Above: Hamish Reid of Project Litefoot

I was lucky enough to be invited along to the Second Hillary Symposium in Christchurch on Friday, World Environment Day. While the symposium had a significant focus on Christchurch, the take-away lessons dealt more with the global situation, and how any city could use it to an advantage. The speakers were of an extremely high calibre, and put forward some excellent ideas and solutions. I highly recommend having a look at the Hillary Symposium website for a summary of each of their presentations.

Wendy

Today the SF team locked up the office and went down to Lambton Quay to join in on the ‘freeze‘. The event this year was to highlight the need to unite to combat climate change, with world leaders to negotiate a new global climate treaty in December. Last year 200 people were involved, so it’s great to see that the momentum is building with over 500 involved this year.

Our thanks to Taylor Maw for the excellent video above.

Willow

Today we had the wonderful Jan Bieringa come in to share lunch with us. Jan started (e)-vision, a digital media centre, in Wellington in the 90s, and was also a co-founder of the 7×7 Ideas Forum. She is currently working on a feature documentary and is the coordinator for the World Summit Awards in New Zealand and the Pacific.

The World Summit Awards seek to ‘bridge the digital divide and close the content gap’, by celebrating e-content and ICT applications that allow people to create and share information for social, economic and cultural benefits. As coordinator for the New Zealand-Pacific region, Jan is drawing attention to work of this kind being done in our region.

Now that we are reaching a point with Project 2058 where we need to shift from researching and writing reports to communicating the ideas and solutions we are coming up with,  we asked Jan along to help us think about how to begin this process. As our Think Piece 10 outlined, New Zealanders are great at coming up with ideas, but putting them in motion is where it gets tricky.Talking to someone so involved in digital content and participation was a great way to work through some of the challenges we face at the moment.

We had a great conversation* and we look forward to hopefully working alongside Jan in the near future.

Willow

*Unfortunately we were so involved in the conversation that we forgot to take a photo!

With the rain filling drains outside, the Sustainable Future team spent an engaging lunch meeting with Pam and Morgan Williams on Friday May 8th. Morgan was New Zealand’s second Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment (1996-2007). Since stepping down from the role, Morgan has worked under the mantle of FutureSteps as a sustainability consult, with recent work including a think piece on the future of the Waitakere Ranges under the recent Waitakere Ranges Heritage Area Act 2008. Pam comes from a secondary education background and last year completed a PhD at Victoria University of Wellington, where she continues to be based as part of the Education for Sustainability programme in secondary schools.

Over a lunch of bread, cheese, nibbles and orange juice, Pam and Morgan shared with the Sustainable Future team a few of their current thoughts. We were also lucky enough to have Dave Henley with us for a few weeks, and to be joined by our former colleague, and occasional harbour-dipper, Amelie Goldberg join us.

On April 23 and 24 I attended the Nanotechnology workshop organised by Dr Robert Hickson from  the Ministry of Research, Science and Technology. The event involved people from universities, research institutes and government departments, and was an opportunity to address issues that may arise from the adoption of nanotechnology. Shown above is Associate Professor Simon Brown from Canterbury University, summing up the ideas raised over the two days.

l to r: Hayley Vujcich, Willow Henderson, Dr Sean Weaver, Scott Wilson and Jean-Charles Perquin

On 3rd April, the first ‘Expert Lunch’ was held at Sustainable Future’s office.

For the debut, we invited Dr Sean Weaver from Carbon-Partnership as the guest, accompanied by Scott Wilson from Water Matters Ltd. We took the chance to enjoy an almost unseasonably beautiful day by having lunch on the roof of our building.

Discussions went well around issues Sustainable Future is dealing with, the main focus being climate change, carbon markets and policy, all being areas of expertise of Dr Sean Weaver. Such discussion is critical and helpful for Project 2058, and we were pleased with the outcomes. We appreciated the chance to share ideas about the implications of climate change in a long-term strategy for New Zealand.

We are now looking forward to the next Expert Lunch meeting which will be held on the 8th May with Dr Morgan Williams, former Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment and Principal of Futuresteps, as the guest.

I just got back to the office after a coffee with Victoria  University’s resident futurologist, the fantastic Ian Yeoman. We had a very interesting chat about trends and tourism in New Zealand (amongst other things) and one thing he said particularly stuck with me. Ian outlined very succinctly the differentiation between ‘insight’ and ‘foresight’ and I thought it might be of interest.

Insight is about analysing current trends in order to find a deeper meaning, whereas Foresight uses scenarios and critical thinking to consider what is coming next.

Worth checking out is Ian’s book  Tomorrow’s Tourist (left).

On Saturday I was involved in the Pathways to Resilient Communities event, held at Te Papa.

The event was organised by a group of committed people, including members of transition towns groups, Regional Councils, business leaders and other groups with an interest in supporting the development of sustainability over the broader region.

The event aimed to assess greater Wellington’s state of preparedness and develop ideas to improve our position, and I am pleased to say that the four scenarios that we developed for our recent report Four Futures for New Zealand in 2058 formed the basis of scenarios presented on the day. I presented on Scenario Two: An Island Paradise, but back to the Jungle, the slides of which are available here.

The day was a great success, and I look forward to seeing what develops from the great thinking that emerged.

For further information, see the Resilient Pathways website.

Jane McGonigal at Webstock '09

I was lucky enough to be invited to hear Jane McGonigal speak at Webstock on Thursday. Jane is a world leader in Alternate Reality Games (ARGs) and her discussion of what makes people happy and how these games help people to achieve this happiness was  fascinating.

Worth checking out are a couple of recommendations on this topic from Jane:

• Happiness: Lessons from a new science – Richard Layard
• Handbook of Positive Psychology – eds. C. R. Snyder and Shane Lopez
• The Happiness Formula – Series on BBC2

Some of the games Jane has worked on include “World without Oil” (the first ARG designed to solve a real life problem) and the lighter “Top Secret Dance Off” (which I’m told is hugely popular in Wellington). For the conference, Jane set up a 48 hour game called The Signtific lab: Free Space which set out to exercise people’s imaginations by asking what future possibilities they saw in Space.

A very inspiring lady, and an excellent conference. I look forward to next year’s Webstock!

Wendy

On the 18th December 2008, the Sustainable Future Team embarked on our ‘Magical Mystery Christmas Party’… The journey started by taking a ferry cruise through Wellington harbour towards a mysterious destination. We ended up at Days Bay, Eastbourne, to enjoy a delicious picnic and a beautiful sunny day.  Some of the team even ventured into the water and jumped off the wharf, although Willow found herself unable to take the plunge on the first try.This event was also an occasion to celebrate an effective year of Reports, Think Pieces, Newsletters and much more…

We wish you all a Merry Christmas and a lovely holiday, may this new year bring a strong willingness to head towards sustainable development and leadership for New Zealand.We are looking forward to completing the last Project 2058 reports and starting to build a National Strategy for New Zealand in 2009.