The late American writer, David Foster Wallace, in his characteristically probing style, once asked, in an essay titled “Consider the Lobster”, if it was “all right to boil a sentient creature alive just for gustatory pleasure.” His intent was to pose an admittedly unsettling challenge to the way many of us live. I was reminded of this while reading the January 6 edition of The Globe and Mail. Specifically, an article titled “Fears of extinction don’t curb blue fin tuna prices.” Let me explain.

The world is growing smaller by the day due to human encroachment on nature. Ecological markers suggest that in the early 1960s, humans were using about 70 per cent of nature’s yearly output; by the early 1980s, we’d reached 100 per cent; and in 1999, we were at 125 per cent. Such numbers may be imprecise, but their trend is clear – they mark the road to ecological (and other) bankruptcy. It is therefore well past time to meet Wallace’s challenge, unsettling though it is, head-on. His essay is nearly a decade old, and the reflection he desperately hoped we might engage in hasn’t happened. And so alongside the unfortunate lobster scrabbling for a way out of the pot – which may ultimately be an ironic metaphor for the human plight if we aren’t careful – I want you to consider the tuna…

On January 5, a single blue fin was sold for US$176,000 in the first auction of the New Year at Tokyo’s Tsukiji Fish Market, the world’s biggest wholesale fish market. And it wasn’t alone; 2,280 tuna were sold on the 5th to feed a Japanese market that is the world’s biggest consumer of blue fin tuna.

It wasn’t always this way. Historically, the samurai considered maguro, as blue fin tuna is known in Japan, an unclean fish and wouldn’t eat it. As recently as the 1970s, the fish was even sold for cat food or thrown away. Now of course, its fatty belly meat – toro on your sushi menu – is prized for its taste and texture.

The Montreal-based writer, Taras Grescoe, reminded us in his recent book, Bottomfeeder, that by the turn of the millennium 90 per cent of the world’s predator fish – tuna, sharks and swordfish – had been removed from the world’s oceans – no surprise given the prices these fish command at auction. The result of this unsustainable harvesting, coupled with pollution and climate change, will be the total collapse of the world’s fisheries by mid-century. Remove the top predators like blue fin tuna and algae blooms expand dramatically. When the algae decays and sinks to the bottom, it releases hydrogen sulfide, a toxic gas. The resulting “dead zones” support jellyfish, but little else. As Grescoe reports, these sterile swaths of ocean “regularly crop up from the South China Sea to the Oregon coast. Some of them are now as large as Ireland."

And yet the tuna harvest continues. Like the cod off European and Eastern Canadian coasts, the blue fin tuna needs a break if it is going to survive. The International Commission for the Conservation of Atlantic Tunas (ICCAT) has developed just such a plan, but it allows fishing to continue during the period 2008–2010. Pardon my skepticism, but haven’t we seen this movie before – in fisheries, forestry and any number of other natural resource industries? It is as if we were the residents of Easter Island, so brilliantly and poignantly chronicled by Ronald Wright in A Brief History of Progress:

The people who felled the last tree could see it was the last, could know with complete certainty that there would never be another. And they felled it anyway…The people had been seduced by a kind of progress that becomes a mania, an “ideological pathology”.

Is our pursuit of the tuna (and other oceanic top predators) emblematic of our broader attitude toward nature? Is it an ideological pathology? I suggest that it is. I suggest that we are running headlong toward a future we believe will either (a) be much like the past, or (b) be something that we can manipulate to our advantage. Such hubris, especially in the face of a historical record that suggests quite the opposite has been true. We have not been stewards of the planet’s bounty. We must shift our thinking – and quickly – to avoid catastrophe. As Canada’s Thomas Homer-Dixon put it in his masterful book, The Ingenuity Gap:

We have subordinated a large portion of the planet’s resources and ecology to our interests…We will need a far better understanding of our planet’s complex systems if we are to achieve a relationship with our surrounding natural environment that is economically and socially sustainable.

