So I have been given a little exercise to try out over the next few days; I need to construct an 'ideal' hypothetical case for applying patterns and systems thinking. It needs to emphasize community level problem solving and environmental sustainability.
Issues of interest are: land rights, community energy solutions (wind, bio, hydro, solar, methane farming) community forestry, marketing and protection of non-timber forest resources (such as dyes, resins, fungi and other ethnobotanicals used as medicines, nutrition and so forth). Perhaps, all in one.
Along with these issues, I'm looking for cases that exemplify community attempts at autonomous decision making, planning, implementation within the context of globalizing world and external pressures from government, business, oppositional civil society, etc.
The case also needs some transnational linkages (i.e. NGOs, MNCs, etc.), yet this can be several degrees removed. Various levels of information literacy and communicative capacity are also needed.
Once this idealized situation (or situations) is developed, a few of us are going to begin the tedious task of looking for potential candidates for empirical study.
3 comments:
take a look at Compendium: http://compendium.open.ac.uk/institute/about.htm Its java & open source, so if it doesn't provide the functionality you need, at least its a starting point.
I'd be interested to hear what you make of it.
oops.. meant to leave that comment on the previous post.
Thanks yishay. I have had a chance to look at compendium before and I really do like the software. The problem for me in extending it to my needs is that I don't know java, nor do I have the time to learn it. Sigh...
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