• Most of of the transition challenges are far upstream, and can only be changed through societal engagement in policy and systems design (my italics)
• We cannot expect to get away with isolating ourselves in pockets of ideal living - we have to engage in the large-scale (re)design of our living places, particularly cities and their bio-regions
• "the proper scale at which to design resilience is not at the household, but in a mesh of urban districts (incorporating energy innovations and transit-orientation) and regional watersheds, foodsheds, transportation systems and energy sources"
• need for compact, dense cities surrounded by farmland that can meet local needs
• There is no avoiding significant climate catastrophe now. "To live in this future, we'll need a few things. We'll need a model of urban prosperity that can be accepted as equitable and shared by all. We need tools for sharing innovation and spreading that model quickly to everyone. We need alliances and international agreements that will help soften the blow where its landing the hardest, help refugees, stabilize failed states, prevent wars, stop genocides, preserve global public health systems and essential governance tools (like nuclear non-proliferation agreements) and so on. And we need to be rugged enough to make it through the very hard times that we know are coming."
• "We need to have the capacity to change quickly, to reinvent, to distribute innovation and explore new realities. ... we'll need to get faster and more creative, not slower and more traditional; we'll need to get bigger and more systemic, not smaller and more spread out; we'll need to get networked and more complex, not simpler and more isolated."
• "Maybe we need less relinquishment and doomerism, and more radical vision and confidence. Maybe we need to start to take responsibility for all of it, and get big enough inside to handle that gracefully. To live in the future we've made, we need to make ourselves people of the future, not reflect imperfect idealized understandings of the past."
• "Forget gardening suburban lawns -- help us redesign urban foodsheds for millions. Forget cohousing -- help us retrofit an entire districts with green buildings, clean energy and green infrastructure. Forget biodiesel -- help us plan a whole new regional transportation systems. Forget ecocity ideas about making your neighborhood look like nature -- help us densifying our existing cities, changing how they connect to ecosystems so they work like nature. Forget light green frugality, household tips and small steps -- help reveal the backstory of the lives we lead and trigger a revolution in sustainable design, post-ownership and genuine prosperity. Forget countercultures. Make the real culture better. Get the new context, embrace the new tools, apply your hard-won insights to the new problems. "

Dutch Area Co-ordinators

We need to be able to count on Dutch Area Co-ordinators to:

·       Have respect from key players from in the Netherlands in their Area

·       Have expertise in their Area

·       Engage key players from the Netherlands and Area in the Meshwork

·       Ensure key know-how from the Netherlands in their Area is brought into the Meshwork

Dutch Sector Co-ordinators

We need to be able to count on a Dutch Sector Co-ordinator to:

·       Have respect from key players in the Netherlands in their Sector

·       Have convening power nationally in their Sector

·       Engage key players from the Netherlands in their Sector in the Meshwork

·       Ensure key know-how in their Sector is brought into the Meshwork

·       Work in an international team of National Sector Co-ordinators

Please contact Peter Merry if you are interested.

International Meshworker

We need to be able to count on an international meshworker to:

·       Understand global systemic change

·       Be able to engage multiple sectors of society

·       Have a quality of inner clarity and focus

·       Work as part of an international team

National Meshworker

We need to be able to count on a national meshworker to:

·       Understand systemic change

·       Engage effectively across different sectors of their society

·       Have a quality of inner clarity and focus

·       Co-ordinate a national meshwork around areas and sectors

·       Work as part of a national and international team

Meshwork Facilitator

We need to be able to count on a Meshwork Facilitator to:

·       Design and facilitate meshwork meetings

·       Understand and embody an Integral perspective

·       Participate in an international community of practice of meshwork facilitators

International Area Co-ordinators

We need to be able to count on an International Area Co-ordinator to:

·       Have respect from key players in their Area

·       Have expertise in their Area

·       Engage key players from their Area in the Meshwork

·       Ensure key know-how in their Area is brought into the Meshwork

·       Co-ordinate National Area Co-ordinators for their Area

·       Work in an international team

National Area Co-ordinators

We need to be able to count on a National Area Co-ordinator to:

·       Have respect from key players from their country in their Area

·       Have expertise in their Area

·       Engage key players from their country and Area in the Meshwork

·       Ensure key know-how from their country in their Area is brought into the Meshwork

