Ep6: Systems Change with Sumi Dhanarajan & Anna Biswas
“The system is always changing so how do you equip people to be able to work with that constant dynamic of change? ”
“It’s dawning on us that actually, no one wins until we all win. And that’s massive.”
Our guests today, Sumi Dhanarajan and Anna Biswas, are leaders at Forum for the Future, a leading international sustainability nonprofit organisation. For over 25 years, they've been working in partnership with businesses, governments and civil society to accelerate the shift towards a sustainable future.
Understanding how to make changes at a fundamental level requires an integrated way of looking at the world - a systems view. But many of us are not taught to think about problems in this way. In this episode, we wanted to seek out the perspective of an organisation that puts systems thinking front and centre.
Sumi Dhanarajan
Sumi Dhanarajan is the Associate Director for Forum for the Future APAC, responsible for the organisation's programme development in Southeast Asia. Previous to Forum, Sumi led Oxfam Great Britain's private sector advocacy team, and the 'Public Roles of the Private Sector' programme at the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy at the National University of Singapore. Sumi's interest is in applying systems change practices within the social justice movement, particularly in relation to securing business respect for human rights.
Anna Biswas
Anna Biswas is responsible for Forum for the Future's impact and operations in India. This includes a broad range of activities, all aligned with our mission of catalysing change towards a just and regenerative future, including supporting leading businesses and other organisations to set systems changing strategies, designing and facilitating collaborative platforms on complex sustainability challenges and leading the team of systems change, futures and subject matter experts in India.
Show notes
Forum for the Future is a leading international sustainability non-profit working to address critical global challenges by catalysing change in key systems from food to apparel, energy to shipping.
Join FFTF’s School of Systems Change, designed for individuals from business, non-profits, public sector organisations and philanthropy who are working on a specific sustainability challenge.
The 15-Minute City concept by Carlos Moreno won the Obel Award in 2021, focused on solutions to the challenges faced by cities around the world.
Ayurveda is an ancient Indian system of medicine which began about 5,000 years ago. The term Ayurveda is derived from the Sanskrit words ayur (life) and veda (science or knowledge) and Ayurveda therefore translates to knowledge of life. Based on the idea that disease is due to an imbalance or stress in a person's consciousness, Ayurveda encourages certain lifestyle interventions and natural therapies to regain a balance between the body, mind, spirit, and the environment.
Clean Clothes Campaign During the pandemic a coalition of more than 200 organisations announced sweeping demands of apparel brands and retailers for cash relief for suffering garment workers and reform of the industry.
Alex Steffen is an award-winning writer, speaker and foresight consultant. Over the last ten years he has advised some of the world’s most forward-looking institutions, investors, philanthropists and NGOs. See his article, ‘Discontinuity is the Job - How climate change and the planetary crisis are changing what works’ here
A Top CEO Was Ousted After Making His Company More Environmentally Conscious. Now He's Speaking Out. “In a gloves-off power struggle, two small stakeholders manoeuvred a coup, ousting the company’s CEO and chairman Emmanuel Faber, whose four-year leadership had made him a star among environmentalists and climate activists.” Vivienne Walt, Time November 21, 2021
Deep transformation or shallow transition? How can we leverage the disruptions of the decade to deliver the change needed? Dr Sally Uren OBE, Chief Executive at Forum for the Future
Forum for the Future’s ‘Responsible Energy Initiative’ is a multi-year programme working to ensure renewable energy in Asia achieves its full potential and creates value in a way that is ecologically safe, rights-respecting and socially just.
Green energy projects threaten the last refuges of the endangered great Indian bustard, Bahar Dutt, The Hindu, 10 July 2021
The Seductions of Quantification: Measuring Human Rights, Gender Violence, and Sex Trafficking by Sally Engel Merry. Leading legal anthropologist Merry investigates the techniques by which information is gathered and analyzed in the production of global indicators.
Kate Raworth’s Doughnut Economics Action Lab (DEAL) aims to rethink 21st century economies as regenerative and distributive by design in order to meet the needs of all people within the means of the living planet. You can listen to her interview in Regenerative Futures Episode 1 of ‘Flourish Systems Change’
Water as Leverage for Resilient Cities: Asia is an initiative of the Dutch Special Envoy for International Water Affairs, and the Dutch Government in partnership with the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank and others. Six international teams were selected to tackle the immense climate and water challenges in Semarang (Indonesia), Khulna (Bangladesh) and Chennai (India). The project City of 1000 Tanks, led by Ooze Architects, is one of 2 teams commissioned to develop transformative urban solutions for the city of Chennai under the WaL Asia programme.
