Course:IGS585/OK2020WT2/GuestLaelParrott

Lael Parrott - UBC Okanagan Faculty of Science

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	Reflection Authors and Commenters
Author	Ian Chambers	Ayla de Grandpre	Adam Kunis	Joshua Ayer	Luis Cadavid	Janna Wale
Commenter	Joshua Ayer	Luis Cadavid	Janna Wale	Ian Chambers	Ayla de Grandpre	Adam Kunis

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Ayla De Grandpre I resonated with many of the ideas Dr. Parrott presented in her presentation exploring landscape sustainability and resilience through complex systems theory. Although I was familiar with complex systems theory literature prior to the presentation, many of the ideas Dr. Parrott discussed helped me form new connections and bigger or more holistic ideas about resilience. For my thesis project, I am approaching the local food production system in the Okanagan as a coupled socio-ecological system. I had not considered the landscape itself to be a complex system as well, however. Much of the literature I have read on the topic has focused on smaller scales, such as the farm. However, complex systems work in nested panarchies, where changes on one level and scale ripple and flow and cascade over into other levels. For example, national-level decisions (e.g. restricted trade of agricultural goods between Canada-USA) can have profound impacts on the local scale (e.g. Reduced food security) and result in changes to the physical, social or economic fabric of the community (e.g. landscape changes to produce more food). For me, Dr. Parrott’s example using the idea of landscape as an example of a socio-ecological system highlighted these linkages, and the importance of considering these feedback loops between different levels and scales. This is certainly an idea I will be taking forward with me into my Thesis research. Another idea that Dr. Parrott presented that was particularly resonant was her definition of a sustainable and resilient landscape. She suggested that: “A sustainable and resilient landscape is one where human demand for ecosystem services does not exceed the landscape’s capacity to provide these services”. While I agree with this definition, I might add that the demand for ecosystem services should not exceed the needs of other organisms who live on the landscape as well. As we discussed in class, this might mean adding a “buffering zone” to the petal model presented by Dr. Parrott, which would represent the needs of non-human species, who also draw on these ecosystem services for their survival. I think that this would be an interesting visual pedagogical tool to communicate the disparity between the capacity of the world to sustain all living beings and the present demand of humans on their environments. I am curious if this visualization might be able to help us better understand critical thresholds and how to attain a better balance between human needs and the needs of the rest of the biosphere. Part of what I admire about complex systems theory, and what I am taking from this presentation, is that it is incredibly interdisciplinary in nature- it is influenced by ideas from a variety of disciplines such as ecology, engineering, geography, biology, anthropology etc. While this makes reading the literature challenging (I am always learning new vocabularies and having to adjust my thinking), I am learning that it is a great opportunity to create meaningful collaborative knowledge that might be able to tackle complex and wicked problems, such as climate change, that are difficult to solve using a siloed or disciplinary approach. Luis Cadavid Ayla, Throughout my research for my project I found the same, the research focuses on a tiny geographical area, and in some cases it very broadly touches upon the environment. More researchers should think more about this, considering landscape complexity could change the way we look at things. Her definition on sustainability and resilient landscape was also one of the most impactful things for me, adding a buffer indeed is an interesting concept that can allow us to live in harmony. I hope the visualization does help and allows more people to be responsible with their actions. One of the few ways we will be able to tackle climate change is if we all work together, all disciplines and all people. Hopefully we all can find a common language to join forces and move in the right direction.

