Last week’s blog began answering the question that many in multi-stakeholder change networks hear :  “So what is it you actually do?”  I wrote about the first two activities of such Global Action Networks (GANs) listed in the Table, and now I’ll explain more about the other four activities.

Networks, Learning and Research

Learning is a core part of most GANs’ work, since how to realize their goals is not always obvious and participants’ capacity to contribute to reaching them must be developed. However, GANs often have a remarkably underdeveloped sense of this work. At a meeting of GAN staff who had roles in developing knowledge and learning, they all said that they had very few resources and learning outcomes and strategies were poorly defined. Nevertheless, GANs put an enormous part of their resources into learning, when all the meetings and time in conversation to develop knowledge and capacity are taken into account.

Learning is a key activity of the Global Compact, as it develops lessons to share amongst companies on how the UN principles it promotes can be implemented. It is also a key activity of the Global Partnership for the Prevention of Armed Conflict (GPPAC), which similarly organizes participants into regional learning groups and shares lessons across them.

For the GANs in health care, research is a particularly important activity. Often this is a traditional type of research:  half of the Stop TB’s 10-year work plan concerns R&D for new vaccines. The GANs support collaborative development of this research, bringing together government, civil society, and commercial organizations with their distinctive expertise and capabilities.

Networks, Measuring and Certifying

Certification is a popular organizing strategy to realize change. Production of goods and services is assessed in terms of social, environmental, and economic standards, and GANs certify whether those standards have been met. The International Social and Environmental Accreditation and Labelling Alliance (ISEAL) is an association of GANs, including the Marine Stewardship Council, Social Accountability International, and the fair trade groups associated with the Fair Labelling Organization.

Several GANs make development of impact measurement frameworks and infrastructure a core part of their work. Although the Global Reporting Initiative does not actually get involved in measurement or certification, it develops the frameworks for companies to assess their impact in terms of social, economic, and environmental outcomes. And in fact, most ISEAL members do not actually do the certification, although they certify the certifiers. Transparency International also has an important measurement program, with its Corruption Perceptions Index that rates countries. And The Access Initiative’s (TAI’s) core strategy has to do with the broader measurement concept of “assessing” countries’ fulfillment of their commitments in the Rio Declaration to access to information, participation, and justice in environmental decision-making.

Networks and Financing

The Global Water Partnership (GWP) exemplifies a GAN formed by donors who want to give scale to their efforts by pooling financial resources. The network has been supported financially by many developed countries. For these funders, the GWP is an economical way to achieve the overall goals of promoting social equity, economic efficiency, and environmental sustainability, by improving the way water is managed and developed.

This pooling of financial resources is at the heart of most of the health GANs, like the Global Alliance for Improved Nutrition, the Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunization, and the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis, and Malaria. The latter is financially by far the largest of any GAN: in the 8 years following its 2002 founding it had approved funding of US$ 19.3 billion for more than 572 programs in 144 countries.

As well the GAN structure often facilitates approaching funders.  For example, GANs can put together proposals that cover a much larger geographic area and be of a much large scale than their individual participants or regional components.  This can make them more attractive to the funders.

Networks and Advocating

GANs’ advocating strategy usually resembles a co-learning approach across traditional divides, rather than a traditional lobbying and pressuring strategy. This is demonstrated by TAI. TAI takes a learning approach when conducting “assessments” of governments’ performance vis-à-vis their commitments to provide access to information, participation, and justice in environmental decision-making.

Although NGOs are in control of TAI, “TAI members recognize that governments are not monolithic; they are filled with allies and opponents,” comments Joe Foti, TAI Associate. This leads to a diversity of TAI advocacy strategies with the goal of governments co-participating in the actual process of assessing. TAI country coalitions find that it usually helps to conduct the assessments in close relationship with a supportive government agency, such as the national Ministry of Environment that is usually weak on finance, political power, and science. In Thailand the TAI coalition includes an institute sponsored by the King of Thailand, which gives it legitimacy in government eyes. And in Africa, the TAI-Cameroon representative was actually asked to advocate to other governments and speak on his government’s behalf at a UNEP Governing Council meeting on access to information, participation, and justice in environmental decision-making.

