Volume 12, Number 2

Reflections
The SoL Journal

on Knowledge, Learning, and Change

No, the Poor Will Not
Always Be with Us
Paul Gilding

Working for the Larger
System: An Interview with
Riichiro Oda
Riichiro Oda and
Linda Booth Sweeney

Commentary
Bob Stilger
BOOK EXCERPTThe Power of Creative
Constraints
Pavithra K. Mehta andSuchitra Shenoy

Think Big. Go Small:
The Benefits of Smallholder
Sourcing
David Bright and Don SevilleCommentary
Gustavo Setrini

The Art of Sustainability:
Creative Expression asa Tool for Social Change
Dominic Stucker andJohanna Bozuwa

Commentaries© iStockphoto

Published by The Society for Organizational Learningreflections.solonline.org
ISSN 1524-1734

Andrea Athanas, Amba Janir, andPhonchan (Newey) Kraiwatnutsorn

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PUBLISHER’S NOTE 12.2

I

n January, the United Nations
Secretary-General’s HighLevel Panel on Global Sustainability issued ”a blueprint
for sustainable development
and low-carbon prosperity.”In the report, “Resilient People,
Resilient Planet: A Future WorthFrank Schneider
Choosing,” the panel suggeststhat sustainable development “is not a destination, but
a dynamic process of adaptation, learning and action.
It is about recognizing, understanding and acting
on interconnections – above all those between theeconomy, society and the natural environment.”
In choosing to devote this issue of Reflections to environmental and social sustainability, we hope to expand
our understanding of the growing global crisis andto re-energize our commitment to being part of theprocess described above. These articles from aroundthe world are inspiring examples of our ability to achieve
individual, collective, and systemic well-being inchallenging circumstances.
In the opening essay, Paul Gilding sees two options
for our collective future: we allow global poverty to go
untreated – at great peril to us all – or we redistributethe world’s resources more equitably. Gilding reminds
us that we can’t rely on economic growth, because weare already living well beyond the planet’s capacity.
While he paints a dim picture of what could be, Gilding
is confident that we will choose to do the right thing
and in so doing experience a much-needed transformation of values.
Linda Booth Sweeny’s interview with Riichiro Oda
offers an example of what this kind of transformation
might look like at the individual level. Once wellentrenched in corporate life, Rich decided to pursue
his vision of “doing something for the larger system.”That “something” came at the cost of financial security,
as Rich took a series of career risks to find work withan environmental NGO.

This issue’s book excerpt, from Infinite Vision: How
Aravind Became the World’s Greatest Business Case forCompassion, continues on the theme of what one
person can do in the face of overwhelming challenge.
In 1976, Dr. Govindappa Venkataswamy founded theAravind Eye Clinic to treat India’s poorest populations
for eye disease free of charge. Despite the challenges,
over the past 35 years, Aravind has become a worldclass organization characterized by all the hallmarksof sustainability – financial health, massive scale,continued relevance, and longevity.
Climate change and other factors are making it moredifficult for global food and drink companies to meetthe rising demand from a growing population. “Think
Big. Go Small: The Benefits of Smallholder Sourcing”
presents the business case for companies to integrate
smallholder farms into their supply chains. This innovative strategy is beginning to accrue social, economic,
and business benefits to both parties.
To round out this issue, we include a piece on creative
expression as a tool for social change. Sculptor andpuppeteer Jay Mead has found that by using objects
from the surrounding landscape to create art or designing puppet shows together, people can connect witheach other and with the natural resources around them.
This positive and joyful experience generates a deep
understanding of systems and a sense of hope forour planet’s future.
I hope these articles will touch your mind and heart.
While our minds help us understand, it is through ourhearts that we act – not out of desperation, but aspiration; not out of selfishness or scarcity, but empathy,
compassion, and abundance. It is these shared humanemotions that promise to sustain our efforts over thelong term.

Frank Schneider
Publisher

EXECUTIVE DIGESTEXECUTIVE DIGEST 12.2

No, the Poor Will Not Always Be with Us

The Power of Creative Constraints

Paul Gilding

Pavithra K. Mehta and Suchitra Shenoy

We have long thought that the solution to poverty is
economic growth. Despite some improvements overthe last 35 years, the overall trend is not positive;
1.4 billion people continue to live in extreme poverty.
Compounding the problem is the fact that because
we are already running at 140 percent of the planet’s
capacity, it is impossible to expand the economy tothe extent necessary to increase global incomes. In
response to this perilous situation, Paul Gilding sees
two alternatives: we “let nature take its course,” andallow the poor to starve and their countries to collapse,
or we spread the resources we have more equitably
around the world, not only because it’s the right thing
to do, but because when confronted with the imminent social and ecological crises, it will be the only
viable option.

An almost incomprehensively ambitious vision unsupported by any sort of business plan may sound likea vision doomed to fail. Yet more than 35 years after
the first Aravind Eye Clinic was set up in South India,
Dr. Govindappa Venkataswamy’s mission to eliminate
curable blindness in the country is surpassing eventhe most optimistic expectations. This excerpt from
Infinite Vision: How Aravind Became the World’s Greatest
Business Case for Compassion describes how a precisely
defined set of creative constraints, including neverrefusing to provide care, never compromising on quality, and never relying on outside funding for patient
services, became the basis for a world-class organization. The story of Aravind’s success, characterized by
all the hallmarks of sustainability – financial health,massive scale, continued relevance, and longevity –demonstrates that charity and business can indeed
be compatible.

Working for the Larger System:
An Interview with Riichiro Oda
Riichiro Oda and Linda Booth Sweeney
A decade ago, Riichiro (Rich) Oda walked away froma corporate career to pursue his vision of “doing something for the larger system.” Since then, he has partnered with others to work on sustainability issues
and to expand the application of systems thinking
and organizational learning principles within Japanesebusinesses and NGOs. After the earthquake, tsunami,
and nuclear meltdown in Japan in March 2011, Rich
supported the disaster relief efforts, where he gained afirst-hand look at the dangers of relying on technology
rather than working in tandem with natural systems.
In this interview with systems educator Linda Booth
Sweeney, Rich shares some of the learnings from Japan’s
response to the 2011 crisis that might serve us well
as world citizens facing the uncertainty of large-scale
climate change.

Think Big. Go Small:
The Benefits of Smallholder Sourcing
David Bright and Don Seville
Food and beverage companies are facing a rapidlychanging world. Global demand is growing, yet theplanet’s ability to meet this demand is threatened byfactors such as droughts, land degradation, and water
shortages. Integrating smallholder farms into the
supply chain is one promising way for companies topotentially increase production while contributing
to rural development. At the same time, by sourcing
from small-scale producers, companies can improvecustomer loyalty and enhance their brands. This
briefing summarizes the business case for integratingsmallholder farms into supply chains, the strategies
used, and the advantages that have accrued to bothcompanies and the poorest smallholders. While thechallenges to integration are formidable and therisks for all involved are significant, they are far
outweighed by the benefits.

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EXECUTIVE DIGEST 12.2

The Art of Sustainability:
Creative Expression as a Tool for
Social Change
Dominic Stucker and Johanna Bozuwa
Much of the work to date on sustainability has relied
on intellectual arguments, reams of compiled data, andcomplex charts and graphs. These tools are essential fordeveloping an accurate understanding of social andecological trends, but they often fail to engage people’semotions. Artist Jay Mead uses several different media,
including creations made from found objects, shadow

puppet shows, and giant puppetry, to help people
connect with nature and tap into their personal visionsof a more sustainable future. According to Mead, bystimulating the right side of the brain, this kind of“heartwork” leads to an intuitive understanding ofsystems and new approaches to entrenched dilemmas.
While our current socio-environmental challenges canbe daunting, Mead finds that creating art in a groupsparks a sense of hope as people concentrate on
taking tangible action together.

F E AT U R E | G I L D I N G

F E AT U R E 12.2

No, the Poor Will Not Always
Be with Us
PAU L G I L D I N G
We have long thought that the solution to poverty is economic growth. Despite some improvements overthe last 35 years, the overall trend is not positive; 1.4 billion people continue to live in extreme poverty.
Compounding the problem is the fact that because we are already running at 140 percent of the planet’s
capacity, it is impossible to expand the economy to the extent necessary to increase global incomes. In
response to this perilous situation, Paul Gilding sees two alternatives: we “let nature take its course,” andallow the poor to starve and their countries to collapse, or we spread the resources we have more equitably
around the world, not only because it’s the right thing to do, but because when confronted with theimminent social and ecological crises, it will be the only viable option.

I

was brought up in the Methodist Church, which has always had a particularly strong focus on social issues and poverty. My grandfather Jasper Gilding
was a minister in the church, and he and my grandma Kathleen lived andbreathed those values. As a result, they also manifested strongly in our upbringing, through the attitudes and level of community engagement I witnessedin my parents, Wesley and Ruth.

We can certainly not consider
While we weren’t a devoutlyPaul Gilding
religious family, we went toourselves to be civilized whilechurch every Sunday, and my
we accept extreme poverty.
parents spent their working lives in jobs engaged withdisadvantaged people, from children’s homes to homeless shelters to elder care. One of the interesting side benefits, unusual for a family in suburban Adelaide[Australia], was that we often had people staying at our house from far-flung lands, generally visiting
students or religious people engaged in social issues. One of these visitors was a Vietnamese monk, Thich
Nhat Hanh. Little did I know back in 1965 that he would go on to become one of the world’s great Zen
masters and peace activists, giving birth to the concept of engaged Buddhism. Nhat Hanh formed a friendship with Martin Luther King Jr., convincing him to publicly oppose the Vietnam War. King nominatedNhat Hanh for the Nobel Peace Prize in 1967.
In a rare interview in 2010, Nhat Hanh, now 84, commented on the issues we are discussing here, saying,“The situation the Earth is in today has been created by unmindful production and unmindful consumption. We consume to forget our worries and our anxieties. Tranquilizing ourselves with over-consumption
is not the way.”1

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lift people out of poverty simply by increasing theamount of stuff and wealth in the whole system,without having to engage in the difficult questionof redistribution of wealth – everyone could have
more, so everyone could be happy!

Thich Nhat Hanh

“The situation the Earth isin today has been created byunmindful production andunmindful consumption.”– Thich Nhat Hanh
Very insightful comments, but back when I was
six years old he was just a kind and gentle man
wearing funny clothes! We lived in a simple housein the suburbs, and all this was a natural part ofour lives. Perhaps as a result of this upbringing
and cultural context, I grew up thinking it was
ridiculous that society tolerated so many of ourpeople suffering grinding multigenerational poverty. The older I get, the more ridiculous it seems.

Of course, there has long been a significant social
movement calling for us to take stronger action
to eliminate poverty and realize our full potential
as humanity. Joining millions of people aroundthe world who campaign on such issues have beenrock star activists like Bob Geldof and Bono, whohave engaged the broad public with excellent
campaigns like “Make Poverty History.” But fundamentally, the response has still been premisedon economic growth, the idea that everyone
could have more.
The logic and morality of this call to end poverty
have grown stronger as we have grown richer.
Global economic growth has meant that there is
now more than enough to go around. We produce
more calories, for example, than are needed tosustain the world population. What is true of foodis also true of water, energy, and other resources– economic growth has ensured that today welive in a world of plenty where no one need suffer
extreme poverty with respect to global capacity– the problems lie elsewhere.

There are deep and complex issues involved herethat go to the core of who we are and, more important, who we want to be. They are central to
the questions we’re covering in this book because
as we respond to the coming crisis, our focus ison building a civilized and sustainable society.
We can certainly not consider ourselves to be
civilized while we accept extreme poverty.

And yet, as we know and to our great shame,
1.4 billion people continue to live in extreme
poverty, generally defined as living on less than
$1.25 a day. Free marketers have long argued that
economic growth and global markets would sort
this out, and that argument was not without merit.
Especially in China and India, economic growth
has lifted millions out of poverty and created a
new global middle class. The income differential
between China and the West has decreased
substantially, with GDP per capita increasing in
China a huge sevenfold between 1978 and 2004.1
Throughout this period, China has sustained growth
rates that are the envy of the developed world.

Our solution to poverty has for a long time focusedaround economic growth. We thought we could

But along with these success stories, there are
significant failures. The UNDP calculated in 2002

F E AT U R E | G I L D I N Gthat assuming global progress continued at thesame pace, it would take 130 years to rid the worldof hunger. Progress is also inconsistent among
countries. While the West experienced two decadesof sustained economic growth in the 1980s and1990s, only twenty developing countries managed
to experience sustained growth over that period.
No fewer than forty other developing countries
went through at least five years of stagnation
or a fall in per capita income.
While some of this economic growth trickled
down, a disproportionate amount stayed at the
top. In 2000 the top 1 percent of the world’s population owned around 40 percent of the world’s
wealth, with the top 10 percent owning 85 percent.
At the other end, the bottom half of the world’s

The UNDP calculated that assuming global progress continued at
the same pace, it would take 130
years to rid the world of hunger.
people share just 1 percent of the world’s wealthamong them.2 The story on income is no better,with the top 20 percent of people earning 74 percent of it. Despite improvement in some countries,
the trends are not all good. Whereas the average
African was almost eleven times poorer than
the average North American or Australian/New
Zealander in 1950, they were over nineteen times
poorer by 2000.3 It seems the economic growth

What Is “The Great Disruption”?
In The Great Disruption: Why the Climate Crisis Will Bring On the End of Shopping and the Birthof a New World (Bloomsbury Press, 2011), Paul Gilding makes the case for the inevitabilityof some kind of major economic and ecological crisis on Earth, what he calls “The Great
Disruption.” As partial evidence of this downward trend, he observes:
The year 2011 saw more extreme weather, with droughts, floods, and wildfires breaking records across the United States, while famine gripped the Horn of Africa. The
United Kingdom faced widespread rioting, global stock markets saw unprecedented
volatility, and more countries teetered on the edge of debt default. To top it off,food prices hit record highs while Arctic sea-ice volumes hit record lows.
According to Gilding, despite the fact that these economic and environmental extremes indicatethat we are bumping up against the limits to growth on our planet, we remain deeply entrenchedin our current ways of thinking and acting. We assume that our economy and our lives will continue on as they have in the past until we choose to change them. Gilding believes, however,that because we have not responded sooner to these irrefutable signs of upheaval, we will
now be forced to change in dramatic ways.
And yet, rather than preach a message of doom and gloom, Gilding remains optimistic, which
is why he uses the phrase “The Great Disruption” rather than “The Great Collapse” or “The End of
the World.” Although he believes that our addiction to economic growth will cause us great pain
and lead to a mad scramble for diminishing resources, he is confident that, in the long run, we
will get through the disruption. He sees on the other side a more sustainable, more equitablesociety that will adequately meet people’s needs while also significantly reducing our relianceon global resources.

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over the last 50 years has defied gravity andfloated up rather than trickled down as the theory
argued it would. This is not just about inequality
and fairness, this is often grinding, brutal poverty. According to UNICEF, in 2001, 51 percent
of Ethiopian children under five were stunted
because of chronic malnutrition. Such stories
and statistics can be found around the world.

immorality of poverty, the power of markets andgrowth to drive change, the need for a fairer distribution of growth, the importance of poor countries having strong economies and open markets,and so on have all attracted significant discussion.

Unfortunately, even though economic growth has
been fostering some admirable improvements, it
clearly hasn’t been going far enough. When facedwith such absolute and despairing poverty in thecontext of such massive global wealth, waiting
another 130 years to eliminate hunger is not a
projection to be proud of. Not to mention thequestionable morality of the basic idea – that if
we let the rich get richer and richer, little amountsof their leftover wealth would trickle down tothe poor, bringing them out of extreme poverty.
Explain that to an Ethiopian mother with a childstunted from malnutrition.

That game is up. As we covered earlier, our current
model of economic growth, the one that is bringing some of the poor out of poverty, works tomake the rich richer as well. Of course, this isn’t apractical problem for the poor if it brings them outof extreme poverty. The problem is that the sizeof the economy needed to achieve this outcome is
not possible. So, for example, if we were to aspire
to global incomes at, say, EU levels and have themgrow modestly at 2 percent per year, with thepoor being brought up to that level over the next
forty years, the global economy would have toincrease to fifteen times today’s size by 2050.
Remembering we’re currently running at 140
percent of the planet’s capacity this is of course
an absurd proposition.

Of course, I’m just summarizing here the argumentsthat have been put forward for many decades. The

It’s time to move on. None of these arguments
matter much anymore.

