It has been sometime since my last post, but things have been busy around here. The reason for my delay is that for the last couple of months I have been trying to make sense of what collaboration and interdisciplinary could mean. I think that in order to tackle complex problems we need to broader our perspectives, so in this quest for interdisciplinary I got myself looking into different departments and institutes around Lund. One of the result of this search was a workshop with Sakiko Fukuda-Parr who was presenting her work:  “Knowledge and Politics in setting and measuring the SDGs”.
 
It seemed like a good opportunity to reflect on some of the questions I started this blog series with: Paradigms and Governance mechanisms. To prepare for Sakiko’s workshop, I had a look into some of her articles and got myself reflecting on the “politics” of measuring. In the article “Keeping Out Extreme Inequality from the SDG Agenda – The Politics of Indicators”, Sakiko describes the discussions that were held when defining the targets for the Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) related to Inequality (aka SDG 10). My interpretation of Sakiko’s example goes as follow: When defining development goals, politics and ruling paradigms are interweaved in the why and how of what we measure, sometimes even leaving the technical rigour aside.
 
Unsettled by this finding, I started studying the story of other development goals, and let me tell you that these tensions are present in many SDG. Another example of these ideological tensions in the SDGs can be found in in the construction of SDG 8, specifically in regard to what economic growth is. In their book “Transforming multilateral diplomacy: the inside story of the sustainable development goals,” Chasek, Kamau, and O’Connor write that developing countries had economic growth as one of their their priorities, while other countries “viewed unconstrained economic growth in potential conflict with sustainability (…) such a goal should highlight economic benefits of greener development (…) and avoid environmentally unsound technologies” (Ibid, pg . 178). However, if you analyse SDG 8, the green environmental perspective is not the main point in the goal’s targets and indicators. Coming from Colombia, I can understand the need for economic growth but most developed economies are moving towards greener development, and not embedding a green economic growth in our policies will once again leave developing countries dragging behind.
 
Not being an Economist limits my discussion about how to measure inequality or economic growth. However, the “wisdom of the fool” allows me to question, for example, why inequality is measured based on income, rather than access to quality education, for example. I believe that having some dollars in a bank account could ease the life of many, but does not necessarily eliminate the problem of classes that inequality entitles. This discussion is about the paradigms we accept and the realities we want to create.
 
The SDGs are built on paradigms that reinforce certain realities while eliminating others. Advocating for the SDGs without a thoughtful analysis of the assumptions and paradigms that are reinforced in these goals, is inconvenient, almost irresponsible, since financial investments, public policies, research initiatives, and people’s actions are being guided by the SDG agenda. This is problematic, and not only because you could agree (or not) with some of the paradigms, but because we are probably not aiming at the causes of the problems, we are not transforming what needs to be transformed. Sometimes we spend more time watching the signboards, rather than exploring the forest.
 
We could argue that the SDG agenda is a way in which ruling organisations (e.g. UN, World Bank) are aiming for a different world. However, others could argue that whoever sets the agenda are the ones in power so the 2030 Agenda is just a mode in which certain institutions maintain their domination over society. It is up to you to judge, but “institutions not only depend upon the activities of individuals but also constrain and mould them, this positive feedback gives institutions even stronger self-reinforcing and self-perpetuating characteristics”[1]. So, today I invite you to question the paradigms that we sometimes accept without reflecting; allow yourself to be fool in the room, and remember that is in times of crisis when we have the opportunity to reinvent our society.  To do so, we have to identify our paradigms and reflect on the values we want to embrace.
 
Finally, I want to tell you about my second attempt for interdisciplinarity and collaboration a podcast. Advancing Sustainable Solutions Podcast  is a show hosted by Sofie and Steven, two colleagues at the International Institute for Industrial Environmental Economics (IIIEE) here at Lund. For two seasons they have been discussing trends in sustainability solutions and in their latest episode I have been talking about Digital Financial Inclusion, so have a look and let me know your thoughts!
 

[1] Hodgson, 2004: 656 cited by Gómez, G. (2019). Monetary plurality in local, regional and global economies. London: Routledge

Last week I was in the event: “Collaboration for sustainability – how to move forward?” hosted by the Sustainability Forum and the Sustainable Future Hub at Lund University. Since my last post I have been thinking in  ways for governing complex processes such as financial inclusion, so I came to this event in hope for the final “answer”. Spoiler, I didn’t find the final answer, but a very good one I must admit.
 
In my last week post I finished pointing at three important discussions. Two of them that I want to bring back today.  As part of my quest in understanding the ruling paradigms and powers around financial inclusion and alternative monetary models I found myself immersed in Financial Markets. Here, I believe, is where the “BIG players” are taking the decisions that define our future through the investments they make. As you might know, monetary policy in many countries is influenced by how Wall Street acts (or reacts) to different policies or events. To put make this a little more tangible, imagine how much influence could organizations such as Japan’s Government Pension Investment Fund (GPIF), which manages assets of around USD $159,215 billion (2018) or Goldman Sachs, which managed around 933 Billion have if they decided to move their investment to companies that comply to high standards of sustainability. But do they really have the power to influence policy making? I recommend you to watch the movie “Too Big To Fail” so you get some idea of what I am talking about.
 
Some of these actors where in the Bloomberg Business Forum talking about Climate Change and sustainability. Even though I have been following these conversations recently, for what I understand this is definitely and advance in getting sustainability in the “Game”.  There are many interesting takeaways of this forum, but I want to highlight one point of a panel in which Denis Duverne (AXA), David Solomon (Goldman Sachs), and Hiro Mizuno (GPIF) participated. Through their discussion they reflected on the need for more transparent information about assets environmental impact. Solomon’s answer: “we are working on it…. but the answer is we are working on it”. However, he later suggested the need for a clearer government climate policy framework that sets the guidelines that sets the standards for the data companies must share in regard to their climate impact.
 
So, I want to come back again to my initial question and its relation to the event “Collaboration for sustainability – how to move forward?”. As the title of the event hints, the discussion focused on collaboration and how to achieve this by including different stakeholders. The key speakers came from IIIEE, STEPS and Venture Lab. Per Mickwitz from IIIEE gave an interesting perspective on how different agendas need to include small actors if we want to make relevant and impactful collaborations. So, it was a perfect moment to find the answer to my governance reflections: How can we get citizens point of view in discussion where not necessarily interests of the big and smaller actors are aligned? Well, he gave a good answer to a quite complex question. Transparency and communication. This might seem quite obvious, and that is why I brought the Bloomberg Business Forum to the discussion. How much transparency can actors immersed in the current economic paradigm (e.g Goldman Sachs) can allow? What are the incentives for organizations that are locked in a system they created for transforming to a more sustainable paradigm and allow small actors in the conversation? I still don’t have the answer but there is going to be an interesting workshop  about “The capital market – a driving force in the transformation towards sustainable businesses?” hosted by the Sustainability Hub at LUSEM that I hope will bring some interesting perspective.
 
Let’s wrap up. Governance of complex processes (e.g. monetary policy) includes many stakeholders, all of them with different and even conflicting interest. The incentives for some of the big players to “buy” the sustainability paradigm are not very clear, and thus governments might need to develop adequate accountability frameworks to re-frame the current incentives. But then how can people that are not at this level of conversation get heard? It is not clear yet, but Transparency and Communication might be a one way to follow. Perhaps Complementary Currencies could be useful to explore this idea. But can money have agency? Believe me, I am working on it.
 
Inspired by these reflections, in my next post I will get a little bit more into the topic of Financial Inclusion and try to connect some of the thoughts I have been working on lately, specifically in regards to Digital Money and Blockchain. By the way, if you find my posts interesting I also post in the Agenda2030 Graduate School blog, where I will focus more in the sustainability perspective, so feel free to join the conversation there as-well!