A Report Relevant to
Establishing a Global Network on Disaster Risk Management and Humanitarian Action for Human Security and Sustainable Development
Presented to the
Workshop of an Emerging Global Action Learning Network
On Disasters and Humanitarian Action
February 2 and 3, 2006
At the
Marc Lindenberg Center For
Humanitarian Action, International Development
and Global Citizenship
University of Washington, Seattle
Authors
Part I Lead
Steve Waddell
Executive Director- GAN-Net www.gan-net.net
Co-Director – Generative Dialogue Project www.generativedialogue.org
Boston, MA 02116
Phone: +1 617-482-3993
Email:
Part II Lead
Sanjeev Khagram
Director- Lindenberg Center http://depts.washington.edu/mlcenter
Associate Professor - Evans School of Public Affairs and
Jackson School of International Studies
University of Washington
Seattle, WA
Phone: (206) 897-1410
Email:
This report was made possible with the generous support of the Metanoia Fund, Care USA, Word Vision International and The Center for Humanitarian Cooperation
Table of Contents
Executive Summary 1
Introduction 2
Part I: An overview of global multi-stakeholder networks 3
The Development Process 3
The Work 5
Governance Structure 9
Administrative Issues 13
Part II: Options For a GLAN on Disasters and Humanitarian Action 14
Option 1: Capacity-Building 15
Option 2: Full Life Cycle Systems Stengthening 16
Discussion and Next Steps 17
Next Steps 18
Appendix 1: List of Organizations Under Review 19
Appendix 2: The Provention Consortium 20
Review of GAN
______s
Executive Summary
A window of opportunity exists to take disaster risk management and humanitarian action to a whole new level of development globally. By bringing together multiple stakeholders in a new network, additional resources can be tapped and synergies realized to address the increasing scale and pace of demand for this work…and create new, capacities and possibilities. This network would focus on the full life cycle of disasters and humanitarian relief. This ‘International Education Council’ or a ‘Global Learning Action Network’ can be an organizational innovation that is a critical mechanism for achieving greater human security and sustainable development in the 21st century.
The scale of the opportunity suggests the importance of clear-headed thinking and understanding the challenges. There is much to be learned from others who are creating new global multi-stakeholder networks. Although this type of organization is a new phenomenon, the experience of others suggests ways forward. Dozens of such networks suggest the value and potential of a global disasters and humanitarian relief network bringing together at a minimum donors, relief organizations and educational institutions and even including international agencies, corporations, business associations, military institutions and community groups.
There is a unique organizing challenge at the global level. Global networks need to create innovative approaches and solutions with the absence of a global analogue to national governments. These networks are change agents creating global systems on topics as diverse as corporate reporting, water and the prevention of violent conflicts. These organizations are new infrastructures for creating shared visions, collective planning, learning, capacity building, and systems change.
Most of these global multi-stakeholder networks begin with a focus upon “techno-fixes” and concerns about operational solutions to issues. However, as they develop their focus shifts more categorically to building social relationships and deeper change processes that are fundamental to realizing their innovative and synergistic potential. They start usually as relatively small centrally structured networks, and when successful usually grow into decentralized, polycentric ones.
Some of these networks function as mass membership organizations and number participating organizations in the thousands. Others have selected a more narrowly focused strategy, and set the standards for membership commitments relatively high. These approaches represent distinct strategies to realize a mission, based upon an analysis of the opportunity and problem.
A couple of key success factors stand out from the experience of the global networks. One is the importance of clearly identifying and building commitment to the collective and individual organizations’ goals. Another is the importance of integrating “organizational learning” approaches, and creating spaces and time for collective learning about how to do the organizing itself better—in such multi-stakeholder networks the goal is not only to change something “out there”, but to change the way participating organizations and people interact to create coherent action.
