The 2022 World Water theme is groundwater. Water, but especially groundwater, is scarce and getting scarcer in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region. I recently reflected on some articles I stumbled across about the marshes in Iraq. I don’t know whether to be pessimistic, or not, but given our ability to address other […]
Category: Systems Thinking
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Environmental Justice
www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2021/05/25/heat-inequality-climate-change/ Another example of structural inequality and how the built environment can lead to adverse outcomes to disadvantaged (poor, colored) communities. I take structural as systemic and suspect that many of the traditional problem archetypes are at play.
www.washingtonpost.com/transportation/2021/05/23/highway-funding-infrastructure/ This is a classic problem the world over – there exist more interest, and likely incentives to build new things rather than maintain what you have. Of course in the US this has partisan overtones. Politicians and engineers probably have pushes to do New rather than maintain even on an even dollar spend.
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PEA and Adaptive Management
Here is an interesting blogging site from Abt on Political Economy Analysis and Adaptive Management – two things I strongly encourage! My experience is that infrastructure related reforms often underperform – in part from a lack of political assessment upfront (public sector unions anyone?) which leads to policy reform activities that are the poor step-children […]
An interesting and thought provoking article in the New York Times recently on The Pandemic is a Prisoner’s Dilemma Game. In the classic Prisoner’s Dilemma two players are playing: if both refuse to turn on the other player they share the reward, if one turns on the other one will reap the entire reward while […]
I have spent a good portion of my professional career working in weakly matrixed organizations tasked with delivering projects. If you have ever worked in that context you know that leadership means having all the responsibility and none of the authority. Creating a high-functioning team focused on delivering a single, integrated, and impactful project that […]