ELSI in Detail

1.2.2 Object level in detail Object indicators are the most common form of sustainability indicators. They index and measure the performance of an object in its systemic context. Examples of object indicators are energy efficiency, environmental impact, cultural value, carbon footprint, material recycling, cost, or ease of use. Object indicators describe a relationship between an object, other objects, and the system as a whole, and their value is dependent on the context. Each project will have a focus on a different set of objects and impacts. For example, when looking at a hospital, the amount of beds it offers and the recovery rate of patients may be a primary focus, while working on a marketing project it may matter how many people are reached, and its impact on behavior. Because each project has its own needs, we discovered it’s impossible to make a standard set of object indicators for every purpose, as you’d end up with an impossible amount of indicators to work through each time. Nevertheless, you want to take into account the full spectrum of societal impact. To resolve this, we use a standard framework of categories, to use as guidelines to map indicators for each project. If the categories of this framework are in the full spectrum, we can develop specific indicators that fit each project, while also working covering each area of the spectrum. In the early days of sustainability science, the ‘People, Planet, Profit (PPP)’, or triple bottom line, framework was used to categorize the various aspects that are important. We ran into problems when trying to use PPP as a categorization system, because it doesn’t cover all the areas we feel are necessary, nor does it provide a logical relationship between the 3 P’s. Because of this, we set out to develop a more complete and sensible framework. The result is the SiD ELSI categorization system, shown on the left. With this, you can quickly develop areas of interest and indicator sets for each challenge, while also being sure to work in the full spectrum. Let’s look a bit deeper into ELSI.

1.2.3 ELSI categories in depth In this section, we’ll review each ELSI8 category, looking at various aspects that may be of interest for each. We provide some resources that may be useful during SiD sessions as well. If you read this book from beginning to end, and don’t want to go too deep before getting a good overview of SiD, you can skip this section for now, and read on about the network and system in detail in the next paragraph. Energy Includes: Radiation, chemical, electricity, heat, motion, wind, solar, geothermal, magnetic, etc. Reflects on: energy storage, smart grids, renewables, fossil fuels, insulation, etc. Energy is the basic building block of our universe. It exists on a galaxy level down to the tiniest particles, and forms all the matter and phenomena we see around us. It is vital for our survival, but also imminently available in many forms. Energy consists in different states, each with its own characteristics and potential. Energy cannot be created or destroyed, but it can be transformed from one type to another, and flows from a ‘high’ energy state to a ‘low’ energy state if isolated and left alone (second law of thermodynamics). The different characteristics of higher and lower energy states makes some forms more useful than others. For example, when converting electricity (a high state) to heat (a lower state), it cannot be easily turned back into electricity, only with great transformation loss. Energy transformations Energy can be transformed from one form to another, for example, radiation from the sun can be transformed to electricity using PV panels, or into thermal energy by simply striking an object. Similarly, a piece of wood, which has stored potential chemical energy, releases this into heat when it’s burned. When going from one state to another, we have to deal with efficiency losses, so the trick is to use the energy type that matches what is needed as much as possible. For example, to heat up a house, it’s more efficient to use the heat from the sun with solar collectors to heat up a house directly, as opposed to first converting sunlight to electricity with PV panels, and then using electric heaters to heat up the house. Energy is never truly lost, but it can be converted into a state where it’s no longer useful. For instance, if heat dissipates from a house, the energy is dissipated into the atmosphere where it makes such a small difference that it can’t be regained (laws of entropy). Fossil to renewable For most of our society today we rely on fossil fuels to deliver the majority of energy we use, including oil, gas, and coal (see diagram on the left). We know that burning this fuel counts for the majority of CO

concentrations that impact climate change. The big quest therefore is to find renewable sources that cause little to no environmental damage, and that we can rely on to supply the energy we need for society. Sources of renewable energy There is an abundant amount of renewable energy around us, primarily from solar radiation which we can convert directly, and which sets in motion our climate system (giving us wind). Other sources are hydrological (including ocean wave energy, and hydropower from dams), geothermal (utilizing the heat of the earth’s core), and biomass (storing solar radiation in carbon structures). All of these technologies have a cost associated with them, financially, environmentally, and culturally. Creating a healthy balance between the different renewable energy solutions we have is a challenge we face now. A characteristic of some important renewable sources is that they fluctuate, such as wind and solar energy. These can compensate each other to a degree, but for an effective and reliable renewable energy grid, we need to be able to ensure that there’s always enough energy available. Currently, we constantly generate a standard amount of energy using non-fluctuating sources (such as fossil sources) to compensate. This is called a ‘base-load’, and a high base-load is detrimental to attempts at reducing our energy use. To help alleviate this, we can store energy temporarily to smooth out the fluctuations. Electricity is expensive to store, but research into promising new battery types, for example using salt water, are under way. In the meantime, biomass can be easily stored, which makes using this renewable energy type an important contribution to a sustainable energy grid. We can also try to balance supply and demand, running energy intensive processes that are not time critical only when there’s surplus energy available. Another solution is a ‘smart grid’, which connects all of the suppliers and users to balance out the fluctuations, explained below. Energy Storage Energy can be stored, but depending on which form it is in, this can be done more or less effectively. Storing chemical energy is usually easy, as it’s often embedded inside fuels such as oil or wood. Storing electricity is more difficult and requires great efforts from science and technology to achieve, and cannot be done without losses over time. In many cases, this requires an energy form conversion. For example, rechargeable batteries found in cars and products convert electricity into chemical energy to store it, and convert it back upon release, which leads to significant losses. Electricity can also be stored in other ways. For example, excess electricity can be used to pump water up a mountain. When you need energy, you can let the water run down again, driving a generator, and get part of the electricity back. Energy storage is at the forefront of technological innovation, and each year new discoveries are made. Often though, there are ways to resolve energy challenges using simple low-tech solutions. Using systems analysis and mapping to keep track of the areas surrounding the challenge will help find these where possible. Smart Grids Smart grids are an example of an energy solution on the network level. Smart grids are the generic term for technologies where the electricity network can manage the balance of power between a variety of users, producers, and storage devices. It helps resolve issues with the fluctuating nature of renewable energy sources, which at the same time paves the way for individual households not to just consume but also produce energy. By connecting many solar, wind, and other renewable sources such as geothermal and hydropower together with a bi-directional network for energy consumers, fluctuations can be evened out. For example, while it may not be windy in one area, it may be in another, causing a smoothing of the energy supply. At the same time, energy demand fluctuates, and connecting this over large networks also flattens out these fluctuations. Connecting local energy storage systems such as electric cars, combined with self reliant homes that can generate electricity, for example with PV’s on the roof, a reliable renewable energy infrastructure is achieved, and a lower base-load energy infrastructure can be used. Materials Includes: water, fertilizer, metals, wood, ceramics, plastics, textiles, fuels, VOC’s, greenhouse gasses, etc. Reflects on: bio-based & circular economy, supply chains, toxicity, availability, appropriate use The atoms from the periodic table of the elements, combined in diverse molecular structures, form the physical world around us. There are some materials we rely on heavily to sustain our existence on this planet, including fresh water, food, oxygen, the potassium and phosphate in our fertilizers, construction materials, and so on. Some materials we rely on are sourced from fossil sources, including oil, which we not only use to create energy but as a basis for most artificial materials such as plastics. Fossil and mineral resources are finite, and some of them are running out. Some of the most critically scarce materials on earth may surprise you. This includes fresh water, but also phosphate, a critical component in fertilizer and essential to life, is dwindling. Furthermore, we are running out of specific types of sand, which we use to make microchips, and rare earth materials we use to make electronic components. Many of modern society’s critical material flows have existed for less than 100 years. Our society grew from natural roots, where cycles of waste, food, building materials and water kept each other in balance. The industrial revolution allowed us to increase materials flows on a scale never seen before. Many materials lost the value they once had, because of this scale increase in extraction and production. Because of this, it became cheaper to just discard these materials after a single use than to try to reuse them. That pattern has changed little today, although the awareness of the problem has increased. A challenge before us is to start closing resource cycles of use and waste, production and use, and create a renewed appreciation of the value of material resources. It’s not just the materials themselves that are the problem. The energy use, land use, water use, and CO

emissions associated with these resource flows also carry a heavy impact. We’ve also mined materials that have laid still for eons without our ecosystems coming into contact with them, and artificially altered materials into forms that are not known in nature. Life has not built up a tolerance against them. Exposing life to these substances is causing huge future consequences. Radioactive substances are a good example, but there’s many other biological and chemical substances as well. Plastics, for example, are an enormous source of environmental and health damage. When thrown away, plastics lead a life of destruction around the planet (witness the plastic soup, for example, or microparticulates). When burned, plastics create dioxins in our air, some of the most toxic gasses known to mankind. Unfortunately, we have treated these flows like any other waste material for the most part. Only in the last few decades we sometimes consider their harmful impact, and attempted some efforts to reverse the damage these inflict. Yet, at this point, many of these materials are now wandering loose in our ecosystems, and can be found in everything we eat, drink, and breathe. Our challenges therefore include: Switching from a society that relies on finite sources, to one that relies on bio-based materials benefitting ecosystems during production (bio-based economy). Changing our linear production pathways of mining, use, and discard to circular, closed loop life cycles that retain the quality of materials, and delivers the services we’re used to (the circular economy). Stop utilizing the harmful and toxic materials we’ve spread around our ecosystems as much as we can, and start collecting them. Dematerializing our economy to provide essential services using ecosystem services, and service based product-service systems rather than heavy material systems. Tools and examples In sustainability practice, a way of looking at the impact of materials on the world around us is through a tool called Life Cycle Assessment (LCA). LCA is a generally accepted, standardized practice that looks at the impact of materials from their inception to the end of their life. It is a complex and intensive process that can only be executed by experts, but the results can be used to compare material impacts. As an example, there’s a simlified LCA table of materials to the right. An example of an extreme material impact, and society’s way to deal with it, can be found in the documentary movie ‘Into Eternity’, which shows the planning and construction of the Onkalo nuclear waste bunker in Finland, to remain there for thousands of years. It shows the impact of our decision to use a solution (nuclear fission energy) to cover our short term needs, with incredibly long term impacts on society. Ecosystems Includes: Oceans, rivers, mountains, plains, air, climate, soil, swamps, lakes, forests, land use, etc. Reflects on: climate change, climate adaptation, ecosystem services, ecosystem restoration, natural capital Our ecosystems are the bridges to life. They consist of ‘dead’ materials and cycles of energy through them, to create the conditions in which life can exist and flourish. They are the oceans, plains, mountains, rivers, and swamps that are our habitats. They are the grounds on which forests grow, the lakes where fish and insects live, the processes that clean the water we drink and provide the soil in which our food grows. They are the air we breathe, and the ozone layer that protects us from harmful rays from the sun. Ecosystems have shaped over millions of years and are constantly moving, changing, and adjusting. The idea exists, launched in the 60’s, that ecosystems are naturally in balance. But, as research shows, complex systems such as ecosystems are never in balance, forever changing, but they can be in more or less healthy states. What is true is that they can be upset and go into decline by changing some of their fundamental operating mechanics. One of the most important ones of these of late is climate change. The main reason for this, science shows, is due to the influence of added carbon dioxide (and equivalent) gasses into the atmosphere. Because of this, our global weather systems are changing, sea levels are rising, and habitats shifting. While change itself is not a bad thing, and part of the natural process, it is the rate of change that is problematic. This is now so fast, that species do not have enough time to adapt, and consequently go extinct. Our society also is not fast enough to adapt, with island nations already disappearing, and nowhere for their people to go. This fast rate of change causes not just the alteration of weather patterns, it causes them to become unstable, resulting in erratic weather conditions, and increased natural disasters such as hurricanes, and flash floods. This process is underway and is not something we can suddenly stop. Complex interactions are occurring which may worsen or relieve this change over time, including the laying bare of permafrost lands in Siberia releasing extra greenhouse gasses, and increasing ocean acidification. What’s clear is that we’re facing a changing biotope on this planet. For some communities this may turn out to be worse than for others. Island communities need to prepare for rising sea levels to a degree where some need to entirely abandon their societies, such as the island of Tuvalu in the Pacific Ocean. For others it may make it possible to farm on lands that were too cold or dry to use before. What it does guarantee is a need for change and adaptation. These efforts are usually caught under the nomer of ‘climate adaptation’, and is supported by a number of international development organizations. Ecosystems are the heavy laborers of our life support system. The services they provide to clean air and water alone are of such a scale that we could never replace them with technical means. Meanwhile, they create habitats for life which in turn provide services that bring us material resources, protection, and nourishment. While ecosystems are hard to value using conventional pricing schemes, they are of fundamental value to everyone, across borders and political spectrums. Natural capital system A framework that is under development by the international community and gaining increasing support for its global adaptation is the ‘Natural Capital’ system. This system attempts to form a framework for the evaluation and quantification of the value that natural ecosystem services deliver, and to account for this on national and regional levels. A possible policy instrument derived from this could be an Environmental Profit & Loss (EPL) statement, tracked each year. For any action that takes away from the EPL, another action would be required to offset this with a positive contribution. While Natural Capital has seen its fair share of debate on whether or not we can put a (monetary) value on ecosystems as a principle, the debate has come to a point where most participating parties agree that at the very least, putting a value of some kind on our natural resources is critical to prevent them from being used for nothing. While it’s a given that not all value can be captured in this quantification, serious attempts are made at approximating it with some sensibility, which forms a foundation of a better understanding of the value of natural system to the economy, our culture, and our continued existence. See more about this in the 4.16 Natural Capital section in the Tools chapter. SiD is useful in a Natural Capital process and its evaluation. It has been used to help unravel impact frameworks and value estimation for things such as soil, as well as impact mapping for green in urban environments. Species Includes: Mammals, birds, insects, bacteria, amphibians, rodents, reptiles, fungi, trees, plants, weeds, etc. Reflects on: biomimicry, biodiversity, habitats, food, hygiene, invasive species, environmental ethics, etc. Life on our planet exists in a multitude of species, believed to stem from a single origin. Traditionally, these species are categorized in five or six Kingdoms, including Animals, Plants, Fungi, Protists, Archaea, and Bacteria, of which the last three are all micro-organisms. We rely on these networks of species to provide the ecosystem services we’ve taken for granted in the last few centuries. We rely on them for food, water, medicine, and materials. We rely on them to make our environments habitable, prevent plagues and disease, and create the conditions to grow all our supplies in. These networks are under stress. In addition, the disappearance of one key species may cause a cascade of species loss. For example, coral reefs are also called the nurseries of the oceans, because of their vital role in providing a protective environment for other species’ mating and hatching. Their rapid disappearance due to ocean acidification (a consequence of rising CO