© Brand X Pictures

F E AT U R E | G I L D I N G

Even assuming dramatically less progress onpoverty than that, we would still be so far past
the physical limits that it would remain impossible.
Remember, not difficult or inconvenient or challenging. Impossible.
Understanding this profoundly changes the gamein many areas, but perhaps nowhere more so thanwith respect to poverty and inequality. As well as
removing the solution we’ve been investing ourhope in, the end of growth has far-reaching impacts
on global geopolitics and national social stability.
Perhaps most critical – and affecting every country,
not just the poor ones – it smashes the generalconsensus among the public upon which our
economic model relies: that the system will
ultimately work for everyone if we give it time.
Economic growth has for a long time been therelief valve on the pressure cooker of global society.4
For the poor, whether defined as those in extreme
poverty or those at the bottom end of wealthy
countries, the hope of one day being lifted frompoverty is what often makes the huge differentials
in wealth tolerable. Never having experienced
growing prosperity themselves, some of the poorest do not cling to this hope. But their leaders andthe developing countries’ elite certainly do, andtheir complete geopolitical focus is on lifting theircountries and their people out of poverty througheconomic growth. They see successes in othercountries, and they want their turn. With the endof growth, this source of hope and focus disappears. Do we expect the poor to now accept theirpoverty as permanent, since no more economic
wealth can be created?
In a similar way, the mentality that embraces theprinciple of economic growth allows us to morally
justify the poor in the West as well. The Great American Dream, built upon the foundation of economic
growth, suggests that anyone who works hard
can improve himself and increase his wealth. In
this context, many believe the poor are at least to
some degree lazy or incompetent. They are poorby their own actions or lack thereof. Accepting theend of economic growth means that this idea, atbest highly debatable, can no longer be argued.
If the amount of wealth overall can’t increase, you
can improve your wealth only by taking away fromsomeone else. The American Dream is dead. The
only way to lift the bottom is to drop the top.

Do we expect the poor to now
accept their poverty as permanent,
since no more economic wealthcan be created?
Ouch. Not only do we have to face the end of
economic growth, but now we have to discuss
the most heretical idea of all: redistribution.
We’ll come back to this shortly.
So the stability of our system has depended
upon a gigantic relief valve, which is now broken.
To make matters worse, we can reliably assume
the unfolding crisis that is forcing the end of economic growth will not only undermine reductionsin poverty, it will reverse them and drive the poorback down the scale, because of the severe challenges to water and food supply and an increase
in climatic extremes.
With disparity rapidly worsening and the escaperoute closing, pressure in the system will build up
until it explodes, unless we take alternative action.
How can we respond? I see two alternatives. One
that is put to me when I present on this topic isthat we “let nature take its course,” that this process is the system getting back into balance. Whilepeople rarely put it to me in these terms, what
they mean is we let the poor starve and their countries collapse. Leaving aside the morality of thisposition, it is inconceivable this could happen without massive disruption globally, including profoundand destabilizing global security impacts.
What people don’t think through is what that
actually looks like. We would not, if we took thatchoice, have two, three, or four billion poor people

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quietly going away to die in a far-flung cornerof the world. While we can’t know just how it willdevelop, it doesn’t take much to imagine how it
might unfold.

A global economic crash combinedwith widespread food shortages
would probably see the desperate
slide of nations and regions intochaos.
A global economic crash combined with widespread food shortages would probably see thedesperate slide of nations and regions into chaos.
We would see failed states with nuclear arms andcountless other weapons being taken over bydictators and terrorists. We would see refugees by
the hundreds of millions, if not billions. Yes, somewould be too weak or ill equipped to travel far,but many would move first as their countries
collapsed around them.
This would not be, as we have seen in past crises,
a few million people on isolated roads moving
into refuges camps. This would be whole countriesof people walking into neighboring states, andthey would be desperate, starving people withnothing to lose.
So when we think about “nature taking its course,”
we should consider what that means and how wewould respond at the time. What would we do if
whole nations started to collapse, and what would
the implications be for the global economy? We
could not then deliver widespread aid because
the conditions would be overwhelming and highly
unstable in terms of security. At its most simple
and brutal, would we let whole regions collapse
into chaos and draw lines on the map we would“defend” – declaring no-go zones of regions of
the world? Would our militaries be able to defend
these lines if hundreds of millions of starving,
desperate people approached them? How would
the politics of the countries that hadn’t collapsed
respond to such human calamity?

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In a globalized world there is nowhere to hide,
no barricade high enough, and the whole thing
would be live on the TV in your lounge room. It isa short journey from this kind of situation to theglobal collapse we need to avoid at all costs.
This is why, as we discussed earlier, our militaries
are looking at these issues very seriously. They see
these trends emerging, and they don’t intend to
wait until then to think them through.
The respected British defense think tank theRoyal United Services Institute concluded in acomprehensive review of the subject in 2008:“In the next decades, climate change will drive
as significant a change in the strategic security
environment as the end of the Cold War. If
uncontrolled, climate change will have security
implications of similar magnitude to the World
Wars, but which will last for centuries.”5 Takeparticular note of the last two words – “forcenturies.”
Another study looking at the relationship between temperatures and civil war in sub-SaharanAfrica in recent decades concluded that civil wars
there are likely to increase 50 percent by 2030.
That level of conflict likely means millions ofdeaths – and an international impact.6 A more
complete – and more disturbing – picture isprovided in Gwynne Dyer’s book Climate Wars.7
Dyer, a military and international affairs journalist
with a good understanding of the science, portrays
the collapse of the European Union in the 2030s
as northern African refugees overrun southern
Europe and southern Europeans flee to the northern states to escape an expanding Sahara. In his
scenario, the 2030s also see nuclear war between
India and Pakistan over water resources and a completely militarized U.S.–Mexican border as America
seeks to keep out massive waves of immigrants.
Of course, this might unfold in many different
ways, some far less dramatic than that, but it iscertainly not possible to imagine letting “naturetake its course” not having profound impacts
on the global economy, including developedF E AT U R E | G I L D I N G

countries. The idea that we could pursue a strategy of what Indian ecologist Madhav Gadjil calledislands of prosperity within oceans of poverty isa fantasy that would simply not work in practice.

7

be our militaries, our planes, our guns, “defending”
us from billions of innocent, starving, desperate
people. It will have been our choice, conscious,clear, and premeditated. Sharing doesn’t seemso hard, does it?

So we need to consider this option carefully
before we assume it is a realistic one.
Personally, I would vote against option one. Whatis option two, you say? I hope it’s better than thefirst choice!

The math of this situation is clear. Remember
where we started this journey. The earth is full. It
is not possible for the future to have nine billion
people in a growing quantitative economy. We
can argue we should have fewer people, but mostof the people we are going to have in this situation are either already born or soon will be. Given
that we have limited resources and wealth andcan’t grow either significantly, we have to share.
We have to accept that the only way forward thatis acceptable to any of us is to spread the resources
we have more equally around the world.
Let’s be blunt and clear that this is going to involve those of us in rich countries having less –not just less growth, but less than we have now.
Less stuff, less money, less capacity to build wealthand consume. How tragic is this? Not very tragic,
really, not even sad. In fact, the lesson learned bythose who’ve tried having less, like Colin Beavan
and Michelle Conlin of No Impact fame, and John
Perry from the Compact, is that having less actually made them happier. Scary thought given how
hard we’ve been working to have more, isn’t it.
If you don’t like the idea, then you have to be able
to look yourself in the mirror and accept that theworld’s militaries will be taking control of theprocess that sees option one unfold. These will

© iStockphoto.com

We have to go back to kindergarten. We have tolearn to share with our friends. Unlike in kindergarten, however, now we know that having more
toys doesn’t make us happy, so we can rest easythat sharing won’t decrease our happiness.

Given that we have limited resources
and wealth and can’t grow either
significantly, we have to share.
If we are to choose option two, then we must
recognize that out current approach of relying
on liberalizing markets and unleashing economic
growth is not going to work. We can’t afford therisk that the situation will spiral out of control as
I have described, because it will then be too lateto do anything other than survive.
What we can do right now is launch a significant
shift in how we treat poverty alleviation and development. We need to unleash a flood of people,
funds, technology, and intellect to rapidly addressthese issues. The sooner we act, the better ourchances of preventing the chaos that we willcertainly otherwise face when the Great Disruption is in full swing.
Let’s take this away from the practical level fora moment and consider it in the largest possible

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The sooner we act, the better ourchances of preventing the chaosthat we will certainly otherwise
face when the Great Disruption
is in full swing.
context. What kind of world do we want? It is
incomprehensible that if we put our minds to it,
we couldn’t fix poverty. I’m not saying it’s simple,
but putting all the information in the world intoa phone in my shirt pocket wasn’t simple either,
but we did it. Unpacking the human genome
wasn’t simple, but we did it. So fixing poverty permanently won’t be simple and it won’t be quick,but we can certainly do it. We have the resources
now to do it, we just have to make the decision.
And how cool would it be if we did? Imagine aworld where no one was starving, where everyone
had basic health care and education, where wereflections.solonline.org

could look around the world and say: “You know
what? We’re doing okay.”
What we’re going to experience is a profoundtransformation in values, one that will see us
address what has for so long been a blight on
our civilization. We’ll adopt this course not justbecause it’s the right thing to do, but because
when confronted with the Great Disruption, it
will be the only socially and ecologically viableoption available. This doesn’t make the values
shift any less important or profound – it just makes
the fact that it will happen a lot more certain.
This is not an argument for utopian equality, justfor the elimination of grinding, soul-destroying
poverty. I can’t see any justification that explainsa society where some have private jets while somedie for the want of a bowl of rice or a glass ofclean water. It’s just not right.
We should stop now, while we still have thechance. O

ENDNOTES
1 Bosworth, B., & Collins, S. M. (2008). “Accounting for Growth: Comparing China and India,” Journal of Economic
Perspectives 22, No. 1 (Winter 2008), pp. 45-66.
2 United Nations University World Institute for Development Economic Research. (2006). The World Distributionof Household Wealth, available online.
3 Maddison, A. (2001). The World Economy: A Millennial Perspective, OECD, available online.
4 I first heard this analogy in a conversation with Charles Secret from the New Economics Foundation.
5 Royal United Services Institute. (2007; published April 2008). “Delivering Climate Security: International
Security Responses to a Climate Changed World,” Whitehall Papers 69.
6 Burkea, M. B. (2009). “Warming Increases the Risk of Civil War in Africa,” Proceedings of the National Academyof Sciences 106, No. 49.
7

Dyer, G. (2008). Climate Wars: The Fight for Survival as the World Overheats. Random House Canada.
ABOUT THE AUTHORPaul Gilding is an international thought leader and advocate for sustainability. He has served
as head of Greenpeace International, built and led two companies, and advised both Fortune 500
corporations and community-based NGOs. His website is www.paulgilding.com.

From The Great Disruption: Why the Climate Crisis Will Bring On the End of Shopping and the Birth of a New World,
published 2011 by Bloomsbury Press. Copyright © Paul Gilding. Reprinted with the permission of the author.

F E AT U R E | O D A A N D S W E E N E Y

F E AT U R E 12.2

Working for the Larger System:
An Interview with Riichiro Oda
R I I C H I R O O D A A N D L I N D A B O OT H S W E E N E Y
A decade ago, Riichiro (Rich) Oda walked away from a corporate career to pursue his vision of “doing something for the larger system.” Since then, he has partnered with others to work on sustainability issues and to
expand the application of systems thinking and organizational learning principles within Japanese businesses
and NGOs. After the earthquake, tsunami, and nuclear meltdown in Japan in March 2011, Rich supported thedisaster relief efforts, where he gained a first-hand look at the dangers of relying on technology rather thanworking in tandem with natural systems. In this interview with systems educator Linda Booth Sweeney,
Rich shares some of the learnings from Japan’s response to the 2011 crisis that might serve us well as world
citizens facing the uncertainty of large-scale climate change.

Linda Booth Sweeney: Let’s start by giving readersa sense of your background. How did you become
exposed to the fields of systems thinking and organizational learning? What drew you to working withcompanies and Japanese government agencies on
issues ranging from climate change to corporatesocial responsibility?
Riichiro Oda

Linda Booth Sweeney

Rich Oda: After working for a small factory for 10 years,
I went to the United States for graduate school. I got myMBA and then spent a decade with a multinational corporation. Both in business school and when working on organizational and strategy development for this corporation, I was exposed to some of the principles and techniques of systems thinking. But my real exposure to the heart of systems thinking came in2000 when I received a chain email from a friend. It started by saying, “More than 6 billion people live inthe world today. If this world were shrunk to the size of a village of 100 people, what would it look like?”
It went on to describe the world’s basic demographics, such as distribution of wealth, health, education,
security, and so on.
Sweeney: Was that email based on the work of Dana Meadows?
Oda: Yes, exactly. I didn’t know that at the time, but I later learned that it was a piece derived fromthe “State of the Village Report” by Dana Meadows in 1990.
After reading the email, a couple of things struck me. Working for a multinational corporation with agood mission, vision, and strategy, I was pretty much content with what I was doing. But then looking at
what was happening in the whole world, I concluded that my scope was not big enough. To be working

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R E F L E C T I O N S | V O LU M E 12, N U M B E R 2

reflections.solonline.org

State of the Village Report 2005
If the world were a village of only
100 people, there would be:t "TJBOTt "GSJDBOTt &VSPQFBOTt QFPQMFGSPN$FOUSBMBOE4PVUI"NFSJDB 
Mexico, and the Caribbeant GSPNUIF64"BOE$BOBEBt QFSTPOGSPN"VTUSBMJBPS/FX;FBMBOE
The people of the village would haveconsiderable difficulty communicating:t QFPQMFXPVMETQFBL.BOEBSJOt QFPQMFXPVMETQFBL)JOEJ6SEVt &OHMJTIt 4QBOJTIt 3VTTJBOt "SBCJDt 5IJTMJTUBDDPVOUTGPSMFTTUIBOIBMGUIF
villagers. The others speak (in descendingorder of frequency) Bengali, Portuguese,Indonesian, Japanese, German, French,and 200 other languages.
In the village there would be:t $ISJTUJBOTt .PTMFNTt )JOEVTt /POSFMJHJPVT "HOPTUJDT PS"UIFJTUT
t #VEEIJTUTt BMMPUIFSSFMJHJPOTIn this 100-person community:t XPVMEMJWFJOTVCTUBOEBSEIPVTJOH
t BEVMUTMJWFJOUIFWJMMBHFBOEIBMGPG
them would be illiterate.
t XPVMETVGGFSGSPNNBMOVUSJUJPOt XPVMEOPUIBWFBDDFTTUPDMFBO TBGF
drinking water.
t QFPQMFXPVMEOPUIBWFBOZFMFDUSJDJUZ

t 0GUIFXIPEPIBWFFMFDUSJDJUZ NPTU
would use it only for light at night.
t *OUIFWJMMBHFXPVMECFSBEJPT UFMF
visions, 14 telephones, and 7 computers(some villagers own more than oneof each).
t QFPQMFXPVMEPXOBOBVUPNPCJMF
(some of them more than one).
t QFPQMFXPVMEQPTTFTTPGUIFFOUJSF
village’s wealth, and these would all befrom the USA.
t 5IFQPPSFTUPOFUIJSEPGUIFQFPQMFXPVMESFDFJWFPOMZPGUIFJODPNFPGUIFWJMMBHF
The following is also something to ponder:t *GZPVXPLFVQUIJTNPSOJOHIFBMUIZ
you are more blessed than the million who
will not survive this week.
t *GZPVIBWFOFWFSFYQFSJFODFEUIFEBOHFS
of battle, the fear and loneliness of imprisonment, the agony of torture, or the painof starvation . . . you are better off than
500 million people in the world.
t *GZPVIBWFGPPEJOUIFSFGSJHFSBUPS DMPUIFT
on your back, a roof overhead, and a place
to sleep . . . you are more comfortable thanPGUIFQFPQMFJOUIJTXPSME
t *GZPVIBWFNPOFZJOUIFCBOL JOZPVS
wallet, and spare change in a dish someQMBDFZPVBSFBNPOHUIFUPQPG
the world’s wealthy.
t *GZPVDBOSFBEUIJT ZPVBSFNPSFCMFTTFEthan over two billion people in the world
who cannot read at all.
When one considers our world from sucha compressed perspective, it becomesboth evident and vital that education,
acceptance, and compassion are essential
for the progress of humankind.

Based on Donella Meadows’s 1990 column, this version of the report was adapted and updated in 2005 and is copyright-free.

F E AT U R E | O D A A N D S W E E N E Y

for one company was not enough – I needed to be
doing something for the larger system.
The other thing that struck me about the email
was that while it showed the big picture, it didn’t
cast blame on anyone. I realized how lucky I wasthat I could read, had a job, had something to eat,
had a house to live in, and so on. The email didn’t
make me feel guilty but instead invited me to
exercise my free will and do something positive
regarding the big picture. I found this possibility
very exciting. That was when I decided to leave
my corporate job.
In 2002, I became a freelance consultant and wanted
to work with NGOs. But making the switch wasn’t

easy. I knew of many environmental NGOs but I
didn’t have a story to tell to help me sell my management skills. Then I received an email newsletterfrom Lester Brown, the founder of Worldwatch
and the Earth Policy Institute, who wrote about anewly founded NGO in Japan, Japan for Sustainability (JFS). I thought, “This must be it.” I contacted
JFS and offered my help. They needed a lot of volunteer work, and I came to know Junko Edahiro,
who is the head of JFS. Over time, I became more
involved in the management side.
Dana Meadows died in 2001, and in her memory,
the Balaton Group established the Donella Meadows
Fellowship. Junko became one of the first Fellows.
Through the Balaton Group, Junko met Dennis

The Balaton GroupThe International Network of Resource Information Centers, more commonly known as theBalaton Group, is an international network of researchers and practitioners in fields related tosystems and sustainability. Founded in 1982 by Dennis Meadows and Donella Meadows –co-authors of the ground-breaking book The Limits to Growth – the Group is a cross-disciplinary,multicultural, and intergenerational meeting point for leaders and thinkers in sustainable
development.
Small ad hoc teams of Balaton Group members convene someplace on the planet physicallyor virtually almost every day of the year. They work together on projects that are often initiatedat the annual Balaton Group Meeting or facilitated through the Group’s active network. Balaton
Group members have consistently advanced the boundaries of research and strategy forsustainable development. Over 30 books, more than a hundred conferences, and uncounted
computer models, training programs, planning methods, and educational games have emerged
from collaboration among its members. Balaton Group members and processes also support thework of many other organizations, such as the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
By investing in its members and supporting them in their professional work, the Balaton
Group accelerates and deepens the world’s general understanding of three factors that are
fundamental to sustainable development: a systems orientation, a long-term perspective, andan unshakeable personal commitment to achieving positive change. Equally important, theBalaton Group members strive to be a model of global collaboration, a fundamental requirement for turning “sustainability” from abstract idea into on-the-ground reality.
Membership in the Balaton Group is by invitation only. Since its first meeting, nearly 400
participants from over 40 countries have participated in the group. For further information,please explore the group’s website.

