trends and future of sustainable development - TransEco

Leadership and institutionsThe SEQCARI report focused on authoritarian and adaptive leadership. Two studies (Easter Island,Azerbaijan) profiled authoritarian leadership as likely to foster short term maladaptive responses toclimate change. Such leadership tends to reduce creativity and the sense of agency in its citizens,communities and institutions. The exception was the case of Cuba’s response to the collapse of theUSSR, where authority stepped back and allowed a degree of freedom to respond creatively to whatessentially constituted a mini-peak oil experience.The study focused on what we call adaptive leadership, following Heifetz (2009). Such leadership isopen, respectful, imaginative, engaged and prepared to take risks to ensure that a broad community ofstakeholders benefit from social renewal. It also suggests that adaptive institutions emerge over time andonly through collective effort. Institutions are social products designed to solve perceived problems withthe ordering and maintenance of society. Adaptive leadership understands how to develop and fosteradaptive institutions as the case of Solon in ancient Greece demonstrates.Case study 4: Athens 590 BCEAt the opening of the 6 th Century BCE, the city-state of Athens was struggling with social unrest,economic decline and the violent rivalry of its wealthier citizens. Leadership was contested and usuallyfactional. The city’s status, prosperity and security were all threatened. The Athenians turned to atrusted member of the aristocracy, Solon. He was elected chief magistrate (archon eponymous) ofAthens in 594, BCE. In this position, Solon instituted a number of sweeping reforms (Rhodes 2006). Thereforms were counter to the interests of Solon’s own class. To ensure that he was not compromised byhis position once the elected period was over, Solon went into voluntary exile for ten years.At first, these reforms were not that effective and Athens again had to endure a period of tyrannyunder Solon’s cousin Peisistratos. However, the reforms laid the foundations for the emergence ofAthenian democracy later in the century. In this example, we see that social learning takes time. Solonprepares for a future democratic Athens by sowing the seeds of an idea and setting up the institutionsthat over time gain strength, legitimacy and ultimately authority. Solon’s idea bore practical results inthe form of a democratic polity that managed rivalry and shaped identity in a way that avoided the worstof factional and competitive violence.Practical lessons 3: patience, memory and visionIt took a century for Solon’s ideas to catch on. Change always experiences a period of up take when it isan emergent trend (one amongst many) before it gains momentum and legitimacy (Inayatullah 2008).This case study is a reminder that patience and persistence go hand-in-hand with vision and courageousleadership. Social memory is also important because people had to remember what it was that Solon hadsought to establish. The democratisation of Athens also flags the necessity of building the institutionalinfrastructure and conceptual tools in anticipation of a desired change.Practical responses therefore inhabit all four quadrants of Figure 1 presented earlier in this paper:we need responses now (upper right), institutional preparedness both now and into the future (lowerright), cultural ferment in which new ideas, values and language are sown through effective leadership246