levels) is causing a rapid loss of life in our marine ecosystems. The value of productive species Species provide useful services for a wide variety of purposes. To switch to a bio-based economy, no other resources are as valuable as other species. Biological systems can process materials, create intelligent and efficient structures, and can provide a host of processing functions which our technical systems can’t come close to comparing to. We can use the beneficial qualities of all these other creatures we share this planet with to shape a better society. This makes protecting biodiversity and researching ways to symbiotically co-exist with rich biodiverse environments a developmental priority. Typically, when doing ELSI sweeps with teams, the Species section gathers the least ideas and interest. When doing brainstorms in most industries about potential values, problems and solutions, sometimes this section is entirely empty. This is indicative of how far we have removed ourselves from the natural world in our thinking, and it shows us how much opportunity we have left to explore there. Since one of our most pressing challenges for survival is our current massive biodiversity loss, this is highly concerning. Pay special attention in group processes to make sure Species and Ecosystems are explored sufficiently. The diversity of life All life on earth is based on carbon, bonded with other elements, most notably oxygen, hydrogen, and nitrogen. From these basic building blocks an unimaginable richness and diversity of life sprouts beyond our wildest imagination, from the depths of our oceans to the highest mountain top. This diversity has grown through 3.6 billion years of evolution, on a planet that’s 4.6 billion years old. Of those 3.6 billion years, mammals have only existed for about 200 million years, and the world’s oldest existing life form is thought to be a one hundred million year old single celled Protozoan living in a lake in Norway. Among this spectrum of life we humans have come to peek around the corner only 200.000 years ago. We evolved in an incredibly rich biotope where countless species interact, exchange and co-habitate. While most of us are ready to be awestruck and inspired by the rich diversity and ingenuity of life that surrounds us, our daily actions are also helping to rapidly kill it off. Between the different institutions that keep track of global biodiversity such as WWF and IUCN, the rate at which species are disappearing lies between 1.000 and 10.000 times the natural extinction rate. In some areas, like amphibians, almost 30% of all species are threatened with extinction, and 21% of all mammals. This all means we are witnessing the sixth mass extinction event since the birth of life. The main cause of this 6th event, science says, is human activity. This is not just bad for these species, it’s bad for us. Tools and examples When looking at biodiversity, we have two clear challenges: to stop and prevent further harm to biodiversity and endangered species, and to start reconstructing habitats and reintroduce biodiversity in urban and degraded landscapes. For the first, an important tool is the IUCN red list of endangered species. This list is the global standard for species endangerment. The second does not currently have a readily useful tool, but various organizations, such as IUCN and WWF, are working on these in various communities of practice. Culture Includes: Community, politics, law, art, education, tradition, living environments, language, etc. Reflects on: Sociology, ethics, philosophy, history, technology, demography, power, architecture, etc. Culture is the collection of foundational interactions between us as a species. They include all the ways we act, interact, and exchange. Some of these patterns are evolutionary in kind and have grown over thousands of years, while others are new and rapidly evolving. Other species also have culture, which is easily seen in species we have empathy towards such as primates, but obvious species cultures such as ant and bird colonies also show us the rich culture of our evolutionary siblings. In relation to sustainability challenges, cultural aspects impact many areas of development. These range from how we talk about the challenges, to the laws we make, the way we try to stimulate or enforce change, and the regulations and traditions that impact Harmony. Social justice challenges are present in every culture on earth and a driving force for many. Cultural aspects are also often present as an enabler or inhibition to changes in other areas of the ELSI stack. For example, the conservative culture of certain communities inhibit the implementation of more progressive sustainable solutions. As we climb up the ELSI ladder, we find aspects that seem increasingly complex. While we’re adept at dealing with issues on the material and energy levels (often engineering-related), in the culture section live elements that are subject to decades of debates and that can get fuzzy really fast. Because ‘politics’ lives in this area, it’s the section most sensitive to warping from these forces. Some of the most important themes in the culture category have to do with a networked understanding of how we exchange culture in society. When performing a network analysis, you can quickly see that knowledge sharing, in any form, is one of the most fundamental drivers of the creation and flourishing of culture. Primarily, of course, through education, which is the cultural equivalent to water and bread of a society, and an expression of fundamental ‘connectivity’ on the network level. Any culture that inhibits or needlessly restricts education, for example by budget cuts that impact quality or access to education, trades short-term financial gain for future societal decline. A systems analysis shows this as clearly as 1+1=2. Unfortunately, this seems to be all too pervasive a problem in many societies, which may have something to do with the typical short term of a political period of 4 to 5 years, while it takes about 10 to 20 years for an impact on the educational system to register in societal performance. But education is not the only important aspect of knowledge exchange. If we think about the transparency parameter we can see that this is analogous to the access and availability of knowledge in the system. What is keeping knowledge from flowing freely and quickly to all people? This is impacted by, for example, intellectual property rights such as patents, as well as governmental and corporate secrecy. Because part of the knowledge exchange in society has been monetized (through patents) many areas have become inaccessible. This is a huge systemic problem when looking at something like medicine. This leads to a strong disenfranchisement of those without knowledge ownership. Because knowledge breeds knowledge, this has a spiralling effect. Thus, the open source movement, which strives for the free access of all knowledge, can be seen as part of the quest for basic human rights and equality. Similar is the trend for the decentralization of knowledge, and with that, power. Knowledge is now more valuable than physical possessions, with the most valuable companies in the world now governed by companies dealing in data. Power is shifting its base from the ownership of property to the ability to receive, collect, manipulate, and broadcast data. Old hegemonies of material wealth are left behind, and new ones that control networks are flourishing. With the advent of the internet, new lands have been made available to humanity to re-order the power landscape. New opportunities await us to establish a more harmonious and free society with these new found opportunities. Economy Includes: Financial systems, transportation, employment, trade balances, legal entities Reflects on: Alternate currencies, value creation, business models, wealth distribution, globalization, sharing economies The economy section is the area that deals with all the interchange of goods and services among people and the other sections. This is the ELSI section that most people in the world are concerned about on a daily basis. If anything is beyond the scope of this book, it’s an extensive discussion about all the issues and elements of the economy. Not because it’s so much more complicated or important than the other sections, it’s just the one humanity has spent most time fretting about. We are, as a species, completely obsessed with the management, maintenance, and performance of our patterns of exchanging resources. Economy is the logistic nervous system of our society. It’s entirely defined, controlled, and embedded in the cultural layer, but it’s often treated as having a higher importance, which is nonsensical. Without culture we are nothing, and economy is as much a cultural expression of our society as art and science is. Economy is, difficult as it may seem, a collective choice. But, each and every individual is directly dependent on the patterns within economy and few have the resources to change this structure on their own. It’s where our jobs are, our transport, and our infrastructure. There are many themes in ELSI’s economic layer that occur frequently when studying societal problems, but none are as pervasive as unequal wealth distribution and its causal cousin, poverty. These should also become apparent when conducting a Harmony system indicator inventory, especially the Power Balance, Access, and Inclusion parameters. If you make a causal loop map of any large societal issue, whether it’s disease epidemics, terrorism, resource depletion or drug addiction, you will find poverty as a major driver. Providing solutions for poverty is therefore a systemic goal in and of itself. Another pervasive theme in economy is the entrenched pursuit of growth as an economic goal. It’s a typical example of a logical fallacy that growth is a precondition for a healthy organization or nation, which has nevertheless permeated economic textbooks for more than a century. No organism on this planet requires consistent systemic growth to survive and procreate. Growth in a finite space is always fatal. Eradicating the mechanisms of this fallacy is one of the big challenges before us in this century. It gives rise to many of the parasitic mechanisms that exist in our society today, including artificial inflation, which in turn can enslave a people into lives of infinite toil. The most valuable component of economy is labor, and the most strikingly influential is, historically speaking, trade. Trade has pulled along culture as a driving force of cultural exchange and exploration. Jobs are the bread and butter of any economy. Jobs not only give people the means to live and sustain their bodies, jobs give meaning to life. Having the right to work, is having the right to a meaningful existence. This is of course only true if those jobs are fair and ethical. Through this fundamental value of being useful for society through meaningful work, the economy section feeds directly into the health and happiness of the individual. Health Includes: Medicine, food, sports, healthy environments, safety, shelter Reflects on: Longevity, nutrition, food access, obesity, life patterns, access to nature, environmental toxicity, aging, healing environments This is the area that deals with our physical health and those aspects in our environment that affect it. We’re increasingly concerned with our personal health, but this is not a new development. Throughout history we’ve seen flurries of health concern, some based on truth, some on superstition, and this is still the case today. Physical health and mental health are, as science continues to prove, closely interlinked. The Health and Happiness aspects of ELSI are therefore operating in close relation with one another. For example, stress, a decidedly mental factor, greatly affects physical health, and vice versa. Leading causes of death The leading cause of death, and rising, is Ischemic heart disease, also called coronary artery disease. Besides hereditary and gender related influences, the highest impact on these are diet (high cholesterol), cigarettes, blood pressure (stress), and lack of physical activity. Clearly, some of the greatest health issues of our age are related to nutrition and a sedentary lifestyle. In our industrialized societies there is plenty of processed food available everywhere, but fresh food has become hard to come by in many areas. It’s either expensive or it’s simply not there. The result is malnutrition, obesity, associated depression, and a plethora of related societal issues mostly in the disenfranchised layers of society (there’s poverty again). The greatest threat to a human being isn’t working environments, car crashes or war, but heart disease. There are colluding drivers for things like obesity, such as car-oriented culture, gaps in education and increasing commercial pressure to buy particular brand products (e.g.fast food chains, soft drinks), competing with affordable healthy products. Fighting for control of one’s own health While historically the individual has mostly been held accountable for making healthy life choices, it’s increasingly understood that there are systemic drivers that disallow or strongly disincentivize this. Not one individual can fight the power of uncountable corporations wanting to sell their product (often at all and any cost). Carefully analyzing everything you buy and consume, and understanding their net effect on your own health, let alone on the planet and others’ health, is simply impossible. Health and nutrition are responsibilities that are as much shared as they are personal, and to effectively confront them can benefit greatly from systemic approaches. Outside of the western world, access to fresh water is still one of the major health concerns. 1.5 million people still die of diarrhoeal diseases each year, linked directly to poor sanitation and access to clean water. These are similar numbers as those perishing from HIV/AIDS. While globally diarrhoeal diseases have been on the decline, with increasing scarcity of fresh water, we should ensure it does not revert. As people move more into cities, with the resulting increase in density and size of urban environments, so does the rise of air and noise pollution. In an increasing number of global capitals air pollution is the number one negative health factor. Measures to improve air quality are constantly implemented, but since they tend to be performed on an object-level they rarely beat the curve of rising pollutuon. Air pollution continues to threaten the lives of billions of people in the world. As we gain increasing understanding in the effects of smaller particles, this problem seems to rise on the priority ladder. Associated to air pollution is noise. Noise (and vibration) is associated with increases in stress levels and subsequently developmental disorders and even cancer. On a related note, living in cities, with less access to nature and a higher pace of living, is one of the reasons stress levels around the world are increasing. This is combined with mental factors, but physical stress associated with long working hours, high brain activity from processing the increased stimuli and messages we are confronted with are related to stress related illnesses. No wonder that there’s increasing interest in health related aspects in our daily lives. Healthy offices and living environments, healthy hobbies such as yoga and health diets and resorts, are increasingly gaining traction in the western world. Silver society At the same time, on average, we are increasingly living longer lives. This is good news for most people, and largely due to improvements in public health, nutrition and medicine. It also means that our population is aging. The ‘silver age’ is becoming a major societal challenge. How will we enable a flourishing society while a majority of us is no longer working? How do we develop environments in which we can live meaningful lives and can contribute, even after we’ve stopped working? How do we deal with the increasing pressure on our medical systems? Long term planning and innovation for the silver age affect nearly all developments, but they are not yet taken into account enough. Things are things to put on the radar. Happiness Includes: Stress, purpose, freedom, free time, social connectivity, self-development, biophilia, access to loved ones, self-expression Reflects on: human performance, creativity, imagination, suicide rates, freedom of speech and religion, access to nature, work-life balance Happiness. Its position on top of the ELSI stack signifies that happiness is the driver behind the actions of each individual. What constitutes happiness varies wildly between individuals, cultures and stages of life, but there are certain universal drivers behind happiness that seem to hold true for most. These include free time to spend at our choosing, the ability to self realize, spending time with friends and family, and repeated time spent in nature. As our society changes, so does our perception and the drivers behind the individual’s happiness. We are, after all, a social animal, and our relationship to the group can largely affect our self image and feelings of self worth. This drives societal pressure behavior such as the pursuit of status or power, which is of all times. Other values shift, such as the perception of value of free time versus owning material goods. Measuring happiness can be as easy as simply asking someone how happy they are, to involving carefully designed questionnaires. It’s useful to know how happy people feel they are, but it’s not always necessary to know how people perceive themselves to understand that various factors impact general happiness levels. There’s different schools of thought about what drives our emotional well-being. Combining them gives us a good set of areas of interest for investigating the happiness part of ELSI. Let’s look at a few of them: Carl Jung listed five main factors for happiness