Multi-Level-Perspective | Professor Frank Geels | NESTwebinar #3 The multi-level perspective (MLP) is a middle-range theory that conceptualises overall dynamic patterns in socio-technical transitions.
Transcript Episode 6 : Sumi Dhanarajan & Anna Biswas : Systems Change : 53 minutes
Sarah Ichioka 00:02
Hello and welcome to the Flourish podcast where we discuss design for systems change. I'm Sarah Ichioka. I'm an urbanist, strategist, and director of Desire Lines based in Singapore. I'm delighted to co present Flourish with Michael Pawlyn, who's the founder of Exploration Architecture, and a leading architect in regenerative design based in London.
On today's episode we're going to be talking about doing the practical work of systems change. This whole podcast ostensibly centres on the need for systems change, but actually, we should unpack this concept more. Systems change sounds both ambiguous and complex. And how does it relate to the mindset shift approach we advocate for in our book, ‘Flourish’?
Michael Pawlyn 01:16
As an example, if we look at urban sprawl, that is partly the result of planning policy and economics, but it's also substantially an embodiment of the way we see ourselves as humans, as isolated individuals in a competitive zero sum game. In this example, the layout of buildings and the roads that connect them would be forms of system behaviour. And the view of humanity is a paradigm or mindset. So if we tried to change this by addressing the system behaviour, for instance, by upgrading the energy performance of the buildings and promoting sustainable transport, we're only going to achieve a limited amount.
Sarah Ichioka 01:55
But if instead we were to approach it at a paradigm level and challenge whether that view of humanity is accurate or useful, we stand a much better chance of transforming the situation. So starting with a mindset based on a view of humanity of social creatures with remarkable capacities for altruism and cooperation would lead to a very different approach to urban planning. You know, perhaps something close to the idea of the 15-minute city, which is a model that aims to provide all the amenities that people need within a 15-minute walk. This recognises that symbiotic or mutualistic ways of living can achieve radical savings and resource use, as well as massive improvements in people's quality of life.
Michael Pawlyn 02:39
Understanding how to make changes at such a fundamental level requires an integrated way of looking at the world - a systems view. But many of us weren't taught to think about problems in this way. That's why we wanted to seek out the perspective of an organisation to put systems thinking front and centre. Our guests today are two senior representatives of Forum for the Future, a leading international sustainability nonprofit organisation. For over 25 years, they've been working in partnership with business, governments and civil society to accelerate the shift towards a sustainable future.
Sarah Ichioka 03:13
One of our guests, Sumi Dhanarajan, is an international development practitioner with a commitment to social justice. She served as a research assistant on Chinese economic and company law, a human rights officer to the Malaysian Bar Council, a Senior Legal Advisor to the Hong Kong Democratic Party secretary for legislative counsellors. Oxfam Great Britain's private sector advocacy head, programme Lead on the public roles of the private sector at the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy at Singapore's National University, and now is part of Forum for the Futures APAC team based in Singapore.
Michael Pawlyn 03:50
Sumi's colleague, Anna Biswas, is responsible for Forum's impact and operations in India. This includes a broad range of activities all aligned with their mission of catalysing change towards a just and regenerative future, including supporting leading businesses and other organisations, to set systems changing strategies, designing and facilitating collaborative platforms on complex sustainability challenges. And leading the team of systems change futures and subject matter experts in India.
Sarah Ichioka 04:26
So Sumi and Anna, a very warm welcome to Flourish. We're so happy to have you on. And Michael and I invited you on to the podcast because we both think passionately that more people should be thinking about the complex challenges that our societies face from a systems perspective. And who better to talk to you then Forum for the Future? Just to kick us off, could both of you share more about what systems change work means to Forum and what does that look like specifically in the context of the work that you each do?
Sumi Dhanarajan 05:02
Well, Anna and I work very closely leading the two countries here in Forum's Asia work. We use our systems change work in a way that helps people to recognise their agency. And I think it's something that you talk about as well, right? You know, everybody has agency in a system, and how might we support, be in service to, helping people to recognise their agency to bring about change. Systems change has become so de rigueur in some ways, you know, most philanthropists now ask for it when they find it's a really good thing and that's the case? How do you make it accessible, because it can be quite exclusive in some ways. And I think Anna, and I probably both experienced what it's like to talk in system change language in our work in this region. So that's one thing, it's agency and accessibility, two things even, helping people to be able to to see unintended consequences and blind spots. I think that's the other thing that systemic practice really supports you in, in doing quite well. So not just root causes to solutions. But you know, where might you not see? And how might you practice it in a way that enables you to always be working with the dynamics of the system and being able to recognise or at least observe dynamics that might be taking you towards unintended consequences of pulling particular levers of change. The metaphor, I suppose, that we sometimes use is that of the oyster, right? And sometimes even when you're working in systems change, you kind of need to throw a bit of sand in the oyster, and see what happens with that grit. So you know, the idea of probing, probing the system. I think, finally, the only other thing I would add is that change is not static. That sounds like such a silly thing to say, But obvious thing to say, but it is that, I think oftentimes, and you practice, in this world of systems change. There's this idea that, Oh, you'll change a system, and then it stops. But that's not the case, right? The system is always changing so how do you equip people to be able to work with that constant dynamic of change?
