Concrete Climate Change Commitment Challenge

Was it really a failure? Or more a learning?

Just for the random reader, I’m not writing about what happened at the COP26 in Glasgow but what my experience was regarding a group experiment during the last House of Beautiful Business in Lisbon.
However, it might still be of interest to you, and I invite you to let me know what you think …

Because I can very much empathise with the disappointment, frustration, and even shame that was palpable in the room directly after the experiment and expressed in countless conversations during the rest of the conference (and in a Linked-in article by Karel Golta), this is as well the attempt to add a perspective coming from a different, more positive angle.

So, eight-year-old Maya from South Africa gave us by video message the challenge to come up with a commitment to one action countering climate change.
Within 45 minutes.
About 300 people present in the room as one working group, and I don’t know how many participating in the virtual space as the other.
My observations relate to the “physical” working group only.

Immediately groups of 10–20 persons formed, a collective smart self-organising move to not have to discuss in the large assembly. I assume the process unfolding within the different groups was quite similar to the one I was part of: A short period of quiet ideation, then sharing ideas to the others, some…