: Good physical and mental health Good personal and intimate relationships, such as those of marriage, the family, and friendships The faculty for perceiving beauty in art and nature Reasonable standards of living & satisfactory work A philosophic or religious point of view capable of coping successfully with the vicissitudes of life The World Happiness Report has six different factors that influence happiness

: Quite a different list. GDP per capita Healthy years of life expectancy Social support (as measured by having someone to count on in times of trouble) Trust (as measured by a perceived absence of corruption in government and business) Perceived freedom to make life decisions Generosity (as measured by recent donations) Yet another perspective is offered by Dr. Roger Walsh, researcher in psychiatry

: Exercise Diet & nutrition Time in nature Contribution & Service Relationships Recreation Relaxation & Stress Management Religious & spiritual involvement As these different lists show, happiness is elusive. Personally, having looked at a lot of these lists in the past, I often miss simple things like having some quiet time alone, a good laugh or the occasion to be silly once in a while. Environmental factors also impact a person’s wellbeing significantly. This is especially true in working environments where people reside without having an option to leave or with limited ability to affect their environment. Things to consider include light, acoustics, comfort, temperature, humidity, colors and presence of nature. Research indicates that improving the quality of working environments increases people’s working performance more than 20%. Instead of trying to make a complete list of what makes us happy, we can also do the opposite, which is a useful way to find strong happiness drivers. We can all easily list aspects that would make us unhappy, for example: Imprisonment Physical pain Seeing loved ones hurt Stress Inability to express ourselves Disconnection from loved ones Suffering injustice done to us or loved ones Being ostracized Mothers-in-law Again, it’s a subjective list to say the least. I did not number this list, because it’s easy to go on for a while. The point is that given a certain situation, you may encounter different factors that affect happiness. We’re looking for a practical working set of topic areas. Happiness may be the biggest demonstrator as to why SiD does not have a fixed set of indicators or subcategories. It would never stop. But if you have a particular situation, for example, when redeveloping a neighborhood or creating policy for a company or government, it’s easier to narrow down the topic areas. Since Happiness is one of the main drivers of the actions of the individual, its here that we often seek for driving triggers that allow us to stimulate a system to make a change. If there’s an action we’d like people to take that is preferable, for example, taking stairs instead of the elevator, happiness is an area we may look at. For example, we may develop a way to make the stairs more fun to walk on. For a great little video of a way to do this, search Youtube for a video on the piano stairs of “the Fun Theory”.

From C.G. Jung Speaking, C. G. Jung, 1987

World Happiness Report 2016 Update, http://worldhappiness.report/

Dr. Roger Walsh, Lifestyle and Mental Health, 2011, American Psychologist, Vol. 66. No. 7, 579-592 SiD ELSI8 flower energy brainstorm aids List of Energy Forms This list is a nice reminder that we’re surrounded by energy, and it’s not even a complete list. Kinetic The motion of a body Potential Any ‘stored’ energy Mechanical Sum of kinetic and potential energies Mechanical work Displacement Mechanical wave Mechanical energy propagated by a material’s oscillations, e.g. that of ocean surface waves or sound Chemical Contained in molecules Electric From electric fields Magnetic From magnetic fields Radiant Electromagnetic radiation including light Nuclear Binding nucleons to form the atomic nucleus Ionization Binding an electron to its atom or molecule Elastic Returning energy from the distortion of a material Gravitational From gravitational fields Intrinsic Rest energy equivalent to an object’s rest mass Thermal A microscopic equivalent of mechanical energy Heat Thermal energy emitted Renewable Energy Sources A small summary of the most common forms of renewable energy. Solar PV Capturing energy from the sun’s electromagnetic radiation Solar Thermal Capturing the heat from the sun’s radiation Wind Capturing energy from air currents Hydro Capturing energy from water currents Wave & tidal Capturing energy from periodic water movements Biomass & fuel Capturing energy from organisms Geothermal Capturing energy from the earth’s core Photosynthesis Capturing the sun’s energy by chemical means Hydro chemical (osmotic) Capturing energy from chemical differences in water bodies Nuclear Fusion Capturing energy from fusing atomic nuclei. Not (yet) made practically possible. Not to be confused with Nucleair Fission (non-renewable). LCA Score of common building materials For you to get a feeling for LCA scores, below table has comparable LCA scores for primary nonrenewable energy (PEI PE), primary renewable energy (PEI RE), GWP CO

equivalent emissions, and Durability. Material per M2 PEI PE PEI RE GWP CO

eq Durab. Limestone & Mortar

3.5 5.4 80-100 Fibre-cement sheets

3.4 40-60 Ceramic panels

> 80 Titanium-zinc sheet

70-100 Wooden shingles

-21 40-70 Insulating glass Ug = 1.1

Plastic sheet 1099

Exp. polystyrene (EPS)

Mineral wool fleece

1.4 5.4 30-50 Perlite fill

2.1

no data Flat plan tiles, titanium-zinc flashings

Concrete tiles, titanium-zinc flashings

Copper sheet

Bitumen sheeting & gravel 1355

25-30 EPDM sheeting & gravel

25-35 Reinforced concrete

70-100 Loam bricks

1.2 4.2 70-90 Calcium silicate bricks

90-100 Clay bricks

90-100 Plasterboard

1.2 40-60 Loam building board

-0.2 no data Timber boards

-26 50-90 Veneer plywood

-23 50-90 (Source: Energy Manual; Sustainable Architecture by Manfred Hegger, Matthias Fuchs, Martin Zeumer, and Tommy Stark) Example of a working document using ELSI to map an integrated value assessment of soil, to use in Natural Capital frameworks. (Jade Moors, Tom Bosschaert, 2014) An exploration like this can be quickly made using free VUE software, and be used as a brainstorm, exploration, or impact registration map. Example of a natural capital quickscan on the value of a tree using SiD’s indicator framework. Can you guess how many bird species exist? And how many mammals? What about plants? Are there more fish than fungi species? Here’s a short list, with a rough approximation of the known and expertly guessed number of species, collected from various sources. Kingdom Known/estimated species Bacteria 4.000 Protoctists (algae, protozoa) 80.000 Animals (vertebrates) 67.700 Of which Birds 9.000 Of which Mammals 6.500 Of which Fish 33.500 Of which Amphibians 8.000 Of which Reptiles 10.700 Animals (invertebrates) 1.272.000 Fungi 72.000 Plants 270.000 Total known species 1.750.000 Possible species (including unknown) 14.000.000 species count Using ELSI to explore the concept of ‘leisure’ in the context of a more livable city of Rotterdam (Except 2013) global health statistics, top causes of death example: healthy buildings pay for themselves We wanted to figure out what the return on investment of health and productivity measures for offices are. Except’s science team collected data in meta-research about all aspects that may influence worker productivity. The diagram on the right shows that in a typical office, over 80% of the costs in that office are employee wages, and only 10% is office cost and upkeep. Below, a table with performance increasing measures. In total, we estimate between 10% and 20% of productivity increase can be gained through health and wellbeing measures. This pays back the entire construction cost of a typical office in 10 years. Improvement item Productivity increase % notes and Suggestions Light 2,8 - 11,4 Natural light always better than artificial. Use wide-spectrum non-flickering LEDs, with min. 500 lux at the desk (pref. natural light), with personal control. Outdoor view

View towards substantial nature Vegetation 6 - 15 Use indoor plants, use of natural materials (i.e. stone, wood etc.) Simulated nature <1 If real nature is not possible, screens, pictures etc. have little positive impact Colors <1 Research is inconclusive about color use Air quality 4,4 - 7 Mechanical ventilation with fine particle filter (e.g. carbon active), use of materials which do not emit VOC, min 10 liters/second of air supply per occupant. Acoustics 5,4 Limit noise from outdoors, limit noise from mechanical systems, limit noise between working stations. Thermal comfort

