Local solutions are key to global challenges

THE United Nations, set up after World War II to prevent further wars, has failed to prevent the unfolding carnage in West Asia, which could lead to another world war. The World Bank, IMF and WTO have been unable to solve the global problems of climate change and inequitable finance and trade systems. The present architecture of the global institutions is based on the principle of vertical hierarchical control. Powerful nations on the top set the rules for the economic, political and environmental management systems around the world.

A new architecture is required. It should be based on the principles of local management of complex systems and lateral cooperation among stakeholders to solve systemic problems that cross the boundaries of nations and cities.

Various combinations of the following three forces are leading to the breakdown of the governance systems: the concept of the sovereignty of the national governments, which is enshrined in the UN Charter; the rise of individual rights as an ideology; and the pressures of the global problems of climate change and societal and economic pathologies represented in the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), which cut across national boundaries.

The misalignment of the boundaries of the natural environmental systems, ethno-cultural social systems and constitutional governance systems is the root cause of the breakdown of global governance. Oceans separate continents and within the large Euro-Asian land mass, mountain ranges isolate the Indian subcontinent. The river systems on the continents define other natural boundaries. Ethno-cultural civilisational systems correspond roughly with these natural geographies.

Governance jurisdictions have been redrawn over the centuries, crossing natural boundaries following wars spurred by religious and ethnic differences and ambitions of competing leaders.

The seventeenth century Westphalian Peace Treaty sought to end wars in Europe by establishing the principle of inviolable national boundaries. The UN Charter is founded on this principle, according to which, countries should not interfere in others’ internal affairs.

Nevertheless, since the founding of the UN, western powers have created new countries which do not correspond with the natural geographical and ethno-cultural boundaries. For example, Pakistan and India, and Israel and Palestine.

Others, like Yugoslavia and Sudan, have been divided in attempts to align governance with ethno-cultural realities.

A war is underway to create new boundaries between the Ukrainians and Russians.

The break-up of nations is justified by the principle of preservation of historical identities and the rights of all people to become what they want to be. Individual rights can translate into extreme liberalism, when individuals are given the freedom to change their histories and be whoever they like to be, including whatever sex they choose. ‘I’ can never be separated from ‘we’, as the African expression ‘ubuntu’ says (‘I am because you are’). Individual identities cannot be divorced from the collective identities. The rights of individuals cannot be separated from the rights of the collectives in which they live.

The wellbeing of individuals depends on the wellbeing of their societies and environments. Medical science has established that social and environmental conditions impact the health of individuals significantly. Bringing about improvements in social and environmental conditions is a less costly and more sustainable solution for improving the citizens’ health than doing so by the high-tech medical solutions focused on the biology of individuals.

These scientific insights call for changes in the designs of public policies and measurements of their outcomes. The policies should focus on the interventions in the conditions of social, environmental and economic systems in which citizens live rather than on the benefits to individuals. The impacts of public policies should be measured by how much they strengthen the local communities rather than by counting the individual beneficiaries of the government and philanthropy programmes.

The top-down institutional structure of governance has failed because it is not based on the systemic view of the global problems. There are 17 SDGs. They are interlinked. None can be solved by itself. Moreover, they are not manifested in the same way everywhere. The problems of environment and climate are not the same in Alaska and Barbados, nor in Uttarakhand and Kerala. The livelihood problems of the slums of New York are different from those of rural Bihar. Therefore, all problems must be solved locally.

Forecasters estimate that the SDGs will be achieved only by 2087 if we persist with the present top-down and siloed approach of problem-solving. The aim was to achieve them by 2030. Everywhere, problems of at least seven of the 17 SDGs must be solved urgently. Let’s do the maths. There can be 94 million different combinations of seven problems from a set of 17! Clearly, the one-size solutions developed by global climate scientists and health experts will not fit the local realities everywhere.

The 21st century paradigm of governance has too much ‘I’ and too little ‘we’ and too many silos, with too little collaboration. The prevalent way of organising on scale breaks up the systemic problems into parts, to be managed by specialists. Solutions arrived at in silos often harm the other parts of the system.

Solutions to grow the economy with man-made infrastructure destroy the environment. Solutions for increasing the productivity of agriculture by applying more chemicals and replacing farmers with machines reduce the productivity of the soil. So, more chemicals are required, in a deathly spiral for the earth.

Meanwhile, displaced farmers cannot find jobs in manufacturing because, simultaneously, humans in factories are being replaced by robots to increase productivity.

A reform of the architecture of global governance institutions is imperative to save humanity. Local systems solutions collaboratively developed by the communities are the scientific way to solving the global systemic problems. Since the natural boundaries of environmental, social and economic systems do not match, multiple, overlapping, democratic forums, cutting across boundaries, are required for good governance at local, national and international levels. They must collaborate with one another. All must not be forced into a top-down vertical structure of control from national capitals and institutions in the USA.