Transcend Discipline | The Big Idea

What's the 'Big Idea'?

There’s a pressing case for bringing bold change to conservation and development practice, for throwing off the conventional pressures that for too long have constrained our imaginations, slowed innovation, and bottled up our more creative aspirations. To agitate the best thinking and innovation across our fields, we must be willing to renew and rethink what isn’t working, and to smartly evolve our disciplines into something courageously transcendent of field, brand and benefactor.

To ignite systemic, enduring change at large enough scale, and at a pace commensurate with the challenges rapidly expanding around us, we must conserve and develop. That idea is not new. But we must take it a big step further. Each of us must in practice be an "aid worker," a "development practitioner" and a "conservationist." We cannot afford to be one and not the other. Nor can the funders afford to silo funding streams to one and not the other. And while our disciplines have flirted with modest partnerships in recent years, calls for our 'integration' remain fundamentally cautious and only marginally realized. In too many cases, we continue to develop in ways unmoored to the environment, and conserve without heeding the lives and futures dependent on what we strive to protect. We achieve short-lived outcomes at long-term costs.

We have a vital obligation to look at what's possible at the deep convergence of our fields, and at the powerful change it can produce and inspire. To not do so – to not aspire to close the gaps between our disciplines and bring our work and designs into real balance – leaves too much that is too important and too consequential unchallenged. It should be our ambition, and our habit, to unleash creative work from the constraints of conventional expectation demanding our approach match what's typically done and fit neatly within the prescribed funding box. And it should be our practice to engage each other blind to 'discipline,' not in limited and cautious ways, but with healthy challenge to presumptive paradigms. We can do so responsibly, respectful of disciplinary expertise, without our perspectives and contributions – or our ambitions – hostage to it.

We can reimagine an approach to what we do that:

unites our disciplines in cause and accountability

elevates the dialogue between us

resists adherence to stale methodologies and metrics

replaces tired terminology

and keeps our focus at once visionary and strategic

Instead of speaking of our “complementarity,” our “linkages,” and our “combined evidence base,” we can lift the conversation between us from one of coordination and tactics to one of unifying vision and common strategy. Instead of speaking of "people-centered conservation" or "integrated development" as signs of sophistication, we can ask the harder questions and expect a deeper examination of where the outcome isn't matching the marketing. We can subjugate concern for our sector and field to concern for real impact.

In doing so, we unlock the practical, field-focused insights sitting untapped at the true convergence of our talents, expertise, and imagination, insights with the potential to positively transform how we work and what we achieve. No matter our core discipline, we can re-anchor to a vision and a strategy that transcend field and brand, and we can reshape our fields into a singularly impactful and more enduring practice.

We are appealing for work that is transdisciplinary. In outlook, in aspiration, and in design.

It’s an idea whose time has come, and one that is a powerful manifestation of our collective obligation to work with a single purpose – to protect and preserve human and wild in balance, in all its forms, no matter our setting or scale, and in a manner and pace in keeping with the challenge.

What does this mean in practice? Jump to A Movement for Change! Have time for a deeper dive? Go to Resources.