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Meadows, Alan AtKisson, Gillian Martin-Mehers,
and other systems thinkers. She became convincedthat we needed systems thinking in Japan. We
invited them to Japan to hold a series of workshops on systems thinking and organizational
learning while we simultaneously translated
their books into Japanese.
After learning about the heart of systems thinking
from Dana Meadows, I learned a lot about modeling, shared vision, and dialogue from Dennis
Meadows through the workshops we organized
and through his guidance as a mentor. So that’s
how I became exposed to systems thinking andthe learning organization.

A Risk Worth Taking
Sweeney: Let me ask you, Rich, about your transition from the corporate world to your work onsustainability. At first, you didn’t have a job, andthen eventually you worked for a start-up NGO.
How did you support yourself financially, andhow did you convince your family that this was
the right move?

After learning about the heartof systems thinking from Dana
Meadows, I learned a lot aboutmodeling, shared vision, anddialogue from Dennis Meadows.
Oda: Well, initially I had a sharp income cut; itwent down to a fraction of what I used to earn.
When making the transition, I reflected on myfamily’s spending, the amount of income we needed,
and the lifestyle we wanted to pursue. My wifeand I determined that we could settle with a lower
income, just enough to keep going. I also calculated
how much time I could forfeit an income in orderto study and develop professionally. I figured outthat I had about one year, so if I could develop
strong enough skills within a year to startearning income, then I would be OK.

reflections.solonline.org

Sure, there was a risk, but I had calculated it anddeemed it reasonable. I also had the support ofmy family, so I took it.
Sweeney: Looking back, what would you say
about that risk?
Oda: It was a risk worth taking. To change patternsof behavior, we first need to change the structure.
The challenge was to change the structures of
how I live and work but more importantly of how I
think. Dana Meadows’s message moved my heart.
I then used my head to figure out how to achieve
what my heart wanted to do. It worked out very
well. It is so liberating not to lead my life theother way around, guided solely by my head!

Organizational Learning in Japan
Sweeney: I think that story will be helpful fora lot of people. How did you become involved
with SoL?
Oda: Actually, in 2006, Dennis Meadows recommended that we go to your house for a party
where we could meet prominent systems thinkers
such as Jay Forrester, Peter Senge, and John
Sterman. [laughter] Junko and I met Peter for the
first time at your house. We spoke with him about
Dana Meadows, about how The Fifth Discipline had
been received in Japan, and about our work insustainability. Peter Senge is such an inspirational
person that I got interested and decided to help
build a SoL community in Japan.
Sweeney: How many people are in this community now?
Oda: We have more than 100 people on our mailing list. People come and go, but roughly 40 members are active at any given time. We have a varietyof events and opportunities to meet and havedialogue every month.
Sweeney: How are systems thinking and organizational learning generally received in Japanesecompanies?

F E AT U R E | O D A A N D S W E E N E Y

Oda: Right now, they are well received. But inthe 1990s, when the first translation of The Fifth
Discipline was published, they weren’t, for a coupleof reasons. First, many Japanese companies traditionally had a learning orientation and spirit of
teamwork, so people didn’t see these as new ideas.
Second, the 1990s were a time when growth inJapan started stagnating after the burst of theeconomic bubble. Many Japanese companies
sought an MBA-type approach, seeking to incorporate finance, marketing, and performance-based
human resource systems, among others. So they
paid more attention to the technical aspects ofmanagement than to getting a big picture andcreating true learning organizations.
But after taking this approach for a decade,Japanese companies realized that they might beheading in the wrong direction. After 2000, we
started seeing more interest in systems thinking
and learning organization–type approaches. And
then SoL Japan invited Peter Senge to Japan in
2008. I was amazed by how many people were
eager to hear him. When we made the announcement about his talk, within 36 hours, the 300
public seats were fully booked, and we had
a long waiting list.
In the diffusion of innovation curve defined byEverett Rogers, we’re just now shifting from theearly adopter stage to the mainstream stage. His
theory says that, when one-sixth of the people
have adopted a new idea, then the mainstream
will quickly start adopting it as well. Until recently,
I worked mainly with innovators and early adoptersin this field. Since around the time we publishedthe translation of the second edition of The Fifth
Discipline in June 2011, we have started to see
and welcome many mainstreamers to the fieldof organizational learning.

A Devil’s Dilemma
Sweeney: In your work with companies and theJapanese government, what trends have you seenin the level of concern regarding climate and keysocial issues?

Oda: Right now, the situation is very complex
because of last year’s earthquake and tsunami.
But first let me briefly mention the history ofsustainability in Japan.
After the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development in Rio de Janeiro in 1992,
some innovative companies saw the importanceof environmental management. In 2002, weJunko Edahiro
In 1993, Junko Edahiro was inspired
to work in the environmental arena
after her encounter with Lester R.
Brown, then-president of the Worldwatch Institute and a renowned
thinker and writer on environmental
and global issues. She has sincetranslated dozens of books on theenvironment and sustainability,
Junko Edahiro
including Eco-Economy by Lester
Brown, Believing in Cassandra by Alan AtKisson, and An
Inconvenient Truth by Al Gore. She has also written dozens
of books, including How to Fix the Earth, and has delivered
hundreds of lectures on sustainability and related topics.
In 2002, along with other collaborators, she founded Japanfor Sustainability (JFS), which publishes weekly digests andmonthly newsletters that go to more than 7,000 subscribers.
Junko is also an initiator of the Candle Night campaign, in
which more than 5 million people turn off their lights on
the nights of the summer and winter solstices to think
about the environment and peace.
Junko is the founder of three companies, all related to sustainability: E’s Inc., Eco Networks, Inc., and Change Agent, Inc.
In 2011, she initiated the Institute of Studies on Happiness,
Economy and Society. Junko has served on many national
government boards and committees on sustainability policy
issues. She is a visiting researcher at the University of Tokyoand a senior advisor to the Balaton Group. Junko was chosen
as a most successful career woman by Nikkei Career Womenmagazine in 2003 and as one of the “100 Planet Earth Lovers”
at the 2005 World Expo.

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reflections.solonline.org© Stocktrek Images

Aerial view of
the Japanese
GroundSelf-Defense
Force anddisaster relief
crews.

passed a tipping point, and most major companies and many medium-sized companies started
implementing environmental management systems,
sustainability reporting, and multistakeholder
dialogues. Japan for Sustainability was one of
the forces driving this shift. Many companies
embraced climate change, waste management,
and resource efficiency as their key issues, andthen gradually took on other environmental
and social issues.
In 2008, Japan hosted the G8 Summit, during
which the developed countries decided that weshould cut greenhouse gas emissions by at least
50 percent by 2050. Junko was an advisor to thenPrime Minister Yasuo Fukuda, and she strongly urged
him to create a vision statement in which Japan
would strive to cut 60-80 percent of emissions by
2050. He took that advice. So, 2008 was a highlightfor Japan in terms of climate change policy.
The global economic crisis naturally decreased
greenhouse gas emissions, and just when economic
activities were picking up again, we had a severe
earthquake and the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear

Power Plant accident in 2011. Even now, 160,000
people who were evacuated due to high radiationlevels cannot go back their hometowns, and they
don’t know when and if they can ever return.
After this horrible, tragic accident, we are reconsidering our energy policy. Thirty percent of ourelectricity in 2010 came from nuclear power,
but after the disaster, the nuclear power plants
stopped their operations one-by-one for inspection and maintenance. For the plants to restart,
the local governments need to give their approval,
which is currently a delicate and difficult decision.
As of the end of May 2012, no nuclear power
plant is operating in Japan.
This turn of events puts climate change policy
in a dilemma. In the short term, we need to fill a30-percent gap in the supply of electricity throughenergy conservation, renewable energy sources,
and fossil fuels. We have made progress in energy
conservation. We have only had a slight increasein the use of renewables such as solar and wind
power, because the development of this capacity
takes time and capital. These two strategies haveF E AT U R E | O D A A N D S W E E N E Y

not been enough to offset the loss of nuclear
power, so we must rely heavily on fossil fuel, whichemits a lot of CO2 and is expensive.
Japan’s commitment to a 50-percent reduction ingreenhouse gases by 2050 relied on an increase innuclear power. But the accident shattered the mythof safe nuclear power in this earthquake-prone
country (we expect that a plant will experience alarge-scale earthquake every 35 years or so). We’rein a “devil’s dilemma” – caught between the desire
to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and the desire to reduce nuclear hazards. We need to reframe
this dilemma so that we can both mitigate climatechange and reduce nuclear hazards, but this shift
in mindset has been difficult so far.

“We Could Have Saved More”
Sweeney: I can see why. Since the earthquake,
you and others have focused a lot of your attention on the disaster relief effort. Can you tell us
a little about what is happening in that area?
Oda: The earthquake and tsunami on March 11,
2011, affected a large area in eastern Japan, resulting in about 20,000 casualties, 380,000 houses
fully or mosty destroyed, more than 22 million
tons of debris, and at least 17 trillion yens worthof damage to the economic infrastructure. The
tsunami did most of the destruction; it surged
20 to 40 meters over sea level and damaged 500square kilometers along the Pacific coast. It also
triggered three meltdown accidents at the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant. At the peak,almost a half million people stayed in shelters;
about a million were displaced from their homes.
Even though many, many public servants andvolunteers went to help the affected people, thescale of the relief effort wasn’t enough. Roughly
speaking, more than a year after the disaster, wehave managed to recover or reconstruct only
about 20 percent of the overall infrastructure.
Debris, radioactive contamination, mental illness,
unemployment, and the collapse of communities
are still major challenges.

Some local governments worked effectively, whileothers didn’t. The lack of effective coordination
between the national and local governments was
disastrous. While government officials were debating and discussing, not enough resources wereput on the ground for several months. We could
have saved much more, but the overall response
was very slow.

The communities that did welltended to have good teamwork.
They didn’t wait for the national
government but utilized resources
they had on hand and focused onwhat they could do immediately.
Some local municipalities did well because ofshared leadership and solidarity. The communities
that did well tended to have good teamwork.
They didn’t wait for the national government but
utilized resources they had on hand and focusedon what they could do immediately.

Rebuilding Trust
Sweeney: What was the immediate impact of
the earthquake on the food systems and social
systems in Japan? Do you have a sense of what
the long-term effect might be?
Oda: Three prefectures known for fishing andagricultural production, Miyagi, Iwate, and Fukushima, accounted for 99 percent of the losses.
The fishing communities in Miyagi and Iwate lost
virtually all the ports and more than 90 percentof the fishing fleet. The supply chain has bottlenecks everywhere, with severe damage to thefreezing, processing, and packaging facilities.
Near the coastline, 26,000 hectares of croplandwere soaked with salt water, and only 40 percent
has been recovered. The damage to the agricultural and fishing sectors is estimated to be
1.7 trillion yen.

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On top of it all, radioactive substances from thedamaged nuclear power plants are still leaking
into the ocean and atmosphere. The government
found levels of radiation in certain foods thatexceeded the standards and has banned those
products from distribution.
What complicates the matter is that some consumers tend to categorically reject produce from
Fukushima and the surrounding areas even though
only certain foods from specific areas pose safety

The good news is that somelocal leaders stood up, called forsolidarity, and worked acrosstraditional boundaries. The longterm prospects for recovery
depend on our ability to learn
and adapt.
risks. For consumers, it is not just about safety
from a scientific point of view but also about trust.
We need to rebuild a trustworthy food system,as the government did a poor job of communicating the risk of radiation in the early monthsof the crisis.
Restoring lost capital, soil, and trust takes time.
The affected areas are also home to an aging population, and over the past several decades, fewer
people have been drawn to fishing and farming.
The crisis could further fuel the collapse of traditional communities in the region.
The good news is that some local leaders stoodup, called for solidarity, and worked across traditional boundaries. The long-term prospects forrecovery depend on our ability to learn and adapt.

Sources of Resilience
Sweeney: What is the learning opportunity fromthe country’s response to the 2011 crisis that mightserve us well as world citizens facing an uncertain
future?

reflections.solonline.org

Oda: Preserving and restoring resilience is so important in facing crises. Right after the earthquake
and tsunami, some communities were in dire needof water, food, and basic hygiene, but they were so
remote that help did not arrive for several days.
Residents relied on each other and on traditional
wisdom to find ways to fill those needs. Someelders remembered where they could get waterfrom wells or mountain springs that had beenused long ago. When people needed toilets,
they created ones with what they had.
Similar stories exist in industry. Japanese manufacturers are famous for just-in-time (JIT) production
systems. Because of the extremely low levels of
inventory they carry, when something happens tostop the production of even one supplier, it soon
affects the entire supply chain. So, it is natural tothink that JIT is not resilient, and certainly after thecrisis, the Japanese automotive and other industries reviewed their policies regarding inventory
levels and dependence on suppliers.
But what also happened is that when suppliersin Tohoku ceased their operations, virtually all of
the companies in the supply chain showed superb
levels of solidarity by dispatching people, knowhow, production equipment, material, and otherresources to restore and restart the suppliers’
production lines. We can consider this rapid effort
to restore capacity as “meta-resilience.”
When we seek to be efficient, we often neglect
the importance of communities, diversity, andredundancy. But for the long-term sustainabilityof systems, we have found that you need both
efficiency and resilience.
The other lesson is to learn from the past andlisten to ancient wisdom. In Tohoku, over the centuries, large tsunamis have come every 50 years or
so, and older residents know how high the watercan reach. In some communities, ancestors left
markers saying, “Don’t build a house below thislevel.” Those who followed this advice had minimal
damage from the tsunami. But many other communities installed sea walls and felt safe buildingF E AT U R E | O D A A N D S W E E N E Y

17Pilots fly over
the Sendai
Airport inJapan to survey
the tsunami
aftermath.

© Stocktrek Images

on low land near the coastline. By doing so,they increased the potential for disaster.
In speaking with local residents, I learned thatmany recognized that we caused the crisis. Of
course, we didn’t cause the earthquake or tsunami,
but we are certainly responsible for the multiplying impact of the disaster. We had so much confidence in technology that we assumed we were
safe and took risks beyond a reasonable level.
Building high sea walls may have delayed thearrival of tsunamis but it also reduced the feedback that people received. Where people didn’t
have artificial breakwaters, they tended to rely
more on feedback and to follow intuition.

Blind Faith in “Hardware”
Sweeney: It would be really useful for people
to understand how building the breakwaters prevented feedback. You’re saying that if certain communities didn’t have the breakwaters, they would
be more in tune with nature and with working
with it and adjusting to it, right?
Oda: Yes. Many towns along the coast createdsea walls, often as high as 6 meters, and the city

We had so much confidence intechnology that we assumed wewere safe and took risks beyonda reasonable level.
of Kamaishi had just completed construction ofa breakwater that was recognized by Guinness
World Records as the world’s deepest. The structures seemed robust, and thus laypeople thought
they were safe from high tsunamis. But a few
problems persisted. First, the historical data showsthat the highest tsunamis exceeded 6 meters, butmany government planners considered 6-metersea walls to be high enough. Second, a large-scaletsunami is not just a few high waves but rather
massive walls of water that keep coming at a highspeed. With a 7-meter-high tsunami, water canactually reach 20 to 30 meters on land.
People couldn’t imagine a high tsunami goingover a state-of-the-art breakwater, especiallymembers of younger generations who had notexperienced previous tsunamis. They constructed

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reflections.solonline.org© Jupiterimages

houses, schools, train stations, and other structures in low-lying areas. As more buildings wentup, people felt even safer and took more risks.
When the tsunami hit, many younger people
did not climb high enough into the hills. Someeven tried to go back to their homes near thecoast after the first tsunami hit, and they were
swallowed by the bigger second wave. On theother hand, those who survived, often listening
to ancient wisdom, did not assume that the artificial breakwater would prevent inundation fromthe tsunami. When they heard the tsunami wascoming, they climbed into the hills. When theirintuition told them that the evacuation areas were
not high enough, they kept running up. We don’tmean that breakwaters are useless, but in the faceof nature, our blind faith in artificial “hardware”
can be dangerous. We also need to rely on our“software” and our own good judgment.
This tendency is happening elsewhere in the
globe as well. The number of fatal natural disasters
has been increasing at an exponential rate overthe last century. Dennis Meadows explains thereasons as increased population, people moving
into hazardous areas based on the expectationthat development has reduced the risks, and more
extreme events caused by climate change.

