The AAAS is a world renowned organization that publishes the acclaimed journal Science.  Their Sustainability Science Forum is comprised of leading scientific initiatives that seek to help move humanity toward a sustainable global future.  

Our vision of our role in this network is to utilize our social science research in the development of learning systems that effectively link global corporations with local communities in concerted problem based learning initiatives through collaborative evolutionary action communities. 

Our primary research objective currently in this regard is to develop and validate the Global Sustainability Inventory (GSI), with which we seek to define individual and community attitudinal and behavioral development goals most equitable with sustainability and sustainable development across global societies.

Stay tuned, as we will report our developing research here on the Ecosphere Net blog.

EJ Wensing

US Virgin Islands

ejwensing@ecosphere.net

We are pleased to announce that Ecosphere Net will be presenting at the upcoming international sustainability conference at the Technical University of Delft,

The conference takes place October 25^th through 29^th, 2010. (Click here for conference website) 

The conference theme is “Knowledge Collaboration & Learning for Sustainable Innovation” and will address four main questions:  

1. How can we bring about sustainable consumption and system innovations?
2. How can higher education facilitate sustainable innovation practices?
3. What can be done for sustainable innovation at a regional level?
4. What can the North learn from the South with regard to sustainable innovation?

The conference will have a direct video/audio link to a parallel conference being held simultaneously in Cape Town, South Africa.

Ecosphere Net will be presenting in the conference category “Sustainable Education and Education Programs” addressing the general conference question, “With what kind of courses and (applied and interdisciplinary) education programs do we prepare students to integrate sustainable solutions into their day-to-day practice? Do we need completely new Bachelor and Master Programs or can it be done with a transformation towards a more sustainable program?”

Specifically, our presentation will introduce the assessment instrument we are developing called the Global Sustainability Inventory (GSI). The aim of the GSI is to set goals for the individual and collective development of the attitudes and behaviours that are deemed most equitable with sustainable development and a sustainable global future. 

We look forward to being part of this exciting conference at TU Delft!

Please visit their website by clicking here.

EJ Wensing

US Virgin Islands

ejwensing@ecosphere.net

Watching the daily news one can quickly become discouraged about our global future.

Most notably is the recent and ongoing oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.

Yet again another big corporation not taking precautionary measures to avoid what surely is a preventable catastrophe.  Equally as shameful is their not taking valid and effective responsible action after creating such a disaster.  

In the Caribbean, around the Virgin Islands you can scuba dive and sit on the ocean floor just 30 to 40 feet below the surface of the water. You can sit in the sand, as I have, and watch the ocean world go by. It’s a beautiful and busy place with turtles, rays, barracudas and other sea life going about their business. Most impressive is the apparently endless species of fish with all the colors of the rainbow. To me it seems full of life, all over the place.

So, having this insight, its been especially difficult for those of us connected to the ocean with this perspective to see the toxic oil spew into this ocean world.

It is important to try to learn from these mistakes and to take action as citizens of this planet to prevent this type of thing from ever happening again.  That is our responsibility.

One place to start might be to have all offshore oil drilling executives come sit on the bottom of the ocean with me for a while.  Spend some time on the sand at 40 feet below and see the world that they have to be aware of and that we all are a part of. From the coral to the fish, they are as dependent on us, as we are on them for our lives and our future.

If any corporations are interested in this, please contact me at Ecosphere Net at ejwensing@ecosphere.net . We would be happy to arrange this experience and prove this reality for you in the United States Virgin Islands.   

EJ Wensing

ejwensing@ecosphere.net

St. John, St. Thomas and St. Croix

US Virgin Islands  

The New York Times photo above taken by Angel Franco of the NYT is of a truck that is home to five in Haiti and is part of a piece on the continuing recovery in Haiti written by Deborah Sontag. Please see/read the article (click here)

Realizing that we share a common humanity and common future on this Earth is a key element of the consciousness that is needed for a sustainable global future: Your future, my future and all our childrens' future.

The next step is to actually take action, in your local home community and in your global home community. Be a community leader, a community organizer and don't give up.

For the people of Haiti, please click-on the Haiti icon in the right margin of this blog page.

EJ Wensing

ejwensing@ecosphere.net

Yesterday I hurriedly purchased a bag of fair trade coffee beans.

At coffee time this morning I actually read the bag’s inscription, which reads “Awaken Your Consciousness.”

That inscription made me smile because I’ve recently been reviewing the sustainability and sustainable development literature with regard to the link, if any, between increased consciousness and behavior.

The jury is still out on this.

Does increasing the consciousness of what’s needed, as in “an awakening of awareness” lead to the all important well-defined behaviors that are most equitable with a sustainable global future?

For apparently a variety of reasons, the answer is still no.

An awareness of what is needed does not necessarily lead to the behaviors that are needed.

How then can we engage people in those needed behaviors?

The best answer I can see so far could be described as collaborative action networks.

These are groups that network in collaboration and action from the local to the global.

These groups are a made up of people.  Everyone, all citizens, together co-creating a sustainable global future: participation leads to action. That is how we awaken our consciousness and move that awareness into action.

EJ Wensing

US Virgin Islands

ejwensing@ecosphere.net 

This means that we take the problems of sustainability of today, seek to solve them and in so doing generate the steps needed to get us toward the sustainable world of tomorrow. 

Solving the problems requires local communities to collaborate with larger global institutions.

Collaboration is the key.

Many of the solutions to the problems of sustainability are well known.

The problems of sustainability have both local and global dimensions.

Local dimensions because solutions may work in one setting and may not in another.

Global because combing local and global expertise and resources will optimize the results for everyone.

Our vision at Ecosphere Net is developing communities around the world connected in a network of collaboration in a transition toward global sustainability.

E. J. Wensing

ejwensing@ecopshere.net

Psychology can serve a critical role in helping to achieve a global transition toward a sustainable future because broad-based changes in human behavior are urgently needed across global societies. However, while the needed changes are for the most part well known by humans in thought, these thoughts have not yet translated into the requisite levels of human behavior.

Furthermore, given the limited efficacy to date of innovation in science and technology, governance through policy, corporate leadership, and public education to change human behaviors toward those deemed most equitable with a sustainable future, the scientific exploration in psychology of human consciousness, cognition, emotion and behavior as it pertains to their origins, causes and modifiers on both an individual level, in terms of personality and identity and the broader social level, as members of the collective community or global citizenship in relation to sustainability and sustainable development, is an urgent imperative.

EJ Wensing

US Virgin Islands

ejwensing@ecosphere.net