The following is information on Holistic Policy based on the Holistic Management framework, founded by Allan Savory. At the bottom of this section you will find a message from Allan regarding policy and the environment.

“The level of environmental destruction evidenced in world wide desertification and global climate change, combined with rising populations and aspirations will demand a greater need for good governance than any time in history. The single greatest role of government is the formulation of policies”. Allan Savory

While policies impact all areas of our lives – citizenship, taxation, education, etc. – it is environmental policies that impact us most profoundly in the long term.  Environmental policies directly affect the quality of life people experience, which in turn influences whether they live in peace or ultimately chaos and genocide.

Global climate change, desertification, widespread loss of biodiversity and related social and economic issues cannot be overcome on a large scale without reevaluating the way in which policy on a governmental and organizational level is created and implemented.

Policies universally are designed to do one of two things, solve a problem (reactive) or prevent a problem (proactive). Either way, the problem must be identified and its root cause comprehensively addressed in order for that policy to be sound. The policy must be formulated in such a way as to address social, economic and environmental concerns in the short and in the long term simultaneously.  Policy furthermore must be monitored for its effectiveness, understanding that there may be variables that are unknown or changing as a policy goes through its various stages of implementation.

The massive rise in populations and degradation of land underlies most of the poverty and increasing violence being experienced in many regions of the world. Land degradation (desertification) inevitably leads to increased frequency and severity of floods and droughts, with no change in the weather. And desertification leads to poverty, social breakdown, violence, political instability, and genocide. In fact, desertification leads to most of the symptoms these regions, and development agencies assisting them, grapple with, and from which millions of people suffer and die.

Much of the work needed to reverse desertification and global climate change, including sequestration of carbon and global energy policy, deals directly with natural resource use and management. In particular, the need comes to light in how we manage the tools of technology, fire, rest, the use of large animals, and how we employ our creativity and stewardship of money and labor.

Because policy formulation and project development are such an important government role, all policies and projects need to be holistically coordinated.  Holistic coordination means that policies and projects are coordinated economically, socially and environmentally simultaneously. Such coordination does not exist in any nation today.

The examples abound from any nation of policies and projects achieving their objective but causing endless additional problems because the complexity involved was not addressed.

Millions of dollars are spent in the United States alone on implementing policy that is not linked with the quality of life of those people most affected by that policy, nor with that of the country as a whole, leading unintentionally to destroying the livelihoods of thousands of farmers not only in the U.S. but in other countries.

Sound policy allows us to save these millions that governments and organizations spend currently on activities that address symptoms, rather than the root causes of problems.

We can realize that, if money is spent to address symptoms of known problems, it is done so knowingly in order to alleviate immediate suffering while a complex, underlying root cause is identified and addressed to sufficient scope.

One step is to incorporate changes in management of farms, ranches, public lands and businesses. Another is to speak out and help policymakers, and those pulling strings behind the policymakers, understand the need for change.

Let us be clear – We must impact how policy is formulated and implemented if we have any hope of reversing desertification and global climate change.

Allan Savory has trained over 2,000 U.S. government agency staff in Holistic Management, analyzing their own policies and these policies’ potential for long-term success. After their training, the participants concluded, “We now recognize that unsound resource management is universal in the United States.”

“Having been in Parliament and President of a political party, I would never again dream of being in politics without being able to form all policies with the Holistic Management framework. Worldwide, people seek good governance. No ‘isms’ (Communism, Capitalism, Socialism, Racialism, etc) provide the basis of good governance, neither can religions, personalities nor party platforms. Governments will provide good governance if they form policies holistically. In fact, those policies are more fundamental to providing good governance than is the form, structure or ideology of that government.” Allan Savory.
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Policies and Projects Simply Explained by Allan Savory

Almost all government policies and certainly all development agency and NGO projects are designed with good intent or motive.  Most people would like to see them generally succeed in achieving the desired objective. However the disappointing shortcomings of policies are increasingly acknowledged, whether it be an immigration policy, the various US government “wars” on drugs, terrorism or weeds, or the disastrous land re-distribution policies of South Africa, Kenya and Zimbabwe, that can only result in further poverty, social breakdown, violence and hunger. One could pick disappointments with policies in any government and not only those named. And the same would apply to many projects of development agencies and NGO’s where despite billions of dollars spent environmental degradation continues unabated together with increasing poverty. 

Government policies and development agency/NGO projects are formed to deal with an existing problem, or prevent a foreseeable problem. Even a family setting a policy on hours of TV viewing for their children are doing so to prevent a foreseeable problem. The principle reason for disappointment in the case of both government policies and development projects is that the policies seldom, if ever, deal with the cause of the problem. And any policy or project not addressing the cause of the problem is unlikely to succeed. Commonsense 101. So, although failing to address the cause underlies almost all failures, there is a reason for our general inability to deal with root causes, as will explain why the best of good intentions go astray so commonly.

Because the similarities between policies, particularly those dealing with natural resources and development projects, are so great and the reasons for the disappointments the same, they will be dealt with together here. If one understands the basic concept of Systems Science and the existence of the two core decision-making frameworks – universal and holistic – then understanding why so many policies and projects disappoint becomes very easy indeed. If they were successful broadly it would be a miracle.