A Hunger for More Expansive Thinking
Sweeney: Tell us about the organizational change
work you’re currently doing.
Oda: Junko Edahiro and I co-founded Change
Agent, Inc., in 2005. We offer workshops on systems
thinking and the learning organization, ranging
from training programs to strategic planningworkshops for government officers and corporate
managers. We use organizational development
methods, primarily with companies but also with
NGOs. We try to expand people’s time horizons
and the boundaries of their thoughts and imagination. We show them that systems can behave
in surprising ways through dynamics such as
tipping points and systems resistance, and weteach them important systems principles suchas resilience and self-organization. We also help
them realize that things are interconnected andthat their choices, such as purchasing and invest-

F E AT U R E | O D A A N D S W E E N E Y

ment, have effects on their environment andvice versa.
Our organizations work extensively in the area ofsustainability and corporate social responsibility.
We have created several learning communities
on climate change, food sustainability, and studiesof happiness, economics, and society. We havepromoted multi-stakeholder dialogues on climatechange, energy, and food issues.
I have also found systems thinking to be useful in
my relief work. I helped an NGO conduct a needs
assessment of refugees in Miyagi. I heard many
people say, “We have eaten nothing but rice fortwo months; we want vegetables.” But the real issue isn’t getting someone to bring vegetables into
the area; it is restoring people’s capacity to fulfill
their own needs by rebuilding communities, providing jobs, and so on. Systems thinking helps
people to see past the obvious quick fixes to getto the fundamental issue or challenge.
Sweeney: Systems thinking is fundamental tothinking about change. It’s not something that
ends up being taught in school or business. I thinkpeople and organizations are hungry for that kindof more comprehensive, more integrated, more
expansive thinking, especially when they are
not in a crisis.

Oda: I agree. During a crisis, people rely on theskills they already have. Thus, expanding ourcapacity before disasters occur is fundamental
for crisis management.

By focusing on and feeding
people’s positive aspects, we canachieve our highest aspirations.
Sweeney: Is there any last thing you can tell
us about your hope for our ability to adapt to thechanges that are coming? That would be a great
way to end.
Oda: One lesson I learned from Dana Meadows’s
work is that people are capable of rising to a challenge. During the disaster in Japan, despite poor
leadership at the top level, poor coordination, andlimited human resources, many wonderful people
stood up and took action to make a difference. In
both my work with change agents and my relief
work, I have found that by focusing on and feeding people’s positive aspects, we can achieve ourhighest aspirations. So despite the many challenges
I’ve seen in our relief work and sustainability
efforts, I trust and am hopeful in our humanpotential to achieve great things. O

RESOURCE
Junko Edahiro, TEDx Tokyo, The “De” Generation

ABOUT THE AUTHORS
Riichiro (Rich) Oda is the CEO of Change Agent, Inc., and is general manager of Japan for Sustainability.
He is on the Global SoL Transition Team and is treasurer of the Balaton Group’s board of directors.
Rich is the co-author of several systems thinking guidebooks.
Linda Booth Sweeney is a systems educator and is the author of numerous articles and several books,
including The Systems Thinking Playbook (co-authored with Dennis Meadows) and Connected Wisdom:
Living Stories about Living Systems. Linda serves on the Balaton Group’s steering committee.
Janice Molloy provided editorial support for this article.

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CO M M E N TA R Y 12.2

Commentary
B O B S T I LG E RIBob Stilger

was having lunch in a Tokyo hotel with the Masami Saionji, leader of Byakko Shinko Kai,
a spiritual association that promotes world peace. It was just a month after the triple
disasters of earthquake, tsunami, and nuclear meltdown that battered Japan in March
2011. Masami looked at me across the table and spoke with a level of clarity I had only
previously heard from the Dalai Lama and said, “We caused this.” I immediately understood
what she meant. As Rich says in his article, there’s no denying that a natural disasteroccurred. There’s also no denying that our hubris and greed opened the way for widespread destruction.

Rich opens his article by describing his first exposure to systems
thinking, which came from reading a version of Dana Meadows’sLong before there wassystems thinking, there was 1990 “State of the Village Report.” What impressed him most wasthat “it didn’t cast blame on anyone.” I think we need to take thatsystems living. We lived asstatement a step further. A famous quote, attributed to various
sources, states, “If you’re not part of the problem, you can’t bepart of natural systems.
part of the solution.” It’s a waste of time to look for where toassign blame in a crisis. The real question is, what are we going to
do now? How will we step in and acknowledge our own part in the problem and begin to be part of the solution?
How will we begin to understand our human roles in causing the disaster and discover our human capacity tocause something different to happen now?
Rich’s article provides some of the starting points.

Systems Living
Long before there was systems thinking, there was systems living. We lived as part of natural systems. Turn backthe clock a few thousand years, and Japan was a land of small villages isolated in valleys and framed by precipitous
mountains. The main food was rice cultivated in wet fields, and it took a village to plant and harvest the crop.
Humans worked with each other and the surrounding ecosystem, or they died. No big mysteries here. Nature
wasn’t an adversary to be controlled; it was something to be listened to and worked with. Death was the
only alternative.
Shinto, the belief structure and worldview that lies beneath Japanese culture, is a systemic understanding of
the world. Everything is connected. Everything contains the face and the essence of god. Everything must be
honored and appreciated. Over the last 60 or so years, this way of seeing and being in the world has been increasingly ignored. Japan, like its modern counterparts in the rest of the planet, has used technology to control nature
and act as if using planetary resources to create more and more consumable goods would produce happiness.

C O M M E N TA R Y | S T I L G E RJapan lost a world war, and the victors restructured the country to be a more viable economic partner. More linear,“modern” management practices were brought into Japanese business. Unrestrained growth to compete in a
growing global economy became the primary objective. Nature could be controlled through a variety of technicalinterventions. Compartmentalization could enhance productivity. Business, and the world, could be organized
and controlled.
But Japan prospered for eons because it stood with nature rather than against it. Rich writes about how, in somevillages, the tsunami damage was minimized because people listened to the elders who warned about the longreach of future tsunamis. This wasn’t just an oral tradition;
along Japan’s entire coast, one finds stone markers carved
People are stepping outside thewith the words “Do not build below this point; the tsunamis
will come again.” This ancient knowledge of living as part
notion that someone else will fix
of a system was disregarded as Japan’s so-called modernthings for them. They are using theization continued after the war.

What Happens Now?
The question, of course, is what happens now? How will
Japan respond to the triple disasters of March 2011? How
might Japan’s way forward provide an example for the
rest of the world?

energy of the crisis to step forwardwith their ideas and resources
and insights – differentiating
themselves within the collective
rather than standing apart.

The government is working as fast as it can to rebuild theregion. In a crisis, most people just want to get back to the old normal, and that’s what government almost inevitably tries to do. It’s almost impossible for it to do any more than try to rebuild the past. It doesn’t matter that thepast wasn’t working so well. Aging population, low birthrate, deteriorating infrastructure, stagnant economies werealready problematic in the Tohoku region where the earthquake, tsunami, and nuclear meltdowns occurred. But
how does something else get created?
I remember hosting a meeting in Tokyo just a few weeks after the triple disasters. About 50 businesspeople arrived
quietly, not sure they were ready to talk with anyone about what happens next. The air was still, tentative, careful.
Three hours later, the room was filled with excitement, as a feeling subtly emerged that “we’ve been released froma future we did not want.”
This is the impulse, the yearning present just beneath the surface these days. What does it mean? Rich touches on
this in his article as well. People are turning to one another again. They are beginning to have conversations about
the things they actually care about. The wisdom of the elders is being sought out and listened to. Equally important, elders are listening to the younger generation as well. Building resilient communities is an intergenerational
phenomenon. We can only do it together.
People are stepping outside the notion that someone else will fix things for them. Many no longer believe that they
can rely on government to be responsible for their lives. They are using the energy of the crisis to step forward with
their ideas and resources and insights – differentiating themselves within the collective rather than standing apart.

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Much of what is being proposed won’t work inthe short run. That’s always the way when something new is tried. But if people can stay connectedwith each other and remember the power of their
dreams, another world is possible.

© MIXA

22“Learning How to Find Happiness”

This is the force that is currently arisingin Japan. People want to think about
how to be happy. Perhaps that is whata crisis provokes. It is a big slap in theface, a wakeup call.

I first came to Japan as a student in 1970. The
woman who would become my spouse and themother of our now 25-year-old daughter was also
a student. Our personal lives have been enrichedby Japan and a vibrant multigenerational relationship with our host family in Kyoto. In those 40
years, I don’t think I ever heard people in Japan
talk about happiness. Since March 11, it comesup constantly when we draw people together
to talk with each other about the future. In fact,
in a community workshop I recently hosted in
Shikoku, the smallest of the four main islands,
one person remarked, “I’ve never thought about
the future very much before, but when I think
about it now, I realize that the future is about
learning how to find happiness.”

This is the force that is currently arising in Japan.
People want to think about how to be happy.
Perhaps that is what a crisis provokes. It is a big slap in the face, a wakeup call. When the immediate threat has
subsided and at least a temporary respite created, people ask more fundamental questions about the nature of
our lives. Joy and grief are close companions, and both are brought to light when disaster strikes.
I don’t have a crystal ball. The future looks very uncertain. But the one thing I am willing to predict is that we’regoing to have more and more disasters and systems that collapse. How will we use these to create a new future?
How will we transform our unsustainable practices into more resilient ones? Japan may help us learn some of
the answers. O
ABOUT THE AUTHORBob Stilger, PhD, spent 25 years as the co-founder and executive director of a community development
corporation in Spokane, Washington, and then a decade with The Berkana Institute. Bob recently founded
The Transformation Institute to work with ideas for how disaster can be a springboard to create resilient
communities.

B O O K E X C E R P T | M E H TA A N D S H E N O YBOOK EXCERPT 12.2

The Power of Creative Constraints
PAV I T H R A K . M E H TA A N D S U C H I T R A S H E N OY
An almost incomprehensively ambitious vision unsupported by any sort of business plan may sound like a vision
doomed to fail. Yet more than 35 years after the first Aravind Eye Clinic was set up in South India, Dr. Govindappa
Venkataswamy’s mission to eliminate curable blindness in the country is surpassing even the most optimistic
expectations. This excerpt from Infinite Vision: How Aravind Became the World’s Greatest Business Case for Compassion
describes how a precisely defined set of creative constraints, including never refusing to provide care, never compromising on quality, and never relying on outside funding for patient services, became the basis for a world-classorganization. The story of Aravind’s success, characterized by all the hallmarks of sustainability – financial health,massive scale, continued relevance, and longevity – demonstrates that charity and business can indeed becompatible.

A“

Ann McGee-Cooper

Pavithra K. Mehta

ll meaningful design begins with empathy,” says
Tim Brown, “and to me,
Aravind is a model of what canbe achieved through design.”1
Coming from him, this is nosmall praise. Brown is CEO of
IDEO, one of the most influential design firms in the world.

In 2005, he visited Aravind on
a tour coordinated by Acumen
Fund, an organization that uses
philanthropic capital for social
investments (Acumen had
supported Aravind in a teleSuchitra Shenoy
medicine initiative). “What I
saw in India, and particularly at Aravind, played a big
part in how I’ve moved forward with IDEO,” says Brown.
How so? “Innovation, in some fundamental way, islinked to constraints,” he says, “and Aravind is an organization that operates within a very unique set of selfimposed constraints. That automatically eliminates
ordinary solutions.”

Adapted from
Infinite Wisdom:
How Aravind Became
the World’s Greatest
Business Case forCompassion
Pavithra K. Mehta andSuchitra Shenoy
Berrett-Koehler, 2011

Reprinted with permission from the publisher. From Infinite
Wisdom: How Aravind Became the World’s Greatest Business Casefor Compassion by Pavithra K. Mehta and Suchitra Shenoy,© 2011 by CharityFocus Inc., Berrett-Koehler Publishers, Inc.,San Francisco, CA. All rights reserved.

Brown’s argument is compelling: Empathy and selfimposed constraints can force you beyond obvious
options. What you then get, he points out, is “the chanceof a breakthrough solution instead of an incremental
innovation.”

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The developing world faces constraints of money,skilled labor, and other resources. But Brown is talking
about something other than these obvious limitations.
“Dr. V brought in his own set of constraints when heinsisted on a particular mode of delivering care. He
said it had to be high-quality, compassionate care, andthat it also had to be affordable and sustainable,” Brown
says. He is referring to the unwritten rules that Dr. V
decided Aravind would follow:
1. We cannot turn anyone away
2. We cannot compromise on quality
3. We must be self-reliant
In summary, these rules meant that whatever Aravind
chose to do, it would have to do it with uncompromising
compassion, excellence – and its own resources.
Dr. Govindappa Venkataswamy

The History of the Aravind Eye Care System
In 1976, Dr. Govindappa Venkataswamy, a retired surgeon, founded an eye clinic in South India with his
siblings and their spouses. Dr. V, as he became known, didn’t have a business plan or money, but he had
a mission to eliminate curable blindness. Today, the Aravind Eye Care System is the largest and most productive blindness-prevention organization in the world. During the last 35 years, its six eye hospitals havetreated more than 32 million patients and performed more than 4 million surgeries, the majority either
ultrasubsidized or free. Even more remarkable, Dr. V has insisted on financial self-reliance, resolving not
to depend on government aid, private donations, or foreign funding.
The organization invests tremendous energy in bringing eye care to villagers too poor to seek out its services.
Its policies ensure that all patients get the same high standard of care. The same doctors work across bothfree and paid services. Defying the assumption that high-quality surgery cannot be performed at highvolumes, Aravind’s doctors are among the most productive in the world, averaging 2,000 cataract surgeries
a year, against the United States’ average of under 200. The efficiencies that enable this achievement help
make Aravind one of the lowest-cost, highest-quality eye care systems in the world.
Dr. V passed away in 2006, but Aravind continues to thrive. Based on his vision, the Aravind model
demonstrates the power of integrating innovation with empathy, and business principles with service.

B O O K E X C E R P T | M E H TA A N D S H E N O Y

Aravind’s Revenues and Expenses (1980–2010)
30
28
26
24
20
18
16
14
Source: Aravind Eye Care System

Millions of $U.S.

22

12
10
8
6
4
2
2010

2005

2000

1995

1990

1985

1980

0

— Revenue — Expenses
Today, numerous initiatives in India provide free eyecare to those in need, and at least a dozen of themoffer quality that is world-class. Where Aravind differs
dramatically from these other efforts is the magnitudeof its work coupled with its astonishing financial selfreliance. No other eye hospital in the world comes close
to handling Aravind’s routine outpatient and surgicalvolumes. And no other organization in the field provides
its services to the poor at this scale, within such arobustly self-sufficient model.

øOver the years, Aravind has proved sustainable inmultiple ways. It is an organization that has quadrupled
its growth every decade, successfully navigated multiple leadership transitions, and consistently upgradedthe quality and range of services provided. It demonstrates all the boons of sustainability: financial health,massive scale, continued relevance, and longevity.

Naturally it is Aravind’s financial sustainability that
attracts the most attention. In 2009–2010, Aravind
made an operating surplus of approximately $13 million on revenues of $29 million.2 A Forbes magazine
article in 2010 reviewing Aravind’s profitability called it“a performance worthy of any commercial venture.”3
Oddly enough, financial self-reliance started out low on
Dr. V’s list of priorities. Certain unpleasant experiences
bumped it up very quickly. Dr. V’s first application fora bank loan to start Aravind was rejected, and his soleattempt at fund-raising yielded more embarrassment
than riches. He had visited a neighboring industrial
town to solicit donations, and “he came back with about
1,500 rupees [roughly $33],” says his brother GS. “He
said, ‘Because people don’t know us, they thought that
this was some sort of begging.’” The misconceptions
came as a painful shock. It had not crossed Dr. V’s mind
that people might view his fund-raising efforts as an
attempt to secure easy cash for his retirement.

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In retrospect, the sting of that experience proved invaluable. It spurred Dr. V to explicitly redefine the roleof money in his organization. “We’re not going to ask
people for donations anymore,” he announced to his
brothers and sisters. “We just have to do the work. The
money will follow.” It became one of his most-repeatedphrases: Do the work. The money will follow. This serveand-deserve rule of Dr. V’s forced the organization into
an improvised independence and fostered some ofits most novel systems.

øIn the field of international development, money canbe a touchy subject. To carry out their core work, many
nonprofit organizations rely on external funding fromindividual donations or grants from foundations. An
unspoken assumption that business and charity do not
mix often gives rise to a tension between purse stringsand heartstrings.

An unspoken assumption thatbusiness and charity do not mix
often gives rise to a tension
between purse strings andheartstrings.
In this context, Aravind manages to hold two seemingly
contradictory principles with ease: self-sustainability
and universal access to its services. Dr. V seeded these“constraints” in the organization without a preset plan.
But the founding team, over time, evolved effective
systems for working within them. “In our experience,
self-sustainability is a dynamic process, not a static
destination,” says Thulsi [Ravilla, executive director of
Aravind’s training and consulting division]. “It emerges
from a complex interaction of organizational, technical,
and human factors.” He maintains that Aravind’s own
financial health and independence are by-products

reflections.solonline.org

of careful attention to pricing structures, free andpaying patient volumes, effective resource utilization,
standardization, and an extremely cost-conscious leadership. In other words, at Aravind, self-reliance is moreof an ethos than an end goal.

