Fostering a Culture of Sustainability

Douglas Worts and Glenn SutterWorldViews Consulting

October, 2007

Presented To: Saskatchewan Regional Centre of Expertise

UN Decade of Education for Sustainable Development

Workshop Outline

- identify pressing issues- clarify the role of culture in our lives- discuss how our culture adapts- identify our current cultural needs- choosing pathways to our future- assessing if we are on a sustainable path

What are the most pressing issues we face globally?

What are the most pressing issues we face locally?

What are the most pressing issues that you are facing

personally?

Sustainability, (and unsustainability)

is a cultural matter

• Our values• Our behaviours• Our attitudes• Our priorities• Our systems

Rooted in:

But what do we mean by ‘culture’?

Culture

“a basic pattern of assumptions invented, discovered or developed

by a given group as it learns to cope with its problems of external adaptation and

internal integration”Edgar Shein

A Definition of Culture….the sum total of all values, collective

memory, history, beliefs, mythology, rituals, symbolic objects and built heritage which reflect the manner in which a people relate to both those aspects of life which:

a) they can know and control; as well as,

b) those they cannot fully understand or control, but to which they need to have a conscious relationship.

Culture isRelationships

Family

Community

Society

Global humanity

Environment

Self

The Unknown

<--Past <--Present --> Future-->

How is our culture lived and perpetuated?:

- Individually &

- Collectively

Consciously & Unconsciously

Sustainability and Adaptation

- changes in personal relationships- changes in career- moving from country to city (or vice-versa)

Personal Level, e.g:

Collective Level, e.g:

- migration => monocultures become pluralistic=> urbanization

Organization

Experiments, Creativity & Surprises

Exploitation

Stronger Connections & Increasing Potential for Change

Conservation

High Levels of Complexity Rigidity, & Resilience

Release

A Rapid Collapse

The Adaptive Renewal Cycle

Holling (2004)

Two Traps

Holling (2004)

The Rigidity

Trap

The Poverty

Trap

Sustainability

Maintaining the capacity for adaptation.

Partly due to resilience, a property that varies through the adaptive renewal cycle.

“…the amount of disturbance that can be sustained before a change in system control and structure occurs.”

Cross-scale Interactions

Cycles of Different Sizes form a “Panarchy”

How does culture respond and contribute

to adaptive renewal cycles?

Cultural Needs of Civil SocietyPersonal:• Empowerment• Empathy and Sympathy• Connection to place, people, the past, the future• Safety• Personal meaning• Spiritual connection• Creativity• Stewardship• Consciousness of relationships to people and nature• etc.

Describe how you have experienced these needs (or others)in adapting to global, local and personal issues.

Collective:• Rights• Responsibilities• Justice (social, economic)• Stewardship• Participatory democracy• etc.

How do we want to live?

Preferred

Probable

How will we get to Preferred Future?

FeedbackYou can’t live without it!

Probable vs. Preferred Future

Community

Institutional

Personal

Culture of Sustainability

Critical Assessment Framework

Criteria for assessing initiatives aimed at 3 levels of cultural adaptation:

• Individual• Community• Global

Working Group on Museums and Sustainable Communities

Individual Level

• Encourages personal reflection

• Captures imagination, stimulates curiosity

• Affirms, challenges, deepens identity

• Enhances ability to think critically & creatively

• Provides opportunity to examine & clarify values

• Helps deal with complexity and uncertainty

• Increases responsible action

Working Group on Museums and Sustainable Communities

Community Level

• Addresses vital & relevant needs/issues• Engages a diverse public• Encourages social interactions and debate• Links existing community groups to one another

Working Group on Museums and Sustainable Communities

Global Level

Working Group on Museums and Sustainable Communities

• consciousness of global impacts of local choices• foster global ecosystem health• reduce global ecological footprint• enhance global social justice and equity

Getting the right indicators

“Development divorced from its human or cultural context is growth without a

soul.”

‘Our Creative Diversity’, UNESCO, 1995

Where is our culture headed?

Contacts

Glenn SutterRegina, SK

<gcsutter@yahoo.ca>

Douglas WortsToronto, ON

<douglas_worts@rogers.com>www.geocities.com/dcworts