Highlighting PhD Fellow Jomy Joseph

I see that we might already be on our way to the climate tipping points that many experts have warned us of, but I also see cases for real optimism where people are being moved to action and I believe each of us in our roles has the choice to do something about it.

Jomy Joseph is a PhD fellow at the Oslo School of Architecture and Design. His research is focused on designing for long-term sustainability in Industrial Design.

What is the topic you are researching?

For the past two years I have been at AHO working at the Institute of Design as a PhD fellow. My research involves designing for long term sustainability and futures, specifically looking at the field of Industrial Design and the kind of radical new approaches in the field that could enable it to create a more hopeful, long-term sustainable future.

Within the context of ecological breakdown, it is absolutely urgent to understand both the material and ecological consequences that we will experience in the coming century (and beyond) in addition to the ones are already experiencing today.

What has motivated you to study the climate?

My motivation to study this field actually started from a somewhat naïve notion of wanting to work with the future as a designer–particularly with speculative utopias, the kind of designs that could make the future profoundly different from what it is today.

One of the biggest hurdles to human society–even life on Earth today–is the fact that our modern industrial civilization is literally eating away the ground beneath our feet. It is easier now to imagine the end of the world than it is to imagine the alternative. The future looks so bleak and yet in some weird way that drives me as a researcher and a designer.

What are your main takeaways thus far?

Well, there is no way to sugar coat this but our civilization, the industrial one, the fossil fueled one, is in BIG trouble and that is no hyperbole. We are taking down a whole ecological epoch with us. This is not news to a lot of us anymore. My work has led me to conclude that we really need to find and build new ways of living, thinking and being with the nature. Because we are nature, not separate from it.

Our industrial economic system, enabled by designers, is based on a myth that somehow the natural world is an externality that is waiting to be exploited in perpetuity. Seeing as we are already at the precipice of irreversible climate feedback loops, this implies a complete overhaul of our material and ecological culture. This is deeply terrifying, as our global response to COVID-19 has shown us to be woefully unprepared for the climate crisis. It will be frightening to watch this play out as ecological breakdown threatens a lot more than just supply chains of masks.

However, the optimist in me believes that this is an opportunity for far-fetched and sweeping changes towards climate action. It’s becoming clear that as professional designers we need to learn from the climate justice movement and build towards long-term sustainable futures. Ones that imagine and create new alternative ways of living that replace the present unsustainable ones, while at the same time improving human and ecological well-being.

Key to my work in that direction is to design visions of artifacts that might aid in designing for the biosphere, which would be critical to accelerating the natural process of repairing and replenishing the ecosystems we have damaged while in pursuit of perpetual growth. This basically goes away from conventional forms of user-centered design (UCD) processes as the impacts of ecological breakdown are disproportionately distributed over time, space and socio-economic realities. Those who the suffer the most from climate breakdown are those who had little or nothing to do with it, especially future generations.

What is your opinion on what it will take for humans to finally adopt large scale work on climate change? How might everyday people help?

I think we need to let go of the myth that individual action is the key to avoiding global climate breakdown. It was always a myth, and we need to collectively reconnect with both our local communities and with the people around the world.

There are people who are already creating resilient alternatives and we should support that work both intellectually and financially, and provide infrastructure and resources to those who need it. From local meat farming, to planting old growth forests, to advocating for climate justice, to political action for Green New Deals, to abolishing fossil fuels, to repairing products to last longer, to slow-fashion, to building eco-communities, to growing food communally, to walking instead of driving; there are numerous ways that this can be done that will actually be amazing for improving the quality of life of people all around the world.

There are a lot of things to do, but I feel we lack the meaningful connections between these individual actions, which is the one thing that will help turn the tide. The solutions need to be interlinked and cooperated on because climate breakdown itself is so enmeshed in political, historical, economic and social complexities that a one-size-fits-all approach doesn’t make strategic sense. Some solutions are better than others and not everybody can do everything.

Illustration by Zhi Wang

These initiatives and solutions need to scale out instead of scaling up and that will be the difference. Scaling up is what caused this mess in the first place. We need to build alternatives wherever we are and rethink things collectively at a local scale and meet people where they are. We need truly sustainable alternatives that make the existing system obsolete. As everyday people I think we need to act, make, and think local with global solidarity. Given how COVID exposed the sheer fragility of the global industrial supply chain, it is obvious how vulnerable and ripe for change the system is. What better place than here, what better time than now?

How do you feel about the future?

As someone who works close with Future Studies and Speculative Design, “the future” is merely a thought experiment, it’s a sandbox where we place our hopes and dreams–or in the case of dystopia, our nightmares. Either way, I feel the choice always boils down to what we can do today. I feel with the climate breakdown we have both of the choices in our hands today.

I see that we might already be on our way to the climate tipping points that many experts have warned us of, but I also see cases for real optimism where people are being moved to action and I believe each of us in our roles has the choice to do something about it. It’s quite cliché to say it, but the future is always becoming, but never arriving, and so it is up to us to build the just and long-term sustainable future we want.

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Jomy Joseph is the author Critical Futures Today: Back-Casting Speculative Product Design Towards Long-Term Sustainability which can be found in volume 3 of the proceedings of the of the LenS World Distributed conference. He can be found at NomadicJunkie.com.

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This article was first published on the Hive Initiative Medium account.