EGaia

Gary Alexander. eGaia Growing a peaceful, sustainable Earth through Communications. Published by Lighthouse Books, ISBN 0907637248

Available online at http://sustainability.open.ac.uk/gary/blog/about_me/egaia/

Reviews at http://sustainability.open.ac.uk/gary/blog/?page_id=34

Review

"Book Review for the International Journal of Sustainable Development Review

by Sandrine Simon, Open University, Faculty of Technology, Centre for Complexity and Change, Systems. Walton hall, Milton Keynes, MK7 6AA, UK.

The World community of people dedicated to environmental issues has been advocating not only envisioning what a sustainable world could be like but also working at identifying practical ways to get there. Many of us also got pretty good at criticising what is wrong with the ways in which we are currently managing the human-ecological systems interactions.

To some extent, Gary Alexander, author of this new book, doesn't deprive himself from releasing a good dose of outrage concerning the way in which we base our economies on a monetary system that he describes as 'institutional mistrust'.

But what might be even more interesting to the reader are the systemic and interdisciplinary approaches that he adopts to describe what he calls 'the global cancer' we have created for ourselves.

And, more importantly, the real attraction of this book is that its biggest proportion concentrates on radical and practical steps to move towards sustainability. These include issues such as:

   * co-operative social groupings,
   * information systems, and
   * improving human skills of communication and relationships.

The author, one of the first Open University lecturers to start developing interactive, collaborative distance online learning courses, uses his fantastic OU skills to engage his readers in an interactive learning journey, a dialogue, interspersed with humoristic illustrations.

If you have doubts about what the book suggests, Gary will soon interject to reflect on this and will initiate an exchange of views with an imaginary member of his audience. This is an inspiring way of getting students – and so many others! - to critically think about how to put sustainability into practice: lecturers will be delighted to go through such animated and pertinent debates.

But this book is also addressed to all types of other people, those who would like to see some major new changes (neither a return to some mythical ancient golden age nor business as usual) and to investigate some possible futures.

The book is divided into four parts. In the first one, the author explains how the e-Gaian organising principles can help us move humanity from global cancer back to a global nervous system. Since the cancerous cells are losing the controlling communication ability, in our current 'global cancer' scenario, Alexander focuses both on:

   - how humanity, as a nervous system, could respond to the needs of Earth rather than trying to control it and 

   -how systemic views, conversations and communication can be at the root of environmental solutions.

Examples of how these principles might be implemented are given through suggestions of imaginary (yet possible) communities of the future.

The story of life and its evolution is then given in Part 2. Throughout this part, the author stresses the fact that with the rise of the competitive market economy, and later with the Darwinian theory of evolution, the competitive side of the story of life came to be emphasised out of proportion to its contribution. He helps us in understanding the complementarity between competition and symbiosis and highlights the fact that life is about symbiosis and inter-connections, hence networks.

In part 3, we then concentrates on 'high level' principles for sustainability and the author focuses on regeneration and recycling, stability, resilience and self repair, as well as adaptability and creativity. He investigates these through the issues of land use, making things sustainably and sustainable energy uses, as well as conflict resolution.

Part 4 then focuses on 'making e-Gaia happen' and investigates various types of 'starting points'. It suggests that what is needed for the Earth to become a global scale organism is a combination of:

   * a communication system that links the various parts and
   * a global sense of identity, leading to
   * a symbiosis among the parts so that they can aid each other and the whole rather than being in conflict.

Many of the practical illustrative examples given focus on co-operative networks - a favourite of the author, since 'a co-operative economy can produce a synergy where the result is greater than the sum of people's effort and since this produces the qualities of a group functioning as an organism, which is the fundamental eGaian image'.

A computer network is central to the co-operative economy described by Alexander, since it provides an infrastructure, a platform, to make thinks easier and engage people who live separate, dispersed lives and helps them co-ordinate their activities.

Unsurprisingly then, the book finishes with the Johannesburg WSSD, the 'first summit of the Internet age', which opened the possibilities of groups of people around the world to co-ordinate their actions locally and globally. Alexander provides examples of such networks through web portals (such as Global Green Information Networks, fair trade networks, education for sustainability, or global emergency aid and development funds).

Above all, this refreshing book is generous and full of hopes. A long awaited cure in communal visionary and practical thinking that will inspire us in moving towards 'real sustainability'." (http://sustainability.open.ac.uk/gary/blog/?page_id=34)