insists that: first, people should do what they are passionate about; and second, that successful businesses require three components to be successful. These are 1) a quality product or service, 2) effective marketing, and 3) sound financial management. Sirolli also believes that because each individual’s skill set cannot by definition contain all three components, owners of small entrepreneurial businesses must ensure that they provide all three elements by appropriate staffing or consultants.

Sirolli’s strategies were applied regionally in Baker County, OR, with the result that within the first five years of implementation, 86 new businesses were cultivated and 177 new Full-Time Equivalent jobs were created. The figures speak for themselves.

4. New Structures – New Outcomes

These two economic development models are additional opportunities or disciplines for sustainability. Another discipline would be the work of Bob Chadwick in conflict resolution, designed to result in consensus building.[9] This process builds civic capacity. The basic process introduces people to conflict resolution. There are four additional themes that manifest conflict. These are change, power, scarcity, and diversity.

The basic module facilitates learning in effective communication primarily through respectful listening. People also learn that the brain functions in times of stress by first imagining worst possible outcomes then can shift to best possible outcomes. Worst possible outcomes are the most powerful and automatic and people often confuse life experiences with life threatening experiences. People can learn that future projected outcomes are possibilities, not fact, and the future can be crafted toward desired outcomes, like sustainability. In this module, people also learn about the power of the human mind to solve problems.

The first theme where conflict manifests is with change. Change fosters a fear of the uncertainty of the future and grief of the loss of the past. Often people will share the belief that they don’t like change, however, people enjoy new changes like a new baby, a car, and new seasons. Change is an emotional experience as well as logical. Elizabeth Kubler-Ross wrote about the stages of grieving which include denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance. [10] A sixth stage of adaptation could be added to this emotional change process. Shift happens!

The next theme where conflict manifests is power issues. Power in this sense is the desire for control of one person over another. This concept differentiates between positional power, a formal recognition of one’s stature, and personal power, which each person possesses though may not choose to utilize. Power conflicts are often frightening as people of less power are very concerned about confronting someone of more power due to the potential consequences (loss of job, loss of freedom, loss of love, loss of life). Intimidation is a form of a power imbalance between people. The one who intimidates may not be aware of this conflict, but the one who is intimidated definitely feels this imbalance of power.

Power struggles between people have a tendency to equalize it. The second law of thermodynamics is applicable when considering the consequences of a power struggle. Because of this, for those who are powerful, it is wise to “stay below the radar screen” to avoid a struggle to topple one’s power. One strategy is to recognize the importance of short-term survival with long-term sustainability by meeting the needs of those in power. A strategy to shift power toward sustainable concepts is to 1) educate (meaning to change behavior) strategically and massively, 2) to create small, significant successes, and 3) to tell the story (theory plus successes).

The third theme for issues surrounding conflict is scarcity. This is where there is a perception that there are fewer resources than the need for those resources. Often scarcity issues exist with water, land, time, and money. Through effective conflict resolution, perceptions of scarcity move from Either/Or to AND logic, which is created through the formation of a holistic goal or a best possible outcome when diverse people are involved with forming the outcome. People are capable of doing the impossible when they can operate from a mental basis of richness or abundance. When people are allowed to express their reasons (beliefs rather than facts) for perceived resources being scarce, they are capable of shifting their attitude to how to do what seems impossible anyway.

The final theme where conflict manifests is diversity issues. People are often frightened initially of people who are different than them. They tend to want “sameness” as it is comfortable. The adage “birds of a feather flock together,” describes this behavior. “Group think” is not an effective method of fostering new ideas and overcoming difficult challenges. As time progresses, sameness becomes boring and diversity can be learned to add richness. Diversity is usually displayed as a bell-shaped curve, with few individuals at both extremes and the bulk of individuals balanced in-between. If one wants to effectively create change from low performance to higher performance, investment in the low end of the curve shifts the entire curve.

