How to advance integration in a new political
environment
Integration is one of those words that we tend to use often,
implicitly assuming that it is a ‘good thing’, and rarely unpacking what
it means in a given context.
My understanding of the verb to
integrate is that it means to make whole, in a sense that is more than
mere aggregation of separate elements into something bigger. Rather,
integration implies a degree of synergy, in which the whole is greater —
more functional, more effective, more efficient, better fit for purpose
— than the sum of the parts.
Over almost thirty years in natural
resource management policy, research, extension and consultancy, I’ve
experienced and led many attempts to improve integration across and
within programs, large and small. I’ve created dedicated roles,
appointed integration managers, designed matrix management models with
cross-cutting integrating themes, funded integration symposia and
attempted to hard-wire integration objectives into program design and
project contracts and milestones — with mixed success.
Integration is difficult, but the alternative is worse. Duplication,
inefficiency, waste, major investments doomed to failure because they
lack key elements, and programs working at cross-purposes are common
symptoms of a failure to take an integrated approach.
The risks
of failing to invest seriously in integration seem particularly obvious
in the disasters, environment and climate ’DEC
context’. Disasters, environmental degradation, and climate change —
especially as they affect people at the grassroots level — are
inextricably intertwined. Climate change amplifies environmental
degradation and the risk of extreme climatic events. Environmental
degradation increases vulnerability to climate change and extreme events
and impedes recovery from them.
These three meta-phenomena are
in turn tightly coupled with development objectives such as food
security, water security and energy security, with extensive links into
other parts of the development aid agenda such as transport,
infrastructure, health, education, gender and poverty.
But
integration is not just about responding more effectively to external
forces and events, it is about shaping the future, about taking
purposeful action in
disaster preparedness and risk reduction, and in halting and
reversing environmental degradation. For the foreseeable future, it must
also be about undertaking what economist
Nicholas Stern calls the greatest structural change in the human
economy ever attempted — to decouple economic growth from greenhouse gas
emissions.
This profound economic structural reform will take
decades, and it will affect every dimension of the development aid
agenda. It is unsurprising that we have not yet successfully integrated
the DEC agenda, or sufficiently
mainstreamed DEC thinking into the wider development aid industry.
But eventually, we have no alternative.
One of the most
interesting developments over the last decade has been the emergence of
resilience thinking. The sustainability literature underlined the
dependence of the human economy on the natural world, the need to live
within ecological limits, avoiding actions that compromise ecosystem
function (like pollution), and it introduced the notion of
intergenerational equity. But it said much less about the social and
cultural dimensions of environmental management or how to manage
contexts with high levels of inherent variability.
Resilience
thinking focuses attention on the capacity of a system to absorb shocks,
reorganise and still function. It adds value in explicitly embracing
change and variability, and introducing the useful concept of thresholds
or tipping points. There are echoes here of the conceptual framework
developed by the ODI team in proposing their the
DEC advancing Integration agenda. More resilient communities,
regions and industries are desirable from a wide range of development
perspectives, including DEC integration.
Which is not to say it
is easy — all countries struggle with this. In Australia, despite
compelling evidence, documented exhaustively in successive Royal
Commissions, we still have an imbalance between extraordinary levels of
expenditure on bushfire and flood recovery and reparations, compared
with relatively modest investment in fire/flood planning, preparedness
and risk reduction. Moreover, some of our fire suppression and
prevention activities are environmentally damaging, and our current
approach probably increases net greenhouse emissions.
The
Australian Department
of Foreign Affairs and Trade (DFAT) and
Overseas Development
Institute (ODI) collaboration on DEC integration is a good
initiative. There is nothing uniquely Australian about this challenge
and different countries have much to learn from each other.
From
my perspective, the
ASK conceptual framework developed by
Aditya Bahadur,
Katie Peters,
Emily
Wilkinson and colleagues around actors, spaces and knowledge, is
intuitively sound. Individual and institutional champions are crucial to
drive something as multifaceted as the DEC integration agenda, but there
will be ‘hot moments’ and ‘hot places’ when political planets are
aligned and spaces for new initiatives open up. There is much to be
gained from anticipating such opportunities and being ready to exploit
them. However in the absence of a solid knowledge base, with compelling
benefit-cost data and project-level stories that support an over-arching
narrative, any gains achieved through opportunism are likely to be
ephemeral.
A new political environment — especially given such a
radical reduction in funding — can present just such an opportunity. The
challenge is to show the
new Australian government how its objectives are much more likely to
be realised through a more integrated approach to disaster risk
reduction, environment and climate change than it is through fragmented,
piecemeal, duplicative systems and processes.
The suggested
initiatives and actions in
Reflections and Lessons make sense to me. If implemented by
DFAT, they would
position Australia in a leadership role in disaster risk reduction,
environmental restoration and climate change adaptation in the
Asia-Pacific.
From my experience, there are a couple of areas
that I think need more emphasis. The first is the systemic issue of what
in the Australian Public Service is known as ‘churn’ — staff turnover as
people move to other jobs, locations, departments or careers. DEC
phenomena are long-term, multi-decadal in nature, demanding long-term,
persistent yet adaptive responses, informed by long institutional
memory. High levels of staff turnover, corporate amnesia and frequently
changing priorities mean that such enduring responses can be very
difficult to conceive, let alone sustain and resource.
The
second, related to the first, is training. Training of DFAT staff and
development partners is mentioned in several of the
case studies, but in my view it deserves more prominence in the
recommended strategy. Well-designed and facilitated training activities,
particularly where they work across organisational and sectoral
boundaries, are one of the most effective and cost-effective ways of
developing and sustaining a community of practice, and of creating
rewarding and hence enduring networks among people. I would embed DEC
Integration training as broadly and deeply within and across DFAT and
its partners, in Canberra and all posts, as soon as possible.
The
Reflections and Lessons is undoubtedly strengthened through being
informed by a fine-grained understanding of this issue from the
perspective of people at post level. However I agree that some top down
impetus is equally important, that DEC integration champions are needed
at all levels including at the most senior levels of DFAT and the
Australian Government.
From my experience, the most effective
integration occurs when demanded by clients or customers, whether they
be farmers, company executives or senior government officials, because
they want a whole solution, not just disparate, partial elements. But
making that happen often requires top down mandate, impetus and
resourcing.
The ultimate measure of this project will be the extent
to which it enables people working at posts and in Canberra to make DEC
integration real and effective.
.