Sustainable Development Goals are Everywhere

In Catalyst Fund6 there is a challenge question with a pot of $75k around partnerships for SDG (Sustainable Development Goals) in Catalyst. This is a nice little challenge! And there’s a nice amount of activity in there. But what I’m suprised to see is how many times the word "SDGs” are floating around in proposal titles, mission statements outside that challange question. SDGs are everywhere- I bet they come up within most challenge questions. And I ask myself the question: Why is the meme of SDG so powerful?

Are the SDGs just so perfectly formulated that we, a decentralized global community, feel the responsibility to use them as core focal points to rally around? Are there competetive forces at work in Catalyst where proposers feel that if they speak to the United Nations SDGs in their proposals they are giving their proposal more, maybe clout? Or focus? or recognizability?That the SDGs are a blue print just waiting for the right tools to hand the engineers? Could it be, maybe in part, that there is a lack of imagination?

On paper, I agree with many of the 17 areas of focus for the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). How could you not? I think they are, for the most part, undeniable. However, the SDGs are only goals. They are open for anyone to act upon, modify, disagree with etc. They do not belong to the UN, nor should we take our agreement with the core ideas therein to mean that we are absolutely in alignment, philosophically, ethically, with the UN and its stakeholders. At the end of the day, the UN stepped up to put Sustainability in the spotlight. But writing goals is the easy part. It’s the implementation/action itself and the public narratives around them that hold the real power to change the world. We should know, from studying history, that corruption, destruction, even genocide has been done under the banner of acheiving goals that looked great on paper.

The United Nations is a powerful institution if there ever was one- perhaps it doesn’t have the same geopolitical power it had in the 20th century, but for a new century with new problems, it has taken up the mantle of Sustainability. And while it was born out of a necessity to “decentralize” geopolitical power around mutual-benefit in a rapidly globalizing world, it is far from a decentralized institution. It plays with the big guys: large NGOs, non-profits, for-profits, academic institutions, governments etc etc etc. This isn’t bad, clearly we live in a world where power is centralized, and so we need these powers to do what they can to support transitions to sustainable systems. And no doubt there are plenty of great people doing gods work in the UN and partner institutions to make meaningful change.

But we at Catalyst, we are, in a way, the future Heart and Mind of Cardano. Cardano deserves a seat with the big guys. But, I don’t think it serves Us, or the mission of sustainability, if we, the Catalyst community, start out from a place of 100%, inserting the UN’s SDGs into our mission statements, unexamined. We are planting the seeds of the Thing that will eventually replace the UN. If the UN reprepsented an evolutionary step in governance from the nation-state to the global polity, then the next step, from a globalized network of centralilzed powers to a truly decentralized network that pushes power to the edges, belongs to US! We haven’t earned it yet, but this is the goal, I feel, that we should be aiming for.

And so we ought to remember: as above so below. If Cardano was built from a first-principles approach to solving the riddle of the Third Generation Blockchain- tackling BIG complex engineering/mathematical/cryptological/scientific problems, then perhaps we, a community of proposers and advisors and voters, ought to take a similar approach to big problems we see in the world for which we see the technology as a solution. Accpeting the SDGs on their face and not participating in a process of examining the SDGs from first principles seems a lot like deciding to copy and pasting a “good enough” proof of stake algorithm. And we wouldn’t have Oroborus. And we wouldn’t be Cardano.

Right now, it makes sense that IOHK and the Foundation and Emurgo are partnering with the big guys, sitting at the table with the UN, NGOS, Governmentc etc. Does Catalyst deserve a seat at the table with the big guys? Absolutely (eventually)! But we ought to examine the question of whether it makes sense to start an NGO in Catalyst or instead to earn our seat at the table with IOHK, the Foundation etc. Before and During the time that they are at a seat at the table with the big guys. We ought to have a say in partnerships that the centralized powers within Cardano pursue. We, Catalyst, can make IOHK and the Foundation stronger, more resilient, more focused, by providing an ethical filter- an ecosystem capable of complex systems thinking and problem solving. And it is in the interest of IOHK and the Foundation to listen to us- because We are a big part of the piece that makes Cardano decentralized, and it is the promise of decentralization that empowers Cardano to grow. They need us. And we need them to do the right thing.

I don’t have the expertise to analyze the SDGs critically. But I do see some things that give me pause. It isn’t always easy to spot them in the grand scheme. But when you dig in, you can see how a single sentence painted with too broad a brush can lead to immeasurable harm and in fact threaten the very goals themselves. Case in point: Reducing Meat Consumption..

There is a big difference between commuting to work in an electric car vs an SUV. But both are net emitters.
When we look at meat consumption, it is absolutely true that it is a major contributor to greenhouse gas emissions, and that lifestyle changes can make a major difference. But while the vast majority of meat is produced in a highly environmentally destructive way, done correctly it can switch valence from negative to positive, a powerful engine for carbon sequestration and a host of other environmental benefits. We will leave out the ethics of eating animals, and understand that they are critical piece to a functioning ecosystem, as are their predators. A story for another day.

Switching from either factory farming or poorly managed pasture to a system of Silvopasture is actually one of the best ways to not only reduce emissions, but rapidly sequester carbon in temperate regions. https://www.drawdown.org/solutions/silvopasture
Not to mention, silvopasture is a method for transitioning degraded farmland into land that can support perennial systems, whether animals are part of those future systems or they're phased out in favor of human-centered systems.
It may seem like I'm splitting hairs, but responsible management of livestock is, I think, a major piece to the climate change puzzle. Especially considering, at the population level, rarely does meat consumption reduce as a choice. Wouldn't it be nice for folks who aren't ready to change their amount of meat consumption to transition from a corn-fed steak to a steak that contributed to the carbon sink and regenerating previously abused soils?
Getting into the weeds a bit: there is the issue of Methane, cow burps. https://symbrosia.co/seaweed As a tiny proportion of cows diets, red seaweed can reduce methane release by over 90%! The trick is finding a way to get it into the diets of animals on pasture… but it's a challenge that we will eventually find an economical solution to.

You can begin to see how a broad-brush proclamation can have unintended consequences. And you can also begin to imagine Who might leverage this proclamation to advance their own agendas. There is a growing industry, backed by very powerful people, that would replace animals with alternative protein sources. If we’re talking about replacing factory farmed beef with lab-grown burgers that peopel will readily buy, then this is great! But, we cannot allow these interests alone to frame the dialogue on animals. Because they can present tons of data that looks bad: the conversion of plant protein into animal protein at say 20%. And you can come away thinking: wow! We can go from 20% to 100%, that’s a 5x improvement! We can feed the same amount of people on 1/5 the land! But that 80% protein that didn’t get converted into meat didn’t just disappear. It went out in the pee, and to a lesser extent, the poo of the cattle. And in a confinment operation that poo and pee is a liability: a pollutant to release as an externality. But in a natural ecosystem or a properly managed pasture, that poop and pee is essential fertility: it falls on a pasture that’s just been grazed at its optimal nutrient level, hoofed into the ground, and taken up by a thriving soil food web that improves the pasture, increases the nutritional output of that land, decreases the need for energy-intensive inputs, water, etc.

I digress. Just saying, maybe it would be a good exercise for Catalyst to think critically about SDGs. Maybe we can do better, maybe we can’t. Either way, it will be a lot of fun.