Returning to the imperiled blue fin tuna, Brian MacKenzie of the National Institute for Aquatic Resources at the Technical University of Denmark, has studied the ICCAT plan and predicts that the adult blue fin population in 2011 will likely be 75% lower relative to 2005 and that quotas in some years will allow the fishery to capture all of the adult fish. Writing in Conservation Letters, he suggests that the population is at risk of collapse (a 90% decline in adult biomass within three generations – the criterion used by the International Union for the Conservation of Nature for defining populations as Critically Endangered), even under the currently agreed recovery plan.

So, how to turn things around? I believe we need to begin striking at the root of established thought. If we have learned anything from the collapse of Canada’s east coast cod fishery, once the envy of the world, it is that we do not understand natural variations in fish population ecology well. We may have approached fisheries planning with good intentions, but we have not imbued our plans with what I can only describe as the requisite humility – and therefore with the protective room of being able to make corrective adjustments in light of feedback from key ecosystem markers.

We need to tap the power of place and evoke the heart and soul of a particular geography in our approach to being stewards of the planet. Our plans should reflect a devotion to place, community identity and nature. This calls for a radical re-think with respect to our relationship with the planet. In the case of the blue fin tuna, we should stop digging the hole that will soon consume us. Yes, that means a stop to the auctions in Tokyo and elsewhere; an absolute moratorium on fishing a species that is so much more than a commodity – it is a keystone indicator of planetary health. We must stretch beyond what conventional or received wisdom says is possible and accept that the status quo just isn’t going to cut it. Let’s face it; does anyone really think that the ICCAT plan is going to work?

I might add that in thinking of how we upgrade, we should feel energized by Elinor Ostrom's recent Nobel Prize in Economics. Her work on human interactions with ecosystems, and in particular, the novel institutional arrangements for managing natural resources and avoiding ecosystem collapse is both a beacon in the realm of ecological economics, and an exemplar of the kind of thinking we need more of to forge truly resilient societies – societies that treat creatures like the blue fin tuna as something more than a commodity.

I am under no illusions; to forge the kind of change we need will not be easy, but achieving something important, on a planetary level, never is. The work that lies ahead will require a deep commitment to what Gary Hamel has called “strategizing”, the creation of new, rich and “complex webs of conversations that cut across previously isolated knowledge sets and creates new and unexpected combinations of insights.” In case anyone is still wondering, this means a good deal more than, as the high bidder at the January 5 Tokyo fish auction put it, making “an impact on the Japanese and Hong Kong economies by buying the highest-priced tuna.”

Rob Abbott ( This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it ) is the principal of Abbott Strategies based in Calgary, AB.

Cities are among humanity’s most durable artifacts, and they are more than the sum of their buildings — they are tapestries of human lives and social networks that, at their best, tap the power of place and evoke the heart and soul of a particular geography. Too often, we have not created cities that reflect this devotion to place, community identity and nature, so we need to radically re-think how we design and build cities. I was fortunate enough to give the opening remarks at the recent Gaining Ground conference in Vancouver. The following is an edited version of that address.
 
It’s an honor for me to moderate and gently steer this 6th edition of the Gaining Ground Conference — all the more so because it is being convened in Vancouver, the Green Capital — a city I love and lived in for many years; a city that knows it’s time to upgrade; time to stand on the shoulders of the giants that are previous innovations and achievements in urban design; time to stretch beyond what conventional or received wisdom says is possible. Time to proclaim that we are looking at a dramatically altered city, country and world in the next 20 years and the status quo just isn’t going to cut it.

I might add that in thinking of how we upgrade, we should feel energized by Elinor Ostrom's recent acceptance of the Nobel Prize in Economics. Her work on human interactions with ecosystems, and in particular, the novel institutional arrangements for managing natural resources and avoiding ecosystem collapse is both a beacon in the realm of ecological economics, and an exemplar of the kind of thinking we need more of to forge truly resilient societies.