Of course GANs integrate these six strategies. For example, The Climate Group focuses in particular on bringing together local and state/provincial governments and business. One project demonstrates the effectiveness of outdoor LED lighting with city government. This requires bringing together LED experts, financial institutions to finance the city’s investments, and local government. Bjorn Roberts, Corporate Partnership Manager for The Climate Group comments: “We make (climate change) a compelling topic for all, and put it on their agenda. The conversations don’t happen unless people are put together.” Through The Climate Group, a local city project becomes a global pilot. It combines the strategies of shared visioning of green cities, system organizing by bringing together the diverse partners, learning with the pilot, financing through developing new financial instruments, and advocating with other cities to follow the pilot.

This table aims to provide an analytical tool for networks to ask questions about their own strategies.  What are they doing in each area?  Which ones are they strong in?  Which ones should they develop further.  I hope you find it helpful!

To realize large-scale change requires really good large-scale conversations.  With tens and even hundreds of millions of people.  I remember the 1980s’ innovative format of satellite-fed televised town hall meetings with citizens of the US and the Soviet Union talking directly to one another for the first time.  They made a huge impression and broke down stereotypes.  Although social media and the internet allow much richer exchanges, by-and-large they have been pretty unimaginative.  But Patrice Barrat of Article Z and the Bridge Initiative in Paris, is pushing the boundaries with a new just-launched production!

Patrice integrates social media, mobile phones, video, television, email, web-conferencing, and other technologies to create conversations about critical issues.  He starts with a citizen with a compelling question and brings them to Presidents, Prime Ministers, CEOs, Executive Directors and other leaders to ask their question.

For example, he did a production with the Global Fund to Fight AIDS and a South African AIDS-infected child.  She asked the question “Why must I die?” Busi – a south African activist – carried her question to G8 participants Gordon Brown (UK Finance Minister), Paul Wolfowitz (World Bank President) and Kofi Annan (UN Secretary General).  The exchanges went on the web, which spurred others to add their own videos and written commentary;  after a conversation of several months, a film was produced integrating the contributions.

Patrice is a journalist animateur whose work reflects three principles:

1. Place film-makers/journalists at the service of citizens of the planet to help them ask questions that affect their lives…journalists bring the powers-that-be to the citizens to answer citizens’ questions.
2. Have the stories unfold publicly by placing video episodes on the web, before making the film for TV.
3. Remember that investigations don’t tell the ultimate truth about an issue…all issues are interactive amongst stakeholders.  It’s an evolving truth;  the story is always an evolving process.

After working for years as an award-winning journalist, Patrice began in 1999 to experiment with his approach, which is named MadMundo.tv.  He is maintaining the cutting edge with the second phase of a research project that brings together Article Z, telecom Sofrecom-Orange, business school HEC, and the Institut de Recherche et d’Innovation (IRI) of Beaubourg.

Just Launched

That second phase just launched last week.  With a team of a couple of dozen people he is piloting a monthly series of conversations for the French-German television network Arte.  The pilot is about the financial crisis in Greece.   He begins with a 28-year old Greek university graduate, Maria, who earns €700 a month, and her question. “Why should I suffer from the economic chaos?”  And for others:  “What if that happened to us?”  Maria will pose her question to such people as the Prime Minister of Greece, the President of the European Central Bank and the head of the International Labour Organization.  Every day there will be a new web-site video and commentary, to spur responses from others on-line.  And at the end of the month there will be a 52-minute TV production.

Patrice’s favorite MadMundo.tv production was a series with a Brazilian named Geraldo who was out of work and asked Lula before he was President “Who benefits from profits?”  Two years later when Lula was President a second series was done with Geraldo.  But this time there was difficulty in getting a meeting with Lula until Patrice met him at an airport and showed him Geraldo’s picture.  “He turned to the camera and said ‘Geraldo you want to know about globalization and profits?’  Lula started explaining how capital flows across borders and that people can’t cross borders…Geraldo was very proud that Lula still talked to him even indirectly.  They met directly later.”

A third series with Geraldo asking “Who can I trust” did not end so happily as Lula was embroiled in a corruption scandal.  But it took Geraldo’s question to the head of Transparency International, Romania, Burkina Faso and the UK.

Many leaders would dismiss Patrice’s request for an interview as a traditional journalist, but are much more interested in meeting with a citizen.  Sometimes it doesn’t turn out happily for the leader.  The citizen who met Kofi Annan commented that she was not impressed. Patrice explains that “Some people at the UN said (to Patrice) ‘We thought you were a friend.’  But that’s what the character had to say.”