ø“Zero can be a legitimate price point,” declares Thulsi.
This is his succinct response to the to-charge-or-notto-charge dilemma. Aravind’s pricing strategy goesbeyond the traditional notions of free care. It positions
free service not as a charitable handout but as one ofmany options in a self-selecting fee system. Its pricerange – from zero to market rates – is built around aculture that respects every patient’s right to selection.
“Choice is fundamentally important,” says Dr. Aravind
Srinivasan, the hospital’s administrator. “We all exercise
it when we go to a supermarket and choose what wewant from an array of options. Our choices are based on
subjective combinations of aspiration and affordability.
We believe in empowering our patients with that kindof choice.”
The organization also believes that a pricing model offering free service as one option within a broader range
can serve more patients in need than a system that
does only charity. Aravind’s consulting work with an eye
hospital named Sadguru Netra Chikitsalaya, in the townof Chitrakoot in rural Madhya Pradesh, is a case in point.
Until 2002, the Chitrakoot hospital relied heavily on
donor funding and focused exclusively on the very poor.
The hospital’s trustees believed that charging patientswould corrupt the institution’s charitable focus. Most of
its patients paid nothing, and the hospital ran at a loss.
But when B. K. Jain, the hospital’s director, visited Aravind,he experienced the power of a different approach.
With Aravind’s assistance, Jain persuaded the Chitrakoot trustees to adopt a tiered pricing system and to
broaden its patient base to include wealthier patients.

B O O K E X C E R P T | M E H TA A N D S H E N O Y© iStockphoto.com

They sought Aravind’s expertise to put together adetailed plan of action. Along with implementing the
new fee structure, they developed the skills to do cataract surgery with intraocular lens implants (replacing
a less advanced procedure) and also began runningfree eye camps in the community. The ripple effectwas dramatic. Five years later, for the first time in its
existence the Chitrakoot hospital was breaking even.
And it was actually making a surplus.4
Most significant was the fact that the number of freeand highly subsidized patients served annually had
increased by as much as 45 percent, and the hospital’scataract surgery volumes had more than doubled.5 The
profits from paid services made it possible to provide
cataract surgery with IOLs for its free patients as well –something it had not been able to do before. In addition, the hospital was able to develop specialty services
and retain five times the number of ophthalmologists,

The organization believes that a
pricing model offering free service
as one option within a broader
range can serve more patientsin need than a system that does
only charity.
drastically reducing its earlier dependence on volunteer medical expertise.
In these ways, the user-fee system at Chitrakoot, farfrom compromising the mission, proved a tremendous
tool for reliably reaching more people in need. It alsoenabled significant upgrades to services and overall
program strength. To Aravind’s leadership, financial

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Most of Aravind’s paying patients
have no idea that by choosing to
pay for services, they are indirectly
contributing to someone else’s care.
autonomy is important not in and of itself, but precisely
because it allows for this greater command over the
many dimensions of quality.

ø
People often wonder if mistrust creeps in when organizations serving the poor charge market rates for somepatients. “That kind of confusion doesn’t happen at
Aravind,” says Thulsi, “because our prices are transparent and compare favorable with local markets.”

Aravind’s pricing strategy aims to make it easy forpatients to seek treatment; there are no hidden costs.
“We don’t add on charges for individual tests – likerefraction, ocular pressure, urine sugar,” Thulsi explains.
“To us, it is unethical to offer those services with separate price tags. These are basic tests that need to be
done. They are all included in the $1 consultation feethat is valid for up to three visits.” This outpatient fee(which applies only to paying patients) has not been
increased in over ten years.
“From the very beginning, our systems have been
designed so that there is no incentive for us to exploit
a patient financially,” Thulsi says. “For instance, we don’t
accept commission for patients that we refer outside for
MRI or CAT scans.” The management regularly reviews
clinical protocols to eliminate any tests or medications
that do not contribute to improving outcomes orTotal Surgeries Performed as of May 2011: 4,035,582
1,600,000
1,400,000
1,200,000
1,000,000
800,000
600,000
400,000
200,0000
1978–1982

1983–1987

1988–1992

1993–1997■ Paying■ Minimal

Source: Aravind Eye Care System

1998–2002

2003–2007 2008–2012*■ Free*2012 Data ProjectedB O O K E X C E R P T | M E H TA A N D S H E N O Y

29patient comfort. Meetings are held to analyze the number of re-operations, lengths of stay at the hospital, andthe reasons behind postponed surgeries. Prescriptions
for medicines and tests are scrutinized to ensure thatthey are advised only when necessary and of real benefit to the patient. The overall goal is to reduce any needless cost and inconvenience to those seeking care. It isan approach that continuously builds fiscal and operational efficiency into the system, as well as patient trust.

ø“I would very much like to come to Aravind Eye Hospitalto spend some time learning and to seek your advice”
is a sentiment that Thulsi encounters in his inbox withincreasing frequency. It is March 2010, and the man
writing in today is Dr. Bharatendu Swain, a plastic surgeon
with decades of experience at one of India’s well-known
corporate hospitals. His passion, however, is Aakar Asha,a grassroots, nonprofit initiative he founded. It performs
free restorative surgery for people who are motor impaired and unable to afford the medical attention theyneed. Swain has studied Aravind’s model from a distance and wants to learn more about it in order tobetter shape his own initiative.
The easy accessibility of Aravind’s leadership would
surprise most in the private sector. The door to Dr. V’s
office, for instance, is always open. Anyone can walk in© Wavebreak Media

There is an interesting flip side to the issue of public
perception. Most of Aravind’s paying patients, whileaware of Aravind’s vast work in the community, haveno idea that by choosing to pay for services, they areindirectly contributing to someone else’s care. Aravind
deliberately steers clear of advertising this pay-it-forward
angle to its high-end customers. Touting charitable
services can work against your reputation in a world
where quality and charity are not necessarily linked,
and Aravind leadership believes that when it comes topersonal health, value for money and quality of careare priorities that tend to outweigh generosity.

“Where large need exists, you canbuild a much more sophisticatedorganization with a roadmap aimed
at scale. Boutique interventions,even if they bring some kind of
personal satisfaction, won’t makethe needed impact.”
without an appointment. Thulsi’s response to Swainis swift, warm, and encouraging. He intuits a genuine
dedication and resonance of approach, and soon after
Swain’s e-mail, a full two-day itinerary is set up, including
meals and a stay at the Aravind guesthouse. In Madurai,
Swain will tour the hospital, watch live surgeries, meet
Aravind’s senior management, and be escorted to an

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eye camp. This hospitality is typical of Aravind – even,as in this case, with a stranger whose work is tangential
to its own mission.

ø
Swain has a neatly trimmed salt-and-pepper mustache
and a courteous air. Seated in Thulsi’s office, he quickly
turns the discussion to questions of scale. His teamis now doing 500 complex reconstructive surgeries ayear, at no cost to their patients.6 Swain wants to expand

Trust must be built and maintained
across the entire patient spectrum.
to do ten times that number and asks Thulsi for histhoughts. Thulsi is candid in his answer: “Where large
need exists, you can build a much more sophisticatedorganization with a roadmap aimed at scale. Boutiqueinterventions, even if they bring some kind of personal
satisfaction, won’t make the needed impact. What’s theestimated need where you are?” Swain has done hishomework. “Roughly 415,000 people in my home state
suffer from disability issues that we can treat,” he says.
“There’s your case for scale,” says Thulsi.
The people whom Swain’s organization treats are
typically healthy, apart from their motor impairment.
All they require is a one-time surgical intervention. The
needed intervention has low morbidity and next to zeromortality rates. The transformation in a patient’s life isdramatic (in all these respects, the treatment parallels
cataract surgery). But Swain must consider the issue ofsustainability as his initiative grows. He is curious about
Aravind’s enviable patient equation that balances its
service between the very poor and those able to pay.
“So how did you arrive at the 60:40 ratio between yourpoor and well-to-do patients?” Swain asks. Thulsi smiles.
“It just happened,” he says, adding, “that ratio isn’t

reflections.solonline.org

fixed – the break-up is actually slightly different now.”
In Aravind’s initial years, he explains, free services were
provided on an ad hoc basis at the discretion of its doctors. If the attending surgeon knew or suspected that apatient could not afford surgery, then he or she waived
the charge. Often the hospital had sufficient income
to cover the expense, but when it did not, Aravind’s
founders dug into their own pockets to make up the
difference. By 1980, the leaders created a formal policy
giving patients the freedom to choose whether or not
to pay for services. The 60:40 ratio of nonpaying andultrasubsidized patients to those paying market rates
emerged organically from there. In recent times, withthe growth of the economy, that ration has shifted
to 53:47.
“Currently at Aravind, for every 100 patients treated,
the typical breakdown is that 47 will choose to pay
close to market rate, 26 will come to us on their own
and opt for care at very minimal cost [roughly $15], 27
will choose to come in through our outreach efforts
and be treated for free,” Thusli tells Swain. “The annual
growth rate in terms of patient volume is about 10
percent,” he says, “but the revenue growth rate is muchmore, because we are finding in recent years there isa real migration from free to paying. Our eye camps
influence health care–seeking behavior in thecommunity. Now the percentage of patients opting
for free treatment is coming down, and the percentage
electing to pay steeply subsidized rates is increasing.”
While the paying-to-free ratio is not set in stone, it isclosely monitored. Trust must be built and maintained
across the entire patient spectrum. If either end loses
faith in Aravind’s services, the entire ecosystem of theorganization is thrown off balance. Losing free patients
increases unit costs, affects Aravind’s reputation in
the community, and reduces training capacity. Losing
paying patients augurs a different set of ills. The organization knows this from walking the delicate balance
between the two.

B O O K E X C E R P T | M E H TA A N D S H E N O Y© Jenny Matthews/Sightsavers

for a more comfortable and modernized setting. But
in the 25 years since its inception, Aravind’s inpatient
facility had not undergone any major renovations.
It was time to update more than the hospital’s accommodations and amenities. Aravind’s leadership also
realized that it needed to place more emphasis on additional surgeries beyond cataract. The market for cataract
surgery had matured and was becoming highly competitive. Pushed by this reality and by its own mission,
the leadership decided to identify other areas of dormant
need in eye care. Community surveys for the potentially

While the large volume of patientsat Aravind forms the engine of themodel, the system needs a regularflow of patients in order to be
optimally efficient.

Thulsi briefly sketches for Swain a situation in thelate 1990s when the proportion of paying patients at
Aravind plunged to 18 percent. Projections showed thatin as little as two years that figure would plummet to
10 percent. Senior leadership held a series of emergency
hospital-wide meetings. It wasn’t just the percentages
that triggered the red flag. “The real concern was that
we were off-sync. We weren’t reflecting the market,”Thulsi says. There was an upward mobility in the environment that was not showing up in Aravind’s patient
trends. Once the crisis was spotted, patient surveys
were conducted and the results scrutinized for insights.
Aravind’s leaders learned that the problem was not
because something had changed – it was because notenough had. As India’s economy had grown and standardsof living had gone up, patients were willing to pay more

blinding conditions of glaucoma and diabetic retinopathy revealed a high number of undiagnosed patients.
Not as common as cataract, these conditions would
require a certain scale to make delivery viable and todevelop the necessary treatment expertise. With its
ability to provide high-quality, high-volume care,
Aravind was well placed to provide such treatment. A
more deliberate focus on subspecialties was thus born.
“We also looked at the surgical acceptance rate, patient
counseling methods, waiting room ambiance, and cafeteria food,” says Thulsi. “Then we worked on improving
all these different things simultaneously. It took us
about two to three years to course-correct and bring
the ratio back to healthy equilibrium.”
The experience strengthened the case for paying
patients in the Aravind system. While providing highquality eye care to those who can afford to pay little
or nothing is an integral part of serving its mission,

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Aravind’s paying patients are key drivers for advancing
quality, service breadth, and medical expertise. “We lookat financial viability as an indicator of our relevance,”says Thulsi. “If people are willing to pay [for something],
then there is a need for it. Serving people who can
pay helps keep you on your toes.”

Self-reliance is more about amindset than it is about money.
It is a particular way of viewing
your resources and putting themto the best use possible.
“Do you have a donor strategy?” Swain queries. Thulsi
breaks into one of his infectious laughs. “We’re not agood group to ask that question to because fund-raising
really isn’t one of our strengths,” he says. “Dr. V choseto grow slowly and with internal resources.”
He shares that Aravind’s core patient care services
as well as all of its new hospitals are entirely funded byrevenue from its paying patients. “The founders did notwant the eyesight of the community held ransom byexternal resources,” he explains. “In the past, we haveeven turned down people’s offers to support our freesurgeries.” He then makes an important clarification:“But for other areas, like eye care research, we welcome
outside funding, and for many of our pilot initiatives
we often actively seek grants.”
Over the years, Aravind has received funding andtechnical support from an array of foundations, grantagencies, companies, and individual donors. These contributions are expressly earmarked for areas outsideof core patient services and represent only a small percentage of Aravind’s total income. In 2009, for instance,
grants and donations accounted for 6 percent (roughlyreflections.solonline.org$1.8 million) of Aravind’s income, compared with the72 percent that was earned through patient revenue.7
Ultimately, in Thulsi’s view, where money comes fromis not nearly as important as how it is put to use. One
organization might be extravagant with earned resources while another is frugal with donations. Basedon Aravind’s experience, Thulsi has come to believe that
self-reliance is more about a mindset than it is aboutmoney. It is a particular way of viewing your resources
and putting them to the best use possible.

øOutside Aravind-Madurai, an orange bus rumbles down
the street, lopsided with four young men hanging on
for dear life in the open doorway. Behind it comes aman on a bicycle, with egg crates stacked higher thanhis head, wobbling precariously. There is a widespread
talent in India for carrying more than what is consideredsensible, and doing so with unruffled ease. You see it at
Aravind too. Throngs of patients that would overwhelm
many care providers are considered par for the course
here. Aravind’s hospital in Madurai alone sees roughly
2,000 patients every day. Collectively, its entire networkof hospitals examines 7,500 patients daily.
While the large volume of patients at Aravind forms
the engine of the model, the system needs a regularflow of patients in order to be optimally efficient.
“Managing demand fluctuation is critical to maintaining
quality and controlling costs,” says Thulsi. Patient volumes
are regularly scrutinized. Using data from past years,
seasonal trends, and real-time monitoring, the management works hard to smooth out demand patterns andprotect against dramatic peaks and troughs that stressthe system. For the convenience of their patients,
Aravind’s hospitals have a walk-in, no-appointmentneeded policy that makes it harder to control volumes.
This vulnerability is further compounded by Aravind’s
practice of conducting eye camps.

B O O K E X C E R P T | M E H TA A N D S H E N O Y© Anita Shan/Community Eye Health Journal

In the mid-1980s, the surgical load on Mondays would
shoot up drastically because of the busloads of people
brought in from weekend camps. By Wednesday, patientnumbers would drop back to a more normal level.
Dealing with this spike-and-dip cycle was frustrating forstaff and created inefficiencies. Aravind’s approach tothe situation was interesting. Instead of doing the mostobvious thing and redistributing camps across the week
to comfortably flatten the spike, it looked for ways tosignificantly increase patient volumes throughout thewhole week – so that old “surge” numbers would be
the new norm.
To pull this off, Aravind’s leaders first analyzed the bottleneck in patient admissions. Looking at the data, theyrealized that a considerable number of patients were
dropping out of the system after being told by a doctor that they needed surgery. Further investigation
revealed a missing step in the process. Patients needed
an opportunity to have their doubts and fears about
undergoing surgery addressed at length by a staff member. A cadre of counselors was promptly conceived anda new division for patient counseling implemented.

Aravind’s hospital network now has 164 patient counselors. Its systems ensure that a counselor meets witheach patient advised to have surgery; she explains theentire process, along with all the various options available, and fields any questions the patient might have.
Within two years of introducing counselors, direct
admissions per week increased fourfold. In the same
period, Aravind’s eye camp volume also increased by
20 percent. But by then, the systems in place wererobust enough to handle the increase without a hitch.
This approach to bottlenecks and capacity barriers at
Aravind leaves no room for complacency. Dr. Usha Kim,
one of the organization’s senior doctors, recalls walking
into Dr. V’s office with two other colleagues in 1999
after first hearing of his plans to build a fifth hospital in
Pondicherry. “We said to him, ‘Look, this is a bad idea.
We don’t even have enough doctors in Madurai rightnow. We have four hospitals already; we’re not interested in starting another one,’” says Usha.8 Dr. V listened
to them quietly and nodded his head. “If you feel thatway, we won’t do it,” he said. “But then after that, hecalled us each in to meet him individually,” says Usha,laughing at the memory. “He called me the next day and

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said, ‘You know, when you think you’ve grown enough,that’s when you start to decline. It means you’re walking
downhill instead of climbing.’” Aravind-Pondicherry wasinaugurated in 2003, and Dr. V’s perspective on growthwould slowly filter through the organization’s leadership.
“I’ve matured into the idea that when you’re in a comfort zone, you start to deteriorate,” Usha says. “You needto have some kind of pressure or you don’t evolve.
Dr. V was right – it isn’t about staying where you areand feeling cozy.” O

reflections.solonline.org

Where Aravind differs dramaticallyfrom these other efforts is themagnitude of its work coupledwith its astonishing financial
self-reliance.

