Panarchy, the future and death
Image by Pawel Czerwinski
All systems reinforce themselves, humans are no exception. Human beings are systems after all, and our bodies and minds work hard to maintain ourselves on a physical, mental and economic level. The very definition of future proof is ‘something unlikely to become obsolete’. But should we really strive to adapt our institutions and systems and take them with us into the future? Or must we cut our losses?
Future proofing rhetorics are full of positive and life affirming rhetorics. Climate change adaptation framing is full of nature based solutions and our efforts to future proof ecosystems. For a long time it seemed - at least to societies in the Northern hemisphere - that with enough resources and technology we could adapt our way out of the climate crisis and more or less continue our lifestyles and economies. If only we’d put a lot of solar panels on our roofs, eat vegan and save the forests we’d be fine. And if things got really dire, we’d have a range of spectacular adaptive measures like floating cities and geo-engineering at our hands to take adaptation to the next level.
Death and release
Meanwhile a staggering 21,5 million climate refugees are displaced every year as a result of droughts, floods and rising sea levels linked to climate change. These people don’t have the luxury to adapt their way out of the climate crisis. They have to accept loss and release their ways of living and being, it is the reality in which they live.
In Western material and organismic philosophy, death is the end of all futures, the end of everything. Our fearful aversion to death is in good company with the optimistic growth mentality that fuels our economies and societies far beyond the carrying capacity of local and even global resources. “Colorado’s economic growth may be slowing down, but the White House says there’s reason to be hopeful”, reads one headline today, and “Swiss lower economic growth forecasts due to war and inflation,” another. Loss of growth is something to fear and to be averted at all costs.
Image by Vackground
But death, real or metaphorical, is not a negative thing. It is not the end of life, but an integral part of it. In nature there is no such thing as perpetual growth. Things are born, grow, die and than reborn. All the materials that make up your body, all the nutrients, the water, the carbon has always been on this planet and it will remain here after you die, reused, reborn in some other organism. Still we believe that our economies need to grow in order to function. But our economies are intricately linked to ecosystems and therefore must play by the same rules: after growth, there comes death.
A new frame for future proofing
We need a new way of framing future proofing. Not as a method to salvage all we have, but as a way to discard what no longer serves us. Future proofing, as stated on the platform Principles of Future Proofing by historic preservation architect Rich Haven, is the process of anticipating the future and developing methods of minimising the effects of shocks and stresses of future events. If it is rooted in acknowledging the cyclical nature of ecological and social systems, future proofing is an approach that transforms organizations and systems by providing a framework to alternate between growth and collapse.
A framework for these adaptive, alternating cycles is provided by the concept of panarchy. Panarchy is the “process by which ecological and social systems grow, adapt, transform, and, ultimately, collapse over extended periods of time”, as stated by C.S. Holling, a Canadian ecologist and Professor in Ecological Sciences at the University of Florida.
Image by wondermash
Living systems have four distinct phases of development: growth (symbolised by the letter ‘r’), conservation (K), collapse (Ω, omega) and reorganization (α, alpha). Holling together with Lance H. Gunderston explored these phase in living systems, including human organizations and communities. They saw reiterating cycles of the four phases at various interlinked levels: space and time scales, localized and more regional, short- and long-term.
The phase of collapse
The focus of our societies is more on the phase growing and conserving by adaptation and less on collapse and reorganisation. But future proofing means realising that growth comes in waves. It might be scary to frame current developments of climate and migration crises as the collapse of our system, but not to recognize this is to be steerlingless in the phase of collapse. To understand collapse is needed for reorganisation and new growth, we might approach the current crises in the world with different frames: not as something to be avoided, but as something we have to work with, a wave we have to ride out.
Image by Compare Fibre
The story of systemic collapse can be scary, filled with uncertainty, loss and death. But there are other stories. Stories of communal led communities that are built on solidarity rather than domination. Stories of resilience and creativity. Stories created by degrowth communities, solar punk activists and pluriversal designers.
If we open up to these other stories ánd are able to accept letting go of once cherished parts of our societies I believe we are able to ride this wave and anticipate the new future and build thriving, more equal and sustainable societies.