TUESDAY, OCTOBER 31, 2017: NOTE TO FILE

Watershed Design Principles

For long-term sustainability

"I seek through comprehensive anticipatory design science and its reductions to physical practices to reform the environment instead of trying to reform humans, being intent thereby to accomplish prototyped capabilities of doing more with less…" — R. Buckminster Fuller 1947

"Seek out the conditions now that will come anyway." —Howard T. Odum 1973

Eric Lee, A-SOCIATED PRESS

TOPICS: ENOUGH, FROM THE WIRES, SUSTAINABLE PROSPERITY

Abstract: To manage Man's demands on Nature's resources is ultimately a local affair. Environmental resources and productivity are local while services, e.g. oxygenation of biosphere, primary photosynthetic productivity, biotic pump, and carbon dioxide sequestration, are global life-support system benefits. Imagine the habitable land area of Earth is managed by those living in each of 25,000 watersheds averaging about 1,000 sq mi (2,600 sq km) in area with perhaps an average population in a range of 400 to 2,500 people which implies complex societies and control SYSTEMs. There are limits placed on watershed management units (WMUs) by a global Federation of Watersheds such that none can exploit more than 20% of a watershed's surface area or 50% of the environmental resources, and none can solve a population longage issue by exporting migrants (livestock, pets, humans) as no watershed will be forced to accept the surplus population generated by the failed policies of another watershed. Trade would be based on emdollar evaluation of sustainable exports and managed globally via equitable trade policies. Members of a watershed's militia would provide for needed transportation as well as help to project a United Watershed military force to prevent a non-member or stronger former watershed member from conquering a weaker watershed. Otherwise management of human behavior to maintain a viable equilibrium between Man's demands and Nature's resources is a local issue provided failure is allowed. A diversity of WMUs is alternative to failing to manage a global empire as a dynamic, unsustainable growth hegemon.

TUCSON (A-P) — To allow for up to 10,000 designs for watershed management units (WMUs, human ecology units) on Earth, number them WaterShed0000 to WaterShed9999. For 65,536 designs, use hexadecimal. A proper name for each watershed may be used as well, may change, but WS014F etc. works better for some purposes. Each watershed design will be a best-guess endeavor of designers. Those designs selected for testing will require testers (pioneers, aka voluntary refugees forming the coming naturocracy) and sustainers to reduce the design to practice and ongoing tweaking of the design.

As for what the carrying capacity of a watershed is, among other things that matter, residents don't get a vote. No committee of elected officials would know enough to have an opinion. Who determines a watershed's carrying capacity? Nature—as in the nature of things. Designers listen to Nature who determines what works. Their task is to listen well, which involves not listening to primate prattle insofar as possible. Beliefs and preferences do not determine what works. From among the set of what works, testers, as intentional refugees from the Modern Techno-industrial Empire prior to collapse, vote their lives and vote with their feet to live their best-guess by becoming members of a WMU. Unintentional refugees will not.

Involuntary refugees, those who continue to serve the current SYSTEM for as long as possible, will have few options. What works needs to be determined and memetically passed on to descendants, and generations of sustainers will maintain the pattern with occasional as-needed and well-considered tweaks. SYSTEM designs that fail will be replaced or the remnant social order (population) will need to reboot with a new OS. When there are thousands of managed watershed SYSTEMs, failures will be instructive and not lay waste to the planet's life-support system, unlike the collapse of a single global SYSTEM such as all consumers of industrial goods and services currently depend on.

Some who decide to live within a managed watershed unit will pass on their genes. Success involves having offspring born into a social system that has the potential to persist long-term. Survivalists who may end up peering from their bunker with fingers curled around triggers when not counting remaining ammunition will have failed to exercise sufficient foresight intelligence. Contributing to an ongoing functional non-Calhoun-rat-like complex society able to preserve and use information about what works and reverse the behavioral sink they are heir to is alternative to planning to survive a 'zombie apocalypse' in a bunker. Most voluntary refugees who opt for the watershed alternative will place a higher value on passing on their memes to future generations and as testers may hope to innovate and discover 'what works' so they may best pass on their legacy.

Those having no memes to pass on are likely to pursue short-term contingencies of self interest within the business-as-usual SYSTEM for as long as doing so remains possible without at any point asking, 'And then what?' A non-trivial point is that a voluntary refugee option will select for humans possessing 'foresight intelligence', unlike the current idiocracy/kakistocracy which selects for the opposite. [Link is to a MAHB article of interest which includes a claim: "Dealing with these threats to sustainability requires government action, and hence ‘political will’, and cannot be otherwise achieved." This claim is off-the-scale questionable. The current SYSTEM, any and all forms of government from city council to UN, isn't going to generate "real solutions", but that doesn't disallow changing "the rules of the game" foundationally, of instituting a foundationally different form of governance, of managing the balance between human demands and Natures resources, e.g. naturocracy. The author is apparently unaware that the Koch brothers are funding Schools of Sustainability as fast as they can increase their profit margins as well as elements of the UA Philosophy department to help people believe in political solutions.]