Sarah Ichioka 07:30
Thanks so much for that. Sumi. Could I just circle back to one of the points you made around accessibility? How do you make a discussion of systems level thinking intervention easy to understand and feel a part of? What sort of alternative language or approaches do Forum use to make systems thinking accessible?
Sumi Dhanarajan 08:06
That's a good question. I don't know if we've, we entirely cracked it yet. But we try. Right? So one is just making - working with the vernacular. And I don't mean, you know, in terms of dialects, but more just, how do people understand it? You know, where can they find familiarity and equivalency? Because it is inherent in human nature to be able to think systemically. So how do you bring it down to the, to something that is understandable and work up from there, you know, whether it's about how body functions, you know, how we behave in a family, how we interact with our friends, or our colleagues, and then start from the equivalency and work up from there can be a very useful tactic.
Michael Pawlyn 08:57
Yeah, sure. So I'm just interested in a bit more about how you get people into a systemic way of thinking, because often I find people find it difficult to shift from a sort of mechanistic way of thinking to a more systemic view. Do you have a particular kind of technique for doing that?
Anna Biswas 09:13
Oh, that's a great question. One of the challenges of our work is that I think we have to meet everyone where they are. As you say, like, people do need to step into a particular way of viewing things to kind of hold, hold the whole picture and hold both over time and over space. And I think, depending on what you actually need to achieve, and that kind of particular process or moment, Futures can be a really powerful process for that, really helps you step into different time horizons. And I think if you do it well, it helps you look past as well as into the future and understand how, you know, cycles of change happen. You understand your own kind of capacity to effect that change, you really are kind of inspired by the future, and you start kind of looking at things across different ways of viewing things, I guess. I think there's also a few key things that we use in our diagnosis processes that help people kind of get underneath the surface. I mean, we, you know, everyone loves the iceberg model. But kind of recognising that, you know, often in our day to day, what we see, and what we experienced are just, you know, just above the waterline of, of how things actually operate, what kind of actually locks us in place, or might cause the change that that's around us. So, you know, helping people to explicitly name what actually is going on in terms of the patterns that they're seeing. And, you know, all of the underlying structures, both in terms of relationships, and power dynamics, but also even kind of digging into what those mindsets are. So we do use quite explicit approaches to try and help people kind of open up and see things quite differently.
Sumi Dhanarajan 11:00
We also do some quite baseline things, which I think are really important when you bring people into a room. So we will often do a check-in, for example, with a particular question, so that it brings every voice into the room. And what we tend to do at the end of a check-in process is to summarise what we've heard. And it's a point at which the group recognises that they are a system, right. And they're going to go through this process as a system. So they need to, in a way, observe how they are relating to each other as a system and find ways to translate that experience, into the work that Anna was talking about, you know, when you're doing the diagnosis, or when you're using Futures, so you're bringing yourself into it as part of the system. And then sometimes we just use a straightforward physical activity. We'll use a game where you know, you all start to relate. So when one person moves, and other people have got certain instructions about what happens when that person moves, but others don't, they get to experience what it's like to hold power, or to see how you know how different instructions or structures will will affect how people behave and what it means to have information or not have information to do it.
Anna Biswas 12:22
Particularly pertinent to our kind of context here in Asia. If you hark back to quite a lot of the kind of traditional ways of thinking, when you've got things like Ayurvedic medicine, you actually have got kind of roots in these cultures that speak more to systemic mindsets than you know, almost anything that we have in Western cultures. So sometimes just even tapping back into the historic context can help people really move beyond a Western label for something and into something they recognise in themselves. Any person in the street in India, will be able to tell you five different reasons why something is not happening. And that in itself is, you know, an understanding of different interconnections and systemic mindsets.
Michael Pawlyn 13:10
Great. I understand that at Forum, when, when you're collaborating with businesses and corporations, you often take the role of what you call a critical friend. What does that look like as a collaborative process?
