Holistic Management: Integrative Desision Making Framework

Integrative Decision Making Framework

Often times designers, thinkers, engineers, planers, and other people engaged in disciplines that value thorough, well thought out plans for any kind of enterprise or endeavor, succumb to a type of paralysis. Cycling through endless iterations of design on paper without being able to ground this good thinking into action often times creates situations where opportunities slip through our fingers.

Holistic Managements Decision making framework offers a system developed to deal with planing in real time for farmers and ranchers who have to be able to harvest crops this year, no matter what changes they may be considering making next year.

One of the most important and informative ways to analyze decision making is through the lens of finance. With a sharp eye for creating profit by minimizing expense, and a framework to insure ecological and social accountability Holistic Management's financial planing is a powerful tool to help us empower eco-social regeneration through entrepreneurial ventures.

Holistic Management Financial Planning

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Integrating this framework into the design cycles present in the world of permaculture design allows us to truly embody principles like catch and story energy and make hay while the sun shines by re-enforcing good decision making that is embedded firmly in an overall holistic vision for the long term design.

A great team of blogers is busy documenting how Holistic Management fits into an emerging framework for Carbon Farming and Regenerative Design.

Some great resources for understanding this process can be found at the carbon farming blog.

Total Ecological Health Index.

Total Ecological Health index is a way of quantifying the health of an ecosystem, or entire bioregion. Scientific methods like soil testing, air quality testing, water quality testing, species diversity index, human footprint and other methods can help us gain an understanding for the health of our home environments.

Maintaining and improving the Total Ecological Health Index of bioregions and the entire prlant is a key part of any strategy to stabalize climate.

In fact saving the ecosystems on earth that have high ecological health indecis due to their species diversity may be the most important strategy of all to help maintain earth's precarious balence of life.

E.O Wilson's article in science news talking about hotspots points to an important strategy I will call the arc strategy.

Hotspots:

Hot spots are areas of the planet, that due to unique climate and topography, harbor immense biodiversity. These hot spots are like seed banks for Earth's genetic diversity.

The Arc Strategy:

In this strategy you protect diversity hotspots that will then be able to radiate species diversity out these refugios have historically been the backbone of planetary species diversity and ecoogical resilience.
Developing a coherent and economically viable strategy for protecting these hot spot is essential for ecological resilience and the survival of our species and planetary ecology as we know it.

So, what are some strategies for protecting these arcs of life?

• government funded conservation grants run through science
• ecosocial entreprenuerial enterprise
• private reserves

Each of these strategies has its upsides and down sides.

Ecosocial enterprise offers us a glimpse at a sustainable solution that can compliment, and even weave other strategies together.
Providing a firm matrix of right livelihood, preservation and even regeneration of species this strategy is being pioneered by innovators in the Gaia U community and other world changing groups around the world.

Booyacacao is my personal attempt to create a sustainable, just ecosocial enterprise that can help protect hotspots and also foster opportunities for right livlihood for all people involved.

Greenhorn and Carbon Farming

Greenhorn Radio interviews Carbon Farming Course convener Ethan Roland


On today's episode of Greenhorn Radio, Severine von Tscharner Fleming interviewed Ethan Roland (a primary organizer of the Carbon Farming Course, and proprietor of Appleseed Permaculture) and John Good (co-owner and operator of Quiet Creek Farm at The Rodale Institute). Their topics were carbon, compost, and the future of farming, and you can hear the show online at Greenhorn Radio.

Read more on the Carbon Farming Blog


This is a great example of where agriculture is going, and how different groups are working together to create cooperative systems to improve ecological health, build real wealth, and shift society and culture into justice and peace.

The Carbon Negative Future!