Nature Positive
Radical Collaboration
Hubs
We must maintain as much biodiversity and natural habitat as possible and seek to recover past losses.
However, our treatment of the natural environment has been dominated by an exploitation mindset, where the environment is seen as something we need to dominate, control and exploit. This in turn has created the ‘tragedy of the commons’. the unsustainable use of a resource over which no one has specific control or ownership (i.e. there is in effect common ownership or access). Organizations (and individuals) have no incentive to exercise restraint in the use of that resource because if they do, another organization will simply take their ‘share’. Hence the ‘rational’ thing for each organization to do is to take as much as they can as quickly as they can. The destruction of ocean fisheries is a typical and typically tragic example.
We need to not only move to a stewardship mindset more like that common among indigenous people, but we also need to be able to collaborate and co-ordinate our actions. Unilateral action by one organization, however well intended, may have disastrous consequences depending on the actions of other organizations that impact the same ecosystem. Biodiversity can only be nurtured if organizations work together.
Each natural habitat is a complex ‘system of systems’ subject to its own unique combination of external pressures, to which it responds in its own complex ways. Collaboration must therefore be location-specific and involve all the organizations that impact the natural habitat in that location.
The Radical Collaboration Institute is therefore establishing location-based Nature Positive Radical Collaboration Hubs. The aim of each Hub is to enable the organizations that impact a particular natural habitat to work together to maintain and improve biodiversity and recover past losses through an eight-stage process.
- Establish the initial membership of the Hub based on the key organizations that impact Nature in a specific location
- Define the initial scope of the Hub by mapping each organization’s environmental impact at the location
- Develop a current diversity and condition baseline report for the location
- Jointly commit to diversity and condition targets for the location
- Generate solutions through a collaborative, structured but creative problem solving process
- Launch a program of initiatives to implement these solutions
- Track and report progress and make course corrections as required to achieve the targets
- Iterate Stages 2-7 as more members join the Hub.
The initial membership of the Hub may not include all the organizations that impact Nature in the given location, but as traction is gained in determining the baseline, understanding interactions, and delivering solutions it is likely that new impacts and new members will be identified.
Critically, as an independent party whose only interest in the Hub is in the achievement of its joint and individual objectives, we provide the “backbone” that enables diverse organizations to work together synergistically. Through our role as the Collaboration Integrity Office in each Hub we provide governance, day-to-day management, progress reporting and transparency around individual and collective accountabilities.
We also facilitate and project-manage our proprietary collaborative problem solving and solution development process to not only conceive and develop innovative solutions, but also deliver them. As part of this process and to support progress monitoring, we also provide mechanisms for the confidential aggregation and sharing of data between members.
Radical Collaboration Hubs are built on a common architecture and use pre-defined processes which means they are quick to start and can be rapidly scaled to get better results faster. This also allows different Hubs to work together.