Think Local to Solve Global

Empirical?evidence and the science of complex adaptive systems prove that local systems solutions cooperatively designed by communities are necessary for solving the existential problems of climate change and inequitable progress that confront humanity this century. Top-down, expert-driven solutions cannot solve such problems. As Albert Einstein said, "The significant problems we face cannot be solved at the same level of thinking we were at when we created them". However nations and leaders in power want to remain in control. NATO is making the world less safe. The G7 (and the G20) must allow all countries to take decisions together on the same table to solve existential problems of climate change and inequitable?economic?growth which?are hurting the 90% of people outside the G7 the most. Within?India too, power must shift from the center to citizens in their states, towns, and villages.?

I explain why it is essential to??think local to solve global problems, in The Hindu this morning. (https://www.thehindu.com/opinion/lead/the-trajectory-of-progress-must-change/article67150934.ece). The article is reproduced below.?

CHANGING THE TRAJECTORY OF PROGRESS

?Global governance is in bad shape. The trajectory of progress must change. The world is being?divided by wars amongst nations and strife within them. Wars with military weapons and with financial and trade weapons. Desperate millions are being pushed back to their deaths, while trying to cross borders and oceans in search of better lives and safety, while three multi-billionaires are competing to create commercial space ventures to take a handful of wealthy people, paying hundreds of thousands of dollars each, for a brief joyride in borderless space.

?The G20 has provided India’s Prime Minister an opportune stage before the next national election. Posters of the G20 with Mr. Modi’s picture are everywhere. Of greater significance to the world is that the G20 is being led by India, the world’s most populous country. Global financial crises in the last thirty years compelled the G7, the US-led cabal of Western countries (and Japan) that controls global financial institutions, to expand the G20 by adding China, India, Russia, Brazil, and a few other countries for solutions to global problems. The G20 is at an impasse because the US wants its members to support the goals of NATO and shut out Russia and China who it sees as threats to its global hegemony. India isn’t easily swayed by pressure from the G7. It wants the G20 to concentrate on the agenda of the 90% of the people who are outside the G7.

?Humanity cannot carry on the way it is. The trajectory of progress must be changed to make economic growth more equitable and sustainable. Economists try to prove with numbers that poverty is reducing, and incomes are increasing for everyone. They should look around and listen to real people struggling in precarious livelihoods. People experience realities which statisticians’ numbers cannot reveal. The planet is heating up inexorably. It cannot take the pressure of the present consumptive model of economic growth any longer. More economic growth will not solve the world’s problems. It must be sustainable and equitable too.

?A new paradigm

India, as chair of the G20, has offered a vision of?Vasudhaiva Kutumbakan?(One Earth, One Family, One Future) to bring all citizens of the world together and make the world better for everyone.

?Continuing to solve systemic problems with the same approach that has caused them is madness, Einstein said. A new paradigm is required for global governance. In 2015, all countries adopted the 17 UN Sustainable Development Goals to be achieved by 2030. Time is running out. Climate change is racing ahead. Rich countries are unwilling to find equitable solutions. Demands for universal basic income and more secure employment are increasing even in rich countries.

?The SDGs describe 17 complex combinations of environmental, social, and economic problems. All 17 problems do not appear in every country, and when they do, they do not appear in the same form. For example, problems of the oceans are immediately life-threatening to island countries but not to land-locked countries yet. Environmental problems are not the same in Canada and Barbados. Opportunities for decent work (SDG 8) are inadequate everywhere, but much fewer in countries in the Global South than in the rich North.

?No country has only one of the SDGs problems. Every country has at least six or seven. Mathematical calculations show that even seven problems (out of a possible seventeen) can combine in 98 million different ways. Clearly one global solution, for the environment, society, or economy, cannot apply everywhere. People on the ground know where their shoes pinch. Standard size shoes cannot fit all.

?The present theory-in-use of top-down problem solving is conceptually flawed. It does not matter how smart the expert or manager on top of the system is. Complex systemic problems that appear in many places require local systems solutions cooperatively found and implemented by communities that combine solutions to economic, environmental and social problems.

?A series of global crises in the last thirty years has revealed the inadequacy of the global governance institutions established after the second world war to solve global systemic problems. The UN is unable to prevent wars. The WTO is in the ICU. Tragically the institution most energized now is the only one that should have been disbanded thirty years ago, with the collapse of the Soviet Union and agreements made then between the leaders of Russia and the USA, viz. NATO.

?The UN General Assembly, not NATO, represents all the world’s people. 15 UN members placed a resolution before the UN General Assembly in March 2023 to promote the “social and solidarity economy” for sustainable development. They propose a recoupling of social institutions with economic institutions on the ground.

?India has proposed an approach of LiFE (lifestyles for sustainable development) to the G20. It requires “coherent actions amongst stakeholders at all levels rooted in collective actions across society”. Principle 7 of LiFE also requires the world’s leaders to “recognize and amplify the role of local communities and traditional knowledge in supporting sustainable lifestyles”.

?Democracy is government of, for,?and by?people. A government elected by the people, providing benefits top-down to people is not a complete democracy. Government must be?by?the people themselves. There is a lesson here for both the US and India, the self-proclaimed leaders of global democracy. Global governance is undemocratic because the US is unwilling to share power in global governance institutions. India has elections, but not full democracy yet. Its political leaders since Independence have given only lip service to the vision of gram swaraj (village self-government) which is required for Poorna Swaraj (full political, social, and economic freedom) for all citizens.

?Paradigms are hardly ever changed from their centers because people in power don’t want to let go power. The text of the resolutions adopted at the G20 Summit will not matter. Pious resolutions for arresting climate change have become an annual ritual. It will also not matter who wins the Indian elections in 2024, and whose pictures are on billboards thereafter, if the system of governance remains a top-down, expert-driven, centralized system.?Pressure to change and new solutions must come from the peripheries of power systems with movements on the ground in India and around the world.??

?Arun Maira

Author of?Transforming Systems: Why the World Needs a New Ethical Toolkit