How the mosaics of life can move us towards beauty
How do we begin to grasp the interconnected pickle we’re in without falling into despair? Is there a way for us to grasp the challenges we’re facing in a manner that moves us towards beauty, and away from apathy? Regen Melbourne’s Yasmina Dkhissi explores all that, and more, through the lens of mosaics.
False starts
After writing a first draft of this article interrogating the question How are global interconnected trends showing up in Greater Melbourne and what is our place-based response to shifting the system?; I felt somehow fragmented. The analytical part of me had taken over to paint a simplified picture of the parts and I felt that something was wrong.
I took a dose of my own medicine – ‘do it your way’, ‘be the change you want to see’ – and so I decided to begin again. I am choosing to open up about the false start, because I believe this is part of the process of life: we make mistakes, we acknowledge them, we learn along the way and we adapt. If only we pretended a bit less, we might get to what matters quicker.
So here it is. You are not reading a piece written by a robot, you are reading the words of a human being who is a combination of complex thoughts and behaviours and moments leading up to this one. As Nora Bateson beautifully puts it: “You are a horizon of always re-shaping forms, falling in and out of the puzzle of your own cohesion. We are all as fragmented as a Picasso. And we are also as whole as life”.
Having grown up in Morocco, practising daily the appreciation of the miracle that life is, in the midst of suffering, explains why what started as a purely analytical piece on interconnected trends transformed into a more reflective Mosaics of Life!
Always start with an intention
As I started again, I asked myself: How do we begin to grasp the interconnected pickle we’re in without falling into despair? How do we do so in a gentle, integrated way that does not simply bring forth our intellectual side while repressing the sense of unease felt in dealing with its complexity and the depth of its roots? I wondered: is there an integrated way we can grasp the challenges in a way that moves us towards beauty, and towards the mutual flourishing of humans and non-humans in spite of the multitude of barriers we face?
To navigate through this journey and bring to light the interconnectedness of the challenges we encounter, Regen Melbourne looks up to the starry sky to guide our way. We will not be strategically effective unless we understand the underpinning structures maintaining the system on its current trajectory.
Regen Melbourne’s guiding light
So, where are we headed? We are aiming for a safe and just space between our Social Foundation and Ecological Ceiling for Greater Melbourne, as defined by Kate Raworth’s Doughnut Economics and adapted to our context to collectively create the Greater Melbourne City Portrait. Understanding our region as interconnected ‘socio-ecological systems’, the Melbourne Doughnut provides a holistic and simplified view of the building blocks that matter for our wellbeing. Like any model, it is imperfect and evolving, and yet it is a practical compass that helps us track how Melbourne is performing as a place that supports people and the planet to thrive. The goal it encompasses serves as our guiding light that orients our efforts anchored in place-based Earthshots: a swimmable Birrarung, a wave of regenerative streets and the foodie city we need to become.
Regen Melbourne’s City Portrait was launched in November 2023.
An interconnected, systems view of the world
It is not an easy thing to hold two paradoxical truths at once: in this case, these truths include the necessity to simplify to make sense of things and move forward, and the awareness that this incomplete worldview somewhat contributes to the very issue it is trying to solve. “Our talent for division, for seeing the parts, is of staggering importance – second only to our capacity to transcend it, in order to see the whole” (Iain McGilchrist).
In the words of Fritjof Capra, the ecological, environmental, social and economic crises we are facing are not separate but are interconnected expressions of one single crisis: a crisis of perception. So even when we look at the Melbourne Doughnut, we should not interpret the wedges as separate but as mosaic tiles coming together to form greater meaning in their wholeness. The International Futures Forum World Systems Model more explicitly maps out and connects issues together making the mosaic more apparent.
The International Futures Forum World Systems Model.
It is our whole-systems task to frequently re-examine the questions we are asking (Daniel Christian Wahl, Designing Regenerative Cultures), and seeing the interconnectedness of the mosaic helps us inform the nature of our responses.
This wholistic view of the world isn’t new. The earth-based consciousness and deep knowing of life as an ongoing process has been held and known by Indigenous peoples for millennia. It is only in more recent times that western, Cartesian-inherited, neo-Darwinian views and how humans understand themselves and their place in relationship with the natural world have departed away from Indigenous wisdom (Jeremy Lent, The Patterning Instinct). As we intend to paint a simplified picture of the global trends affecting us, we honour the teachings of Mary Graham, and her wise words ‘I am located therefore I am’, which remind us to ground the work and trends in place and in our context. We acknowledge the wholeness and appreciate the usefulness of our talent for seeing the parts and how they come together as trends in a moment in time. As the mosaic crystallises, a static capture of moving parts emerges and helps us better understand the responses we can offer.