In Mali, West Africa the four themes of conflict resolution were taught to local villagers over four years. As a result of transformational change affecting their beliefs and behaviors, the villagers were able to increase yields by 78%, dissipate violent conflict so no incidents were reported, and reduced the impacts of male dominance over females, resulting in more respect of women in the villages.

Current Strategy

When working within a bureaucracy and the work is outside of the formal structure, two elements are important. One is to fulfill all the needs of the bureaucracy’s formal structure with efficiency, which satisfies what the system expects in a way that allows saved time and money to be reinvested into actions outside of the formal structure. The other important criterion is to do the work in such a way that it does not draw attention to the facilitator of change, as this work is often different from the norm and can foster intolerance.

A current strategy based on these elements is to first build civic capacity within the working team and the surrounding community. This work would include introducing the concepts associated with conflict resolution, which allows the team and community to be most adaptive to change. Team development allows for the opportunity to satisfy the needs of the bureaucracy efficiently, hence creating resources saved that can be reinvested into more appropriate work, consistent with sustainability.

The formation of a diverse strategic team is also important to foster awareness and begin an education process toward sustainability. This group defines the whole being managed and develops a beginning holistic goal for the region. They then develop an assessment of past and present conditions allowing decisions to be made toward the holistic goal. This team uses the seven sustainable testing criteria to diagnose, propose, and make decisions (Appendix 3).

Of particular importance with testing is to identify the social weak link allowing the team to determine where to invest in human change to allow significant progress toward the achievement of the region’s holistic goal. As the strategic plan develops and gets implemented, occasional monitoring and evaluation needs to occur to determine if the strategic plan is actually moving toward desired outcomes or if other strategies need to be adopted.

Another important part of the strategy is the focus on small, significant successes. Successes attract attention, particularly if those successes are significant. An effective strategy to create significant successes is to identify crisis with unresolved conflict. Unresolved conflict often has frustrated, stifling energy associated with the issue, and when positive resolution occurs, significant progress can be demonstrated due to the pent-up energy. This can also include identifying processes that can be modified to yield effective decisions, particularly in the allocation of time and money, as how money and time are spent dictates the future that will be created.

In the current work in Central Oregon, the following steps have occurred during the past three years:

1) Team Development – allowing time saved in meeting the needs of the formal structure is reinvested to do sustainability issues. We have created a goal for the team to focus their efforts toward of moving from a 30 percent to a 90 percent level of conservation applied on private lands at the stabilized level or better in the next three years.

2) Consensus Institute training initiated, which builds civic capacity yielding greater ability to adapt to change,

3) Enterprise Facilitation process started, which builds rural economic infrastructure creating resources to do addition work,

4) A “Shifting the Normal Curve” for conservation participation survey completed to identify why farmers and ranchers on the non-participatory side of the curve do not do conservation and what would be necessary to move them to do conservation. Theoretically, resources invested in the low side of the curve will shift the whole curve to a higher conservation applied level. We see similar patterns in education.

5) Implementing “Ag Day Workshops” in partnership with university structure. These workshops include “neighborhood meetings,” to understand the needs of farmers and ranchers to implement conservation.

6) Initiating Rapid Watershed Assessments for entire land area and more effective accounting of time to outputs in order to facilitate targeting resources and actions

7) Reintroducing herding on Indian Reservation by identifying areas with higher likelihood of success to begin herding, use GIS to design “virtual pastures” and develop plan to address all resource needs, and educating team members in low-stress livestock handling

8) Resolving conflicts between landowners and agencies in order to stabilize a severely degraded stream channel, while installing fish-friendly structures to catch sediment and retain water and increase the efficiency and effectiveness of the state and federal permitting process, and

9) Changing the regional Oregon Watershed Enhancement Board project application process, which directs time and money resulting in changed landscapes.