A WS0000 design will be implemented when 0.0014% of humans perceive a need to commit to the first of many WSs to come (20,000±) to maybe preserve information in the form of a long-term functional complex society able to evolve trust and cooperative behaviors that work. Of those 0.0014%, many will be dependents (children, elderly) and other family members who may go along with the best-guess decision maker of the family, so all will not have to 'perceive a need' to make an existential choice to join the first watershed management unit, so maybe only 0.0004% of humanity as heads of households will have to decide to become technoindustrial refugees from the fossil-fueled global empire to enable WS0000 to exist. Until then, we can think about it and iterate towards increasingly detailed plans.

Designs need to fit a population to a watershed's environmental productivity, that of the 20% humans claim, without being dependent on trade for food or other needs. Trade may well develop and added wealth could allow for a population increase, but should not be assumed as trade and export are subject to interruption, so by design each watershed management unit would foresee and not be dependent on exports and trade to support its biophysical economy of enough.

 

What will a WMU society look like?

 

After a prosperous way down for some, for those who manage to retain enough information resources and functional behaviors:

  • Life will become very local, i.e.no one living beyond a maximum 100km radius of a central area (a 1 day bike/3 day walk).
  • Humans will have to live with much less energy and material flows.
  • Mass consumerism, the modern techno-industrial society, empire building, and the monetary culture, will end.
  • Population numbers and density will be much lower, e.g. 20-50 people in a community and 20 to 50 communities in a watershed for a population in a 400 to 2,500 range per WMU.
  • Urban areas few, but one per WMU inhabited for a few days at a time to support large (>150 people per rendezvous) and some permanent cities centered around high energy sources and trade centers.
  • The global economy will be managed, interwatershed trade of renewable goods based on emdollar accounting.
  • Global human/wind/water powered travel possible via migrant labor opportunities and individual perpon savings.
  • High transformity electrical energy will be 50wH/person/day (range 40wH to 60wH for poor to rich per day).
  • Food production local, distributed unprocessed to minimally processed to preserve, with scant imported foods where such is possible.
  • Lifespan for some will decrease due to rationed advanced (e.g. organ transplants) medical intervention, and increase for others due to the passing of 'the diseases of civilization' secondary to living in modern techno-industrial society.
  • Managed exploitation of potential local environmental productivity, limited to 20 percent of a watershed area, will select for viable management.
  • Wealth and income inequality limited to a range, e.g. 0.8 to 1.2 where 1.0 is 'enough' and 0.8 is 'just enough' to avoid a significant risk of increased death or dysfunction.
  • A WMU could decrease per capita consumption and thereby increase the WMU population.
  • If consumption exceeds environmental productivity, the people of a WMU will suffer and if they fail to prevent a significant increase in child mortality secondary to their management failure, the WMU will be declared a failed state.
  • Failure to manage, prosper, and persist will be a local (not global as now), falure, selecting for what works (humans again become evolvable).

 

 

As there is nothing desirable in consumption per se; the less consumption in a Society of Enough, the better, therefore production and consumption is minimized to meet life-driven intrinsic needs as distinct from manufactured purpose-driven extrinsic (Skinner box) wants that serve elite interests, one's own or those of other elites. A failure to meet needs, individual or collective, has adverse effects measurable in terms of reduced life expectancy or loss of functionality. Zero tolerance relative to maximum life expectancy or functionality is excessive intolerance as costs can become 'too high' as in approach an unpayable infinite. Tolerance may vary, but in general assume 5%. For example, the minimum tolerable amount and nutritional quality of food will, insofar as possible, not be less than will shorten life expectancy by more than 5% of optimal nor will over-nutrition (obesity) of more than 5% go untreated. Diet would be managed to reduce risk of type 2 diabetes to less than 5%, and so on. The value may be adjusted based on energy/resource costs, but policies based on zero risk arguments will not be the basis of policy making.

Numeracy involves asking how much. If a 5% risk is equal 0.8, or 'just enough' (to avoid more than a 5% increase in mortality/dysfunction), and 1.0 by definition equals 'enough', an optimal level of consumption, then 1.2 will equal more than enough, and just as with values less than 0.8, would need to be redressed. Primates can prattle endlessly about fairness and equability. Neoclassical economists can justify/explain why some must have 10,000 times more than others. Societies of Enough, however, need to put values (numbers) on values. If some elites are privileged to consume up to 1.2 times more than enough, perhaps as a reward for exceptional service to express social approbation in a material form, then anyone who feels entitled to more can vote with their feet or learn to moderate desires. It is possible to design and manage a biophysical economy of enough to meet human needs, but not the human potential for desire. A 5% risk, or 0.8 level of consumption implies that instead of living 75 years (a 1.0 life) that some live 72 years and that consuming up to 1.2 times more than enough does not increase risk of mortality more than 5% by overconsumption.

