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Nurturing innovation

By Elizabeth Economy

26 February 2009

Can humankind find its way to a world that is cleaner, safer, and fairer than the one we inhabit today—and can we do it with 50 percent more people? The answer is, possibly. It will require a complex interaction of vision, innovation, and policy all coming together at precisely the right moment. We will need leaders who have the foresight, financial wherewithal, and public standing to set the stage for global change. Just as important, we’ll need grassroots activists around the world working on innovative small-scale projects and implementing visionary technologies. Perhaps the most important thing policy makers can do is allow those efforts to flourish.

Our best intentions often seem to get hijacked by a Hobbesian political reality. Efforts to protect our world’s forests, oceans, and climate stall as a result of short-sighted economic and political calculations. In 2000, for example, the United Nations Millennium Development Goals—the most significant and comprehensive effort yet to move us toward that better world—promised that by 2015 we would make great strides in raising the living standards of the poorest among us by reducing poverty, tackling disease, educating the young, and reversing environmental degradation. Halfway down the road, despite some successes, the United States, European Union, and Japan are falling far behind on their aid commitments, and several recipient countries lack the will or capacity to make full use of the assistance.

There has been some progress made, but not through official political channels. Instead, it’s come about through grassroots and nongovernmental initiatives. The wildly uneven progress in China is instructive. Despite more than a decade of grand-scale environmental campaigns, real improvement eludes the country. A recent campaign by China’s Ministry of Environmental Protection to green the supply chain, for example, has moved forward only haltingly. The progress that has been made has instead occurred down in the trenches. One NGO, concerned about water pollution, publicly identifies factories all over China that have failed to address their pollution problems. Under threat of persistent shaming, a number of these factories have begun to redress their water pollution excesses, installing the necessary treatment facilities. Meanwhile, a US retailer brought together more than 900 of its suppliers for a one-day conference to discuss energy efficiency, green consumption, cooperation with Chinese environmental NGOs, and new approaches to pollution control. The retailer made clear that future orders would reflect how successfully these factory CEOs revamped their environmental and energy practices.

Even in countries that lack China’s resources, there are examples that prove a grassroots approach can exert, quite literally, real power. In rural Bangladesh, Grameen Shakti—an organization in which microfinance meets renewable energy efforts—is installing an average of 4,000 solar heating systems every month, helping villagers move away from environmentally degrading and polluting fuels such as wood and dung. The group faced a shortage of skilled workers, a lack of funding, and high upfront costs. So Grameen Shakti began to train women technicians to develop a workforce and established an installment payment plan that made the systems more affordable.

On the smallest scale, I draw inspiration from my children’s elementary school in New York City. The vision of the school head over the past decade has been one of environmental stewardship and global citizenship. The school community rebuilt and supports a sister school in Chennai in Tamil Nadu, India, that was devastated by the 2004 tsunami; raises money for mosquito nets for people in Africa; and provides food and supplies to local churches and homeless shelters. It is also working to reduce its carbon footprint by growing vegetables and fruits in a school greenhouse and buying wind power credits. And it tries to embed these principles into daily life, by insisting, for example, that the children walk the six flights of stairs between classes rather than take the elevator. The school doesn’t just “think globally, act locally”; it acts and thinks both globally and locally.

Creating a prosperous, sustainable future that includes billions more people and millions of other species is a tall order; it is not, however, an impossible one. Over the past century, we have transformed our world on an equivalent scale through airplanes, computers, vaccines, polymers, the Manhattan Project, and the Marshall Plan. Many of these efforts began with an individual—a scientist, a tinkerer, a political leader. All became reality through the combined efforts of people, markets, and governments. The next global transformation will require no more than what has worked to date: the extraordinary leadership and vision of a few, coupled with the painstaking, persistent activism of the rest.

Comment [7]

Agree? Disagree? Let us know what you think. Please include your full name with your comment. Comments may be edited.

Have people not noticed that humans always have vast swathes of poverty? The population of the third world is forever exceeding their resources, and as long as the first world promises food and agricultural advances, the population will continue to exceed the resources. The only promise that the first world should be making is one of education, so that they can climb out of their self-inflicted vicious circle of poverty and starvation.