Summer: 23,5 – 25,5 °C, Winter: 21,0 – 23,0 °C, homogeneous temp. distribution, personal control / feeling of being in control of temperature set point. Happiness score of countries according to World Happiness Report of Columbia University (2018) ELSI Rose case study: redefining health Re-Defining Health with SiD’s Systems Lens For years, health has been viewed as a mere ‘absence of disease’, which is not really informative when trying to look at what healthcare is supposed to mean and be. In line with SiD’s definition of sustainability, health can be seen as a state of a complex dynamic system. In this view, different internal and external ‘objects’ such as hormones, food intake, and exercise interact with each other on a network level, together producing some state of the ‘health’ system as a whole. Specifically, in order to be able to speak of health, the state of the system needs to be resilient, which means that one can recover fairly quickly and sustainably after some imbalance. The system also needs to be harmonious, which in the case of a non-societal system such as a human body is inherent (not attacking itself), as well as autonomous, meaning it needs to be supplied with the right amount of resources to operate properly (food, water, air, physical exercise, sunlight, etc), and can freely move to seek more optimal conditions if required. By stressing the need for resilience, and thus the ability to recover from an ailment, this definition recognizes that a person can experience physical or mental issues from time to time as part of “normal operations”. This, as opposed to the traditional view to cure each ailment separately, is therefore more helpful in light of current trends in demography and healthcare technology. Moreover, treatment can be directed at establishing (long-term) resilience and not at mere symptom reduction. So, this view both clarifies what health is, and contributes to more sustainable ways of treating health related issues. Applying SiD to (Un)healthy People In line with this definition of health, we use SiD as a starting point in working towards resilient physical, mental, and social systems. I’ll illustrate this by zooming in on mental health diagnosis and treatment. Research has increasingly shown that mental disorders are not fixed entities, but emerge from interactions between different biopsychosocial aspects. On top of that, the ‘objects’ and network structures making up these mental health systems differ across individuals. When taking the systemic nature of mental health into account, it makes little sense to diagnose people with certain ‘mental disorders’ and trying to fix these using a unified approach, which is currently the case. Using SiD-like methodologies to map the system helps to achieve better goals and better solutions. It goes without saying that SiD can be used in designing and improving other health related topics, such as cardiovascular problems related to lifestyle, or ‘vague’ chronic ailments that do not seem to have a simple cause . The resulting insights then consist of, for example, interrelations between mood, anxiety, genetic disposition, lifestyle factors, social environment, and protective factors like purpose and fulfillment, together making up a patient’s mental state. There are multiple ways of mapping this system, both qualitative and quantitative, which can function as an individualized diagnosis. Both bottom-up and top-down approaches of analyzing the system are then used to arrive at the right intervention to shift the state of the system of individual people towards a more resilient one. This can then include a variety of solutions in a ‘roadmap’, including medicinal, therapeutic, biophysical, psychological, behavioral and cultural aspects. If the mapped system is not too big, it’s possible to analyze the quantitative structure for most central objects that function as a leverage point in shifting its dynamics, and thus quickly find remedies. If it is too big to map, therapists and patients can use a top-down analysis approach such as SiD’s climbing-the-hill approach to start discovering solutions in the form of iterative interventions. Roadmaps are drawn to infer whether the effect of the interventions have the desired effect, and ‘the system’ is evaluated and updated along the road of treatment. Currently, in psychological science, studies are designed that investigate possibilities of implementing such an approach in mental healthcare, and results are expected to be published in the coming years. Expanding beyond ‘sustainability’ To conclude, SiD can be applied beyond ‘classic’ sustainability questions onto other complex constructs in which sustainability is a desired goal. SiD can be used in designing and improving other health related topics, such as health systems on the meso level, i.e., healthcare organizations, cultural patterns affecting health, and global health systems on a macro level. In this way, SiD enables us to see the complex world as it is and develop actionable interventions to all kinds of systems to make them truly sustainable. RAH system indicators System Level: Resilience Resilience is a system’s capacity to withstand (unexpected) external disturbances and its ability to return to a healthy state after suffering a blow. Resilience is not to be confused with toughness or strength. For example, for purposes of personal self-defence, techniques which rely on agility and flexibility such as Aikido are more effective than those which rely on pure strength, such as body-building. The same goes for systems: agile, flexible, and adaptive systems are more likely to be able to return to a sustainable state than monolithic and tough systems. There are many theories that have been developed and new ones in development about Resilience, and whole organizations that focus on it, like the Stockholm Resilience Center and the Resilience Alliance. Please note that the word can be used with different meanings in different professions such as psychology, engineering, and ecology. Thinking in Resilience Resilience is a powerful concept: the degree to which something can withstand unexpected occurrences. Resilience is key for ensuring continuity of a system in the long run. By focusing on resilience, you come to the insight that goals such as growth and profit lead down fragile pathways which, in the end, serve nobody. Replacing these with Resilience as a goal at the topmost level of decision making leads to profound improvements in system performance for all stakeholders, creates clarity where there previously was none, and leads to more effective strategies in the short and long run. Behavior Resilience is a complex system indicator, influenced by a wide variety of network and object parameters, which change depending on the circumstances and context. Resilience tends to be more important for the sustainability of the system as a whole. In general, and in virtually all cases, higher resilience is good. Resilience is highly susceptible to system dynamics, often more so than Autonomy and Equity. It is the most strongly influenced by the network parameters of the three RAH indicators, and less directly by ELSI indicators. Resilience responds to Autonomy and Harmony strongly, but not in a linear fashion. Increased Harmony usually leads to higher Resilience, and a very low Autonomy also hurts Resilience, although a very high autonomy can also cause a low resilience. We’ll look further into the relationships between the network and the system parameters more in the next chapters in the network parameter chapters. Cities have become the central framework to sustain human life. While growth may seem an attractive option for cities, considering the potential economic benefits, we are well aware that growth alone leads to undesirable cities. Applying resilience as a strategy instead of growth is a more effective means to arrive at both economic growth, and an actually flourishing city. A city wanting to improve itself can see that growth isn’t necessarily a good thing. Growth will fluctuate, and end. While a growing city increases resource flows, this can only be temporary, and eventually it will either shrink or run into a resource shortage. This is also because with increased size, resource consumption tends to grow in a non-linear fashion, as well as overhead costs for infrastructure and management. This means that ensuring quality of life, safety, and healthy living environments during growth is no trivial task. What will steer that, what is its target? And when growth ends, the challenge then becomes how to flourish in either condition of growth, while becoming resilient for the long run. If the city focuses on resilience rather than growth, the result is, as a necessary consequence, a more diversely-mixed, flexible, and dynamic urban landscape. It will have less monocultures of office parks and suburbs (which eventually drive traffic congestion out of bounds). It leads to dealing differently with resource management, this costs in investment terms, but pays off in the long run with clean, healthy living conditions, lower utility and maintenance costs. It will deal with the uncertainty of fluctuation resource flows in the future, will restructure itself to allow for changes in demographics and lifestyles, and start to shape itself according to its inherent strengths. When implemented effectively, this leads to better living conditions for all inhabitants, creating a more attractive city, attracting more businesses and investment, and which then causes economic growth. The result is a different trajectory, that leads to a completely different, better performing city, while at the same time leading to better economic conditions. Rather than growth as a driver for economic wellbeing, resilience is used as the driver instead. Economic health is achieved through a different pathway, that simply regards economic growth as a side-effect of being a great, beautiful, healthy, and future-proof place to live and work. Creating such as ‘resilience’ policy will automatically start to influence other areas of systemic concern as well, such as energy, sanitation, poverty alleviation, infrastructure, and cultural programs. For example, it leads to a city in which health is increased by means of biodiversity growth. It means reduced transport loads by smarter reallocation of workforce distribution. These are win-wins that aid to in concert, like instruments in an orchestra, help to achieve benefits that drive the larger goal. This way, a resilience driven strategy maximizes positive benefits on the United Nations SDG program, which helps to acquire investment funds and to achieve positive PR and worldwide recognition. Let’s have a look at what happens when applying resilience as a central strategy for an organization. We can see the same pattern with organizations a we see in cities. For example, if a company, like most traditional companies do, focuses on maximizing profit and growth, it may succeed in doing so for a while. That is, until something unexpected happens which it did not prepare for (not unthinkable in our volatile economy), and it’ll be costly to survive the unexpected blow. The most common method that is used to try to evade this is trend analysis, a form of predicting the future through historic analysis. Based on these trends, the expected outcomes are used as a forecast to strengthen the company where it’s deemed to be weak. But, of course, reality doesn’t necessarily follow the trends, because trends cannot predict the future. Because complex systems can’t be predicted well, and can rapidly change states, this is a poor form of preparing for the future. Many companies can attest to this in the last few decade due to the economic crisis, and many can’t anymore because they’re now gone. If companies focus on resilience as a primary goal instead of growth, an entirely different strategy results. This strategy is based on how to ensure the company can use system dynamics to its advantage given any number of possible situations, by building its resilience to be healthy in the long run. This may include aspects such as having a healthy, diverse, and flexible labor force as opposed to pure efficiency or growth as a focus for HR management. This allows the organization to quickly change its operations and be more resilient for rapid market shifts. Reducing its reliance on limited resources creates economic resilience, which can be achieved by for example switching to bio-based materials instead of fossil resources, taking control of the material cycle, or establishing an industrial symbiosis with supply and delivery partners. This can be done by, for example, focusing on maximizing the company’s value for society and embedding this value, so that the company becomes unmissable for society. For example, it may invest in better living environments, education, and closed loop resource flows rather than entering new markets or on saving labor costs. When a company becomes unmissable for society it has a healthier long term position, and a greater human capital base to carry it forward in rough times. This is something akin to the saying “If you focus on cost, quality goes down, but if you focus on quality, the costs go down.”. example: resilience in cities example: resilience in organizations System Level: Autonomy Autonomy, or self-reliance, is the level of independence of the system from other systems on any level, including material resources, decision making, trade balances, etc. Autonomous systems are less influenced by what happens around them than dependent systems are, freer to follow their own decision trajectory, and can tune their mechanics to suit their own needs more accurately. All systems are dependent on others to some level, which is not necessarily a bad thing, and it’s rarely worthwhile to maximize Autonomy. After all, we’re all living on this planet, and we’re all dependent on the sun and the earth to supply us with the basic platform of life (suggestions for living off-planet notwithstanding). To increase the sustainability of a system it’s usually an effective strategy to increase the autonomy of vital resource flows, network functions and system relations. For this, it then becomes necessary to focus on what these vital resources are, which is a worthwhile exercises in and of itself. Lessons from Autonomy The Autonomy indicator is largely reliant on the physical world around us, affected mostly by the EL part of the ELSI stack. It’s greatly affected by resource availability and the unequal distribution of resources on our planet. By investigating autonomy, we automatically discover local strengths and context-specific solutions to universal demands. This leads us to closed resource loops and cycles, reducing waste and increasing the recognition of value that lies within everything around us. This ties into themes such as the circular economy, blue economy, and bio-based economy. What we learn from Autonomy is the necessity to discern between critical resources and those of luxury. Critical resources of a city, such as food, shelter, clean water, and power, are best to locally provided for, decentralized, adapted to local conditions, and closed loop. Doing so increases resilience and the ability for these needs to be provided in a context sensitive manner, minimizing externalizations such as pollution and injustice. Behavior Autonomy is the system parameter most directly influenced by the lower object parameters of ELSI. Resource cycles heavily affect systems in their ability to be autonomous. In addition, decision making structures are an important factor in autonomy, as well as the balance of interchange between neighboring systems. Per resource, the scale of its optimal autonomy is different. For instance, it’s feasible for small villages to capture and clean their own water, and valuable to do so. However, the same does not apply to building cars. Not every village needs its own factory, even though they may need cars (and then could use a garage). Autonomy needs to be balanced. This can be done by prioritizing essential resources as well as their frequency of use, and their cost of provision. It is similar for policy decisions. Some decision types that are universal and slow to change, are best taken on a centralized level such as the European Union or the United Nations. These are likely to be few, but critical, such as the universal declaration of human rights. Local laws and conditions are usually best to decentralize as much as possible, to increase speed, decrease overhead, and to retain autonomy. System Level: harmony Harmony, or social justice, is all about fairness: to each other, to future generations as well as to all other living things. Harmony is a measure of tension inside of the system, when it is low, there’s a chance for internal collapse through revolution or strife. Harmony touches on the fundamentals of human interaction, and provides the base motivation and conditions for people to want to be part of a system, to make it successful, and thrive in it. In evaluating Harmony, basic human rights come first, which is still a challenge in any global supply chain in the world today. For more complex social and interpersonal evaluations of Harmony, we can use areas of study such as ethics to help, including deontology and consequentialism. Lessons from Harmony History shows us that humanity has the capacity to be unimaginably cruel, both to itself and to other living creatures. We need to protect ourselves from our own dark side. This is what many governmental systems aim to do, to optimize our best behavior, while preventing our worst. Just as with Autonomy, Harmony seeks a state where there’s a healthy playing field to achieve this. We’re far from reaching that state. While we’re protecting ourselves from our worst, we’re also damaging fundamental freedoms that allow the best to surface. We can only go so far in protecting a group at the cost of the individual. At the same time, many structures within our society currently lead to a growing imbalance in power division. Balancing power, and finding equitable mechanisms to steer clear of the atrocities that continue to plague our collective actions is a primary cause for any system hoping to be sustainable. After all, one can have a resilient, autonomous system built on the back of slaves, only serving to propagate the suffering of many, to benefit few. What we see in western society today is a deep layering of hidden social injustice. While not apparent for most consumers, slavery and other gross social injustice is still very much part of this world. It is directly, but invisibly, fed through our consumer supply chains. Many products consumed in the western world are produced elsewhere, and harbor these social wrongdoings. However, they do not even need to injustices from far away. New rings of socially unjust working practices are discovered in the west on a regular basis as well. Efforts such as fair trade improve these, but it is a voluntary practice still in the minority, and for many types of work such a system does not yet exist. Therefore, tracking Harmony through the cause and effect chain is a critical component of working on sustainable systems. Using the SiD framework by creating system maps of these influences can be a great help in tracking down dark spots, to shed light on them. In this way, you can help create increased social justice for whole sectors and product life cycles. Behavior In a world that is increasingly trying to be transparent, we may hope to move towards a world with greater social justice and harmony. Yet, some of this transparency also exposes much wrongdoing not seen before. At the same time, global wealth (and thus power) is becoming more concentrated in ever fewer agents, which obstructs Harmony, and leads to rising tension. These rising tensions are palpable, and result in various systemic effects we can see on a daily basis. These include the Brexit process in the UK, the rise of the extreme right and populism in many western political systems, mass migration and at the same time reduced empathy for immigrants, and terrorism. Harmony is primarily fed by the top layers of ELSI, such as cultural rules, laws, economic balances, and the health and happiness of those that are inhabiting the system. These object level aspects connect to Harmony network parameters, such as Balance of Power, and Equity. Besides Harmony’s own network parameters, Harmony can also be affected by the resilience network parameters, such as awareness, transparency, and validity. Increasing these network parameters through law or policy will lead to increased Harmony in the long run. Harmony is typically tracked in space and context for social justice issues of today. Mapping Harmony in time leads to questions concerning future generations, as well as learning from past mistakes. From the dark to the light Harmony is an immensely powerful aspect when used in the right way. If you internalize that Harmony is not only about preventing harm and to stop injustice, but about boosting positive developments as well, new avenues open up. We can achieve great systemic improvements when systems are tuned towards aspects such as happiness, balances between freedom and responsibility, and the support structures to guide these in a healthy way. These Harmony dynamics can make systems move by harnessing the internal tensions for good, by engaging internal willpower, passion, and fascination. In many cases, when smartly implemented, positive impacts on Harmony can be achieved in most projects with little effort, and a great return on investment. Harmony can also be seen as a measure of how much each individual can strive for personal flourishing in a system. For example, if a company is able to channel the passion and dedication of its employees to create value, it will be a vastly more effective organization. Harmony’s dynamics live deeply rooted in our society. It’s fast-moving, and can shift focus rapidly. In the last decades we’ve seen issues such as poverty, gender equality, LGBTI rights, labor practices, and many more receive significant global attention, much to the benefit of specific communities and human rights in general. In this light, Harmony and Resilience go hand in hand, sharing the needs for transparency and awareness first and foremost in the path towards sustainable change. Time Daylight Traveler Food Ecosystem Advertisement put in picture of network evaluation sheet bottom-up network exercise Imagine a social network. Let’s call it Numbernet. Numbernet can be used to connect to friends online. Now, do the following three things: Only considering the social network aspect (not the technical aspects): go down the list of 9 resilience network parameters one by one, and determine what simple formula would be useful to inform each network parameter. Do the same, but now only considering the technical aspects (devices, servers, etc). Point to the network parameters that are likely to influence the success of the network most. Examples Connectivity The total amount of users multiplied by the total amount of connections between all users. Awareness The number of users that will see a message of importance that is posted by a single user in a 24 hour period.

