Cracks as Openings

Five organizations formed the Living Systems Alliance this week. Heads of state debated replacing GDP with wellbeing. Cities built what nations only promised. Transformation is everywhere. Coherence is still catching up.

The Coherence Question

The polycrisis generates transformation efforts in every domain. The distance between scattered improvement and systemic change is the distance between coalition and coherence - between patching the old system and building shared narratives, infrastructure, and pathways for what comes next.

Three Themes

  1. The Polycrisis Generates
    What is happening
  2. Coherence Over Coalition
    Why it keeps recurring
  3. Surfacing the How
    What it determines next

Overview

Improving the old system is not enough. Four convenings on four continents made that case this week without any of them saying it directly. The polycrisis - interlocking failures across climate, governance, finance, and civic freedom - demands not better programs but fundamentally new structures. And the cracks in existing systems are not problems to manage. They are openings to organize through.

Cover Image

Yeosu Forum COP30 Korea Pavilion Session - ICLEI

Event Highlights

In Reykjavik, heads of state from Iceland and Slovenia opened the Wellbeing Economy Forum to argue that wellbeing should replace GDP as the organizing metric of policy. In Yeosu, South Korea, ICLEI organized the first UNFCCC Climate Week of 2026 around "locally-led green transformation". At ECOSOC in New York, RIPESS presented the social solidarity economy as a financing mechanism rather than a recipient of aid.

News Briefs

WWF Tests Three Alternatives to Dolphin-Killing Gillnets
On Tuesday the 15th, WWF published results from a co-design program with fishing communities testing three alternative gear types to replace gillnets, which kill an estimated 300,000 cetaceans annually. Early results show two of the three alternatives maintain catch volumes while reducing bycatch by more than 80%.

ReGeneration26 Gathers Youth Leaders in Bali
On Wednesday the 16th, Green School Bali hosted ReGeneration26, a youth-led global gathering with keynote speaker Daniel Christian Wahl, author of Designing Regenerative Cultures.

Multilateral Development Banks Issue Joint Stability Pledge
On Thursday the 17th, heads of the World Bank, African Development Bank, Inter-American Development Bank, and Asian Development Bank issued a joint statement deepening cooperation amid "heightened global uncertainty."

Spain Passes Landmark Social Economy Law
On March 26, the Spanish Congress approved the Comprehensive Law to Promote the Social Economy, a milestone that RIPESS celebrated as entering the UN financing architecture at ECOSOC.

Cover Story: Cracks as Openings

Four convenings on four continents revealed fragments of a transformation architecture seeking coherence - shared stories, shared infrastructure, shared pathways.

Quick Take

  • Living Systems Alliance launched: 5 orgs building shared transformation tools across 67 countries.
  • Wellbeing Economy Forum in Reykjavik: shifting the story of what economies measure.
  • ICLEI Yeosu: developing new pathways for locally-led climate governance.

The question is whether transformation mechanisms—new stories, infrastructure, pathways, models, and tools—can find coherence among them.

Features

Where Models Become Visible

From Shenzhen to Nairobi, cities are surfacing the transformation methodology lacking at the national level. The World Resources Institute published an account of Shenzhen's near-zero carbon community program, highlighting various local projects.

The Cost of Coalition Without Coherence

The We Mean Business Coalition reported significant but fragmented climate action efforts among over 23,000 companies. The disconnect highlights the need for coherence in climate movements.

Shifting the Story of Who Decides

New York City's participatory budgeting initiative hands capital decisions to residents as young as 11, challenging traditional governance narratives. Similarly, UNDP Liberia encourages youth as decision-makers.

Contraction Creates Necessity

Civic space is collapsing in several countries, but such cracks create openings for building new governance structures.

Glossary

  • Coherence: Alignment of narratives, shared infrastructure, and pathways across actors working toward systemic change.
  • Polycrisis: Multiple interlocking system failures amplifying each other's crises, creating openings for transformation.
  • Living Systems Alliance (LSA): A coalition of five organizations working on transformational mechanisms simultaneously.
  • Wellbeing Economy: An economic model focusing on human and ecological health over traditional metrics like GDP.
  • Participatory Budgeting (PB): A democratic process where residents decide how to allocate public budgets.
  • Social Solidarity Economy (SSE): A sector focused on social and environmental goals over profit.