In Conclusion: (or Author’s Commentary)

My experience of applying, testing, and modifying the theoretical models I have just reviewed, leaves me guardedly optimistic. By working in the variety of settings on which I have briefly touched here, I have learned that shift IS possible, that change CAN occur, and that it need by neither violent, nor divisive, nor ephemeral. Contrary to what the theoretical literature I have just reviewed suggests, building self-sustaining healthy communities is NOT rocket science. In fact it is not a science at all, but a method, rooted deep in patience, humility, and a willingness to stop, look, and listen – respectfully. It requires the willingness to trust in the inherent intelligence and creativity of human beings listening to each other, learning for each other, and working with each other to generate solutions that will meet each other’s needs. It all boils down to one precept: Viewing the other as self – whether that “other” is nature or a pesky Jeeper tearing up a flowering meadow on a Sunday afternoon in the name of fun. That, in short, is my view from the trenches.

Appendix 1

Objective	Weak	Marginal	Cause	Ecosys	Energy/$	Society	Auth	Budget	Financial	Priority
1. Social Change: By 2009, the Deschutes-Hood Basin at its best will have a diversity of people of the community who will be informed, engaged, responsible, in agreement and working collaboratively
· Initiate a consensus institute training in the Basin	T	T	T	N/A	a	T	Y	/	W	1
· Continue to successfully resolve conflicts in Basin	T	T	T	N/A	a	T	Y	/	W	1
o Co-host a weed summit	T	T	T	N/A	a	T	Y	/	W	1
· Individual Interview process	T	T	T	N/A	a	T	Y	/	W	1
· Active Civil Rights / Diversity Program (Element 3)
· Initiate media campaign – Pioneers / Leaders of Conservation for future CSP
2. Sustainability: By 2009, the Deschutes-Hood Basin at its best will foster sustainable conditions as reflected in economic viability and enhanced ecological conditions.
· Support new and existing businesses within the Basin through the introduction of Enterprise Facilitation, targeting the rural communities	a (social) / T (financial)	T	T	N/A	t/a	t	Y	N	W	2
· Introduce financial planning for profit for solar-based economies such as agriculture	a (social) / T (financial)	T	T	N/A	T	T	Y	/	W	1
· Target financial resources towards effective resource change with sources such as Farm Bill and OWEB resources o Expenditure of Funds and Timely Program Implementation (Element 1) o Meet Performance Goals (Element 2) o Technical Service Provider Progress for dealing with backlogs of farm bill programs (Element 5)	t/a	T	a	N/A	t/a	t	Y	Y	W/M	2
3. Decision Making: By 2009, the Deschutes-Hood Basin at its best will be making effective and efficient decisions toward the community’s long-term wellbeing and values.
· Develop unique Deschutes coordinating/natural resources groups similar to Crook County NRPC	t	t	T	N/A	a	t	/	/	W/M	2
· Complete initial phase (inventory and analysis) of Basin-wide plan on private and tribal lands & make available to community leaders	a	a	T/a	t/a	t/a	t/a	Y	Y	W/M	3
· Effective leadership and management of team members (Element 4) o Your overall management activities that direct staff, administer personnel matters, promote cooperation, establish responsibilities and provide employee career opportunities o Individual Development Plan & and training plans for staff. o Staffing Plan
4. Sustainable Natural Resource Base: By 2009, the Deschutes-Hood Basin at its best will manage natural resources in a highly effective and sustainable manner including supporting the reintroduction of anadromous fish in the upper Basin in a way that respects all parties.
Support conservation efforts throughout the region by developing effective partnerships o Leverage of Non-Federal dollars and personnel to accomplish NRCS missions. (contribution agreement, 319, state funds, etc) (Element 2)	t/a (biological)	t/a	t/a	T	a/t	T/a	Y	/	W/M	4
· In two years, 90% of farmers & ranchers in the remaining 8-digit HUC watersheds are qualified for one of the three tiers of the Conservation Security Program AND we meet the national & state needs.

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