New Thinking Required, Please

Following up on this earlier post, I submit the following article for your consideration - which discusses the dire need for more 21st century-thinking and less (or no more) of the wrongheaded 20th century one:

Finance, politics, climate: three crises in one

By John Elkington

The breakdown of the global financial system highlights the need for a change in ways of thinking as well as strategic direction.

Many observers describe the turmoil in financial markets in 2007-08 in terms of a "domino effect"; others find metaphors drawn from "chaos theory" more appropriate. The chain-reaction element of the first and the patterned disorder of the second offer some grounds for making sense of these extraordinary and still-unfolding events. They are also useful in suggesting that since what is happening goes far wider than the financial sphere, so must the "imaginative" ways of capturing it.

Indeed, a crisis that is so important and wide-ranging - even systemic - is every citizen's concern, and efforts to think through (far less to solve) it cannot be left to the bankers, traders and politicians who did so much to create it. If this is so, a good way to imagine the current near-collapse must also relate the financial hurricane of 2007-08 to other, concurrent troubles: in democracy and sustainability, for example. This brief article considers this theme by employing another metaphor: the "suit of cards".

The metaphor started life in a set of scenarios for the future of the planet in SustainAbility's report Raising Our Game (2007). The first three depict outcomes in which society and the environment either win or lose:

▪ diamonds, which we describe as "a domino-effect world, in which, instead of Adam Smith's invisible hand, our invisible elbows knock over a series of economic, social and environmental dominoes"

▪ clubs, where we foresee "a world [where] elites learn how to use environmental sustainability as an excuse for denying the poor access to their fair share of natural resources"

▪ spades, where "(democratic) societies open out higher living standards to growing populations" but where "ecosystems are progressively undermined, with most governments unwilling to take the political risks of asking voters to make sacrifices in favour of the common good"

▪ hearts, a world in which "demography, politics, economics and sustainability gel. It is the future that the Brundtland commission pointed us towards way back in 1987".

The systemic signs

This framework leads us to ask questions of democracy itself:

▪ can it drive the transition towards more sustainable patterns of production and consumption?

▪ are growing democracy vs sustainability tensions in prospect?

▪ can the peoples of the world (soon to be 9-10 billion) vote their way to a sustainable future?

▪ are the time-scales of democratically elected governments appropriate for delivering sustainable development?

The political world is full of evidence that can be used to argue both for and against the notion that democracy is necessary (or better than other systems) for sustainable development. The lengthy and lively United States presidential competition, for example, has offered the unprecedented and hopeful spectacle of the three main candidates for the presidency (Hillary Clinton, John McCain and Barack Obama) left in the race engaging an unusually high proportion of citizens in debate on some of the great issues of the day - and in acknowledging the vital importance of global climate change.

At the same time, much of the overall campaign has been conducted via point-scoring, attack ads, media and campaign concentration on stray remarks and surface details - reflecting how modern democratic conduct can sideline environmental issues at the very moment when they should be central to the debate (see David Shearman, "Democracy and climate change: a story of failure", 7 November 2007).

In such contradictions, democracy - as it currently works - and the financial turmoil of 2007-08 share more in common than it might first appear; in particular, the underlying problem of what might be called connecting system-crisis to system-change.

(Keep reading ...)