Reinforce the behavior you want to see in the world
“Disaster often accelerates, exponentially, the macro trends that predate its arrival.” Consumer insight strategist Lucie Green offered this sage advice to the New York Times when she said this about fashion, but she very well could be talking about corporate social justice, and of a belief that diversity and inclusion are good for all.
It is well known that cataclysmic events such as pandemics can dramatically alter ecosystems in innumerable ways. The first order, second order, and third order consequences are exponential across generations and geographies. The world we live in is an ecosystem, and it is continuously avoiding or emerging from shocks to its system. Our current weather and climate issues are creating havoc and displacing countless humans worldwide. But it could be worse:
- During the reign of dinosaurs, meteors and volcanic eruptions hastened a dramatic change in the environment, making dinosaurs extinct. One of these forces drove all dinosaurs except for the birds extinct and opened the evolutionary door for mammals until, eventually, humans arose.
- Inside our body lives an ecosystem of bacteria — our microbiome is a connection of systems, and many chronic medical conditions are now being tied to imbalances in this microbiome. In fact, imbalances of the gut microbiota have been associated with insulin resistance in patients with obesity and other metabolic diseases such as type 2 diabetes. The lack of diversity within these microbial communities is literally killing them.
- In the financial crisis of 2007–2008, banks were determined to be too big to fail within the financial ecosystem — their demise would send shockwaves through the financial system. “The “too big to fail” (TBTF) theory asserts that certain corporations, particularly financial institutions, are so large and so interconnected that their failure would be disastrous to the greater economic system and that they, therefore, must be supported by government when they face potential failure. This assumption dramatically changes the risk profile of these select organizations, who are rewarded for working to primarily serve the value of their shareholders and themselves, instead of their own customers.
Pandemics create scarcity, which brings more attention to the ecosystem in which we live, and the ecosystems that live within us. The various and intertwined systems: federal and local government, banking, education, healthcare, technology, retail, real estate, and numerous others are laid bare and their faults are exposed when they are unable to deliver on their value proposition. Our bodies are stretched thin by this pandemic and some internal ecosystems are unprepared for the onslaught of the virus. But not all are equally affected.
This pandemic has physically and financially disproportionately affected the Black and brown portion of our ecosystem.
One of the ways that we have responded to this is via the government’s PPP response. The intent of the program was to provide liquidity to businesses that have been affected by the pandemic.
The program has been criticized for lack of accountability and for the selection of businesses to receive funding.
A May 2020 report from The Center For Responsible Lending states, “The Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) continues to be disadvantageous to smaller businesses, businesses owned by people of color, and businesses without employees. Businesses of color were more likely than White-owned businesses to be disadvantaged by the structural limitations built into the PPP program. Had PPP been designed to serve businesses of color equitably, businesses of color would be better positioned to participate in the recovery.”
On December 1st, the Washington Post published an article that talked about the distribution of PPP loan totals:
“The data shows that this program primarily benefited the well-banked and well-lawyered at the expense of the small businesses it was supposed to benefit.”
In times of drought, where you water is where you’ll find a little growth. So it isn’t more than common sense to realize if you fail to account for hydration, what was once green is now gone.
As a response, we have seen other ecosystem players such as citizen groups, non-profits, and even corporations play an important role in filling the gaps that exist for businesses owned by people of color.
We’re proud to work with NBCC to help fund 50 Black-owned bars and restaurants with $150K in grant funding as they are trying to figure out how to plan for the rest of the year and 2021.
According to a September 2020 report from the National Restaurant Association, one in six restaurants — or a total of 100,000 establishments nationwide — have “closed either permanently or long-term,” and nearly three million restaurant employees are unable to work, and that nationwide, the industry lost $165 billion from March through July and will have lost $240 billion in sales by the end of 2020.
While these Black and brown businesses are not too big to fail, what we fail to understand is that they are too important to fail, because their closures will negatively affect the ecosystem they serve in exponential and generational ways.
We’re seeing much of our ecosystem wither and die, and while it looks hopeless, I’m hopeful because of the story of the humble mangrove tree, and what that represents for our ecosystems in need of support.
Sadly, mangrove trees have been destroyed at increasing rates within Indonesia because of an increase in aquaculture and palm oil harvesting.
The destruction of mangrove trees has multiple implications. These trees provide protection from erosion, and act as a buffer against the sea, while also being a strong carbon sink. “If you preserve a mangrove, you’re preserving an active carbon sink, because the ecosystem keeps taking in carbon continuously. It’s a highly biodiverse, dynamic, resilient ecosystem. If we utilize it sustainably it will be there.”
According to the World Bank, Indonesia an “emerging lower-middle-income country,” and though it has cut its poverty rate by more than half since 1999, some 26 million Indonesians still live below the poverty line.
The economic implications of harvesting natural resources in service of improving one's own livelihood are the real context of this situation. But as Upton Sinclair once said, “It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it.”
The situation would sound bleak and dire, but all has not been lost.
Indonesian innovators have found better ways to make an economic argument that puts conservation at its core. They have been successful in no small part due to the fact that the economic advantages of mangrove restoration projects include higher crab, shrimp, and fish yields. The solution was the replanting of lost trees and getting the Indonesian people to begin to prioritize conservation over aquaculture. Individuals such as Hidayat Palaloi, founder of the Indonesian Self Growth Foundation, have been helping communities replant mangroves.
Palaloi stepped in to mediate in the late ’90s. He and two of his staffers lived in Tongke-Tongke for years, staying with local residents on a rotational basis to build alliances with residents all over town.
