The Winner of the 2010 Buckminster Fuller Challenge
Richard Buckminster Fuller (1895 – 1983), engineer, architect, designer, philosopher and inventor, is prominently known for the famous lightweight and stable geodesic domes he constructed, such as the US Pavilion of the EXPO 1967 in Montreal, now housing the eco-watch centre Biosphère. The domes reflect his continuous efforts to explore nature’s constructing principles in order to find design solutions.
Buckminster Fuller’s intention was “to make the world work for 100% of humanity, in the shortest possible time, through spontaneous cooperation without ecological offense or disadvantage of anyone”[1] – promoting a systemic worldview to solve complex problems in a sustainable way especially in the fields of housing, shelter, energy, transportation, and ecological destruction.
The Buckminster Fuller Challenge
In this spirit, The Buckminster Fuller Institute who, in their own words, extends the legacy of Buckminster Fuller, holds an annual international design competition, the Buckminster Fuller Challenge (prize award: $100,000), “to support the development and implementation of a strategy that has significant potential to solve humanity’s most pressing problems.
The Buckminster Fuller Challenge attracts bold, visionary, tangible initiatives focused on a well-defined need of critical importance.
Winning solutions are regionally specific yet globally applicable and present a truly comprehensive, anticipatory,integrated approach to solving the world’s complex problems.”[2]
Ideas submitted to the Challenge are included in a searchable database, the Idea index, and in the past years have included projects on a wide variety of topics such as education and awareness campaigns, transportation concepts, shelter and housing designs, material development or energy efficiency.
Winner of the 2010 Challenge: Operation Hope
This year’s edition of the Challenge saw 215 entries, a showcase of remarkable proposals, which were narrowed down to six finalists. From these, the Winner of the 2010 Challenge was announced in Washington DC on June 2, 2010 at the National Press Club.
The winning entry ‘Operation Hope–Permanent water and food security for Africa’s impoverished millions’ by Allan Savory on behalf of the Africa Center for Holistic Management (ACHM)’ presents the case of how holistic land management reverses desertification in grasslands and savannas.
Grazing livestock as part of the solution to reverse desertification in the grasslands and savannas of the Earth? A somewhat surprising approach it seems – at first glance.
A Holistic Framework for Rangeland Management
In the application for the Challenge, Operation Hope founder Allan Savory, President and co-founder of the Savory Institute, former biologist, game ranger, politician, farmer, and rancher says about the project:
“In this particular project ACHM has demonstrated on 6500 acres of grasslands in Zimbabwe the process of reversing desertification. Livestock have increased 400% using holistic planned grazing and we now enjoy open water, water lilies and fish a kilometre above where water has been known before in the dry season. The livestock are integrated with Africa’s big game avoiding competition and wildlife are on the increase.
Currently, we can barely keep pace with grass growth even in dry years. This is greatly influencing scientists, NGO’s and pastoralists from all over Africa.”
Allan Savory and his team have applied what he calls a Holistic Management Framework as the underlying thinking in order to understand the actual cause of desertification in savannas and grasslands. Whereas reductionist science and management have not dealt appropriately with the complexity of the issue, the Holistic Management Framework has enabled the ACHM team to address the root cause of environmental degradation – what they found to be the way in which humans make decisions.
Linear thinking and decision-making cannot adequately tackle complex issues like desertification, rather situations as a whole need to be considered, what Savory calls in his Framework setting a ‘holistic goal’. The second part of the holistic framework is about employing appropriate toolsets – in the case of Operation Hope the ‘tool’ is grazing herbivores which prevent the desertification of savannas and grasslands in seasonal rainfall environments. The impact of the animals provides rapid biological decay and re-growth of perennial grasses, whereas without the physical impact and grazing of the animals, the decay process stops and the grasses die.
”Our project has changed the human management of the livestock to mimic the behavior of the once vast herds of grazing animals and predators that produced Africa’s extensive, abundant savannah’s. The result has been increased land productivity, increased water availability, increased wildlife and improved livelihoods for those who depend on the land.” [3]
Holistic thinking for complex problems
Savory’s approach is based on the application of holistic thinking to rangeland management. An example of the kind of shift in mindsets that, in recent years, has slowly been trickling into decision-making contexts – such as in complex spatial environments and the field of sustainable development– up to now largely dominated by reductionist, solely technocratic approaches.
Practitioners like Savory often experience the clash between the actual complexity of situations they are working in and scientific recommendations and fixed business strategies. This is because the practitioners do grasp and understand complexity and apply common sense to deal with it – in contrast to the established conventional approaches which do not provide adequate answers. It is, time end again, actually dedicated individuals and initiatives who lead change through employing and systematically addressing the whole system view philosophy that Buckminster Fuller propagated and which the Challenge champions.
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Christine Broenner is Principal Consultant with The abaci Partnership LLP.
