We Stand for a Better Way

After President Trump’s disparaging remarks about Haiti and African countries, CCL Global Strategy Director Joe Robertson responds.

Our volunteers in Nigeria, Cameroon, Côte d’Ivoire, Kenya, Tanzania, in all across 14 African countries and 6 continents, work hard to be principled community leaders whose efforts foster democratic participation. They work to build better societies, where citizens and stakeholders have a voice in making policy, where human imagination, not the inertia of historical injustice, determines future outcomes.

This is not easy work. Volunteers have faced disdain and assault from those who believe citizen volunteers should not have a right to correct against corruption, simply for speaking up. One of our local leaders said, after receiving personal threats, “I will not let people driven by fear and anger stop me from working for good. We have a right to a better future, and we have the tools to empower others. We must do this work.”

Posted by Joseph Robertson

Joseph Robertson is Founder and Executive Director of Earth Civics (Earthcivics.org). He is chief strategist for the Climate Value Exchange, and a principal in the Good Food Finance Network, co-leading efforts to establish a new co-investment platform for food systems transformation. He previously served as Interim Director for the Food System Economics Commission, during its start-up phase, and as Senior Advisor, Sustainable Finance, for the EAT Foundation. He is the founder of Geoversiv (earthintel.org) and Liberate Systems (liberatesys.net).

Quiet Revolt Stuns UK Pollsters

For weeks, public opinion polls in the UK have shown the contest for leadership of the UK government to be a dead heat, likely to require a complicated negotiation to achieve a new governing coalition. Nearly every poll showed the Conservatives and Labour to be hovering around 34 percent support each. No one was expected to win an outright majority. Late last night, however, exit polls showed something radically different: David Cameron’s Conservatives beat Labour 37 to 31 in the popular vote, and would hold an outright majority in Parliament, while the Scottish National Party won nearly every seat in Scotland.

Posted by Joseph Robertson

Disruptive Optimism for Serious Change

We need non-expert voices in the room. No individual expert knows everything, many decision-makers are themselves non-experts, and considering stakeholders’ voices leads to more legitimate, relevant and viable policy outcomes. Significant improvements in the prevailing condition require disruption of the status quo. The status quo implicitly extends from the status quo ante, the prevailing norms that preceded the current state of affairs and on which the structures we know were founded. Expertise is rooted in an examination of these two states, and can provide a sound and reasoned reference for how to move into the future, but when we look to achieve a post status quo reality, where human conditions are greatly improved and the previously unavailable has become commonplace, we have to recognize that we are looking beyond what is known. Expertise unaccompanied by the power of imagination and a hot contest of ideas can lead to planning not well adapted to visualizing, comprehending or catalyzing disruptive optimizing change.

Posted by Joseph Robertson

Citizens Engage World Governments in Lima

The 20th Conference of the Parties, held in Lima last month, produced a consensus agreement among 195 governments, which provides the draft structure for “an agreed outcome with legal force” to be finalized in Paris, in December 2015. During the Lima Conference, governments engaged each other, non-governmental organizations engaged the process, and through Citizens’ Climate Lobby and the Pathway to Paris project, I had the privilege of helping to bring the voices of citizens from around the world directly into the process.

Posted by Joseph Robertson

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