Chloe Smee shared her Human Ecology Journey at our recent event in Glasgow. This is an edited version of her presentation.

Chloe writes: I’m working with the Sustainable Scotland Network, which is the network of sustainable development advocates from Scotland’s 32 local authorities.

We are funded by the Scottish Executive and tasked to deliver certain actions within their Sustainable Development Strategy and Climate Change Programme.  Our work focuses on climate change, Best Value, sustainable procurement and footprinting (ecological footprinting and carbon footprinting).  These four issues are all, broadly, mechanisms through which to address the factors that are inhibiting local authorities from being inherently sustainable – ultimately, the way they cost, measure and value things.  We undertake research to inform these four programmes, and support local authorities to deliver meaningful projects to mainstream them.
 
What’s highly relevant to me in this work (given my anthropological background) is translating the centre (and big ideas) to the periphery, and seeing the potential for change in the latter.  It’s about understanding what motivates and drives people and about translating the grand human ecological vision to their priorities.
 
The work I’m doing with SSN was influenced by both my masters thesis and a freelance project I undertook on the back of that.  The former gave me a really good understanding of what human ecology meant through the specific lens of housing associations and sustainable housing.  Through this research I learnt that, while ecological architects are experts in design, they are not experts in the day to day realities of the people that will occupy their houses.  If consultation is not undertaken between the two, the houses won’t perform as per their design, and the tenants won’t be given an opportunity to gain an ecological understanding of their lifestyles.  The thesis led to the freelance project, which looked at how far local authority planning departments are developing policies for sustainable housing – and, if they’re not, what would encourage them to.  This freelance project taught me a lot about the structures and mechanisms that operate in local government, and the passion of a broad number of local authority officers, and humbled me – I had a lot to learn.
 
So what is the role of CHE in this story?  In preparing this, I undertook some journaling, and I will quote a bit from these:
 
“I came across www.che.ac.uk through some happy instances of happenstance whilst I was working as an intern for a newspaper in the lung-exploding city of La Paz, Bolivia.  The editor, ribbing my penchant for George Monbiot quotes and comment, made an off-the-cuff comment about ‘that CHE-Guevera styled pseudo-educational establishment in Edinburgh.’  While he was busy scoffing, I set to researching this link, which, frankly, fascinated me.  And it proceeded to fascinate me more and more the more I delved.  I loved the breadth of the courses on offer, the flexibility of learning patterns and, more than anything, the kind of learning the CHE advocated.  I was ready to challenge my comfort zones, wanted to get more engaged in the things that mattered to me and I wanted a new start.  I was certainly ready to get to grips with some ecological certainties after an utterly perplexing, if rich, three years wrestling in the relativity-mired swamp of social anthropology.
 
"Two years and two continents later, I found myself cosied around a tea-urn in a damp kitchen in a corner of salubrious south Edinburgh.  The learning was brain-baffling broad, the friendships were soul-stretchingly deep and these two things dovetailed quite fantastically together into a ‘learning community’ whose fibrous support system strengthened the nuts-and-bolts learning to an amazing degree.  We were a diverse bunch – in age and profession and spirit – but we established some well-rooted common ground.”
 
So, as well as the solid academic framework cementing my personal motivations, I established an incredibly rich network of friends and an ethical and spiritual underpinning to inform my adventures.  CHE provided an opportunity for deep self-learning which has enabled me to move towards, I think, right livelihood:

"'Right Livelihood’ is an idea about work that is linked to the natural order of things.  It is doing our best at what we do best.  The rewards that follow are inevitable and manifold.  There is no way we can fail.  Biology points out the logic of right livelihood.  Every species in the natural world has a place and function that is specifically suited to its capabilities. This is true for people too. Right livelihood, in both its ancient and contemporary sense, cmbodies self-expression, commitment, mindfulness and conscious choice." Marsha Sinetar.
 
So where do I sit with the CHE now?  Well, I sit on the Board of Directors – that is something quite tangible.  Less tangibly, though?  I think I am just beginning to work that one out.  I know the deep learning and transformation that CHE’s model of learning has to offer.  I also know the realities of the organisations that I work with.  Allied to this is an acceptance that I’m at a very early stage in my CHE trip.  The next stage will be about finding the routes in which the learning at CHE and the professional work I’m engaging with come together: using an action research frame might be one way of exploring this.  Irrespective of this aspect of the course’s manifestation in me, there is a constant personal level of nourishment that the MSc has left me with.
 
Ultimately, CHE has deepened my engagement with life – the extent to which I am open to the deep learning which is inherent in every interaction (with self or other) and this is not something which can willingly be disarmed.

The distinct quality of the Human Ecology MSc course has proved inspirational for many people and been described in many ways. Common to these descriptions are testimonies of a life affirming experience.