Wageningen 100 year anniversary masterclasses

March 9th, 2018

Carl Folke

Reconnecting development to the biosphere

Resilience – strategic theme in Wageningen for 4 years now
>100 000 cited
- Strong impact on policy, he made his own science!
- Bringing people together that wouldn’t normally be together, creating various institutes.
- Fantastic role model for our university!

Talk start
- Intertwined planet
- Resilience and transformation
- Stewardship

1. First
- Transition on the understanding of people and nature till social-ecological systems.
- Anthropocene:
o Scale: too many humans
o Connectivity: many new types of interactions
o Speed: what is the speed of this interactions, local shapes global? Or the other way around? And how fast.
o Spread: humans everywhere
- The Economy
o Natural Capital
o Human-Social-Cultural Capital
o Human made capital
- Three dimensions of sustainability
o Has become a micky mouse with
o Tone Bjordan
- Ecosystem support areas on cities
o Folke, et al, 1997
- Life support systems
o Folke, 1983
o One of the first quantifications of ecosystem services.
- Moisture recycling as an ecosystem service
o Precipitation shed, where does rainfall comes from.
o Keys, Revealing Invisible Water: Moisture recycling as an Ecosystem Service
2. Social ecological approaches
- Resilience: not recovery!
- Fragmented landscapes
o Madagascar, beehives crops up to 60%
o Patches are funeral places
 Only ecological or only social understanding mises the point
- Lobster gangs of Maine
o Common-pool resource management
o Local level connectedness, lobster is not overexploited
o To understand how the world work today, we need to look at both systems together
- Tipping points
- Resilience is usually centered at the shock, not the most interesting.
o Marine regime shifts
- Trajectories of the Earth System in the Anthropocene
o Climate change and tipping elements
- Sleeping financial giants
o 10 financial actors are investing on the future of this systems
o There are very few players that are making all of this
- Planetary boundaries and what is the shape of the operating space for humanity

Complex adaptive systems

- The big paradigm shift is to understand the world as this!
o Functional redundance
o Modularity
- We’ve been simplying systems for the focus of producing many things

3. Resilience thinking
- How new governance structures may emerge when there is crisis
o Schult, Folke, PNAS, 2015
o Global governance can help manage systems
- Norms as tipping points
 o 13 companies are shaping the oceans in terms of fishing and acuaquilture
 1000 subsidians all over the country
 Connect, dominate, control
 If you want to go fast go alone, if you want to go far go together
o Global resilience partnership
 How can we do development in the Anthropocene
 New renaissance
 Greenspoon
 We are shaping the planet but don’t understand it, mature Anthropocene?
 We are leaving the industrial phase to a new
o Artistic reflections
 Carl Folke & Lars Hall
o Beatles
- I don’t believe in engineering our way out
o Technology is part of the value system
o Reinforce the positive feedback on the same way of thinking
o Same in GMO’s when they started – quick fix when they started
 Now they are playing in the
o Technology is embedded in social ecological systems
 Can be helpful, is combined in the way we evolve, but it is not a quick fix
o Polycentric governance
 Many different accord doing things that can connect
 Science is taking on that view more and more – e.g. transdisciplinary science!
 Knowledge systems, the scientific approach is becoming more humble for the role of science in society
 Can be a partner in collaboration!
o In every area there is a handful of players
 Technology – 3 players
 You can say I hate it, but they take a more pragmatic approach, what can I do about it?
o Resilience thinking concept is very appealing
 How to make it operational?
 Paradigm shift from easily developing measuring indicators
o Sustainability indicators in the EU failed because of this.
o Complex dynamics need to be taken seriously, spending many years on how to develop indicators that
can give at least an idea
o Accept that society is complex! Accepting true uncertainty
o The most important part of resilience is having the capacity to deal with the unknown.
 We’ve been developing technologies that solve problems in the short term, but then have a negative feedback in
the long term.
 Where is the opportunity to reorganize our society?
 It’s happening
o Boundary organizations – platforms of governance, new governing will be more platform governance
o Big mismatch between planetary boundaries and rooms of action, and the solutions coming from the social systems.
 Doughnut economy, not sufficiently dynamic thinking
 Social dynamics are being addressed in a very sophisticated way
o 10-20% of research should be made to interdisciplinary science
 The parts are really important, but the trick is to
o Valentina, reconstructed the way of living in the amazon based on current trees
 What is the future?
 How can we found better relationship between economy, society, nature
o Very few players determine the future of the world, a very few with a lot of power create a lot of difference.
 Some act very individualistically, egoistically
 Small players shape society which shape also this handful of determinant players.
o Big debate whether democracy works in these turbulent times

- Collective learning experience, raising the collective consciousness, how to do it more efficiently
o It is happening, and it is playing out in different interpretations
o Humans are being much more polarized in this phase, clusters of equal-thinking people
 It is part of this searching for meaning, a part of the future is creating this meaning.
 Taking away the meaning is the problem, making people stewards of their landscapes is the goal.
- Database on investments on the amazon, many where made by tax agents
o The interrelations should be made more transparent  new types of methods, new types of approaches.
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