Note that I am not claiming that the first world is fault-free, since we actually consume that vast proportion of resources, generate the vast proportion of waste and pollution, and export war as well.

What I am stating is that solving the poverty issue is essentially exclusively one of education and not one of providing more food.

Posted 23 July 2009, 01:35 by Damian
What exactly is “…a prosperous, sustainable future that includes billions more people and millions of other species..”? The description “…a world that is cleaner, safer, and fairer than the one we inhabit today…” is pretty vague. Granted, the Millennium Development Goals are (relatively) specific, but they incorporate the concept of innovation about as well as the Hindenburg incorporated the concept of grounding.

I’m not surprised that you think, “There has been some progress made, but not through official political channels. Instead, it’s come about through grassroots and nongovernmental initiatives.” In fact, the UN’s MDGs are a perfect illustration of how ‘official’ actions, by definition, are not innovative. Innovation is always something new and poorly understood, which means it can’t possibly be widely supported enough to be considered ‘official.’

Therefore, rather than “…the extraordinary leadership and vision of a few, coupled with the painstaking, persistent activism of the rest,” I suggest coming up with a way for everyone to win. People aren’t going to be interested in a new idea they don’t understand unless they see more in it for themselves than pain. Even if the solution really does involve pain, it’s a capital mistake to admit it, let alone mention it.

Posted 16 July 2009, 16:24 by Matthew Maier
There was a perfect line used by Rebecca that “each one teach one”. we need to do some changes in our own then we can teach others. This is the time one has to think of the future for all aspects either the economic conditions or about the environment. Because if we will start doing a single innovative step to save this world then other will at least think of other.

Posted 14 July 2009, 14:19 by Abhishek Mishra
New democracy governance is predominantly perception driven – it must be big statements, encompasing global issues and delivering mulitiple benefits to a wide stakeholder base. Results indicate very little of this wash is ever achieved, and suprisingly (or perhaps not) there is never any follow up, and so there is no knoweldge capture for improvement the next time round. Governments have moved beyond results driving securing re-election, relying more on media positioning and feel-good “smiles”. As a result, empowering people to achieve results by enabling delivery of many micro-projects, resulting in a much higher success rate, is not aligned to this form of government. If a government were to consider adopting such an approach, they might back off for several reasons – the initial one being they are no longer seen as the headline grabbing deliverer, and secondly empowering people to better their own lives is peversely not in a democratic government’s interest – other than perception and basic quality of life improvement. Leaders may have fear of micro-empowerment being seen as socialism by the back door.
Post democracy will show that effective project management is a valued method of delivering to the electorate, where success can be a simple as getting the job done. Delivery of projects through practised mediums, such as registered micro-credit organisations, could even offset government risk and create an improved and more open market place. This will drive innovation – but on a small scale, and so the cycle of small growing bigger through successful market development and acquisistion will start all over again.
Often great leaders are hardly noticed other than being there and seemingly always delivering and moving things on.

Posted 14 July 2009, 13:28 by Bruce Girvan
As long as problems are looked at through political eyes (such as the right opposing global warming politically rather than addressing the science), I don’t know if I am very optimistic about all this. At least not for the USA.

Burgy

Posted 14 July 2009, 09:30 by John (Burgy) Burgeson
Each one teach one. We will need to shift the paradigm of what we value in millions of small ways and the leadership and decision makers will follow. Indeed even be influenced by some of the very people who read these pages. The bright side of this severe economic turmoil is that everyone can boldly and allowably think differently. Let’s move towards a post-capitalist, sustainable and equitable future!

Posted 4 March 2009, 22:50 by Rebecca Lurie
The problem is corporates and nations are still obsessed with figures and bottom lines, all of which are measured through the profits , revenue, GDP, etc. Also, innovation takes time and cannot provide the short term benefits which everyone desires in our modern society.
Until there is a shift in the mindset and way we measure contribution (to take a longer term view) and success, it will be hard to get the majority on this bandwagon.

Posted 3 March 2009, 12:26 by kenny tong

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