• or -

The time it takes for an important message to reach 90%+ of the network’s users. Redundancy The number of devices a single user can access the network on.

• or - The number of backup servers for each critical node in the technical system

Flexibility The time it takes to make or break connections between users. Transparency The time it takes for a message to travel from one user to another.

• or -

A calculation of all messages multiplied by the amount of people allowed to see the messages, divided by the total amount of messages. Diversity The total amount of users divided by the different types of users in a certain chosen category (age group, nationality, etc). Centrality The median number of connections per person divided by the average number of connections per person. Complexity The total amount of users multiplied by the total amount of connections. Validity The total messages transmitted to users divided by the network’s consensus (or scientific consensus) of the validity of the messages. Top-down network exercise Take an imaginary country, which we will call Billistan. Conjure up an image of a small country with a few dozen towns about a few hundred years ago and see which resilience network parameters you can influence by adding a modern technology, or policy measure. Do this for all the network parameters. news: connectivity and awareness Imagine that there is no form of news propagation in Billistan: no radio, TV, newspaper, or otherwise. This means the ‘connectivity’ network parameter is low, and subsequently also the ‘awareness’ indicator of Billistan’s network is low. Its effect could be, for instance, that one town within Billistan will only hear of another town’s failed harvest if someone from one village happens to pass through and deliver the news to the other village. This may result in famined villages collapsing, while they could have been helped by other towns (and in return help with something else the next year). So, we can conclude that this reduced connectivity and awareness reduces the resiliency of the country as a whole. Adding a news network to Billistan increases its connectivity and awareness, and if the news stays true (validity), it will withstand something like famine better, and thus increase its resilience. This comes at a cost of efficiency, because some people need to dedicate themselves to making news, and can no longer produce resources. Effects of censorship In another example, consider an oppressive political system which censors bad news. This lack of transparency produces a great disparity between perceived awareness and reality. Consequently, this reduced awareness harms resilience. Censorship reduces the transparency of the news to such a degree that bad news is not allowed to be reported, and the actual awareness value of the news is reduced. In this case, it may be even though of as worse, because perceived awareness and actual awareness may diverge, possibly reducing the effort to increase awareness. Diversity of education Consider a different resilience network parameter - diversity. If Billistan has a low diversity of education, social class, and background, it’s conceivable that there is great consensus in opinion and perspective. This in turn likely generates a single echo chamber which jeopardizes resilience. Diversity often positively contributes to resilience. For example, a diverse population provides varied know-hows that could make or break its emergence through a crisis. Diversity in life-styles and population demographics increases resilience through disease-resistance, increased creative power, and flexibility. the resilience network parameters CRAFTDCCV resilience network, CRAFTDCCV in Detail The resilience network parameters concern the whole of the collection of objects and their inter-object relationships, in time and space. These nine holistic network parameters look at the composition of the network, and together they help to determine a system’s resilience. In this next section we explain the meaning of these parameters and some of our experience with what they mean for creating a resilient state of a complex dynamic system. The 9 resilience network parameters are: Connectivity Redundancy Awareness Flexibility Transparency Diversity Centrality Complexity Validity In some cases, it helps to subdivide these 9 parameters according to types, as follows: Structure These three parameters mostly deal with how the network is structured: the amount of connections, and the network’s (physical) structure. Connectivity Redundancy Centrality Character These three parameters most often deal with the character of the system’s network; how fast it can react, and the diversity of its composition. Flexibility Diversity Complexity Content These three parameters reflect on the content of information traveling around the network. To what degree nodes are aware of this information, the speed of transfer, and truthfulness of information. Awareness Transparency Validity “For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong.”

