The Inner Development Goals Summit 2022 - Moral Imagination and Ethical Leaders
3 May 2022
Chellie and myself (Rodger) attended virtually the first Inner Development Goals (IDGs) Summit held on April 29th, providing an opportunity to explore the application of the IDGs and how “we can release the brakes on human progress, both individually and collectively”.
The programme covered the five IDGs categories:
BEING: How can we stay in touch with our inner compass and enhance a learning mindset?
THINKING: What can help us cultivate long-term orientation, maturity and wisdom?
RELATING: How can we leverage compassion, humility, and connectedness in our cultures?
COLLABORATING: How can we build trust and promote an inclusive mindset in our teams, organizations, and societies?
ACTING: Practice with pioneers and grow your courage, optimism and creativity.
Moral Imagination
Renegade scientist, systems thinker, and social entrepreneur Phoebe Tickell’s discourse on how imagination can change the course of people's lives was a highlight. “Imagination activists are activists powered by imagination and by vision and tools to make a better world for everyone. They go round, agitating the collective consciousness and expanding what people believe can be real and what people believe can be possible,” she said.
She urged us to consider imagination as something very intimate rather than fantastical or distant. “It's in here. It's inside. It shapes how we think about ourselves, how we relate to other people, how we relate to the world, and how we make sense of our context. Imagination applied intentionally, can bring us closer to who we really are, and strengthen our inner compass. And when we come together to do collective imagination, we can create collective imaginaries that can guide us to create different worlds and different futures,” Phoebe said
Phoebe runs an organisation called Moral Imaginations, working with different people to develop and test her practices. She said that her work with teams, leaders, communities, organisations showed her how indigenous people had used imagination and dreaming for millennia. “It's an old and ancient technology. But there is no time like now that we need it more."
She led summit participants through an activist imagination method, which guided us through a journey of encountering our future descendants. We were invited to imagine encountering someone seven generations from now (Phoebe acknowledges that we must assume there will be humans 200 years from now and they will have access to your vision from today). The exercise is dedicated to “building a movement of moral imagination: collective imagining to increase radical kinship with the human and more-than-human worlds, present, past and future.” - (Moral Imaginations, 2022).
Relating this to investment, imagine you are encountering someone seven generations from now and answering their question: “What type of world did you hope that your ethical investments would contribute to in future?”
Ethical Leaders
Immediately following Phoebe’s session, a panel of three inspirational speakers explained how they are creating sustainable development.
Representatives from Costa Rica and Rwanda were asked: “How can the IDGs learn from your countries?”
María del Pilar Garrido Gonzalo, National Planning and Economic Policy Minister, Costa Rica
Costa Rica is one of the foremost countries when it comes to working with the SDGs. Costa Rica is the first country in the world to implement the IDGs framework in the public sector. The Costa Rica launch video from December 2021 can be viewed here. Costa Rica is one of five countries piloting the IDGs with the support of the Templeton Foundation.
María explained that Costa Rica is using the IDGs to accelerate progress on the SDGs. María highlighted Costa Rica’s successes with reversing deforestation and a 200-year-old history of democracy, “with no armies and dealing with conflict in a way where we can actually not have the same opinion but in a way, respect each other and come to a conclusion and work it out,” she said. Maria described “the joy of living” as being about acknowledging yourself in a broader ecosystem. “As a small part, but a part that can actually make a difference living better sustainable lives,” she said.
Diane Gashumba, Ambassador, Embassy of Rwanda to the Nordic Countries
Diane is the former Minister of Health in Rwanda and a medical doctor. She explained how Rwanda had emerged from the 1994 genocide against the Tutsi that had taken a million lives.
Back then, Rwanda was ranked one of the poorest countries in the world. It now has an education system that is available to everybody. Rwanda has 98% Covid vaccination coverage; is the first country in Africa to implement cervical cancer vaccination and aims to be the first country in Africa to wipe out cervical cancer; and is the first country in Africa to ban single-use plastics – from plastic bags, to plastic cutlery and almost all food packaging.
Diane highlighted the importance of “investing in people” and explained how the people who had committed genocide were reintegrated into the army. Rwanda is now one of the safest countries in the world (11th globally) and second in Africa (slightly less than Algeria).
Lars Strannegård, President of the Stockholm School of Economics
Lars began by acknowledging that universities at large have not been very good at educating students about sustainability. He said this was self-evident looking at the state of the world. Referencing philosopher Martin Heidegger, who theorised that the person who is best prepared for the future is one who is “free and alive in relation to the unknown”, Lars described how the university had created an acronym for their educational mission:
FREE
F: facts and science-based vs alternative facts and fake news
R: reflective and self-aware, understanding who you are, understanding your role in society and applying life-long learning
E: empathetic and culturally literate
E: entrepreneurial and responsible – “having an action orientation and doing stuff really”.
Lars highlighted the need to “educate educators” that “there is no shortcut. You can't just push the SDGs without starting from the inside”.
Learn more about the Inner Development Goals
If you would like to learn more, please let me know. Money Matters has created a “Guide to Exploring the Inner Development Goals through Ethical Investment”. Described in our previous blog Introducing the Inner Development Goals this guide is for investors who would like to consider the IDGs in detail and how they might apply them personally.