ENDNOTES
1 Tim Brown, interviewed at the IDEO offices in Palo Alto, California, December 2007.
2 Data supplied by Finance Department, Aravind Eye Care System, 2010.
3 Karmali, N. (2010). “Aravind Eye Care’s Vision for India,” Forbes Asia (March 15 issue).
4 Aravind Eye Care System. (2008). “A Debate on Funding Eye Care Fee for Service—Yes or No?” PowerPoint presentation.
5 Ibid.
6 Swain, B. (2010). “The Forgotten Tribe—Persons with Disability,” PowerPoint presentation, Aakar Asha.
7 The remainder of the income comes from such sources as interest and dividends; tuition fees for its courses; and salesof its books, manuals, and various applications. Based on Income Statement, Aravind Eye Care System, 2009–2010.
8 Comments from Dr. Usha Kim are drawn from interviews, informal conversations, and other interactions between
2003 and 2011.

ABOUT THE AUTHORS
Pavithra K. Mehta is a writer and filmmaker whose award-winning documentary Infinite Vision followed thelife and work of Dr. V, who was her granduncle. She is on the boards of the Aravind Eye Foundation andServiceSpace, and co-leads ServiceSpace’s DailyGood news portal and Karma Kitchen.
Suchitra Shenoy is the co-founder of a start-up dedicated to financial services for the poor. She was a founding
member of the Inclusive Markets team at the Monitor Group and is on the advisory board of the Youth 4 Jobs
Foundation.

F E AT U R E | B R I G H T A N D S E V I L L E

F E AT U R E 12.2

Think Big. Go Small:
The Benefits of Smallholder Sourcing
D AV I D B R I G H T A N D D O N S E V I L L E
Food and beverage companies are facing a rapidly changing world. Global demand is growing, yet the planet’s ability to meet this demand is threatened by factors such as droughts, land degradation, and water shortages. Integrating smallholder farms into the supply chain is one promising way for companies to potentially
increase production while contributing to rural development. At the same time, by sourcing from small-scale
producers, companies can improve customer loyalty and enhance their brands. This briefing summarizes thebusiness case for integrating smallholder farms into supply chains, the strategies used, and the advantages
that have accrued to both companies and the poorest smallholders. While the challenges to integration are
formidable and the risks for all involved are significant, they are far outweighed by the benefits.

Consumers everywhere are growing more knowledgeable and concerned about the ethics of where and how their food and drink areproduced. Food and beverage companies face a rapidly changing
world, and global demand for their products is rising as the world’s
population grows. By 2050, the world will have approximately 9 billion people,
which will require an estimated 70 percent increase in agriculture production
over today.1

David Bright

However, factors such as drought, the consequences of climate change, landdegradation, and biofuel production increasingly threaten the ability of agricultural companies to meet this demand. Some companies have found that including
smallholder farmers in their supply chains is one way to mitigate such threats.
When their yields are pooled, smallholder
farms can bolster a company’s production
capabilities by providing adequate supplies
Smallholder Farmersof key agricultural products.

In addition, smallholder sourcing is one wayof managing a company’s reputational risk.
A chink in a company’s reputational armor, such as public revelations
about exploitation, can significantly damage brand value. Consumers
often react positively when they know that part of a company’s sustainability strategy involves purchasing from small-scale rural farmers.
While consumers will always care about price and value, they also
hold companies accountable for how they treat the environment,
how they treat their employees, particularly with respect to working
Don Seville

Smallholder farmers around the world
produce a large range of crops from smallplots of land that result in varying but small
yields. They typically raise staples sufficientfor feeding their families and sometimes
producing small incomes. Crops vary bycountry. Cassava, for example, is raised in
Africa, and soybeans, coffee, and sugar
are raised in Brazil.

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R E F L E C T I O N S | V O LU M E 12, N U M B E R 2Agriculture remains the best
opportunity for the estimated
1.5 to 2 billion people worldwide
living in smallholder households
to work and trade their way
out of poverty.
conditions, and to what extent their businesspractices harm or benefit local communities.

The Development Case for
Smallholder Sourcing
Agriculture remains the best opportunity for theestimated 1.5 to 2 billion people worldwide living
in smallholder households to work and trade their
way out of poverty.2 Studies have shown that linking smallholders with well-functioning local or
global markets plays a critical role in long-term
strategies to reduce rural poverty and hunger. By
including smallholder farms in their supply chain,companies are investing in the rural sector. As aresult, local farmers and communities benefit fromreflections.solonline.org

improved productivity, increased income, accessto technical services and training, and improved
infrastructure.
For example, Alpina Foundation is working with
Oxfam in Colombia to develop efficient small-scaledairies that can each process milk from up to 200
smallholder dairy farmers. If the pilot project provescommercially and socially successful, the aim is
to scale it up to integrate thousands of small dairy
farmers into the company’s supply chain. In addition, Hariyali Kisaan Bazaar of India, a chain of
more than 300 collection and distribution centers,
provides small-scale farmers with a local “hub”
for affordable farm goods and a link to the market
through its buy-back scheme. To meet the needsof small-scale producers, these centers provide
access to agronomists, insurance services, andmobile phone technology through which producers can gain up-to-date prices and special deals.
And Sodexo factored in the effects of smallholders’fluctuating household incomes over the year
when purchasing supplies for its canteens in Madagascar. The company offered advance payments
and created a “buffer fund” to enable smallholders© iStockphoto

F E AT U R E | B R I G H T A N D S E V I L L E

FIGURE 1

Leveraging Impact
For companies investing in smallholders,
it is not simply about brand value orpoverty reduction. Other benefits doexist, and all reinforce one another.
This enables any investment to beleveraged to increase both commercial
and development impact.

From Think Big. Go Small. Adapting Business Models
to Incorporate Smallholders into Supply Chains

to maintain production when household incomes
were low. It also sourced from alternative regional
suppliers at times when smallholders could gethigher prices in local markets.
In addition to helping combat rural poverty andhunger, sourcing from smallholders can also help
reduce gender bias. Agriculture offers an opportunity for women to run their own enterprises onor off farm, and if companies include these enterprises in their supply chains, they are also helping
to reduce gender-based constraints on access totraining and opportunities for investment.
Numerous studies have shown that, compared
to men, female small producers engage disproportionately in local markets and domestic foodproduction, and when given the opportunity canboost overall development in a community. For
example, in Zambia, enabling women to invest
in agriculture has increased overall outputs byan estimated 15 percent.3 Evidence also existsthat income placed directly in the hands ofwomen often translates to improved nutritionand education, especially for girls.4

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Principles for Sustaining Successful Trading Relationships
Despite the considerable challenges of linking small-scale producers to formal markets, evidence shows that
smallholder farms can be successfully incorporated with positive impact. The Sustainable Food Lab and Oxfam
have identified five success factors that ensure corporate and smallholder value in trading relationships.
1. Chain-wide collaboration with shared goals and mutually agreed upon returns is essential to successful trading relationships. This kind of collaboration across the supply chain aids in the identification and resolution of
performance issues before they negatively impact the partner relationship. Likewise, transparency is critical to
the success of the process, especially when perishable commodities, which require traceability and management of food safety risks, are involved. In addition, as members of the supply chain come to understand theirinterdependencies and their ability to adapt to shifting markets, chain-wide collaboration serves to stimulateinnovation and creativity. Finally, collaboration with stakeholders outside the supply chain has the potential to attract
Despite the considerable
further investment.
2. Market linkages, which are common weak points between
informal smallholder farmers and formal supply chains, needcareful monitoring. This is generally done through intermediaries. Intermediaries aggregate production from multiple
small-scale growers and make sure that the growers have thesupport services they need to guarantee high-quality and consistent output. Intermediaries can also help smallholders distribute their risks by helping them diversify into other markets.

challenges of linking smallscale producers to formal
markets, evidence shows that
smallholder farms can be
successfully incorporated
with positive impact.

3. Fair and transparent governance is also important to incorporating small-scale farms into the supply chain.
This includes defining mutually agreed-to terms of trade, quality standards, and pricing structures. It also involves
dispute resolution mechanisms, which are essential to improving understanding within and among supply chains.
Clearly defined on-farm management standards and incentives are part of good governance and play an important role in promoting and maintaining sustainable social and environmental farming practices. Good governance should also include a mechanism for organized groups of farmers to contract with each other, as suchgroups can more effectively negotiate fair prices and obtain financing than individual smallholder farmers can.
4. The equitable sharing of costs and risks underpins successful trading relationships. Typically lead companies,
which have the advantage in their ability to directly access customers, take the lion’s share of the profit, leaving
smallholders to bear much of the risk without a commensurate reward. Deciding which crops to grow, when toplant them, and how much to invest are risks for all small-scale farmers. Lead companies must be willing to sharein these risks by educating smallholders about the principles of supply and demand and about available financial risk management schemes.
5. Equitable access to services ensures that smallholder farmers have ready access to technical expertise, businesstraining, fertilizers and high-germinating seed, and appropriate financing. These producers also generally needhelp in developing best practices for soil, water, chemical, and labor management. Partnership with other companies, NGOs, and governments can often provide such expertise, but for smallholders to achieve long-term
success, such services must be embedded in the day-to-day functioning of the supply chain. The way in whichaccess to services is managed will determine whether small-scale farms remain dependent or become selfsufficient and truly developed.

F E AT U R E | B R I G H T A N D S E V I L L E“Helping the poorest smallholder farmers grow more
crops and get them to market
is the world’s single mostpowerful lever for reducing
hunger and poverty.”

FIGURE 2

Adapting the Business Model– Bill Gates, World Food Prize speech,
October 15, 2009

Challenges of Linking Small-Scale
Producers to Formal Markets© iStockphoto

Successfully incorporating smallholders into
domestic and global supply chains in a way thatdelivers commercially viable products and value
to smallholders has its challenges. Owing to along history of underdevelopment, small-scale
producers often operate in areas with inadequate
infrastructure and insufficient access to skills andservices. Compounding these challenges, theylack uniformity in the way they operate and exist

The critical change for a company is to adapt its practices forsourcing and purchasing and to work with key partners in the
supply chain to restructure trading relationships or develop
new chains. However, to enable change of this kind to happen,
companies also need to adapt their:t $PSQPSBUF$VMUVSFo'SPNBDPNQFUJUJWFNJOETFUUPB
partnership-oriented outlook;t 0QFSBUJPOTo5PDSFBUFJODFOUJWFTGPSCVZFSTUPJOWFTUJODSFBUJOH
long-term stability and development benefits in supply chains;t $PSQPSBUFPS#SBOE$PNNVOJDBUJPOTo5PJOUFHSBUFWFSJGJFE
commercial and development benefits delivered throughthese changes.
From Think Big. Go Small. Adapting Business Models
to Incorporate Smallholders into Supply Chainsin scattered locations. Because of their substandard level of living, smallholders are generally
uneducated, have restricted access to healthcare,
and are often limited in their ability to deal withextreme weather conditions that threaten theircrops. Basic elements of responsible farming,such as waste management, safe use and storageof chemicals, water quality, soil management,
and fair treatment of farm labor, all need to beaddressed if supply chains are to be environmentally and socially responsible. Without adequate
investment to manage these issues, problems caneasily arise, reinforcing a widely held impression

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reflections.solonline.org© iStockphoto

40that smallholder involvement creates morechallenges than it solves.

The Adaptation of Business Models
A number of global consumer goods companies
have invested in the practice of including smallholders in their supply chains as a core businessIncorporating smallholders
into supply chains is proving to
be a winning strategy for many
mainstream businesses.
strategy and not as an afterthought. Some companies that have adapted their business models
have done so by making relatively small but consistent investments through agreeing to forward
contracts, sharing technology, and paying quality
premiums to farmers. Many that are not trading
directly with smallholders are working withintermediary suppliers to engage indirectlywith farmers. So as not to undermine their investments in new trade relationships, some companies are providing specialist training for theirpurchasing teams whose strategies in the past
have focused on faster, more flexible, and cheaper
production – strategies counter to those used
for incorporating smallholder farms into supply
chain management.

The Pay-Off
Incorporating smallholders into supply chainsis proving to be a winning strategy for many mainstream businesses. For example, companies sourcing from the global south, where most suppliers
are smallholders, have built retail sales of almost€3bn, the equivalent of approximately US $3.625
billion.5 Working with mainstream companies, theRainforest Alliance certification program for small
farms has seen a 5 to 11 percent increase in sales
in a one-year period. And in emerging markets
such as Brazil and India, an estimated 2 billion more
urban middle-class consumers with increasingly

F E AT U R E | B R I G H T A N D S E V I L L E

higher disposable incomes will boost demand forhigher-value processed food and drink by 2030.
The business case and the development casefor mainstream companies to include smallholder
farms in their supply chains are compelling. In
order for this change to be successful, however,companies must be willing to risk making systemicchanges in their organizations. They must shift
their corporate culture from a mindset of zerosum competition to one of partnership andcollaboration. Their operations will have to include incentives for buyers to invest in creating
long-term stability and development benefits intheir supply chains. And their communications,both corporate and branding, need to include
verified commercial and development benefits
that have been delivered through these changes.
The task is daunting, but the consequences ofnot stepping up to the challenge are evenmore so. O

ENDNOTES
1 Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations
2 World Development Report (2008) “Agriculture for Development” states that there are 1.5 billion people
in smallholder households; P. Hazell, C. Poulton, S. Wiggins, & A. Dorward (2006) “The Future of Small Farms”(Synthesis Paper) states over 2 billion. These smallholders include half of the world’s undernourished people,
three-quarters of Africa’s malnourished children, and the majority of people living in absolute poverty(IFPRI, 2005).
3 Gates Foundation, Gender Portfolio White Paper, 14 November 2008, p. 7.
4 Hoddinott, J. & Haddad, L. (1995). “Does Female Income Share Influence Household Expenditure Patterns?”
5 Fairtrade Labelling Organisation Annual Report, 2008–2009.

ABOUT THE AUTHORSDavid Bright is the Development Lead of Oxfam International’s Economic Justice Program. He is amember of the Sustainable Food Lab Advisory Board, the Unilever Sustainable Sourcing Advisory
Board, and a non-executive director of a social enterprise. dbright@oxfam.org.uk
Don Seville is the co-director of the Sustainable Food Laboratory. He is leading the Sustainable
Livelihoods Initiative and manages the New Business Models for Sustainable Trading Relationships
project. donseville@gmail.com

This article was adapted from Think Big. Go Small. Adapting Business Models to Incorporate Smallholders into Supply Chains, publishedby Oxfam International in the “Briefings for Business” series. Deborah Wallace provided editorial support for this adapted version.

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CO M M E N TA R Y 12.2

Commentary
G U S TAV O S E T R I N I“

Think Big. Go Small: The Benefits of Smallholder Sourcing” makes a strong case forwhy businesses should adopt small-farmer sourcing. Drawing successful examples
from around the world, it also offers important insights for other companies thatwish to so incorporate smallholders into their supply chain. But what about the inverse
question? How do small farmers successfully become suppliers for global food companies?
Under what circumstances do they benefit from participation in global supply chains?
And what can we learn by studying global supply chains from a farmer’s point of view?

Gustavo Setrini

Multinational food companies must incorporate smallholders in their supply chains toachieve a socially sustainable food system. As the article points out, investing in small-scale agriculture is a powerful strategy to address poverty, hunger, and inequality at a time when consumers are demanding ever-greatersocial accountability from businesses. Economic efficiency alone demands a shift toward small-farmer sourcing.
The negative relationship between landholding size and land productivity is one of the most established empirical findings in the field of economics.1 On average, small and medium farms produce more goods per unit ofland than large farms, given equal access to transport infrastructure, credit, educational opportunities, and otherproductive assets. This fact means the world could feed itself more cheaply by supporting small-farmer development. It also shows that we need not accept increasing levels of inequality in order to feed ourselves efficiently.
However, small farmers confront globalization under tremendous economic, political, and social disadvantages,
and, under these conditions, the consolidation of global supply chains is linked more closely to their exclusion
than to their development. In most places, small farmers are trapped by a series of tightly linked problems. First,
they lack the production infrastructure, technology, and knowledge to meet new and demanding global quality
standards. Second, they lack access to information about which investments are most valuable in the global marketplace. Third, even when they can identify profitable investments, farmers generally lack access to credit. Fourth,farmers often access these assets through intermediaries that perpetuate farmers’ dependence and isolation. And
fifth, farmers occupy the riskiest and least rewarded node in the agricultural value chain, weakening their incentives to invest in agriculture and pushing them into other sectors and toward urban or international migration.
Moreover, integrating small farmers into global supply chains requires institutions capable of negotiating formidable discontinuities of scale and power. Global companies operate on a very large scale and aim their products
at global consumer markets. They require large volumes of uniformly high-quality goods on short delivery schedules. Small farmers operate on a very small scale, and historically their produce is directed toward subsistence
and local markets. To make small-farmer sourcing a reality, mechanisms must be established to coordinate learning, investment, and production activity among hundreds or even thousands of small farmers so their individual
efforts combine to increase volume of the right kinds of goods at the right time. Furthermore, global buyers arevastly more powerful than even well-organized farmers. Ensuring that small farmers benefit from globalization
requires putting structures in place for them to articulate and defend their interests.

