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Just societies cannot grow in toxic soil. To realize a more just and regenerative world, we need only look at how life flourishes in the natural world, of which we are an inherent part. Why? Because maintaining an equitable global society in which all life can thrive is not a static goal but a dynamic condition that benefits from a rigorous understanding of how systems change. This understanding includes a core set of time-tested principles:
1. Systems are transformed through coordinated collective action; no one entity or sector can achieve this goal independently.
2. Systems are dynamic and change in response to local contexts. What works in Accra may not work in Paris. What works today may not work tomorrow.
3. We cannot control how systems change. However, we can cultivate fertile conditions characterized by broad-based power, wealth (broadly defined), and wellbeing.
4. Fertile conditions enable diverse relationships, exchanges, experiments, and solutions to emerge, rooted in the lived experience of those most impacted by a particular issue.
In 2019, the international journal of social change work Alliance magazine published the piece, ‘Systems change—are we already doing it?’ Its authors discuss the depth of current social transformation efforts and suggest, ‘…Secondary and third levels are oftentimes ignored or gilded over, and not given the attention they deserve when analyzing the systems that we work in.’ These levels refer to those described in the Causal Layered Analysis framework. This systems thinking tool demonstrates how the status quo emerges from human behaviors that reflect worldviews about who and what has value and the underlying paradigm from which entire systems grow. Ignoring these deeper levels renders change efforts incomplete and fails to take advantage of what we now know about how complex systems change from diverse cultural perspectives.
Systems scholar Donella Meadows identified leverage points with varying capacities to affect transformational change. Because systems arise from paradigms, the soil remediating these is necessary to ignite lasting change. However, Meadows takes this suggestion one step further, urging humanity to transcend the idea that one paradigm or view on who and what has value and how society will be subsequently organized can represent every culture. Therefore, a new framework is needed to guide meaningful change work that recognizes the necessity of a more inclusive and intercultural paradigm. Enacting transformational efforts on a more expansive foundation of values and insights can foster new relationships, democratize power, redistribute wealth, and inspire new patterns of behavior this moment in history demands. Where can we look for an example of this vision in action? To Nature and vibrant ecosystems, of which we are an inherent part.
Living systems are superb organizers that build and distribute power across flexible networks, united by a shared purpose—to ensure all life thrives. These diverse communities adapt dynamically in dialogue with place and time. Living systems sustain their vitality by working in solidarity across differences, enabling them to continually discover novel ways to circulate vital resources. Fertile soil demonstrates these characteristics exquisitely. Consequently, the principles and patterns found in healthy soil offer practical lessons in reparative justice, systems transformation, and, as such, an elegant blueprint for a regenerative society.
A suite of restorative principles can heal soil and enhance its regenerative capacity by ensuring power, wealth, and wellbeing increase over time. The resulting fertility is the energy that enables complex systems to experiment, learn, adapt, and continually discover how to care for the common good. This aliveness can only be created through diverse cooperation and collective willingness to evolve. I’ve mapped the various roles, relationships, flows, and structures that enable ecosystems to adapt to the levers found in Western systems change frameworks. In doing so, I’ve come to believe that soil keeping ethos provides a compelling metaphor and practical lessons in how we can evolve our approach to transformational change, drawing upon Nature’s time-tested brilliance and the knowledge held by diverse cultures.
An increasing number of disciplines are adopting an ecological paradigm as a more effective way to influence change. From philanthropy to human rights, climate change to economics, many sectors demonstrate how this ethos can catalyze systemic change by creating space for people with varying worldviews to encounter differences, engage in meaningful dialogue, and discover new ways to care for the common good. Entering into dialogue with nature insights, those committed to actualizing justice-seeking. Many Indigenous cultures and wisdom traditions embody this knowledge, suggesting that a soil-keeping ethos can facilitate the deep social and ecological healing essential to meaningful change. By embracing a more expansive perspective that recognizes the power of diverse ways of knowing and being, embracing this ethos begins to remediate the mindsets that hold injustice in place, allowing equitable access to new tools and techniques.
Kiley Arroyo is the executive director of the Cultural Strategies Council (CSC), a vehicle for interdisciplinary research, strategy, and institutional development. Established in 2007, the CSC promotes the essential role of culture, critical imagination, and futures literacy in equitable development, participatory democracy, and creative systems change.