International Sector Co-ordinators

We need to be able to count on an International Area Co-ordinator to:

·       Have respect from key players in their Sector

·       Have convening power in their Sector

·       Engage key players from their Sector in the Meshwork

·       Ensure key know-how in their Sector is brought into the Meshwork

·       Co-ordinate National Sector Co-ordinators for their Sector

·       Work in an international team

National Sector Co-ordinators

We need to be able to count on a National Sector Co-ordinator to:

·       Have respect from key players from their country in their Sector

·       Have convening power nationally in their Sector

·       Engage key players from their country in their Sector in the Meshwork

·       Ensure key know-how in their Sector is brought into the Meshwork

·       Work in an international team of National Sector Co-ordinators

Below are 3 key roles that need to be played to support the further development of the global 2020 Climate Solutions Meshwork. Please contact Peter Merry if you are interested in playing one of these roles. There are also a number of more specific roles for your location or area of expertise, that can be seen here.

A note on Language

Areas refer to the key Areas in the 2020 Climate Solutions Meshwork

Sectors refer to societal sectors as identified in the 2020 Climate Solutions meshwork

The meshwork is hosted online at www.2020climatesolutions.org

Areas Co-ordinator

The global meshwork needs to be able to count on this person to:

18.0pt; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo3;">·      Identify and invite people to fill the roles of International and National Area Co-ordinators:

International Area Co-ordinators

We need to be able to count on an International Area Co-ordinator to:

• ·       Have respect from key players in their Area
• ·       Have expertise in their Area
• ·       Engage key players from their Area in the Meshwork
• ·       Ensure key know-how in their Area is brought into the Meshwork
• ·       Co-ordinate National Area Co-ordinators for their Area
• ·       Work in an international team

National Area Co-ordinators

We need to be able to count on a National Area Co-ordinator to:

• ·       Have respect from key players from their country in their Area
• ·       Have expertise in their Area
• ·       Engage key players from their country and Area in the Meshwork
• ·      Ensure key know-how from their country in their Area is brought into the Meshwork

Sectors Co-ordinator

The global meshwork needs to be able to count on this person to:

·      Identify and invite people to fill the roles of International and National Sector Co-ordinators

International Sector Co-ordinators

We need to be able to count on an International Area Co-ordinator to:

• ·       Have respect from key players in their Sector
• ·       Have convening power in their Sector
• ·       Engage key players from their Sector in the Meshwork
• ·       Ensure key know-how in their Sector is brought into the Meshwork
• ·       Co-ordinate National Sector Co-ordinators for their Sector
• ·       Work in an international team 

National Sector Co-ordinators

We need to be able to count on a National Sector Co-ordinator to:

• ·       Have respect from key players from their country in their Sector
• ·       Have convening power nationally in their Sector
• ·       Engage key players from their country in their Sector in the Meshwork
• ·       Ensure key know-how in their Sector is brought into the Meshwork
• ·       Work in an international team of National Sector Co-ordinators

Countries Co-ordinator

The global meshwork needs to be able to count on this person to:

·      Identify and invite people to fill the role of National Meshworker

National Meshworker

We need to be able to count on a national meshworker to:

• ·       Understand systemic change
• ·       Engage effectively across different sectors of their society
• ·       Have a quality of inner clarity and focus
• ·       Co-ordinate a national meshwork of focus areas and sectors
• ·       Work as part of a national and international team 

"This is not a natural disaster story. This is a poverty story. It’s a story about poorly constructed buildings, bad infrastructure and terrible public services. On Thursday, President Obama told the people of Haiti: “You will not be forsaken; you will not be forgotten.” If he is going to remain faithful to that vow then he is going to have to use this tragedy as an occasion to rethink our approach to global poverty. He’s going to have to acknowledge a few difficult truths."

Chantal Gill'ard's Dutch clarification is below.

Relatie klimaatverandering en rampen
 
Het feit dat men zo onthutst reageert op mijn tweet over de link tussen klimaat verandering en de ramp in Haïti geeft aan dat internationale solidariteit springlevend is in de Nederlandse samenleving. Daar ben ik blij om. Wat wel verbeterd dient te worden is de wijze van communiceren met mensen die in eerste instantie een tegengestelde mening is toegedaan. Het begint door te vragen naar nader uitleg, vooral als het gaat om summiere berichtjes via twitter.
 
