There are two facets of adaptation that we focused on. One is the very straightforward concept of extreme weather patterns (slightly warmer summers,

Transcription

1 This brief presentation is meant to share three concepts that may help you in the management of our sustainability initiatives by sharing systems thinking from other disciplines. These are based on my personal experience and help shape what we are doing at Loyola. The three fields are: Climate Adaptation, Ecosystem Restoration and Jesuit Pedagogy. I hope you ll agree with me that sustainability is not an end goal that we aspire to but rather a process of improved outcomes based on constantly evolving strategies and the changing context that intent and action run into. That being said, we need to have continuous improvement strategies in place that can help us improve the actions we take and the outcomes we see. No one has this figured out but we can learn from our colleagues in other fields to improve our own processes OR bring other smart people into the fold in our efforts. 1

2 First a quick overview of Loyola. I am a new University Sustainability Director at Loyola University Chicago. Loyola is a Jesuit school with just over 16,000 students across multiple, mostly very urban campuses in Chicago. We have 4 main campuses; 2 in Chicago, 1 in surburban Maywood and 1 in Rome. We also have 4 academic centers; Ho Chi Minh, Beijing, Lima, and McHenry County, Illinois. When I started at Loyola, I was given a blank slate by which to advance sustainability across the university. Sure we have staff, programs and obligations but I don t teach and we re based underthe Provost s s office so we write our own script. This is a presentation about leading sustainability efforts for a university very much in process but I thought it might be of interest to hear how I am incorporating concepts of adaptive management into our efforts at Loyola. 2

3 The concepts that I work to incorporate into our processes at Loyola can be found in many fields of study and different people are comfortable with different terms. Continual or Countinuous Improvement Process, Adaptive Management, Adaptive Resource Management, Institutional Evolution, Looped Learning, or Learning Organizations. While these each have their unique interpretations of this model, the concept is highly similar, robust feedback processes will spotlight issues and opportunities. Clear and engaging communication will become its own correcting mechanism. Here are three pieces that I try to include in my work: In my past job I worked for the City of Chicago as the Deputy Commissioner for Natural Resources and Water Quality. I led all kind of great projects from the City s green job training program to the Center for Green Technology to our restoration of the Calumet Region but for the last two years, I was most engaged in implementing the Adaptation strategies of the Climate Action Plan. When I say adaptation in this context I mean the preparation or modification of the built and natural environment and engagement programs of the City for the forecasted impacts of climate change. 3

4 There are two facets of adaptation that we focused on. One is the very straightforward concept of extreme weather, the other is slightly harder to approachand and those are gradualchangesin leading to new normal weather patterns (slightly warmer summers, more frequencies and heavier rain and snow events). As we in the City talked to stakeholders, be they engineers, philanthropists, or elected officials, the risk of uncertainty was always there and yet there was wide buy in, indeed an eagerness to find out what to do and then go do it to make Chicago more resilient in the face of climate change. A few concepts were very powerful to serve as drivers for this work. They were: Model our own implementation to serve as a base for scale out. We can t tell others to do things that we weren t willing to do ourselves. Leverage our business as usual activities, that is, what are we doing already and can we make those actions climate ready Prioritize vulnerable communities. If we don t who will? Plus, they are least capableof responding to emergencies, drawing additional resources and inordinately feeling the impacts. Balance the need for research with the need to act. I often said this another way, for 90% of our actions, we know enough to act with no regret decisions. Enhance co benefits with climate mitigation and economic development In the City of Chicago, we estimated the cost of climate change s impacts to our operations at between 700 Million and 2 and a half billion over the next 90 years. As Hunter Lovins mentioned on Sunday, the rate of extreme weather events led to more than 14 events over $1 Billion dollars last year. As we struggled to find a way to measure the impact we were having in making Chicago more resilient, we created new performance tracking systems that not just measured if we were completing the actions that we said we were going to do (increase permeable surfaces by X%, reduce energy use by Y%), we also stole a concept of surveillance measures from the public health community. These are numbers that serve to indicate when something isn t going right. They aren t comprehensive metrics but they are alarm bells that we need to be spend some time looking into what s going on. Some examples of these are over 10% increase in basement flooding complaints in a given month over that same month the year before, rate of complaints for spring pothole season (yes we have a pothole season). Preparing our population and our infrastructure provided me a structure from which to understand a continuous learning system. Another field that I was exposed to is the world of ecological restoration; in my Masters degree program but also as a volunteer through the Chicago Wilderness Alliance, upon which I serve as the Vice Chair for the Executive Council. 4

5 Ecologists for a long time have struggled with understanding the highly complicated and multi variate world of ecosystems. These systems have so many inputs and outputs, especially when considered over time, it can be incredibly challenging to boil them down to clear, scientific experiments, in situ or in the field. As we look to restore a fallow corn field, no two are alike. Hydrology, time, species, micro climates and other historical impacts are all unique. To address this, restorationists have embraced concepts of adaptive management. This concept encourages action (removal of invasives, return of fire, hydrologic restoration or manipulation) that is closely monitored for impact in the ecosystem. Indicator species, soil quality, and other factors are closely watched over time in a specific but evolving process to look for feedback in response to actions, often using a remnant ecosystem as a benchmark. This can mean actions are increased, reduced or eliminated in a cycle of test, evaluate and repeat. 5