Here is a Reader’s Digest version of what we learn from System Science which recognizes three types of “systems” – hard, soft and natural. Hard systems are man made. Examples are a watch or computer, a machine. Apart from being man made their characteristics are that they can be very complicated, are not self-renewing, do not work if any parts are missing and when problems develop they are relatively easy to solve. Soft systems are also man made. Examples are human organizations, government agencies, NGO’s, environmental organizations, etc. Other properties are that they are not only complicated but are what is known as “complex”. They are self-renewing, if a part is missing they adjust and continue and if problems develop they are extremely difficult, almost impossible in many cases to solve. The final form of system is a natural system. Examples are living organisms, forests, oceans, grasslands and savannas. These obviously are not man made but other than that they share the properties of soft systems – complex, function with bits missing by self re-organizing and problems that develop are extremely difficult, almost impossible to solve. 

Currently and throughout history, policies and projects are/have been formed by all cultures unknowingly using the universal decision making framework described in “Holistic Management: A New Framework for Decision Making” Second Edition 1999, Island Press. Briefly this universal decision making framework previously undiscovered, probably because of it’s sheer simplicity, lies at the core of all conscious decision-making. It is recognizable in use by any person, or culture, in any walk of life. We make all conscious decisions, including forming policies and projects toward achievement of some objective/goal. We accept to manage our environment at large using three ‘tools’ – technology, fire and resting the environment – and we make all decisions based on one or more of many factors. Factors such as past experience, research results, expert opinion, intuition, compromise, cultural norms, cost, profitability, cash flow, expedience and so on endlessly. We do this in our household daily lives and from Bushman family in the Kalahari to the most sophisticated schools of decision-making, or team of scientists exploring space or attempting to address climate change.

Our universal framework is amazingly successful (as long as we ignore the long term effects on society and environment) when dealing with complicated hard systems – it has taken us from pre-stone age to the moon and given us all the conveniences of modern life and entertainment. Throughout history our universal framework has however been less successful when dealing with the complexity of soft and natural systems. Unfortunately policies and projects deal with both complex systems – soft and natural - and only to a limited degree with hard systems. This is why I believe, despite the finest of minds (far greater than mine), we continue to flounder endlessly with global economies, institutions incapable of adopting new thinking under fifty to a hundred or more years, environmental degradation, biodiversity loss and consequent desertification and climate change.

I find some people understand the problem best using a computer analogy. Human brains are the most incredible computers imaginable and we each have the latest after millions of years of evolving improvement. Each, depending on our training/education, uses different sophisticated software programs. Now we have suddenly discovered that all our computers were using the same operating system in which there are two flaws or bugs. One has only to correct those bugs (using the holistic framework operating system) and amazingly all starts to come right because we are so capable, well intentioned and have so much knowledge in all professions and walks of life.

The finest minds and all the money in the world will not produce sound policies and projects at the level required to effectively deal with global problems, including climate change, as long as the underlying framework remains unchanged. Period. Success requires policies and projects that are simultaneously economically, socially and environmentally sound both short and long term. If we look at our environment alone, other than in marine and aquatic or perennially humid environments this is simply impossible to achieve using the universal framework (because there is no tool that can sustain biodiversity over most of the Earth’s land area on which human society and economies depend).

Determining why policies and projects generally disappoint is easily done. We learned this from providing training to many government officials in the use of the holistic framework in the early 1980’s in the U.S., India and Lesotho. After a week of training, US officials looking at many of their own policies were able to conclude that they “Could now recognize that unsound resource management was universal in the U.S.” Foresters in Bhubaneswar in India after a week of training looked at 12 existing and planned policies concluding all 12 would worsen their situation environmentally, socially and economically. And senior agricultural ministry officials in Lesotho similarly looked at their own forestry and soil conservation policies and concluded the situation would be further damaged and soil erosion would increase.

Such is the nature of complex soft systems – the institutions these highly trained and educated people worked for changed nothing. Their institutions continue to this day with those policies in a deteriorating situation. No different from Britain’s Royal Navy that took almost 200 years to accept lime juice would end scurvy, or the Merchant Navy led by equally brilliant men who took a further 70 years to adopt the practice, despite it’s vital importance to Britain and the thousands of sailors dying.

A few years ago our staff provided training for staff of a large NGO spending millions of dollars annually on development projects in Africa. They analyzed one of their projects at the completion of the training and concluded it would damage the people, environment and economy further. One person acknowledged this probably applied to all their projects. Nothing changed – a property of soft systems.

As soon as the key insights that made the development of the holistic framework are reasonably understood, and the use of additional tools is accepted for use in situations requiring them is accepted, developing both natural resource policies and projects becomes possible over the bulk of Earth’s land area. And in any situation world-wide, from urban to rural, the moment policy and project objectives are guided by the new concept of a holisticgoal, dealing with social, environmental and economic complexity becomes easier and possible as all those professional people in training so quickly learned.

Any government, international development agency, NGO or environmental organization so wishing could address the current disappointments by having staff trained to use the holistic framework. Doing so involves training and does not require great capital outlays. The starting point would be simply doing a two day workshop looking at how the process works using samples of their own policies or projects. From that they can explore further training of their own people as only they know the culture of their organization. However the nature of soft systems is such that even this is not likely to produce any different result unless there is buy in at the highest level through the full involvement of the most senior people.

The time is now to make these changes happen. We are beginning to see incredible response in Africa with NGOs and high ranking officials visiting ACHM on almost a daily basis. We have the tools at hand to bring about change. We now need to gain the attention of those in the position to bring about the shift in policy and decision making.