C O M M E N TA R Y | S E T R I N I

As the preceding article suggests, CSR initiatives, corporate sustainability programs, and third-party certification
may represent one set of institutional innovations necessary to make globalization more inclusive of small farmers.
They work on the global demand side of the equation to expand the markets available for small farmers, creating
opportunities for them to adjust their production strategies and become competitive in global markets. However,research on these initiatives has shown market incentives are insufficient to drive small-farmer development, andtheir effect can be limited or perverse when local support systems are not in place.

The Limits of Market-Driven Development
Third-party certification has been among the most promoted market-driven methods to support socially andenvironmentally responsible trade. The label “market-driven” suggests that the social conditions and environmental impact of production will adjust in response to market incentives. Thus, groups like Fairtrade and Rainforest
Alliance harness the economic power of concerned consumers in order to offer increased market share to companies that source in responsible ways and to grant market premiums for their suppliers. They also establish auditing protocols to guarantee that consumers get what they pay for and to ensure that positive incentives reach only
those companies and suppliers that comply with high social and environmental standards. By providing information about how goods are produced, certification is meant to encourage companies to do well by doing good.
Research has shown, however, that certification is costly to farmers in terms of financial, human, and time resources
and that the market premium it brings can be entirely absorbed by certification costs.2 Furthermore, while themost committed “mission-driven” buyers of certified goods invest in long-term, collaborative supply relationshipsof the sort described by Oxfam and the Sustainable Food Lab, “market-driven” buyers tend to favor traditional
short-term and arms-length relationships with suppliers, thus viewing certification as a supply-chain management
tool to guard brand reputation and court affluent consumers. For the latter, certification does not preclude businesspractices such as “withholding market information, competing with other buyers, and fueling competition
between suppliers”3 that limit small farmers’ success in conventional markets.
All of the factors listed above as causes for small farmers’ marginalization also limit their ability to respond to the
incentives provided by third-party certifications and corporate sourcing programs primarily driven by market andmarketing incentives. To overcome their dependence and vulnerability, small farmers require a network of support
organizations at the local level, which is costly to establish. This type of intervention goes well beyond the capacity
and commitment of most buyers, and, where they are able to source from small farmers, global companies often
rely on previous work undertaken by farmer organizations, NGOs, government, and international donor groups.

Local Partnerships for Global Sourcing
Effective farmer organizations and cooperatives are crucial for making global supply chains more inclusive. They
can coordinate the set of educational, technological, and infrastructure investments that small farmers are unable
to pursue on their own. Moreover, they give small farmers access to the managerial services and expertise necessary for managing the quality, logistics, and legal demands of formal international markets. When they are democratically governed, farmer organizations help ensure that the benefits from international trade are spread broadly
by disseminating a variety of goods and services to their members, including effective marketing and negotiation
strategies with powerful buyers.

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However, farmer organizations and cooperatives have a mixed reputation and an uneven record of success. On
the one hand, students of smallholder development have consistently identified cooperatives as a factor in smallfarmer competitiveness and advocate broader use. On the other hand, researchers who have examined cooperatives as a business strategy describe them as woefully inefficient and doomed to marginality. These observations
reflect the difficult and often contradictory task that farmer organizations face: they must balance an economic
function with democratic representative functions in a competitive marketplace. Farmer organizations often
sustain decades of financial insolvency, mismanagement, and corruption before emerging as successful enterprises developed through organizational learning and democratization processes.
This slow process can be aided by global market incentives, but it especially depends on the support network
available to farmers and their organizations at the local level. When farmer organizations are connected to multiple
buyers and a variety of other institutions, such as government extension agencies, microfinance and other lenders,
NGOs and training institutes, and other farmer organizations, they develop independent resources to support
learning and capacity building among their members. In turn, as their farmers upgrade their individual capacities,
they are better able to hold their organizations and their leaders accountable.
This experience suggests that a shift toward small-farmer sourcing will likely be a corporate response to whatsmall farmers accomplish on their own and in collaboration with government, NGOs, and international donors.
However, this work will be much easier in collaboration with committed buyers who can provide market outlets
and information about demand to small farmers. Third-party certification and corporate sourcing decisions havealready created markets that privilege smallholders. This access has provided venues for organizational learningand upgrading among small farmers at a time when private-sector demands on them have escalated rapidly.
To the extent that third-party and corporate initiatives support the development of local institutions that are
responsive to small farmers, they provide a key strategy for building a more sustainable global food and agriculture system. O

ENDNOTES
1 For a review of this literature and an examination of its enduring relevance to contemporary conditions, see Lipton, M.
(2009). Land Reform in Developing Countries: Property Rights and Property Wrongs. Routledge.
2 Mutersbaugh, T. (2005). “Fighting standards with standards: harmonization, rents, and social accountability in certified
agrofood networks.” Environment and Planning A. Volume 37, 2033-2051.
3 Raynolds, L.T. (2009). “Mainstreaming Fair Trade Coffee: From Partnership to Traceability.” World Development,
vol. 37, issue 6.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Gustavo Setrini holds a Ph.D. in Political Science from MIT, where he is currently a research associate. His
research investigates the food and agriculture industry to identify the institutional and political foundationsof local development in the global economy. setrinig@MIT.EDU

F E AT U R E | S T U C K E R A N D B O Z U WAF E AT U R E 12.2

The Art of Sustainability: Creative
Expression as a Tool for Social Change
D O M I N I C S T U C K E R A N D J O H A N N A B O Z U WA
Much of the work to date on sustainability has relied on intellectual arguments, reams of compiled data,and complex charts and graphs. These tools are essential for developing an accurate understanding of socialand ecological trends, but they often fail to engage people’s emotions. Artist Jay Mead uses several different
media, including creations made from found objects, shadow puppet shows, and giant puppetry, to help
people connect with nature and tap into their personal visions of a more sustainable future. According to
Mead, by stimulating the right side of the brain, this kind of “heartwork” leads to an intuitive understandingof systems and new approaches to entrenched dilemmas. While our current socio-environmental challenges
can be daunting, Mead finds that creating art in a group sparks a sense of hope as people concentrateon taking tangible action together.

A

Dominic Stucker

ccording to recent research, our climate is changing faster than anticipated, and the Earth is headed toward largely irreversible global
tipping points (see Barnosky et al, “Approaching a state shift in Earth’s
biosphere,” Nature, June 7, 2012). While many are convinced that we
can innovate our way out of our problems using science, technology, and policychanges, it is becoming increasingly clear that such solutions alone will not
suffice – we also need new ways of being,
communicating, and collaborating to
We already have many ofaddress the current and inevitable environmental and social challenges we face.
the tools we need to makethe transition to sustain-

The good news is that we already haveability, including systems
many of the tools we need to make thethinking and creativity.
transition to sustainability, including systems thinking and creativity. A systems
approach encourages us to convene
Johanna Bozuwa
diverse stakeholders to better understand the integrated economic, social, andenvironmental systems we seek to change. Creativity and the arts help us gain clarity of vision and tap
into the breakthrough thinking necessary for innovating a new reality and a new relationship between
people and planet.
In this article, we introduce artist Jay Mead and his philosophy of art as a way to enhance systems
thinking and promote social change, all in service of achieving environmental and social sustainability.
We describe his unique and engaging approach to helping people tap into their often-latent creativity
and ability to be in tune with and learn from nature. By inviting people to let go of inhibitions and

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assumptions, Jay supports them in deepening
their capacity for creative expression and theirrelationships with one another and their surroundings. In this way, they develop fresh perspectives
and shared visions of a vibrant future.

Hunger for a Different Kind of Experience
Jay Mead coined the phrase the “art of sustainability” to refer to the technique of applying creativereflections.solonline.org

expression to advance the principles and aspirationsof sustainability. Much of the work to date on sustainability and systems has been portrayed ingraphs and diagrams through a logical, scientificlens. While these tools and perspectives are essential to developing an understanding of the world,
they are abstractions that can leave people wanting. “People are hungry for a different kind of experience,” Jay comments. Art makes systems more

Artist Jay MeadMy life has been ajourney down a pathof design and creation.
From a young age, I
was enamored of art
and have experimented
with many different
media. While at Dartmouth College, I became involved with andwas deeply affected by the political and community aspects of Bread and Puppet’s work.
(Vermont-based Bread and Puppet has been
performing its unique style of political theater
since the mid-1960s.) Through various demonstrations in New York City and Washington,
DC, in the 1980s, I discovered that art could
be a tool for activism. I began teaching art at
a high school and, realizing the great potential
for promoting personal and global change
through creativity, have continued to teachthroughout my life.
I also ventured into community art as a core
member of Wise Fool Puppet Intervention,a giant puppet company that formed in San
Francisco in the late 1980s and performed
political theater for 10 years in the Bay Area,
Central America, Germany, and the Czech
Republic. We were involved in using art tosend a social message. My seminal piece during that time, which combined my studio workwith environmental activism, was “Found
Stump.” Commissioned by the San Francisco

Arts Commission, the 20-foot-tall piece wasmade entirely of recycled wood. It highlighted
the destruction of California’s ancient redwoods
and the misuse of this extraordinary resource.
The instructional part of my career has increasingly moved outside of the classroom and into
residencies and workshops, including programs
at the University of Chicago and Vassar College
as part of the “Big Art” project; a performance
residency at Visão Futuro in Purangaba, Brazil;
and multiple residencies with the Donella
Meadows Leadership Fellows in Vermont. This
work is as much about empowering people of
all ages to create as it is about seeking socialtransformation through art.
Other projects include numerous sculptures for
the Sculpture Fest in Woodstock, Vermont, myfirst book, A Little Farm Story (Harbor Mountain
Press 2011), and one-of-a-kind shadow puppet
shows. I am currently adapting “The Turning,” ashadow puppet show I created with Elizabeth
Sawin on climate change and a vision of the
future, into a graphic novel.
I work with Sustainability Leaders Network,
bringing the “Art of Sustainability” to leaders inthe social and environment change movement.
We see creative, out-of-the-box problem solving
as essential for addressing the many challenges
we face in bringing about a life-sustaining
future for people and planet.

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visible while creating a sense of immediacy andadding resonance to a given problem.
The picture book A Little Farm Story (Harbor Mountain Press, 2011) is a good example of Jay’s artistic
rendering of systems. With vibrant illustrations
and haiku-style writing, he portrays the interconnectedness of a farm, the seasons, and the role ofhumans in those systems. The illustrations bringthe concept of local agriculture to life for readers.
Rather than using complex diagrams, Jay translates the systems thinking ideas of interrelationship and feedback into beautiful, moving, andaccessible paintings.
Jay describes this deepening of systems thinking
as a move from head to heart, and he therefore
refers to his pieces as “heartwork.” Sculpture, painting, and performance can generate an emotional
response and novel insights into a social or environmental system. For Jay, this kind of heartwork
allows him and others to reflect on and process
life-changing events, whether a personal tragedy
or the clear-cutting of an ancient forest.
Through art, people can grasp the magnitudeof a challenge. For instance, Jay recalls a thoughtprovoking exercise, originally carried out by 140
students, faculty, and staff at Dartmouth College,
in which people collected and carried all of theirgarbage in a plastic sack for a week. This activity
had two purposes: to make the carrier and others
more conscious of the amount of waste they generated, and to create a moving art installment.
“Because some of us live in an abundant place,the amount of waste we produce isn’t obvious,”says Jay. When the problem is hanging on theactor’s back, it is impossible to ignore.

What If?
In addition to making problems visible, art alsoengenders hope. In her syndicated Dear Folks column, the late Donella (Dana) Meadows, professor,
farmer, and co-author of The Limits to Growth (Clubof Rome, 1972), shared her reflections on the stateof the world and the long road to sustainability.

Sustainability Fellows
Convened by Sustainability Leaders Network, the Fellows
Network consists of 80 leaders from around the world whoare alumni of the Donella Meadows Leadership Fellows
Program. Fellows strive to address social, economic, andenvironmental issues at their root causes, as taught byDonella Meadows, the inspiration for the program. They are
active across sectors and issues areas, bringing a wide rangeof representation into conversations. Fellows learn to apply
a suite of leadership practices – visioning, systems thinking,reflective conversation, and creative expression – to many
fields, from renewable energy and climate to water andsustainable agriculture, from poverty eradication and social
entrepreneurship to corporate social responsibility andmedia for social change.
Jay Mead has worked closely with the Fellows Network
to pilot the Art of Sustainability approach, offering participants hands-on opportunities for creativity, spontaneity,and reflection. As Fellow Kristi Kimball, program officer with
the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation in California, put
it, “[Through the Art of Sustainability workshop] I gained a
new sense of hope and inspiration, the re-ignition of thecreative side of my brain, and a recommitment to andrefinement of my original vision for my professional andpersonal development.”

Art makes systems more
visible while creating a sense of
immediacy and adding resonanceto a given problem.
She always ended her letters with the inspiration
she took from what was just outside her window,
such as a bee collecting honey. In these seemingly
inconsequential details, she drew hope from her
surroundings and from nature’s resilience. Dana’s
engaging and poignant writings are anotherexample of the art of sustainability.

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As an artist and teacher, Jay finds inspiration in
Dana’s visionary words and applies them to his art.
He says, “My artistic passion is driven by the question ‘what if?’” The question “what if?” represents
an unknowing and a trust that new insights andideas will emerge that lead to the discovery of
one’s personal vision, connection to nature, andcare for the greater community of life. In Jay’sview, this inquiry involves expanding possibilities
and a different type of intelligence than the rational one on which we generally rely. We spend
much of our daily life using the left side of ourbrains and looking logically at the world aroundus. By engaging in the artistic process, our minds
tap into a wealth of knowledge that, for many ofus, has been dormant since childhood. Allowing
ourselves to consider the “what if” can stimulate
the right side of the brain, opening up expansive
possibilities, an intuitive understanding of systems,
and new approaches to entrenched dilemmas.
Some of Jay’s most powerful workshops involvegroups of participants creating art in nature and incommunity. By being present in the moment, participants draw inspiration from natural ecosystems
and human interactions. The immediacy of theexperience creates a visceral understanding of thegiven system and engenders innovative ways ofthinking, being, and acting.

By engaging in the artistic process,our minds tap into a wealth ofknowledge that, for many of us,
has been dormant since childhood.
Art in Nature Workshop
One kind of nature workshop that Jay offers is
inspired by the work of British artist AndrewGoldsworthy. Goldsworthy uses natural material,
including snow, ice, leaves, bark, rock, clay, stones,
petals, and twigs, to create outdoor sculptures
inspired by and part of nature. Jay encourages
participants to follow Goldsworthy’s lead by immersing themselves in the outdoors and creating
their own in situ pieces employing found objects.

reflections.solonline.org

Participants find that, by sitting quietly, eyes
opened or closed, they hone their skills of observation, noticing patterns and processes that have
evolved over millennia. Using all their senses,
they experience and learn from nature. Perhaps
they see the streams, brooks, and river in a basin,
noticing nature’s nested hierarchies. Gazing skyward from a soft bed of pine needles, they mightobserve the forest’s resilience in flexibility, trees
swaying in the wind. Or they smell the pungent
soil, part of the annual cycle that returns sustenanceto the trees’ roots. Perhaps they see the genius in
a flower, tracking the sun and folding its petals at
dusk; or in the capacity of a cactus to store water;
or in the design of a feather. Through the “playful
meditation” of this art exercise, participants learn
from and create in tandem with these natural
systems.
As a result, people tap into their own creativity as
a way to explore, express, and clarify their visions
for the future. In addition to personal discoveries,
people often gain a greater sense of connection
to the group and the place. Michael Dupee, senior
vice president for corporate social responsibility
at Green Mountain Coffee Roasters in Vermont,notes:The Art of Sustainability session helped me
to profoundly reconnect with the natural system in which we live and my own potential asa creative being. The result for me has been a
deepening experience of a very powerful wayof being in the world – a way of being thatcreates the space for me to show up for life
differently, to connect with people differently,
to ask different questions, and to generate
different responses to the challenges I encounter. I hesitate to describe this as a new
way of being – rather, in my heart, it feels likean entirely old way of being . . . but a way of
being to which I had lost my connection.
In this activity, the creative process is one ofhumility and co-creation with nature, with thevision for the piece often emerging throughout
the process. For example, Trista Patterson, an

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ecological economist with the United States
Forest Service in Alaska, collected small red berries
and wanted to create a heart shape alongside aforested stream. The water, however, pulled someof the berries into the current, carrying them into
eddies downstream and highlighting flows not
visible to the casual observer. The lesson was oneof letting go, of collaboration, of fully participatingin the process and being open to an array of outcomes. Ultimately, the creative process helps us
learn about ourselves, gain insights about our placein the world, and clarify our visions for the future.

to decrease the amount of carbon dioxide in theatmosphere. With this news, the city celebrates
the hard won victory of sustainability. The mayor
describes the struggles that the world has surmounted before achieving this goal, such as starvation in some areas and the extinction of different
species. Among the festive crowd, a grandmothertakes her granddaughter through the city, describing the times before sustainability (our current
reality). They also walk past examples of the elements that helped bring about a more sustainable
world, such as wind turbines, community gardens,
bicycles, solar installations, and mass transit.