Interconnected, global trends
One example of our analytical talent for division, but nonetheless a useful starting point to unpack the interconnected global trends and their relationships, is the World Economic Forum’s Global Risk Report 2024. This often-cited resource identifies earth systems, human development, AI technologies and organised crime as the emerging global risks that are shaping our geostrategic, environmental, demographic and technological spheres. Moving from the global vantage point to how these trends manifest locally in our lives, we can hone the questions we need to ask and the strategic contributions we can make. What follows is an attempt at untangling some of these knots and briefly articulating how their threads show up in Greater Melbourne, while being aware of the immense and necessary simplification made in the process.
The World Economic Forum’s global risks landscape.
Earth systems and overshooting planetary boundaries
Global
The planetary boundaries framework brings a scientific understanding and monitoring of the anthropogenic global environmental impacts on our Earth system as a whole, through the identification of nine critical, interrelated processes. Globally, we have already transgressed six out of the nine planetary boundaries: climate change, biosphere integrity, novel entities, biochemical flows, freshwater and land-system change. This increases the risk of generating irreversible environmental damage. Critical change to Earth systems entered the global risks list in 2024, posing one of the most severe risks faced over the next decade because of its intensified impacts to food, water and health security (WEF, Global Risks Report, 2024).
The planetary boundaries framework.
Understanding the interplay of boundaries and the biosphere-geosphere interactions is key. For example, respecting the land system boundary and bringing back global forest cover will be instrumental to addressing climate change and biodiversity.
Greater Melbourne
Applied to Greater Melbourne, the Melbourne Doughnut shows us how we currently consume too many resources, convert too much land for human use and produce too much waste; we are already exceeding our Ecological Ceiling with regards to climate change, land conversion, biodiversity loss, nitrogen and phosphorus loading and chemical pollution. How will this impact us? Take our waterways as the life blood of our ecosystems’ health. Over the coming decades, Melburnians can expect lower average rainfall and higher temperatures, which will result in less runoff and lower drinking water yields, while drier soil conditions will damage underground services such as pipelines for water, sewage and stormwater. More frequent extreme events such as heatwaves, floods and bushfires will also disproportionately affect vulnerable community members. Bayside municipalities and along Melbourne’s major rivers and creeks will be impacted by floods and marine pollution (Resilient Melbourne, 2015). Since colonisation, Victoria’s population growth, land management, government decisions, now combined with climate change pressures, have resulted in the loss and degradation of numerous species and habitats; with over 50 per cent of the state’s native vegetation cleared since European settlement (Melbourne Biodiversity Network). Although Melbourne faces tensions between urban growth and conservation, great opportunities exist for repair, reconnection and adoption of water sensitive urban design principles to increase the biodiversity and resilience of our streetscapes.
Economy and human development
Global
Our global economic model, based on a linear materials economy and growth, does not operate in cognition of or within our Earth-System Boundaries (The Lancet Planetary Health Commission, 2024). According to WEF’s analysis, human development and resilience are eroding globally, with impacts on livelihoods measured through poverty and access to education and healthcare narrowing. Let’s take food security as an example of how barriers to human development and economic mobility are further arising from interconnected climate, technological and geopolitical constraints. Food, climate change and health are intrinsically intertwined within our human development and economic livelihoods.
With irrigated agriculture using the largest share of water globally, food systems have major effects on land, nutrient and water use, soil degradation, greenhouse gas emissions, air quality and biodiversity. The El Niño impacts to food production and inflation combined with competition over water availability could spark disputes and further disrupt global supply chains, financial markets and political stability (WEF, Global Risks Report, 2024). In Australia, food insecurity coexists in conjunction with unsustainable food consumption, practices, and waste. As climate and extreme weather events impact agricultural productivity, food prices are likely to carry on rising. But these are not impacting us equally, with between 22-32% of the Indigenous population estimated to suffer from food insecurity compared to 4-13% of the general population (Future Earth Australia, 2022).
Queen Victoria Market, Melbourne.
Greater Melbourne
The impacts of climate change do not affect everyone equally. Rapidly urbanised areas in Melbourne’s west, such as Brimbank, Melton and Wyndham, are at high risk from heat waves and suffer from different forms of compounding socio-economic factors that undermine people’s capacities to stay safe (Centre for Just Places, 2022). This intertwines closely with severe health and wellbeing issues, underpinned by mal-adapted infrastructure outpaced by urban growth pressures. The most vulnerable communities already dealing with structural, multilayered disadvantage are unfairly impacted by the limits of our economic system, with six of the ten most disadvantaged locations reported in Greater Melbourne having disproportionate levels of public housing, low access to jobs and education (Centre for Just Places, 2021). This is worsened by the rise in cost-of-living, climate, food and health issues. Chronic stresses such as unaffordable and poor quality housing, domestic violence, food insecurity and social isolation constitute threats to the resilience of Melburnians. Under-resourced neighbourhood houses in Greater Melbourne are now serving as essential food relief hubs, surfacing the need for strengthening our infrastructure capacity and governance to support community resilience.
