External Strategic
4. Weaving the future: do we want to witness the end of our civilization?
According to the quantum theory, when two macro systems interact then the world splits into different new worlds. There are two possible scenarios in the ecological holarchy. First scenario, one holon may evolved into a senior or super-holon, merged with previous super-holon, creating superposition states or it will create a new independent super holon (based on self emergence properties) encapsulate other sub holons which are previously at the same level.
Since the new super holon will preserve its history, it is difficult for the other sub holons in the ecological holarchy to maintain their structure, autonomy, and agency capacity. In such case, the higher level holon over-dominates, represses and even alienates the lower level holon, which is pathological to the holon. Further, junior or sub-holons may be diverted to the wrong decision by senior holon due to over domination, and unfortunately they are unable to alter the superposition and coherency situation. The worst is, they may cease to exist. In the first scenario, ecological holarchy will be transformed into developmental holarchy with concentric pattern.
Fig. 3. scenario 1: evolution of the ecological holarchy into concentric developmental holarchy
In the dawn of society 1.x, holons are local and isolated. Success, failure and disappearance of the holon did not propagate to the other holons. Yet, by the end of the society 1.x, we witness two world wars followed by cold wars, increasing radicalism, environment degradation, many economic crises and collapse which actually represents the emergence and dissolution of the holon in pathogenic holarchy. This pathogenic holonic formation can be traced back in the era of colonialism, in which the development of super-holon went beyond its traditional border and treated other holons as sub holons which were assumed as retarded, primitive and obsolete.
Also, by the end of society 1.x and the early day of society 2.x, in terms of many worlds, we actually involved in many major splits at the coarse grain in our civilization history, eg. Hitler was defeated, or Soviet Union collapsed. Of course, there are other worlds where Hitler won the war, Soviet union won the war in Afghanistan and it did not collapse, which may be better or worse than our world. Suppose that our world is better than Hitler’s world, but we are
Senior holon
Junior holon
a b c
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Page | 174 aware now that we are heading to the wrong direction. Now, we are waiting our civilization to be split again into more radical view of religion or free fight liberalism (social Darwinism). In terms of environment, we are also waiting whether global warming process can be halted or it may become worst, leading to uninhabitable planet.
Radicalism flourished because their super holon has been destroyed, leaving the sub holon which emerged more than one thousand years ago and now paving the way for creating a new super holon based on this old holon. Moreover, post modernism and flat-world thinking also destroyed previous super-holon, leading to anomie even though the nature actually follows the holonic views, where hierarchy is a must. The roles of states diminish and the roles of individu increases. In society 2.x and 3.x, these super holon flaws may impact globally with catastrophic consequences, that is the end of our civilization.
Based on the previous discussion, it seems that we always forced to follow the developmental holarchy with concentric holon and coherent state for each holon as in the scenario 1. With the advancement of technology and more globalized world, holon growth, creating new super holon. The drawback of the scenario 1 is that any alteration will occur in global scale. Therefore, when the world split, it will be occurred on the coarse grain of the existing senior (super) holon. Here, the flow of our history seems to be linear following a “single path” of the many worlds. The drawback is, we do not have enough choices or alternatives when the world split. The fallacy in the early stage of our history will be propagated in the future. The new emerging super holon may inherit this fallacy except the world/history is split by force (eg. through war). Description of the first scenario is shown in Figure 4.
Fig. 4. scenario 1: world split at the coarse grain level
In the second scenario, a new emerging super-holon is able to develop it self-dissolution capability. In this scenario, each sub holon has capacity to evolve into higher holon, encapsulated in the senior holon, in superposition state or entangled among each other (two holons merging). In the entangled state, two or more sub holons may correlate to each other, even though they are separated by time and space. Many different values and histories of each holon can be preserved by super-holon, creating ecological holarchy which resembles the onion pattern (Figure 5). Therefore, in the fine grain scale of the sub holons, we have many parallel worlds. Splitting in one of these sub holons will not necessarily splitting the coarse grain of the super holon.
Fig. 5. scenario 2: promoting self-dissolution for ecological holarchy
In the second scenario, the role of super holon should be defined clearly. For instance, in order to keep our planet inhabitable, we must developed humanosphere (super-holon) which made our planet healthy, has ability to recover their environment degradation, capable to develop social and economic systems which are not widening the gap between the poor and the rich creating more stable growth, etc. These clear goals will keep the coarse grain from splitting prematurely. Description of the second scenario is shown in Figure 6.
