16.1 | WAAS

Roundtable on “Catalyzing Rapid Social Transformative”

Co-convened by

Club of Rome Project on Emerging New Civilization Initiative (ENCI)

WAAS-UN Project on Global Leadership in 21st Century (GL-21) and Future Capital Initiative (FCI)

Background and Rationale

Both Club of Rome and the World Academy of Arts and Science are engaged in major projects that envision transformation of global society as an essential condition for addressing pressing global challenges and evolution toward a sustainable global society. COR is engaged in projects to address both short term emergency measures to address climate change and long term movement toward a new civilization. WAAS is collaborating with the United Nations Office in Geneva on strategies to promote global leadership at a time when the world confronts a global leadership vacuum and retreat from multilateralism. WAAS is also collaborating with the UN Office of Partnerships and UNCTAD in New York on the Future Capital Initiative (FCI) on strategies to finance the SDGs.

There is considerable agreement on what has to change (e.g. collective behavior change that causes unsustainable production and consumption patterns, climate emergencies or biodiversity loss) and some agreements about the need for accelerating change in consciousness (from mind shifts to paradigm shifts to an inquiry into emerging new civilizations). But there are many institutional actors who have not yet recognized the importance of process and are preoccupied with where and what rather than how. Rarely do discourses and knowledge exchange focus on this how of approaching and (collectively) leading (small and) large systems change across the boundaries of institutions, nations, cultures and mindsets.

This workshop intends to fill this gap by focus on how we can consciously accelerate social transformation. There is an urgent need to understand how best to design, steward and lead transformative change process that accelerate collective behavior changes and structures towards widespread adoption and implementation of a global sustainability paradigm.

The purpose of the suggested workshop is to:

- Bring together thought leadership and collective action approaches to designing and leading transformative change processes.

- Create a knowledge exchange around transformative large systems change designs and put the topic of the how of sustainability transformation on the global agenda.

Workshop flow and purpose:

- Setting the scene for “Leading transformative pathways towards a regenerative civilization”

- The future vision: Patchwork elements of regenerative civilizations

- Pathways of the past: Historical experiences of consciously accelerates systems transformations

- Pathways of the present: Appreciation of existing ways of leading transformative change towards future pathways

- Pathways to the future (I): Methodologies for supporting and accelerating (collective) leadership towards transformative pathways

- Pathways to the future (II): leadership challenges - catalyzing transformations

- Collective Practice: How can COR, WAAS and other collaborating organizations contribute to accelerating transformative pathways?

More info can be found here.