Communicating Sustainability in different cultural context: Experience from KAILIndonesia

Catharina Any SulistyowatiKuncup Padang IlalangKompl. Giri Mekar Permai IV/ Blok C-18, Bandung 40619INDONESIA

KAIL Vision & MissionsKaiL is a non-profit-organization, which create conducive-environment to

increase personal and organizational capacity for transforming society.Vision:• The establishment of dynamics of fair and equal society and all

creatures.Missions:• To develop conducive-environment for supporting agents for

transforming society through training and assistance.• To develop a community of transformative society.• To develop an alternative discourse about society’s problems.

KAIL Activities

- Training and workshop on:- Knowledge- Personal Development

- Peer mentoring group- Community/Group Proces Facilitation: visioning, planning,

evaluation, team building

What have we learned about communicating sustainable

development?

Expand time horizon

The roots of actions

Level of perspectives

Systems Thinking: New way of seeing

できごと

Behavior patterns

Structure

Model Mental

Events

See the whole, including the intangible

Leverage

Modified from Systems Thinking Module by Sustainability Institute, USA & Change Agent, Japan

For the last 7 years we focus on:- facts/events

- analysing trends- understanding structure

but not very much onunderstanding mental models

The result was:

We were successfully creating awareness of sustainable development issues,

butWe hardly creating fundamental and significant

change that is needed for sustainable development

The way we promote sustainable development are:• Focus on the data, rationality, which is processed in

our conscious mind.• Our subsconscious mind might have different

beliefs.

Sometimes we know that something good in our head, but we have hardtime to act according to our new knowledge/awareness we feel powerless.

Why? Reason 1

What is Mental Model?

• Deeply ingrained assumptions, generalizations, pictures, images or stories that determine how we understand the world and how we take action.

• Paradigm, mindset, worldview, perspective, belief system

• Sometimes, we realize that consciously, sometimes, we don’t.

“Believing is Seeing”

Say, What is a sheep doing up

in clouds?

Modified from Systems Thinking Module by Sustainability Institute, USA & Change Agent, Japan

Belief system (Life Script)

• Interaction of peope with their complex environment (was developed since we were small children) will create belief system (Life Script).

• Belief = ideas + agreement.

Our brain

Consists of :-12% conscious mind-88% of subsconscious mind

Mammalian brain is the place of the subsconscious mind

Examples• We want to promote activities that reconnect

children with nature. Reason: nature is good and loving nature is very important for child development and environmental conservation.

but• People think that nature is a dangerous place and

we need to stay as far as possible from nature. Implication: learning in nature is dangerous for children.

Why? Reason 2

• An organization/group working with different mental model can go no where.

• They get trap into endless debate about what is important and should be done.

• The energy does not go to action, but to the debate.

• Sometime, debate is necessary, but when it comes to action, it really need to have same clear undertanding about the problems and the approaches for solution.

How different mental model creates different actions?

Learning from biogas case

Some Data

- A lot of cow dung is not use in the village- It create unpleasant smells in the village and

polluting the water in the village- The cow are mostly owned by richer farmer. The

more cow they have, usually the richer they are. They get the money from selling the cow milk.

- Vegetable farmers are the poorest in the area. Sometimes they take the cow dung for their fertilizers, if they do not have money to buy chemical fertilizers.

Problem formulation

• Environmental problem: waste management• Socio-economic problem: poverty

How two different mental model create two different actions:

- Let’s use biogas as a way to make profit/new source of income for cow

farmers- Let’s use biogas as a way to create

social equity

Some comparisonsYour mental model

Biogas as source of income for cow farmers

Biogas as way to promote social equity

What you promote/ tell community members

-Cow dung is economic property-Cow farmers can sell the cow dung to vegetable farmers-The vegetable farmers should pay for getting cow dung as their fertilizers

-Cow dung is common property-Waste management is “responsibility” of the cow farmers-As part of responsibility, they should “reward” the vegetable farmers for taking care of their cow waste

Implication -Income gap will be higher-Cow dung will goes to the most actors that can pay to the cow farmers – sometime it can be going outside the area – outflow of organic material from the area and replace by money for cow farmers as results.

-The needs for collaboration between cow farmers and vegetable farmers.-Might goes slower, because no money involve.-Reducing income gap between cow and vegetable farmers.-The organic materials need to be inside the villages and benefiting the area and the people there.

All mental models are wrong (not complete/not perfect)

• Being wrong is not a problem as long as it is useful

• Not knowing it is wrong is the problem

Source: Richiro Oda’s (Change Agent, Japan) slide presentation @ KAIL workshop on Ladder of Inference, Bandung, 2009.

Dialogue

• Talk and think what matters “here and now“ together by creating a safe container

• Important principles:– Suspend one’s mental model– Listen– Respect– Voice your mind and heart

Source: Richiro Oda’s (Change Agent, Japan) slide presentation @ KAIL workshop on Ladder of Inference, Bandung, 2009.

How can we identify mental model?

Context And

Model

Action

Data available

Data selection

Data interpretation

Making conclusion

The Ladder of Inference

Modified from Sustainability Institute Lecture Slide Presentation on Ladder of Inference @ Donella Meadows Leadership Fellows Program, batch 3, 2007-2008.

Ladder of inferenceI do action based on

what I believe

I have certain belief about the world

I make several conclusion

I make assumption based on what I have learnt in the past

I learn some understanding (personally & culturally)

I select several data from what I have observed

Data that can be observed and my experiences

What I believed influence the way I select the data in the future

Modified from Sustainability Institute Lecture Slide Presentation on Ladder of Inference @ Donella Meadows Leadership Fellows Program, batch 3, 2007-2008.

Exercise: Group discussion

• Choose one sustainable development initiative you would like to promote.

• Think about mental models of the people that will be supportive of your initiative?

• Think about mental models of the people that might be against your initiative?

• Try to indetify some communication strategies to make them change their mental models that are against your initiative.

Share your group findings in the plenary