trends and future of sustainable development - TransEco

Obyerodhyambo, 2006) 1 . Our joint lecture was performed as a duet, starting with an African call-andresponse.Our style was deliberate, an active illustration of working together in a way that allowed us tolearn from both Western and African knowledge. By October 2006, we had drafted the first conceptnote for the Barbets Duet, a twenty-year experiment in systemic invention. We would draw on Africanand Western knowledge in order to create institutions that could routinely integrate the imperatives ofthe natural world in our decision-making and economic rewards.The following year, 2007, I spent three months in East Africa, India and Europe, testing ourconcepts with many people. However, by January 2008, it was not clear what should follow, so Istopped in Nairobi to hear what Oby and his wife, Hilda, would advise. I told them that our ideas hadlargely been endorsed, and asked them what we should do now. Given the surrounding threat of civilwar in Kenya, I expected them to say, ‘Let’s wait until this blows over’. I was wrong. Both said, withouthesitation, ‘We just begin. You can see that this is needed now more than ever before.’ They thenoffered their family land in Western Kenya as the first Barbet Learning Site.Within the next two days, I had flown to Dar es Salaam. I was attending a meeting to test thepenultimate draft of the East African scenarios. The group in Dar was drawn by SID, the Society forInternational Development, from all five countries of the East African Community. Most were people Ihad worked with over the previous ten years when I facilitated SID’s scenario projects in Kenya,Tanzania and Uganda, culminating in the East African scenarios we were just completing. Inevitably,given the role of Kenya in the region and the crisis then underway, a good part of our discussionconcerned events there. However, during small breaks in the meeting, I asked three of the people whohad endorsed our concept note in 2007 if they were willing to create Barbet Learning Sites. There waslittle discussion – or time for discussion – but all agreed and were joined by a fifth person a few monthslater.That year, 2008, was the start of the Barbets Duet. Against the background of Kenya’s post-electioncrisis, five people from Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda, plus myself from the USA and UK, agreed to ‘JustBegin’, putting our own land, communities and resources into the experiment. In October 2009,everyone with an East African site met in Mlingotini, Tanzania, for our Invention Convention. By May2010, Woodland Valley Farm in Cornwall, England, had joined us and I had bought land in upstate NewYork, our first American learning site.This paper looks at the role of scenario building work in creating the experimental space we call theBarbets Duet. It will describe the initial thinking behind the experiment and some of the results so far.Implicitly, this experiment questions existing assumptions about ‘sustainable development’, while alsooffering an ambitious alternative model.1 This lecture was held the Royal Society of Arts, London on 26 January 2006, jointly sponsored by LIFT(London International Festival of Theatre) and the Royal Society of Arts and Manufacturing.97