Sumi Dhanarajan 13:22
It's probably worth starting with telling you a little bit of a story about Forum’s provenance or origin, so Forum for the Future came about at a time when a number of NGOs were for the first time engaging with business. So this is in the, I guess, mid to late 90s. And the first point of engagement was often through public campaigns. So at the time, I worked for Oxfam - Oxfam was running a campaign called the clean clothes campaign that was asking the top five clothing retailers in the UK to adopt labour codes of conduct. And there were a number of others like that. So Amnesty was campaigning against Shell for its impacts in Nigeria, Christian Aid on labour standards in supply chains of footwear companies, etc. And Forum Forum recognised that, you know, for the most part a number of the companies were simply denying and defending what these you know, these accusations that were coming up, but there were some companies that were serious about tackling the challenges. But they didn't know where to go for support. So they needed they needed a partner, but they they needed a partner, who was a nonprofit that would be able to set goals according to what the planet and its people needed and not goals that are about what would work within the confines of business as usual, hence, hence the “critical friend”, right: a friend, but a friend that's going to push you to where you where you really need to be if you're serious about this. And so when I work today, and it's continued throughout Forum’s 25 years of existence, we help companies recognise the scale and the urgency and the complexity of sustainability challenges. And what they need to do if they are actually going to be an agent of change, rather than a barrier to change. And the other thing we do with them is to make them ensure that they respond to a changing landscape. That they're equipped, for example, to interpret what it means when the problem of climate change is suddenly being talked about in terms of a climate emergency or climate crisis. You know, what does that shift in the paradigm mean? And what does it mean to take action in a commensurate way to that change? John Elkington talks about how we are moving from a ‘gradually’ world where we were able to address climate change in an incremental fashion to a ‘suddenly’ world where it is an emergency, and it is a crisis, and whatever you do to address that has to be commensurate to that urgency.
Sarah Ichioka 16:22
In this new world, how do you see Forum's work relating to the work of organisations and movements who are advocating for more direct action? How do you interrelate with them?
Sumi Dhanarajan 16:41
So how do we interrelate to movements? So first of all, I hope that we are in service to movements, that we are part of certain movements, and that we're able to bring our skills to observing how the movement is evolving, and its dynamics and supporting others in the movement to be able to see this and work with them, right? Because often, when you're in the thick of a movement, you are working in real time. So how do we, how do we, how do we support in that way?
Anna Biswas 18:08
I totally agree. Definitely, we're here to enable if we can, just as everyone else in the movement is there to move it forward. I think we help people see the possibility and their own agency. And I think one important thing that came up in a recent initiative that we ran with Climate Civil Society here in India, of which we are definitely a part, is that recognition that, you know, we're in like the foothills of to use Alex Steffen’s language, like, unprecedented discontinuity. So how do we face into creating change as movements, when we have no blueprints, you know, like, there is no certainty to hold on to, or any kind of necessarily established maps to, to follow. So to go back to the critical friend point, like being there as someone that is there with you in the journey to work through this, to experiment towards it, I think is actually really important.
Michael Pawlyn 19:12
It's great that Forum for the Future works in so many different parts of the world. And I'm wondering if you experience different types of pushback in different regions? What are your experiences in Southeast Asia and India in that sense? So the kind of pushback I'm thinking of is, for instance, Danone's CEO, Emmanuel Faber was ousted by shareholders because he felt that he had not managed to strike the right balance between shareholder value creation and sustainability.
Sumi Dhanarajan 19:43
Yeah, there's so many different dimensions to it right? I remember moving back from the UK to Singapore in 2008, and I worked within the at the time it was very much called the corporate responsibility movement in the UK by that time over 10 or 12 years or so and had become accustomed to how it has evolved. And when I first arrived back in my home region, I had expected that it was at the same place, right, that the understanding of corporate responsibility was, it's not about philanthropy. It is about businesses recognising their responsibilities for their environmental and human rights footprints. And that was taken for granted. And I quickly realised that that certainly wasn't the case. And so it was one having to recalibrate to that, I think there's been quite quite a lot of rapid hockey stick movement upwards and understanding, it's still a little bit away from saying, you know, this is what we need to do, because we are part we are part of a living system, this is, you know, we do these things as business, not for the sake of protecting our reputations, or mitigating risks, we do this because if we don't, there will be no world, right, or at least a world that we that we're currently used to living with. So, that's part of it. And then the next step is, you know, how do you ensure that there isn't this linear “Okay, this is the problem. This is a solution-type approach. And that's where I think I still experience some challenges. But I think there is a curiosity about a systems change approach, and in many cases an inherent ability to be able to make sense of it. I think the real challenge is when you have to address incumbent power within a system, and that's where people then pull back, right? So they can be ambitious to a point, and then it's over. “The government hasn't set regulations in this area”. Or, as you say, Michael, you know, “our shareholders aren't really ready to be able to support us in being able to adopt just and regenerative business models,” and then that's a very real thing - still.
