Adaptive Networks the Governance for Sustainable Development

Adaptive Networks The Governance for Sustainable Development The earth lasts forever. What is the secret of its sustainability? Is it because it does not generate itself and has no self-interest? Hence, the wise puts him self last and is first. He is outside himself and therefore his self lasts. Is it not in this way That he is able to perfect himself? Lao Tse, around 600 BC Adaptive Networks The Governance for Sustainable Development Adaptieve netwerken De besturing van duurzame ontwikkeling Proefschrift ter verkrijging van de graad van doctor aan de Erasmus Universiteit Rotterdam op gezag van de rector magnificus Prof. Dr. S.W.J. Lamberts en volgens besluit van het College voor Promoties. De openbare verdediging zal plaatsvinden op donderdag 30 november 2006 om 13.30 uur door Sibout Govert Nooteboom geboren te Leiden Promotiecommissie Promotor: Prof.dr.ing. G.R. Teisman Overige leden: Prof.dr. H.Th.A. Bressers Prof.dr.ir. J. Rotmans Prof.dr.ir. K.J.A.M. Termeer ISBN 13: 978 90 5972 147 0 Eburon Academic Publishers P.O. Box 2867 NL-2601 CW Delft, The NEtherlands tel.: 015-2131484 / fax: 015-2146888 [email protected] / www.eburon.nl Title: Adaptive networks. The governance for sustainable development. Author: Sibout G. Nooteboom With support from DHV Management Consultants Cover design: Inken Greisner (www.typoly,de) © 2006 S.G. Nooteboom. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission in writing from the proprietor. Contents PREFACE 1 1 GOVERNANCE FOR SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT 5 2 THEORETICAL NOTIONS OF COMPLEXITY 35 3 A METHOD OF COMPLEXITY RESEARCH 67 4 POWER NETWORKS 83 5 ADAPTIVE NETWORKS 115 6 CHANGE MANAGERS 145 7 SUSTAINABLE CHANGE MANAGEMENT 155 8 GLOSSARY 197 9 ABBREVIATIONS 201 10 TABLES 203 11 FIGURES 205 12 REFERENCES 207 13 ABOUT THE AUTHOR 215 14 SUMMARY 217 15 SAMENVATTING 233 Preface Why this book? This book is the result of nearly three decades of wondering why it is so difficult to take action where things are clearly going wrong. My father taught me to love the wilderness; the Dutch peat lakes, where one can quietly wander in Dutch flat-bottomed boats, and the tropical rainforest, where man still may discover many places and species. Both were disappearing then, and this process has only intensified since. Later, I came to understand that many people have similar feelings about nature and other adversely affected qualities of life. People com- plain about the course of societal development and the role of governments. They ask for innovations, high quality development and better governance, sometimes referring to ‘governance for sustainable development’. In my professional life I have seen many claiming that they have solutions. But in their heart they know it is not that simple. After having been environmental and management consultant for 15 years I decided to write this book. How this book was written I wanted to write this book in the first place for people who simply were wondering how we could be so collectively stupid, like my father. Secondly, I wanted to address policy makers and citizens, pointing at their options to contribute to common goals, and developing a language for them to express these options to each other. I have become used to apply the term sustainable development, as the Brundlandt Commission did in 1987. So, this book addresses all who want to contribute to governance for sustainable development. When I started off, I asked Geert Teisman to coach me. I admired him for his ability to put everything in a context, including contexts. We developed a way of analyzing the limitations of the Dutch efforts for sustainable development, and constructive efforts to deal with these limitations. These efforts included using influence at the right time in the right direction, sometimes in highly politicized contexts. It included developing trust that the opponent would not misuse the opportunity pointing at negative short-term side effects. It was not easy to have access to the deeper thoughts and, sometimes, emotions of the acting policy makers. Yet, it was important to follow these people in detail. Otherwise the nuances of this process might have been lost, the small differences in initial Preface 1 conditions that create important changes in outcome, might have been over- looked. For my empirical research I was able to make use of my professional con- tacts in the mobility, energy and environmental policy sectors. Job van den Berg, one of my colleague consultants, had access to the heart of influential networks. Through him I had first-hand access to informal networks which developed trust, and whose members were able to express their thoughts and emotions enough to allow me to understand the subtleties of their action, and to explain the development of policies in The Netherlands, and to some extent in Europe. I was trusted not to publish prematurely, and I think my observations and reflections made the group as a whole more aware of their own role and potential. This lasted five years, allowing me to trace back the link between small and large-scale changes in policies. In the book I also describe how the group evaluated their own action, and I assess the theoretic possibilities for such a group to know if certain courses of action have a high quality from a larger-scale point of view. This has led to rec- ommendations for those who are willing to try to follow this path, albeit in different contexts, and become a sustainable change manager. In hindsight, the lessons they had to tell are extremely interesting, and in my view such groups may be the only effective way to make use of the opportunities we have to create a better development. The nature of proactive change To these ends, I felt I needed to go back to our basic knowledge about causality and change, using insights from political sciences, economical theories, theories on trust and cybernetics. Public and private officials ground their policy behavior on what they think is real and right. Not the facts but the images of reality seem to generate social change, so I had to understand how such ideas develop. I identified five themes of social change that have to be considered in conjunc- tion: the content of our ideas, the structure of our social system, the process that results from social interactions, the individual conduct that leads to interactions, and our perceptions of reward and causality, that lead our conduct. My first assertion is that larger scale changes only occur if the five variable change si- multaneously and in reinforcing interaction. My second assertion is that such change has to be established at three interrelated levels: power interactions, social learning interactions, and personal behavior. Simultaneous causally interrelated change of different items may be called co-evolution . It can be imagined how the cheetah may have co-evolved with the antelope, the chicken with the egg, the city with farming systems, views in poli- tics with views in society. Where two items are mutually dependent, I assume that the alternative for co-evolution is catastrophic inertia. In social systems co- evolution is required between governments, between the public world and the private world, between contrasting pressure groups, higher management and lower management, and also different regions or countries. Co-evolution is a governance capacity. Each one of these entities needs to be open to change, and 2 Adaptive Networks - The Governance for Sustainable Development needs to be able to transform its existing preferences into combinable ones, matching the short-term and the long-term. Letting go the traditional stand-alone way of working is, as Machiavelli already observed in the 15 th century, the most difficult strategic option. Many have put their stakes on what is. This book how- ever shows possibilities of change. It shows that if a sufficient number of people, across parts of social systems, become aware of interdependency and the mechanism of co-evolution, they can develop internal trust and generate changes in policy agendas. I have termed such groups adaptive networks . This book is about adaptive networks in action. I describe them as living organisms, with their own metabolism. An appetizer: they feed on social connections. Structure of the book In this book I develop a framework for understanding adaptive networks. Chap- ter 1 describes dilemmas of governance for sustainable development. Chapter 2 explains these dilemmas through an analysis of theories of change, from which I deduct observable characteristics in chapter 3. This leads to a description of change at three interrelated levels: power networks (chapter 4), adaptive networks (chapter 5) and change managers (chapter 6). Chapter 7 contains conclu- sions and implications for sustainable change management. I hope this book can help you explain to yourself and others how your actions can be in the interest of larger groups and future generations. Acknowledgements This book is based, among others, on dozens of interviews with policy makers who have been closely involved in the transition discourse throughout 2001 - 2005. This included monthly interviews with several members of the Innovation Board Sustainable Mobility. I would like to say thanks to all these people. Names of people and companies have been replaced by made-up names throughout this book, except Cabinet members and members of formal commit- tees. The policy makers whose actions are analyzed are not the only policy makers who significantly influenced the transition processes.

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