Masters of Degrowth : Ecological Economics (w.2.3) Transformative science

 

Class 5: Transformative science and learning 

Funtowicz, S.O., Ravetz, J.R., 1994. The worth of a songbird: ecological economics as a post-normal science. Ecological Economics 10, 197–207. https://doi.org/10.1016/0921-8009(94)90108-2 

Ecological economics embraces post normal science, that instead of reduce uncertainties or seek for truth, aims to be useful at providing tentative answers to important questions.

The article challenges economists obsession to deal with questions of evaluation by reducing

the question to one number. It provides additional qualitative metrics to evaluate uncertainty, and leverages and article of the recent Nobel price Nordhaus to show the poor usage of meaningless numerical accuracy with a model full of assumptions, tweaks and tricks to give plausible numbers.

Quality is assessed by the robustness of a policy given the observed amount of uncertainty. Nordhaus makes policy recommendations that shows an excessive confidence on his poor model, basically allow for significant warming as the economic losses of climate change does not seem sufficient to justify early action.

Post normal science considers lawyers and other assessors of the social consequences of the policy implications to be an essential part in the evaluation of new research and science, instead of being ignored due to the obscurity and presumed inability to understands of evaluate the object of study.

When taking a decision or discussing a policy, multiple versions and perspectives will be considered, and not only technocrats or presumed experts will be include in the discussion.

• What does it mean that ecological economics is a “post-normal science”? Name and describe a few characteristics.  

Ecological economics allows publications based on the writing quality, from a logical and ethical perspective. That means that standard quantification and formalisms are not a prerequisite to get publisher recognition. This open space for other ways of thinking and knowing, opening up for contributions for great thinkers and doers which are not embedded into the rules of normal science of testability, formalism and rigid structures of the text.

• Adopting an ecological economics lens, how would you assess “the worth of a songbird”? 

Ecological economics differs from environmental economics or other mainstreams approaches in the sense that the worth of a song birth is neither based on a monetary value, nor even the strict use value it can provide to humans and its reproduction. That means that a bird and its creations are arguable to be protected despise its commonality, lack of exchange value... Ecological economics recognise

that not everything ought or can be measure, and there are thinks like culture and heritage that are priceless and worth a live being lived.

 

Meadows, D.H., 2002. Dancing with Systems. The Systems Thinker 13, 2–6. 

Meadows make a call for people in sciences to embrace a humble and more compassionate attitude to science; listing some principles as a guidance:

1) get the beat; listen and gather data before you act

2) protect the self maintenance capacities of the system

3) expose your model so it can be challenged

4) stay humble and stay a learner

5) honour and protect information that will trigger informed action

6) understand why the system behave the way it does

7) make feedback policies for feedback systems; rathe than static isolated policy making, implement a series of adjusting policy mechanism that reacts to the feedback is gather after its implementation

8) do not be obsessed on what is measured, care about what is important, and not only what is quantifiable

9) do not maximise or optimise part of the system while ignoring the whole

10) increase dominant time horizons, think in terms of generations, millennia...this is better for the survival of the systems

11) expand your horizons and avoid the blackhole of single displiciplines, multidisciplinary environments allows to increase your understanding of the systems

12) expand the boundary of care, for pure systemic and not only moral reasons

13) embrace and celebrate complexity, this is why is so interesting and it works after all\

14) remark and acknowledge the goodness, do not be cynical, idealist of perfectionist...between evil and saintly there is a broad path to goodness

15) give more than you take, take reciprocity seriously, and never forget, we are together on this!

What is significant for you in this article? 

Meadows make an excellent call out to engineers and innovators of the MIT to stay humble and relate different to the systems they interact with. Instead of being obsessed with prediction and control, she calls for a rather curious, caring and more gentle relation with knowledge.

Donella Meadows describes 14 ideas of how to dance with systems. We could read this list as guidance how to live and be in a complex world in crises. Think about what point you would add to this list – something that is important to you but missing – you're number 15. Write it in big letters on an A4 sheet of paper. 

I would add reproduce life and not money, stay reciprocal and grateful no matter what.