Anna Biswas 22:04
Yeah, I would agree. I think, if I'm completely honest, if you don't get push back, I actually worry, because to me, that's a sign that they don't necessarily realise the depth and breadth of what we see as necessary. So, you know, if we're talking about a deep transition, we're not talking about green capitalism, still based on the fundamentals of extractivism, you know, and that that is where the win-win-win, that traditionally, you know, we as a movement, try and advocate for, sits. But I think, you know, our movement, as a whole, as change agents, systems change drivers have come to the conclusion, it's dawning on us that actually, no one wins until we all win. And that's massive. I think one of the things that is really interesting to me about the Indian context is that we have a different set of levers to pull when it comes to corporates here. There's often from the outside the whole idea of CSR is, is kind of looked down upon as maybe something from the past. But when you look at it done really well, in tandem with sustainable or you know, just and regenerative business, which I don't think we've gotten examples of yet, here or anywhere, really. But if you do the two well, they become two sides of the same coin, that is not constrained by the same returns on investment or models of capitalism. Here, it actually allows you to do more than maybe traditional sustainable business would be able to do. It's a really interesting opportunity, if you can shape it well.
Sarah Ichioka 23:59
Following the cue about deep transition, Anna, we know that your chief executive Sally Uren has written about the risk of shallow transition as we emerge from the pandemic. Could you share some examples of what a shallow transition looks like? And then what deeper alternatives we need to be pursuing?
Anna Biswas 24:20
So we've been really lucky to be able to work with some amazing organisations, including TERI and WRI India and DHR, WHRC and WWF on an initiative called Responsible Energy Initiative. It's actually a multi country endeavour, but we've started it in India. And the whole idea is that we recognise that the decarbonisation of the energy system here in India, we're in real danger of experiencing a very shallow transition whereby actually we may be able to decarbonize to a certain degree, the energy system, but we may actually see some stepping back in terms of other development indicators because of the way in which that transition is happening. So, it was frontline news that, you know, the great Indian bustard, an endangered species here, was endangered by some of the transmission lines needed for one of the big, renewable energy plants here that went to court. It had all sorts of repercussions. But, you know, whilst that's a, you know, front page news, there's many other ecological issues that are being caused by this. There's also all sorts of social challenges around land acquisition, you know, pre and prior informed consent, shared benefits, all sorts of different challenges right there at the site of these big solar and wind farms. There's also challenges right down the value chain. So you know, if we're looking at an energy system that relies more on renewable energy, we know we need storage. At the moment, that means lithium ion batteries, and those have all sorts of human rights challenges in the value chain, as well as ecological repercussions for the kind of extraction of raw materials like lithium. So, you know, when we're talking about this kind of shallow transition, it essentially means it might solve one challenge, but it definitely doesn't help solve others. Whereas a deep transition would be one that actually in the process of transitioning allows for much greater impact, positive impact it actually tackles some of the, you know, structural issues that are holding, you know, societies back from a more just and regenerative future. And I think that that's where I think the renewable energy sector actually has real potential because everyone's come into this with the best of intentions. And because of several things like pressure to do this quickly, the race to the bottom in terms of cost to make it viable and competitive. Even just the impact of the pandemic, to be honest, where, you know, to ease the pressure on businesses, we've reduced things like requirements on labour standards, things like this. We're actually yeah, we really need to tackle some of these, these drivers of the reason why it could actually end up being very shallow and actually quite negative in its impact. We need it to happen, like we must see this transition happen. But we can also see it being a far greater opportunity to solve yet more of the challenges that India and other countries face. So it's a really exciting, exciting space, I think because of the dynamism and the opportunity.
Sumi Dhanarajan 28:01
We are looking to bring the Responsible Energy Initiative to Southeast Asia next year. Perhaps another example is the challenge around protein in Southeast Asia, where the shallow version of a transition to a new food system or new protein system in Southeast Asia involves lots of investment into plant and alternative proteins. So we are addressing decarbonisation, and various other issues in that sense. But there is huge potential for these products to be produced in a way that aren't just you know, coming up with a product that is plant based but doesn't have a good isn't a good nutritional source of protein, isn't accessible, because it's priced at a cost that only certain parts of population can afford. That it's been produced with, say soy, right, that is going to have a deep environmental impact, instead of working with orphan crops that are indigenous to the region. That it's not including smallholders in the production of it. So you've got potentially, you've got the potential to create a business model here, that will be deeply transformative. But it's not being grasped because investors that are going into the space, you know, mainly venture capitalists are going in with an exit strategy right “Now how can we invest in this, make lots of money and come out?” So what we're doing with meat is that we are simply putting in place ESG metrics that are only asking and I think this is something you pick up and Flourish this idea of carbon reductionism or carbon myopia, only really asking companies to address their carbon footprint, rather than the whole way that ecological and social impact.
