Mary all of your questions involve policies formed by higher authorities or governments above farmers and people on the land. I am going to
answer you at some length because this I believe will help all of us in the next three days of discussions.
Such policies are formed by well-meaning people to try to address problems – all policies are formed to address problems through one or more objectives. Now policies (and development projects) need to meet 3 needs (1) be achievable (2) not address symptoms & (3) not lead to unintended consequences.
Always the context for the various objectives of policy is “the problem being addressed”. All objectives need a context. If they have no context or inadequate context they amount to “loose cannons on the deck” - likely to lead to damaging but unintended consequences. The real world of human societies, cultures, economies, governance, religions, weather and environmental complexity is holistic – meaning there are no connections, parts or any of our mechanistic constructs, but functioning in wholes and patterns, feedback loops and more in such self-renewing complexity.
In this real world of complexity any objective with the “problem” as the context has an inadequate or unrealistic context. Because of this it is unlikely to be achievable (other than short term), is almost always addressing a symptom and highly likely to lead to unplanned and unintended damaging consequences.
So we see humanity experiencing ever growing tsunamis or catastrophies of our own making associated with almost everything we “manage” which involves such complexity. If you look at everything we “make” it involves technology and expertise but roads, bridges, dams, computers, planes, etc although complicated are never complex – they are designed by humans, do what they are supposed to do are not self-renewing, do not work with parts missing. Generally we are very successful with these as long as we measure success as having achieved the objective, and we ignore longer term consequences on environment and society. The holistic framework would help us reduce the damaging consequences of things we make using technology, but for the moment let me stick to the things we manage including policies that we do not make, but which constitute management dealing with complexity almost beyond human comprehension.
In the cases you mention the problems concerning you fit this pattern of fallouts from faulty policies – and your dismay, response and that of others seeing the damage is one of the unplanned consequences, along with all the environmental and social damage being done.
Almost all of this damage brought about by faulty policies (& development projects) in every country (there is no exception) is avoidable when we use the holistic framework in formation of such polices and projects. This is because we work to a “holistic context” and use a set of 10 filters to ensure the objectives and means to attain such objectives are in that holistic context. When this is done we commonly find almost all of the knowledge required to develop sound policies is available and what is causing the global damage we are witnessing (and have for thousands of years) is the way we have traditionally in all cultures made conscious decisions to achieve objectives. Most people, even though we often do not think so when we
experience the damaging results, are trying to do the right thing and it is our way of making all conscious decisions that leads to environmental damage, poverty, violence, war and more.
You ask how we stop such policies. I am afraid having battled for fifty years on many fronts I know now from both experience, and from studying the research on how truly new paradigm-changing scientific insights get into democratic societies, that it only happens when public opinion forces institutional change in our many organizations. Twenty minutes of TED talk about reversing desertification now having gone to about 2 million viewers on the various sites has done more than fifty years of dealing with universities, farming and ranching organizations, governments or international agencies. Thousands of individuals in institutions have worked with us developing the holistic management framework for decision making but they are as powerless as you and me to bring about change within their institutions. Now that public opinion is mounting institutions will inevitably begin to change. I stress all that we know about such change indicates no amount of logic, data, facts, evidence changes institutions – only public opinion brings about institutional change. Thanks to social networking today this is beginning to happen in several fields where “authorities” can no longer control information. So all that you can do personally is to do your best working with thinking concerned people, as you are, and make sure you do all you can to spread public demand for change from today’s almost universal faulty agricultural policies.
