Month: June 2020

Dear Readers, here are the resources for this week’s newsletter:

This week’s Interview: Sheeba Sen, founder of Alaap, India

Ferdi: How do you compare the impact you achieved working abroad versus working in India?

Sheeba: Working with Greenpeace for a year, I learnt that international advocacy work can feel a bit removed from reality. Working directly with communities in India brought back the groundedness that I felt was missing. This zooming in with the micro and zooming out with the macro has helped me in understanding the dynamics of how change may happen. Both are needed, at the same time.

Ferdi: You are active in both international networks like the Vital Voices/GRC and local project development in small villages. Tell me about some of the contrast and various challenges in working with such different stakeholder groups.

Sheeba: I believe for effective advocacy one has to cross borders. I think of people and organisations as different species in a forest. For magic to happen each of them have to engage with each other and find that balance where they can come together to create something bigger than each of them individually.

I constantly work on myself to think in terms of ecosystems rather than individual entities and become aware of the interdependencies, competitions, disagreements and different vantage points of the stakeholders I involve in the work I do.

The most common challenges I encounter is disconnectedness and suspicion. A local micro perspective will be suspicious of an ‘outsider‘ and may not be open enough for co-creative processes. At the other end a global perspective lacks the understanding that local context will ultimately determine the shape of the process, product or a service and not the other way around.

The key lies in building trust, building empathy, building stamina (!) and the internalisation. Anything regenerative can only be created through an ecosystem.

Ferdi: What do you think the regenerative approach can uniquely bring to the battle to save the planet?

Sheeba: Ferdi, I see the battle is one of saving ourselves than saving the planet! I’m still internalising what a regenerative approach can mean for us individually and as a humanity, collectively. The strongest pull towards a regenerative approach for me is inspiration from nature to re-imagine the human experience.

The fundamental difference between a regenerative paradigm and an extractive one is where in the ecosystem do we place humans? In the centre, where we view all resources at our disposal or as part of the circle where we thrive together with other species?!

Ferdi: Looking back at your work you have done in the last 10 years, what do you wish you had started doing earlier?

Sheeba: Oh! I wish I had shared more about my work on different platforms; connected more with seemingly ‘irrelevant‘ partners and written more!

I also wish I involved different stakeholder perspectives in my projects. By doing all these more, the chances of innovation and thereby degree of impact would have exponentially increased!

Ferdi: What makes the regenerative approach to social and environmental rejuvenation harder/easier in the Indian context?

Sheeba: I’m tempted to say it is both harder and simpler. Harder because the Indian top down sentiment is still that Western industrial nations should bear the brunt of emissions reduction and sequestration; that India is a growing economy and we need to ‘develop‘. And for that we need fossil fuels and infrastructure that may (mostly will) destroy natural resources.

More than 70% of India’s energy needs are met through coal and 14 of the 20 most polluted cities of the world are in India. Yet, there is a hesitation to take the lead on innovating and committing to a regenerative model of development for India. We don’t hear that narrative from the government circles.

On the other end the grassroots regenerative movement in India, especially rural India, is brimming with success stories and community owning up their own destinies. However, this remains small scale and siloed. What a regenerative future could mean for 1.3 billion Indians will in many ways decide the destiny of all 8 billion of us!

So, the challenge is to scale up the rural regenerative movement of India, bring in investment for large scale regenerative infrastructure and make a compelling case for the government to invest in regeneration as a development future for India.

Ferdi: Is it important for local villagers to understand the global significance and causes of their challenges?

Sheeba: Most of the time rural communities already understand the causes of their challenges. Perhaps not always in the global context but certainly in the rural vs urban context. One of the farmers I interviewed in rural Karnataka in February this year said to me:

” Our rivers are drying and our forests are disappearing. City people are taking everything away. We don’t even have enough water to grow our food. I also want development in our village but I don’t want to destroy nature. I am caught in this dilemma”.

This tells us that rural communities do have a sense of the causes of their challenges and the inequities and view that economic advancement can only be achieved by extraction and destruction. That’s all there is for them to see! They lack a choice. And this desperation, lost faith and the inability to invest long term throws up challenges for ownership. Women in the Himalayas would say:

“What’s the point of us saving our forests? The government will cut these trees anyway. Things are so bad here that we don’t want our children to be back in the village. So why should we invest?”

Lack of political will has left most rural communities lacking faith. In their struggle to survive poverty, they are predisposed to think short term and thereby lack ownership.

Ferdi: If you had one wish to my readers, what would it be?

Sheeba: Believe in the power of collective wisdom! 

If you would like to get involved or make a contribution, please feel free to reach out.

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The Worksheet

Dear Readers, here are the resources for this week’s newsletter.

This week’s expert interview:

Ferdi: When you lost nearly 90% of your cows due to the drought you decided to leave your University job and return to your community and the farm full time. Many people in your situation would have done the opposite (give up the farm and focus on a “safe” paid job). What motivated you to make this decision?

Dalmas: What compelled me to leave employment was a strong sense of a calling to help save my people’s future.  Growing up as young herd’s boy I saw our Maasai people being independent, food and water secured with healthy cattle and healthy lands. I am proud of my culture, my heritage and history.

The thought about children and our society’s future.