Michael Pawlyn 30:06
Yeah, that's one of the concerns that we've got about the debate amongst built environment professionals at the moment. That is, it is currently limited in two troubling ways. Firstly, it's nearly all about carbon, which is obviously important, but a narrow focus on something that’s systemic is inherently problematic. And secondly, it's mostly at the level of system behaviour rather than systems change.
Sarah Ichioka 31:58
I've noticed, as we're just in conversation, and also in a lot of the material that I've read from Forum recently, there's a strong focus on a “regenerative” and “just” future. How do you, when you're working with your partners, ensure that you have the same meanings in mind when you're talking about those goals? And how do you relate to measurable specifics to broader mindset shifts?
Sumi Dhanarajan 32:37
I have been seduced by a book called The Seduction of Quantification. It's a book by a socio legal scholar called Sally Engle Merry, and she talks about how there is the seduction of quantification in the field of development, development indicators. That's the area that she looks at, but I relate to it a lot about the use of metrics in the sustainability space. And primarily because I feel that, you know, there is the seduction, right, Sarah, as you mentioned, that we know, particularly when you're working with businesses, the need to be able to measure, you know that that whole kind of chestnut of you know, “whatever gets measured, gets managed”, is very, very strong. And the instinct to go there as a means of being able to encourage change, it's an easy path to tread. But one of the challenges I see as a systems practitioner is that metrics can often start to reconstruct the norm. And the example that I often give is, if you look at the SDG8, which is around decent work, you'll see that there are actually only two indicators on that. One, how much legislation has been introduced to protect decent work in a country, that's one indicator. And the second is actually around work, work related deaths. And that's it right? And if you were a company that was using the SDGs as your frame, to take for your impact and to measure it, that's not an end you use just those two sets of indicators. That's not actually giving you a very accurate guide as to what decent work really means and what approach you need to take to it. So I think that's one of the challenges that we need to watch. In terms of the use of metrics when you're bringing about systems change.
Sarah Ichioka 35:10
How do you square that with accountability? I guess what I'm trying to get to is one of the major motivations for Michael and me to write this book was that we noticed a huge increase in the use of the term “regenerative” in relation to design and built environment practice, transferring across from agriculture. But we had a strong concern that if we look down the road, say, 5 - 10 years, we'd see exactly the same devaluation of that term, as we've seen with “sustainability”, unfortunately. So we tried to set out these five paradigm shifts that, for us, are fundamental to our understanding of what regenerative practices might mean. But even within those, right, there could be so many different ways they might be measured. But nevertheless, we would hope that it would set up some sort of framework for common understanding of what regenerative design and development might be. How do you, when you're entering these critical friend relationships with stakeholders, set up to ensure that you have a shared understanding of what you mean, by the terms that are important to you?
Anna Biswas 36:27
I think the benefit of having longer term relationships is that you do understand each other better over time. And you begin to dig into the assumptions under some of those terms that people use, and you know, what people view as success underneath those things. So I think it would be, you know, quite a challenge to be able to, right from the outset, say, we know exactly what is on each other's minds, but that we try and set a kind of common shared ambition for our work together. And we do that in a way that is both kind of informal and kind of more formal, I guess. So we set transformation targets, we have agreements that we sign about where we're trying to aim for. But really, it's not until you really kind of form that trusting relationship, that you kind of understand the kind of nuts and bolts underneath it. But I guess just on the metrics part, and kind of understanding, impact enough to be able to have accountability, we're working with a really interesting organisation here called Social Alpha at the moment. And they really want to tell their impact story. And they're quite systems minded. And I think where we've got to with them is that in order to have any kind of accountability to their funders, they need to be able to, to tell the story of their contribution to how the system is changing. And, you know, yes, there may be metrics, but there are no metrics without stories. So, and I think there's a kind of recognition also that when you're talking about systems change, you're not talking about necessarily just the direct impact that you assume he's talking about with some of these indicators, you're actually talking about contributions that are far wider than that. So being able to have the capacity to recognise how your system is changing around you, being able to then tell that story of what your contribution to that change is, is a very different set of skills to being able to quantify and measure against those, those, those targets. And I think that's where there needs to be a little bit more capacity built and, you know, a general field of capability, I think, when it comes to understanding systemic impact, so that, you know, stories are enough to, to hold ourselves accountable.
Michael Pawlyn 39:11
I wonder if I could just try and bring the conversation back a bit more specifically to the built environment, which is kind of a lot of our focus. Thinking about the built environment, are you aware of any particular sort of hotspots around the world where you see things starting to change quite rapidly, maybe countries or cities or even individual companies. So for instance, we've interviewed Kate Raworth, and she seems to be focusing quite a lot on cities. So the city of Amsterdam has embraced the Doughnut and so on. And I'm just really curious to know where you see change starting to happen. Where's the sort of base energy?