Coarse grain Fine grain
Other world
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Page | 175 Fig. 6. scenario 2: stable super holon (coarse grain)
5. Conclusion
Our society has involved into society 2.x and ready to move further into society 3.x. Yet, if this transition follows the developmental holarchy as described before, our society is in danger because one holon always tries to dominate and other holons should be suppressed. In this case, the society is uniformed, follows one path of the many worlds in the coarse grain holon (super holon) in which all flaws should be corrected forcefully to split the world in the coarse grain level. However there is no guarantee that the new world is better since it shares the same history with the old one.
With the advancement of information technology, the development of holon become shorter and the correction in the coarse grain will be more frequent leading to more chaotic world. Hence, stability can only be maintained by creating dominant holon. If we do not want to witness the end of our civilization, ecological holarchy should be developed in society 2.x, since this approach give respect to other (sub) holon. Therefore, any changes in fine grain (sub) holon will not damage the coarse grain. The coarse grain will split less frequently in ecological holarchy compared with developmental holarchy.
References
1. Moravec J. Toward society 3.0: new futures for human capital development. Minnesota: University of Minnesota; 2008 2. Snowden DJ, Boone ME. A leader’s frameworks for decision making. Harvard Business Review November 2007; 85(11): 68-76 3. Schlosshauer M. Decoherence and the quantum-to-classical transition. Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer-Verlag; 2007
4. Silverman MP. Quantum superposition, counterintuitive consequences of coherence, entanglement, and interference. Berlin, Heidelberg:
Springer-Verlag; 2008
5. Zurek WH. Decoherence and the transition from quantum to classical. Physics Today October 1991: 36-44 6. Price MC. The Many-Worlds FAQ anthropic-principle.com; 1995
7. Byrne P. The many worlds of hughs Scientific American December 2007: 98-105
8. Mella P. The holonic revolution: holons, holarchies and holonic networks, the ghost in the production machine. Pavia: Pavia University Press, Italy; 2009
9. Cosentino M, Galland S, Gaud N, Hilairen V, Koukam A. How to control emergence of behaviours in a holarchy. Second IEEE International Conference on Self Adaptive and Self Organizing System Workshop 20-24 Oct 2008 p 180-185
10. Edwards M. Seeing integral leadership through three important lenses: developmental, ecological and governance Integral Leadership Review 2009; Volume 9(1) available at http://www.archive-ilr.com/archives-2009/2009-01/2009-01-article-edwards.php
11. Wilber K. A brief history of everything. Boston, Massachusets: Shambala Publication, Inc; 1996 12. Sattler R. Wilber’s AQAL map and beyond. Ontario, Canada: Rolf Sattler, Kingston; 2008
13. Guimaraes MP. (2011) Holarchies for better understanding of universal design as a socially inclusive factor. International Conference on Best Practices in Universal Design: June 5-8, 2011; 2011
14. Bowman, KJ. Holarchical development: discovering and applying missing drives from Ken Wilber’s twenty tenets International Journal of Transpersonal Studies 2009: 28: 1-24
Coarse grain
Fine grain
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4th International Conference on Sustainable Future for Human Security, SustaiN 2013
Fair trade organic coffee production in Southern Lao PDR.—Vulnerability or strength of household coffee farmers
Sengsawai Kommasith
a, Apisak Dhiravisit
baBolikhamxay Agriculture and Forestry College, City Bolikhamxay Postcode 291, Country Lao PDR.
bFaculty of Humanities and Social Science, Khon Kaen University, City Khon Kaen Postcode 40002, Country Thailand.
Abstract
Coffee is one of the world’s most popular beverages and the second largest traded commodity after petroleum. Coffee is cultivated in about 80 countries across the globe and entangles huge business worldwide. Laos, Champasak province has the largest area of land for coffee production which is approximately 1.5 million hectares. In the world coffee market, Laos shares about 0.25 percent of market worldwide. In 1986, The coffee production in Laos was converted from conventional farming to organic farming . This change is linked to the vulnerability of the organic coffee farmers and fair trade. The research is based on combined approaches. Our quantitative household survey of 260 farmers randomly selected in Lao, PDR is complemented by over a 50 qualitative in-depth interviews. The results show the impact on vulnerability household organic coffee farmers and Fair Trade. The income of organic coffee farmers in Laos is changing which depending on the variable of market, labour, land, and governance structure. The results suggest that the umbrella organization for Laos coffee cooperative structure may change that vulnerability to be strength.