A watershed that defines 'just enough' to be 0.1 and 1.0 to be middle-class American 'enough', and allows average elites to consume 1,000 times more goods and services than is enough, will sustainably support a much smaller population where commoners work to serve elites, as is normal among empire builders for a time until social unrest and/or overshoot destroys the SYSTEM as usual. A stable SYSTEM in which the predator population (hyper-elites) and prey population (commoners, peasants, serfs, slaves, workers) is maintained in equilibrium has not yet evolved among humans living in complex societies. It may be that complex societies that over tolerate (>25%) elite privilege in terms of energy/resource consumption, are inherently unstable, which is perhaps why humans have lived in equable (0.8 to 1.2 or less, gini coefficient < 0.2) sharing hunter-gather bands for 300 millennia.

Watershed management units will vary in wealth, in real wealth measured in energy resources which are a precondition for acquiring other resources. Some will have a level of environmental productivity that will support only a hunter-gatherer life of roving bands. If the population agrees to exploit 20 percent or less of their watershed area (likely the most productive area) and provide militia (guardians) to support other watersheds under attack or hit by natural disaster, then they will also be protected from conquest and provided mutual aid. They would also receive information, use of workshop/repair facilities, and health care at the centrally located Federation Embassy.

The 80 percent not exploited provides environmental services to all inhabitants of the planet. The 80 percent is set aside for Nature, and not managed as National Parks are 'in such manner and by such means as will leave them unimpaired for the enjoyment of future generations [of humans]'. The areas are not 'conserved' for human use, including recreation, though managed visitation would be allowed per Article XIV, Section 2, Line 2 of the Constitution of the United Federation of Watersheds. Some areas, such as current National Parks, would not be within inhabited watershed areas, and would be managed by the Federation for visitation only, limited as needed in such a way 'as will leave them unimpaired for the enjoyment of future generations' to visit in order to better 'put them in their place' whether they enjoy it or not.

All humans benefit from Nature's services, including the 80 percent, and so the Federation provides Embassy services to all watersheds based on need with the most services provided to those who exploit their 20 percent the least, those living by hunting-gathering perhaps with seasonal low-intensity agriculture. Anyone born into a nomadic band could borrow a copy of Rosetta Bliss to teach themselves to read. They could then borrow one copy at a time of any of the one hundred volume Encyclopedia Bliss. Baseline medical and dental services would also be provided. Some might agree to emigrate and some might end up teaching at the Federation Academy.

Some watersheds may be extremely energy rich, such as those containing a hydroelectric dam build using fossil fuels in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Although the average life expectancy of these dams may be 400 years, some will last much longer, supporting a high-energy industrial society, perhaps resembling early twenty-first century technoindustrial society other than with more equitable distribution of resources and services to avoid social collapse. Such societies may not be able to grow, nor be interested in producing food and fiber, and so would trade for consumables as well as the products of landfill mines, providing high-value technology for those living in agroecosystem powered watersheds whose members, some or even all, may benefit from trade that provided them with 5W-10W of solar PV, one AA battery, and an LED lighthat for personal use. Perhaps some could have music players, or some, those who taught themselves to read and had read Encyclopedia Bliss, could even have smartbooks for personal use to not depend on going to the Embassy for information services.

What works as the century's pass is alternative to what doesn't, though short-term self interests may be served for a time. And what works? Ask Nature. Alternative, for a time, is to listen to wordsmith prattle, full of sound and fury perhaps, that signifies nothing. Those peoples who may merit being listened to should have been living the sustainable life of enough for centuries in such a way that is a model for survival in that it molds individual behavior into a plan of actions or avoidances that are oriented toward the maintenance of a viable equilibrium between Man’s demands and Nature’s resources. In this manner the individual and society at large must both carry the burden of great responsibilities which extend not only to their own society but to the whole of mankind.

As for the rest of design for what works, it is details all the way down, which may vary. Get the details wrong and fail, then others may listen and learn. Eventually we'll have a human on the planet that really does understand it and can live with it properly. Or extinction is an option, and Nature doesn't care, though Nature is a Giving Parent to those who listen and learn.

Details for Federation Watershed design are outlined in the Constitution which is subject to revision each generation. Each generation carries the burden of great responsibilities. Failure is an option, therefore endeavor to think well as there is no life for humans in complex societies without ecolate thought. Existential concerns may justify repetition, so, let's see, perhaps we should endeavor to think and listen well..., or maybe we should just live in a world of pathologies so we and our progeny can continue to live the pathogenic life. Failure is an option. There may be worse things than failing to live the pathogenic life. Hu-mans awake.

 


 

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