Wednesday, July 22, 2009

Sustainability by Design

John R. Ehrenfeld

"I define sustainability as the possibility that human and other life will flourish on the planet forever. It’s a definition about as far from the central notion of sustainable development as night is from day. But, to me, it represents a truer idea about what sustainability is all about. Flourishing, like many other desirable qualities, is an emergent property. It has no thing-like character. It’s like health, or liberty, or freedom: It appears only when the whole system is functioning properly. And just like you can’t produce a Rembrandt from a paint-by-numbers kit, you can’t build a machine to produce flourishing, and you can’t measure it."

Lecture at TU Delft

Saturday, July 18, 2009

Preventing Food Colonies

Some of the richest countries are buying up large swatches of land in some of the poorest countries. The wealthy foreigners produce crops abroad for pennies on the dollar and then ship the goods home: Olivier De Schutter.

Natural World - Farm for the future

Tuesday, July 07, 2009

WORLD KNOWLEDGE DIALOGUE


Two main interdisciplinary themes:


1. Collective network knowledge & human individual intelligence:
Convergences and divergences

2. Collaborative Behaviour, Altruism & Conflict:
From animal behaviour to economics and prevention of violence

Monday, July 06, 2009

Resilience - short

Interview with Buzz Holling.

His 1973 paper on the resilience of ecological systems had a substantial impact within ecology and other natural and social sciences. He has also contributed important ideas to ecological management, including Adaptive management and the Adaptive Cycle.