Anna Biswas 39:54
One of my observations, if I'm completely honest, is that I'm not sure how much the built environment sector here in India is engaging in the way that we need it to. I think the juggernaut of growth has really particularly hit the built environment sector here in India, you know, the focus is on meeting the needs of growing cities. And not necessarily in the kind of most healthy or ecologically safe ways, or just ways. I think one of the things I am really interested in, though, is I think Indian cities are historically not the emblems of the best, most planned design. AndI think now that problem is being recognised and the need for more resilient, more adapted cities is really on the rise. The recognition is on the rise. So, for instance, in Bangalore, we're seeing builders are now restricted in what water they can use. So there are some really interesting innovative techniques on you know, closed loop development, essentially, when it comes to water, some really fascinating stuff about how you adapt to using not quite Passiv Haus standards, but kind of more tropically appropriate versions, then, and I think also, small pockets of circularity, so you know, recognising that buildings might need to meet very different needs in the future. And as part of that adaptation, being able to build them in a way that can be deconstructed, reconstructed, changed for purpose. So I think that those three things are part of the kind of move towards more adapted cities in India, it's not as fast as it needs to be by any means. But um, I think climate change is here for us. So the cyclones, the floods, the legacy of our decisions in the past mean that we have to move quite quickly, I think.
Sarah Ichioka 42:12
We're really interested in thinking about what traditional cultural practices and Indigenous knowledge can teach us now about the techniques and skills that we need going forward. And I understand that that's something that Forum has been talking about, too, you know, looking back to look forward. And I was I was on the advisory board for the multi-year, multi-city initiative called Water as Leverage for Resilient Cities Asia, and one of the ongoing projects that's come out of that is in Chennai, and they've a really interesting practice called Ooze have been working very, very closely with local civil society to look at rehabilitating traditional forms of localised water storage, that as landscape and cultural elements, but also looking at recovering and then replicating these forms to build water distributed water resilience in the city, that I think in a way that there's a really nice model there with perhaps what a regenerative and just relocalization of, say, energy supplies, at, you know, an energy system might look like, as well. And so that was one really exciting example I know within Indian urbanism that may be taking more consistently-
Anna Biswas 43:39
I was just gonna say Chennai has a real wealth of problems. And I think this is one of the things that as system change practitioners, we always come up against, right? We've got these wonderful islands of excellence, these amazing initiatives, but how do we? How do we face into the dominant kind of mindset? Because at the same time, time, as that wonderful initiative happening - you've got, you know, planning decisions that are currently being made that are, you know, building on watersheds on all these things. So how do you make sure tension does not exist?
Sumi Dhanarajan 44:17
My feel is that in Singapore, particularly that because the property developers were in some ways ahead of the game in Singapore in terms of adopting particular environmental standards, and I think this is something you talk about in the book where, you know, the certification schemes and all that enable you to check a lot of boxes and to be able to be recognised quite quickly as meeting gold standards or platinum standards around your environmental sustainability footprint. It does feel sometimes that they've sort of rested on their laurels and I particularly feel this in risk in response to how they look at their social impacts right? Hardly any of the property developers in Singapore look at their social impacts or labour is focused on environment and it is it is focused in a particular realm, there isn't kind of a level of ambition that that is being set to how they behave, I think where, where I think I'm seeing possibility–to use your phrase–is in the ground up movement here and I see it in my home, my home town of Penang as well, just some exciting city level, as you describe Michael earlier as well, activities often taken forward by by younger people. And I think that's where we kind of need to, you know, they're in the niche, if you like, give us a multi level perspective, frame. But I think that's where we need to look and support in bringing about shifts, because the mindsets are too entrenched. And there's too much, I guess, incumbent power and then property development so that you know, the shifts have to come from somewhere else.
Sarah Ichioka 46:02
I know that Forum has a tremendous repository of different resources that you've put out in the public realm. As Michael said, you know, our listeners probably tend to be mostly drawn from a built environment background or interest, could you signpost them to some of the resources that you're most excited about?
