Strategies for the next 100 years

A few months ago, I was seeking funding with my organization through traditional systems and quickly it became apparent that we had to make our projects do some major contortions to fit the 17 UN SDGs (Sustainable Development Goals).

"17 Goals to Save the World

The Sustainable Development Goals give us a roadmap to a better, more sustainable future for all. They respond to the global challenges we face, including those related to poverty, inequality, climate, environmental degradation, prosperity, peace and justice. The goals are interconnected and, in order to leave no one behind, it is important to achieve each of them, and each of their targets, by 2030."

Source: https://www.un.org/sustainabledevelopment/fr/objectifs-de-developpement-durable/

The NGO world and states today are structuring their humanitarian aid and some of their decisions along the lines of the SDGs. The SDGs were originally created with a certain logic with over 100 goals that were then sifted through international negotiations that reformatted them.

These goals are a great educational tool to raise awareness among people who know nothing about the topics being addressed, but as it is used as a political tool and a tool for allocating funds, it turns out that these shifts generate effects, the main one being that they are often managed according to 5-year, 10-year political timelines... the same problem that NGOs face with large international programs.

Until the next election

These programs are willingly initiated but on short time frames often aligned with electoral calendars. Why? In fact, a politician is also working for re-election. This is not a problem specific to the SDGs, this systematics also affects public procurement for example.

Let's take the example of the public building market. Over an electoral period of 5 years, after a political change following a new election, it takes a year to restart the machine because before each new election, the public procurement offers stop. In fact, the state or regional public markets only really work for 3 years out of the 5 years of a mandate.

The problem for construction companies and for all those who depend on public markets such as NGOs and international organizations is that they can only project themselves on time frames set on defined periods. And, faced with this, we have challenges that are impossible to solve in 5 years, in 10 years. It is completely unproductive when a political changeover is inserted in the middle and everything has to be started again almost from scratch.

The challenges we face need 20 years, 50 years, 100 years to be overcome. The problem here is a structural limitation stemming from the systems of governance and in particular of a democratic nature. A global overhaul would be necessary to be effective and clean up some of the other dysfunctions.

So, in the present situation, if we want to raise funds for our humanitarian organizations, we need to present short term goals and fit our organizations and projects, round in nature, into square boxes. This is not impossible, but complicated because it requires conforming to different logics than ours, which are more focused on empowering civil societies than on the management and operating criteria of large organizations.

Preventing and organizing instead of reacting

How did we get here with our organization? In fact, we had a lot of internal crises to deal with in the face of reactions from very poor people who wanted to help themselves to the projects to get a place in the sun and used multiple processes to take control of the projects for their personal use.

As the founder of the ecosystem at one point, I said "stop" and we recreated everything on a voluntary 100% volunteer basis of a social trust repairing network. This network is called Angels with representatives of the civil societies of the communities that asked for our help.

From there, the absence of financial constraints allowed us to generate a natural structure that responds to real needs of the field in which come to graft the families who were initially victims of war, then of the climate, then of the global economic crisis and therefore that we put in touch with companies and urban projects in order to get out of the traditional concept of dependent ecosystem, to instead develop with them an autonomous and positive ecosystem. Our goals today are completely outside of the SDGs and traditional funding systems.

Because, we do not want to manage crises like the big international organizations do, we want to prevent future crises and at worst help communities to adapt to the realities on the ground with procedures to regenerate the current situations. We do not belong to the group of ostriches that hide their faces, or look at one part of a problem or live on the backs of problems. Our goal is to disappear one day because no one will need us anymore.

My specialty is creating novel but effective concepts and strategies. Our beneficiary communities number in the millions even though our NGO fees amount to $500 per month. However, today we have to plan big projects, very big projects, especially projects of relocation of city neighborhoods to the sea and lake. But there is no international aid fund for this. And in 10 years if we do nothing, it will be millions of people who will live with their feet in the water.

The water does not rise quickly, but it rises

For example the capital of Mauritania is located below sea level.

Dakar complains about the inefficiency of its sewage system during heavy rains. I don't think anyone has really understood that the sanitation is fine and that the problem is the rising sea.

In Uvira in the Democratic Republic of Congo, for the past 3 years, 100,000 people have lost their homes in total international indifference. They receive only a little food aid and they live in tents made of odds and ends because they have lost everything. A flood is worse than a fire. The muddy water corrupts everything. Everything is lost.