• H. L, Mencken

Connectivity Connectivity is the level at which the nodes or agents in a system are connected to one another. It’s a very basic network property. The characteristics and consequences of Connectivity are usually easy to figure out; counting your friends is easy, and if you have more friends, you have higher chances of people coming to your birthday party. If there’s more roads between cities, travel times will be shorter overall, and possibly more efficient. Of course, each connection comes at a cost, and depending on the cost, the Connectivity property of a system may reduce or increase Efficiency, and thus Resilience and finally Sustainability. High or Low? In most cases you want a system to have a high level of Connectivity. If connection cost (and management) is not a limiting factor, it’s usually best to have as many connections as possible. The quality of these connections, of course, also matters, which is covered in the other indicators. Diversity Diversity indicates the different types and connections the network has. Diversity is often important to have a system withstand changes in environment, have a level of self-resolution and increase inventiveness. Diversity is leveraged on both the types of nodes, and the types of relations between each node. High or Low? Diversity is often a desired property in a system. Especially larger systems suffer when the Diversity is too low. Diversity is often a property that wants to be balanced: not too high, not too low, but in a comfortable middle, possibly err on the side of more than less. Imagine a warehouse filled with a single product: if the demand for that one product goes down, the company that owns it suffers quickly. If the warehouse had a lot of different products, its risks would have been spread, but its management would be more complex. Similarly with people in an organization: more diverse people increase the ability of an organization to respond to challenges, and have a broader platform of experience and perspective. Too much Diversity may lead to fragmentation and poor cohesion of a system, as well as low Efficiency. Complexity Complexity is a network parameter combining the amount of nodes, the amount of connections and the network’s Diversity. In that sense, it is a compound indicator, but its qualities are so fundamental that we’ve included in as a base indicator for networks. Network Complexity governs a wide range of effects that are important in virtually all cases. Complexity is also an emergent property of systems in general, one which is paired with the law of diminishing marginal returns. This important network effect, described by Joseph Tainter in his book The Collapse of Complex Societies (1988), has proven to be a major reason for human societies to collapse. This leads us to adopt a general strategy of ‘decomplexification’. Since other network properties such as Redundancy and Connectivity tend to drive up Complexity, this parameter can explicitly serve as a check and balance element, much like the Efficiency parameter. High or Low? For a given outcome, it’s desirable for the network complexity to be low. A high Complexity usually makes a system fragile, especially if the complexity rises above the beneficial limits of the size of the system (diminishing marginal returns). This means that there’s usually an optimum of system Complexity that lies somewhere in between its minimum and maximum properties. Flexibility Flexibility determines the ability of the network to form new connections, and to reroute or ‘bend’ existing connections. It’s a measure of the ‘elasticity’ of the network, with an important time component: how quickly can connections be (re)established, and at what cost? How far outside of the required parameters can a system operate before it fails? Flexibility is dependent on time. A system may be able to form new connections easily, but how long does it take to do this? High or Low? Generally speaking, Flexibility is a good thing. It’s one of the important supporters of system resiliency and allows faster changes. A flexible system can more easily move itself into an optimal position. Awareness is necessary for a system to change when it is needed though, therefore Flexibility is often dependent on other system qualities such as Awareness and Transparency. Flexibility is also often related to Redundancy and Diversity. For example, if there’s a low Diversity in disciplines in a company, the company can’t be very flexible on its delivery performance on a certain task, because it doesn’t have the know-how and expertise. Similarly, a city can’t house a new generation of people with different living requirements if its housing stock is limited in Diversity, and cannot be converted quickly, where Flexibility relates to the convertability of the stock. Redundancy Redundancy is a straightforward indicator that measures the level of repetition of nodes and relationships in the network. In societal systems, there’s always a redundancy present. In technical systems, Redundancy is often built in to increase reliability. High or Low? Low Redundancy leads to a fragile system, which can easily fail due to the breaking of a single critical component or connection. High Redundancy has a positive influence on Resilience, but also reduces the Efficiency of a system, increases Complexity, and may affect other parameters as well. Efficiency is usually not a goal in itself, but rather a means to an end. Therefore, if a system is sustainable it does not matter what its Efficiency is, and it’s preferred to have higher Resiliency than Efficiency. It follows that a certain degree of Redundancy is usually a good thing. Redundancy in itself is rarely a goal, but its effect on the Resilience system indicator is large. For example, combined with a low score on the Centrality indicator, Redundancy is a major driving force behind decentralized power generation. Combined with Diversity Redundancy supports Flexibility. Centrality Centrality measures the extent with which a system is reliant on particular critical node(s) within the network. In other words, it gauges the structure of a network and gauges what form it has, from a star-shaped form with high Centrality, or a flat hierarchy organic shape with a low Centrality. It is a highly influential aspect that can change the behavior of a system radically. In any network, Centrality plays a role on some level. Much has been written on Centralized vs. Decentralized systems, and many mathematical models exist to evaluate networks on their Centrality, and their consequences. High or Low? Centrality is interesting, because its effects shift quite radically depending on the size of the network. For small networks, a highly Centralized system is often efficient, fast, and reasonably reliable. That is, if the central nodes are Redundant and Flexible enough. But, when scaling up the system Centralized networks become brittle, have low resiliency, and are not efficient anymore: they lose most of their beneficial properties. This already measurably happens on the scale of small to medium sized organizations. Small organizations, from one person up to 50 or so, stand to benefit from some from of Centralization and hierarchy in the node structure. Beyond this, it quickly becomes rewarding to adopt a less hierarchical, and less centralized organizational structure. Awareness Awareness measures the reach of information between nodes within the system. A node may be in total oblivion (a complete disconnect), or it may be aware of only the information its own surrounding nodes have, its own sub-networks, or it may have a complete awareness of the entire system, and so on. Note that Awareness may be high even while Validity is very low, as in the case of propaganda. Awareness often relates to Transparency whilst Validity refers to truth. High or Low? A system with a high level of Awareness is able to respond faster to events in the system. Entities in the system can respond sooner when they are more aware. The third braking light in cars is an easy example. This light can be seen through the windshields of other cars, and alerts drivers further down the road sooner. Higher Awareness in social and cultural networks can foster greater innovative capacity within the system. In another example, low Awareness negatively impacts the Resilience of a system, since those agents that do not know about the best ways to respond to critical events may make uninformed decisions and make the situation worse. An example is what happened at the Chernobyl nuclear disaster. Even the highest officers at the facility were not aware that the emergency stop procedure could make a situation worse, and cause a meltdown. This is what happened eventually. Transparency Transparency is a measure of the connection speed between nodes in a network. Speed may be affected by layers of transmission and/or opacity. For example, hierarchies require clearance from each subsequent level for information to filter down the chain, hence hampering speed. In the case of opacity, a bureaucrat may deliberately prevent civilians from gaining insight into governance. High or Low? Low Transparency within a system implies difficult information transmission between nodes. Systems with low Transparency therefore have a slower reaction time than a high Transparency system. High Transparency seems beneficial across the board. In technological systems, the network throughput speed is often a limiting factor for the performance of the entire system. In governance, social, and cultural domains, Transparency also directly impacts the network parameter harmony. Take for example a corrupt government that takes advantage of lack of transparency to cause division between groups of people. Using propaganda to create fear for immigrants, for example, has an adverse impact on Harmony. Validity Validity is the truthfulness of information transmitted in a network as reflected on the objective observations of all of the nodes in the system. Measuring Validity may provide a pivotal insight into a system or society’s health. Validity plays an important role in societal systems where Transparency and Awareness also interact to interchange information. In technical systems, validity will be analogous to the reliability of information transfer, or subsequent corruption of information. Another interesting use of Validity is in the form of ‘true costing’. This is the practice of determining a monetary value for all externalized factors, in order to make a more ‘truthfully’ weighted economic decision. Natural Capital and True Pricing are forms of this. An economic or financial decision is less valid if some factors have not been considered. High or Low? In most cases one would want the Validity of a system to be high. This means that the information that’s passed on from one agent to another is ‘true’ according to the evaluation of their peers, as well as uncorrupted from its originating source. A small amount of corruption of information may be healthy in any system, however, to keep the error-checking systems healthy, active, and alive. Resilience Parameter Variations There are other useful indicators to analyze Resilience. Most of these have something to do with a spatial or temporal mapping of the network, and could be captured in an accurate mapping of the above indicators in space and time. For instance, the indicator ‘Reach’ is used often in existing research on system dynamics. Reach can be effectively covered in SiD’s system by mapping a combination of Awareness and Connectivity parameters in space. An indicator such as ‘Transmission speed’ can be captured by mapping the Transparency indicator in time. Otherwise, specific indicators can be used for specialized network analysis situations. Examples of other parameters we have used are: Coherence Accessibility Sensitivity/Responsiveness Entropy Rigidity/Sturdiness Usually, these aspects can be found in a combination of the CRAFTDCCV parameters, but it may be useful to add or replace parameters where the need arises. the autonomy network parameters sscne autonomy network: SSCNE in Detail The system indicator of Autonomy is naturally more associated with the physical, such as the availability of power and the recycling of resources. As with all the system and network parameters, these influence each other across the board. E.g. a more decentralized system affects Resilience greatly, but may also affect Autonomy. The following parameters are useful to evaluate Autonomy, in addition to those for Resilience. Self-sufficiency The measure to which the system can fulfill its own basic needs and beyond Self-governance The measure to which the constituents of a system can govern themselves Circularity The measure to which resources in the system are, and can be re-used, in a closed loop Network support The system’s ability to support neighboring systems in case of calamity Efficiency The amount of agents and assets contributing positively to the system in relation to their cost. Self-Sufficiency The most important indicator of autonomy is self-sufficiency. Self-sufficiency relates to the self-production of elements that are vital to a system’s operation. For example, when talking about a town, we refer to elements such as drinking water, the required power for essential operations, food, and so on. A system is self-sufficient if it produces these in large enough quantities that when supply from the outside world is cut off, it can continue to operate. There may be a term limit to this. It’s possible to measure self-sufficiency in time. For example, if a town can survive with its resources for one year before its grain or water storage is depleted, its self sufficiency is that one year. While that may be a great achievement in our current society, one year can be considered reasonably low in light of things we might be facing, in terms of drought, crop failure, storm flooding, etc. As noted before, Autonomy and Resilience can bite each other. Too high of a level of Autonomy may impact connectivity, flexibility, or other network parameters and thus undermine Resilience. For human communities, in order for that not to be the case, self-sufficiency should focus on the essential required resources. These are not just water, food, and power. These also include, for example, the capacity for managing waste, public order, basic health treatments, basic economic operations including work and value exchanges, communications, and essential public transport, as well as cultural expression and social connectivity. And, of course, the capacity to maintain and service these elements, and provide training for their continued operation. The other extreme, of things that are not part of it, are those that are not vital to operations or are of such complexity that their decentralized distribution would lead to large resource losses. For example, while having transport vehicles is of high value to a town, and a repair station for them may be considered an essential item for self-sufficiency, every town having its own vehicle factory is excessive in terms of resource utilization. It helps to conceptualize self-sufficiency in light of unexpected calamities. The autonomy of a town should be high enough to support its own basic operations indefinitely in case of most unexpected calamities. The network of towns could then support the non-essential elements. A country, conceptualized as a network of towns and settlements, increases what are ‘basic requirements’ to all essential operations of a country. For example, while a single town may not need a university as an essential basic service to continue to operate (people can go to another town for it), a country as a whole certainly does (there needs to be one for all the town to be able to get to). Therefore, the self-sufficiency of a resource or a system is intricately bound to an understanding of its scale and its relation to the network. Scope of self-sufficiency It is often helpful to define a scope and the degree with which self sufficiency should be reached. This scope determines which services are included in the set of basic resources. This then determines the living standard in times of need. Again here, the scope should not be in excess, to avoid ostracizing the community. A scope that is too low though may threaten self-sufficiency, or the capacity for network support. The degree of self-sufficiency has to do with how long, or to what extent items in the scope are self-sufficient. For example, when making a plan for a self-sufficient housing neighborhood in the Netherlands, we decided that food, electricity, heating, water, and waste were in the scope. For food self-sufficiency, we determined that its degree of self-sufficiency was to provide the essential need for basic nutrient intake for all its inhabitants in case of total disconnect from the rest of society for a period of at least 3 weeks. Self-Governance This is the ability of agents within a system to determine their own actions, especially concerning the basic resources that make up its self-sufficiency set. For example, the ability of a town’s local population to be able to make their own decisions concerning their water supply, power, food production, etcetera. For a company, this may relate to employees having the authority to make their own working environment workable, and to have a say in the basic resources and parameters of production. Self-governance has a strong relation with Harmony’s ‘Power balance’ and ‘Equity’ parameters. Self-Governance focusses on forces of control from outside that may be acting on the system. The parameters inside Harmony focus on the interrelations of the agents inside the system. Circularity A system’s Circularity is the degree with which its (essential and non-essential) resources are reused within the system. A system whose resources retain its value and quality when reused requires less replenishment from outside its system. Consequently, the system becomes self-reliant and efficient. Circularity is a panacea for imminent material shortages, pollution generation, and waste production. Circularity is measured against the degree to which resources are, and potentially can be used in a circular way. Circularity seeks a healthy balance, because not all resources can be re-used, and it is not always desirable for all materials to be reused. Circularity also encompasses value retention or transition that resources undergo during their life cycle. Consider a town that recycles its drinking water (from its water fountain) into grey water. This is a case of down-cycling, as the water by means of its transformation, deteriorated in value. On the other hand, value retention is evident in the case of toner cartridges that are designed to be disassembled, refilled, and returned to the store shelf. The same goes for products. If a product-life cycle recycles a piece of plastic only as throwaway plastic bags, it is degrading the value level of the resource, and while it’s recycling, it’s not actually all that circular of a system. Circularity is a factor that has received much attention in northwestern Europe, under the approach called the ‘Circular Economy’. Because of this attention, more existing tools are available for circularity than for other parameters. See the tools section for more explanation on the Circular Economy. levels of circularity Circularity is expressed in lower or higher levels of preference, as can be seen in the SiD Rocket diagram on the right. They are categorized from the best to the worst: Super-use Direct re-use Refurbishing Remanufacturing Recycling Waste This same idea can be found in other frameworks used in the field of Circularity, such as the Waste Hierarchy / Ladder of Lansink (diagram below), and its counterpart, the more popular Circularity mantra of Reduce, Reuse, Recycle. While circularity commonly applies to the lower ELSI stack tiers (energy & materials), it is equally relevant to the higher ELSI stack domains (life, society, individual). In fact, interesting connections can be established with the upper ELSI stack domains. For example, household waste used as a building block for a local vegetable garden improves food production awareness, and the community’s wellbeing by means of better nutrition and biophilic exposure. Measuring circularity There is a variety of tools available to measure circularity, for example the ‘Material Circularity Indicator’ of the Ellen MacArthur Foundation. This basic formula uses the following inputs: Input in the production process: How much input is coming from virgin and recycled materials and reused components? Utility during use phase: How long and intensely is the product used compared to an industry average product of similar type? This takes into account increased durability of products, but also repair/ maintenance and shared consumption business models. Destination after use: How much material goes into landfill (or energy recovery), how much is collected for recycling, which components are collected for reuse? Efficiency of recycling: How efficient are the recycling processes used to produce recycled input and to recycle material after use? For more information on developing specific indicators for material Circularity, see the free publication CIRCULARITY INDICATORS, An Approach to Measuring Circularity”, Ellen MacArthur Foundation, 2015. Please note that these standardized indicators do not (yet) take into account the full spectrum of ELSI’s categories. Network Support Network support measures to what degree the system can provide support to external systems in times of need. In a sense, it is a sister indicator to the Redundancy network parameter. It measures the ability of the system’s resources covered by the self-sufficiency scope to be delivered to neighboring systems to support shortfalls in their operation. We’ll get to specific system dynamics later, but it’s good to note here that the system dynamic Law of Decreasing Marginal Returns is strong in this one. As a network of systems starts to break down, each individual system’s capacity to support failing neighboring systems goes down with it, until the entire network becomes brittle and collapses. A high rate of Network support in a system is therefore not just nice to have as friendly neighbors, but a primary sign of a healthy system. This can then also be seen as a feeder of Resilience to external systems. A Network support capacity of zero shows that the system can only take care of itself, which usually means it is at the brink of its own capacity to survive. If Self-sufficiency is low, Network support can become negative. Then, the system relies on external systems for the supply of critical goods and services, and burdens those systems around it. Efficiency Efficiency is a measure of how well a network is servicing its intended goal compared to the resources it needs to achieve this performance. Efficiency in itself is not a goal, but when comparing systems, this parameter is useful for finding optimization strategies. Note that a highly efficient network may not be a resilient one, and Efficiency and Resilience may be opposed at times. Typically, you want Efficiency to be high as high as possible until it starts interfering with the other parameters that help to establish a high Resilience. It’s often easy to improve Efficiency by reducing parameters such as Redundancy and Connectivity, but that usually reduces Resilience. A focus on Efficiency can therefore be dangerous, especially when it has been made into a goal, which it should never be. Efficiency in itself should never be a goal for a sustainable system. SiD Rocket This diagram is a generic representation of the stages of an object’s life cycle through a system. It shows the main steps of the object’s life cycle in the blue arrows, and the required inputs and impacts at each step. When investigating a life cycle, each of these is detailed to make an assessment of the costs, impacts and benefits of the cycle as a whole. It’s helpful in establishing the necessary autonomy for various services and indexing impacts of an object within its system, and to observe the different stages of circularity. ““We can’t surge forward with certainty into a world of no surprises, but we can expect surprises, learn from them, and even ‘profit’ from them. We can’t impose our will upon a system. We can listen to what the system tells us, and discover how its properties and our values can work together to bring forth something much better than could ever be produced by our will alone.”