Anna Biswas 46:45
I think Futures Centre’s definitely one of them, that it's just available online. It's an open platform where anyone can have a huge community of what we call signal spotters. So spotters of change, signs of change towards positivity, usually, and then a really excellent team behind the scenes that make sense of what those are telling us about the world and how things are moving forward. So definitely, definitely take a look at the Futures Centre. It's also the home of a publication that we produce every year. This year, it's a bit different. It's called The Future of Sustainability. So it talks about, you know, the factors that are shifting in our own sphere, and how we can remain at that kind of cutting edge and face the biggest challenges of our time. So we've got some really interesting resources that have come out recently, as part of a kind of three month drive of content from some really well known people, not just Forumites, but also, you know, really respected figures that have been in that too. You mentioned this earlier on, Sarah, the kind of looking back to look forward; to what do we have in our legacy that we can draw on? What mistakes have we made? What learning have we had? And what does that mean for us as the sustainability movement moving forward, and that includes built environment professionals Hands down. I think the other thing I would think I would signpost is the new business transformation compass. And I think you mentioned this earlier on that, you know, the term regenerative is definitely on the increase. You know, I think if you look for how many times that word has been searched for this year, it would have gone through the roof. And I think there is a danger that it could be the emperor's new clothes, you know, it could be just another term for sustainability. But it really isn't. Like we're at that moment where we as a movement need to make sure that it is genuinely the step forward that recognising that recognises the fact that we are in a new epoch almost we, you know, we need, we need regeneration, we need justice, we need to rebuild, we need to replenish and restore rather than just sort of sustain and I think this is the business transformation compass is one small step towards understanding the role of business in in truly regenerative practice. And it kind of sets out some really useful materials.
Michael Pawlyn 49:37
There's some fantastic material on there. And it's been a real pleasure talking to you both. And I really salute what you're doing at Forum for the Future in trying to drive the debate of sustainability towards this regenerative goal because I think that is exactly the kind of system change we need in order to bring about a much more rapid and urgent pace of change. So thank you both and all power to your elbow in the work you're doing.
Sumi Dhanarajan 50:05
It was great to be able to read your book. And you know, there's some fascinating things in that to help people frame how we take these steps on this journey, what I think one of the quotes is around, you know, walking the road as we make it, right. So thank you.
Sarah Ichioka 50:28
Michael, I'm always interested in the backgrounds that our guests bring to their work. For example, Sumi trained as a lawyer, her interest is in applying systems change practices within the social justice movement, especially in relation to looking at how businesses can respect human rights. And that's why it's been so important to us in our whole Flourish project to bring these adjacent disciplines into the conversation for a built environment audience.
Michael Pawlyn 50:58
Yeah, absolutely. It's been really interesting seeing how some professions that have been kind of conventionally a bit quiet on this have really come to the fore. And I'm thinking particularly of the legal professions who are really raising their game.
Sarah Ichioka 51:12
And you can see that if you look at Forum’s team, they are drawn from very diverse professional backgrounds. And I think that that's potentially what makes their organisation’s work so robust.
Michael Pawlyn 51:23
Yeah, there's always been an impressive breadth to their work, there's been a long running debate about how people who are concerned about the environment should bring about change. They're often assertions and counter assertions that some people have been too positive or too negative, too compromising or uncompromising, too angry or too passive. And I think that Forum for the Future is an organisation that has navigated through that really skillfully over the years, it's encouraging to see that they are focusing more and more of their work through a regenerative lens and through systems thinking, and always bringing climate justice into the discussion as well.
Interface, our podcast sponsor, has been constantly challenging itself as a company ever since their founder Ray Anderson set them on what he called a mid course correction towards sustainability, and now increasingly towards regenerative approaches. As just one example of this, the company constantly looks at ways to incorporate materials that would normally be seen as waste. Its Networks project was a collaboration between Interface, yarn manufacturer, Aquafil, and conservation charity, the Zoological Society of London. The project transformed waste nylon fishing nets into material for its products, whilst providing access to finance and a healthier marine environment to fishing communities in the Philippines, Cameroon and Indonesia, now spun out to be an independent entity as Coast 4C, the recycling of nets is now integrated with seaweed cultivation to combine circularity with sustainable farming.
Sarah Ichioka 53:01
If you're interested to learn more about principles of regenerative design, or any of the many fascinating topics that we've been discussing together today, you're warmly invited to visit our website, which is simply: www.flourish-book.com. And we'll also have a link to subscribe to our podcast there as well. That website will also include links to all of our socials. The podcast is sponsored by Interface, and based on the book, Flourish: Design Paradigms For Our Planetary Emergency by Sarah Ichioka and Michael Pawlyn.
The Flourish podcast is recorded at Cast Iron Studios in London and the Hive Lavender studios in Singapore. Our co producers are Kelly Hill in London and Shireen Marican in Singapore. Our research and production assistant is Yi Shien Sim. The podcast is edited and features brilliant original music by Tobias Withers.
Flourish Systems Change is brought to you by Interface
Production credits
Presenters Sarah Ichioka & Michael Pawlyn
Audio producer & composer Tobias Withers
Producers Kelly Hill (London) Shireen Marican (Singapore)
Research & production assistant Yi Shien Sim
Podcast cover art by Studio Folder
