A Special Installment from Director FRANK COSTANZO-CONNELLY in advance of PGI's UNGC 2011 COP:
The remarkable thing about business consulting in India is the incredible opportunity to observe humanity as a collective democratic society transitioning on an epic scale. The flip side is watching-in real time- the natural resource security of a Nation erode. For our U.S. readers, imagine waking up tomorrow and the landmass of US shrank by two thirds and the population tripled. That’s India. In previous news we’ve covered the critical issues of food security, increasing scarcity of potable water, drastic inflation in food prices due to broken and antiquated supply chains and farmer-market trade inequity. We’ve examined the social impact of these basic critical issues as it relates to endemic farmer suicides, GOI policies to gloss development imbalance and some fine people and organizations that have proved that positive change can be made no matter how big or small. Over the course of the past several months the entire PGI team has been where we love to be – in the field. We’ve applied our brand of triple bottom line (3BL) business planning and implementation and we’re pleased to say they are being well received. Having stopped for a breather before the facility of three major projects, we can report that we have some solutions to offer that we and many like us believe can lead to sweeping change. In a word, the solution is integration. More accurately, a multi-criteria de-compartmentalized approach to development as a vehicle of commercial –human – ecological symmetry. And it’s a model that works anywhere, whether India, U.S.A. or Burma. In essence the asymmetric growth of enterprise and human development indicators are a result of: 1) disintegrated public policy; 2) misapplied intel and resources; and 3) failure to adopt correlative systems of 3BL and Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR).
Although this seems a daunting list to achieve change, we also found it can be done very simply. Many small changes lead to mass movement. Ultimately it requires like minded people – and there are truly no shortage of same in India and elsewhere. What is needed is a clarity of mission, delivery and measurable outputs so others can join the movement and know the likely outcome.
INDIA: A PEERLESS 3BL-CSR LAB
From a feasibility and facility perspective, sustainable business planners can gain experience rapidly. Based on the law of frequency, variables and scale of enterprise, India simply creates so many opportunities to witness the very best and the very worst of human potential. It’s often been said that India is a land of contradictions. It’s not. It is a land of multi-dictions. PGI has been intimately involved in top-down problem approaches; bottom-up problem approaches and sandwich approaches. The sum of all these experiences has taught us a valuable lesson that is imperative that we share to as wide an audience as possible. It is the paradigm of many small actions can result in massive movement. That’s not to say scale is not unimportant, the influence of many small projects spread over a wide footprint create greater 3BL efficiency, scale and returns than a mega project.
Think about this analogy: A government decides it wants to increase national green cover. They decide that 1 billion trees need to be planted. Is it easier for a government to organize and facilitate the planting of a billion trees? Or would it be easier if one billion people planted one tree? We’re witness to analogous examples playing out the world over: the Arab Spring, the facebook factor, the Anna Hazare movement, cheap mobile technology that has connected rural farmers with meteorologists, market updates, cooperatives. The power of technology has delivered to people a tool for change.
FIRST THINGS FIRST: HUMAN DIGNITY
The one maxim that we can confirm through our work in rural and marginalized India is that human dignity has real and measurable value. Our nature as humans is to be equal and interdependent. This statement is easy to accept, however until one actually witnesses the many disguises of oppression, one cannot fully appreciate the value of equality. We at PGI have seen many examples. We’ve worked with communities labeled by industrialists as inherently ‘lazy’; which upon closer examination proved to be a blind-eye label given to a community that refused to be oppressed. It is therefore critical that those in the sustainable facility industry use PGIS and other integration building systems to learn what values and inputs are necessary to empower project sector communities and assure they remain culturally intact; connected to their environment. Only then can this world of ours begin enjoying the gold standard of the human-nature paradigm- a triple bottom line global network of millions of local economies.
