NEW APPROACHES
SYSTEM When people partner up and support each other they can forge an entirely new system – much as they
did in past millennia By Howard Hudson, OPEC Fund
A griculture was humanity’s first revolution. Around 12,000 years ago, small bands of hunter gatherers coalesced into larger better-fed communities in the Eastern Mediterranean. Those small farming communities grew into cities, nations and empires, vying for power, rising and falling in turn. The invention of the plow was a catalyst, but the pivotal moment was the mass change of mindset – that another way of life was not only desirable, but actually possible. “We can do this,” said our ancestors. And they did. But it was always about the community as much as the crop. That revolution can also be called a “system innovation” because people partnered up and intensively supported each other with new skills and tools while forging a new direction. When humanity put down roots, the system changed. Which in many ways is the goal of the UN 2030 Agenda, as the international community attempts to transition to a new way of living in a more sustainable global system. That “We can do this” statement has, however, shifted to
“Can we do this?” – because although our capacities are infinitely greater, global conditions are far more complex and deteriorating fast. A recent snapshot of partnership building comes in the form of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) Decision 3/27, adopted in Sharm El-Sheikh in November 2022. A decision that aims at: “Promoting a holistic approach to addressing issues related to agriculture and food security... Enhancing coherence, synergies, coordination, communication and interaction between Parties... strengthening engagement, collaboration and partnerships among national, regional and international organizations and other relevant stakeholders.” Truly a lockstep text, with nine different synonyms for seeking alignment to support one another; encouraging a disparate group to be more than the sum of its parts.
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