Monday, March 25, 2013

Inequality for all - follow-up

Further to my post on the documentary 'Inequality for All' I commend this site to you as riveting viewing.  Given this analysis I am left even more convinced that what we are experiencing across the globe is the nadir of our western-governance systems. There is an urgent need for governance reform - institutions and processes that are attuned to 21st century realities.  Last year I commissioned a cartoon from Simon Kneebone to capture how I was thinking about this issue.

My argument is that as we enter the Anthropocene with its associated water, biodiversity, inequality etc crises then we cannot build responses on the old foundations - a business as usual approach is not feasible - to do so would, in Russ Ackoff's terms, involve doing the wrong thing righter, rather than doing the right thing. In principle (if not always in practice) acceptance that we are in the Anthropocene brings with it the need to reconsider all human invented institutions (norms, codes, rules, policies etc). In my cartoon I suggest we have to rebuild the foundations of what we do by focusing on governance, thinking, practice, institutions and investment (i.e. how and where are financial resources are allocated).

See Helen Wilding's blog for an elaboration of some of these ideas. I am grateful to Dave Griggs for drawing my attention to the inequality mashup.

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