"The phenomenon will certainly not have the magnitude of a tsunami, but the engulfment by the Atlantic of most of Nouakchott, the Mauritanian capital, is scheduled. Such a scenario was previously considered only likely due to rising sea levels as a result of global warming, which, according to the World Conservation Union (IUCN), would affect cities in Atlantic Africa such as Abidjan (Ivory Coast), Banjul (Gambia), St. Louis (Senegal) and Windhoek (Namibia).

But the combination of sea level rise and human intervention means that flooding of several city districts appears to be at the top of the list of disasters most likely to occur in the not-too-distant future. The warning was issued by government officials and scientists meeting in the Mauritanian capital from December 5 to 15, 2004, during a "discovery of the Mauritanian coastline" seminar jointly organized by the Ministry of Fisheries and Maritime Economy, IUCN, the Regional Program for the Conservation of Coastal and Marine Areas (PRCM), and French cooperation."

Source: January 2005 - The day Nouakchott will be submerged by the ocean... -
https://www.jeuneafrique.com/57671/archives-thematique/le-jour-o-nouakchott-sera-submerg-par-l-oc-an/

Two years ago, there was a volcanic eruption in GOMA and the whole city had self-evacuated on its own because all the public organizations had fled. The lava passed through the middle of the city above but also below. GOMA is a city with gas blocks in the lake and the lava passing under the city was approaching the gas blocks. There was an imminent risk of an explosion that could potentially blow up part of the city. This population self-evacuated on their own with their children under their arms because they remembered the city's evacuation plan from the eruption that had occurred 20 years earlier.

This story gave me the idea of creating strategies that can be understood by everyone, even illiterate people, with real responsible and reasonable goals that allow individuals, communities to have a common vision and to know that they are not alone, that local efforts are not in vain and, as the late Pierre Rabhi initiated, that each one is like a hummingbird with its drop of water and that all the drops of water in the world eventually create an ocean. Far from me the objective of the ocean, but if each city beneficiary of our organization manages to reduce its carbon footprint and its local pollution then it will already be infinitely more than drops of water.

To give an effective grip to our action we add to it the creation of Community Labels, which can be local within the framework of a city or delocalized within the framework of communities of common goals. Labels on the preservation of water quality for example, not to serve humanity as I have read recently but rather to make an alliance between man and nature. Which is a completely different dynamic.

The choice of words we pose for the following decades will shape our future. While this is a primary issue for the creation of artificial intelligence, it should be noted that it is valid for all non-digital human actions as well.

A label is much more effective than a law. A law is restrictive and limiting and a part of the population will try to circumvent it and even sometimes governments themselves circumvent their own laws. We can see it with the creation of super basins in 2023 in France allowing farmers to store water on the surface to irrigate their fields. It is an emergency solution, but is it wise? In the United States, they pour floating balls by the millions on the retention basins to stop the evaporation of the water reserves. I'm not going to get into politics, but this is where you see the distortions between perennial interests and economic interests.

To make our work easier, I've separated our activities into 8 sections from which we are rolling out subsections that are going to come up in a short while as labels.

You will find classic topics such as resources, commons, cities, but also other themes such as "vivance", family, my world, Meta governance. I would emphasize here the last two themes that are quite little present in our world like wisdom, levels of consciousness and that for me are fundamental areas to develop with our students.

"01 - Resources

Whether natural, artificial, intellectual or financial, resources are the energies of this world.

02 - Liveliness

Liveliness touches on the quality of life which passes through its norms, its securing, its repair through resilience.

03 - My World

My family, me, and my ecosystem touches on everything that makes up the nature of our human life.

04 - Commons

Commons are concerned with our relationships with the collective and its impacts.

05 - Cities

What makes a city? Its inhabitants, its impacts, its supplies, its services, its structuring.

06 - Meta

Is community governance with vision, for whom? How?

07 - Wisdom

It is necessary in the face of the illogicalities of our world and comes through education, just projects for community groupings.

08 - Consciences

Awakening to different levels of consciousness is a fundamental key to strategies over the next 100 years."

Source: 100 Strategies of VLG world
https://100.vlg.world/ - https://100.vlg.world/fr/accueil/
https://100.vlg.world/es/hogar/ - https://100.vlg.world/pt/casa/

Today, living with the new deal created by climate problems, pollution problems, various crises, implies stopping lamenting about our lost paradise. It will not come back soon and if it does, we will all be in paradise long ago.

Education has a great role to play in this new era: to form consciences, to train professionals, to develop critical thinking, common sense and to create adults full of wisdom and benevolence who will have the capacities to govern with a clear vision of the future of our planet and humanity. As long as there is life, nothing is dramatic for those who anticipate.

Image source: Pixabay - Pascal-Laurent