…to help track what we’re picking up while on this steep learning curve as we shift from single points solutions to embracing portfolio logic to tackle complex systemic challenges (plus it helps that i can pick up tips & tricks from some very smart people i admire- am looking at you Cassie Robinson and Marco Steinberg, and our Vietnam DeepDemos team).
Weeknote 1: Oct.19–23
COVID recovery and system dynamics. In three separate conversations this week, the issue of COVID accelerating the underlying dynamics that generated social injustice and unsustainable development came up. Dynamics that predate the pandemic have been nudging these systems toward fragility and not resilience — be that the structure of tourism industry in the Dominican Republic (tightly coupled value chains with a single industry dependency, wealth extraction, hidden cost of resource extraction, unfair employment practices), the land use and planning practices in Zimbabwe that have been exacerbating food security or the culture of short-term profit seeking (among other factors) in the SME sector in Vietnam.
*Sidebar: some really interesting work coming up from our Country Office , Francesca Nardini and Mela Atanassova on future-proofing tourism in the Dominican Republic shortly, partly inspired by Dan HIll’s Slowdown Papers.
On incoherence between log-frames and sticky issues. Our Tunisia team is exploring the implications of broadening the concept of citizen engagement from citizen-to-state consultations to citizen-to-citizen relationship. One quote from an interview struck me as particularly relevant for our work on system transformation — ‘Trust is like a drop of water. It fills a glass drop by drop with time. But if the glass gets knocked over, it gets empty in a sec.” It points to the limits of tools (be they artificial intelligence or design thinking) and a need for a very different set of conditions and mindsets to drive this work (comfort with emergence, ambiguity, uncertainty).
Updating mental models. In working with Angola team on dynamics that underpin the functioning of informal markets, what came out is the notion that these spaces are ‘democratic’ in so far that they are open to anyone and they thrive on diversity, and that the ‘informal markets’ may not be the most adequate term to describe it but instead ’self organizing market’ — something that points to resilience, agility, adaptability and entrepreneurship (and on a flip side, exposes those taking part in informality to enormous risk). Rather than pointing to a marker failure to be regulated, ‘policy makers should view informal practices of the urban poor — street vending, informal public transport, irregular housing arrangements- as a form of communication by doing. Then if we accept that informal practice is a valid form of dialogue, responses should be equally open — not simply geared toward compliance or formalization, but building and maintaining ongoing dialogue about the use and form of urban space.’ On this note, we also had a conversation with our team in Paraguay on the recently established Informal Economy Lab — what struck me is how some of the more dominant literature on this topic (punitive vs. pedagogical models) is out of date with the dynamics emerging from ‘informality’.
On using non-obvious entry points to open up strategic conversation. Enjoyed reading colleague’s inputs on a concept note that looks at different options to provide digital solutions for the delivery of COVID vaccines. It was a very practical way to put the overall mission of our team into practice — it showed how we can use the entry point of a vaccine delivery process to open up a more systemic conversation (how do we build public infrastructures for equality, like for example here) and more of a multi-dimensional approach that touches upon governance, poverty, and health through the lens of vaccine delivery. This hits at the heart of ‘why UNDP’ and not someone else (as he pointed out, an IT consultancy).
