(THIS ARTICLE IS MACHINE TRANSLATED by Google from Norwegian)
It is hard to find a more worthy purpose than wanting to make the world a better place to live for all of humanity – not just for the luckiest of us. Nor is it every day that we find people who really believe in change in a world where economic chaos and conflicts are increasingly setting the agenda. Neither is Partnership for Change (PfC), which held its annual conference at Gamle Logen on 6 and 7 May, an organization with low ambitions.
Difficult. The people behind it are also unique in the sense that they care about and believe that it is possible to change the world. They work to make our planet a better place – where seemingly airy dreams of less poverty, a more sustainable environment and the fight for equality are more than, well, dreams.
It is said that there are three types of people: those who make things happen, those who watch things happen, and those who say "what happened?". In which category the people behind the PfC project fall, it is not yet possible to say anything for certain – but it is safe to say that they hardly belong to the latter type of person. I also don't think they want to represent the 'onlookers' group – but there is undeniably a long way to go before PfC can say they have 'made things happen'.
This is not to say that PfC has unclear objectives for what they want to achieve, on the contrary – they appear to be clear. It is probably rather that the path to the goal is not immediately easy to stake out. And it's not so strange. When the goal is to make the world a better place for all the world's inhabitants, the road to get there must necessarily be difficult, motley and long.
Turn the tide. The initiators of PfC are Ingrid Stange and Marie Louise Sunde, the latter leader and coordinator of the Nexus Network. Stange is a so-called social entrepreneur, i.e. a person who is concerned with social innovation, sustainable business operations and climate challenges. She has a background from McKinsey & Co and has been involved in "venture philanthropy" for over 25 years. Sunde, on the other hand, represents the next generation of young social entrepreneurs with a focus on human rights, environmental issues and global health issues. With them on the PfC team, they also have former Prime Minister Kjell Magne Bondevik, who is chairman of the board.
The list of speakers at this year's PfC conference was impressive. To name a few: Dr. Christoph Stuckelberger of Globethics.net, Dr. Ernst U. von Weizsacker of the Club of Rome, Frederic Hauge of Bellona, Hazami Barmada of the United Nations, Secretary of State Laila Bokhari, polar explorer and adventurer Robert Swan Obe, Truls Berg from Innovation Forum Norway and Prince Maximilian von und zu Liechtenstein.
So what is the main message of PfC? It is very comprehensive and ambitious, and here lies perhaps their biggest challenge: How to sharpen the message and the objective so that lots of good words about the climate, poverty, women's rights, the world's health policy and combating radical environments are redeemed in the active action PfC's message conveys about? As they themselves formulate it: Turning the tide together for a sustainable future, or, to ask the question in Norwegian: How can we together reverse the trend to create a sustainable future?
We have neither the right nor the opportunity to ignore the challenges humanity has created for itself.
From the bottom. We undeniably live in a world with great challenges. Today's generation of middle-aged men and women have grown up in a growth paradigm that has produced major social and positive reforms – but at the same time and to an increasing extent significant welfare challenges. In a world that has become dependent on constant and unstoppable growth, and which now meets itself at the door in the form of a dependency on non-renewable resources, it is not easy to get a common understanding of – let alone agreement on – the path towards a more just and sustainable world order. Many would argue that it is an impossible task. So why this commitment? Why arrange a conference where such large and unclear questions are challenged? Simply put: Why bother when my voice, or the voice of a few, is very likely not to be heard?
Frederic Hauge more than insinuated that he had given up on politicians.
The answer lies in our humanity, our ability as rational thinking individuals. As human beings, we are all endowed with a greater or lesser portion of intellectual capacity. We are able to analyze problems, find solutions and put them into practice. We have to if we are to survive in the long term. In line with this, PfC's ambitious objective is a virtue of necessity. We simply have neither the right nor the opportunity to ignore challenges humanity has created for itself.
Many people had something on their minds during this year's PfC event, but the main message was clear: We must do something fundamentally different from what we have done for the past 40-50 years, we must do it quickly, and it must start with each individual individual. Frederic Hauge said it: "Change must take place from the bottom up, not from the top down." It was in a way liberating to hear Hauge more than insinuate that he has given up on politicians, and that he rather works directly against "big business" and out among the people. The motto seemed to be that you have to talk to those who sit on know-how-one – those who constantly try to direct limited resources, capital and labor where they waste the most, but also where they do the least damage both to people and the planet we live on.
Capital and social responsibility. What are we left with after this year's PfC event? Greater commitment as well as ambitious and impatient speakers left this impression more than anything else: It is the free interaction in society, that between free people, that provides the best fertile ground for so-called sustainable change. Instead of states, politicians and bureaucracy directing and caring about everything "between heaven and earth", they must stay at arm's length, limited to facilitator roles behind the scenes. And as always, it is the financing and the financial conditions that are the biggest challenge. The catchphrase that was repeated at the PfC conference was "social awareness»: We must facilitate a worldwide corporate culture that combines a high return on invested capital with a "social responsibility". And that was perhaps the most important question asked by the speakers and participants: Is it possible to combine these seemingly contradictory goals?
A discussion about this will have to be a core part of PfC's further work, and a topic for the next conference. We should not be afraid to ask the big questions, and it is quite clear that neither Inger Stange nor Marie Louise Sunde. For my own part, I look forward with excitement to the next conference, where you should be able to expect a somewhat more juicy debate about means of action. This really boils down to people's handling of limited resources in a world that unfortunately requires permanent growth. But the conference clearly shows that the debate about a paradigm shift is well under way.
Olav is an economic journalist in Ny Tid.