A Report Relevant to Establishing a Global Initiative on Disaster Risk Management and Humanitarian Action for Human Security and Sustainable Development
Introduction
Global Action Networks (GANs) share the characteristics of being:
- Global
- Focused on issues concerning the public good (not profit-seeking)
- Inter-organizational and cross-sectoral networks
- Boundary-crossing — North/South, rich/poor, policy makers, techno-scientists, funders, global institutions, professional disciplines, and cultures
- Structures that hold potential for promoting fundamental changes and innovation in society by engaging organizations across sectors and industries
There are approximately a few dozen organizations that share these characteristics. This report is based upon a survey of 32 of them. Of course they share these characteristics “more or less”—for example, some are dominated by inter-governmental organizations, some include individual as well as organizational members, and some are active mainly in the South.
Information was collected in a structured format from the organizations’ websites, and supplemented with numerous interviews with GAN representatives. The organizations are listed on Appendix 1. The authors have also been active participant-researchers in several GANs and have drawn on this practical experience.
Part II of the paper presents some initial ideas for a potential global network on disasters and humanitarian action. The options are envisioned as being multi-stakeholder, but one is sharply focused in terms of mandate and quite selective in terms of membership while the other more broadly oriented and more inclusive. It also identifies critical next steps.
This document should be viewed as a “work-in-progress”. This is reflected in the fact that some data are not readily available and research is still underway. As well, many of the ideas in Part II require further discussion. Perhaps more importantly, agreement by this project’s stakeholders is required to begin narrowing down the vast range of possible developmental, governance, administrative and funding structures and processes towards establishing a global network on disasters and humanitarian action.
Part I: An overview of global multi-stakeholder networks
The Development Process
Key Points
- Integrating “organizational learning” approaches is a key success factor in development.
- There are three initiation approaches: one to two years of multi-stakeholder consultation, formation out of a pre-existing global space for stakeholders, growing out of a program/project of a specific organization
- Successful GANs shift over time from “techno-fixes” to system-building emphasis
- Most GANs begin with a centralized network and move to a decentralized one
Initiating
GANs are a recent phenomenon. The oldest organization in this group[1], IUCN, was founded in 1948—a full quarter century before the next was established. They are the product of increased globalization and the need to marshal resources of substantial scale across national and sectoral boundaries. This means that our knowledge on how to develop GANs is still emerging, that the development paths are varied, and the supportive processes for “organizational learning” is a particularly critical ingredient for success. This requires creating processes of regular review and reflection in conjunction with stakeholders to assess how structures and activities might be improved; it is necessary to defy the compulsion to continually respond to on-going demands and put aside time and resources to invest in collective learning.
Year GAN Founded≤1990 / 1991-2000 / 2001+ / ??
5 / 19 / 6 / 2
Three initiating paths for GANs can be distinguished. One emphasizes a period of two to three years of consultation with the various stakeholders followed by an initiating meeting of some sort, in a sense like a constitutional convention. Sometimes these consultations are sponsored by an individual organization, such as the NGO called CERES organized before calling people together to form what is now the Global Reporting Initiative. In the case of Transparency International, it was very much the work of an individual, Peter Eigen.
Lead GAN FounderIGO / NGO / Mixed / Other / ??
6 / 5 / 11 / 6 / 4
A second group of GANs have begun out of the imagination of one or a couple of organizations. For example, the Youth Employment Summit is the product of the Education Development Corporation and WWF. Unilever birthed the Marine Stewardship Council. When one organization has a leading founding role, the GAN often starts as a “project” or “program”, as with the Microcredit Summit Campaign which is still legally a project of an NGO called Results and the Global Compact which remains structurally attached to the UN Secretary General’s office.
The third path is appropriate when there is already a relatively well-developed “global space” for the participants. For example, global conferences on the topic of water issues were organized from time-to-time which led to the realization that more formal and permanent organizational arrangements would be valuable. This led to the formation of the Global Water Partnership and the World Water Council.