In mijn tweet heb ik de link gemaakt tussen klimaatverandering en rampen. Dus niet tussen klimaatverandering en de aardbeving. Het is een essentieel verschil.
 
Het is een lang bekend maar weinig erkend probleem dat de landen in de Caribische regio steeds zwaarder worden getroffen door de klimaatsverandering. Verwarming van de aarde door CO2 uitstoot en stijging van de zeespiegel vormen een gevaar voor de eilanden in de regio en zo ook voor Haïti. Daarbij komt het feit dat ieder jaar deze landen, wiens economie veelal gebaseerd is op toerisme en landbouw, getroffen kunnen worden door orkanen. Door haar in elkaar gestorte economie en inadequate politieke structuur is Haïti minder weerbaar dan haar buurlanden. Veelal is het land getroffen door een combinatie van politieke revoluties, bodem erosie, en orkanen. De aardbeving komt nog eens daarbij. En mijn hart gaat uit naar de vele slachtoffers die tijdens de voortdurende rampspoed bleven geloven in hun land. Zo ook naar de vele hulpverleners, NGOs en particuliere initiatieven, die Haïti nooit in de steek hebben gelaten.

Mijn tweet was een oproep dat bij de wederopbouw van Haïti rekening wordt gehouden met de ecologische en politiek-economische factoren.

12.1.    Womens eduction

• Trainings for women in rural areas to learn how to regocnize and deal with climate change effects, including linking to family planning (3 kids per woman by 2020) water, food, etc.
• Increase resource scarity will lead to increased male violence against women & children: more frappe, assaults, prostitution. We must re-educate men and help women & children resist made violence.

12.2.    Access to finance

• Barrier: international targets and goals have not been effected on local level due to capacity finance and awareness.

12.3.    Legal rights

• Exploitation includes exploitation of womens bodies please don’t forget about womens rights.

12.4.    Womens health

12.5.    Political representation

12.6.    Cultural and socialtal empowerment

• Equal recognition for women and construction industry and for women professionals to be respected equally with men.
• Greater of understanding of what is neede for women to live to their full potention.

12.7.    Easy access to birth control

I first heard of the metaphor of the imaginal cells from Elisabet Sahtouris, an evolutionary biologist. The essence of it is in the following, quoting directly from a mail from Elisabet today when I asked her for her latest version (my emphasis):

"A caterpillar eats up to three hundred times its own weight in a day, devastating many plants in the process, and continues eating until it’s so bloated that it hangs itself up and goes to sleep. In its sleep its skin hardens into a chrysalis and then, within the chrysalis, within the body of the caterpillar, while it sleeps, a new and very different kind of creature, the butterfly, starts to form. Now this was confusing for a long time to biologists asking how this could happen, that a new genome could come into play to form a different creature? They knew that metamorphosis occurs in a number of different insects, but it was not known until very recently that nature did a lot of mixing and matching of very different genomes in early evolutionary times. The butterfly genome is held by imaginal discs of primitive cells, like stem cells, in the folds of the caterpillar’s skin all its life, never developing until the crisis of overeating and fatigue allowed these dormant cells to develop. 

Metamorphosis makes a good metaphor for us to think about in considering the great changes globalisation is bringing about. Our bloated old system is rapidly becoming defunct while the 'blueprint' of a new and very different society that has long been held by many humans who dreamt of a better world, is now emerging like a butterfly, as a  solution to the crisis of overconsumption - a way of living lightly on Earth; a way of seeing life not in the metaphors and models of mechanism but in those of living organisms."

As with any living organism, a key moment in the birth of the butterfly is the increasing interconnection and differentiation between its cells. In other words, the new cells of the butterfly start to connect up as they recognise each other as part of the new whole, and in that process also differentiate, as different cells take on different functions.

Now take that story from nature and translate it into the context of global change, with the metamorphosis that we as humanity and the planet are currently undergoing, as our old systems collapse and something new tries to emerge. As we become increasingly aware of the inadequacy of our current systems to solve the complex nature of the challenges we are currently facing, we go into mass experimentation and questing mode (see Footnote 1). These organisations, initiatives and individuals are the "imaginal cells" of the potential future of human civilisation. When we begin to see ourselves in the context of a bigger emerging whole, and look around to see what everyone else is doing, we become clearer about our identity and the specific piece of the puzzle we hold, as we know that others are holding other pieces and that we are connected in our quest for the new civilisation. We interconnect and differentiate.

The imaginal cells strategy therefore contains a number of key elements:
- become aware of ourselves as part of a new emerging whole
- identify the key functions that humanity needs to perform at this time on the planet
- find the people and organisations who are already performing those functions or who have the potential to perform them more effectively
- identify the break-through solutions and best practices that already exist and are making a significnat difference, and make them visible and useable to others working in contexts where that solution could be applicable
- enable the people, organisations and solutions to align behind the core functions, and support a rapid action-learning dynamic-steering implementation process whilst continually sharing our learning as we go along

There is a two-way dynamic between identifying core functions, and looking at people and solutions that are already there. From a "bottom-up" crowd-sourcing perspective, we simply need to look at what people are already doing to identify the core functions, as we are the planet responding to the dis-ease in our body, and as a part of the natural system ourselves, we are responding naturally to the challenge. From a "top-down" "use best of existing research" perspective, we can take a look at work that has already been done to identify the core functions of any healthy living system (such as that of James Grier Miller) and design from that template. In reality, we create dynamic interaction between the two, where Millers's core functions for example become a starting point from which to compare how humanity is really responding. We ask ourselves if what we see adds to the framework, and the other way round - how such a framework can help inform our collective activity, see blindspots in our response and initiate new activities.

With the meshwork that we have been evolving as part of the 2020 Climate Leadership Campaign, we started by asking a well-informed international group of 230 people what they felt the key areas were that we needed to be focusing on and prioritising as humanity at this time. This gave us the framework that you can see in the case story of the launch of the 2020 Campaign in Brazil. Then as we went into Copenhagen, we asked hundreds of people as they passed through the meshwork space whether they thought that we had the right set of priority areas and conditions, and we are currently working through that feedback to create the next iteration of the framework. You can track the evolution of the online meshwork at www.2020climatesolutions.org.

In the meantime, Marilyn Hamilton and I have been working through James Grier Miller's work and translating it into the global change context as well as cities context. The next step in all of this is to compare what we have come with there with the latest bottom-up iteration of the framework.

So applying the imaginal cells change strategy is really quite simple:
- identify the framework of areas and priorities that we should be working on for a sustainable future (for any scale - community, city, school, organisation, nation)
- find the people and organisations that naturally help make progress in those areas
- identify existing break-through knowledge and solutions that are already making a big difference
- align people, organisations and knowledge behind the core functions (areas/priorities) and support collaborative implementation

Note that this strategy chooses to put attention on the emergence of the new, and does not pay attention to the struggles of the old system as it attempts to cling on. It is inspired by Buckminster Fuller's quote to "build a new system that makes the old one obsolete", rather than try and convince the old to change. The old system has a job to do - run everything until the new is ready to take over! So we can't expect it to change just like that into the new. However, that does not mean we do not engage with people and organisations who are currently participating in the old system. It remains an open invitation to anyone anywhere who wants to be part of building the radically new future. The new system runs on different principles to the old, and we refuse to play by the old principles as they are simply disfunctional and drain energy. It is the principles and practices that guide our discernment, not people. The question to people is whether they are willing to play the new game. If so, let's explore which piece of the puzzle you may hold.

The imaginal cells strategy is intentional and light, experimental and rigorous, inclusive and discerning. It is the best I know how to do right now - inspired by nature itself, as we learn to remember who we really are and work out what it means to act as the earth evolving ourself to our next phase.

Feel free to be in touch if you'd like to know more or be involved. Behind these ideas is a well-developed and ever evolving practice, combining the best of social engagement technologies, with performance and quality management discipline, and an online collaboration and implementation platform to support. It's replicable and scalable. And it's very energising to be part of the emerging butterfly...

Footnote 1
Jean-Francois Rischard, former vice-President of the World Bank in Europe gives an eloqent analysis from an insider on the inadequacy of current systems, the Dutch minister for the Environment Jacqueline Cramer returned from Copenhagen stating that the UN was essentially not up to the task, and Prof Ervin Laszlo's work describes precisely the nature of these non-linear civilisational transitions and phases of mass-experimentation.

For more information on Kiwah go to: http://www.kiwah.org or mail us at: info@kiwah.org