Janna Wale Having the pleasure of having Dr. Lael Parrott as my supervisor, I am always struck by how well spoken she is and how clearly laid out her ideas are. Her discussion on complex systems, and socio-ecological systems is no exception. Reflecting on Dr. Parrott’s talk, her stress on embracing systems thinking and recognizing interrelationships really resonates with my own thesis topic of Indigenous community resilience. In Indigenous communities in BC, relational thinking is paramount when dealing with both social and ecological aspects of community life. In fact, in Gitxsan culture, there is no separation between the human and the natural world. Her definition of sustainability as “the quality a system has if the relationships between and within the subsystem are able to persist and nourish each other” reinforces my own worldview of being interdependent on other aspects of the system as a whole. Understanding this, making the jump to managing for rather than in spite of complexity does not seem so daunting. While these concepts were not new to me, hearing them articulated in the context of interdisciplinarity helped me to understand that systems thinking is more widely applicable than I previously believed, and that having a better understanding of the human-nature interface will strongly impact the depth of our understanding around sustainability and resilience. In essence, iterating this interface as a “socio-ecological system” allows for a stronger perception of the links that exist between the two, and has allowed me personally to better orient myself within my community and within my research. To me, this discussion has reinforced the importance of maintaining complexity as it relates to socio-ecological systems, and how the two must be considered together, rather than apart. Furthering this, her point on human health and wellbeing being linked to the landscapes in which we live has been something that I have been mulling over for the past couple of weeks. Hearing this discussion reminded me of working with Qwelminte Secwepemc, where my work involved assessing Sxusem (Soapberry) abundance as it related to community wellness. For the Secwepemc, Sxusem is representational of being well, and is a culturally important species for making medicine. With climate change and industrial development, Sxusem abundance within the territory is in decline. Sxusem abundance is being impacted by climate change, the Secwepemc people will also be impacted through the reduction in availability of the Sxusem, which will lead to an overall decrease in community wellbeing. Since the loss of medicine is an indirect effect of climate change, it is often overlooked in climate literature. Having a stronger understanding of the interacting pieces of complex systems will help to create a more holistic perspective that will inform a better understanding of sustainability and resilience. In my own research, this will mean reassessing the indirect effects of climate change on Indigenous communities in the context of complexity. Adam Kunis Jana, Your observation about interdependence was a great takeaway from the presentation. It seems that the more we build siloed disciplines and try to dig deeper into their own respective methodologies, the more isolated we have become. However, even though we may appear to be in isolation, as you describe, this is not the case. Relating it back to Gitxsan culture was a great reminder that no matter what we do as humans, build concrete jungles, create vaccines, develop AI, etc, it is all existing within nature. If these are lifestyles we want to sustain then we must turn a critical eye and look at these, not as siloed advancements, but actions that take place in an overlapping complex system. I also really valued your example of the Sxusem. As you mention, these systems can be immensely complex, but it doesn't have to be overwhelming if approached with the right perspective. When I hear about the impact of climate change, my mind runs in a million directions. Keeping it focused and simple, such as with Sxusem, helps ground/focus my attention. By doing so, it makes it easier for me to look at the issue and see that climate change is reducing the abundance of Sxusem, thus the secondary effects of that are x,y,z.