This edition of Gaining Ground can be likened to a river of intellectual thought that this year weaves the Canadian Society for Ecological Economics and Smart Growth B.C. into the mix, as well as a staggering array of shoulder events that got underway yesterday and continues in adjacent venues throughout the week. Add in extensive media involvement and the space for networking and you have the platform for a rich and, dare I say it, more resilient conversation than any of the individual players might have if gathered independently. My friends, our task is a sacred one — creating resilient cities liberated from fear and greed.

That we are here today in such number is a reflection of our shared curiosity and passion for the subject of resilient cities, but it is also, I think, an explicit recognition of at least three things: (1) that we are at a hinge point of history — economically, socially, ecologically, and culturally; (2) the pace of systemic change, what Buzz Holling calls panarchy, is beyond what many of us imagined and is outstripping the ability of incumbent institutions to address; and (3) cities, which embody the best and the worst in our modern world, can nonetheless be — must change to be — crucial units of leverage in sustainability policy and action.

The Gaining Ground Conference themes are an acknowledgement of two planet-shifting trends: (1) accelerating climate change and (2) diminishing cheap oil. And so it is that over the next three days we will examine innovations in sustainability governance and practices for creating and managing sustainable urban systems; opportunities in the green economy (or is that green opportunities in the economy?); and strategies for building widespread sustainability collaborations that engage the community at all levels. Indeed, the central conference idea is that it’s time to upgrade; resilience, the ability of a city to effectively operate and provide services under conditions of stress, cannot be achieved or sustained without strong collaboration between key urban constituents: community, business, learning institutions, and civic leadership – we in this room have our hands on the levers that can affect change. We are the future we have been waiting for and we must ask ourselves: what will we be proud to say happened on our watch? How can we stretch ourselves and others to plan cities and design buildings (and rescue existing cities and buildings) such that they are not only ecologically and economically more viable and resilient, but also better places to live, work and play. My friends, we need to leave our polite, transactional conversations behind and fully embrace the urgency of transformation – a transformation in our conception of cities that truly honors the rhythms of nature, culture and community.

These themes provide a platform from which I can return to the narrative I started a moment ago about a hinge point in history. The American scholar, John Schaar – echoing Erwin Lazlo — has described the future in a way that frames much of what I want to share with you in the remainder of my opening remarks. He said:

The future is not a result of choices among alternative paths offered by the present, but a place that is created - created first in mind and will, created next in activity. The future is not some place we are going to, but one we are creating. The paths are not to be found, but made, and the activity of making them, changes both the maker and the destination.

Those words remind me that we have an opportunity, an obligation, to create something, as opposed to simply reacting to what is presented to us. And the act of creating requires courage — courage to use both the head and the heart to identify possibilities and to divine new ways of being. Schaar’s good words also remind me of what I hold to be a fundamental truth: Sustainability is not a problem to be solved; it is a future to be created.

So, what will we create together? What will sustainable prosperity in our cities look like 10 years from now, or 100 years from now? What does competitiveness look like in a low (or lower) carbon economic future? And how will Vancouver, or the cities we call home, fare in such a future?

Might it be possible that the balance shifts irrevocably in favor of truly sustainable, low carbon community-based solutions? Solutions that increase the resilience of cities to the combined future impacts of climate change, peak oil, and population migration? Many of us might think so, or hope so, but how do we combine our talents in new ways to get there — while preserving or enhancing quality of life? And our engagement has to be global; our ability to avoid collapse must be based on an ability to shift the trajectory of all cities, not just those here in the Pacific Northwest or those showcase cities and urban design projects from elsewhere in North America. While we revel in the learning from these places, let us also think of Sao Paulo, Seoul, Manila, Lagos and so many others. What we talk about here should also be in service of them. For that matter, what about the rural and hinterland regions that feed and support all cities?

And while you’re thinking about that, let’s remember that the pattern of city growth, especially in North America, has followed the now tired model of outward expansion of predominantly single-family homes connected by a vast and expensive network of roads, pipelines and other services that have masked the true environmental and social costs of our lifestyle — and that are not, by the way, economically sustainable in a world of increasingly scarce, and expensive, oil. Why is it that lifestyle aspirations and choices in our cities too often run against nature? Why is it okay to leave an empty Lincoln Navigator — the antithesis of fuel-efficiency, by the way — idling at the curb while the kids are dropped off at school? Have we failed to get the price signals right? Yes, but I suspect there are other, more complex forces at play. Despite much rhetoric, we have not made the connections between environmental quality and social or economic well being meaningful to a sufficiently large number of people in our cities.