 The land used to have rivers with water and they have dried up. We used to have plenty of food and the Maasai were reduced to become dependent on food relief.

I decided to take a leap of faith and save our people.

I came to realise that all our problems were emanating from land degradation.

Therefore, I came here to help in restoration of the land.

It has not been easy but it is a worthy cause. I felt a strong urge to come here and lead by example.

Ferdi: How do traditions help and hinder the adoption of regenerative practices? What parts of your culture have you used to help others understand? What parts of the culture makes it hard for people to understand?

Dalmas: The Maasai culture is good but there are very high levels of illiteracy here. Our society is highly patriarchal and elders have veto powers and control over the lands and because some don’t understand they don’t want to change to grazing practices that contribute to overgrazing and leading to land degradation this is a big problem.

The current policies on land tenure like individuation of land in private deeded land has significantly affected the Maasai communal way of living and the management and sharing of common resources like grass and water.

 I have been using Maasai traditional ceremonies to bring people together, creating village cooperatives of like-minded and willing people to work together.

Ferdi: You have a very ambitious goal, to build a center for regenerative pastoralism through Ildalalekutuk Maasai Action for Development. Why do you believe it is important to build a centre for education and development rather than just looking after your own family farm?

Dalmas: The reason why it is important to have the centre for regenerative pastoralism to train and demonstrate regenerative land management and regenerative agriculture practices in a place they can relate with, on their own land and in setup that belongs to them. We are strategically located in the border of Kenya and Tanzania so we target all the pastoralists in southern Kenya and Northern Tanzania.

Our society is very conservative culture and it will be good to demonstrate to them regenerative practices that has been used and have helped restore the land in other places in the globe.

Ferdi: When people come to visit your centre, what is the thing that surprises them most? Why do you think that is?

Dalmas: In visiting my place people get to see holistic planned grazing working. I have helped to restore the land that I am using holistic management. My animals are very healthy and friendly managed. I also get good profit from my livestock keeping. I am also able to employ people or herders and pay them good salaries. I am also loving, welcoming, generous contributing to community development helping children who need school fees.

I care about people, planet and profit.

Ferdi: What role do you think governments can play in building and supporting more regenerative solutions? What makes it hard for them to be more effective?

Dalmas: The government can support regenerative solutions by including them in the agricultural and science school curriculum. They can train and support training to community members. They can also support and work with grassroots environmental organisations like the Maasai Center for Regenerative Pastoralism to work with communities. They should also direct funding such the Climate Funding to grassroots environmental nonprofits to enable them work with communities.

Ferdi: How do you plan to keep young people engaged and committed to the pastoral lifestyle when the big cities with flashy style and fast lifestyles are tempting them?

Dalmas: I am encouraging young people to come back to villages and support pastoralism and preserve Maasai culture. I have been telling them to see pastoralism as a lucrative business and invest their money in rural areas.

 I have also distributed steers cattle from my herd to a women group to help them start a livestock enterprise.

I am also setting young people trainings with the aim to give them incentives.

There is funding to finance young people who want to get into agriculture as well to create employment and encouraging them to come back to the land.

Ferdi: Around the world many traditional lifestyles are threatened by the effects of climate change. What is the best advice you can give to other people who are in your situation?

Dalmas: I will tell other traditional groups globally to fight climate change by becoming good stewards of their lands. Our hope is in restoration of the land to sequester more carbon and this can be made possible by embracing regenerative agriculture.

I am telling them to join hands with others good people globally to become one force to make our planet a good place for all.

Recent video Interview with Dalmas Tiampati:

If you’d like to support Dalmas in his mission, you can contact him here.

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The Worksheet

This weeks worksheet can be downloaded here.

Dear Logic Leap reader, here are the resources for this week’s newsletter. Hope you enjoy:

The Worksheet

This week’s expert Interview:

1. How does defining the right system boundary affect the design work you do with clients?

In the practice of design, I often invoke Eero Saarinen’s quote  “always design a thing in its next larger context …” Too often, we set the systems boundaries too closely around the thing we’re designing.

Opening up provides us with new insights and opportunities. I once ran a hospital design workshop where we played with system boundaries — ranging from a patient room all the way through to the community in which the hospital was to be built. Teams came up with radically different hospital designs according to what perspective they designed from.

2. What specific strategies do you suggest to ensure that the boundary is set correctly to be useful?

I like to play with temporal boundaries — consider a single touchpoint in an experience over the length of the experience, over the life of the product/service. In my hospital systems design work, I often have the clients begin the engagement with a way-finding exercise. They accompany someone unfamiliar with the hospital to some hard-to-find destination.

They are also asked to explore how way-finding happens in non-hospital contexts. This helps them to understand that the building they have learned to navigate over years is not the same building their customers are experiencing, sometimes for the first time.

3. What is the best example (case) you have seen where a company redesigned their service/system boundary to achieve better results?

Brigham and Women’s created a wonderful pre-surgery experience that began in the referring physician’s office, where patients received a “map” of the surgery experience, some of the major touch-points, a physical map of the hospital, and space for the physician and patient to take notes tailored to their unique experience (like a reminder to bring meds, numbers to call, etc.)

Hi there

From week one you can download the worksheet here:

Here is a link to the book by Samuel Arbesman: