tag:theconversation.com,2011:/us/topics/millennium-project-3128/articlesMillennium Project – The Conversation2016-10-07T06:56:18Ztag:theconversation.com,2011:article/655682016-10-07T06:56:18Z2016-10-07T06:56:18ZTo boldly go toward new frontiers, we first need to learn from our colonial past<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/140834/original/image-20161007-32698-8dgk2y.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">The idea that there's a moral imperative for humans to expand beyond Earth is echoed by influential proponents of space exploration. </span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/tamaracraiu/4504728673/">Tamara Craiu/Flickr</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/">CC BY-NC-ND</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>How should we understand the idea of the frontier in the contemporary world, with spacecraft sailing <a href="http://voyager.jpl.nasa.gov/where/">beyond the solar system</a> and <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_computing">quantum computing</a> taking us deeper into the heart of matter?</p>
<p>Many view human evolution as a continual expansion into new territories, from out-of-Africa to the “high frontier” of space. Frontiers, then, are associated with exploration, conquest, and struggles against hostile nature. </p>
<p>They can be seen as a challenge to solve with technology, going hand-in-hand with human progress. But the concept also comes with a lot of baggage. </p>
<h2>From stone age to space age?</h2>
<p>Once upon a time, the story goes, the world was full of space for humans to expand into. The genus <em>Homo</em> radiated <a href="http://phys.org/news/2016-09-human-dna-tied-exodus-africa.html">out from temperate Africa</a>, colonising the tundras of Ice Age Europe, and the continents and islands of Asia and Australasia. </p>
<p>As the climate warmed from 12,000 years ago, populations increased and people with domesticated animals and crops expanded further, turning <a href="https://news.virginia.edu/content/agricultural-methods-early-civilizations-may-have-altered-global-climate-study-suggests">forests into fields</a> along the way.</p>
<p>On one side of the frontier was tame “culture”; on the other wild “nature”. Humans proved tremendously successful at adapting to these new environments using technologies such as fire, stone tools and metallurgy. </p>
<p>By the 20th century, technology had enabled humans to move beyond the narrow band of pressure and temperature where our bodies had evolved, to explore the deep sea, the Earth’s poles, and outer space. Special suits and vehicles enabled travel to these remote places where life at the extremes promised revelations about our place in the universe.</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/QSxI0OOjR0Y?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
</figure>
<p>This story is captured well in a famous scene from the 1968 film <em><a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0062622/">2001: A Space Odyssey</a></em> in which a bone tool, flung into the sky by an ancestral being, is transformed into an Earth-orbiting spacecraft. </p>
<h2>The other side of the frontier</h2>
<p>What’s often left out of this popular narrative is the perspective of those on the other side of the frontier. Consider colonial expansion from the 15th century onwards, when European nations sent ships to the southern hemisphere in search of new resources. </p>
<p>European invaders painted Indigenous people as Stone Age “savages” and cast themselves as the pinnacle of human evolution, entitled to lay claim to <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terra_incognita">terra incognita</a> and <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terra_nullius">terra nullius</a>. </p>
<p>The conquest of frontiers in the American West, the Australian outback, South America and numerous other places, was often brutal and bloody. The expanding front didn’t bring “civilisation” to supposedly benighted people; the result was rather <a href="http://www.australianstogether.org.au/stories/detail/colonisation">genocide, disease, environmental degradation, alienation and poverty</a>.</p>
<p>Utopia did not lie waiting in the New World. </p>
<p>Yet, despite the weight of historical evidence, people continue to assume that new frontiers beyond the Earth can <a href="http://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/stephen-hawking-space-travel-will-save-mankind-and-we-should-colonise-other-planets-10058811.html">provide refuge</a> from old injustices perpetuated on this planet.</p>
<h2>Panspermia and the moral imperative</h2>
<p><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panspermia">Panspermia</a> is the theory that the universe is filled with life. Micro-organisms and pre-biotic molecules travel on comets and asteroids between the worlds, flourishing when and where conditions are right.</p>
<p>The expansion of life into every available niche is thought to be a natural process that’s taken place countless times in this, and other, galaxies. The corollary of this idea is that enabling the spread of human life throughout the universe is justified.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/140833/original/image-20161007-32718-1sndeuf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/140833/original/image-20161007-32718-1sndeuf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=469&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/140833/original/image-20161007-32718-1sndeuf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=469&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/140833/original/image-20161007-32718-1sndeuf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=469&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/140833/original/image-20161007-32718-1sndeuf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=589&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/140833/original/image-20161007-32718-1sndeuf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=589&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/140833/original/image-20161007-32718-1sndeuf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=589&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The trappings of status in the ‘real’ world are just a matter of coding in the virtual one.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/andreasstawinski/15568818582/">Cyber-Andi/Flickr</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd/4.0/">CC BY-ND</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>To date, evidence that micro-organisms can survive journeys in space, even if encased in meteoroids, is scant. Critics also point out that the theory merely delays the real question, which is how life started. </p>
<p>While the panspermia theory is controversial, the idea that there’s a moral imperative for humans to expand beyond Earth is echoed by <a href="http://www.spacequotes.com/">influential proponents</a> of space exploration. </p>
<p>Consider <a>these thoughts</a>) from American science fiction writer <a href="http://www.raybradbury.com/">Ray Bradbury</a>, from his 1971 conversation with <a href="http://www.carlsagan.com/">Carl Sagan</a>, and <a href="http://www.biography.com/people/arthur-c-clarke-9249620">Arthur C. Clarke</a>, on the eve of NASA’s Mariner 9 spacecraft entering orbit around Mars:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>What’s the use of looking at Mars through a telescope, sitting on panels, writing books, if it isn’t to guarantee, not just the survival of mankind, but mankind surviving forever!</p>
</blockquote>
<p>And here’s space-travel advocate, <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marshall_Savage">Marshall Savage</a> in his 1992 book <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1965968.The_Millennial_Project?from_search=true">The Millennial Project: Colonising the Galaxy in Eight Easy Steps</a>: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>We need to rupture the barriers that confine us to the land mass of a single planet. By breaking out, we can assure our survival and the continuation of Life.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Such views are increasingly attracting trenchant criticism, as scholars “<a href="https://theconversation.com/want-to-understand-the-decolonisation-debate-heres-your-reading-list-51279">decolonise</a>” knowledge and expose how the simple narrative of frontier expansion obscures the cause of terrestrial inequalities.</p>
<h2>Islands of the interior</h2>
<p>Perhaps the frontiers to be conquered in the 21st century are not spatial, but virtual. </p>
<p>Rapid advances in computing technology and data storage have renewed speculation about the idea, so often described in science fiction, of <a href="http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-35786771">uploading personalities</a> into a digital environment. Here worlds can be tailored to suit individual or collective taste without environmental impact. </p>
<figure class="align-left ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/139213/original/image-20160926-31862-7iavo4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/139213/original/image-20160926-31862-7iavo4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=821&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/139213/original/image-20160926-31862-7iavo4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=821&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/139213/original/image-20160926-31862-7iavo4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=821&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/139213/original/image-20160926-31862-7iavo4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1032&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/139213/original/image-20160926-31862-7iavo4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1032&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/139213/original/image-20160926-31862-7iavo4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1032&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Tsiolkovsky imagined that the free energy of the sun would meet all human requirements for warmth and sustenance.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Russian Academy of Science</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>In the 1890s, Russian space pioneer <a href="http://www.mapcon.com/konstantin-tsiolkovsky-role-in-rocket-science">Konstantin Tsiolkovsky</a> hypothesised that living in microgravity (when people and objects appear to be weightless) would eliminate social disparities. Basking in the full energy of the sun, with no need for houses or furniture, everyone would be equal. </p>
<p>While this vision has not been realised, digital habitats seem to offer similar potential. The trappings of status in the “real” world, with all their attendant costs, need only be imagined to come into being; a new body or an elaborate castle are just a matter of coding.</p>
<p>But our experience with cyberspace to date suggests that class, race and gender <a href="http://culturalpolitics.net/digital_cultures/global">still structure access to resources</a>. The impacts of colonialism have contributed to a “<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_divide">digital divide</a>” that mirrors the old geopolitical frontiers.</p>
<p>Virtual communities can also be places where the worst of human behaviour is nurtured. Some argue that this is because people don’t yet perceive the online environment as “real”. Hence they think the social consequences of their aggression cannot be real. </p>
<p>How, then, do we define reality when human interactions and material culture become numbers stored in machines?</p>
<p>It may be that the ultimate frontiers of the future will be boundaries between different levels of engagement with the material world. The “haves” may withdraw into quantum computers, rather than colonising other planets, and leave the “have-nots” to tackle the global unpredictability of the <a href="http://www.ibtimes.com/what-anthropocene-epoch-humans-climate-change-have-brought-new-geological-era-experts-2408732">Anthropocene</a> era.</p>
<h2>A thirst for the new</h2>
<p>If crossing frontiers consistently fails to deliver utopia and instead replicates terrestrial inequalities, is there any cause for optimism?</p>
<p>People on Earth avidly follow the discovery of <a href="https://theconversation.com/explainer-how-do-you-find-exoplanets-24153">expolanets</a> (a planet that orbits a star outside our solar system). Witness the frenzy that accompanied the announcement of the <a href="http://news.sky.com/story/new-planet-found-which-humans-could-colonise-10550245">potentially-habitable Proxima b</a> in August. </p>
<p>The live exploration of inaccessible ocean landscapes through remote cameras, like those of the <a href="http://www.noaa.gov/">US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s</a> research vessel <a href="http://oceanexplorer.noaa.gov/okeanos/explorations/explorations.html">Okeanos Explorer</a>, is equally compelling.</p>
<p>Humans, it seems, have a thirst for escape. We hope that elsewhere – wherever that is – things may be better. </p>
<p>But this particular version of elsewhere has proved to be elusive. In the end, frontiers are not crisp lines on maps, but complex historical processes. As legendary explorer <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freya_Stark">Freya Stark</a> (1893-1993) said, “every frontier is doomed to produce an opposition beyond it”. </p>
<p>This, then, is our mission: to reconcile the opposites on the near side, before boldly going further into the beyond.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/65568/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Alice Gorman is a member of the Space Industry Association of Australia and the Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies.</span></em></p>Technology had enabled humans to explore the deep sea, the Earth’s poles, and outer space. But we shouldn’t forget historical lessons about frontiers in the process of traversing them.Alice Gorman, Senior Lecturer in archaeology and space studies, Flinders UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/74602012-06-27T20:41:15Z2012-06-27T20:41:15ZChallenge 15: Let’s get ethical; embracing the cosmos leads to better decision-making<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/11444/original/swgwhq48-1338952523.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">We are the world: under a cosmopolitan ethos, citizens from all corners of the globe are united by a universal, common language. </span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">hojusaram</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>In part 15 of our multi-disciplinary Millennium Project series, Edward Spence argues that the modern world is crying out for a return to classical cosmopolitanism.</p>
<hr>
<h2><a href="http://www.millennium-project.org/millennium/Global_Challenges/chall-15.html">Global challenge 15</a>: How can ethical considerations become more routinely incorporated into global decisions?</h2>
<p><em>When anyone asked him where he came from, he said, “I am a citizen of the world”.</em></p>
<p>Diogenes Laertius, <em>Life of Diogenes the Cynic</em></p>
<p>My Greek friend Luke has been telling me about his current passion - playing backgammon on the internet. His latest contest was with a Turk from Istanbul. Two individuals, who have never met before and have traditionally been divided by hostile boundaries of ethnicity, religion and politics for over five centuries, came together for a game of backgammon and a chinwag in a way unimaginable before the internet.</p>
<p>Can the internet provide a global medium for the development and promotion of cosmopolitan ethics that can transcend ethnic, religious, cultural and social conflicts? Can the cultivation of cosmopolitan ethics provide the platform not only for a better understanding between individuals involved in such conflicts, but for these differences to be transcended? </p>
<p>Cosmopolitanism is a central belief of Stoic philosophy. It is the belief that human beings, as rational creatures, are inter-connected as part of the One Rational Cosmos. As fellow-members of the Cosmos, all human beings share a common kinship and equal moral status. They are all cosmopolitans, citizens of the world.</p>
<p>Although antithetical to cosmopolitanism, colonialism (both ancient and modern) has advanced the cause of cosmopolitanism by providing one of its essential practical features - namely, that of a universal common language – for if universal reason is to spread and become the foundation of human relationships, it must be able to be expressed in a universal language, common to all people. The new globalisation of economic rationalism and free trade is determined not by gunboat diplomacy, but multinational corporate policy. Its opponents suggest that this is another form of world colonisation exercised though the money-market for the benefit of the rich and powerful. If true, the new globalisation can be perceived as another form of world colonisation, albeit an economic one. </p>
<p>Slavery, as practised under the old colonialist regimes, has been replaced with sweatshops in third-world countries, where consumer goods are manufactured for the affluent citizens of the corporate world. In his book, <a href="http://www.amazon.com/The-Global-Soul-Shopping-Search/dp/0679776117">The Global Soul</a>, Pico Iyer refers to this new type of globalisation as ‘cocacolanisation’ - a globalisation in which companies become more important than countries and people.</p>
<p>As it treats people primarily as consumers, economic globalisation has no interest in promoting cosmopolitanism in accordance with the Stoic ideas of eudaimonia (happiness and well-being), autarkeia (inner-freedom and self-reliance) and a simple lifestyle based on the pursuit of virtue. It views people not as ends to be allowed to develop their full human potential for their self-fulfilment and moral benefit, but rather as economic units of consumption that provide the means for generating profits for large multinational corporations. However, as in the case of colonial globalisation, economic globalisation is providing, even if unintentionally, the means for advancing the practical possibility of cosmopolitanism. It provides and supports a vast information network accessible by <a href="http://www.internetworldstats.com/stats.htm">billions of people around the globe</a>, which can be used to lay down the foundations of cosmopolitanism.</p>
<p>When used for ethical ends, the ubiquity of social media is contributing to the realisation of cyber-cosmopolitanism. Closely associated with the cosmic perspective of stoic philosophy is the communal perspective. For the Stoics, unlike Aristotle before them, the polis is the cosmopolis - not the city-state, nor any single country - but the whole world.</p>
<p>The cosmic and the social dimension of the internet provide a perfectly suitable medium for the dissemination of cosmopolitanism. Although concepts of a cosmic dimension and community engagement underlie both cosmopolitanism and the internet, the latter does not yet embody the other essential Stoic features relevant to cosmopolitanism. Significantly, what is missing is the practice of wisdom; understood not as a form of information, but as a way of being in the world requiring one to live a good life both individually and communally in accordance with virtue. </p>
<p>More than information, wisdom requires moral transformation. More than knowledge, wisdom requires practical ethics - both essential for developing trust amongst people. Perhaps this would occur not through revolution, but through an evolution of a global spirit. Using the internet to propagate the precepts and practices of cosmopolitanism we may be able to create the first world cosmopolis. The realisation of global ethics can only occur through the adoption of cosmopolitan ethics and that is our biggest challenge: how to become true cosmpolitans in thought and in practice. Cyber-citizens may have already made a start by creating the cosmic cyber-world. Let’s hope cosmopolitan ethics follows next.</p>
<p><em>Comments welcome below.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/7460/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Edward Spence does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>In part 15 of our multi-disciplinary Millennium Project series, Edward Spence argues that the modern world is crying out for a return to classical cosmopolitanism. Global challenge 15: How can ethical…Edward Spence, Senior Research Fellow at the ARC Special Research Centre for Applied Philosophy and Public Ethics, Charles Sturt UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/75642012-06-26T20:35:37Z2012-06-26T20:35:37ZChallenge 14: the road to innovation transformation<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/11566/original/p3tndd5k-1339125008.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">If we're going to hit our innovation targets, we need to harness growth. </span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">nyoin</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>In part 14 of our multi-disciplinary Millennium Project series, Stephen McGrail argues that boosting innovation requires us to change our thinking as much as our technology.</p>
<hr>
<h2><a href="http://www.millennium-project.org/millennium/Global_Challenges/chall-14.html">Global challenge 14</a>: How can scientific and technological breakthroughs be accelerated to improve the human condition?</h2>
<p>We are in the early stages of learning how to harness science and technology – and more broadly, innovation – to help meet contemporary challenges, such as climate change and Australia’s rapidly ageing population. </p>
<p>Transforming our approach to innovation is particularly important for emerging science and technologies. Recent events highlight the issues being grappled with, including: the destruction of CSIRO GM-wheat research crops by <a href="http://www.greenpeace.org/australia/en/what-we-do/Food/">Greenpeace</a>; the questioning of the safety of sunscreens containing “<a href="http://www.abc.net.au/news/video/2011/05/17/3219556.htm?site=melbourne">nanoparticles</a>”; and <a href="http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/ld200910/ldselect/ldsctech/22/22i.pdf">UK House of Lords</a>’ conclusion that the reluctance of food and packaging sectors to communicate openly about nanotechnology may create a public backlash. </p>
<p>Existing patterns of innovation are unsustainable. The urgent question is: what approaches should be used to <a href="http://www.ecologyandsociety.org/articles/3218.html">govern “sustainable socio-technical transformations”</a>? </p>
<p>Such transformations will require better involvement of the community in science and technology, coping with the uncertainty inherent in technological change, and adopting “systemic” perspectives – the absence of such approaches has contributed to recent controversies and unmet expectations.</p>
<p>This is the wider context for the challenge of “how can scientific and technological breakthroughs be accelerated to improve the human condition?”. In some ways, progress in Australia is being made in the required transformation of innovation; but in other ways the challenge is not being met. This article provides an outline of Australian trends and related recent developments.</p>
<p>Recent international policy announcements, such as <a href="http://ec.europa.eu/research/innovation-union/index_en.cfm">EU Innovation Union</a> and <a href="http://www.innovateuk.org/">UK Innovation Nation</a>, and new related discourses (e.g. the “transitions” discourse) signal shifts from “science-push” approaches to innovation, to new “challenge-led” models of innovation. </p>
<p>As UK Professor Fred Steward <a href="http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/09537325.2012.663959">recently asserted</a>, such a shift implies a more diverse “new policy repertoire” that goes beyond traditional fiscal measures and regulation. This also requires a move away from “technology driven theories of innovation”. </p>
<p>New policy instruments are needed to better involve end-users and producers, create and stabilise networks (e.g. to achieve better coordination, facilitate cooperation), and conduct expectations and learning-oriented activities.</p>
<p>In Australia similar thinking and new approaches have recently developed. The <a href="http://www.innovation.gov.au/Industry/Nanotechnology/NationalEnablingTechnologiesStrategy/Pages/default.aspx">National Enabling Technologies Strategy</a> (NETS) was created in 2010 to facilitate responsible development and “industry uptake” of new technologies. An Expert Forum has been established, which examines how biotechnology, nanotechnology and other emerging technologies could help address national challenges. Additionally, the Forum <a href="http://www.innovation.gov.au/INDUSTRY/NANOTECHNOLOGY/NATIONALENABLINGTECHNOLOGIESSTRATEGY/Pages/NationalEnablingTechnologiesStrategyPlanningfortheFuture.aspx">conducts “foresighting” activities</a> to facilitate learning and innovation. A tripartite Stakeholder Advisory Council (SAC) was also established to give concerned parties the opportunity to provide advice to government, along with a new community engagement program (<a href="http://www.innovation.gov.au/Industry/Nanotechnology/PublicAwarenessandEngagement/Pages/ScienceandTechnologyEngagementPathways.aspx">STEP or ‘Science & Technology Engagement Pathways’</a>). Beyond NETS there is recognition of the need to improve collaboration between research and industry, and to better consider Science in Society issues (e.g. <a href="http://www.csiro.au/Organisation-Structure/Divisions/Earth-Science--Resource-Engineering/science-into-society.aspx">at CSIRO</a>).</p>
<p>Despite this, my research on nanotechnology research and development in Australia reveals key challenges. For example, many civil society groups view the SAC and existing public engagement processes as being vastly insufficient – for example one termed these “a slap in the face”. </p>
<p>Further policy challenges have also recently emerged. Expectations and networks have not been maintained, with an associated rise in cautiousness. Many industry players and the <a href="http://www.atse.org.au/resource-centre/ATSE-Reports/Industry---Innovation/">Australian Academy of Technological Sciences and Engineering (ATSE)</a> argue that major systemic issues, such as reduced investment by Australian venture capital suppliers (at one-third of the 2007 peak, according to ATSE), hinder research commercialisation. </p>
<p>Linked with these changes, there has been a sharp reduction in new patents. Additionally, although the language of “industry uptake” and activities of NETS suggest an emerging shift towards new models, a “science-push” approach often remains problematically dominant. </p>
<p>Finally, there is policy uncertainty with NETS winding up in 2013 and low levels of State government support despite <a href="http://www.business.vic.gov.au/busvicwr/_assets/main/lib60265/5937%20dbi%20tech%20plan%20booklet%20small%20tech_web.pdf">continued hype</a>.</p>
<h2>Expanding scientific and technological potential</h2>
<p>The Federal Government recently released a major <a href="http://www.innovation.gov.au/Industry/Nanotechnology/NationalEnablingTechnologiesStrategy/Documents/EnablingTechnologiesRoadMap.pdf">report</a> by the Australian Institute of Commercialisation (AIC) which considered both new scientific and technology potentials, and commercialisation issues. </p>
<p>The report focuses on biotechnology (application of technoscience to living organisms and the products of organisms to produce new goods and knowledge), nanotechnology (manipulation and control of matter at the atomic scale), and synthetic biology (extending genetic engineering to design new biological systems), which are “considered fundamental to a wide range of R&D across a wide number of areas”, including:</p>
<ul>
<li>Health and medicine: advances in genomic information and related healthcare services; drug delivery and diagnostics methods (e.g. use of nanoparticles for molecular imaging techniques); and new therapeutics (e.g. stem cell therapies, regenerative medicine)</li>
<li>Energy: e.g. use of nanoscience and nanotechnology to improve energy storage, new solar cells such as <a href="http://www.vicosc.unimelb.edu.au/">organic polymer-based photovoltaics</a> and cells integrated in glazing products</li>
<li>Food and agriculture: e.g. new “nanomaterials” – materials engineered to have changed “nanoscale” properties and forms, adding value to products, such as “smart” packaging that changes if food is spoiled; development of new crops via genetic modification (GM) or non-GM techniques</li>
<li>The built environment: new functional materials that are responsive to external stimuli (such as “switchable” surfaces, which can alter their properties according to climate conditions), <a href="http://spiedigitallibrary.org/jnp/resource/1/jnoacq/v6/i1/p061505_s1?isAuthorized=no">use of green nanophotonics</a> to reduce energy use, and “nanosensors” for improve building safety.</li>
</ul>
<p>Australia can point to significant scientific strengths of regional (Asia-Pacific) and global significance. Some emerging areas derive partly from uniquely Australian assets such as our tropical location (e.g. <a href="http://www.cairns.com.au/article/2011/07/15/173961_local-news.html">tropical health</a>, <a href="http://www.track.gov.au/">management of tropical ecosystems</a> such as tropical rivers and reefs); in others we have a significant history of innovation in (e.g. <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Sq56mBCJaE">medical bionics</a>). </p>
<p>Specific to emerging science and technologies, the <a href="http://www.arc.gov.au/era/">2010 Excellence in Research for Australia (ERA) assessment</a> found that Australia has world standard or above output in environmental and industrial biotechnology, and nanotechnology (as well as related fields such as quantum physics and computational chemistry). </p>
<p>The ERA assessment also shows Australia research’s strengths are well aligned with the <a href="http://www.smh.com.au/opinion/political-news/we-can-be-food-bowl-of-asia-pm-20120503-1y1w9.html">political push to support Asian food security</a>.</p>
<p>Reports recently released by peak Australian scientific and technological bodies also “signal”, and attempt to build support for, new opportunities. These include <a href="http://www.atse.org.au/resource-centre/ATSE-Reports/Health-Technologies/">aged-care technologies</a> (gerontechnology), second- and third-generation <a href="http://www.atse.org.au/resource-centre/func-startdown/50/">biofuels</a>, and <a href="http://www.science.org.au/reports/documents/AusRenewableEnergyFuture.pdf">renewable</a> and other low-carbon <a href="http://www.atse.org.au/resource-centre/func-startdown/286/">energy technologies</a>.</p>
<h2>Increasing governance and management challenges</h2>
<p>This potential is coupled with increasing challenges. Over the past decade, four policy and wider governance challenges have emerged:</p>
<p>1) Ethical and societal issues increasingly need to be considered earlier in the R&D process to address public acceptance and values dimensions. </p>
<p>For example, ethical issues are raised by <a href="http://www.gerontechnology.info/index.php/journal">gerontechnology</a> such as privacy and autonomy issues associated with emerging remote health monitoring technologies. Many areas of biotechnology are also contentious. The potential for unintended consequences (e.g. from introducing new crop species) is also now a more prominent consideration.</p>
<p>2) There is an increasing desire to influence technological development in the early stages (e.g. pre-market research stages). Issues include defining the roles of, and mechanisms for, community involvement, and limited knowledge of the eventual future impacts of new technologies. Experiences with biotechnologies and other recent technoscientific controversies indicate that these issues are far from resolved.</p>
<p>3) Slower adoption of emerging technologies, such as nanotechnology, is occurring due to a diverse mix of economic and non-economic barriers. In this respect the Australian experience is not unique, as this has also occurred at an international level. Some issues contributing to a <a href="http://www.atse.org.au/atse-in-action/tackling-issues/emerging-technologies">limited “innovation dividend”</a> from Australian research are locally-specific; however, many are not. </p>
<p>The Science and Technology Studies (STS) field is contributing new insights into general systemic issues. The STS concept of innovation <a href="http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/09537325.2012.663959">“as a process of interactions … [occurring] in "meso-level’ social networks”</a> emphasises how it is always socially situated, requiring the alignment of diverse actors, and associated interventions (e.g. to facilitate joint action). </p>
<p>Related dynamics also often influence technology development such as <a href="https://eldorado.tu-dortmund.de/handle/2003/27510">“waiting games” in the context of uncertainty</a>. As <a href="http://www.innovateuk.org/">UK Innovation Nation</a> notes, such complexities mean “markets often do not function perfectly”.</p>
<p>Some of the above issues suggest important roles for government. <a href="http://doc.utwente.nl/34163/1/the_past_and_future.pdf">Generic strategies</a> include: “technology forcing” through policies that influence the market demand for, and design of, new technologies (e.g. setting new stretching standards via regulation); “alignment activities” that facilitate earlier interactions between the involved actors (e.g. dialogue workshops); and “niche management” activities that orchestrate new “niches” with temporary protection from market pressures, in which actors can learn (e.g. about user requirements) from experiments with new technologies. </p>
<p><a href="http://www.atse.org.au/atse-in-action/tackling-issues/emerging-technologies">ATSE advocates</a> the forcing of emerging technologies through government procurement. Gerontechnology advocates are also <a href="http://www.simavita.com/news/12-03-27/Gerontechnology_-_our_next_market_boom.aspx">calling for new demand-side policies</a> to help accelerate new aged-care solutions. At a national policy level the <a href="http://www.innovation.gov.au/Innovation/Policy/Pages/ReviewoftheNationalInnovationSystem.aspx">2008 Cutler Review</a> has advocated new government actions that similarly “act as a catalyst for private sector innovation”.</p>
<p>But there are dilemmas in this for government. Dual roles of promotion and control can lead to the blurring of boundaries between technology policy and assessment. The government’s public interest role may be seen as being compromised by other roles. Activists often raise these concerns.</p>
<p>4) Finally, incremental innovation is insufficient to address many contemporary challenges. A key issue is the need to understand how to create and govern transformative innovation. </p>
<p>Theory and practice here is a work-in-progress. But it points to a need to shift from the focus from single innovations (e.g. creating a new product, or technology) to a challenge-led approach to innovating larger socio-technical systems (i.e. new systems for fulfilling societal functions such as mobility, aged-care, etc). </p>
<p>Many new forms of governance are required to “steer” the many interconnected changes that are necessary for sectoral-level transformations to address contemporary challenges. There is also an urgent need to develop the capability to better evaluate the potential of scientific or technological advances, as we have both limited resources and time to address many challenges (e.g. climate change). Whilst some dead ends and failures are inevitable in innovation, we can certainly do better.</p>
<h2>A mixed report card</h2>
<p>New approaches to science and innovation are emerging but remain partial. On the one hand, responses to some governance and management challenges are clearly evident. Major investments have also been made in research infrastructure (e.g. the <a href="http://www.anff.org.au/">National Fabrication Facility</a>) and other enabling cyber-infrastructure which provide the opportunity to better utilise scientific knowledge. </p>
<p>On the other hand, systemic issues and intensifying governance challenges constrain our capacity to purposefully harness science and technology. </p>
<p>The capacity of Australian policymakers and others to appreciate and successfully address these issues will influence our capacity to harness science, technology and innovation, helping us meet challenges such as climate change and food security affecting the human condition now and into the future.</p>
<p><em>Comments welcome below.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/7564/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Stephen McGrail does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>In part 14 of our multi-disciplinary Millennium Project series, Stephen McGrail argues that boosting innovation requires us to change our thinking as much as our technology. Global challenge 14: How can…Stephen McGrail, Lecturer, Swinburne University of TechnologyLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/69942012-06-25T20:40:08Z2012-06-25T20:40:08ZChallenge 13: smart energy demand and renewable supply<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/12048/original/m3r8tpxw-1340261151.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">A cleaner, more efficient Australia will blend smart grids and meters with renewable power's growing capacity. Pictured: Spain's Gemasolar concentrated solar thermal power plant.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Gemasolar</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>In part 13 of our multi-disciplinary Millennium Project series, Mark Diesendorf argues that it is high time we got smart about power: how we generate it and how we deliver it.</p>
<p><strong><a href="http://www.millennium-project.org/millennium/Global_Challenges/chall-13.html">Global challenge 13</a>: How can growing energy demands be met safely and efficiently?</strong></p>
<p>The stated purpose of the Millennium Project, which has inspired State of the Future 2012, is “to improve humanity’s prospects for building a better future”. I interpret “better future” to mean an ecologically sustainable and socially just future. To achieve this, we must challenge the three drivers of unsustainable development on a finite planet - growth in population, growth in consumption per person, and inappropriate technology — and present a vision of a sustainable future.</p>
<p>Question 13 <a href="http://www.millennium-project.org/millennium/Global_Challenges/chall-13.html">was posed</a> by the Millennium Project in a global context. However, when applied to Australia and other rich countries, the assumption that energy demand should continue to grow must be challenged at the outset.</p>
<p>There is huge potential for increasing the efficiency of energy use through technological improvements (known as “energy efficiency”) and reducing the demand for energy services by fostering behavioural changes (known as “energy conservation”). These are the cheapest and fastest ways of cutting unnecessary energy demand. The key foci are buildings (including the appliances and equipment they contain) and industry.</p>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/11491/original/pmm8pgkc-1339031432.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/11491/original/pmm8pgkc-1339031432.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=854&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/11491/original/pmm8pgkc-1339031432.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=854&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/11491/original/pmm8pgkc-1339031432.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=854&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/11491/original/pmm8pgkc-1339031432.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1073&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/11491/original/pmm8pgkc-1339031432.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1073&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/11491/original/pmm8pgkc-1339031432.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1073&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Wising up electricity use: a smart meter.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">AAP/David Crosling</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>In the near future, a new tool will become widely available for monitoring and reducing electricity demand: the smart meter as a component of the “smart grid”. A smart meter can monitor a consumer’s electricity demand continuously and can display that demand in real time to both the consumer and the distant electricity utility. In a system where electricity price varies by time of day, a very smart meter could be programmed by the consumer to switch off certain circuits (e.g., air conditioning) temporarily when electricity prices reach a certain level. When there is a high peak in demand or a failure in part of the supply system, the utility could also remotely and temporarily turn off a customer or one or more of their appliances via the smart meter or other devices.</p>
<p>Energy supply may be classified into forms that are used as electricity, heating and transportation. At present about 80% of Australia’s electricity is generated by the combustion of coal, the majority of heat comes from burning gas and almost all transport is fuelled on oil (most of which imported at a huge cost). This combination, but especially the heavy coal use, has given Australia the unenviable record of the highest per capita greenhouse-gas emissions in the developed world.</p>
<p>Australia has <a href="https://www.ga.gov.au/products/servlet/controller?event=GEOCAT_DETAILS&catno=70142">huge renewable energy</a>, especially solar, wind and hot rock geothermal. Even if we are limited initially to technologies that are currently commercially available, we could make the transition to a predominantly renewable energy system within two to three decades, if we could mobilise the political will. Scenarios for 80-100% renewable energy have been developed by government agencies, academics, and NGOs for the whole world, the European Union, Denmark, Germany, the Netherlands, United Kingdom, USA, Japan, New Zealand, Ireland and Australia. Some of these studies address the whole energy sector, while others focus on electricity. <a href="http://politiken.dk/politik/ECE1577867/fakta-energiaftalen-i-store-traek">Denmark has a target</a> of 100% renewable energy by 2050. This includes reaching 50% of electricity from wind by 2020, phasing out coal by 2030 and reaching 100% renewable electricity and heat by 2035.</p>
<p>In Australia, two groups have published computer simulations showing hour-by-hour how observed electricity demand in a given year could have been supplied entirely by renewable sources with the same reliability as the existing polluting system. The first study was a single scenario spanning 2008-2009 commissioned by the NGO <a href="http://beyondzeroemissions.org/zero-carbon-australia-2020">Beyond Zero Emissions</a> (BZE). A much more detailed examination - based on scores of hourly simulations of 2010 - was published in 2012 in the peer-reviewed journal <a href="http://www.ies.unsw.edu.au/docs/diesendorf-simulations.pdf">Energy Policy</a> (vol. 45, pp.606-613) by Ben Elliston, Mark Diesendorf and Iain MacGill from UNSW. In the UNSW scenarios, we removed several assumptions making the BZE simulation unnecessarily expensive while maintaining reliability at the current standard. In our model, electricity is generated predominantly from concentrated solar thermal (CST) power with thermal storage, solar photovoltaics (PV) and wind, with the flexible sources being biofuelled gas turbines, hydro, and smart demand management balancing supply and demand - in effect smoothing the fluctuations in wind and solar PV.</p>
<p>Both the BZE and UNSW studies refute the <a href="http://www.dissent.com.au/dissent_36_summary.htm">claims</a> by vested interests and their <a href="http://socialsciences.arts.unsw.edu.au/tsw/BASELOAD.html">unwitting</a> proponents that renewable energy cannot replace base-load (24-hour) coal-fired power. BZE interprets its results by saying that CST with thermal storage is base-load. We interpret the simulation results differently, concluding that although CST can perform in a similar manner to base-load in summer, it cannot in winter. However, that doesn’t matter. In a predominantly renewable energy supply mix, the concept of “base-load power station” is redundant. The important result is that renewable energy mixes can give the same reliability of the whole generating system in meeting demand, as the existing polluting fossil-fuelled system. Similar results and conclusions were obtained for the USA by David Mills in a paper presented at the <a href="http://www.solarconference.com.au/">Solar 2011</a> conference.</p>
<p>It should be emphasised that neither the modelling of BZE nor UNSW establishes a timescale for the transition to 100% renewable electricity. However, the main body of the BZE report claims heroically that the transition could be made in a decade. That claim is actually an assumption based on the observations that Australia could supply the raw materials for manufacturing the systems and that solar and wind technologies are suitable for rapid manufacture. While these observations are valid, they don’t justify the notion of a very short timescale for the transition.</p>
<p>We must consider the time needed to undertake a huge training program for engineers (especially electric power engineers) and other essential professionals, the challenges of reversing the industry policies of many previous Australian governments that have decimated most of our manufacturing capacity, and the complex institutional reforms needed, such as changing the rules of the <a href="http://www.aemc.gov.au/Electricity/Electricity-Market.html">National Electricity Market</a>. An entirely different kind of research project is needed to investigate possible transition timescales.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/11492/original/zdmb3qnt-1339032733.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/11492/original/zdmb3qnt-1339032733.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/11492/original/zdmb3qnt-1339032733.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/11492/original/zdmb3qnt-1339032733.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/11492/original/zdmb3qnt-1339032733.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/11492/original/zdmb3qnt-1339032733.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/11492/original/zdmb3qnt-1339032733.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A renewable energy future will see internal combustion engines replaced by electric motors.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">AAP/Julian Smith</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>In most 100% renewable electricity scenarios, electricity is given a wider role than at present. It is envisaged that electric vehicles would replace most motor vehicles for urban use. Public transport, mostly electric, would be greatly expanded and improved, as would facilities for cycling and walking. A greater proportion of high temperature industrial heat would be supplied by renewable electricity and possibly from CST heat, which is not yet commercially available. Most low-temperature heating and cooling would be supplied by solar thermal energy and by geothermal heat pumps.</p>
<p>The principal barrier to the transition to a predominantly renewable energy system is the failure of governments of both major parties, both federal and state, to implement effective policies. The carbon price to take effect on 1 July will alert prospective investors in new dirty coal-fired power station that they would be taking a risk; however, its initial value of $23 per tonne of CO2 is too low to drive the necessary transition. It would be better to have a carbon tax that increases steadily up to at least $100 per tonne by 2030.</p>
<p>Until such a level is reached, a stronger Mandatory Renewable Energy Target is needed, at least 30% of demand in 2020 and at least 60% by 2030. Large-scale solar needs <a href="http://www.wind-works.org/articles/feed_laws.html">feed-in tariffs</a> (FiTs), gradually decreasing to zero as the technologies mature. Small-scale solar, wind and hydro also need FiTs, initially equal to the retail prices of grid electricity and then decreasing steadily. Time-of-day pricing of electricity for all consumers would give a big boost to solar PV on residential and commercial buildings and would enable their FiTs to be phased out within a few years.</p>
<p>Other required policies include mandatory energy efficiency standards for all residential and commercial buildings and all energy-using appliances and equipment. Essential infrastructure is new transmission lines and railways. About $10 billion per year could be freed up to assist the transition by removing <a href="http://www.isf.uts.edu.au/publications/riedy2007subsidies.pdf">existing subsidies</a> to the production and use of fossil fuels.</p>
<p>The job creation potential in energy auditing and in manufacturing and installing renewable energy and energy efficiency technologies is substantial. The current subsidies to the production of petrol-guzzling cars should be shifted to the sustainable energy technologies and to retraining auto-workers to build renewable energy hardware. Australia could manufacture components that are too large to import at low cost, such as wind turbine blades and mirrors for solar power stations.</p>
<p>We must finally discard the notion that Australia’s role in the global economy is restricted to that of a quarry for fossil fuels and minerals. Australia could be a manufacturer of sustainable energy systems and, in the long term, a major exporter of <a href="http://www.theage.com.au/news/environment/hydrogen-fuel-plant-to-use-heat-from-solar-power-station/2008/02/21/1203467284218.html">solar hydrogen</a> to countries that are less blessed with renewable energy resources.</p>
<p><em>Comments welcome below.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/6994/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Mark Diesendorf does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>In part 13 of our multi-disciplinary Millennium Project series, Mark Diesendorf argues that it is high time we got smart about power: how we generate it and how we deliver it. Global challenge 13: How…Mark Diesendorf, Associate Professor and Deputy Director, Institute of Environmental Studies, UNSW, UNSW SydneyLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/75462012-06-24T20:42:07Z2012-06-24T20:42:07ZChallenge 12: Look within for transnational criminals<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/11540/original/96rw8zzd-1339055537.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Degrees of dirt: the state and organised crime are not separate entities as we like to believe.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Flickr/PropagandaTimes</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>In part 12 of our multi-disciplinary Millennium Project series, Jacqui Baker argues that the ugly truth of organised crime is that governments and their agencies are a fundamental part of it.</p>
<hr>
<h2><a href="http://www.millennium-project.org/millennium/Global_Challenges/chall-12.html">Global challenge 12</a>: How can transnational organized crime networks be stopped from becoming more powerful and sophisticated global enterprises?</h2>
<p>Rethinking the “war on transnational organized crime” demands an interrogation of ourselves.</p>
<p>In late 2000, United Nations General Assembly ratified the Convention on Organised Crime. This heralded a landmark moment of multilateralism in the war against the transnational organised criminal syndicates. Meanwhile, in another corner of the UN, an ad hoc committee was just beginning to sketch out what a similar convention on corruption might look like.</p>
<p>This eventually became the <a href="http://www.unodc.org/unodc/en/treaties/CAC/">UN Convention against Corruption</a>, a document ratified in 2003. The decade that has followed has been marked by the growth of global industries around the “prevention” of transnational crime and corruption. These industries are as much knowledge complexes as anything else, with their own unique scales of measurement and quantification. Together, anxiety about these two kinds of crimes have come to define the tensions of a globalized 21st century. And yet, that initial asymmetry of ratification timelines, the prioritizing of one form of criminality over the other, is indicative of the critical imbalances in the way we conceive of crime and corruption.</p>
<p>Corruption is the great misunderstood counterpart to organised crime. The field is dominated by assumptions. Where organised crime is transnational, flexible and mobile, state agents are sovereign and fixed. Where transnational crime is organised and efficient, corrupt agents are disorganised and act independently. Thus, where organised crime is cunning and manipulative, state officials are vulnerable and incidental. Even the profession/discipline’s dominant working definitions dumb down corruption. Joseph S. Nye’s understanding of corruption as “the abuse of public office for private gain” reduces the role of the state in illicit activity as a problem of maverick officials motivated by personal interest. The complicity of state agents is the necessary counterpart to transnational crime and yet, the state networks and organisations that promote illicit activity are treated as an adjunct to transnational criminality, reducing their role to incidental protector rather than a primary beneficiary of criminal activity.</p>
<p>The lexicon of state corruption includes words like “systematic” and “organised” and yet even in states of endemic corruption, where all the fiscal, legal and political resources lie within the state, the literature of transnational crime continues to cast the state agents as the weaker agent. We often speak of states being “captured” by organised criminal networks seeking to take on the state¹s coercive and legal machinery to shield and further their economic interests.</p>
<p>Colombia, Mexico, and Guinea-Bissau are all known as narco-states, countries where parts of federal or local government have been invaded by drug cartels that become so embedded within the state, that their conduct is normalised and legitimised. Increasingly, studies of organised crime from developing or transitional states argue that vast tracks of the state are “captured” and under processes of internal reconfiguration. Nestled within the state, criminal networks are able to use the mechanics of the state - the apparatus of law, the veneer of legitimacy - to create more fertile conditions for their operations.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/11538/original/d8zd47zn-1339054642.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/11538/original/d8zd47zn-1339054642.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=402&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/11538/original/d8zd47zn-1339054642.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=402&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/11538/original/d8zd47zn-1339054642.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=402&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/11538/original/d8zd47zn-1339054642.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=506&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/11538/original/d8zd47zn-1339054642.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=506&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/11538/original/d8zd47zn-1339054642.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=506&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Mexican security forces with Marcos Carmona Hernandez, an alleged commander of the well-connected, ultra-violent Zeta cartel, believed to have been formed by elite soldiers.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">AAP/EPA/Sashenka Gutierrez</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>But when you kneel down and take a good hard look at it, even traditional studies of “organized crime” have trouble delineating the line between corrupt official and mobster, between “state” and “captured state”: politicians have multiple roles in industry and lobby groups; regulators move between government and industry; criminal organizations form legitimate security services; police and military moonlight on the side; military generals head up private enterprise. “True” career criminals, those that can be clearly put in one camp over the other, don’t often have deciding roles over illicit practices.</p>
<p>Facilitating movement between the two spheres are a whole host of brokers, fixers, and deal-makers with varying but enduring relationships with and within the state. This goes well beyond analytically tenuous ideas of state hijack or state capture. The fact is that when we really squat down and try and put our finger on it, the border between “the state” and “society”, “criminal groups” and “corrupt officials” is just not clear-cut.</p>
<p>To get around the problem of blurred boundaries, recent works by researchers such as <a href="http://www.alexanderkupatadze.com/book.php">Alexander Kupatadze</a> in the field of transnational organised crime have advocated for terms like “state” and “substate”. But arguably, this doesn’t go far enough to reshape the theoretical field to concur with empirical reality.</p>
<p>The fact is that the traditional categories of “organised crime” and “state” are only analytic frameworks that no longer, or perhaps never did, represent the lived reality of “crime”. These frameworks suit the interests of state agents, who after all, dominate what we know about “organised crime”. The thesis of creeping transnational criminal networks displaces our attention from states we know to malevolent aliens that we don’t and suspends us within conditions whereby “we do not know what we do not know about transnational crime”, as <a href="http://www.aic.gov.au/events/aic%20upcoming%20events/2010/%7E/media/conferences/2010-isoc/presentations/lewis_address.pdf">Gary Lewis</a> puts it.</p>
<p>A better approach would be to recognize criminality and illicit activity as a constituent part of all states. Modern state formation has always entailed a critical delinquent element, utilising different mechanisms at different points in the trajectory of their development. The corruption is not incidental, but strategic and instrumental. Transitional and developing states often rely upon illicit rents and criminal economies to make up for the deficiencies in their own fiscal management. </p>
<p>This is not just a “third-world” problem. Jason Sharman’s <a href="http://research-hub.griffith.edu.au/display/n5c6faafdee0240397dc891f0022dc2cd">cutting edge work</a> on shell companies and money-laundering showed how OECD countries are least likely to comply with the regulations of their own making. Rather than assuming the state has an automatic purchase on lawfulness, we might ask in what ways does the state create the conditions under which criminal economies flourish?</p>
<p>In interrogating more fully corruption’s role in facilitating transnational organised crime, we might find a bitter truth in the wise words of Pogo: “<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Pogo_-_Earth_Day_1971_poster.jpg">we have met the enemy and he is us</a>”.</p>
<p><em>Comments welcome below.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/7546/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Jacqui Baker does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>In part 12 of our multi-disciplinary Millennium Project series, Jacqui Baker argues that the ugly truth of organised crime is that governments and their agencies are a fundamental part of it. Global challenge…Jacqui Baker, John Monash Scholar & Visiting Fellow, Department for Political and Social Change, ANU, Australian National UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/75452012-06-21T20:10:28Z2012-06-21T20:10:28ZChallenge 11: How improving women’s status helps us all<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/11527/original/c8tj8722-1339049168.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=34%2C17%2C3853%2C2572&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">We need to take a better look at the role women can play in the Millenium Devlopment Goals.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">AAP/EPA/Harish Tyagi</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>In part 11 of the multi-disciplinary Millennium Project series, Danielle Logue and Mel Dunn note the striking absence of male voices in discussions of women’s empowerment, despite it being fundamental to a legion of social improvements.</p>
<h2><a href="http://www.millennium-project.org/millennium/Global_Challenges/chall-11.html">Global Challenge 11</a>: How can the changing status of women help improve the human condition?</h2>
<p>Women’s empowerment has been one of the strongest drivers of social change over the past century. Although much progress has been made, significant differences still remain for women’s economic and political participation.</p>
<p>This is unacceptable to anyone seeking greater equality for women, but also for those who want to improve the human condition. So rather than rattling off statistics about women’s representation as heads of government, on corporate boards, or as a proportion of wages, we present three arguments that go towards re-imagining the <a href="http://www.un.org/millenniumgoals/">Millennium Development Goals’</a> (MDGs) gender priorities.</p>
<h2>Top priority</h2>
<p>In the Millennium Project’s <a href="http://www.millennium-project.org/millennium/challenges.html">global challenges</a>, the status of women is numbered 11 out of 15. While probably not intended to represent rank, the changing status of women is far more fundamental than this number represents. </p>
<p>It underpins the achievement of all the goals, particularly <a href="http://www.un.org/millenniumgoals/education.shtml">MDG2</a> (universal primary education), <a href="http://www.un.org/millenniumgoals/gender.shtml">MDG3</a> (equality and women’s empowerment) and <a href="http://www.un.org/millenniumgoals/maternal.shtml">MDG5</a> (maternal health). In fact, it is hard to imagine any of the other 14 global challenges in the State of the Future not benefiting from the improved status of women. </p>
<p>Equally, unless these other challenges are genuinely approached with a true understanding of gender, it is hard to imagine much success.</p>
<p>A society where the female voice is sought and heard, where the principles of equity (fairness) and equality (opportunity) co-exist, where gender-based violence is not committed or excused, is a more powerful and effective society. </p>
<p>From Kofi Annan <a href="http://www.iwhc.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=274&Itemid=27">espousing</a> the power and importance of educating girls (and boys) as the most powerful development policy, to Ban Ki-moon <a href="http://www.un.org/apps/news/story.asp?NewsID=41055&Cr=davos&Cr1">highlighting</a> the factual links between educated girls and enhanced health and maternal outcomes, the value of creating a more equal world is clearly fundamental to improving the human condition.</p>
<h2>The other half</h2>
<p>Our second observation, is directly related to expediting progress towards changing women’s status. Although we have increasing numbers of female CEOs, board members, politicians and even a few female national leaders, we are far from equality. </p>
<p>Rafts of programs and policies have had little effect – <a href="http://www.business.uq.edu.au/sites/default/files/web/UOQ%201189_UQBS%20Magazine_women.pdf">according to Queensland University’s Dr Terrence Fitzsimmons</a>, with over 2,000 studies on gender disparity in leadership positions continuing to be debated. </p>
<p>What we observe, amongst these discussions, is that whilst there are many associations, conferences, panels and programs to address gender equity and equality – in business, development and politics – there are strikingly few or no men involved. </p>
<p>For example, one of the roles of UN Women Australia is to “Challenge attitudes which perpetuate gender inequality in Australia and globally”, yet its <a href="http://www.unifem.org.au/home">national board</a> is 100% female. We suggest that the inclusion of men on such boards (or panels, task-forces and programs) may have significant impact – or at least, is worthy of consideration.</p>
<p>One such example, that is working well, is the <a href="http://www.whiteribbon.org.au">White Ribbon campaign</a>. This is a male-led campaign (led by a female CEO), where men are addressing the issues of violence against women; issues that clearly impact women’s status. </p>
<p>Prevention of domestic violence obviously requires men’s input, and their direct involvement in this campaign is a successful example of where focusing on men’s role can improve the status of women. Here women and men are working effectively together to change the status of women.</p>
<h2>Women’s business</h2>
<p>Our third argument in regards to the need for changing the status of women is about presenting the arguments for change as both a moral and economic imperative. With an estimated control of over 70% of global consumer spending, women are strongly influencing market preferences.</p>
<p>University of Oxford’s <a href="http://www.sbs.ox.ac.uk/research/people/Pages/LindaScott.aspx">Professor Linda Scott</a> recently coined the term the <a href="http://www.doublexeconomy.com/">Double X Economy</a> to describe the global economy of women. She <a href="http://www.sbs.ox.ac.uk/newsandevents/videos/Pages/TheDoubleXEconomy.aspx">argues</a> that: “While women have always engaged in economic behaviour, their activities and outcomes have usually gone unnoticed, unmeasured, untracked, and unregulated, because of assumptions and limitations inherent in conventional economic thought”. </p>
<p>By recognising the role of consumption in economic development, women’s influence on consumption patterns becomes strikingly important, and begins to reveal the power and reach of the women’s economy. As outlined by Professor Scott, women are often employed in informal work or in un-monetised work, and so their considerable power has been made invisible.</p>
<h2>No simple answers</h2>
<p>The changing status of women is clearly complex. Inequality and empowerment issues cannot be adequately addressed where only half of the population is positively and actively engaged. </p>
<p>The challenge of enhancing the status of women, to true equality needs greater engagement with and by men. We should not think of this challenge as “women’s issues”; changing the status of women should be an issue for the human race – women and men – to address.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/7545/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Mel Dunn is affiliated with White Ribbon in a voluntary capacity as a White Ribbon Ambassador, a role he has adopted since 2009.</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Danielle Logue does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>In part 11 of the multi-disciplinary Millennium Project series, Danielle Logue and Mel Dunn note the striking absence of male voices in discussions of women’s empowerment, despite it being fundamental…Mel Dunn, Adjunct Associate Professor, School of POLSIS, The University of QueenslandDanielle Logue, Lecturer in Strategy, Innovation & Organisation, University of Technology SydneyLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/75382012-06-20T20:42:13Z2012-06-20T20:42:13ZChallenge 10: Transnational security threats - new research and converging strategies<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/11507/original/dcbzzgy7-1339044517.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Muslim women pass bombed Christian shops in Nigeria: researchers and policymakers are developing complex views of organised violence.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">AAP/EPA/Ruth McDowall</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>In part 10 of the multi-disciplinary Millennium Project series, Alex Burns argues that we are getting more sophisticated in our approach to global threats and conflict.</p>
<p><strong><a href="http://www.millennium-project.org/millennium/Global_Challenges/chall-10.html">Global challenge 10</a>: How can shared values and new security strategies reduce ethnic conflicts, terrorism, and the use of weapons of mass destruction?</strong></p>
<p>International research programs seek to provide policymakers with actionable insights about transnational security threats. Terrorism, ethnic conflicts, and the potential proliferation of weapons of mass destruction are <a href="https://theconversation.com/wicked-problems-and-business-strategy-is-design-thinking-an-answer-6876">wicked problems</a> which have shaped the past decade of research agendas. New research suggests converging strategies to anticipate and deal proactively with trans-national security threats.</p>
<p>The Obama administration’s counterterrorism agenda is shaped by Osama bin Laden’s death at Abottabad, Pakistan on 2nd May 2011; the increased use of robot drones; and speculative fears of cyber-warfare attacks. Overlooked is Obama’s <a href="http://www.whitehouse.gov/sites/default/files/National_Strategy_for_Countering_BioThreats.pdf">National Strategy for Countering Biological Threats</a>. Gregory Koblentz <a href="http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1468-2346.2012.01061.x/pdf">contends</a> in International Affairs that Obama’s strategy is preventative; that its definition of biosecurity focuses on improving global health security (pandemics and disease prevention); and that intelligence and law enforcement personnel must work more closely with the life sciences and public health. Obama has shifted from the Bush administration’s focus on attack prevention to strengthening multilateral treaties and improving organisational coordination.</p>
<p>The changing international environment also influences how law enforcement and judicial researchers view transnational terrorism. John T. Picarelli of the United States Department of Justice <a href="http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/09546553.2011.648349">suggests</a> in Terrorism and Political Violence that organised criminal organisations are undergoing threat convergence: long-term cooperation between the two types of groups which increasingly resemble each-other. However, Picarelli also found that there is little basic research and empirical datasets. Historical and international political economy methods may provide greater analytical clarity whilst datasets would enable integration with geographic information system mapping.</p>
<p>In contrast to terrorist threat convergence, a data-driven approach yields research insights about the causes of ethnic conflicts. The UCDP/PRIO <a href="http://www.pcr.uu.se/research/ucdp/datasets/ucdp_non-state_conflict_dataset_/">Non-State Conflict Dataset</a> hosted at Uppsala University’s Department of Peace and Conflict Research provides new insights into “communal and organised armed conflict where none of the parties is the government of a state.” The dataset examines the period 1989-2010 and covers communal, ethnic, and paramilitary conflicts. It is part of a UCDP/PRIO collection of datasets on conflict.</p>
<p>Uppsala University’s Ralph Sundberg, Kristine Eck, and Joakim Kreutz have used the dataset to examine Somalia’s ethnic conflict after the end of Siad Barre’s regime in 1991. Sundberg, Eck and Kreutz found a series of overlapping conflicts in Somalia: clan and tribal fighting motivated by scarce resources, organised militias that split into warring factions, and state-based conflict that occurs primarily in urban areas. Somalia’s conflict thus has a range of actors and geographic-specific forms of political violence.</p>
<p>Nigeria since the 1960s has experienced ethnic conflicts. Ray Ikechukwu Jacob <a href="http://www.ccsenet.org/journal/index.php/ass/article/view/15959">recently estimated</a> in Asian Social Science that 50,000 Nigerians were killed between 1999 and 2004, and 800,000 people were displaced. Jacob contends that Nigeria’s recent ethnic conflicts are based on unintended consequences of the 1946 Richards Constitution (named after Britain’s then colonial administrator, Governor Arthur Richards) which enabled “unity in diversity”, or a range of religious beliefs in different regions. This legislative implementation created the conditions for conflict between Christian militias, Sunni and Shiite Muslims, and rival armed gangs who established a kidnap and ransom market amidst high unemployment and problems with Nigeria’s judiciary and law enforcement. The decision of northern states to implement Shari’a law and to marginalise Christians means that ethnic conflict is traceable to political decision-making and leadership manipulation.</p>
<p>2011 marked the tenth anniversary of Al Qaeda’s terrorist attacks on September 11, and the October 2001 anthrax letter incidents. Two international organisations — the Seventh Biological Weapons Convention (BWC) Review Conference and the <a href="http://www.g8.fr/evian/english/navigation/2003_g8_summit/summit_documents/global_partnership_against_the_spread_of_weapons_and_materials_of_mass_destruction_-_g8_senior_officials_group_-_annual_report.html">G8 Global Partnership Against the Spread of Weapons of Mass Destruction</a> — made progress on counter-proliferation strategies for non-state actors. Gerald Epstein of the American Association for Advancement of Science <a href="http://connection.ebscohost.com/c/articles/70224489/biosecurity-2011-not-year-change-minds">counsels</a> in The Bulletin of Atomic Scientists that counter-proliferation initiatives should augment their threat-based approach with partner-based awareness of the life sciences and other emerging areas of scientific research.</p>
<p>Dr Jorge Morales Pedraza, formerly of the International Atomic Energy Agency, this year <a href="http://www.springerlink.com/content/4474506l244659r8/?MUD=MP">proposed</a> in the journal Public Organization Review an Organisation for the Prohibition of Biological Weapons (OPBW) within the United Nations system. The OPBW would supervise the BWC’s implementation by UN member nation-states. It would strengthen the BWC’s verification mechanisms, which the United States fears could be used for foreign espionage in biotechnology, pharmaceuticals, the life sciences, and other sensitive industries. Pedraza’s proposed OPBW would help the UN to foresee and adapt to a changing international environment.</p>
<p>Collectively, this new research points to a convergence of new strategies to deal with transnational security threats. Academic researchers are using empirical datasets and mixed-method designs to understand terrorism, ethnic conflicts, and the potential proliferation of weapons of mass destruction in new ways. Policymakers are building on shared values to strengthen multilateral treaty conventions and international organisations. Both academics and policymakers are adapting to a more complex global environment, and new strategies of resilience have displaced threat preparation.</p>
<p><em>Comments welcome below.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/7538/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Alex Burns does not work for, consult to, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and is affiliated with the American Political Science Association and the International Studies Association.</span></em></p>In part 10 of the multi-disciplinary Millennium Project series, Alex Burns argues that we are getting more sophisticated in our approach to global threats and conflict. Global challenge 10: How can shared…Alex Burns, Research Facilitator, Victoria UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/75112012-06-19T20:15:35Z2012-06-19T20:15:35ZChallenge 9: Decision making amidst increasing complexity<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/11475/original/qy2ws7fy-1338969103.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Overwhelmed: to live wisely in a world where complexity seems to be running rampant, we must first grasp what complexity is.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Flickr/Elif Ayiter/Alpha Auer/..../</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>In part nine of our multi-disciplinary Millennium Project series, Cliff Hooker argues that to get any better at decision-making, we must first face up to our limitations.</p>
<hr>
<p><strong><a href="http://www.millennium-project.org/millennium/Global_Challenges/chall-09.html">Global challenge 9</a>: How can the capacity to decide be improved as the nature of work and institutions change?</strong></p>
<p>Our decision making urgently needs improving. But how? And why? This <a href="http://www.millennium-project.org/millennium/Global_Challenges/chall-09.html">Millennium discussion</a> focuses immediately on handling increasing complexity as our chief challenge, and it identifies new computational processes and digital media resources as the primary source of solutions.</p>
<p>Both claims have merit but are too narrow. Complex systems are, roughly, those that have many nested and organised interrelations among their component entities, as, for example, living creatures do (of which more below). We need to both sharpen our understanding of complexity, and consider more than complexity and digitalisation.</p>
<p>Besides complexity, as just characterised, there are features of our current world that we often conflate with complexity but are instead mostly simply <em>complicating</em> for us:</p>
<ol>
<li><p>Trans-institutionalisation and globalisation, each of which requires integrating culturally diverse styles, agendas, time-tables, and more;</p></li>
<li><p>Increasing rapidity of change; </p></li>
<li><p>Increasing scales of consequences in space and time. </p></li>
</ol>
<p>All three features, for example, afflict the climate change problem. These add numbers of considerations and constraints, creating (massive) complications to our decision making, but are not at the core of complexities proper.</p>
<p>Beside digitalisation: computers can indeed often help ameliorate these problems, and the Millennium discussion offers useful developments and ideas. But, for example, making decisions speedily often changes the <em>kind</em> of decision process, not just its speed. However useful cost-benefit-risk analysis is elsewhere, anyone who has a hungry lion charging them and continues to use it to decide what to do, is irrational. Merely having faster or networked computers etc., won’t help when to decide to change decision method, or what alternative method to choose.</p>
<p>The need for expertise and skill to decide wisely on changes in decision method is increasingly crucial to our lives but poorly recognised. It is well illustrated in complex systems, so let’s now consider them.</p>
<h2>Complex systems</h2>
<p>Core complexity is being more ordered than a gas (fully disordered) but less ordered than a crystal (fully ordered). Neither are useful models of climate, living organisms, ecologies, cities. These systems are somewhere between gases and crystals in ordered-ness, but also nested (sub-systems within sub-systems) and organised (many distinct roles all differently interrelated to achieve coherent overall functioning, e.g. the parts of a car engine).</p>
<p>Complex systems typically involve irreversibility, organised levels of phased feedback/feedforward, internal constraints, and so on. Various combinations of these features lead to the behaviours that are distinctive of complexity: sensitivity to conditions, chaos, criticality, <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fat-tailed_distribution">fat tails</a>, self-organisation, emergence, path-dependence and so on. Our climate shows all of these features and more. When a complex system has to be managed, it is managing these distinctively complex behaviours that causes the decision problems.</p>
<p>And we have to decide under a new set of restrictions on what can be known. Two illustrations are considered:</p>
<ol>
<li><p>Complex systems often sit on a knife edge between diverging behaviours, the slightest change in conditions tipping it into one path or the other. A steel ball bearing dropping on to a real knife edge is a useful image. Since we can never know system conditions infinitely accurately before it tips, we cannot know which way it has gone and, because the paths diverge, our ignorance grows with time. (The differences can be below computer round-up errors, highlighting computational limits.)</p></li>
<li><p>Typically, dynamical equations for complex systems have no explicit (“analytic”) solutions, so they have to be approximately simulated. This is where computers offer us one uniquely new and important tool. However, approximation can wipe out sensitivities. And simulation typically must be in a multi-dimensional space and there is yet no effective general way to search this space for its important dynamical features. So experts must decide how best to search it, given what is known and the approximations used. This leaves it uncertain how the system will behave in many new conditions. (But we are also rapidly improving our knowledge of particular systems.)</p></li>
</ol>
<p>(For the interested, all these subjects and more are discussed and referenced across various chapters in a book I edited, <a href="http://store.elsevier.com/Philosophy-of-Complex-Systems/isbn-9780444520760/">Philosophy of Complex Systems</a>, although it is written for researchers.)</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/11476/original/xvdxd3p5-1338969903.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/11476/original/xvdxd3p5-1338969903.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/11476/original/xvdxd3p5-1338969903.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/11476/original/xvdxd3p5-1338969903.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/11476/original/xvdxd3p5-1338969903.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/11476/original/xvdxd3p5-1338969903.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/11476/original/xvdxd3p5-1338969903.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Sharp insights: if a steel ball falls straight onto the edge, we cannot predict which way will go.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Flickr/Falling Outside The Normal Moral Constraints</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Fat tails and policy making</h2>
<p>To illustrate the issues, let’s consider fat tails. Complex systems can generate unlikely behaviours (“<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Outlier">outliers</a>”) more frequently than would occur at random. The increase is the “fat” in their low-probability outlier tails. An ash slope at a critical angle has an equal probability of landslides at all scales, big and small, so big ones are more frequent than if the sliding particles all must come together at random. The difference is often crucial because the unlikely behaviours often cause massive damage (mud-slide, tsunami) or bring massive reward (some stock market bets).</p>
<p>Most current statistical decision packages assume your data is generated by sampling random variables, so that deciding on the basis of averages is valid. But if instead you were actually sampling a complex process, you would be caught out by not allowing for the extra outliers. It is conjectured that this was behind the recent <a href="http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-06-13/dimon-faces-senators-over-jpmorgan-s-hedge-fund-style-trading.html">$2 billion+ losses</a> by JP Morgan Bank on what seemed a watertight risk-hedging scheme. (Current statistical tests also assume the variables are independent, when they will not be for many complex systems - another basic challenge to current decision making tools.)</p>
<p>Most suggested revolutions in decision making - for example, those on the <a href="http://www.millennium-project.org/millennium/Global_Challenges/chall-09.html">Millennium page</a> - simply offer new ways to get deciding-by-averages done more efficiently and do not tackle this issue. For example, dynamic Net Present Value analysis - a basic tool (commonly used in finance) for deciding future courses of action by comparing projected inflows and outflows - can be hastened by simulation, but this typically masks the fat tails and unpredictability of complex future behaviours, often rendering these analyses more dangerous than enlightening. Designing in resilience instead is often far more important and practical. (Interested readers might look at <a href="http://www.publish.csiro.au/pid/5344.htm">Resilience Thinking</a>, by Brian Walker and David Salt.)</p>
<p>Life is run by averages, except where it is run by outliers. It is in deciding to avoid, or grasp, outliers that agents show intelligence: deciding by averages can be automated. (Well, inputting sensible valuations can’t be, but set that aside here.) What is crucial is to be able to judge when a complex domain has been entered that matters for decision making and, specifically, how it matters.</p>
<p>For example, Australian dry grasslands can have an exploitation “tipping point” or threshold beyond which they degrade irreversibly into a less biodiverse, less productive condition. It takes practical expertise in both agriculture and dynamic analysis to identify it. Standard deciding-by-averages assumes exploitation for maximum yield, a condition typically near the threshold, ignoring the risk of crossing it and ignoring our typical uncertainty about where it is. When life is run by outliers, only appropriate decision expertise has any value. This is well expressed for poker: you have to know when to hold, when to fold and when to run away.</p>
<h2>Challenges</h2>
<p>Managing complex systems is crucial. To do that we need to at least:</p>
<ol>
<li><p>Identify these systems and locate the key decisions requiring expertise.</p></li>
<li><p>Integrate systems contexts for key decisions to organise context-dependent decision interrelations and timescales. This replaces the Millenium principle of subsidiarity (defined as having “decisions made by the smallest number of people possible at the level closest to the impact of a decision”), which is unworkable for complexity.</p></li>
<li><p>Foster the development of capable experts for these tasks, and also develop their capacity for entering effectively into the range of expert-lay decision making that flows from 1).</p></li>
<li><p>Re-vamp existing decision tools like statistical analysis to suit complexity.</p></li>
<li><p>Develop the capacity for resilience analysis and practice.</p></li>
<li><p>Construct institutions that mirror in decision authority the interrelations in 2 above and in orientation mirror 3 and 5.</p></li>
<li><p>Separate, as far as possible, scientific epistemic scepticism from political pragmatic scepticism and educate the public to the preceding challenges and democratic roles therein. Climate scepticism, e.g., then largely reduces to a political phantasm.</p></li>
</ol>
<p>These are massive challenges that humans have only just begun to tackle, yet are crucial to our survival.</p>
<p><em>Comments welcome below.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/7511/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Cliff Hooker has received funding in the past from The Australian Research Council and the Cooperative Research Centre for Coal in Sustainable Development. </span></em></p>In part nine of our multi-disciplinary Millennium Project series, Cliff Hooker argues that to get any better at decision-making, we must first face up to our limitations. Global challenge 9: How can the…Cliff Hooker, Director of the Complex Adaptive Systems Research Group, University of NewcastleLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/74672012-06-18T20:40:41Z2012-06-18T20:40:41ZChallenge 8: Tackling global disease threats<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/11469/original/nrbjmdgg-1338965152.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Animals and livestock are often the carriers of harmful viruses.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">AAP</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>In part eight of our multi-disciplinary Millennium Project series, Martyn Jeggo argues that we must search the animal world for clues if we are to react in time against the rise of new and emerging viruses.</p>
<hr>
<h2><a href="http://www.millennium-project.org/millennium/Global_Challenges/chall-08.html">Global challenge 8</a>: How can the threat of new and re-emerging diseases and immune micro-organisms be reduced?</h2>
<p>The threat from new and emerging viruses is increasing as these infections continue to spread across the world. In the past 20 years alone, some 30 new, highly infectious diseases have been identified, many of which infect humans – including <a href="http://www.csiro.au/science/Hendra-Virus">Hendra</a> and <a href="http://www.cdc.gov/sars/">SARS</a> (severe acute respiratory syndrome). </p>
<p>There are no effective treatments for the majority of these diseases, nor are vaccines available to prevent infection.</p>
<h2>Understanding the risk</h2>
<p>Viruses are uniquely dangerous because of their ability to mutate and change, often becoming more lethal for their existing hosts or enabling them to infect new hosts. </p>
<p>Many of the most dangerous viruses are zoonotic in nature: they spread from animals to humans, often in a highly unpredictable way. This ability to live in a range of hosts and the often rapid speed of transmission make them a deadly threat to people, our livestock and our economic well-being.</p>
<p>The 2003 <a href="http://www.csiro.au/en/Outcomes/Food-and-Agriculture/Bats-found-to-be-the-natural-host-of-Severe-Acute-Respiratory-Syndrome-virus.aspx">SARS</a> epidemic was a perfect example of a previously unknown virus causing chaos worldwide as it spread from China around the world. It was subsequently shown that a SARS-like virus had been dormant in bats for some time before a chance mutation occurred that enabled the virus to switch hosts and affect the civet cat – and then spread to humans.</p>
<p>These events brought about by a random virus mutation illustrate the need to keep an open mind when considering what might emerge as the next SARS or influenza pandemic. We shouldn’t, for example, rule out the possibility of wild birds from Asia migrating to the top end of Australia, mingling with our native birds and introducing a new type of influenza we’ve never seen before and therefore have little or no immunity to.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/11462/original/27443bj8-1338963507.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/11462/original/27443bj8-1338963507.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=429&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/11462/original/27443bj8-1338963507.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=429&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/11462/original/27443bj8-1338963507.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=429&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/11462/original/27443bj8-1338963507.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=539&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/11462/original/27443bj8-1338963507.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=539&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/11462/original/27443bj8-1338963507.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=539&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Birds migrating from Asia could potentially infect local populations with new viruses.</span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Shifting focus, be prepared</h2>
<p>To assist us in preparing for global epidemics, we need to shift focus from responding when diseases emerge, to pre-empting or predicting the event.</p>
<p>For those diseases we’re aware of, we need to find out as much as we can to fully identify the risks they pose to our health and economy. This will allow us to establish mitigation strategies and processes to both reduce the likelihood of an outbreak occurring or reduce the consequences should an outbreak occur.</p>
<p>If diseases are unknown we’re essentially trying to predict the unpredictable. But we can make informed decisions based on what we already know. And this is best achieved through taking a systems-specific, rather than a disease-specific, approach. </p>
<p>In other words, we undertake surveillance not just to look for a specific disease, but to look for unusual events such as a sudden spike in the number of wild bird deaths that would signify that something is amiss, even though it’s not clear what’s wrong. </p>
<p>Another example may be noticing a significant increase in ambulances responding to large numbers of people “feeling ill”. This approach is termed <a href="http://www.hln.com/expertise/hit/hie/mu/mu-ss.php">syndromic reporting</a> and is increasingly used to assist in the early warning of a major pandemic or major disease event.</p>
<p>We shouldn’t underestimate the need to be prepared and the power of simulation exercises to both test and further develop our response systems. Despite taking time and resources, these exercises not only critically highlight what is being done correctly but what can be improved, assisting us in preparing for future outbreak events.</p>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/11459/original/pkv96fr9-1338963208.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/11459/original/pkv96fr9-1338963208.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=664&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/11459/original/pkv96fr9-1338963208.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=664&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/11459/original/pkv96fr9-1338963208.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=664&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/11459/original/pkv96fr9-1338963208.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=835&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/11459/original/pkv96fr9-1338963208.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=835&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/11459/original/pkv96fr9-1338963208.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=835&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">South Korean officials practice quarantine procedures during a bird flu outbreak.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">AAP</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Uncertainty is always a characteristic of these new and emerging disease events. Preparing the community prior to a potential disease outbreak will increase the likelihood that management strategies, such as animal or people movement control, are understood and followed.</p>
<h2>Coordination approach</h2>
<p>Australians are aware of the damage that diseases, weeds, invasive animals and insects can inflict on crops, livestock, properties, farm profits and on human health. Biosecurity is all about preventing or keeping the impact of these threats and outbreaks to a minimum.</p>
<p>CSIRO realises the importance of a coordinated approach and is currently reorganising its biosecurity and related research activities to form a <a href="http://www.csiro.au/en/Organisation-Structure/Divisions/Livestock-Industries/CLI-e-newsletter/7-biosecurity-opinion.aspx">National Biosecurity Flagship</a>. This move will further promote collaboration with related research agencies including state, federal and international partners.</p>
<p>Improved coordination of biosecurity research will allow us to better safeguard public health, the environment and the economy into the future. It will also greatly assist other countries as they too strive to deal with the pests and diseases that continue to spread globally and threaten general health.</p>
<h2>Working together</h2>
<p>Population growth, livestock farming practices and climate change have all disturbed the global ecosystem and increased the risk of virus emergence and spread. When you add the huge increase in global travel, you’re left with an ideal opportunity for these virus infections to further spread around the world.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/11463/original/dwqsbdwm-1338963760.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/11463/original/dwqsbdwm-1338963760.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=387&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/11463/original/dwqsbdwm-1338963760.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=387&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/11463/original/dwqsbdwm-1338963760.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=387&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/11463/original/dwqsbdwm-1338963760.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=487&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/11463/original/dwqsbdwm-1338963760.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=487&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/11463/original/dwqsbdwm-1338963760.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=487&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The increase in world travel makes disease control a lot harder for the authorities.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">AAP</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Traditionally, we’ve approached wildlife, animal and human diseases entirely separately. What we need now is to take a “<a href="http://onehealthinitiative.com/">One Health</a>” approach with scientists across all three disciplines working together to understand the system holistically. To deal with zoonotic viruses, for instance, we need to understand the multidimensional links between wild animals, livestock production, the environment and global public health.</p>
<p>Understanding the mechanism of how viruses behave in different animal species and environments and putting this in the context of our ecosystem is perhaps the best approach to predicting and pre-empting future virus risks.</p>
<figure class="align-left ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/11458/original/jnx3qps2-1338963002.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/11458/original/jnx3qps2-1338963002.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=874&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/11458/original/jnx3qps2-1338963002.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=874&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/11458/original/jnx3qps2-1338963002.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=874&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/11458/original/jnx3qps2-1338963002.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1098&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/11458/original/jnx3qps2-1338963002.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1098&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/11458/original/jnx3qps2-1338963002.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1098&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The One Health approach has had some success with the Hendra virus.</span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>This One Health approach has already been successful in Australia with the development of a <a href="http://www.csiro.au/en/Organisation-Structure/Divisions/Livestock-Industries/Hendra-vaccine.aspx">horse vaccine against the deadly Hendra virus</a>. </p>
<p>By working together, we realised there wasn’t much we could do to reduce bat populations, and vaccinating people would cost too much and take too long. We soon realised the best opportunity to intervene with the human infection pathway was to vaccinate horses. This will prevent the disease in horses and reduce virus shedding; both of which are critical in reducing the risk of the virus spreading to people.</p>
<p>The reality is that no matter how effective our Australian border controls are, there is always the possibility that micro-organisms will get through. We need to know what systems and management should be in place for dealing with outbreaks of disease, whether caused by viruses, bacteria, fungi or parasites. </p>
<p>But we must remember that pre-empting these biosecurity threats is far less expensive and infinitely preferable than dealing with a disease once it has emerged.</p>
<p><em>Comments welcome below.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/7467/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>The Australian Animal Health Laboratory receives funding from CSIRO and DAFF for its service delivery and operational activities as well as funding from Government and industry sources for its research program.</span></em></p>In part eight of our multi-disciplinary Millennium Project series, Martyn Jeggo argues that we must search the animal world for clues if we are to react in time against the rise of new and emerging viruses…Martyn Jeggo, Director, Australian Animal Health Laboratory, CSIROLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/74852012-06-17T20:44:26Z2012-06-17T20:44:26ZChallenge 7: The market, morals, ethics, and poverty<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/11484/original/fyj4vp3h-1339025895.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Can ethical markets solve the problems of persistent poverty and global income inequality?</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Michelle Brea</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>In part seven of our multi-disciplinary Millennium Project series, Adrian Walsh argues that a humane market asks something of us that we may not want to give.</p>
<h2><a href="http://www.millennium-project.org/millennium/Global_Challenges/chall-07.html">Global challenge 7</a>: How can ethical market economies be encouraged to help reduce the gap between rich and poor?</h2>
<p>The world we live in is dominated by the market. Perhaps there are different kinds of markets in different regions, but they are markets nonetheless. It is also a world in which there are vast disparities of wealth: any number of statistics can be found to demonstrate the growing gap between the top 10% and much of the earth’s population—and in which there are enormous levels of poverty. </p>
<p>For the foreseeable future, the market would appear to be the only form of social organisation on offer. If markets generate inequalities, as many studies suggest they do, then does that mean we must accept ongoing inequality and poverty? If so, then that is an extremely depressing state of affairs. We might call this - with apologies to others who have used the phrase - the “repugnant conclusion”.</p>
<p>The UN’s Millennium Project takes a far more optimistic attitude towards the role of markets in alleviating poverty and inequality. Published this year, the Project lays out 15 Global Challenges, the seventh of which asks how we might employ ethical markets to reduce inequality. The central claim of the authors is that free markets are capable of lifting people out of poverty. Leaving aside the empirical veracity of that claim, there are important conceptual questions to ask about the relative priority we ascribe to alleviating poverty and reducing inequality, and about what makes for an ethical market.</p>
<p>The first point to note is that their idea of a free market is a long way from that being championed by the <a href="http://www.adamsmith.org/">Adam Smith Institute</a> or <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chicago_school_of_economics">Chicago school</a> economists. They speak of economies that require - amongst other things - improved fair trade, business incentives that comply with social and environmental goals, an honest judicial system, reduced corruption, and general access to land, capital and information. The term “free” here seems to indicate freedom for all citizens to participate in the market, rather than the absence of government interference. They contrast the free market (or “relatively free” markets) with “decentralised, individualised private enterprise”.</p>
<p>Such markets might well be able to lift people out of poverty - that is an empirical question that I cannot explore herein — but will they realise more egalitarian societies? This seems far more unlikely. If that is indeed the case, should we choose relieving poverty over ending economic inequality? </p>
<p>The influential North American political philosopher <a href="http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/rawls/">John Rawls</a> famously argued in his seminal text A Theory of Justice (1971) that while equality should be our default principle of justice, if inequalities make the worst-off better off, then they are permissible. This is his so-called “Difference Principle” and his thought is that we should prefer a society in which the worst-off have increased levels of social welfare to a more equal society in which the base levels of income are lower. </p>
<p>Should we also give priority to the alleviation of poverty, even if that is at the expense of equality? The use of market solutions is unlikely to create more equal societies, even if the worst-off improve their general levels of well-being. The authors of the Millennium Project document avoid this question by conflating inequality and poverty, but it is a question that is likely to continue to rear its head as market solutions are increasingly applied globally to solve social problems.</p>
<p>The other significant conceptual problem not addressed in the Millennium Project document concerns the make-up of an ethical market economy. What is it? Their focus is clearly upon the establishment of institutional safeguards, such as insured property rights, and an honest judicial system, to ensure that there is a level-playing field for all to engage in market activity. An ethical market economy would appear to be one in which the system is designed so as to reduce poverty. But ultimately systems require people to operate them. One is reminded here of T.S. Eliot’s comment in his poem “The Rock”:</p>
<p><em>They constantly try to escape</em></p>
<p><em>From the darkness outside and within</em></p>
<p><em>By dreaming of systems so perfect that no one will need to be good.</em></p>
<p>Eliot’s point is well made. But the hard question is how, in a market economy, can goodness be fostered. What if immersion in a market economy - where the profit motive is the primary incentive - undermines our abilities to be ‘other-regarding’?</p>
<p>One step forward I would suggest is to distinguish between kinds or species of profit-motives. Typically, talk in the marketplace is of the profit motive as if it were a single unified thing. But some people pursue profit with moral side-constraints upon their action: there are certain things, such as selling contaminated foodstuffs or child pornography, that they would never do. For other people, let us call them <em>lucrepaths</em>, there is nothing they would refuse to do in pursuit of a dollar - nothing that is out of bounds. The profit motives of these two character types are quite distinct. What we require is a general recognition that the pursuit of profit does not immediately rid us of all moral obligations. Too often, becoming a player in the market involves adoption of the view that this is a morality-free zone. This is mistaken. Instead, rejection of the <em>lucrepath</em> needs to become an explicit feature of public discourse surrounding the morality of market economics.</p>
<p>What might this mean for our repugnant conclusion? It means that those engaged in market activity should avoid engaging in activities that worsen poverty. Concerns with the living standards of others should be one of the side-constraints that motivate market agents, no matter what their other goals might be.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/7485/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Adrian Walsh does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>In part seven of our multi-disciplinary Millennium Project series, Adrian Walsh argues that a humane market asks something of us that we may not want to give. Global challenge 7: How can ethical market…Adrian Walsh, Associate Professor of Philosophy, University of New EnglandLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/75612012-06-14T20:09:22Z2012-06-14T20:09:22ZChallenge 6: Switching on to the politics of the digital era<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/11547/original/ywk9m3b6-1339116757.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Access to the internet is becoming less of a problem - but does society have the structures to support free exchange of information?</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Howard Stateman</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>In part six of our multi-disciplinary Millennium Project series, Jake Wallis argues that the infrastructure of global communication networks is inherently political and calls for a switched-on populace.</p>
<hr>
<h2><a href="http://www.millennium-project.org/millennium/Global_Challenges/chall-06.html">Global challenge 6</a>: How can the global convergence of information and communications technologies work for everyone?</h2>
<p>Challenge 6 of the Millenium Project’s Global Challenges Facing Humanity is a tricky one. How can the convergence of information and communications technologies (ICTs) work for everyone?</p>
<p>The problem, as cyberpunk author William Gibson <a href="http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=1067220">famously said</a>, is that “the future is already here, it’s just not very evenly distributed.”</p>
<p>Some organisations have modelled online (ironically) the disparities in infrastructure and use of global information and communications networks. They use visualisation techniques to represent digital data. StatSilk uses data from the International Telecommunications Union (the United Nations’ specialist agency for information and communications technologies) to model the global distribution of broadband per 100 inhabitants: you can see it <a href="http://www.statsilk.com/maps/world-stats-open-data?l=broadband%20subscribers%20per%20100%20inhabitants">here</a>. The interactive model lets you watch as broadband spreads across the globe over the decade 1999-2009. You don’t need to be William Gibson to see that broadband is not very evenly distributed.</p>
<p>The global community must discuss how pervasive networks can best serve social well-being. The problem is that the inequalities inherent in existing global structures - distribution of food, clean water, health care and so on - are already reflected across our global networks.</p>
<p>Tim Berners-Lee, the inventor of the World Wide Web, originally envisaged the internet as a universal communications medium beyond the constraints of proprietary software and computing hardware. The <a href="http://www.w3.org/">World Wide Web Consortium</a> (W3C), which Berners-Lee directs, has an unashamedly <a href="http://www.w3.org/Consortium/mission">universal mission</a>:</p>
<p><em>The social value of the Web is that it enables human communication, commerce, and opportunities to share knowledge. One of W3C’s primary goals is to make these benefits available to all people, whatever their hardware, software, network infrastructure, native language, culture, geographical location, or physical or mental ability.</em> </p>
<p>But W3C is just one stakeholder in the web’s development. Some of the others get more attention. The chief executive of Google, Sergey Brin, <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2012/apr/15/web-freedom-threat-google-brin">recently lamented</a> the shift towards “walled gardens” on the web. Brin’s use of the term is interesting. In the context of the web, a “walled garden” is the term commonly used to describe online systems and data which are closed off in an environment designed to be inherently open. Brin was, of course, talking about Google’s primary competitors in the digital economy: Facebook and Apple. In fact, he may simply be talking about environments that can’t be indexed by Google.</p>
<p>Now that the infrastructure of the web is in place and extending, Berners-Lee has <a href="http://www.ted.com/talks/tim_berners_lee_on_the_next_web.html">turned his attention</a> to the potential of the vast quantities of data that reside online. His idea is that the more accessible the data is, the greater its creative application. Data can be re-used [for disaster relief](<a href="http://www.google.org/crisisresponse/">http://www.google.org/crisisresponse/</a> or <a href="http://www.theyworkforyou.com/">public accountability</a> or even the <a href="http://www.fixmystreet.com/">maintenance of public spaces</a>.</p>
<p>During the debate around the <a href="http://www.nbn.gov.au/">National Broadband Network</a> (NBN), there has been significant confusion about the things improved networked infrastructure might offer Australian society. The government did not articulate the potential social benefits of public investment in broadband particularly clearly. It was clear throughout the debate that many of Australia’s elected representatives didn’t “get” the idea of the information society and digital economy - politicians asked why public money should be used to fund faster movie downloads for teenagers. The information society and digital economy are presented as models for development not just by the <a href="http://www.dbcde.gov.au/digital_economy/what_is_the_digital_economy">Department of Broadband Communications and the Digital Economy</a> but also by international organisations like the <a href="http://www.unesco.org/new/en/communication-and-information/resources/publications-and-communication-materials/publications/full-list/towards-knowledge-societies-unesco-world-report/">United Nations Educational, Scientific Cultural Organization</a>.</p>
<p>The shape of the global economy is changing. For a highly educated and highly skilled nation like Australia, the future is in doing smart things with smart technology. Manufacturing could get a competitve advantage, for example, by producing customised on-demand products rather than getting involved in mass production (which the global economy has essentially outsourced to cheaper labour <a href="http://www.theage.com.au/opinion/politics/manufactured-crisis-20120428-1xro9.html">in industrialising economies</a> anyway).</p>
<p>The Gillard government initially presented an economic rationale for the NBN. However, the debate has shifted into areas of broader social benefit as potential applications in health and education develop. For a nation dominated by the tyranny of distance, the collapsing of time and space enabled by broadband networks offers much.</p>
<p>The danger in facing this particular challenge in its global context is that our thinking becomes technologically deterministic: we begin to equate technology with progress in an uncritical way.</p>
<p>The potential of the social web as a platform for popular activism was apparent during the Arab Spring. But the events that we see unfolding in Syria demonstrate that without the structures of civil society, the intense political mobilisation afforded by the web goes nowhere. Technology does not bring democracy; in fact, it can be an incredibly effective tool of state surveillance and control. Since the Arab Spring, the United States (US) Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton, has increasingly intertwined internet freedom within the [thread of US foreign policy](http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2010/01/21/internet_freedom?page=full](http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2010/01/21/internet_freedom?page=full).</p>
<p>As economic and citizenship practices shift into networked spaces, we need to think about how those practices can be absorbed into wider civil society and political institutions, regional economies and public services. Iceland, for example, has managed to incorporate new media into the democratic process in a meaningful way. Whilst recovering from the collapse of its banking system the Nordic island nation recently used a combination of social media environments to <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crowdsourcing">crowdsource</a> the <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/jun/09/iceland-crowdsourcing-constitution-facebook">re-drafting of its constitution</a>. Technology can provide a platform for social change. What happens next depends on what society, collectively, chooses to do with it.</p>
<p>How do we promote international consensus around the development of communications technologies? One forum tries to respond to this specific question: the United Nations sanctioned annual <a href="http://groups.itu.int/wsis-forum2012/Information/WSISOverview.aspx">World Summit on the Information Society</a>. The 2012 summit, which met last month, identified areas that are crucially important to maximise the potential of networked ICT for global humanity. They drew attention to:</p>
<ul>
<li>equitable governance of cyberspace by all stakeholders</li>
<li>environmental sustainability of ICT usage</li>
<li>access to ICT by women</li>
<li>the role of ICT in post-conflict resolution.</li>
</ul>
<p>The infrastructure of our global networks is inherently political. Technology doesn’t create the future; the complex interaction of political structures and human agency does.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/7561/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Jake Wallis does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>In part six of our multi-disciplinary Millennium Project series, Jake Wallis argues that the infrastructure of global communication networks is inherently political and calls for a switched-on populace…Jake Wallis, Lecturer in the School of Information Studies, Charles Sturt UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/76142012-06-13T20:38:07Z2012-06-13T20:38:07ZChallenge 5: The trouble with policy-makers thinking ahead<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/11645/original/ckjk7gvx-1339553319.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Julia Gillard espouses "evidence-based" policy and Bob Hawke set up a Future Commission, but policy-making is necessarily subject to all manner of short-term pressures.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">AAP/Tracey Nearmy</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>In part five of our multi-disciplinary Millennium Project series, Scott Prasser questions easy sloganeering about the importance of “long-term” policy-making.</p>
<hr>
<h2><a href="http://www.millennium-project.org/millennium/Global_Challenges/chall-05.html">Global challenge 5</a>: How can policymaking be made more sensitive to global long term perspectives?</h2>
<p>Doing policy for the long term, let alone connecting to global challenges is hard, if not impossible. Regarding the former, the pressures of day-to-day politics and policy means horizons for both bureaucrats and elected decision-makers are necessarily short, and their responses thus appear over-reactive to events and immediate political gains.</p>
<p>Connecting to global challenges from a national perspective is also difficult. It is often deemed to be in the nation’s interest to support, connect, and possibly subordinate national interests to so-called “policy challenges” that have been defined as such elsewhere, and are often driven by the very same type of politics (e.g., those of self interest, obtaining or holding advantage) but from different national perspectives. Trying to get a number of countries in the European Union to meet the European challenge of balanced budgets and a sustainable welfare system amidst the immense opposition of some, like Greece, to these very real policy goals highlights just how difficult this is.</p>
<p>So pursuing each these of two policy tasks – long term policy development and responding to global challenges – is difficult even in isolation, but getting them in sync is even more so. And there are the added issues of “do we want to?”, “can it be done?” and “how do we do it?”. In other words: desirability, capacity, and process.</p>
<p>Much of this debate can be seen through the prism of the present mania for <a href="http://www.pc.gov.au/research/conference-proceedings/strengthening-evidence">evidence-based policy</a> and the debasement of “politics” and politicians. The argument goes that if only policy was made on the basis of “evidence” and if we kept politicians out of things, then policy development, choices, and results would all be so much better. Hence, the increasing attempts to create institutions that are supposedly independent, such as the <a href="http://www.pc.gov.au/">Productivity Commission</a> and royal commissions, instead of being tainted by the short-termism and partisanship of party politics, elected officials, or the narrowness of “ideologies.” Nonsense!</p>
<p>The trouble with trying to think ahead shares with trying to make evidence-based policy the fundamental problems that information is never clear-cut, predictions are <a href="http://press.princeton.edu/titles/7959.html">often wrong</a>, data changes, scientists have personal prejudices, and “evidence” goes through cycles of fads and popularity. Just think, if some time ago government had acted on “<a href="http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/3414661">evidence</a>” that coffee was bad for you and banned coffee or took steps to reduce its consumption. More recent “<a href="http://www.bmj.com/content/305/6854/609.abstract">evidence</a>” is that coffee might be good for you. And then there was that scare that studies had indicated that the human race might face extinction because of the alleged <a href="http://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/out-for-the-count-why-levels-of-sperm-in-men-are-falling-1954149.html">decline</a> in men’s sperm counts that has now been shown to have been based on <a href="http://healthland.time.com/2011/06/07/no-decline-in-sperm-counts-after-all-danish-data-show/">flawed work</a>.</p>
<p>Certainly “evidence”-based policy needs to underpin “good” (effective) policy. However, given the now 24-hour media cycle, the demand in our society is for instant solutions, and in the “labyrinthine complexity” of modern society, politicians often favour simple, easy to explain “<a href="http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/features/sideshow-syndrome-eroding-democracy/story-e6frg6z6-1226046757528">announceables</a>” over long-term, evidence-based, nuanced solutions. The real world of politics also leads politicians in this direction, as vested interests, values, context, timing, and political judgment jostle with research, analysis, and “facts” for major influence on policy decisions.</p>
<p>When governments do seek data, evidence, and expert advice as a basis for new policy directions on complex problems, or to consider long term issues, they have a wide range of approaches to choose from: they can seek a brief from within the bureaucracy; refer the issue to a statutory agency specifically established for the purpose of research and review (e.g., the Productivity Commission); request consideration by a parliamentary committee; commission an external consultant or researcher; or appoint an independent committee of inquiry (e.g., royal commissions and public inquiries). In other words, governments do think about long-term issues, but there are immediate demands to meet and an excess of capacity about what to do, leading to multiple choices and numerous options.</p>
<p>What is clear is that bodies set up to look at the future as a distinct policy focus, and that are separate from clear policy areas such as health, industry, and education, or a particular perspective like productivity, simply do not work.</p>
<p>We tried a <a href="http://trove.nla.gov.au/people/579801?c=people">Commission for the Future</a> in Australia. It was established in 1985 by then-Federal Science Minister Barry Jones in the second Hawke Labor Government. By 1993 it had gone through four directors, changed its focus, cost $7 million, and was wound down shortly afterwards. Far more influential and effective has been the Productivity Commission and its predecessors, starting with the <a href="http://trove.nla.gov.au/people/458304?c=people">Industries Assistance Commission</a> established in 1973 by the Whitlam Labor Government. It is not only what the Productivity Commission says that makes it effective, but how it works. Its effectiveness lies both in delivering mostly quality reports from its particular economic perspective, and also how its open processes of producing, consulting, and publically releasing those reports has helped inform debate, change the agenda, and make governments consider, if not always accept, policy ideas that have long-term impacts and that do take into account global trends and issues.</p>
<p>So, let’s look at how Australia is fairing in the current global financial crisis and its aftermath. We, almost alone (along with perhaps Canada) among Western nations have avoided a recession, had no bank failures, and possess a welfare system that is not bankrupt, and, thanks to decisions by past governments such as Menzies’ and largely supported by the Hawke-Keating governments, is targeted and to some extent seeks to modify behaviour rather than just accept it as the basis of funding.</p>
<p>Our economy is going well largely because of the resource sector. This did not happen overnight. The resources sector has long lead-times to develop and deliver. Thanks to the then-immediate short-term interests (jobs and votes), venal interests (perks and paybacks) and particular value-sets (development good, environment protection bad) by former state governments in Western Australia and Queensland, Australia is now sitting pretty and connected to the global trends of Asia’s century and China’s growth. Those responsible for those decisions were combining short-term politics with some long-term focus (they could see the demand taking off overseas), but let’s not over-emphasise the latter.</p>
<p>The best way that Australia can develop policies with long-term perspectives, and which link to global issues is not through special agencies with this mandate. Rather, it is by having a policy superstructure that allows multiple views, ensures transparent release of quality information, and promotes ongoing robust and rigourous debate where alternative views are not sidelined. And we should not devalue politics and the interest of politicians in all of this because democratic decision-making and policy actions are not about policy-by-experts, or just evidence, but about securing agreement to make necessary changes, and about change that is important and makes a difference.</p>
<p>We have done well with our federal system of government, our use of a range of policy advisory bodies within, on the fringes of, and outside government, and by a range of values that compete but that must meet certain standards of argument, debate, evidence, and pass the test of plain old democratic politics: will the punters accept it?</p>
