December 2006
Donella Meadows Leadership Fellows
Edie Farwell, Beth Sawin, Andrew Jones, Don Seville, Daniella Malin
Fellow Terrie Lind went from simply doing good work for her local Planned Parenthood to getting invitations to speak professionally to much wider audiences. She said, “Systems thinking helps me sift through, find salient details and make a graphic representation so I can speak effectively with diverse and divergent audiences – not all sympathetic.” Alumni Fellow Virginia Farley said at a recent alumni event that when she starts to get overwhelmed by the challenges of work and life, she thinks of the Fellows Program and is renewed with hope. The Fellows Program remains a valued support for both the alumni Fellows, who continue to maintain contact, and the new class of Fellows, now nearing completion. The application announcement has just gone out for our third class of Fellows. The curriculum for this cohort will include a focus on climate change because the scope and magnitude of climate change make it an ideal practice field for systems thinking, reflective conversation and vision and because the challenge of addressing climate change requires the attention of all of us.
Sustainable Food Laboratory
Hal Hamilton, Don Seville, Susie Sweitzer, Christopher Landry, Daniella Malin, Diana Wright
Rome city schools used one finely honed tool as a lever to completely shift the way that city feeds its children in the last six years. Now, through the Sustainable Food Lab, NY City school administrators and representatives from large U.S. food distribution companies along with others are learning from the Italians so they can provide more local and sustainable food to school children here. In supplying fruits and vegetables to restaurants and cafeterias, the giant food service company SYSCO has reduced 300,000 pounds of pesticides in the first year of a new program, and the Sustainable Food Lab is helping to multiply this impact through other companies. The Sustainable Food Lab is a group of over 70 business, public sector, and civil society leaders from around the globe who are working together, facilitated by Sustainability Institute staff. Now in entering its third year the Food Lab is starting to see early results of its efforts. Green Mountain Coffee Roasters and Costco have developed ways to figure out how to measure and improve the lives of small farmers in Central America. The large French retail chain Carrefour, is putting its money in service of small fishermen in Africa and more. Most of all, the Sustainable Food Lab is fostering networks of relationships among dozens of senior leaders of large and small organizations. Their purpose is to mainstream sustainability in food and agriculture.
Our Climate Ourselves
Beth Sawin, Phil Rice
Our Climate Ourselves supports people educating themselves, their friends, neighbors, and co-workers about climate change by producing materials and ways of communicating how the climate system works and the choices open to us for living within its limits. In 2006 we developed and streamlined the OCO Introductory Presentation, increasing the level of interaction built into the program. In addition to a rigorous examination of the science, we focus on helping people express and work with their feelings about climate change, speak out of a sense of personal urgency about it, clarify a personal vision of a post-fossil-fuel world, and set and work towards specific personal intentions for action on the issue. While the facts of climate change on their own can be demoralizing, we find that acknowledging and drawing strength from people's feelings and sense of vision helps groups find a determined positive stance from which to act. Approximately 300 people - college students, business leaders and community members - participated in an OCO Introductory session. In 2007 we will focus on expanding the reach of the OCO approach with more talks, development of the OCO website, development of an OCO intensive training for leaders, production of an OCO video, and a regular Our Climate Ourselves column series. In other climate related work, we are also developing an online simulation to demonstrate that dramatic action is needed to keep greenhouse gasses below dangerous levels and WHY this true.
The Meadowlark Project
Nancy Gabriel, Hal Hamilton, Susie Sweitzer and Don Seville
The Meadowlark Project is a Leadership Laboratory on the future of the Northern Great Plains. It is organized by Northern Great Plains Inc, a Fargo-based non-profit that has partnered with Sustainability Institute for this project. The goal of the Meadowlark Project is to create living examples of how the northern Great Plains region can be a place of opportunity for all people. The Meadowlark team is a group of 30 leaders from the business, non-profit and governmental sectors in the northern Great Plains who are participating in an intensive 18-month social change project designed to find new ways to address long-standing, systemic problems in the region. Team members have begun constructing a map of the current realities and emerging future of the region and are currently on “Learning Journeys” to better understand the issues the region is facing.
Using Systems Thinking to Improve Public Health Strategies
Andrew Jones, Don Seville
SI is working with public health officials in three areas: diabetes, HIV and hypertension. In Atlanta, SI is helping the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention improve strategies to address hypertension and with their nation-wide effort to reduce Type 2 diabetes in the U.S. A system focus brings more emphasis to prevention of the disease via changes in the food system, built environment, and access to preventive healthcare. The SI team has teamed up with others at Emory to develop a system dynamics model and is now using it to work with leaders in the states of California, Minnesota, Florida, Tennessee, and Alabama to set goals and develop improved strategies. In LA, SI is working with the LA Commission on HIV to use systems thinking and diagramming to assess, evaluate, and improve their approaches to HIV care and prevention in the county.
Mississippi River Basin Alliance- Gulf Hypoxia Action to Outcome Mapping
Philip Rice
Systemic change in the watershed is necessary to bring about improved water quality in the Gulf of Mexico into which the Mississippi flows. The Mississippi River Basin Alliance has contracted SI to facilitate a strategic planning session using the Action to Outcome mapping methodology developed by SI staff. The workshop is focused on ways to improve the water quality in the northern Gulf of Mexico and will include stakeholders representing disciplines from agriculture and fisheries to economy to wetland biology.
Creation of a Learning Laboratory for Wildlife Managers
Philip Rice
SI has teamed up with Chris Soderquist (Pontifex Consulting) to create a training environment for state level wildlife managers. The goal is to create a realistic simulation of the experience of managing a new disease in the context of a state agency. Both the introduction of a disease into the wildlife population and the interactions of the wildlife manager with the various stakeholder groups in the state are modeled. The implications of this emergent disease involve the affected species, hunters, private landowners, the state agencies and adjacent states. The wildlife manager can engage in the simulated reality to improve their own understanding of how to manage the disease as well as how to manage all of the other affected groups. Thus the wildlife manager can confront the complex reality in a place where they have the breathing room to learn.
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Edie Farwell — efarwell@sustainer.org
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Dear Folks is a letter continuing Donella’s monthly tradition of reflections, news, articles, and professional and personal accounts of community, farm and Sustainability Institute happenings.
Opinion columns by Sustainability Institute staff can be read on-line. Several of the SI staff also sends out their own columns by email. If you would like to receive these periodic emails of opinion columns, please write to each author:
Elizabeth Sawin — bethsawin@sustainer.org
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