The 21st Century has collapsed North and South, East and West into one global project.

Sustainable development is every nation’s challenge.

A view of our tiny blue planet travelling through the vast expanse of space reminds us how exceedingly rare life is in the universe.
At the same time, a long view of human history suggests that we have achieved an unprecedented level of knowledge, material progress and global interdependence. While we have not yet eliminated the scourges of conflict, disease and hunger, the post-war period has seen substantial gains.
The dividends of relative peace are substantial, enabling the lifting of people out of poverty and limiting destructive forces in society.
We have also discovered that our planet is more complex and fragile than previously understood. Our capacity to engage in activities that harm the planet has overtaken our willingness to protect it. As a result we have increased demands on our own life support system that cannot be sustained. We urgently need to identify what forces are driving societies over a cliff.
One of the most harmful structural problems we face is runaway wealth concentration that has had the effect of appropriating the incomes, assets and opportunities of ordinary citizens. Where this is done through complicity with public institutions, either through abdication or abuse of power, it becomes a form of expropriation devoid of public purpose.
It will require imagination, insight and effort to protect and nurture our environment while advancing human society and lifting people out of the scourge of conflict, poverty, disease.
Unless we transform the economic and political choices now being made, then for the first time in human history the eradication of all higher forms of life on Earth will have shifted from mere possibility to probability.
Whether by precipitating a nuclear exchange, triggering a climate tipping point, allowing human values to be uprooted by indifferent technology or failing to respond effectively to health emergencies, the governance principles we embrace now will determine our future. It is no exaggeration to suggest that either we put systems and rules in place to ensure responsible decisions, or else more species will become extinct until it finally will be our turn.
If humans drive themselves over that cliff, it will be because those in power have failed to meet their most fundamental obligations, aided by citizens who have empowered them without due regard for the impact of their choices on others, including future generations.
How we organise ourselves, how we relate to one another, how we make use of our resources and how we allocate the benefits of society all come down to human decision-making.
Cambridge Governance Labs was created to understand governance deficiencies and failures by focusing on the causes and effects of suboptimal decision-making, and then to develop tools to promote a more responsible and sustainable way of understanding and organising society.
It is our contention that this is not a matter of ideology or culture but universal principles.

Paul Harding 08/04/2022 Paul Harding 08/04/2022

CGL Statement on Ukraine

Looked at through a governance lens, the invasion of the Ukraine signals a dangerous form of internal political failure to look after the interests of ordinary Russians. This war is little more than one man’s kleptocratic vanity project.

Not only have precious lives been lost on both sides of the conflict, but Russia’s present and future has been stolen through the private capture and expatriation of wealth that should have been used to create a sustainable economy.

Pretending that this is a culture war to uphold family values while slaughtering families is a form of deception in the nature of distraction technique. It can only delay the emergence within Russia of a 21st Century value system that respects human life and enables economies to become sustainable for younger and future generations.

Warding off economic collapse by appropriating the economies of neighbouring countries is a recipe for stifling the target economy and employing a dangerous logic that can only expand and perpetuate conflict globally.

Two disturbing conclusions might be drawn from this. First, there are serious deficiencies in any political system that allows power to become so concentrated that the whims of one individual are permitted to produce destruction and suffering on such a grand scale.

Second, it points to deficiencies in our system of international governance when there are no virtually governance norms to guide societies that wish to become more humane, productive and sustainable. Human rights and humanitarian laws sanction the most extreme effects of poor governance while remaining silent on practical pathways to good governance.

However, other corrective forces may eventually prevail. Societies built on butchery, fear and illusion cannot avoid eventual political and economic collapse. Ingenuity and internal motivation are not the by-products of cruelty and fear.

A common feature among all aspiring dictatorships is that they are willing to harm people to protect their systems of wealth capture.

The greatest challenge to dictators is comparisons with societies where citizens don’t live in fear and at the same time enjoy higher standards of living.

The people of Ukraine have the opportunity to choose between building a humane and economically productive society or succumb to brutality and bankruptcy.

It is clear what they prefer. It is just a matter of time before Russian citizens wake up from a propaganda-induced dream and make their own choices. In the meantime, there will be extreme and avoidable suffering in the Ukraine, in Russia and across the globe.

All for one man’s kleptocratic vanity project that represents a catastrophic failure of human self-organisation. Perhaps it is time for us all to wake up from the dream that our state of governance is ‘good enough’.