How do we define development?
Development is a goal societies and individuals have sought throughout history, despite different understandings and interpretations of the term. Nowadays, a variety of approaches to this goal can be seen at collective level in politics, economy, and in global organizations such as the United Nations. These collective approaches bring different conceptualizations of the term, resulting in decisions regarding international arrangements, national policies, investments, etc. At individual level, we also strive to define development, which can be identified with different understandings of terms such as well-being, happiness, or personal needs.
Within all these variants on how to achieve development at different scales, one of the main tools or strategies that has emerged as the preferred answer is economic growth. From the appearance of markets and motivated by globalization, economic growth has been the most used strategy to pursue this objective; evident on how nations strive for increasing their GDP and how individuals associate high wages with success. However, the latest research has proven this to be a mistake. Correlations between economic growth and development or happiness have proven to be false. In addition, economic growth presents a contradiction with environmental and social sustainability, elements that are indispensable for development.
An alternative and better way.
Under this new light, it is necessary to develop new societal arrangements that include alternative practices that can lead to a sustainable development of both, society and individual. To achieve this, a reciprocal behavior between society and individual must occur that effectively solves the sustainable challenges currently present, and provides opportunities of collective and individual development.
A development process tying neatly the development of society and individuals is the one proposed by Nobel laureate Amartya Sen. The proposal focuses on increasing the number of freedoms that exist in a given societal arrangement and the continuous contribution of everyone to improve or increase the number of freedoms in the arrangements they belong to. Within this already complex paradigm, the sustainability component must be added where complex problems, transdisciplinary challenges, feedback loops and multi-stakeholder frameworks are the main barriers to effectively implement sustainable development alternatives.
Despite the complexity, integrating collective and individual development with sustainability to achieve a sustainable future is possible. An arrangement that could provide a context to facilitate this process is leadership for sustainability within social innovation. Social innovation is broadly defined as creating enterprises that prioritize social goals such as environmental sustainability, instead of maximizing profit and following the economic growth paradigm as the main driver. Within these enterprises, the individual leadership component is of great relevance as leaders have the capability of creating social change and can be valuable assets when pushing for sustainable transformation. Leaders for sustainability are individuals that can operationalize effectively sustainability projects and are able to deal with the challenges that emerge during the process. The creation of these leaders does not only involve theoretical information but the inclusion of practices that relates the leader’s worldviews and values, maximizing their practical knowledge and skills to become an agent of change toward sustainability.
Written by Carlos Cordova