FORGET MEGA – THINK AND DO A LOT OF SMALL
Which leads us to the point: Lots of small is so incredibly beautiful. There is no better joy than to create an facilitate the networks for replicable integrated systems that connect and empower the historically oppressed, marginalized and insecure. To not merely throw money at a problem or a people as a means of development. To form specialized teams dedicated to the hard work, the coalition building and problem solving. It’s the kind of effort that results in equitable and perpetual relationships; and create social/ gender empowerment and natural service security. It’s the solution that ends the subsistence and bonded labor paradigm of rural farmers through myriad relationship linkages and genuine triple bottom line planning. It requires no official policy (although policy can and should be a platform toward solution) but relies instead on using inter-and extra- organizational vertical expertise that is linked to the ground, working with Nature and each other.
INTEGRATED PEOPLE NETWORKS WILL MAKE CHANGE; GOVERNMENT IS A SUPPORTER NOT AN AGENT OF CHANGE
And this is do-able when networks build capacity and the necessary verticals are crosscut and harmonized. And this is not going to be delivered by Governments, or inter-governmentals or public policy…(they will support and provide medium service) but the work –the heavy lifting-must be done by all of us –from end-to-end. If there are those that need a different motivational tool to become aware, then think about this: TISS just released a study on the “Indian Approach” to Sustainable Development. It promotes the theory that every human is entitled to an equal share of the global atmospheric carbon sink. For example, the per capital ‘equity’ based emission entitlement for each American is 30.95 giga-tons, however US has emitted 81.57 giga-tons per person. In India, the per capita entitlement is 112 gigatons, however India has emitted only 25.28. The sum of the paper is that developed nations either compensate developing nations to the tune of $707 billion for their over-emission; or (as PM Singh suggested) each person in India is entitled to as much emission as anyone in developed country. (That would be 1.2 billion people entitled to 86.72 gigatons of carbon.) So, if climate-apartheid reparations versus per capita development parity (an apocalypse) are the only two options, then we need another option that comes from outside the policy box. It must spring from the ground. It requires a global paradigm shift that redesigns developed country norms and designs-right-the-first-time the norms of developing countries.
The TISS paper provides a good example of the policy paradox that finds equity though dividing groups rather than unifying. Unifying policies tend to emerge only when a crisis is immediate and defined in scope and need. In those cases policy is useful for rapid and joint response. Like a hurricane or an earthquake. But when given an incremental crisis like climate change, policy seldom reaches the critical mass needed for consensus; and if by chance consensus is reached, there is always the question of ephemeral sincerity and eye-wash. It is therefore up to each of us – an IT enabled collective of humanity- to change and turn the tide of climate change, natural resource security, human equality and sustainable development. This era is ours and it’s actually much easier to claim than you may think.
THE EVIDENCE OF CHANGE
What has given us at PGI much hope recently, is the universal message that is beginning to get traction and go ‘100th monkey.’ In many ways PGI itself was steered by gravity from its beginnings as a sustainable energy consultancy, to designing sustainable ag-businesses, and more recently CSR perma-economic 3BL planners. The transformation has been intuitive and directed by our mission-culture. Each project delivery resulted in deeper networks and mission focus. Our organizational focus has been influenced through particular revelations about the most efficient manner to winning the evergreen revolution. India –as noted above- presented the target rich environment and a cultural ground network (that is in many ways as effective as the internet but has been around long before its invention) that assists facility of replicable models and attracts likeminded strategic alliances. When good models work in India, the word spreads and the traction necessary to scale small-beautiful 3BL projects blossoms and achieves ‘viral’ potential.
PGI is convinced that the way to environmental remediation and widespread social adoption of 3BL models is the performance metrics that come from combining timeless wisdom (Vedic sacred gardens, Black Elk’s vision of a 4th Way and Mollison/Holmgren’s permaculture eco-synthesis, etc) with best practice technology and CSR systems. Obviously, the key is that all the bottom lines perform and are profitable. For this reason, PGI adopts an inter-disciplinary approach to produce holistic integrated ag-business-models each geo suited but with replicable core systems so they can be adopted and linked on a broad scale. This is how we will win the evergreen revolution.