What’s changed over the years?  One thing is that Patrice’s approach is recognized as legitimate and doable.  There’s a form of competition even, with YouTube and other on-line video exchanges. And Patrice has moved from a more journalistic style “to a style where you feel the character is really meeting someone.  It’s a series of discoveries and encounters.  It’s not made for an audience just to understand an issue, but to understand the questioning of the characters with their eyes and their evolution (in relation to the issue).”

Of course a big bi-product is strengthened community around the issue with greater participation and understanding about how to influence it.

Want to try creating your own MadMundo conversation with Patrice?  He estimates the cost between €120,000 – €160,000.

New financing mechanisms for Global Action Networks (GANs) are being developed under the leadership of the Leading Group on Innovative Financing for Development.  The Group’s work is already producing very significant funding for Stop TB, the Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunization (GAVI), and the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria.

The Leading Group has a wider focus than GANs and health care.  And although it has the word “development” in its name from when it was formed in 2006, it actually is evolving a much bigger agenda than that.  The agenda is really around addressing globalization, the production of global public goods, and such objectives as the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs).  The eight MDGs each focus on one issue, including poverty, gender equality, health and environmental sustainability.

Julien Meimon, Permanent Secretary of the Leading Group, explains that the goal is to generate “…flows that are stable, predictable and complementary to ODA (Overseas Development Assistance).”  The financing is to come from beneficiaries of, and costs associated with, globalization, such as air travel, international financial flows, and CO2 emissions.

The Leading Group is a “coalition of the willing” to use George W. Bushes famous phrase.  But this time, the US is so far absent and another 60 countries are committed.  The Group itself, Julien stresses, is an informal umbrella structure that is producing formal and concrete initiatives.  Julien is an employee of the French Foreign Ministry, and has a staff that ranges from three to 20, depending upon the needs.  They are determined not to become an international bureaucracy themselves.

There are four mechanisms to date:

1)    State Guaranteed loans: The Leading Group spurred the formation of the International Finance Facility for Immunization (IFFIm).  By the end of 2010 nations will guarantee close to €4 billion in 20 year bonds to undertake immunization projects. The Group also produced $1.5 billion in commitments by governments and foundations to fund partnerships with pharmaceutical companies to research neglected diseases and provide affordable distribution of the drugs to the poorest countries.

2)    Mandatory Contributions or Taxes: International air fare taxes are funding UNITAID to buy drugs and diagnostics and negotiate significant reductions in prices of pharmaceutical firms. In its first three years with 13 countries participating, the taxes raised $1.2 billion. Norway has applied a kerosene tax to fund UNITAID.

3)    Voluntary contributions: In January, 2010 voluntary contributions were promoted with most air ticket purchases;  McKinsey estimates the voluntary contributions could produce another $1 billion annually.

4)    Market mechanisms: Germany allocates 10 percent of the revenue from carbon auctions to development.

These mechanisms fund existing formal organizations like the health GANs and generate formal organizations, like IFFIm and UNITAID to lead the activity.

Task Forces are investigating various other mechanisms.  The biggest mechanism of all probably is yet to come.  In June a Task Force will report the technical and juridical feasibility of taxing financial transactions.  “The (Leading Group) countries have tasked experts to propose a menu of options for what tax or voluntary contribution should be promoted,” Julien explains.

A 2010 review pointed out: “there is a total flow of $777.5 trillion. With a minimal impact on transactions caused by the introduction of such a tax, a levy of 0.005% would guarantee approximately $33 billion for solidarity programs to combat hunger and extreme poverty.”¹

The Leading Group arose from a report on mechanisms commissioned by French President in 2004 and a 2006 Paris Ministerial Conference.  It is a type of GAN, bringing together 59 countries, various international institutions and non-governmental organizations.  It is an “action research/learning” body.  Meetings report back on experiments with application of the mechanisms to both share learning and promote their adoption by others.  And they are also breaking the model of “development financing” in spite of their name, and moving to “global financing” for global public goods.  For example, countries like Namibia, while net recipients, also apply the air tax and contribute to UNITAID.

The Permanent Secretariat is in Paris, but the Presidency rotates between countries every six months.  Japan is taking the Presidency for a 2010 meeting that will be in Tokyo.

What type of mechanisms do you think should be promoted?

