Posts Tagged ‘Gordon Brown’

Technology has changed the face of campaigning over the past years and every month we witness a novel digital campaign. Gone are the days where I sit down with my pen and paper and write a letter to my local MP, as the internet comes up with increasingly innovative ways of connecting a cause to its supporters.

Before Christmas I sat on a conference call with Gordon Brown to hear about his hopes for the Copenhagen summit. Impressive, you may think, but in fact this was a new ‘community engagement’ tactic hosted by Avaaz, allowing hundreds of people across the globe to dial into a conference call and pose questions to the PM. As the conference organisers said, this was an example of technology bringing citizens together like never before.

Although the format was innovative, the content of the call itself was quite unremarkable. One thing that caught my attention however was when someone posed the question “What do you need us, the citizens, to do about climate change”. Mr Brown’s reply was surprising. “Visit the Ed’s Pledge website,” he said “and register your support”. This website is dedicated to Ed Miliband Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change, and his ambition for greater ambition on climate change.

A few days later Ed Miliband sent me an email, offering me a whole raft of ways that I could “take action”. Take action, to me means getting a compost bin to reduce the amount of organic waste we throw into landfill sites, or getting on your bike to reduce the amount of harmful emissions we are pumping into the atmosphere. Ed’s definition was somewhat different; none of these actions were tangible ‘actions’ in the truest sense of the word. All did, however, include the prefix ‘click to’. Click to sign a petition, click to write to your newspaper, the list goes on.

This has made me think about the true effect technology is having on ‘taking action’. It seems to me that whilst online tools have become invaluable in bringing citizens together, we are in danger of changing the definition of ‘action’ among audiences. You would be forgiven for thinking from listening to Gordon Brown, that by signing a pledge, sending on a message of support to a friend or  re-tweeting a post then we’ve done enough, we can sit back in our armchairs because climate change will be halted.

Not only that but, before long, we are in danger of creating a kind of ‘take action’ fatigue among the general public. Before long people will undoubtedly start to question the true value of online pledge signing and wish to do something more meaningful in supporting a cause.

What lesson can we take for online communicators? Whilst increasingly novel community engagement tools can be useful in recruiting support and connecting people, we must not lose sight of the end goal. We need to dedicate as much creative thought to meaningful calls to action as the tools we use to communicate these.

I went to see Professor Jeffrey Sachs, Director of the Earth Institute at Colombia University, speak last week at LSE ahead of the G20. Sachs spoke with conviction and emotion about the lack of representation of poorer nations at the G20, a total of 2.5bn of the world’s poorest with no voice at the meeting. I came away with a sadly pessimistic outlook for what could be achieved at the G20 for developing nations’ economies.

However, what actually transpired from the summit was far more positive. One outcome of the world’s rescue package was $250bn trade credit made available for the world’s poorest nations, which is a step in the right direction, and something I’m sure Professor Sachs will be pleased with, given his pragmatic approach to tackling global poverty. According to Professor Sachs we need greater investment in developing countries to avoid the flight of capital back to developed nations. Sachs also advocates investments in infrastructure and the millennium development goals as a priority. In an article in the Huffington Post Sachs praises the commitment, seriousness and efficiency of G20 leaders in what they accomplished at the summit for the poorest economies in the world.

It is clear that what resulted from the G20 was a far more sizeable package than could ever have been expected and will go some way to relieve the impact of the world crisis to those economies that will suffer the most. Gordon Brown has stated that a “new world order” is emerging. Hopefully in the next meeting of global decision making at this level, poorer nations will be represented at the top table.

It’s official. The global financial crisis is bad. Bad for home-owners, employers and especially bad for banks. It follows, therefore, that it must be bad for global health too… But just how bad is it? Not bad at all, according to some experts, since the poorest countries have only limited exposure to the financial markets. It is clearly bad for the rich countries who have suffered the greatest losses, fuelling concern that spending on aid and development will need to be curbed.

Bill Gates is worried – earlier this week he urged the rich nations not to cut back on the amount they spend on health aid. Gordon Brown echoed those sentiments yesterday when he pledged to continue to address the world’s health problems, mirroring comments that he expressed earlier at the Millennium Development Goals Summit in New York in September.

The bigger question is whether the financial crisis is bad for those people most vulnerable to health problems and diseases. UNAIDS Director Peter Piot suspects it might be, but is not entirely sure how. Rising food prices and fuel costs will undoubtedly make people more susceptible to infections, but can we really blame the global financial crisis for this? Prices were rising before this latest crisis, and, if anything, have fallen since then.

The worst is probably still to come. For now, let’s hope the global financial crisis is used as an opportunity and not as an excuse. Because, that really would be bad…