2016 International Conference on Clean Water, Air & Soil (CleanWAS 2016)

87 / 2016-06-15 21:59:37

WHOLENESS PRAXIS ON ENVIRONMENTAL RESILENCE AND CONSILENCE APPROACH IN TAMSUI CREEK

wholeness praxis, environmental resilience and consilience, Holling’s adaptive cycle, aspirational future

There are two main theoretical grounds for practicing environmentalism in VUCA epoch: one is reformative environmental recovery for an aspirational sustainable future via Holling’s adaptive resilience cycle, and the other is environmental enlightenment for an audaciously aspirational thriving future via neo-Holling’s adaptive consilience cycle.

Tamsui creek, which was also known as Zhuang-zai-nei creek in Tamsui county. Its source is Shuang-jun-tou fountainhead area, the beginning of Hu-wei aqueduct, which is the first one built in Taiwan in 1899. As dirty as almost other 40 creeks flowing into Tamsui river, Tamsui creek is a good site for practicing environmental resilience and consilience approach, partly because Tamsui county is an older city well known by foreigner since 1900. Although Tamsui river is well known as one of the three biggest rivers in Taiwan, Tamsui creek contains valuable fountainhead source is not known to many people, including its local communities. Through a 3-year field work in the Tamsui creek, the authors closely observe the Tamsui River, and undertook the environmental protection tasks challenging the communities.

The research methodology synthesized and moderated between rationalism, humanism, pragmatism and holism, which is framed as “Wholeness Praxis” (Li & Lin, 2011). By applying wholeness praxis methodology, they focused on transformative holo-volution on the site of Tamsui Creek, such as socio-technology design, action research, participatory action research and co-operative inquiry from 2014 to 2016.

In this paper, the authors concluded by making a two-stage proposal for the emergence of social-environmental innovation: Holling's adaptive resilience cycle works on ecosystem resilience as adaptive evolution stage calling for a phase transition, and neo-Holling’s adaptive consilience cycle works on ecosystem consilience as adaptive holo-volution stage hoping for the “audaciously aspirational” future by thriving furthermore.