¹ Pochmann, M. and G. R. Schutte. (2010). “A tax for globalisation based on solidarity.”   Retrieved April 28, 2010, 2010, http://www.leadinggroup.org/article540.html

The world’s premier alliance of multi-stakeholder change networks is reviewing standards that operationalize their change strategy. The ISEAL Alliance is the global association for social and environmental standards.  Members include the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC), the Marine Stewardship Council (MSC), Social Accountability International (SAI), the Fair Labelling Organization (FLO: fair trade) and the International Federation of Organic Agriculture Movements (IFOAM).

You know ISEAL organizations by their labels:  Fair Trade’s on coffee, MSC’s on seafood,  FSC’s label on paper and wood products. ISEAL’s Impact Code helps define what to measure and how to measure in order to be awarded the labels. Highly relevant is the work of 2009 economics Nobel Prize winner Elinor Ostrom.

The Change Strategy

The change issues are sustainability and economic justice.  A basic Code element of the change strategy is multi-stakeholder engagement.  This produces a “whole systems” perspective about how companies’ actions impact social, environmental and economic outcomes. This is a big change from the traditional exclusive corporate focus on its own financial welfare.

Currently the standard does a good job of defining who stakeholders are.  However, how they must be engaged is defined under the very general concept of “consultation” that raises questions.

For MSC and FSC, certifiers who meet certain standards are hired by a “client” (usually a forestry or fishery company) to determine whether certification standards are being met.    Typically certifiers interview stakeholders individually and there is not necessarily a collective meeting of stakeholders.  Nor is there any requirement that a multi-stakeholder group be developed to manage the fishery/forest or ensure the certification standards are being met between the certification renewals.

This is distinctly different from the strategy of the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria (the Global Fund) and the Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (EITI).  The former only accepts funding applications from multi-stakeholder groups;  the latter, a spin-off of Transparency International, requires that applications for “validation” of transparency standards come from multi-stakeholder bodies.

“EITI offers a platform for dialogue to discuss transparency issues,” Tim Bittiger, EITI Regional Director explained to me.

The Nobel Prize

Ostrom won the Nobel Prize for her analysis of economic governance. The media release announced her win this way:

“(Ostrom) has challenged the conventional wisdom that common property is poorly managed and should be either regulated by central authorities, or privatized. … She observes that resource users frequently develop sophisticated mechanisms for decision-making and rule enforcement to handle conflicts of interest, and she characterizes the rules that promote successful outcomes.” (Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences 2009)

She spent decades studying successful resource management at the local level by multi-stakeholder groups.  Most of ISEAL’s members are multi-stakeholder networks at the global level, which reflects their theory of change.  This would lead you to expect that they would find this a compelling arrangement locally, as well.

Empowerment

Paddy Doherty who is managing the Impacts Code review process, says that ISEAL members talk about the importance of “empowering” stakeholders.  This suggests the importance of creating new governance arrangements locally where differences can be worked out, and collective planning and heightened standards can be advanced.

As might be expected, there is already experience with cross-stakeholder groups locally.  FLO deals with cooperatives that cross the traditional labor-management divides.  MSC Project Manager Amanda Stern-Pirlot comments that: “If a fishery has certification conditions (i.e. has to make improvements over the course of their certification) often the cooperation of others is needed to fulfill these conditions, particularly when improvements to management systems are needed. In lots of situations, having a good collaborative relationship with stakeholders outside the client group is essential.”

Multi-stakeholder Platform Issues

The idea of forming multi-stakeholder groups for certification raises skills issues. Typically certifiers have traditional auditing expertise (eg.: from Arthur Anderson) and would not be equipped to handle some of the dynamics and associated goals.  Making multi-stakeholder platform development would require a very different set of competencies.

Doherty raises the valid point that the Global Fund and EITI are dealing with different situations:  handing out large amounts of money in the one case, and working with large corporations and governments in the other.  However, maybe this simply suggests a modified strategy to foster formation of a multi-stakeholder group.  It could be made a condition of renewal of certification, for example, so the initial certification ushers is contingent upon a plan and commitment to develop a local platform.

The big product and attraction to multi-stakeholder platforms is their ability to coordinate their very distinct resources and capabilities, and challenge each other’s parochial perspectives, to produce very wonderful innovation…to do what none of them could imagine doing on their own.  This is the type of change that is required to realize the objectives of ISEAL Alliance members.  This has been well-documented, including in my last book Societal Learning and Change:  How governments, business and civil society are creating solutions to complex multi-stakeholder problems.

Until 30 April 2010 you are invited to contribute your ideas for improvement, discuss key issues, and propose changes to the code.