© 2013 The Authors. Published by SustaiN Society.
Selection and peer-review under responsibility of the SustaiN conference committee and supported by Kyoto University; (RISH), (OPIR), (GCOE-ARS) and (GSS) as co-hosts.
Keywords: Coffee; Organic; Laos
1. Introduction
Coffee is one of the most traded economic crops. Coffee is not only the ingredient of popular caffeine beverages, but also create revenue stream for several producing countries (Procafe, 2008; Sipaseuth and Walter, nd).1,2 In 2011, world’s coffee production was 8.18 million tons, an increased from previous year 0.58 million tons or 7.6%. This resulted from the expansion of the coffee cultivation in Barzil, Viet Nam, Colombia, and Ethiopia from their suitable climate. Indonesia, the third coffee bean exporter in the world, however, was the only country with 11.2% decreased production according to heavy rains during harvesting season. (Food Institute Thailand, 2012 and Wikipedia foundation, 2013).3,4
Coffee consumption in world’s market has been expanded continuously. An increase in coffee trade from 8.0 to 8.3 million tons from 2008 to 2011 is calculated to be 1.2% increase per year. When considering the location of consumers according to import and export countries, the export countries appear to consume with a growing rate when compared with the European Union countries or the United States. Brazil has campaigned its people to drink more coffee and also attempts to improve coffee products to stimulate the market share of the coffee and its related products. In Viet Nam, coffee beverages are very popular among younger generation, leading to a burst of coffee shops in large cities around the country (Food Institute Thailand, 2012).3
Lao, PDR has its own unique policy in agronomic, i.e. non-pesticide cultivation, organic farming, and natural farming (DOA, 2007).5 Most coffee farming in Lao, PDR is organic. Among the various agricultural export products, coffee has the most advanced production and marketing system, creating revenue of 27 million dollars USD in 2007 (Nestel, 1995; Philaphone, 2011).6,7 Coffee production in 2008 was 0.033 million tons, of which exported for 0.027 million tons was exported. The remainder was for coffee beverage industries within the country (Office of Plan, 2008).8 The coffee plant was largely cultivated in Bolaven Plateau in Champasak province in the southern region of the country.
There are 20,000 families in 250 villages in Lao, PDR who grow coffee. This include private company such as Dao Heuang, Sinouk, Paksong Highland (Lao Coffee Association, 7002& Lao Mountain Coffee, nd).9,10
Lao coffee bean is among the highest quality in the world due to the fact that it is grown in 1,300 m above the sea level, with suitable temperature and humidity. The soil in Bolaven Plateau is volcanic soil with micro-nutrients essential for coffee growing and doed not require fertilizer. This in turn allows the low unit cost of coffee production (Cambrony,
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Page | 177 1992; Winston et al., 2005; Planning and Investment Department Champasak Province, 2009).11-13 Organic coffee farming is more profitable than natural or chemical farming for 20-30% (ICO, 2001).14 Although all coffee cultivation in Lao, PDR is organic, most lack the official certificate for organic farming (Philaphone, 2011).7 This results in a moderate price for those farmers as opposed to high price if the farms are certified (Giovannucci and Ponte, 2005; Calo and Wise, 2005; Kuminoff and Wossink, 2010; Lapple, 2010).15-18
Besides the un-certification of the coffee farming, individual farmers and manufacturers are confront with limitation in market and export of the coffee product. For instance, the expense for international standard organic certification is relatively high and inability to enroll the world trade system (Helvetas , 2003).19 Therefore, this study aim to investigate the situation of the coffee farmers. The research question is dose coffee production leads to better quality of life and family strength or vulnerability?
2. Research Methodology
This study used both qualitative and quantitative data analysis. A questionnaire was distributed to 260 coffee farmers. An interview was performed in 69 farmer families in three villages with the largest, medium and lowest cultivation area. These were Setkhot village, Katouad village, and Luck 11 village in Paksong district , Champasak provice. The statistics was analyzed using SPSS for Windows (Statistical Package for the Social Sciences) and content analysis.