6 The final adaptive strategy that I am just now taking into my work at Loyola is a modified version of Ignatian pedagogy. The Jesuits are known around the world as teachers. Their concept of transformative education is admired. Its intent is not just to convey knowledge but through the process of context, experience, reflection, action, and evaluation, the learner actually transforms the way they learn and ultimately themselves. It is strongly focused on the care of the individual and has a lot to offer those dealing with initiatives dealing with behavior change. First Context, In Context we are encouraged to help the learner understand where they are in the world. This is partly the real circumstances of a student's life which include family, peers, social situations, the educational institution, and so on. [5] The socio economic, political and cultural contexts must not be forgotten, as these can seriously affect his or her growth as a person for others. A context of poverty or political repression can affect expectations about success or discourage open inquiry. These and many other factors may stifle the freedom encouraged by Ignatian pedagogy. [5] Prior learning is part of the context. Points of view and insights acquired from earlier study or spontaneously acquired from their environment are part of the context. Their feelings and attitudes regarding the subject matter also form part of the real context for learning. [5] Next is Experience Jesuits use the termexperienceexperience todescribe any activityinin which in addition toa cognitive grasp of thematterbeing considered, some sensation of an affective nature is registered by the student. These feelings are motivational forces that move one's understanding to action and commitment." [6] Learners gather and recollect their own experiences in order to understand what they know already in terms of facts, feelings, values, insights and intuitions they bring to the current study. [7] Reflection is the fundamental key to the paradigm. This is how the student makes the learning experience his or her own and obtains the meaning of the learning experience for herself and for others. Reflection means thoughtful reconsideration of subject matter, an experience, an idea, a purpose or a spontaneous reaction, that its significance may be more fully grasped. Reflection is how meaning becomes apparent in human experience. Which leads to Action Action means the learner's internal state that is: attitudes, priorities, commitments, habits, values, ideals, and growth flowing out into actions for others. Jesuit education is not meant to end in mere personal satisfaction. It is meant to move the learner to act. [2] The goal is not merely to educate the mind, but to change the person into a better, more caring human with a developed conscience. [3] Finally Evaluation Evaluation of the learner's growth is essential. [11] In the paradigm, it measures more than intellectual success, artistic talent, or athletic ability. Evaluation is to assess those things, but it is also to produce an awareness of the real needs yet unmet, as well as to understand the learner's own moral growth. I am just getting into understanding this paradigm and the real usefulness of it but there are many examples of using an institution s ethics or faith traditions to drive sustainability. We have examples of this at Loyola addressing our investment policies, our recent ban on bottled water and our social enterprises. We ll see if we can use it to incorporate sustainability into how we educate. So what does that mean for you all sitting out there trying to find some ideas to take back to your campuses? Well, I can t suggest that I have a solution that fits all institution s contexts but here are some ideas and process steps that may be different than classic strategic planning: 6

7 From Climate Adaptation I ll offer two examples about the importance of clearly communicated data. The forecasted climate impacts; More daysof heavy precipitation, wetter winters and springs, dryer summers and falls, more heat waves, temperatures spiking to 117 by the end of the century. Also the cost estimate for these impacts. This took it out of the abstract What would hot weather feel like and demonstrated how that would impact the City s bottom line and operational capacity. Plus Chicago s experience with the 1995 heat wave where over 700 people died from heat related deaths made It very relevant. That concept of surveillance measures might also be useful. We have a lot of freedom at universities to explore data and study issues, but if we don t have all the research resources we d like, there may be data that we can t afford to collect. Try asking yourself, if I can t get the direct data, what would the indirect impacts look like and perhaps that is something you can collect easily. Where are your potholes for sustainability? From Ecosystem Adaptive Management I would suggest that how we analyze the data and implement new action is exceedingly important. There have been multiple studies done that evaluate the effectiveness of adaptive management and the shared findings are pointing to the need for analysis to be consistent, rigorous and engage many stakeholders. We have an NSF funded project in Chicago called 100 sites for 100 years and the more people were involved in the restoration planning effort, the better the outcome, especially as it relates to the support in the community for the project. Think there is anything there for a sustainability project? I do. Finally in Ignatian pedagogy, again I haven t looked deeply into this but I think the commitment to the process of reflection seems to be significant. If don t spend time digesting what actions and impacts are underway than we are simply going to repeat them. One much more practical item is that I am working with one of our professional development resources the Faculty Center for Ignatian Pedagogy to create a incentive program for faculty to include sustainability learning outcomes in their teaching. The Center is already set up with budgets and outreach processes. I just had to convince their director that there were enough overlaps to justify this connection. At this point we are just working through the implementation details for FY14 but using our sustainability learning outcomes as evaluation tools we can modify an existing program to support interdisciplinary sustainability efforts. Its actually very similar to the concept I shared on climate adaptation and that is modifying business as usual practices in a more resilient way. Probably a concept you are all working towards in some manner. 7

8 As I wrap up here; hopefully I ve shared something that provides some new ideas to frame your sustainability planning efforts. Our tent is big, our opportunities plenty. We just need to be adaptive and responsive enough to use it. 8