<p>However, there are problems ahead. Lindsay Tanner, former Federal Finance Minister in the Rudd Labor Government, has taken a pessimistic view of modern policy-making, observing that important changes occur without serious public scrutiny and that the meaningful content of politics has been replaced by a <a href="https://theconversation.com/dumbing-down-the-media-or-shooting-the-messenger-lindsay-tanners-sideshow-1010">sideshow</a> where ideas and rational debate lose out to entertainment and trivialisation. So, let’s not get complacent. Good policy development never ends.</p>
<p><em>Comments welcome below.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/7614/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Scott Prasser does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>In part five of our multi-disciplinary Millennium Project series, Scott Prasser questions easy sloganeering about the importance of “long-term” policy-making. Global challenge 5: How can policymaking be…Scott Prasser, Executive Director, Public Policy Institute, Australian Catholic UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/75442012-06-12T20:24:00Z2012-06-12T20:24:00ZChallenge 4: Authoritarian rule and the internet<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/11539/original/t4zn4pcn-1339055133.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">China's citizens are catching up to the government-monitored web.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Mike Licht</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>In part four of our multi-disciplinary Millennium Project series, John Keane takes a look at the Chinese regime’s troubled relationship with the cyber world.</p>
<hr>
<p><strong><a href="http://www.millennium-project.org/millennium/Global_Challenges/chall-04.html">Global challenge 4</a>: How can genuine democracy emerge from authoritarian regimes?</strong></p>
<p>US President <a href="http://www.whitehouse.gov/about/presidents/jamesmadison">James Madison</a> famously remarked that a popular government without popular information, or the means of acquiring it, is but a prologue to a farce or a tragedy. </p>
<p>Two decades ago, the government of the People’s Republic of China set out to disprove this rule. Rejecting talk of farce and tragedy, its rulers now claim their authority is rooted within a new and higher form of popular government, a “post-democratic” way of handling power which delivers goods and services, promotes social harmony and roots out “harmful behaviour” using state-of-the-art information-control methods more complex and much craftier than Madison could ever have imagined.</p>
<p>The phrases “resilient authoritarianism” and “authoritarian state capitalism” roll easily from the tongues of many China analysts but, in practice, state censorship and control in that country is no straightforward matter. </p>
<p>In contrast to the period of Maoist totalitarianism, the new Chinese authoritarianism does not demand total submission from its subjects. </p>
<p>In such matters as the clothing they wear, where they work and which social company they keep, most citizens are left alone by the authorities. Belief in communism is no longer compulsory; few people now believe its tenets and the ruling Party (as a popular joke has it) comes dressed in Nike trainers and a Polo shirt topped with a Marxist hat. The regime officially welcomes intellectuals, foreign-trained professionals and private entrepreneurs (once denounced and banned as “capitalist roaders”) into its upper ranks. </p>
<p>The Party is everywhere. It prides itself on its active recruitment strategy and its organisations are rooted in all key business enterprises, including foreign companies. The methods of governing are clever. Ruling by means of generalised in-depth controls, or through widespread violence and fear, mostly belong to the past. </p>
<p>While the authorities reject both independent public monitoring of its power and free and fair general elections, they actively solicit the support of their subjects. Protesters are crushed, but also bribed and consulted.</p>
<p>Obsessive controls from above are matched by stated commitments to rooting out corruption and the rule of law. There is much talk of democracy with “Chinese characteristics”. Top-down bossing and bullying are measured. The regime seems calculating, flexible, dynamic, constantly willing to change its ways in order to remain the dominant guiding power.</p>
<p>Nowhere is this trend more strikingly evident than in the field of information. Heavy-handed government censorship methods, popularly known as the “Great Firewall of China”, are still used frequently to suppress points of view that diverge from the dominant positions formulated by the information office of the state council (the cabinet) and the propaganda departments of the ruling Party. </p>
<p>Yet information flows in China are not simply blocked, firewalled or censored. The productive channelling of dissenting opinions into government control mechanisms is a basic feature of the political order. Especially remarkable is the way the authorities treat unfettered online citizen communication as an instrument for improving the ability to govern, as an early warning device, even as a virtual steam valve for venting grievances in their favour.</p>
<p>The co-option strategy draws upon the efforts of thousands of government employees who post anonymous online commentaries designed to support policies favoured by the Party. There is also a vast labyrinth of surveillance that depends on a well-organised, reportedly 40,000-strong internet police force. </p>
<p>Skilled at snooping on Wi-Fi users in cyber cafés and hotels, it uses sophisticated data-mining software that tracks down keywords on social networking sites such as <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Renren">RenRen</a> and search engines such as <a href="http://www.baidu.com/">Baidu</a>, along the way issuing warnings to Web hosts to amend or delete content considered unproductive of “harmony.” A combination of URL filtering with the blanking of keywords labelled as “harmful” or “anti-social” is also a common strategy used to block tens of thousands of websites.</p>
<p>The 2012 concerted campaign against <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/bo-xilai">Bo Xilai</a> and his family shows that state media can be instructed to take a certain line on any particular issue; and that news websites can be told whether or how they should cover the matter, for instance by sensationalising reports in order to silence critics, or by keeping the coverage short, so as to bury it down deep memory holes. </p>
<p>Calls for “discipline” and “self-regulation” are commonplace. So-called “rumour refutation” departments, staffed by censors, pitch in. They scan posts for forbidden topics and issue knockdown rebuttals.</p>
<p>What are we to make of these techniques of repressive tolerance? They certainly confirm the paradoxical rule that the governments of authoritarian regimes are much more sensitive to popular resistance than those of democratic regimes. </p>
<p>Looking from the top down, likening the Chinese authorities to skilled doctors of the body politic, some observers wax eloquent about the new surveillance tactics of “continuous tuning” (<em>tiao</em>) of the body politic. The simile understates the ways in which the labyrinthine system of unusually well-coordinated do’s and don’ts is backed by pre-digital methods: fear served with cups of tea in the company of censors; reprimands, sackings and sideways promotions; early-morning swoops by plainclothes police known as “interceptors”; illegal detentions; violent beatings by unidentified thugs; disappearances and imprisonment, sometimes (reports suggest) in “black jails” operated by outsourced mafia gangs employed by the authorities.</p>
<p>Such restrictions breed public resentment and resistance, which (unsurprisingly) is most pronounced within the world of on-line communications. </p>
<p>China first hitched itself to the web in 1994; the country now has an estimated 500 million users, twice as many as in the United States. Two-thirds of them are younger than 30. </p>
<p>What is not officially reported is that the sphere of text messages, bulletin boards, blogs and other digital platforms nurture the spirit of monitory democracy, often with remarkable vigour. </p>
<p>The range and depth of resistance to unaccountable power are astonishing. The regime comes wrapped in propaganda, but counter-publics flourish. </p>
<p>Helped by sophisticated proxies and other methods of avoiding censorship, salacious tales of official malfeasance circulate fast, and in huge numbers, fuelled by online jokes, songs, satire, mockery and code words that develop meme-like qualities and function as attacks on government talk of the “harmonious society” (<em>hexie shehui</em>). </p>
<p>Digital media users commonly re-tweet their posts (a practice known as “knitting,” the word for which sounds like “<em>weibo</em>”). Messages easily morph into conversations, illustrated with pictures. The consequence: instantly forwarded posts tend to keep ahead of the censors, whose efforts at removing online material are countered by such tactics as re-tweeted screenshots.</p>
<p>The aggregate effect is that conversations readily go viral, causing large-scale “mass internet incidents” (<em>daxing wangluo qunti shijian</em>), as happened (during 2010) when a citizen nicknamed “Brother Banner,” a software engineer in Wuxi, was catapulted into online celebrity overnight after holding a banner that read “Not Serving the People” outside the gate of a local labour relations office to protest its failure to intervene in his pay dispute with his former employer. </p>
<p>The banner challenged the Party’s slogan, “Serving the People.” Officials were deeply embarrassed by a one-person protest that won national prominence through the internet and, eventually, coverage in official media.</p>
<p>The great significance of citizens’ initiatives of this kind is the way they put their finger on hypocrisy. Relying heavily upon networked media, they project locally specific goals that for the moment do not challenge the state’s legitimacy as such but instead call on the government to live up to its promises of “harmony”, to listen and respond to the concerns of citizens in matters of material and spiritual well-being. </p>
<p>The upshot is that the authorities now find themselves trapped in a constant tug-of-war between their will to control, negotiated change, public resistance and unresolved confusion. They may pride themselves on building a “post-democratic” regime which seems calculating, flexible and dynamic, willing to change its ways in order to remain the dominant guiding power. Yet they also know well the new Chinese proverb: ruling used to be like hammering a nail into wood, now it is much more like balancing on a slippery egg.</p>
<p>Whether the authorities can sustain their present balancing act, so proving James Madison wrong, seems at least an open question. </p>
<p>Within the China labyrinth, the 21st century spirit of monitory democracy is alive and well. Whether and how it will prevail, probably with Chinese characteristics, against the crafty forces of digital surveillance, is among the global political questions of our time.</p>
<p><em>A longer version of this piece appeared in the <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/15/opinion/the-china-labyrinth.html?pagewanted=all">New York Times</a>.</em></p>
<p><em>Comments welcome below.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/7544/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>John Keane does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>In part four of our multi-disciplinary Millennium Project series, John Keane takes a look at the Chinese regime’s troubled relationship with the cyber world. Global challenge 4: How can genuine democracy…John Keane, Professor of Politics, University of SydneyLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/74892012-06-11T20:36:43Z2012-06-11T20:36:43ZChallenge 3: Balancing population growth and resources<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/11432/original/tqdv2pbs-1338949625.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">The population has the best chance of stabilising if we improve the lives of the poor and reign in excessive consumption of the wealthier.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Flickr/DaveWilsonPhotography</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Welcome to the State of the Future series. This series addresses <a href="http://www.millennium-project.org/millennium/challenges.html">15 global challenges</a> posed by the <a href="http://www.millennium-project.org/">Millennium Project</a>, an international non-profit think-tank collecting responses for 40 nodes worldwide.</p>
<p>The Australian node is hosted by the <a href="http://www.isf.uts.edu.au/">Institute for Sustainable Futures</a> at the University of Technology, Sydney. UTS and the Conversation have assembled 15 articles by leading academics, each giving an Australian perspective. Together, they provide a fascinating snapshot of Australia grappling with a shifting future.</p>
<hr>
<h2>Challenge 3: How Can Population Growth and Resources Be Brought Into Balance?</h2>
<p>The world’s population reached seven billion in October 2011. The sixth billion was reached in 1999 and it is significant that the seventh billion took the same number of years (12) to add as the sixth. This is relevant because prior to that there had been a progressive shortening of the time taken to add billions to the human population. The first billion was reached in 1804, taking many thousands of years of human evolution to achieve. Thereafter successive billions were added in 123, 32, 15, and 13 years respectively.</p>
<p>There has been a slowing down in the rate of population growth from a high of 2.1% per annum in the late 1960s to 1.2% per annum currently. This slowdown has occurred despite a significant decline in mortality which has seen global life expectancy at birth increase from 47.7 years in 1950 to 67.9 years in 2010. The decline has been driven by a remarkable decline in global fertility from 4.95 births per woman in 1950 to 2.52 births per woman in 2010.</p>
<p>The attainment of 7 billion world citizens is cause for both optimism and concern. Optimism derives from the massive achievement in bringing down global fertility in the last three decades. When I was working in villages in West Java in the early 1970s women were having close to six children on average and I must admit to not being at all optimistic about this being reduced significantly in the short term. Yet family size has been more than halved in a generation. Writers such as Paul and Anne Ehrlich in <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Population_Bomb">The Population Bomb</a> were envisaging that the globe’s population may reach as much as 12 billion before stability but the United Nations in the early part of this century projected that it would stabilise at around 9 billion by 2050.</p>
<p>However, there are concerns. The United Nations has recently revised its stabilisation figure at around 10 billion in the latter second half of this century. Fertility decline, especially in Africa, hasn’t proceeded as rapidly as was anticipated. This must be a clarion call to redouble commitments to reduce poverty, extend education (especially of females) and intensify maternal, child, reproductive health, and family-planning programs - especially in Africa.</p>
<p>There are real concerns in terms of feeding perhaps an additional 3 billion world residents this century. Even now, between 850 and 925 million people experience food insecurity and undernourishment. In the New York Times Joel Cohen <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/24/opinion/seven-billion.html?pagewanted=all">states</a> that in 2009-10 the world produced 2.3 billion metric tons of cereal grains – enough calories to sustain 9 to 11 billion people. However, the distribution of that grain has left a significant part of the global population underfed.</p>
<p>Pressures on the environment are increasing exponentially as levels and modes of consumption accelerate. It is estimated that a seventh of the world’s population live without an adequate safe supply of water. In several areas climate change is anticipated to exacerbate those pressures. Yet stopping population growth should not be seen as a substitute for the necessity of reducing consumption in high-income countries and moving toward sustainable practices of resource use.</p>
<p>There are some striking changes occurring in the world’s population other than its inexorable growth. Ageing is not just an issue for OECD countries. A corollary of the massive decline in fertility means that growth of aged populations is more rapid in developing countries than in developed countries. In describing the global situtation, Joel Cohen has shown that whereas in 1950, globally, there were more than six children aged 15 or less for every person aged 65 or older, in 2070, the latter will outnumber the former and there will be only three working age people to every 2 people aged 65+.</p>
<p>In 2010 the world passed a significant demographic milestone when the balance between urban and rural inhabitants shifted, with more than a half of the world’s population now living in urban areas. Almost all of the net growth in global population for the rest of this century will be in urban areas of low-income countries. Rapid urbanisation brings with it many challenges.</p>
<p>Seven billion is an important milestone for our planet. The last century has been “the demographic century”, seeing more than 5 billion people added to the world’s population. We need to move as quickly as we can toward a stabilisation of the global population and this can be best achieved by improving the lives of people in low-income countries and achieving a more sustainable pattern of resource consumption, especially in high-income countries.</p>
<p><em>Comments welcome below</em>.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/7489/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Graeme Hugo receives funding from the Australian Research Council.</span></em></p>Welcome to the State of the Future series. This series addresses 15 global challenges posed by the Millennium Project, an international non-profit think-tank collecting responses for 40 nodes worldwide…Graeme Hugo, ARC Australian Professorial Fellow , University of AdelaideLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/74642012-06-10T20:12:27Z2012-06-10T20:12:27ZChallenge 2: Water; a local resource, a global problem<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/11408/original/29h296n8-1338880074.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Liquid politics: fights over water will heat up unless its management is democratised.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Flickr/Kyle Horner</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Welcome to the State of the Future series. This series addresses <a href="http://www.millennium-project.org/millennium/challenges.html">15 global challenges</a> posed by the <a href="http://www.millennium-project.org/">Millennium Project</a>, an international non-profit think-tank collecting responses for 40 nodes worldwide.</p>
<p>The Australian node is hosted by the <a href="http://www.isf.uts.edu.au/">Institute for Sustainable Futures</a> at the University of Technology, Sydney. UTS and the Conversation have assembled 15 articles by leading academics, each giving an Australian perspective. Together, they provide a fascinating snapshot of Australia grappling with a shifting future.</p>
<hr>
<h2>Global Challenge 2: How can everyone have sufficient clean water without conflict?</h2>
<p>There can be no better metaphor for the manner in which natural cycles have been changed through industrialisation than the state of the world’s waterways.</p>
<p>Water resources are a renewable resource, or they can be. However, all over the world groundwater sources that have developed over thousands of years are being mined to depletion in mere decades, and surface water resources stretched beyond their limits.</p>
<p>Extraction for agriculture, hydroelectricity, and urban use has left many waterways diminished or in some cases they have been lost forever. Given the transboundary nature of many river systems, water is likely to become a major source of conflict in the future.</p>
<h2>What is to be done?</h2>
<p>To address this, let’s focus on three dimensions of the issue.</p>
<p><strong>Firstly, as cities, irrigators, and governments have developed water resources, they have predominantly pursued a supply-side path.</strong></p>
<p>The emphasis has been on developing water supplies to meet increasing demand. In both the developed and developing world, the focus has been on new dams, large-scale inter-catchment transfers, and desalination. For poorer countries this has resulted in an increased cost of water and limited access. In wealthy states, this has pushed up the price, and led to a greater level of energy use for water supply.</p>