• Donella Meadows, 2008n

the harmony network parameters PEAIE harmony network: PEAIE in Detail Harmony is a measure of internal tension in a network. It takes into consideration social justice, as well as the rights of not just humans but also of other organisms. Below, the five Harmony network parameters are listed, followed by some frameworks to help evaluate them. Power Balance Who controls what happens, and influences decision making? Including distribution of assets; who controls the resources and wealth. Expression Who can talk, who is heard, and what can be said openly? Including freedom of expression and/or repression of perspective or opinion, commitment to transparency and voluntary free flow of information. Access Who can access important information, resources, education, etc., and to what extent? Inclusion To what extent are people and all other life considered valuable in relation to each other? Including civil and political rights, economic, social and cultural rights, gender and race equality. Equity To what degree do those that have specific needs have those needs met equitably? Justice and Human Rights Frameworks In 1949 the UN department of Realization of Economic, Social and Cultural Rights suggested to use a set of indicators to measure and track progress for human rights goals for the first time. If you work on projects where human rights and/or equity are important, such as national policy or corporate strategy, you can use the below frameworks to help inform the Harmony para­meters. A few of these are: Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR). The basic 30 articles, fitting on one sheet of paper, that was adopted in 1946 by the 56 nations in the United Nations. A minimum baseline. UN 2012 Human Rights Indicators: A Guide to Measurement and Implementation. A comprehensive and freely available framework for the evaluation of human rights. Useful for evaluating nations, regions, governments, and large organizations and their supply chains. Natural Capital A body of thought, work, frameworks and indicators attempting to quantify value of natural resources and ecosystem services, to protect and expand them. Human Spaces Report A way to measure and implement nature’s inclusion into the workplace. EU Social Justice Index 28 quantitative and eight qualitative indicators, distributed across the sections of poverty prevention, equitable education, labor market access, social cohesion and non-discrimination, health, and intergenerational justice. Power balance Power balance reflects on how the resources that give agents power to act, over themselves and over other agents, are distributed. When applied to the ELSI stack, you’ll see that these resources can be numerous, including physical resources such as water, energy, and land, but also nonmaterial things such as information, decision-making agency, capital, and in some cases, other agents (slavery, farming for plants and animals). Power balance has a large influence on the tension within a system, and thus, on Harmony. For example, an oppressed population revolting to overthrow their despots triggering strife, death, and destruction, which consequently result in the collapse of that society. Power balance is often dynamic and shifts over time. The preeminence of access to food and natural resources as the main currency of Power balance has been overtaken by access to and control of information. In this day and age, developed societies prize information not just merely for survival but also for superiority. Few people in the developed world can function anymore without internet. Typical areas of interest to investigate here include forms of government, voting rights, wealth and asset distribution, and agent’s decision making power over themselves and others. Expression Expression is about how agents can and do communicate with one another. The resilience parameters of Transparency and Awareness deal with an important part of this equation of the network as a whole, and Expression allows deeper investigation on issues such as freedom of speech, repression of particular issues or groups of agents, and commitment to Transparency and voluntary free flow of information. A high degree of Expression is important for a good Harmony in a system. This means that most means to purposefully curtail Expression, either in form or content, will likely harm a system. Not just the level of basic Expression (which agents can talk freely, what subjects are restricted) is important, but also the reception of Expression (who or what is actually heard). This also may be related to the ‘Validity’ resilience network parameter: if there is full freedom of Expression, but Validity is low, a system will have tension. But, with high Expression, the system may find ways to correct this low validity itself. If Expression is high, and Access is low, there may be a bias in who actually gets to benefit, use and reap the benefits of Expression, and also give rise to tension. Access Access focusses on the level with which agents in a system can access critical assets, information, resources, education, etc. In societal terms, this may also include the ability for agents to travel to other places (power of passport), and physical Access to places of (free) education and information exchange. For instance, a person who has official access to higher education may be financially prohibited from pursuing it. In this case, it can be said that Access to higher education is low. Access therefore is defined in terms of participation rights and/or capacity (being able to participate if willing). Restricted Access to valuable resources for large groups of agents may produce tension and destabilize a system. Circling back to the education example, the effects of educational deprivation may be evident only in the next generation. Similarly, correcting Access issues may take at least one generation. inclusion Inclusion is a measure with which agents in a system are included in the general set of laws, regulation, or cultural habits to which rules of ethics apply. This reflects on slavery as well as discrimination, and more broadly about all living things, the rights of organisms beyond human society. To exemplify this, we can look at the development of society over the centuries. In the Old World, only men of good standing were included in the so-called ‘ethical set’. Women, children, slave men, and all other living things outside of man, were considered possessions that a man of good standing could do with as he pleased. Murder was considered with gravity only when men of good standing were implicated. Over time, more agents were included in the ethical set. In ancient Egypt for example, infanticide came to be outlawed. However, it was legal to keep children as slaves. Through the thousands of years that followed, women, children, and to some degree animals, have gained more inclusion into the ethical set, although the degree of inclusion is unevenly distributed around the world. While slavery is now officially illegal in all countries of the world, prison slavery is still allowed even in some states of the USA, and practices akin to slavery are still widely present. Inclusion can also be used as a measure of fairness within organizations, for example, to see what rules apply to what agents in an organization. Equity Equity measures to what degree agents within a system have their needs met, according to their ability. This is different from equality, which distributes equal amounts to each agent. Equity is about fairness in distribution, not equality. Consider the mundane matter of access to buildings. While provision for disabled persons (handicap ramps, etc.) typically cost more than provision for able-bodied persons, it is nevertheless important for disabled persons to have equal access. Equal access here points to the usage rights of buildings and its relative facility for users with different needs. Literally, creating a level playing field. Equity is a fundamental property of any society. Equity as a parameter serves to evaluate distribution of power and resources, freedom of speech, access to resources, and inclusion. Ethical considerations matter significantly in Equity. “Faced by the magnitude of the unknown, we are lead to the limit of what analysis can do, and then point beyond– to what can and must be done by the human spirit.”

• Donella Meadows, 2008n

Ethics and the application of Harmony In applying Harmony parameters to evaluate a system, you may encounter situations in which it is useful to have a debate in the team about ethics. Having a language to talk about ethics, we’ve found, is helpful in navigating these discussions. In order to support this, we’ve added a section on ethics and some main frameworks of thought in the tools section (4.12). This may also appeal to those of you reading this with a general interest in philosophy and the progression of ethical frames of mind over the centuries. example: a systemic look at our food system In this example we look at the global food system in a rough review of the global problem, through a systemic SiD lens. The problem with food What is the issue? Our world population grows. With a growing world population comes a growing need for sustenance. Compounded with this is an increase in food consumption per capita, which makes for an exponential demand pattern. This increase of food consumption per capita is largely due to an increasing affluence of the world’s population. The more comfortable we are, the more we consume and waste (a system dynamic to keep in mind). This increase in food demand leads to increased land use for agriculture, and also usurps other scarce natural resources. Water is scarce, and its use is increasing in agriculture. We’re also running out of mined phosphate and potassium for artificial fertilizers, and without these fertilizers, production capacity is significantly diminished. Our industrial agriculture practices also leads to massive ecological damage, biodiversity loss, and pollution. These, in turn, reduces agricultural resilience, making food harder to grow. While members of the wealthier parts of our society can eat well, fresh food has been replaced by cheaper processed foods for many marginalized populations around the world. This impacts our global health and wellbeing, and creates so-called food-deserts, where fresh food isn’t available at all anymore. This is a hidden harmony risk waiting to explode. What a hairball of a problem; where do we even start? One way to start analyzing such a compound problem is by using causal loop maps. You use these to trace systemic relations back to their source, and see which factors affect the whole system. In the last few years, we’ve done this exercise and analyzed a variety of perspectives, and collected research around the globe from organizations doing the same. A highly simplified causal loop map, merely for the purpose of exemplifying such a map, is printed above. This shows some simplified major influences on the food system. Let’s have a look at some of the major dynamics in this system. Enough food, but distribution is uneven It is possible to produce plenty food for the current world population, but the food is not distributed equally. This leads to some people having an abundance of food, and others starving. The primary problem as it stands is therefore one of distribution, rather than production. This makes this challenge centrally locked into the ‘harmony’ system area, requiring, for example, policy changes. Policy change, however, has never been a safe bet for global solutions, not in the short or in the long term. This is especially true since we’ve not managed simpler challenges such as to globally eradicate poverty, establish gender rights, and so on. It would be more resilient to also try another approach. Limit to production potential An easy thought would be to just increase agricultural production to meet the increased demand. Unfortunately, we can’t continue to grow production the way it is organized now. We are limited by, at minimum, three planetary boundaries on an object level: a depletion of concentrated phosphate and potassium used in artificial fertilizer), depletion of agricultural land, and the decreasing biodiversity through agriculture. Water is also becoming a major issue in many countries in the world, and agriculture uses more than 80% of it globally. All of this limits our capacity for scaling up current production. Sustainable production needs to reduce water use, reduce land use, eliminate fossil fertilizer use, and increase biodiversity rather than harm it. The reality of monocultures One of the prime causal sources of the global food problem is a strategy we have steered our agricultural production industry into: monoculture production. In principle, growing food is a productive use of natural resources. This doesn’t have to be harmful. However, to boost our production we resorted to monocultures, which means growing a single crop over a large area. During the industrial revolution we sought ways to boost our food production, and monocultures were the answer we chose, globally. Once we entered that pathway, it was hard to go back, and the scale of farming has been increasing ever since. In SiD language, monoculture agriculture is a perfect example of an extreme case of increasing efficiency and centrality, by means of reducing diversity. This has as a consequence that the system is unbalanced to become extremely non-resilient and non-autonomous. Monocultures also separate themselves from their natural context, which is essential to their (one-directional) success, however ultimately makes the agricultural system behave more like a machine than a natural cycle. As a result, monocultures show all kinds of associated systemic issues. As the agricultural system is increasingly under pressure, these issues are coming to light. For example, because monocultures have the same crop planted over large areas, the same nutrients are taken up from the soil, and are not naturally replenished. In a diverse ecosystem, this would happen naturally. Therefore, this requires artificial fertilizers to replenish them. Because these large single cropped areas are a walhalla for pests that like those plants, these pests flourish and multiply in monoculture areas. To counter this, the industry makes heavy use of pesticides. These then also kill other (beneficial) creatures, which reduces biodiversity, and causes environmental damage. This damage in turn reduces the resilience of the ecosystem, reducing the capacity for natural pest control, and reducing soil fertility. Consequentially, this negatively affects production and yield. Some of these relations are expressed in the causal loop diagram above, showing that biodiversity loss and monoculture agriculture have a negative feedback loop that reinforce each other. Monocultures also have a large impact on transport networks. They produce a single crop in large quantities in a single place. Because local demand cannot absorb such concentrated production, produce has to be shipped to far away places, sometimes in cooled, energy intensive containers. This requires an extensive distribution network. For this we pay a price in, among others, additional land use, energy, air pollution, and time (reducing the quality of the food). The network also needs to be maintained and supported by large industries, which reduces local ownership and control (autonomy). To conclude, on a network level, the highly centralized and non-diverse food production system is driving a systemic lack of resilience and autonomy. The system dynamics that follow as a result cause a negative causal loop that is reinforced by the system. What to do? This is a systemic problem that requires a systemic intervention. It cannot be solved by merely adjusting one of the drivers, such as waste, affluence, or simple efficiency. To feed the world, we need to do several things at the same time: to increase output while negating negative effects. We also want to avoid all these negative, reinforcing systemic effects. The interventions should work within our system boundaries, which in this case are close to being met in the form of various resource limitations, including available land. One way to reduce negative effects and increase efficiency is to use agricultural systems that are diverse, decentralized, and aimed at sustainably producing crops efficiently. Instead of using monocultures, we could use polycultures. Polycultures grow food in diverse natural systems, by making use of ecosystem services and symbiotic effects between species. Some examples of polycultures are permaculture, and agroforestry. Another contribution to solving some of the systemic issues is to design locally closed loops of energy and material cycles between production, distribution, consumption, and the re-use of waste. This reduces resource use significantly, and lowers environmental damage, which result in a boost to autonomy. Polycultures also naturally use seasonal variability, and local climate niches to provide for a diversity of food throughout the year. This aspect also engages consumer awareness, expectation, and appreciation. This is another relevant topic that we won’t go into here, but is worthwhile investigating as a systemic driver. Polyculture systems such as permaculture are tried and tested on small scales, but they are not used to provide large scale food production on an industrial level. There’s still much to learn on how to achieve this. Currently, Polycultures demand all manual labor, which is inhibitive to the efficiency needed. There are promising developments in robot automation which hopefully negate that argument, such as the Pixelfarming project in the Netherlands. With Pixelfarming, a farming robot can plant and maintain polycultures. Example: Polydome As a result of the insight that polycultures provide a major improvement opportunity, Except invested in the development of a professional polyculture agriculture system. It is focused on greenhouse production, and it’s called Polydome. A team of scientists, designers, and developers built up a database of knowledge from existing polyculture efforts, and from this Except developed a concept for efficient polyculture production in greenhouses. The aim is to grow efficiently using no pesticides or artificial fertilizers. As a polyculture, it produces a wide variety of food, and recycles wastes from the community back into the system. It’s designed as a biodiverse and highly productive agriculture system that helps with a part of this global food challenge. As great as it may sound, it is still in its infancy. It provides hope, but there is a long way to go before polycultures become a competitor to current industrialized food systems. In addition to polyculture’s early development state, we need more solutions to tackle the problem. Some crops cannot be grown in polycultures, such as cereals. For these, organic production, with crop rotations and other means of production without artificial fertilizer is required. Decentralizing production of these crops is also important, and to design these in closed resource loops as well. The result of these measures is a lower output of production, but at least a sustainable one. As a direction of development, this has a potential to be a significant answer, but mature solutions are not there at the moment. There’s many questions and challenges left for this direction. Change in diets So far, we’ve only discussed agricultural systems in general. However, the nature of different agricultural systems differ drastically. In our diet, we see a vastly different impact depending on what we eat. By now, most people know that animal products are generally more impactful than vegetables (see diagram on the next page). The general rule of thumb is, the larger the animal, the higher the impact. This difference is significant, with a kilo of beef having nearly ten times the negative impact in land use and CO

