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How to combine governance with sustainocratic processes?

The inspiration came from a Dutch region referred to as “Rijk Dommel en Aa”. The region is not formally registered as such. It comprises two mid sizes cities and 5 smaller communities. It is surrounded by canals and rivers which make it a rectangular territory.

image

The region is drawn with light blue

This confinement had been for some years a place to develop regional cocreation at government level. At one stage someone asked me to look at the region from a practical sustainocratic point of view. Two converging lines came together, governance and peer 4 regional sustainocratic development. How do we unite those lines into a functional format that enhances the combination rather than drive them apart?

Differences
Governance tends to deploy itself around “files”. These files normally live a life of their own within the context of current political-economic steering mechanisms. Rijk Dommel and Aa had its own traditional files for the region:

  • Mobility
  • Energy and Water
  • Nature and Recreation
  • Housing and living
  • Farming and Food

The focus that government had agreed among themselves was to facilitate the population’s spare time (recreation, sport) development.

When Sustainocracy started to look at the region, that hosts 400.000 residents with an multiple equivalent of regular visitors to festivals, activities, recreation, tourism and special events, it introduced the 5 core values for regional development (health, safety, basic needs, self resilience and self awareness). At provincial level we are developing the Health Deal, inspired on the Healthy City commitment in Eindhoven through AiREAS. During a first multidisciplinary encounter the people present were asked to come up with ideas to simply enhance this particular member of the leading core values: Health.

Cocreatie

In the cocreation exercize 6 areas of attention were defined:

  • How can we involve all people and institution into this health driven process? (involve)
  • What are the impediments and problem spots in the region? (impediments)
  • What are the admirable initiatives that can be highlighted and supported? (initiatives)
  • What experimental initiatives can we define? (experiments)
  • Can we organize events for people to experience what we want to achieve with their help? (events)
  • Let’s investigate in the region what residents feel about the subject? (research)

Health, files and areas of attention

With “health” as leading topic the files and areas of attention could easily be combined into a matrix.

Rijk Dommel en Aa

Just one meeting was needed to populate the matrix with multidisciplinary teams that develop the ideas into projects with the corresponding commitments.

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The multidisciplinary tables in action

When a project is defined it is seconded by all and deliveres a measurable result that can be related to the higher sustainocratic purpose, Health in this case. Since all key partners are available to commit resources the project can get rapidly equiped with the finances, technology, human creativity and hands on power to get into an execution phase. The process can be repeated as often as needed in the region with increasing involvement of all stakeholders together.

The process is fast, dynamic and very effective. One of the polical executives mentioned with a degree of surprise: “In one afternoon extremely difficult and complex projects are defined here and committed, what normally takes us 30 years!”

Many regions around the world are now coming to see how we do this. India, China, central Europe, Turkey, etc are candidates for developing sustainocratic platforms soon.

We tend to work in three steps with them in Eindhoven:

  • Come over to learn and get inspired
  • Come over to discuss how to implement it within their own regional complexity?
  • Implement locally and establish a cooperation to work together

That is how Sustainocracy expands by combining governance with new guidance based on core human values and integral societal involvement.

The evolution of Sustainocracy

What started as a one man’s awareness breakthrough, that health and safety are natural core human values which stand above political, social and economic choices, evolved into an evolution of human societal development and multidisciplinary commitment to sustainable human development. Let us go through this step by step.

We all have a choice
We have a choice when awareness breaks through. When it does not then we remain trapped in a worldview imposed upon us by our reigning cultural surroudings and paradigm. It is as if nothing else exists or existed. The breakthrough opens our eyes to different realities and then the choice appears loud and clear. For me the choice was presented by life’s circumstances in two different occasions, the first in 1996, the second in 2003. The first time it affected me tremendously but did not pull me over the edge of making a definite choice, it just made me powerfully aware. The second time I made my definite and life changing choice.  I became my own first Sustainocrat in a new world.

choices 2

We all have a choice between life and death

Our current social political – economical paradigm evolves around death
Our consumption based global and local economy is based on trade of dead things. In order to make a product we need to get our resources from the living world, kill it and convert it into a consumable. We have built large marketplaces called cities in which we display the dead stuff in abundance to give the population a permanent sense of abundance. We only see this abunbance but do not sense the destruction this killing does to our environment. The killing is not visible because it happens outside the city while the city itself has eliminated all lifeforms other than the consumption based interaction with the human species.

Exponential growth of the human population, combined with the focus on trade of dead materialism, caused an exponential growth of devastation of our natural living environment. And we all contribute to it through our labor activities and blind consumption, often unaware of our shared responsibility in the disappearance of life on Earth and eventually that of our own.