<p>A <a href="http://hdl.handle.net/10453/7825">demand-side approach</a> asks the question “how can the needs of the community and households be met, with the least amount of water, and at the lowest overall cost?” This means considering the uses of water in a disaggregated way, and determining how the efficiency of water use, and the reuse of water resources, can be maximised to get the most out of each drop. In the developed world, that can mean a <a href="http://www.aee-intec.at/0uploads/dateien625.pdf">major reduction, up to “factor ten”, in water use</a>, while providing the same level of service. In the developing world, it can mean bypassing, or “tunneling through”, the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kuznets_curve">Kuznets Curve</a>. This refers to the possibility that developing cities (and irrigators and industry) can avoid the increases in demand per capita that developed nations, especially countries such as Australia and the United States experienced, prior to increased efficiency.</p>
<p>In the developed world, demand for water and water use per tonne of produced commodity is falling as improvements are made to water use. These improvements have been driven by regulation, price, improved technology and awareness. This needs to continue and accelerate. Developing countries can avoid this path through increased consumption, and with sufficient support and up front investment, can move directly to a more efficient future. To illustrate with a fundamental and ubiquitous example, <a href="http://www.iwaponline.com/wpt/002/wpt0020071.htm">toilets in Australia</a> and the United States were, historically, universally wasteful in terms of litres per flush (12 litres and 20 litres respectively) and yet have now reduced excess (less than 6 and less than 4 litres respectively) such that, even with population growth, it is unlikely that Australian toilets will ever flush as much water in absolute terms as they did in 2000.</p>
<hr>
<p><strong>Secondly, water issues are highly intertwined with other sustainability-related issues.</strong></p>
<p>An example is the water-energy nexus — which works both ways. As we develop more water supply systems, the energy intensity increases, through desalination, longer inter-catchment transfers, and deeper groundwater sources. As energy use increases, conventional centralised sources use more water for cooling, or for hydropower. Thus energy efficiency can also reduce water-use. In Chile, for example, the national government is planning to develop <a href="http://www.sciencemag.org/content/329/5990/382.full">seven large dams in Patagonia</a> and a 2,400 km transmission line to meet a projected tripling of electricity demand by 2025. Opponents claim that improved energy efficiency, geothermal resources, and abundant solar thermal potential near the high demand copper mines in the Atacama Desert provide a ready and more suitable alternative.</p>
<p>Similarly, global changes in diet have put additional pressure on water, and many other resources. Dramatic increases in food sourced from animal products (meat and dairy) have increased water demand, often used for cereals fed to livestock. Currently, livestock for human consumption contributes to <a href="http://www.waterfootprint.org/Reports/Hoekstra-2012-Water-Meat-Dairy.pdf">one quarter of all water use</a>. Eating further down the food chain will significantly reduce water use, along with reductions in greenhouse gas emissions and nutrient use.</p>
<hr>
<p><strong>Thirdly, the governance of water is important.</strong>
Communities should have the right to manage the water resources in their region, within the limits of the resource and the environment, and for the benefit of those communities. This requires <a href="http://www.activedemocracy.net/index.html">robust methods of community engagement</a>, with citizens, and their preferences and values being recognised, and being informed by data on the resource and its constraints. Much of the supply-side thinking has been driven by governments or companies out of touch with the actual needs or preferences of citizens. <a href="http://www.isf.uts.edu.au/publications/whiteetal2008reformriskreality.pdf">From the unnecessary desalination plant in Sydney, Australia</a> to <a href="http://www.coha.org/water-for-sale/">protests over privatised water resources in Cochobamba, Bolivia</a>, there is a common thread of poor decision making, inappropriate exertion of power, and lack of community engagement.</p>
<p>Addressing these three challenges alone will not solve global water issues. Concerted action is needed at all levels of government. Technical advances will help, but by and large institutional barriers remain the largest obstacle. Political will, community awareness and action and strong informed processes of community engagement and decision-making processes that take account of the demand side represent the best hope for the future of water.</p>
<p><em>Comments welcome below.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/7464/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Stuart White does not work for, consult to, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has no relevant affiliations.</span></em></p>Welcome to the State of the Future series. This series addresses 15 global challenges posed by the Millennium Project, an international non-profit think-tank collecting responses for 40 nodes worldwide…Stuart White, Professor, University of Technology SydneyLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/70232012-06-07T20:11:26Z2012-06-07T20:11:26ZState of the future: challenge one; sustainable development and climate change<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/11316/original/ph3v43qz-1338774473.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Darkness visible: we're driving animals to extinction, burning through resources, and throwing out natural balances, yet consumption still reigns.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Flickr/NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center</span></span></figcaption></figure><p><strong>State of the Future 2012, a quick introduction</strong></p>
<p>What is the “state of the future”? How successfully are we tackling global challenges threatening our collective future? These questions are asked annually by the <a href="http://www.millennium-project.org/">Millennium Project</a>.</p>
<p>The Millennium Project is a non-profit think tank of futurists, scholars, business planners, and policy makers from around the world. Each year, it asks its 40 Nodes to collect judgements on emerging trends and developments. This work is distilled into an annual <a href="http://www.millennium-project.org/millennium/publications.html">State of the Future</a> report.</p>
<p>The Millennium Project identifies <a href="http://www.millennium-project.org/millennium/challenges.html">15 global challenges</a> facing humanity. They include sustainable development and climate change, democratisation, bridging the rich-poor gap, improving women’s status and tackling transnational organised crime.</p>
<p>The Australian node of the Millennium Project is hosted by the <a href="http://www.isf.uts.edu.au/">Institute for Sustainable Futures</a> at the University of Technology, Sydney. This year we decided to do something a bit different. In partnership with The Conversation, we have assembled 15 articles by leading academics, each giving an Australian perspective. Together, they provide a fascinating snapshot of Australia grappling with a shifting future.</p>
<p>These articles will be submitted to the Millennium Project’s State of the Future 2012 report. Over coming days, we hope you enjoy these glimpses into Australia’s future.</p>
<hr>
<h2>Global Challenge 1: How can sustainable development be achieved for all while addressing global climate change?</h2>
<p>Human civilisation <a href="http://wwf.panda.org/about_our_earth/all_publications/living_planet_report/2012_lpr/">uses 50% more resources than the Earth can sustainably provide</a>. In other words, we would need one and a half planets to sustain our current way of life into the future. By 2030, if we keep going the way we are going, we will need two planets.</p>
<p>Assuming an extra planet is not available, how are we going with the challenge of living within the boundaries of the one we’ve got? And what role is Australia playing in meeting this challenge?</p>
<p>In 2009, a paper in <a href="http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v461/n7263/full/461472a.html">Nature</a> by Johan Rockström and colleagues identified nine planetary boundaries that “must not be transgressed”. They found that we are already overstepping three of these boundaries: biodiversity loss, interference with nutrient cycles, and climate change. Let’s look at each in turn before considering the fundamental driver behind each of these challenges - unconstrained growth.</p>
<h2>Biodiversity loss</h2>
<p>Humans are sending species extinct at a rate <a href="http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v461/n7263/full/461472a.html">100 to 1,000 times greater than the natural background rate</a>. WWF’s global <a href="http://wwf.panda.org/about_our_earth/all_publications/living_planet_report/">Living Planet Index</a> indicates that animal populations fell by 28% between 1970 and 2008. In Australia, <a href="http://www.environment.gov.au/biodiversity/publications/strategy-2010-30/pubs/biodiversity-strategy-2010.pdf">more than 1,700 species and ecological communities are known to be threatened and at risk of extinction</a>.</p>
<p>Scientists recognise five previous mass extinctions of species on Earth. Humans are now <a href="https://theconversation.com/rise-of-the-planet-of-the-homosapiens-the-death-sentence-for-other-life-4010">causing the sixth</a>. The main drivers of biodiversity loss are conversion of habitats to provide land for farms and cities, and the impacts of introduced species.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/11329/original/hggv9s3z-1338776986.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/11329/original/hggv9s3z-1338776986.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=405&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/11329/original/hggv9s3z-1338776986.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=405&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/11329/original/hggv9s3z-1338776986.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=405&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/11329/original/hggv9s3z-1338776986.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=510&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/11329/original/hggv9s3z-1338776986.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=510&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/11329/original/hggv9s3z-1338776986.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=510&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Sound the trumpets: other life vanishes as we spread and conquer.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Flickr/khteWisconsin</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Nutrient cycles and food production</h2>
<p>Modern agriculture interferes with natural cycles of the two major nutrients - nitrogen and phosphorus. We use fertilisers containing these nutrients to increase the productivity of farming land and provide the food we need to support growing human populations.</p>
<p>However, runoff of nitrogen-based fertilisers pollutes waterways and contributes to the creation of “dead zones” in lakes and oceans. Phosphorus for fertilisers comes from phosphate rock, <a href="https://theconversation.com/time-for-policy-action-on-global-phosphorus-security-5594">which is a diminishing resource</a>.</p>
<p>According to the <a href="http://www.ifpri.org/sites/default/files/publications/oc72.pdf">International Food Policy Research Institute</a>, global food production systems are under increasing pressure from declining growth in agricultural productivity, competition from biofuel crops, strong demand for agricultural products from emerging economies and weather shocks. These pressures have led to food price hikes in recent years that have contributed to millions of people being hungry or malnourished.</p>
<p>Our existing farming systems are not sustainable and new farming practices need to be developed. </p>
<h2>Climate change</h2>
<p>Of these three challenges, climate change receives the most public and political attention. This is not surprising because changes in the climate have the potential to worsen many other problems, including biodiversity loss and food production.</p>
<p>In 2011, <a href="http://www.iea.org/newsroomandevents/news/2012/may/name,27216,en.html">global carbon dioxide emissions grew by 3.2% to a new record high</a>. Global efforts to respond to climate change have not halted rising emissions, which are now driven mainly by emerging economies such as China and India.</p>
<p>While world leaders have set a goal of <a href="http://unfccc.int/essential_background/items/6031txt.php">keeping global warming to less than two degrees</a>, the <a href="http://uk.reuters.com/article/2012/05/24/co2-iea-idUKL5E8GO6B520120524">current trends are on track to deliver a world that is six degrees warmer</a>. The window of opportunity to keep global warming below two degrees appears to be closing.</p>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/11333/original/8nfbq97r-1338778226.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/11333/original/8nfbq97r-1338778226.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=859&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/11333/original/8nfbq97r-1338778226.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=859&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/11333/original/8nfbq97r-1338778226.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=859&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/11333/original/8nfbq97r-1338778226.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1080&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/11333/original/8nfbq97r-1338778226.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1080&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/11333/original/8nfbq97r-1338778226.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1080&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Stoking is a health hazard: coal to be loaded at a port at Gladstone, QLD.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">AAP/Dave Hunt</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Despite dipping during the global financial crisis, <a href="http://www.climatechange.gov.au/publications/greenhouse-acctg/national-greenhouse-gas-inventory-2011-12.aspx">Australia’s greenhouse gas emissions rose again in 2011</a>. Under United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change accounting rules, emissions were <a href="http://www.climatechange.gov.au/publications/greenhouse-acctg/%7E/media/publications/greenhouse-acctg/NationalInventoryReport-2010-Vol-1.pdf">13.6% higher</a> in 2010 than they were in 1990. After all the messy and divisive debate over climate change in Australia, we still have not begun the challenging task of actually reducing our emissions.</p>
<h2>Towards sustainable prosperity</h2>
<p>At the heart of these three challenges is one central problem - indefinite growth is not possible on a bounded planet. As Paul Gilding points out in his excellent book, <a href="http://paulgilding.com/the-great-disruption">The Great Disruption</a>, “the Earth is full.” Indeed, it is overflowing.</p>
<p>Growth in the number of people and our material consumption drives demand for land, food, energy and water and creates the challenges I have described above. Yet there is very little serious discussion about curbing growth as a response to these challenges. Instead, we pursue endless political negotiations, like those under the <a href="http://www.cbd.int/">Convention of Biological Diversity</a> and <a href="http://unfccc.int/2860.php">United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change</a>, that deliver change at a glacial pace. We invest in renewable energy while continuing to expand coal and gas mining as if global growth in fossil fuel consumption is inevitable. We endlessly discuss market initiatives like carbon pricing to deliver incremental change without talking about the scale of change needed to achieve the ultimate goal of a zero-carbon economy. </p>
<p>There have been some valiant attempts to open up discussion about the sustainability of a growth-based economy in recent years. Gilding’s book is one. He argues that we are headed towards an inevitable series of economic crises that will lead us to measure growth in a new way, based not on quantity of stuff but quality and happiness of life.</p>
<figure class="align-left ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/11339/original/pwpkb9r8-1338780071.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/11339/original/pwpkb9r8-1338780071.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=948&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/11339/original/pwpkb9r8-1338780071.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=948&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/11339/original/pwpkb9r8-1338780071.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=948&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/11339/original/pwpkb9r8-1338780071.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1191&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/11339/original/pwpkb9r8-1338780071.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1191&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/11339/original/pwpkb9r8-1338780071.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1191&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">iPad fever: queuing to buy the latest replacement for the last exercise in planned obsolescence.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">AAP/Tracey Nearmy</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>In a similar vein, Tim Jackson’s book Prosperity Without Growth - nicely summarised in <a href="http://www.ted.com/talks/tim_jackson_s_economic_reality_check.html">this TED talk</a> - argues that we need to shift focus from pursuit of material economic growth to pursuit of sustainable prosperity. Jackson argues that our blind faith in our ability to decouple material consumption and ecological impact from economic growth is misplaced. He contends that we need a broader concept of prosperity that is more tailored to real human needs. For Jackson, prosperity is our ability to flourish as human beings within the ecological limits of a finite planet. Having more stuff doesn’t help us to flourish and can even get in the way.</p>
<p>As Jackson puts it in Prosperity Without Growth:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>To do well is in part about the ability to give and receive love, to enjoy the respect of our peers, to contribute usefully to society, to have a sense of belonging and trust in the community, to help create the social world and to find a credible place in it. In short, an important component of prosperity is the ability to participate meaningfully in the life of society.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Participation in the life of society is also central to sustainable development. On one level, sustainability is a simple concept, which we could define as the ability to maintain human civilisation indefinitely. But what is it we wish to sustain? What is it we value about human civilisation? We all need to be engaged in an ongoing conversation about what it is we value and wish to sustain.</p>
<p>So, how can sustainable development be achieved for all while addressing global climate change? The many political, technological and market responses to climate change are valuable and necessary but not sufficient. I would argue that we need to find a way to transition from a civilisation based on material economic growth (measured as GDP) to one based on sustainable prosperity with as little disruption as possible. At present, despite the efforts of Gilding, Jackson and others, the mantra of economic growth and unbridled consumption remains largely unquestioned in public debate.</p>
<p>To make progress in tackling the challenge of sustainable development we need to genuinely engage people in discussions and decisions about what it is they value and wish to sustain about society. We also need to begin a serious debate about the nature of a post-growth economy and how we can move towards it. Sadly, there seems to be little appetite for either of these conversations in Australian political debate.</p>
<p><em>Coming next: <a href="http://www.millennium-project.org/millennium/Global_Challenges/chall-02.html">Challenge 2</a>, How can everyone have clean water without conflict?</em></p>
<p><em>Comments welcome below.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/7023/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Chris Riedy is the President of the Climate Action Network Australia and Co-Chair of the Australian Node of the Millennium Project.</span></em></p>State of the Future 2012, a quick introduction What is the “state of the future”? How successfully are we tackling global challenges threatening our collective future? These questions are asked annually…Chris Riedy, Associate Professor, University of Technology SydneyLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.