We can have students going onto specialised studies at university whose understanding about climate change might not get much further than a concern for recycling or an awareness of extreme weather events. There are entire Economics courses delivered in school and at university with no reference to the planetary boundaries. We have Geography courses that do not mention tipping points. We have media that do not ask questions about how any policy or push for growth relates to the remaining carbon budget.
This is absurd.
We have a world of specialisms that has lost sight of the bigger picture. This disconnectedness is dangerous.
Systems thinking is not an optional extra when the system in question is thing that makes all other systems possible.
All human wealth is dependent on planet Earth. Our entire economies and social lives depend on the stability of Earth systems.
Climate change will affect the private sector, at both a personal level and at a global GDP level, with the same force that it will hit our social fabric. The private sector is not immune to the laws of physics and chemistry.
One of the deepest myths about climate change and sustainability is that it is somehow marginal. It is something on the fringe, often just an afterthought. By pushing sustainability into the margins, often into a space of voluntary action, humanity fails to recognise that a collapse of Earth Systems will lead to a collapse of everything else.
Both the private sector and the public sector need entrepreneurial thinking and action that is informed by the basic reality of the planetary boundaries. Indeed, we don’t just need innovators in the silos or private and public wealth, we need innovators who can make these two sectors properly overlap and enhance each other.
The sustainability crisis is a Super Wicked one that cuts across, not just the public and the private, but every dimension of our society. In a world of specialisms and silos, we need thinkers and agency, strategies and solutions that operate on multiple levels.
The first boundary to cross is that deeply entrenched one between the public and private spheres. This separation has also been marked by a massive flow of assets, away from the public, and into the private sector in recent decades. The monumental privatisation and commericalisation of the natural world and other public assets has undermined our capacity to respond to the sustainability crisis.
On top of this basic economic power shift, there are many other systemic imbalances that require deep entrepreneurial work. The climate crisis is plugged into all the systemic injustices that can be observed in the world: generational, gender, racial, class, geographic location, neurodiversity…
The third pillar of The Climate Academy is not “Social Entrepreneurship”. The problem with the concept of simply “Social Entrepreneur” is that this tacitly accepts that there are different and separate zones inside our society, as if they don’t have much to do with each other.
They are absolutely related and connected, and part of the domination of the private sector in our modern economies has been the way in which the environment and social issues have been marginalised into an after-thought, not a first thought; a place for charity not a priority.
Being a Systems Entrepreneur means, first an awareness of all the different systems in play, from the natural world to the human world, and secondly, an ability to pull these things together in solutions that are progressive and constructive.
The Academy helps students to identify hidden assumptions and challenge the status quo. The Academy supports students in their exploratory thinking and actions, as they seek to establish enduring change at different layers of our systems.
At various moments of their time in the Academy, the students will need genuine resilience and imagination to make the most of all the set-backs involved in non-linear change. Whilst acknowledging the profound seriousness of rampant climate change, the students can learn to take their role in advocating for systems change very lightly, by understanding it as a game.
Students learn how to be resolute about key principles and key content whilst adapting them to different contexts. The experience of the Academy can enable students to hold their informed views and lifestyle with more confidence and nuance.
The outward focus of the Academy helps foster humility. Genuinely strong leadership is marked by modesty.
The 360° view of reality offered by the Academy enables students to identify important connections and perspective – both about themselves and the world. It enables them to better navigate between the universal and the particular. It fuses systems knowledge with systems action.
In blunt summary, as a Systems Entrepreneur, you will have designed and delivered work that is typically marked by being:
• Truly intersectional — cutting across disciplines, sectors, and communities.
• Barrier-breaking — overcoming significant personal or social obstacles to create real change.
• Legacy-building — projects that leave a lasting positive impact.
For more details about how to achieve a Systems Entrepreneur certificate, click below.
