From baboons to building a 21st century innovation system.

By Dr Philippa Hammond.

I spent much of my PhD studying baboon behaviour and the primate fossil record, so what can I tell you about the transition to net zero? 

My work now, with CSIRO, involves trying to understand how we get better at directing our science at the big challenges we face in society. The thing is, these are really complex problems, where no one actually knows (or agrees on) how to solve them, and success looks different to different groups of people.  

They also won’t be solved by any single technology, individual, organisation, or sector, so they inherently require collaboration, as well as experimentation. So we need to be constantly learning on the job about what is and isn’t working – where, why and for whom. 

In working on building out these learning and coordination processes, I’ve learned that a couple of things are really important for evaluating success: one is the scale at which you assess the problem, and the other is the metrics you use for success. 

And here I’ve found a useful analogy from my days of studying deep history through fossil records. You can learn a lot about a species from studying the fossil record. For example, let’s just say you’re studying a prehistoric antelope that lived in eastern Africa a few million years ago.

You can look at their fossilised teeth & jaw bones, and learn that these antelope were really well streamlined for eating the vegetation in the woodlands they inhabited. You can also look at the number of fossils in the record and learn that the antelope lived in large groups, had a population that was growing fast, and it was outcompeting other species in the woodland.

From all this, it seems like a pretty successful antelope, right? However, if you also assess the broader context that that this antelope was living in, you’ll learn that over time there was an ecological shift – woodlands were shrinking and grasslands expanding across eastern Africa 

Suddenly, this antelope that was so well suited to eating woody vegetation is the first species to go extinct. In this context of the changing environment, the best indicator of success would be adaptability.

And this is actually something that our ancestors had going for them. Humans have been a very adaptable species for millennia – perhaps something to give hope to us modern humans who are dealing with this transition to net zero. 

Now, back to the modern day, we have the benefit of hindsight – the ability to learn from history at multiple scales. We also have the benefit of foresight – the ability to learn about the changing world around us and adapt accordingly. 

When we do monitor and learn the world around, unfortunately it’s not as us simple as just measuring the uptake of EVs or the expansion of the renewable energy grid as signs of success. That’s because we know that there has been resistance to the transition by communities – for varied and valid reasons.

We also know that there are certain routes to decarbonisation that have negative trade-offs with biodiversity that need to be navigated. So, what we need to be monitoring is what’s under the hood. 

Do we have the processes for surfacing and negotiating these trade-offs with all the groups of people who have an investment in the future? Do we have reciprocal feedback loops that actually translate consultation into action? Do we have the institutions, networks, policies and funding mechanisms to collectively identify and take action towards shared goals? 

These are the types of metrics we are trying to build into our measures of success when we implement and evaluate Towards Net Zero’s activities. And we’ve also learned that building out these frameworks can be a point of entry to engage with others, negotiate shared values, and build trust with one another. 

Collective intelligence, innovation, and cooperation. We know from our own species’ evolutionary history that these are inherently human capacities. And it’s now just a matter of channelling these capacities towards building a 21^st century innovation system and a sustainable future.