Puppetry for Social Change
While the global process toward sustainability
can be daunting, Jay finds that creating art ina group sparks a sense of hope, as people concentrate on the beauty of the moment and on
taking tangible action. Jay has found that shadow
puppetry and giant puppetry are useful tools forsocial change, because these art forms cannot
be created or performed without a community
effort. By developing and telling a specific story,
the players have made something that they cansee, hear, feel, and share with others. Their work
can have a transformational effect on themselves
and on the audience.
Shadow puppetry is an ancient form of art
that uses light or fire to create shadows behinda screen to tell a story. The most classic versionsof shadow puppetry are found in Bali and greater
Indonesia. The art form is one of the oldest, goingback to the time of cave dwellers. By using thismedium, Jay connects his art to somethingancient, while dealing with contemporary issues.

The Turning
An example of one of Jay’s shadow puppet plays
is “The Turning,” which he wrote in collaboration
with climate scientist Elizabeth Sawin. “The Turning” tells the story of a complex, global challenge
we currently face, while also inspiring hope.
The story takes place in a future city where themayor announces that the world has not only
achieved a zero carbon footprint, but has started

Creating art in a group sparksa sense of hope, as people
concentrate on the beauty ofthe moment and on taking
tangible action.
This particular play highlights essential leadership
practices for social change work, such as systems
thinking, visioning, reflective conversation, andcreative expression. People often look at the world
around them and see problems. The next stepafter problem identification is visioning, in whichpeople envision solutions and ways of being thattranscend the challenges they see. Jay and Elizabeth
intentionally incorporated real-world solutions in
the play to help the audience envision how thedescribed future can become reality.
In the first few performances, Elizabeth began
by speaking about the current reality of climatechange and sustainability, leaving most of theaudience feeling discouraged. She then changed
roles and became the storyteller of the shadow
puppet play. Jay comments, “Beth hit you with thehard reality of the present and then the promiseof the future.” Workshop participants were solely
audience members and not players.
For later performances, however, Elizabeth and Jay
involved participants as performers. Being part of

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The incorporation of what the area
had to offer opened up possibilities
for reuse along with broadening
perspectives of what is beautiful.
the performance drew the group into the vision
being portrayed. Many saw this art medium asa practical tool for effecting change within theirown communities and lives; some have evenbrought shadow puppetry into their work.

reflections.solonline.org

giant puppetry was his facilitation of a community
performance in Brazil in 2006 at Visão Futuro.
Visão Futuro is an eco-village outside of São Paulo.
Jay worked with community members to put on a
giant puppetry performance highlighting environmental and sustainability issues relevant to Brazil.
For two weeks, Jay and the Visão Futuro community collaborated on the vision and realization ofwhat was to be portrayed during the play. Given
the grand scale of the puppets, the performance
had to be a community event. Jay taught the group
how to create the puppets, write a storyboard,and animate these giant theatrical elements.

Giant Puppetry at Visão Futuro
Jay also uses the related medium of giant puppetry to create change. These puppets are larger
than life, and the players do not hide behind ascreen but are within the puppets. The giant puppets are best suited for pageantry and outdoor
performances. A good example of Jay’s work in

Jay and the Visão Futuro community createdcharacters and props that depicted the greed,fear, and apathy that the current economic systemperpetuates. Questions arose about humans’ relationship with and place within nature. By personifying these ideas in giant puppets, the artists

Co-Creating with Nature

Encouraged to accentuate patterns in nature, we createda wide variety of art from found materials. I was drawn to
the flow of water in each basin and created pieces that
traced these lines. Personally, I think I wanted greaterflow in my own life, a balance of the dynamism and confidence of water as it makes its way through the world.
Professionally, I am now conducting research on how we
can cooperate in shared river basins to adapt to climatechange impacts.

Dominic Stucker along Connecticut River, Vermont, October 2011

I [Dominic] participated in two of Jay’s art in nature workshops along rivers in Vermont and Connecticut. In his
workshops, Jay invites participants to see nature anew
through quiet observation, sensing, and play. The invitation includes being fully present, setting aside transient
to-do lists and deep-seated preconceptions about how
the world works. Participants are asked to start from aplace of unknowing – playful for some, meditative forothers – allowing deeper wisdom to emerge.

F E AT U R E | S T U C K E R A N D B O Z U WA

made emotions and abstract concepts tangible.
Participants used art as a tool to describe andto better “feel” the systems around them.
The group used raw materials from their surroundings, for instance bamboo and recycled materials
found on site, to create the giant puppets. The incorporation of what the area had to offer opened
up possibilities for reuse along with broadening
perspectives of what is beautiful. In this process ofrediscovering the environment, new opportunities
arose. Also, by incorporating the four major elementsof earth, air, water, and fire, the community wasable to further understand the interconnectedness of different natural systems.
Participants used the natural landscape to telltheir story. The play moved throughout the community’s grounds, with players walking up anddown the rolling hills, stopping within the forest,and finally launching a giant puppet across thewater to an island where audience members stoodchanting. Through the performance, the community of Visão Futuro journeyed into a story that
continues to be told every day in Brazil: the balance
between struggle and celebration.
This collaborative approach exemplifies Jay’s
emphasis on process. Through the constructionof colossal pieces of art, he and the community
bonded around a shared vision – to instruct theaudience about sustainability and the role ofcommunity in Brazil. In the group’s work together,
new connections were made and new ideas were
accepted to further the vision. Although the performance was specific to Brazil and to the site, thistype of small-scale cooperation exemplifies thechange in interactions needed on a global scale.
As Jay comments, “A lot can be done with committed people, and the people of Visão Futuroare committed to the betterment of humanity.”
In Jay’s shadow and giant puppetry productions,the common threads of community, rediscovery,
systems, visioning, and hope emerge – keycomponents in creating social change.

Art from a Systems Perspective
As we have seen in the above examples of art
in nature, shadow puppetry, and giant puppetry,the creation of art can help us better experience,
understand, and act within the systems we seek
to change. In fact, systems thinkers encourage
many of the same approaches that are found in

Systems thinkers encourage manyof the same approaches that arefound in the creative process.
the creative process. In her classic article, “Dancing
with Systems,” Dana Meadows describes the importance of letting go, applicable to both creating
and thinking in systems:
The future can’t be predicted, but it can beenvisioned and brought lovingly into being.
Systems can’t be controlled, but they can be
designed and redesigned. . . . We can listen towhat the system tells us, and discover how its
properties and our values can work together
to bring forth something much better than
could ever be produced by our will alone. We
can’t control systems or figure them out. But
we can dance with them!
Dana goes on to highlight some of the same qualities practiced in Jay’s Art of Sustainability sessions
as guidance for navigating complex systems. At
least four are about observation and learning: t (FUUIFCFBU
 t -JTUFOUPUIFXJTEPNPGUIFTZTUFN t &YQPTFZPVSNFOUBMNPEFMTUPUIFPQFOBJS t 4UBZIVNCMF TUBZBMFBSOFS
These guidelines encourage us to notice thediversity of stakeholders, flows of information,and behavior of the system over time. Dana
encourages us to notice what works well before
making changes and, when we intervene, to do
so in the spirit of experimentation and humility,
learning from our mistakes.

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In order to achieve an inclusive view, she urges
us to:
 t &YQBOEUJNFIPSJ[POT t &YQBOEUIPVHIUIPSJ[POT t &YQBOEUIFCPVOEBSZPGDBSJOH
When creating art with nature or engaging in acommunity puppetry performance for socialchange, we see that all things are interconnected.
For example, when we observe a particular
ecosystem, we see the links between the different
forms of flora and fauna. By expanding the geographic and temporal scope of care, we become
better informed about the decisions we make,reflections.solonline.org

decisions that impact people in distant places andfutures, thus increasing our collective chances tosurvive and thrive.
These nuggets of wisdom, present both in systems thinking and in creativity, are essential for
addressing the many challenges we face in bringing about a sustainable future for people andplanet. They provide meaning, expansive possibilities, and a view of the big picture, offering a
profound sense of new possibilities. Sustainability
is an art. And art helps us break through old waysof thinking and our sense of isolation to get tosustainable solutions together. O

ADDITIONAL RESOURCES
Video by Colleen Bozuwa of an art-in-nature session led by Jay Mead along the Housatonic River, Connecticut, 2009.
Video by Colleen Bozuwa, documenting the creation of a giant puppetry performace led by Jay Meadat the Visão Futuro ecovillage, Brazil, 2006.

ART & PHOTO CREDITS
Page 49
Upper left: Michaelyn Bachhuber along Connecticut River, Vermont, October 2011
Upper right: Chris Page on Mt. Tamalpais, California, November 2010
Lower left: Nirmala Nair along Connecticut River, Vermont, October 2011
Lower right: Anonymous along Connecticut River, Vermont, October 2010
Page 50Upper left: Alex Bauermeister and Maria Kogan with Maria’s piece along Connecticut River, Vermont, October 2010
Upper right: Huma Beg along Connecticut River, Vermont, October 2011
Middle left: Maria Latumahina along Connecticut River, Vermont, October 2011
Middle right: Catharina (Any) Sulistyowati on Mt. Tamalpais, California, November 2010
Lower left: Michael Dupee and Carmen Negron-Dupee with her piece along Connecticut River, Vermont, October 2010
Lower right: Carmen Negron-Dupee along Connecticut River, Vermont, October 2010
Thank you to Edie Farwell, Carla Kimball, Clemens Kalischer, and Dominic Stucker for the art-in-nature photos.
ABOUT THE AUTHORS
Dominic Stucker is co-founder and program manager at the Sustainability Leaders Network. Before
coming to SLN, he worked with the Sustainability Institute and Earth Charter International. Dominic
also volunteers with the International Union for Conservation of Nature and conducts research onwater and climate change adaptation. dominic@sustainabilityleadersnetwork.org
Johanna Bozuwa is an Environmental Policy major at Barnard College of Columbia University andis a scholar in the Athena Center for Leadership Studies at Barnard College. She currently interns
at the Sustainability Leaders Network. jmb2298@barnard.edu

C O M M E N TA R Y | AT H A N A S

CO M M E N TA R Y 12.2

Commentary
A N D R E A AT H A N A S

These are momentous times. After decades of consolidation around industrial models
of production and consumption, we are now entering into a period of a radical
rethinking about how we live on this Earth. The innovations that emerge over the
next decade are likely to set us on a path that will take us through the 21st century. Whilethe innovations of the 20th century were dominated by breakthroughs in industrial andtechnological thinking, the innovations of the 21st century will require breakthroughs in
how we connect to our intuition and emotion.
Andrea Athanas

The times ahead ask us to engage with complex, interconnected systems. Art is a thrilling way of tapping into our inner core and releasing insights that can’t easily be accessed through a rational, logical process. As Dominic Stucker
and Johanna Bozuwa describe in their article, through art, we can connect with ways of being that, in many western cultures and settings, are less nurtured.
Art also provides us with a way of understanding and processing change. When our family moved from Switzerland
to Tanzania, our daughter was four. At the time, she was captivated by drawing marvelous princesses, a traditional
figure in Swiss stories. Her world turned on its head when we moved, and for weeks she stopped drawing. She wassad. She missed her friends, her school, her home. But within a week of starting at her new school, she was drawing again . . . this time pictures of Maasai warriors dancing. Art was her way of coping with the changes in her life.
The times ahead require us to embrace the wisdom of all our cultures. Art provides us with a way of connecting
across boundaries. Although language is an amazing way of communicating specific thoughts and ideas, it canbe a barrier when it is not shared. Sometimes what we need first is a way to connect with each other at a deeper
level. Art communicates across cultures. The Maasai dance, a colorful and energetic performance of jumping andchants, welcomes people from all walks of life into a boma (homestead). The meaning of the dance is clear, andthe connection is made instinctively.
The times ahead call for innovation. Art helps us see things differently and shows us pathways that are not logical.
The Art of Sustainability session opened my mind to see the possibilities for change. Stepping out of the dogmaof logical progression and into a space of creating something from pieces of what was around me illuminateda vision of a future that I had never imagined.
Visioning, acting with compassion, and coping with change are strategies necessary for these challenging
times. The creative process builds our strength in these areas in ways that are fun and inspiring – and, at times,
it produces magic. O
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Andrea Athanas is Senior Program Design Officer at the African Wildlife Foundation in Arusha, Tanzania.
aathanas@awfafrica.org

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CO M M E N TA R Y 12.2

Commentary
AMBA JAMIR

To communicate a personal vision is easier said than done. Before you can begin to
articulate your vision, you have to understand and define just exactly what it is. Thiscan be quite a challenge. Although I have been successful in achieving what I set out
to do, one of the greatest difficulties for me has been clearly envisioning what I want toaccomplish or be in life. I have always been a doer and thinker when it comes to helping
others refine their visions or engage in strategic planning. But when it came to my own
choices or strategies, I often felt paralyzed and confused by indecision.
Amba Jamir

My inability to have a clear, defined vision left me feeling scattered as I attempted to do different projects at
the local, national, and international levels. As a result of juggling so many things, I lost the balance between myprofessional and personal lives. I realized that my inability to visualize or, more accurately, connect to a defined
vision was causing me to compromise those things that mattered most as I spent too much of my time working
to reach less important goals.
The Donella Meadows Leadership Fellows program was, in many ways, the catalyst I needed. The program
broadened my understanding of myself and my relationship to the larger system. The various modules, especially the creative sessions, helped me appreciate the complexity of relationships. I began to fully understandthat interdependence is of much greater value than independence – in social systems as in nature. My interactions with the other Fellows, their perceptions and experiences, and the cross-pollination of learning haveall greatly influenced my thinking and acting.
More than any other activity, the Art of Sustainability session allowed me to let go of all my inhibitions andconsciously connect with my inner self. I became aware of the source from which my thoughts and vision were
emerging and of how to relate these to the larger system in which I co-exist. The sessions helped me rediscover
the innocent, free, and childlike way of being inquisitive, observant, and sensitive to things around me, as well as
within me. I became aware that we, as adults and as trained professionals, tend to complicate matters. We often
miss the woods for the trees because we do not ask the simplest of questions such as “what if?” or “but why?”as Jay Mead invited us to do.
The sessions showed me that people ultimately relate to stories with which they can connect. Therefore, as aleader or a member of any community, it is not so much what I think or say, but how I make a connection to thepeople around me that matters. This realization has greatly influenced my way of thinking and working, at boththe professional and the personal levels. O

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Amba Jamir is Executive Director of The Missing Link in Guwahati, Assam, India. ambajamir@gmail.com

C O M M E N TA R Y | K R A I WAT N U T S O R N

CO M M E N TA R Y 12.2

Commentary
P H O N C H A N  N E W E Y  K R A I WAT N U T S O R NAs a person who draws on art as a path for self-realization and who works in thearea of social entrepreneurship, I cannot agree more with the points emphasized in
the article. For almost a decade, I have observed and supported the work of social
innovators who offer solutions to our world’s pressing problems. These passionate people
start with an insight and then focus on the particular part of the system they want toengage. In order to create systematic change, they seek to generate tremendous creativity
to change society’s long-established patterns.

Phonchan (Newey)
Kraiwatnutsorn

As director of Ashoka’s Youth Venture Thailand program, a significant part of my work
involves supporting the Millennial Generation in starting social ventures and gaining change-making experience.
Young people come to me with their heads full of information but also concern that the world is deteriorating.
I have come to realize that not until they engage in “heartwork” exercises, like those I learned from Jay Mead,
can they connect with their hopes and dreams by creating projects that address their true passions.
To help young entrepreneurs make this connection, I adapted what I learned in Jay’s amazing session and createda workshop called “Feeling Climate Change,” in which youth walk around and observe our hot, polluted city of
Bangkok. It is amazing to notice how much we overlook in daily life. We sometimes need a focused exercise to
see our surroundings as a part of us and to see us as a part of our surroundings.
In the Youth Venture Program, we have found that the young people who go through these kinds of learning
experiences start their change projects based on their real passions and feelings. In the long run, they are more
likely to accomplish better and more sustainable outcomes than if they had solely applied a logical approach totry to solve a problem. Statistics and data are important but they aren’t the key factors in motivating youth totake innovative and impactful actions.
Whereas in the past, art was my personal journey of self-discovery, I now see it as part of a group process. Ourgroup work brings out a collective dream that can be turned into a shared vision and common goals, leading toaction and collaboration for a better future. Visual art was already within my comfort zone, and Jay further
inspired me with the process of how to use it to engage people. O

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Phonchan (Newey) Kraiwatnutsorn is Director of Youth Venture Thailand in Bangkok, Thailand.
pkraiwatnutsorn@ashoka.org

57

Reflections
The SoL Journal

on Knowledge, Learning, and Change
Volume 12, Number 2

EDITORIAL TEAMManaging Editor
Janice Molloy
Contributing Editor
Deborah Wallace
PublisherFrank Schneider

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