Palaloi successfully politicked enough to get community members working together, helping them to create a master plan for their village and expand their mangrove planting efforts.
“I think if he didn’t help us to resolve the conflict, I’m not sure that this mangrove forest would be here now,” Saenuden says.
Palaloi’s method is to tap local leaders like Saenuden to plant mangroves and then monitor the health of the trees. He sees his role as enabling community members to envision and complete their own projects, rather than dictating what communities should do.
There are many economic advantages of mangrove restoration projects, including higher crab and fish yields. Mangroves create an aquatic environment that protects and enables fish, crab, and shrimp growth.
A local fisherman who worked with Palaloi said, “After we planted all the mangroves, our [crab] business started to grow,” Bachtiar says. “One person can catch about 10 kilograms per day. Before, you could just catch one or two kilograms.”
These community members were able to shift to increasing their crab harvests and subsequently built a factory to scale production.
An October 2020 article by the World Economic Forum discusses how growing shrimp in Indonesia is creating jobs and restoring mangroves.
Backed by the IUCN’s Blue Natural Capital Financing Facility, Selva Shrimp is piloting the inclusion of Nature-based solutions (NbS )into shrimp farming in Indonesia to meet the world’s growing appetite for consciously produced seafood. The effort aims to demonstrate the financial sustainability of such projects and their attractiveness, in order to show the world a path towards rectifying negative impacts generated during decades of unsustainable farming practices.
The company says everything the shrimp need to grow is provided by the mangroves, and that its programme provides incentives for farmers to change existing practices. Among these are substantially increased harvest sizes through improved farming practices and healthier environments, and a higher price for this premium product. Harvested mangrove areas are reforested with young trees, it says.
Never underestimate the power of an engaged group of stakeholders fighting for a common good. The power of Indonesian activists, NGOs, corporations, and local governments to convert actions to outcomes and help stave off ecosystem implosion is helping reclaim land from sinking into the ocean while building economic systems that reinforce and accelerate mangrove conservation.
This conservation effort creates a higher quality of life for all Indonesians and provides an example for us as we deal with the implications of this pandemic towards Black and brown communities.
A key message about creating a movement to make ecosystems more resilient by meeting unmet needs is to tie it to sustainable growth. There are various ways we can monetize and incentivize the act of reinforcing the ecosystem through purposeful building.
Many diverse US-based innovators and entrepreneurs recognize the need for purposeful ecosystem building that also address economic needs while seeding an ecosystem for growth.
Take Naj Austin, founder and CEO of subscription-based physical and digital community Ethel’s Club. Naj is currently building Somewhere Good to be a one-stop-shop for people of color. Beyond being a place for people of color to connect, it’s also about creating a safe space for folks to be their authentic selves.
Naj found traction and built community with Ethel’s Club, and is scaling to meet the large, unmet need for people of color online.
Shop Latinx cofounders Brittany Chavez and Miles Montes saw the opportunity around commerce for the Latinx community After Brittany created the brand directory, it grew into a marketplace with products by and for its titular community. A recent Morning Brew article highlights the relaunch:
- Shop Latinx will stock around 500 products from Latinx-founded indie brands.
- It’ll eventually release editorial content for its 60,000+ followers, as well as exclusive collabs.
But it is not just about building companies. It is also about diverting the flow of water across larger organizations by helping them pay attention to overlooked audiences that represent market share and potential revenue.
A Brooklyn-based retailer named Aurora James came up with an idea. It’s a social media initiative called the 15% pledge that challenges major retailers to pledge 15% of their shelf space to products made by Black-owned companies.
Black people represent 15% of the population, and so stores like Target should make sure they’re hitting 15% of Black-owned business on their shelves.
While it may seem like a bold move, again it aligns with common sense.
If there’s one reason for James coming up with concrete solutions so quickly, it’s the ingenuity and conviction of her Brother Vellies philosophy, upheld since the brand was established in 2013. Founded on a series of progressive principles that include a central mission of sustainability, a commitment to honoring and fairly compensating African artisans and their traditional design practices, as well as a policy of no sales or discounts, Brother Vellies has become a shining example of a brand sticking to its ethics even as it has continued to rapidly scale.
The benefits of this are ecosystem-wide — from a recent NPR interview:
Well, what we see time over time is that female founders and also people of color who are business owners put money back into their community when they make it. And so while this is direct money that’s going to business owners, it’s also money that’s going to immediately channel back into communities. And when you empower business owners and allow them to spend money in ways that make sense, that’s so much more sustainable to me than just a one-time donation.
These leaders are showing the FAANGS of the world how to innovate. And sadly, large enterprise organizations are less focused on addressing the unmet needs of underserved audiences. Instead, they are dealing with anti-competition issues brought on by their bloated size and reach. But even corporations are waking up to missed opportunities. They will need the help of diverse innovators to address the challenges of today which are the opportunities of tomorrow.
We the people can continue to add momentum to the moment to get stakeholders including corporations, startups, and investors to understand their role and responsibility in the ecosystems they serve. Many of these corporations, startups, and investors purport to serve the largest target addressable market –if that sentiment is true– then we should hold them accountable for where they pay attention, and where they water. If they are serious, they have a vested interest in caring about underserved customer segments that will represent the majority in this century.
We must increase the movement and galvanize industries to help ecosystem stakeholders realize that serving diverse audiences is good business and the critical part of an organization’s ability to survive the next boom and bust cycle. As we have learned, no one is an island unto themselves. It’s on all of us to play our part in reinforcing this ecosystem.