Adam Kunis In Dr. Parrot’s presentation on complex systems, I found the flower petal evaluation system fascinating. In sustainability, we are traditionally taught that the three pillars of sustainability are the environment, society/culture, and the economy. Dr. Parrot's environment-focused organization strategy appears to be very effective at identifying and categorizing regional opportunities based on geographic boundaries. In order for researchers and communities to understand the value of ecosystem services, a tool such as 'the flower petal' would be greatly beneficial for the identification and communication of services. By identifying the benefits brought to society and the economy via the production capacities of a geographic location, the petal organization system could provide a clear outline of information on the value of ecosystem services. With this additional information, stakeholders and decision-makers would be able to better understand the trade-offs that occur when an environment is developed or in understanding a region’s natural resource harvest limits. As Dr. Parrot described, this system is immensely complex. The flower petal tool thus depicts a simplified foundational environmental system that contributes to other “greater” systems; a social-cultural system and an economic system. The ability to identify and act on geographic natural capacities for activities such as tourism, fishing and hunting, agriculture, etc. can have an immense effect on the ways we seek to develop our culture and society, and economy. In doing so, the scale appears to be a crucial element to the petal diagram. If seeking to incorporate this tool into policymakers toolkits, one must consider the scale of the ecosystem’s impacts within both local contexts and a global context. A precursor to understanding the societal and economic impacts of geographic activities is to look at ecosystem services on a deeper, biological scale. To maintain value-generating ecosystem services, ecosystem engineers must be preserved. An ecosystem engineer is any organism that creates or significantly modifies a habitat. For example, fungi are essential organisms to many ecosystems as they control nutrient cycles. Another common example is the beaver, who alter forests and rivers, which in turn greatly shapes the character of a landscape. If society can identify and measure ecosystem engineers' response to proposed developments, then a clearer understanding of an environment’s production/consumption capacities can be developed. I believe a tool like 'the flower petal diagram" would be quickly adopted and utilized by communities if made readily available. The main benefit, that I could see, from a tool like this, is greater efficiency through specialization and cooperation. If regions specialize and act in synchronicity with their ecosystem services, then cooperation would be essential to maintain regular flows of resources. The challenge to this would be creating diagrams for every community and every geographic region. Another challenge to the prolonged use of this diagram is that ecosystem services may not be resilient. Environmental threats such as development or climate change may alter a region’s production/consumption capacity requiring frequent re-forecasts. Janna Wale Adam, I also was traditionally taught the pillars of sustainability, and found Dr. Parrott's regional approach to be very interesting (and part of the reason I joined her lab!) I agree with your thinking in that offering a different presentation of the traditional sustainability model could create space for a change in thinking as well, which might lead to more favourable outcomes. Your mention of scale is also extremely important, but is also what makes this a very challenging task. You make an excellent point about how it would be difficult to create a diagram for every community as well as the potential for the frequent re-forecasting; scaling ideas presents logistical challenges. Another challenge I see is if we went the other direction (scaled up rather than down) we create the potential for developing a cookie-cutter framework that might overgeneralize some of the finer details, that could detract from overall resilience. I appreciate your fungi and beaver examples, for me they really exemplified the idea of being able to have impact on the landscape at different scales.

