Transforming New Zealand's Rural Communities to Enable Continued Economic Expansion
There are many interrelated factors when considering policy decisions, and with the shift towards carbon farming, many sheep and beef farmers around New Zealand are concerned about the changing landscape. Not just the visual factors, there is a focus on biodiversity, forest fires, loopholes in trading carbon credits, pollution laundering, displacement of lamb and beef farms and farmers along with the support structures and businesses that make up rural communities. The TVNZ Sunday report below informs about the switch to forestry that will likely reduce certain rural populations and force families to shift elsewhere.
While these changes could seem problematic, the background problem is climate change, and more specifically, human behaviours such as fossil fuel burning, deforestation and agricultural practises. Would it be too ambitious to take such a broad view in the research and analysis phase of an IEM approach to these issues?
My personal view is that government are attempting to 'do something', to keep the 'business as usual' (BAU) game going, however, from what I've been hearing from credible sources is that humanity needs to radically reduce production and consumption (by around 75%) AND at the same time, restore ecosystems which includes planting to absorb atmospheric carbon, change farming systems, change our diets and build community resiliency. Doing this will bring long term solutions, where BAU with tinkering around the edges, i.e. carbon trading, merely confounds the problem and creates other problems, such as monocultures, land disturbance, soil loss and so on. Moreover, the carbon trading scheme, promotes a 'free market approach' to managing climate change which does not offer long term solutions. Instead, this approach frames another form of rampant capitalism as the solution, and this kind of thinking entraps us. It make us 'producers and consumers' within a 'market', rather than as people that depend on each other and ecosystems that makes life possible. To attain a long-term solution requires a transformative shift in thinking and doing. For this to happen degrowth or ecological economics provides principles for metamorphosis. Dan O'Neill talks with Giorgos Kallis about degrowth in the video below.
The IEM challenge for me is to be part of a group that prefers to take a narrow boundary view of the issue of hill country farming conversion from agriculture to forestry. While a narrow view could avoid broader boundary issues, will this approach be holistic?
The other key matter to address for this challenge, is to define what sustainability is so our group can create an IEM analytical report on this topic. Part of our group challenge is to define 'ways of achieving sustainable outcomes for rural areas in the face of strong global drivers that are influencing future land use, especially conversion to exotic forestry'. The scope of analysis regarding what's deemed 'sustainable' will likely cause contention. From my perspective, the term sustainability is used too broadly and has become a greenwash catchphrase. My preference for the group IEM assignment would be to look at the problem more broadly, however, I went along with the majority just to keep things moving and avoid intergroup opposition. This behavioural heuristic is called 'group think' or 'group reinforcement' and can cause many contradicting outcomes for IEM processes. The three phases (Noticing - Deliberating - Executing) of problem definition, analysis, decision making and action is shown below and places group reinforcement within the deliberating phase.
Group reinforcement influences unified decision making, even when it may be unethical or counter to what communities’ desire. Individuals within groups become conditioned through positive and negative reinforcement which shapes how information is perceived and decisions are made. Micro and macro social pressures can influence group members to remain in the group, therefore, they support certain ideas over others. This reinforces and normalises certain decision-making logic, even when it may be illogical. This heuristic impacts upon group decision making as it can force group members to follow certain trains of thought or ideals which limits their ability to see alternative possibilities. Hallsworth et al.,(n.d.) provide two main drivers for group reinforcement. Firstly, people can be influenced by other’s opinions even if they have an alternative view. The influence can be so strong that people within a group conform to a certain viewpoint even when other’s views are incorrect. Secondly, social pressure within groups (from leaders in particular) could mean group members that oppose group thinking will be relegated in primacy and loose status, which could raise tensions further and disintegrate the process.
What do you consider to be sustainable and have you ever been caught in a group reinforcing predicament in an IEM situation. Leave a comment - especially if you have alternative views.
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