Artificial Intelligence, conflicts and threats to democracy
Global
Exponential and unregulated growth of technology carry significant risks to democracy, in a context where deep conflict hotspots in Ukraine, the Middle East, and Taiwan, hold ramifications for the geopolitical order, global economy and security (WEF, The Global Risks Report, 2024). New technological advancements in the forms of missiles, Artificial Intelligence (AI) and autonomous systems, as well as cyber/information warfare are already impacting Australia’s defence strategy (CSIRO, Our Future World report, 2022); cyber attacks targeting Australia’s critical infrastructure are estimated to cost the Australian economy $29 billion annually. Combined with a lack of international agreements, sound governance systems and regulation limiting the open-access to the most powerful use of AI technologies, severe biological weapons could be used by a wide spectrum of non-technical actors and escalate decentralised pathways to wars.
Linked to AI development, the rise in misinformation and disinformation, including social media abuse, has led to societal polarisation, where the loudest, unfact-checked voices dominate the public discourse. In turn, the proliferation of misinformation may be leveraged to strengthen digital authoritarianism and lead to the erosion of human rights (WEF, The Global Risks Report, 2024). In a context where evidence-based nuances are stripped from the public debate, intertwined issues such as climate change are heavily politicised and polarising. Due to a series of macro forces that are weakening our social fabric and creating increasing division in society, including anxieties around nuclear war (Global: 72%, Australia: 68%), climate change (Global: 76%, Australia: 61%), energy shortages (Global: 66%, Australia: 59%) and food shortages (Global: 67%, Australia: 54%), we are globally and in Australia on a path to polarisation (Edlerman’s 2023 Trust Barometer).
The World Economic Forum’s global risks landscape.
Greater Melbourne
Back in 2015, the preliminary resilience assessment conducted through Resilient Melbourne identified lower rates of community participation, risk of pandemic, radicalisation and terrorism, and cyber attacks as threats to the resilience of Melburnians. Combined with a rise in distrust in government, concern for inequality and future, polarisation over The Voice referendum, a sense of belonging and social cohesion are now in decline (2023 Mapping Social Cohesion Report). Threats to human development and our democracy, technology and climate justice issues are deeply intertwined, and community resilience, which starts with enabling community connection and cohesion (Care through disaster, 2024), is all too often supported by women-led unpaid care work. As a result, well-resourced, place-based infrastructure and responses to climate change are vital to addressing the intersections of climate change and health inequities, and build community resilience. As pointed out by David Korten in Ecological Civilisation, the only legitimate purpose of human institutions is to serve the people on whom their existence ultimately depends, and if these fail to serve us, it is civil society’s right to reimagine and transform our institutions. Rather than letting tech manipulate us against one another, we have an opportunity to bolster imagination around what communities are capable of in defining our collective futures, and use tech to our advantage. We can take ownership of our narratives and position the role of community as central to shaping the future of our places.
Repair to wholeness
Feeling fragmented or dizzy? Well, if a part of you feels furious after metabolising the risks we are collectively facing, you are not alone. That is a good reminder that you are human and triggered by what are, at large, justice issues. Yet part of our collective work is being able to surface the interconnectedness, so we can ask and learn our way through better questions, gather ourselves and move our ship forward with intention.
We cannot live in denial of the risks we face, and should not be tricked by our inherited illusions of separation. We have to take risks, build connections and create new patterns and metaphors that influence the way we view and navigate through uncertain futures. Yes, there is injustice. And there is beauty too, and we have a moral obligation to it, to our nature.
As we transcend our fragmented state and come back to wholeness, we grow our capacity to see the utter miracle that life is, and the responsibility we hold by being part of it. We acknowledge it is, like a mosaic, a beautiful whole made up of broken pieces, needing healing and connected through grout. Thea Snow rightly reminds us to honour the grout and the relational fabric that holds us together. We have an opportunity, and some might say obligation, to repair to wholeness. The hope is that by building coherence towards a collective place-based vision, reimagining adaptive pathways that help shift systemic conditions and build our resilience, we can create a regenerative present and future together. We can learn to begin again with a soft smile. Because deep down we know that: No Mud, No Lotus.
No Mud, No Lotus (Thich-Nhat Hanh)
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