production than a kilo of chicken. This may suggest that cutting all animal husbandry from our food system would be the best solution, but that’s not the case. Wanting everyone to become a vegetarian is probably a practical impossibility within the time frame we require these solutions, but it’s also systemically not the optimal choice. Animals have a useful place in our agricultural system, although less so than currently the case. For example, certain grasslands cannot be used for any meaningful edible crop production. But, they can be used by grazers such as cows or goats, and in that way, still be productive for milk and (some) meat. Also, certain lands can be used for animal food production, but not for human food production, also increasing the potential for some beneficial animal husbandry. In addition, goats and chickens are great organic waste processors. Things that are not food for us anymore, can be food for them. To close resource loops in society these types of organic wastes can be processed by chickens and goats into products for human consumption, such as milk and meat, but also into fertilizer that close agricultural loops. By slowly changing the global diet away from its current heavy meat consumption, for example to 30% of its current use, we can reduce impacts and increase food efficiency by more than 50%, helping to bring us into the future. A shift in diet, together with switching to polycultures, together are major systemic solutions to move to a healthy global food system. Addressing Food waste Looking at the causal loop diagram, we see a couple of other options. One way is to combat food waste, and to try to counter the relationship between affluence, increased waste, and consumption. Global food waste amounts to so much, that all 815 million hungry people in the world could be fed 4 times over with it, according to the FAO. Combating food waste is currently mostly done through ‘end-of-pipe’ solutions such as making restaurants and consumers be more aware of the problem, and to adjust their behavior (increasing awareness). While this is useful to a degree, it is a systemically weak approach. Moreover, more systemic issues of food waste lie upstream in food distribution, processing, and packaging. For example, food is wasted in distribution because imperfections cause food to be disqualified for retail sale. Each food system has its own waste characteristics. For example, in low-income countries, food waste mostly occurs in the early stages, during production and transport, before it reaches the consumer. In sub-saharan Africa this can amount to as much as 83%, and consumers there only waste 5%, says the World Resources Institute. In North America, however, only 32% is lost in pre-consumer stages, and 61% is wasted by consumers. Each system requires its own specific approach. There’s other factors involved in waste reduction as well. Agricultural trade agreements can cause large market shifts. These occasionally cause food to be dumped to maintain prices in large quantities, or overproduced because of perverse subsidies (and subsequently wasted). Usually, trade agreements only look at economic effects, but the effect they have on waste and long term investment of production facilities can be tremendous. Furthermore, farmers are pressured on a price level by powerful retailers that enforce low prices. This causes a reduction in the ability of farmers to innovate, invest, and be flexible in their methods and offer. On a network level it’s therefore often the middle-men that control the systemic problems of the food challenge, and not so much the consumers at the end or the producers at the start of the chain. This means systemic leverage can be found there, and a systemic solution that affect these relationships will have far reaching effects. Consumer awareness Lastly, there’s a large causal issue that drives up food waste and lowers awareness, which has to do with the distantiation of consumers from the source of their food. Growing up in industrialized societies makes us believe milk and bread come from a factory. This lack of awareness creates unnatural purchasing habits, and an unhealthy understanding about both nutrition and relevant consumer power. In the diagram at the start of this chapter some of these dynamics have been outlined. Increasing awareness as a solution through pure information sharing is beneficial. That said, it is a weaker method, as a result of a lack of leverage on the system. A more helpful tool in this process is to reintroduce food production in our daily life. This connects both ends of the system, creating a more direct feedback loop, which takes leverage away from the middlemen. A possible practical solution to help in this challenge is urban agriculture. Producing food inside of cities is not a solution to significantly contribute to the world food supply, due to its low efficiency and high cost. But, it has another role to play. Systemically, urban agriculture reconnects us with nature, and the sources of our food more effectively than an awareness program would. Urban agriculture can use wasted and degraded spaces, and introduce niche species that can thrive on other waste streams, such as mushroom production on coffee grinds. Urban agriculture has the ability to perform secondary services as well, such as water retention, waste processing, and filtration, in addition to increasing urban biodiversity. This makes urban agriculture an example of how a holistic view makes something that is at first glance economically uninteresting, into something that can be a major systemic contributor to the global food solution. Capturing this value can be done, as is shown by various urban agriculture brands around the world. Alternate food systems The global food system is huge, and complex. Each country, region, and food system has its own challenges. In our work we’ve been studying a variety of alternate food systems. We designed vertical agriculture towers for Shanghai in 2006. These are skyscrapers that are used for food production for a significant part of their floor space, mixed with residential, offices, entertainment, institutions and services. We explored how food production in urban contexts can be profitable, while using it to drive up real estate value, to clean river water, improve urban air quality, and provide quality jobs for rural migrants. This project was one of many that caused scepticism in 2006, with many procaliming this could never be a reality or profitable. Now, we see the first vertical agriculture towers rise in Asia and the Middle East, Another interesting example of alternate food systems is for desert climates. Desert climates traditionally have few food producing opportunities. Therefore, in the middle east, most food is imported, to over 80% in some countries such as Egypt and Saudi Arabia. In much of this part of the world, hot desert climates prevent normal field agriculture. The agriculture that is performed there are a huge drain on available fresh water, which is already in short supply for normal consumption. This means that fresh food, including salads, tomatoes, and cucumbers, need to be flown in with airplanes on a daily basis. The footprint of this food provision system is off the scale. For this, special solutions are required. For this desert climate, for example, we developed a special closed greenhouse system that is designed to keep the heat out, the water in, and use only renewable water and energy sources. With this system, we save more than 99% of water use compared to field agriculture, and grow local, healthy and sustainable food, It uses only sunlight as a power source, and sea water to power the system. The added benefit of food production in the desert is that we can use land that is infertile otherwise. Desert food production adds to rather than taking away from agricultural land use on the planet. It also provided local, high quality labor. In addition, it proves to be a lucrative business, by capturing value from a major part of the supply chain. Growing fresh food in the desert in this way helps the system in a variety of ways. On a resilience network level, it reduces the complexity of the local food supply chain, helping to increase resilience of local communities, boosting food security. It also increases diversity of local industries. It supports autonomy by establishing local resource based production using renewable resources. Lastly, it supports harmony, by providing fair wages for valuable agricultural work, as well as training for individuals, by expanding their access and inclusion. Case review and exercise As the length of this section shows, looking t the global food system through a systems lens is enough to provide many lifetimes of research and innovation. We hope it shows a bit of the power and insight using SiD as a lens gives you on such a subject. In the light of reviewing the use of SiD for this case, we’ve hoped to demonstrate a variety of aspects. First, the use diverse system maps to explore and review the challenge, including a rough causal loop map, a SiD SNO Quickscan, and a custom context map exploring the dynamics of a specific aspect (consumer disconnect, in this case). We hope that the usefulness of using system maps as a form of analysis, focus, and communication for complex societal challenges is apparent. While the causal loop map on the first page of the case is simplified beyond acceptability in any formal research, it helps to introduce the main dynamics of the challenge, and as a recipe for the discussion to follow. The SiD SNO Quickscan diagram shows a practical way to review and summarize the general systemic negative and positive effects of a situation, on all three levels of abstraction. In the text, we have referred to various network parameters, and their effects on system indicators. Exercise This review is far from complete. The industrialized food system is more complex than we have shown here. As an exercise, or as a means of further research and training, consider the following: Develop an expanded causal loop map Identify aspects of the map where you see an opportunity or are inspired to investigate further Execute a SiD SNO Quickscan on this aspect Highlight a particular system or network challenge, and focus on this to formulate solutions Effects of the disconnected consumer in the food production and consumption system This diagram collates a series of systemic effects and relationships related specifically to the ‘disconnect’ of the individual consumer to the production of food. Polydome Shown on this page are some images of Polydome, a concept for a high-efficiency polyculture agriculture system, designed to optimally grow in a greenhouse. Polydome combines the efficiency of modern agriculture with zero pesticide and fertilizer use, and a resilient growing system. This project is developed by Except as a pathway for highly sustainable food production for both urban and rural areas (Except, 2011). A design for a sustainable desert agriculture on infertile land, using only salt water and sunlight as primary sources. (Except, 2019)