Introducing: 'The Rift'

This week, we held an invite-only event to announce The Rift, a new Research Cycle that will form the primary focus of the Sustainability Accelerator’s work over the next two years.

Combining formal research briefings with poetry, seed planting and carnival games, our launch event brought together leading voices to discuss the ideas of the cycle. From board members of global pension funds to art-activists, representatives of global supply chains and senior policy makers, this interdisciplinary group worked together to explore our work, find common ground, and establish networks of practice.

For those who weren’t in the room, here’s a quick overview of our research cycle...

[rɪft] noun

A crack, split, or break in something.

Over the past decades, much work in climate and sustainability has focused on finding ways to support and preserve current reality – to sustain, to protect, to make resilient. With this research cycle, we take a different approach. We are asking – what happens when we view our current moment as the first years in a new reality? The first act in a fundamentally new period of human history. A new climate reality. A new global (dis)order. A new set of relationships. The Rift.

How might such a framing influence how we understand the present, and how we take decisions about the future? What implications does it have for existing institutions, and the new ones we might need to build? Our research cycle will explore these questions through three related strands: Collapse, Uncertainty and Renewal. Let’s take a moment to explore each one:

Science shows that major disruptions to climatic and environmental systems – and therefore human society – are now inescapable. Whilst full system collapse may not be inevitable, the prospect of collapse across multiple systems – including food, economy, water, social organisation – is a very real possibility. We will not emerge from the next decades unscathed. We will experience significant and irreparable loss. There is no way out – only through.

How are we to respond to this? As humans. As decision-makers. As institutions, and as communities with our own particular forms of agency and responsibility?

In the Collapse strand of our research cycle, we will explore:

How might we hold the space for dialogues that explore the implications of climate collapse with nuance?

And how can we ensure considerations of collapse form a productive role in the discovery and creation of our shared futures?

Whilst severe climate impacts are inevitable, we also face profound uncertainties – limitations in what we know, and what it is even possible to know. This is true at the level of climate systems - and these uncertainties multiply as we try to predict a future where non-linear climate dynamics interact in complex ways with equally non-linear human systems.

This can be characterised as 'deep uncertainty'. In stable conditions, reliance on ideas of probability, predictability and least cost-optimisation may be sufficient, but in conditions of deep uncertainty, these approaches can have detrimental impacts. The world is changing, and traditional decision-making is poorly adapted to our new reality.

In the Uncertainty strand of our research cycle, we will explore:

How can institutions take better decisions in contexts of deep uncertainty?

What tools might be most helpful, and how can they effectively pilot and test such approaches?

Under the shadows of both collapse and uncertainty, a growing body of thinking and practice is beginning to coalesce around the ideas of transformative adaptation. Such work explores transition pathways that proactively seek to generate simultaneous benefits for mitigation, adaptation and societal renewal through long-term, structural changes.

Across the world, we see inspiring pockets of adaptive innovation, often characterised by a profound re-engagement with the specifics of place. And whilst these efforts are undoubtedly valuable, the broader trans-regional and international aspects of progress remain underexplored. It is this gap which we seek to address in our work.

In the Renewal strand of our research cycle, we will explore:

How might the roles of government, business and civil society evolve to better support the emergence of transformative adaptation?

And how might forms of regional and international governance interact with more localised efforts to drive system-wide renewal?

The research cycle for The Rift will be conducted over the next two years via collaborative mechanisms that harness collective knowledge, build networks of practice and generate practical progress for our partners and broader systems.

At the heart of The Rift will be the creation of new collaborations and dialogues, bridging a wide range of disciplines, and bringing leading edge practice into productive exchange with major institutions. Work will include publications, large-scale events, closed-door discussions and structured incubation processes delivered in partnership with other organisations.

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The Rift has been developed in conversation with many individuals and institutions. We would particularly like to recognise the contributions of Absurd Intelligence, Ashok Gupta and the New Capital Consenus, Futurall, Rupert Read, Strategic Climate Risks Initiative, Victoria Ward, Mark Workman, Henry Throp and Ana Yang.