In the face of the twin challenges of climate change and dwindling cheap oil, that most eloquent and trenchant urban critic, James Kunstler, has asked if we should continue to invest in what he sees as a futureless life — “the whole smoking, creaking, hopeless, futureless machine of suburban sprawl”, or whether it is time to start behaving differently?

This is a question that matters, one without an easy answer, but one that we nonetheless know in our bones demands our attention. We must overcome the poverty of imagination that would otherwise prevent us from reinventing or resetting the industrial age economy. This unique conference is a forum to help us get started on this work. Think of this room and the associated workshop and salon spaces as homes for innovation, unexpected collaboration, and deep conversation about things that matter — what the "rights and responsibilities of urban citizenship" confer upon citizens, and how we might change the lens through which citizens see those rights and responsibilities; what it means for our cities if they are our primary "physical narrative of place" and "the place" also has rights that should be placed into an equitable relationship with those of its citizens.

Think of these spaces and the extraordinary backdrop that is the city of Vancouver as vessels to help you hone your skills at seeing systems; collaborating across boundaries; and moving easily from problem solving to creating. Most of all, think of all you hear and see over the next three days as a potent reminder that saving our cities and our planet is not a spectator sport — the bell has rung and we need to answer it; we need to lead. And leading has nothing to do with position or formal authority, but rather, the capacity of individuals and human communities to shape futures that people truly desire. This, ultimately, is why we’re here. It’s the best kind of work and it should excite and challenge all of us. More than that, it should ignite us to do things differently than we’ve done them before, better than we’ve done them before.

Rob Abbott, is Founder & CEO of ABBOTT STRATEGIES, and Senior Independent Advisor, Stratos Inc.

Over the summer I have been reminded, again, of the perilous state of the world’s environment and the need for perhaps less planning and more institutional reform. 

On July 2, the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) reported that governments worldwide are failing to stem a frightening drop-off in biodiversity that threatens extinction for almost half the world’s coral-reef species, a third of amphibians and a quarter of mammals. As the IUCN report succinctly put it: “Life on Earth is under serious threat.” Meanwhile, a report released on September 2nd by the Royal Society, Britain’s leading science academy, underscored the accelerating risk of global climate change: “The global failure to make sufficient progress on mitigation of climate change is largely due to social and political inertia, and this must be overcome if dangerous climate change is to be avoided.”

There are at least three reasons why we should care about these two reports:

1. First, humans are directly affected by the changes taking place. Coral reefs, for example, feed a large portion of the world’s population; protect tropical shorelines from erosion; and are home to plants and animals that (a) have an intrinsic right to exist, and (b) have untapped potential as sources of new therapeutic drugs. Climate change has the potential to swamp coastal cities worldwide with rising sea levels caused by melting ice in Greenland and Antarctica – to say nothing of devastating other parts of the globe through droughts, hurricanes and other forms of severe weather. Bottom line, humans have some serious skin in this game.
2. Second, the reports paint a picture of accelerating change; the conditions that make life on Earth possible are deteriorating at a faster rate than previously thought. The decline in amphibians reported by IUCN should worry us all because frogs, in particular, are excellent indicators of global environmental health – they play the same role as the ill-fated canaries in the coal mines of yore, whose death signaled that poisonous or explosive gases had reached dangerous levels. Kenneth Dodd, a research zoologist at the U.S. Department of the Interior’s Florida-Caribbean Science Center put it well when he observed: “If all the animals were dying in a pond, would you want to drink the water? We breathe the same air, we drink the same water. We live in the same environment. If something is affecting them, it’s affecting us.” And as Craig Stewart of the World Wildlife Fund reported on September 2nd, Arctic climate change is happening faster than anyone anticipated and may soon force more rapid warming on the rest of the planet: “We thought by 2050, multi-year ice would be cut in half. Well, it happened in 2007.” Bottom line: don’t move to New York, Vancouver or Shanghai anytime soon.
3. Third, and most relevant to this column, these changes are happening despite many well-intentioned strategies, policies and plans. The Convention on Biological Diversity, for example, was adopted at the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (The Earth Summit) in Rio de Janeiro in 1992. While the focus of the convention is on the development of national strategies for the conservation and sustainable use of biodiversity, it is also widely (and rightly) seen as a foundation strategy for sustainable development. A lack of progress against the twin goals of biodiversity protection and sustainable development would be bad enough, but further erosion in the face of an international convention with the sole purpose of protecting these goals is worrisome indeed. Similarly, as the nations of the world prepare to gather in Copenhagen in December for the United Nations Climate Change Conference of Parties and forge an international agreement on greenhouse gas reduction as a successor to the Kyoto Protocol, it is sobering to think that we have been working at this for at least 15 years — the Kyoto Protocol was drafted in 1997 — and the build-up of carbon dioxide has gotten worse, not better. Bottom line: humans have a track record of not delivering on the promise of well-intentioned plans to protect the environment.

