Speakers: Florence Reed, Hedda Reich, Rita Golstein-Galperin, Maayan Agmon, Issabella Orlando
Presentations
Working Together to Create a Just and Sustainable World Through Transformative Farming Training that Nourishes Communities and the Earth
Florence Reed
Climate change and biodiversity loss threaten the very existence of human society, while hunger and poverty continue to plague humanity. Though conventional farming practices are a leading cause of climate change, smallholder farmers with little money or education are transforming the world’s food system into one that stabilizes the climate, restores degraded lands, and lifts people out of hunger and poverty. Meet some of these unsung heroes partnering with Sustainable Harvest International (SHI) and learn how millions more could join their ranks to transform the world’s food system. Over 25 years, SHI has partnered with affiliated organizations in Belize, Honduras, Nicaragua and Panama to provide direct technical assistance to over 3,200 smallholder farm families (16,000 people), catalyze the regeneration of over 26,000 acres of previously degraded land and plant over 4 million trees. Of our 3,000 graduated families, 91% continue using the agroecology practices they learned. An important key to long-term success is the strong partnership built between smallholders and SHI extensionists through weekly visits over the course of four years. Visits and trainings are tailored to each participant’s goals, preferences, and abilities with new skills and knowledge building upon each other and that of the farmers. If the world’s 500 million smallholder farms shift to agroecology, they’ll sequester six billion tons of carbon annually, which is equivalent to closing every coal-fired plant on earth. The cost to deliver agroecology extension programs such as SHI’s to all 500 million smallholders would be approximately $60 billion per year for 12 years, or 10% of the $600 billion per year that governments of the world spend on industrial agriculture. Redirecting this government spending away from degenerative farming to regenerative agroecology training could thus improve the lives of 2.5 billion people while also mitigating climate change and restoring degraded lands.
A new path to Sustainability and Justice? Questioning the role of deliberative mini-publics in transformations.
Hedda Reich
Deliberative mini-publics (DMPs) are increasingly expanding as a democratic innovation in Western democracies. They are discussed as one potential solution to respond to the current challenges of representative democracies, including the climate crisis and biodiversity loss. In the fight against the climate crisis, the IPCC emphasises the need for societal transformations, addressing social justice, power dynamics and underlying values. Even though some researchers mention the transformative potential of DMPs, there is a knowledge gap in understanding the connection between DMPs rooted in deliberative democratic theory and transformations to sustainability and justice.
Therefore, the discussion will revolve around the following research question: What is the role of deliberative-mini-publics in Transformations to Sustainability and Justice?
By synthesising the two scholarships of deliberative democracy and transformations to sustainability and justice, I examine how the two scholarships view DMPs’ role in transformations. I identify synergies and tensions regarding their perspectives using literature and interviews with researchers with specialist knowledge in these two scholarships. The findings suggest that the two scholarships’ underlying assumption and normative bias are important explanatory variables for how they view DMPs’ role and transformative potential. Deliberative Democracy sees the potential and function in the openness and quality of the deliberative process, mostly questioning DMPs’ connection to the broader system. Transformations to sustainability and justice view DMPs’ potential in addressing deeper leverage points such as underlying norms and values.
These presented findings could trigger exciting discussions regarding synthesising these two scholarships and the role of new democratic innovations, such as DMPs, in transformations that move beyond theoretical implications. Researchers, practitioners, and policymakers are welcome to join the session to critically discuss how they see DMP’s potential role in transformations and what parameters and mechanisms such innovations can address to tackle urgent sustainability challenges.
Keywords: deliberative democracy, deliberative mini-publics, transformation to sustainability and justice
Academic Impact Centers – Time for Paradigm Shift
Rita Golstein-Galperin, Maayan Agmon
Universities historically have played a pivotal role in transforming leadership and societies at large. In the last decades we’re witnessing rise of impact economy, merging business and social issues – notably known as “double/triple bottom line”. The role of the academia in enhancing impact leadership is pronounced through the umbrella term “academic impact center”. coined by Oxford University (2017), and refers to a broad range of university-based initiatives such as “social innovation initiatives”, “social entrepreneurship programs”, and “impact labs” However, the unique contribution of the transformative role of the academia through the impact lens is yet to be fully described. To fill this gap, we have conducted a qualitative comparative study aimed to understand the best practices to support the leadership of the academia in promoting impact. We mapped out 107 impact programs from 29 countries across five continents from diverse disciplines (economics / business administration / public policy / social work / design). No uniformity between was found between the institutions in terms of the essence of the centers, their goals, their leadership and audience, the content of the activity, and even the degree of student involvement. The findings were organized in a typology that correspond with three main themes: Who are the people involved? What is the focus of the activities? And how is the center organized and managed? The presentation will outline the diversity of the field, raising the main dilemmas and tensions. Following this discussion, participants will have a better understanding of the guidelines underlying the centers’ theories of change that further leverage their role as change agents and transformative leaders. We welcome people from both newly developed centers, as well as those aspiring to refine their vision as transformative leaders.
Transforming Through Cultural Development & Community Partnership
Issabella Orlando
I’m a firm believer that in order for transformation to occur, something has to break: old patterns, paradigms that no longer serve the world, that maybe never did. I’ve observed and considered some of these kinds of paradigms through my work and research in arts & culture. My critical eye is borne from my master’s thesis, which yielded the discovery of a new paradigm in development studies in which culture is mobilised to serve sustainable economies, namely through initiatives led by and in partnership with communities. Through this research and work in private-public cultural partnerships, I’ve realised that the cultural development programme today often fails to involve with people on the ground in local communities, and become more deeply passionate about breaking the bad habits of an old paradigm and spreading awareness of a new one. This new paradigm entails the formation of culture-driven, grassroots, regenerative economic opportunities for growth and enterprise that protect the cultural and natural resources of communities around the world. It requires a break from top-down programming, imposing Western ideals of productivity and prioritising brands and institutions first and communities second. It instead champions getting on the ground and listening to voices that have been traditionally disregarded: indigenous peoples, local populations, elders, and young people, especially young women. Their ideas, needs, understandings and generational traditions become the building blocks for culture-led development, and the role of brands and institutions becomes to support and co-facilitate. The outcomes are as varied as the cultures it could work with; existing examples range from women’s weaving circles turned to heritage-led textile production houses to local knowledge of natural landscapes, heritage sites and sustainable agriculture turned to excursions in sustainable travel. In any case, true partnership with local communities, not just institutions, and a shift from the norm is absolutely required.