3BL AND CSR VERSUS THE TIPPING-POINT:
The power of what Gandhi described as India’s nine lakh (900,000) villages, empowered and interdependent can alter the course of development and steer India away from its current collision course with natural service breakdown. The saathi haath badhana is alive and growing in India and has the potential of avoiding immanent food/water security collapse. The current path is simply the result of 19th century notions of development process and lack of good governance. It has resulted in critically uneven, disintegrated and wholesale unsustainable development. PGI tweeted in January 2011 that this year would be the year that India’s development story collided with natural service security. It has sadly come to pass as predicted. For those who need to use commercial economic metrics as the measuring stick, witness then the rampant inflation of food and resources, manufacture and market drops, spiraling petrol prices, crash of cotton market, off-monsoon climate anomalies, the Anna Hazare movement that have made 2011 the most precarious year for India since 1998. Single-bottom-liners cry for a return to protectionist policies as a ruse to distract from the actual economic flaw- sustainability and linkages to its heart, rural India. Most striking is the recent statement of Home Minister Minister Chidambaram at the 28, September 2011 All India Management Association:
“We must raise the tax revenue to defend (‘the expected aggregate decline of resources’). I know many people won’t like this. But I think, I can summon the courage to make the statement.” Chidambaram also said that poverty must decline rapidly and at a higher rate than the current 1%, if the country has to achieve inclusive growth in the future.
Like the Chipko women who guarded their sacred trees, the people of India-and the world as a whole- must activate and make significant change in norms to protect natural resources and economic security. Chidambaram’s stark assessment is unsettling but a realistic step in the right direction that requires fuel.
It is time for all- from every profession- to leave their comfort zone, cross-cut and make the connections with those engaged in the work of adopting the right plan at the right place through an integrated network of 3BL CSR objectives. Participate. Activate. Make a small difference in a big picture. It doesn’t matter if you are in India or not, India’s development is affecting your world, your climate your future. If in a developed country then it is even more incumbent to reboot the paradigm to offset the effect of a crowded ever-developing world. To recognize that ‘development’ need not be measured in terms of tons of carbon and CO2, there is another way.
The evergreen revolution is winnable. Triple bottom line companies and networks are not some lofty ideal, they work. Permaculture on a community-commercial scale, forest farming on a community-commercial scale is not only possible, it’s proven and profitable and simply requires mass adoption and proliferation. The greatest irony shall be that in the end analysis those who historically remain connected to the Earth –the billions of SME farmers and foresters- will be owed credit for saving the planet and humanity. PGI professionals have always found SME farmers the most receptive agents of sustainable models…because we weren’t teaching them anything they didn’t already indigenously know! In fact we learned their TIK! They are the bearers of the flame of ancient practices that kept them connected to Nature. They maintain a wisdom immemorial… before humans began to believe that technology had relieved us the need for Nature.
MOBILATION IS KEY
Lastly, the evergreen revolution will not be televised. But our technology will assist us. The ability to network has never been so easy and pervasive. The dissemination of ideas has been the agent of change like never before. It is almost too coincidental that our ability to network with each other coincides with our critical need to modify our own behavior to save Nature and thereby ourselves. Like the Arab Spring proved that the collective can topple any regime no matter how large and brutal, a global collective is ushering in a new paradigm of equality and empowerment, harmonically connected to Earth and each other.
Next year is a very special year for PGI. It is our 5th anniversary as an Indo-US sustainable business systems consultancy. November will be the one year anniversary of our membership as a UNGC company and we’ll publish what we hope to be a broadly useful COP. This is all in the lead up to the 2012 UN International Year of the Cooperative which we look forward to sponsoring. We’ll continue to evolve as an organization and will continue to focus increased attention to the mission critical issues of global rural sustainable development and how you can be participant. Namaskar, Aloha and Cheers! –PGI
Thanks for reading, and go make some change!
FRANK COSTANZO
Director PGI
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