Beyond Initiation
In general, successful GANs follow a development path from a centralized model where the role of a “Secretariat” dominates to a polycentric network with many dispersed hubs of activity communicating with each other. However, in some cases, the centralized model may be simply a conscious and strategic choice; for example, when the principle function involves distribution of funds as with the Global Fund to Fight AIDS and the International Youth Foundation. In some cases the GANs get “stuck” at a development phase with a centralized model; this reflects the difficulty of shifting to the higher development stage which demands a new way of thinking about organizing.
This developmental process also can be seen with formation of leadership structures. It is not unusual for there to initially be quite tight control over the initiative, and this expands to be much looser. For example, the Global Water Partnership was originally a product of a few donor and other global interest groups; today it is a dispersed network of 13 regions and over 1000 members selecting a governing Board.
GANs also change their focus in addition to their shape. As the diverse stakeholders work together, new ways of thinking about the issue emerge—one of the most remarkable examples is the shift from defining climate change as an outgrowth of overpopulation of the South, to defining it as an environmental impact footprint of people living in the North.
Participants generally start out with a “techno-fix” or specific operational improvements as the goal. For example, leading participants often come from a problem-solving perspective and think about their issue in terms of developing appropriate solutions and getting others to buy into the solution they have develop. They think of the challenge as creating the “right” code of ethics, or the “right” physical technology to respond to a question such as energy and climate change, or the “right” way to build human capacities. Only as they work together do they start to understand that the critical challenge is also about creating social relationships and structures where they can work effectively together in the face of dynamically changing circumstances, challenges and opportunities. This is certainly a challenge GANs are still facing as they often try to bring together policy makers, scientists/specialists, community activists and business people, among many many others.
The Work
Key Points
- A key success factor is clearly identifying and building commitment to the collective goal and individual organizations’ goals
- GANs appear to be good for addressing a diverse array of social change-type over-arching goals…and not a typical government or for-profit goal
- Mastering deep change is a core GAN activity
- System-organizing, shared visioning and action learning are key GAN strategies
The Issues
GANs’ missions and goals are complex by the very nature of their attempt to be worldwide—there is no planetary agency for incorporation and GANs usually operate in part because of governance and coordination “gaps” that result from the absence of a global counterpart to national governments. Therefore, issues of voice and representation are closely tied up with the substantive issues that focused on by GANs.
GANs must be understood as having two levels of outcomes. One is a collectively defined goal that all participating organizations can buy into. It derives from the fundamental rationale for founding a GAN—the need to bring together distinctive competencies and resources on a global scale. This is a goal that may be called a “system-organizing” goal—GANs can be thought of attempts to organize diffuse activities of many organizations into a new global “system”. For example, the Global Reporting Initiative aims to bring together diverse stakeholders to create a global system of corporate reporting.
This over-arching goal is seemingly broad, but it must encompass the particular objective that leads organizations to participate. For example, Unilever participates in the Marine Stewardship Council not only to develop sustainable fisheries, but ones that will also be profitable for it. Success in a GAN is determined by collective commitment to both the over-arching goal, and to supporting each other to reach at least some of their individual objectives. This emphasizes the importance of clearly articulating these two different sets of goals and ensuring collective commitment to them.
The most outstanding quality of the organizational focus of the GANs we reviewed is the great diversity of the issues they are addressing (see Appendix 1). This suggests that in terms of issues, GANs are a relatively robust organizational template. However, there would appear to be at least one overall limitation: there are no GANs that focus upon economic production, for example, although some flirt with building the economic infrastructure such as the Microcredit Summit Campaign. A large number have economic activity as a secondary concern: for example, the Forest Stewardship Council aims to create sustainable and profitable forestry. And a number include addressing poverty as part of their mission.
Also notable is that the missions of GANs generally reflect more of an social change-type framing than that of government. Just as GANs are not about profitable activity, nor are they about mandatory rule creation such as is the role of government. However, those participating in GANs may voluntarily agree amongst themselves to follow specific rules to address the focal issue—although even this is quite contentious and enforcement procedures are absent. The business members of the Ethical Trading Initiative must commit to applying codes of conduct to their supply chains.