Integral Sustainability
With the kind support of the Integral University, I was fortunate enough to travel to Westminster, Colorado last month to attend, present and facilitate a working group at the world’s first Seminar on Integral Ecology and Sustainability.
Seventy five of the leading thinkers and practitioners in sustainability from around the globe joined together to learn integral multi-disciplinary approaches to ecology and sustainability practices and to find out how we can work together, potentially on issues of global significance.
This emergent community includes Biologists, Environmental Scientists, Systems Modellers, Ecologists, Economists, Artists, Architects, Educators, Mediators, Community Leaders, Academics, Researchers and Practitioners with qualifications in Philosophy, Comparative Religion, Transpersonal Psychology, Anthroposophy, Child Psychology, Cultural Studies, Law, Economics, Ecopsychology, Permaculture, Mechanical, Water, Environmental and Aerospace Engineering and Interdisciplinary Technologies.
The significance of this particular event, is not that this is the first time something like this has been done, but that the Integral Ecology and Sustainability domain that organised the seminar is only one of 20 domains that the Integral Institute is forming for simultaneous launch in the next few months to create what they call the Integral Multiplex.
This will bring together into virtual space similar groups working in areas such as Integral Psychology, Integral Law, Integral Ecology, Integral Education, Integral Consciousness Studies, Integral Art, Integral Business, Integral Religion, Integral Medicine and Integral Transformative Practice all linked into one worldwide learning community.
One of the most interesting experiences from the Seminar I attended was a simulation involving over 50 participants in different roles modelling, in a day-long simulation, the 20 year management of the Florida everglades eco-system - putting the competing interests of developers, industry, environmental groups and fast growing communities into a real time dynamic learning space. This gives us a way to see and experience if what we do will be sustainable, before we do it - at a whole of society level.
People originating from Mexico, Russia, Canada, Taiwan, Germany, Brazil, Belgium, Australia, Philippines, Norway, Holland, England, Scotland and all corners of the USA worked together intensively for a week at a level I have not seen before.
These are all people with big hearts and big minds committed to big solutions to the multitude of micro-problems being faced by communities everywhere. The reverse slogan ‘Think Local Act Global’ becomes real in this space.
We have been waiting a long time for this - and it was an honour to be there to experience its beginning.