{"id":707,"date":"2011-06-27T12:10:24","date_gmt":"2011-06-27T11:10:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/?p=707"},"modified":"2011-06-27T12:10:24","modified_gmt":"2011-06-27T11:10:24","slug":"lets-hear-it-for-edgy-co-existence","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/2011\/06\/27\/lets-hear-it-for-edgy-co-existence\/","title":{"rendered":"Lets hear it for Edgy Co-existence"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Another stimulating couple of days with the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.ellenmacarthurfoundation.org\/\">Ellen MacArthur<\/a> team on the Isle of Wight working with a richly diverse group of people from across interests, disciplines and sectors, all of whom are working with the Foundation on the idea of the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.ellenmacarthurfoundation.org\/about\/circular-economy\">Circular Economy<\/a>, one way or another. \u00a0 We did one exercise that focused on <em>10 Winning strategies for the ecological age<\/em> that had been worked up by ARUP\u2019s <a href=\"peter-head-urban-design-for-the-ecological-age-presentation.pdf\">Peter Head<\/a> based around Janine Benyus' Biomimicry [ See her <a href=\"http:\/\/www.ted.com\/talks\/janine_benyus_biomimicry_in_action.html\">TED<\/a> talk ], with a strap line of <em>smart responsive simplicity<\/em>. \u00a0The 10 strategies are:<\/p>\n<p>1\u00a0 \u00a0Use waste as a resource<\/p>\n<p>2 \u00a0\u00a0Diversify and co-operate<\/p>\n<p>3 \u00a0\u00a0Gather and use energy efficiently<\/p>\n<p>4 \u00a0\u00a0Optimise not maximise<\/p>\n<p>5 \u00a0\u00a0Use materials sparingly<\/p>\n<p>6 \u00a0\u00a0Clean up, not pollute<\/p>\n<p>7 \u00a0\u00a0Do not draw down resources<\/p>\n<p>8\u00a0 \u00a0Remain in balance with the biosphere<\/p>\n<p>9 \u00a0\u00a0Run on information<\/p>\n<p>10 Shop locally<\/p>\n<p>Some of these seems self-evident at the common sense level, others much less so. \u00a0The 2nd,\u00a0\u00a0\"<em>Diversify and co-operate<\/em>\" stimulated a lively discussion about whatever happened to the idea of competition, particularly as this is often more visible than co-operation in the everyday natural world that inspires this list.<\/p>\n<p>It boils down to a question of preferred metaphors, of course, with nature red in tooth and claw often being seen to be too redolent of markets, competition and capitalism to be dwelt on by sensitive souls who don\u2019t think that these can have much of a role in a sustainable future \u2013 and don't want them to have any such a role.\u00a0 Nature as warmly collaborative and nurturing is a much nicer template for a preferred human future, especially if your tastes run to the more local, the simpler, and to a stepping back to a better time (though when this was is a puzzle). \u00a0Nature might be socially constructed, but that doesn't mean you can construct is any old how.<\/p>\n<p>The reason that we have two metaphors is because these collaborative and competitive tendencies are both full on, all the time, resulting in a very edgy co-existence \u2013 and giving the natural world its resilience and diversity. \u00a0To pretend otherwise seems dishonest.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Another stimulating couple of days with the Ellen MacArthur team on the Isle of Wight working with a richly diverse group of people from across interests, disciplines and sectors, all of whom are working with the Foundation on the idea...<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":237,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-707","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-comment"],"acf":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/707","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/237"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=707"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/707\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=707"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=707"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=707"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}