Joshua Ayer There were so many things in Dr. Parrott’s presentation that I found fascinating and wonderful to reflect on, but there are two things I will highlight. The first, it strikes me that her way of seeing the landscape as a complex system and a coupling of human and environmental factors really is a fantastic metaphor for interdisciplinary work. Working within multiple disciplines you appreciate areas of study as approachable from not only one set of theories but as being these complex focal points that gather theories from economics, biology, political theory, literature, etc. In our context, we are studying the development of Keremeos, but this will require some political theory, some economic theory, some knowledge of the history of the area, just like a landscape has all these systems running through and over top of it creating an overall complex system. In the end of our interdisciplinary work we may have a thesis or project as the “emergent global level entity” but it will be the product of the many “locally interacting heterogenous components.” These policy areas we are engaging are historical, economic, political, our responses should be too. Further all the disciplines nourish each other in unexpected ways and having more or less of a field in the research can help or hinder. I also think this links well into Dr. Parrott’s definition of resilience as partly defined as a capacity to change and adapt to unexpected stressors. Interdisciplinary work has the potential to adapt quickly through the linkages between disciplines rather than focusing on only one part of the whole and becoming trapped at a dead end. The second aspect I am reflecting on is a connection between the flower models that Dr. Parrott used to illustrate ecosystem services and the doughnut economic theory that is being used to pursue sustainability in Amsterdam. Here I think there is a lot of good overlap potential from Dr. Parrott’s presentation and her work on complex systems more generally and the doughnut models. One difference between the flower model and the doughnut model though is scale, the doughnut started as a Country/State scaled model and has since been down-scaled to the city-scale. It would be fascinating to imagine how it could be modelled to apply to a landscape scale. One of the institutes to partner with the doughnut model is the biomimicry institute whose guiding practice is to identify the services that an ecosystem provides naturally and determine how development can be shaped to ‘boost’ those naturally provided services. Dr. Parrott said she considered sustainability to involve the relationships “between and within” a system’s subsystems in ways that “persist and nourish each other.” What I like about biomimicry is the emphasis on humans building back into the environment instead of focusing on ways they can sustainably take from the environment. The presentation also left me with questions of cost. Programs and policies like monitoring complex systems and implementing adaptive management schemes appear heavily cost inducive especially for small towns like Keremeos. I am convinced of the merits of sustainable management, but what about a town that is paranoid about its own financial sustainability as a community? A community that is worried about growth and that theoretically needs growth to continue, a community that is already betting high on undetermined government grants? How do you propose an alternative option to slow down and not grow the economy? Who should carry this sort of burden? Should it be the town of Keremeos, or should the provincial government provide the funding? Ian Chambers I really like the metaphor you drew between Dr. Parrot’s idea of landscapes being the coupling of human and environmental factors and interdisciplinary work. This isn’t something that I really thought of or considered, but I think it is a valuable idea. Disciplines tend to be quite isolated from each other and I have definitely found in my interdisciplinary degree that they really can nourish each other and enrich the work and ideas from other disciplines. Complex problems like sustainability really do require this sort of approach where disciplines can collaborate and integrate to create new innovative ideas and solutions. This sort of approach will also enhance resilience as links are made between disciplines allowing for a more holistic view and thus provides more alternative ideas or pathways. I must admit that I do not know much about the doughnut economic theory, or the biomimicry institute but from some quick research it does appear that there is some good overlap between Dr. Parrot’s flower model and the doughnut economic model. I’d be curious to learn more about the implementation of this theory in Amsterdam and some of the challenges and successes they’ve faced in implementing it. I’m sure we could learn from them and apply it to our Keremeos project. The biomimicry institute also seems to overlap nicely with some of Dr. Parrot’s ideas and I’d also be curious to learn more about it. I really enjoy the idea of coupling human development with the environment to boost ecosystem services. As Dr. Parrott defined ecosystem services as the processes in nature that serve us, I’d also like to think of ways human development could boost nature in ways that don’t necessarily serve us but help maintain a viable and healthy ecosystem. I think integrating ourselves into the environment as opposed to seeing ourselves as separate from the environment is vital to sustainability. Again, I’d love to learn more about the biomimicry institute and any ideas they have on how to successfully accomplish this integration.

Luis Cadavid Dr. Parrott’s presentation resonated with me in several aspects. The first is the complexity of the landscape that is linked directly to human health. To me, this definition hits close to home as it shares some of the principles of permaculture that we practice at the CASA Foundation. It is a model in which humans can exploit the ecosystem to a certain level while allowing them to thrive and nature. In permaculture, just as in Dr. Parrott’s presentation, one must think in multiple timescales and at different levels to have a perfectly functional ecosystem. Feedback between small things and larger cycles or systems are often ignored. In permaculture, these loops are essential for the functioning of the systems. Overall, the definition of the complex ecosystem made a lot of sense to me. Coming from a non-traditional background in sustainability, I always try to find more familiar research to my field. In that process, I have discovered many disciplines involved in the process, not just science as I initially thought. I like some of the new concepts, especially related to resilience, that adds another dimension to what we should consider at the CASA Foundation. I believe an aspect that is often forgotten is leaving an adaptive capacity in a system, at least in my experience. Our society thinks about squeezing everything out of the ecosystem, but we tend not to leave space for a crisis. The lack of resiliency leaves us unprotected from nature, as more often than not, nature gives us what it wants in terms of conditions and not the ideal ones that we desire. Resilience is something that I did not think about much before. Overall, her presentation gave me a lot to reflect on to create more resilient ecosystems and improve on sustainability. Ayla De Grandpre Luis, I also found the connection between the landscape and human health very interesting. I recently read a book titled “Parks and Protected Areas in Canada” by Philip Dearden and Risk Rollins, and they make this connection as well. They conceptualize the ecosystem services that Dr.Parrott highlighted as playing the role of a hospital, which maintains and repairs damaged aspects of the socio-ecological system. As Dr. Parrott suggested, social and ecological systems do not exist in isolation, but as complex systems, so it is important that we consider these interactions when studying sustainability and resilience. Finally, I really liked how you connected this idea with permaculture. Growing food is one of the best examples that I can think of, where the linkage between ecosystem and human health is made exceptionally explicit. Reading your comment reminds me that it might be important to consider the methods of agriculture being used in Keremeos, and how that is affecting the health of land and people, when evaluating the resilience and sustainability of the community.