I have long been interested in the fact that governments, businesses, academic institutions, and NGOs worldwide have plans in place that would do much to support sustainability, and in many cases elected officials, CEOs, and the like who have endorsed such plans, but the human trajectory as a whole continues to run counter to sustainability. While there is a growing number of case studies that can inspire us, these are, sadly, islands of sustainability in an ocean that is profoundly stressed. We need to do better.

We need to identify and overcome the barriers that stand in the way of a course correction. For me, this means proportionally less emphasis on strategies and plans, and more emphasis on the organizations and institutions in which those plans are intended to take root. My working hypothesis here is that we spend too much time crafting a “great plan” without thinking about how the organization or institution might need to be reformulated for the plan to actually work. And so it is that we see cities, businesses, and others flail about pursuing the dream of sustainability. The strategy or plan may be fine; what is not, and what needs to be fixed, is the organization itself.

To help us get started, there is no better source than Alfred Chandler’s classic text, Strategy & Structure (1962). Chandler, an economic historian as well as a management theorist, observed that large American businesses struggled with organizational structure as rapid growth taxed the administrative reach of the management team. The result was to design organizational structures around the tasks most critical to the success of the firm’s strategy.

Taking Chandler’s ideas and applying them to an environmental or sustainability context means letting go of conventional wisdom around “the ways things are done.” Whether a local government, a multinational company, or a United Nations Agency, we need to make strategy-critical activities the main building blocks of organizational structure. Put another way, we need to ensure our well-intentioned 21st century plans for sustainability are matched by 21st century institutions.
 
Rob Abbott, PhD, CMC, ( This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it ) is Director of Sustainability at Stratos Inc.

In a recent Calgary Herald article on the challenges facing Alberta’s coal-fired generating stations in a carbon-constrained future, TransAlta President and CEO, Steve Snyder said "we have to solve the carbon dioxide issue, but we can’t bankrupt the province to solve the problem." ("Alberta in CO2 firing line", May 2, 2009.) In doing so, he inadvertently perpetuated an image of environmental protection as the purview of earnest do-gooders who don’t understand business. And so it is that in the face of the worst recession in 80 years there have been calls in some quarters to back off on the accelerator that was inexorably moving sustainability forward and upward on Calgary’s corporate agendas. 

By Rob Abbott

Let’s face it, people are nervous right now. The economy is convulsing and there is much talk about the environment being "off the table" of policy and business decision-making as the focus shifts to job protection or the containment of losses.

While the fear is real and understandable, the solution is less about expensive and incremental change through bailouts and stimulus packages than a national economic strategy that heralds whole system change. And for all the polite talk of a "green stimulus", this sends the wrong signal — we need a 21st century economic strategy that does more than give a nod to green; we need a strategy that is smart enough to feature green throughout its underlying logic.