Learning Management from Ecosystems: Tolerance for Failure, Diversity, and Local Autonomy

The latest ESG issue is setbacks for two major Western oil companies. A landmark judgment by The Hague District Court ordered Netherlands-based Shell to further reduce the group’s total carbon emissions by 45% by 2030. At Exxon Mobil, a carbon-reduction investment fund also made history by winning two board seats in an election. Learn from nature: tolerate failure and embrace diversity. ---- Paul Crutzen, a Nobel laureate in chemistry and renowned scientist studying global warming, proposed the term Anthropocene, the age of humans. Many scientists believe human activity is causing warming, biodiversity loss, ocean acidification, air pollution, and freshwater depletion, ultimately threatening the entire ecosystem. Humans really are a group of unruly children raised by Mother Nature. Greedy and shortsighted, our species has done her enormous harm. But we should not underestimate her resilience. To avoid climate disaster—and even to become wiser ourselves—the best approach is to learn from Mother Nature. --- Mother Nature’s first lesson: tolerate failure Why learn from Mother Nature? Earth is more than four billion years old. Over that immense history, nature has endured shocks, climate changes, and unexpected events, sometimes even asteroid impacts. Yet despite every ordeal, it has continued evolving remarkably well. It is our model and teacher. Her first lesson is to tolerate failure. More than 99% of all species that have existed on Earth throughout life’s evolution are extinct. Cruel? Heartless? Yet this is nature’s way of surviving. Nature accepts failure calmly. Without failure, how could there be success? Consider forest fires. People once treated every fire as a disaster to extinguish by every possible means, only to find fires becoming more frequent and larger. Eventually, they realized fire is integral to ecosystem change. Without it, forests age faster and accumulate more flammable material. When a fire finally comes, it spreads faster and farther. The best defense is to burn a firebreak in advance to stop the spread. A zero-tolerance policy toward failure will inevitably produce greater disasters. Mother Nature’s second lesson: embrace diversity Her second lesson is diversity. She understands that the best way to evolve good ideas is to encourage many different ideas. In 2000, University of Minnesota biologist G. David Tilman published ‘Causes, consequences and ethics of biodiversity’ in Nature. He wrote: Overall, greater biodiversity brings higher productivity to plant communities and better nutrient retention and stability to ecosystems. For example, scientists conducted grassland field experiments in North America and eight European countries. A plot planted with only one species yielded over 50% less than an equal-sized plot planted with 24–32 species. Reduced plant diversity also caused greater soil nutrient loss, lowering fertility and further reducing yields. Mother Nature’s third lesson: encourage local adaptation Her third lesson is local adaptation. Nature has no Lion King. It has established trillions of small networks, beginning with microbial systems and gradually developing into larger ecosystems. But every small network is a little community that keeps adapting and evolving to survive and flourish. Each distinctive local environment has its own inhabitants. Local species adapt to one another and form an integrated whole. This is their home; they belong here. Without encouragement of local adaptation, an invasive species can easily disrupt the system and create disorder. This is self-organization through a federal, decentralized approach. Governments, companies, and communities must learn to balance centralization and decentralization, encourage local adaptation, foster belonging, and inspire teamwork. That is how the whole becomes greater than the sum of its parts. ----- #Dedao #HeFansReadingClub