Ian Chambers This is a reflection on the presentation by the guest speaker. Dr. Parrott’s presentation managed to bring many of my own thoughts and ideas of sustainability together in a very cohesive and well-presented way that I really enjoyed. One of the biggest ideas that I connected with from Dr. Parrott’s presentation was this idea that sustainability requires both reductionism and holism. As a complex problem, sustainability can’t be studied or understood without the individual small-scale components and equally these individual components can’t be studied or understood without the entire system and overarching concept of sustainability. There is a level of scales at play that needs to be taken into consideration when discussing sustainability. As a mathematician that works on models this concept connected really well with my own work. In creating mathematical models, one is trying to represent a system, which is done by breaking the system down into smaller and smaller parts. The overall system is broken down into smaller systems which are further broken down into parameters and variables. Individually these components don’t have much meaning, but once they are reassembled into an equation representing their relationships they can be better understood. The equation can’t be understood without its parts, but equally the parts can’t be understood without the equation. Then in understanding the overall problem there is a dichotomy between the parts and the whole. Another part of Dr. Parrott’s presentation that resonated with me was her discussion regarding ecosystem services and how they couple human and natural systems. Ecosystem services are functions in nature that support us and are wellbeing such as food production and flood mitigation. In this portion of her presentation Dr. Parrott presented a petal diagram representing the capacity of the environment to serve us and the portion that we use. Here she discussed if natures resources and energy should be harvested to their maximum capacity, or if some should be saved or stored. This discussion made me understand resilience in a new way. If we are to use ecosystem services to their maximum capacity, this leaves few if any resources and energy left for nature and the ecosystems within it. In order for these ecosystems to be resilient, they require stored resources and energy to fall back on and adapt. In my experience resilience has mainly been discussed in an anthropogenic fashion. Dr. Parrott presented that the environment also has to have resilience to persist and that resilience does not pertain to humans alone. In order for us as humans to be sustainable and resilient, the environment also must be sustainable and resilient. Stemming from this section of Dr. Parrott’s presentation was a discussion on whether growth, which our economic system depends on, is sustainable. Growth requires us to extend our use of ecosystem services, reaching closer to the environments capacity and thus cannot be sustainable forever. In order to manage this dilemma we require integrated methods that don’t decouple humans from the environment. Joshua Ayer I am glad I get the chance to respond to your reflection on the reduction-holistic analysis presented by Dr. Parrott.  I found this part of her presentation really interesting too, the way that one has to toggle between different levels of analysis without ever having a perfect view. Its important to keep in mind that there is never a full picture. If we are looking at the whole, then we are missing some of the minute detail in the micro, but if we focus too clearly on the individual parts, then we will likewise miss out on the whole picture.  I liked your relation to math from landscapes.  I like that there are symmetries between two fields of knowledge (math and ecology) that otherwise seem very different to me. I like the common thread you identify, that a landscape behaves like a Mathematical system, or that the Mathematical system models the complexity of the ecosystem. The flower petals were a highlight for me as well, but I really like how in your reflection you focused on that inter-dependency between human resiliency and the ecosystems resiliency. It is very concerning to think that our use of the landscape can tip into a state wherein it can no longer replenish itself, and that it can do so without us necessarily being aware.

Name of Reflection Author This is a reflection on the presentation by the guest speaker. Name of Commenting Author This is a reflection the reflection of the author above.