Sustainocracy evolves around life
Having defined the 5 core values of sustaining life in an evolutionary manner, which had started with the first two (health and safety) within my own breakthroughs, a new social interaction appears. The 5 core values of Sustainocracy are:

  1. Health – The living nature is always healthy. If not the unhealthy dies and gets absorbed into a new cycle of healthy life. When humankind produces death just for the sake of abundance it interrupts the cycle of life and produces an avalanche of death. We humans are part of that cycle so inevitable we develop our own destruction too. Focus on health however is an awareness issue. Most people take health for granted and only become aware when sick. Becoming sick is a way of nature to develop also health through the development of our defenses. But self inflicted sickness is antinatural and we don’t know how to cope with it. That’s why cancer and other horrible deceases affect us. We also see that the human immunity is in decline. Health is hence a leadership issue, not democratically choicen but a core responsibility!
  2.  Safety – Without safety there would be no community. The whole essence to create a community in the first place is to get a better position for safety for all members. It does not only refer to physical integrity but also respect, equality, trust and cohesion among each other.
  3. Local resilience – Working together to fullfil the basic human needs such as food and housing is key to remain committed to the community. In Sustainocracy the 5 values are leading, as they are core human interests. The democratic part of Sustainocracy is not to chose direction yet to chose the priorities for innovative change together through dialogue and consensus. Our core values are leading, not our self interests around materialism, leading by trust in our abilities rather than fear for shortages.
  4. Self awareness – Withou the awareness breakthrough the choices cannot be made as they do not reveal themselves. Awareness driven cocreation is hence both a community leadership and educational core value.
  5. Three basic needs: we all need 1 kg for food per day, 3 kg of drinking water and 30kg of healthy air. I expressed it all in kilo’s for the sake of comparison. The quality of our basic needs has to be outstanding since our body consists of the same elements. When we manipulate or polute our basic needs, we do the same with our own living essential. Food to live is totally different from food to stock a supermarket to create a sense of abundance.

Transition from death to alive
The regions that gradually evolve into Sustainocracy through core values driven multidisciplinary cocreation platforms (such as AiREAS or FRE2SH or STIR Academy) have to go through an intense transition. This can only be done when the 4 pillars of the local community carry this responsibility together:

  • Local government: territorial responsibility for infrastructure and public funds
  • Local innovative  entrepreneurship: developing creative solutions
  • Science and education: providing knowledge to the processes
  • Local citizens: social innovation, cultural adaptation and behavior

In order to help these fundamental pillars to interact on the basis of equality the tables are presided by an independent Sustainocrat. The sustainocrat makes sure the core values remain leading and that the multidisciplinary cocreation breaks through its abstract discussions and gets to project definitions and commitment of the diversity of resources with an expected result.

changeuk

Both paradigms coexist and gradually the emphasys will transit from the money dependent trade and control system to the multidisciplinary cocreation. This coexistence is especially demanding for those executives in institutions that are active in both worlds. It becomes easier when Sustainocracy is seen as the regional process for value creation and the old system for value consumption. Looking for local cylcic balance between creation and consumption is a huge step forwards and produces measureable productivity, wellbeing and resilience. A new economic cycle appears…..

Kondratiev

The main driver this time is not technology but the psychosocial health evolution and awareness breakthrough

 

Read more (free download through open access):
http://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-3-319-26940-5

Paul’s Pyramid

On a regular basis I am approached to tell about Sustainocracy, AiREAS, FRE2SH, the key human and natural values and the results of our innovative multidisciplinary approach and society model.

This time it was creative text writer Paul Carremans from Belgium who contacted me. He interviews people with a mission and publishes a free journal for the world wide field of readers of innovative ideas and views. Het publishes in two languages: Dutch and English (curious combination ;-).

Today I received the winter edition and am allowed to share it with you. Hopefully you enjoy it, especially also the other articles, as I did. This table of contents speaks for itself:

TABLE OF CONTENT / INHOUDSTAFEL

p. 3-4 Social Economy

COMPLEMENTARY CURRENCIES FOR A MORE SOCIAL ECONOMY

p. 5-6 Leven en maatschappij

ROUWBEGELEIDING

p.7-8 Women in Business

EXECUTIVE VICE PRESIDENT AT THE AGE OF 30

p. 9 Cursiefje

MONOGAMIE IN BEWEGING

p. 10 Social Economy

CREATING A NEW ECONOMIC REALITY

p. 11 Beroepen in de kijker

ZELFSTANDIGE VROEDVROUW

p. 12 How can I be of service to you?

Hoe kan ik u van dienst zijn?

Here you can download the full paper: PP Winter 2015

Feel free to subscribe to Paul’s work directly. He will appreaciate it.