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Reflections: The Designers Accord Global Summit on Sustainability & Education
Just a thought though were there ANY speakers from the "rest" of the world i.e. those parts of the world that actually have the majority of peole who these discussions will impact?
From the list of speakers and attending institutions it did not look like it.
I was in a store recently and an article on the cover of the latest BBC Focus on Africa magazine struck me. The title of the article was: Africa hits a Billion.
Quite an interesting Q AND A with the aurthor of Africa Rising -Vijay Mahajan about the opportunites and challenges that come with Africa's population passing the billion mark.
In it was a nice graph that showed the planets population distribution. Asia at 60%+ 4billion plus, Africa at 14% 1 billion, Europe was next at 700 million plus and North America was down fifth I think. And it struck me looking at those numbers do we as designers realise what they REALLY mean? and have we grasped the fundamental changes that are going to happen in or industry with Asia and Africa as potentially the new growth points on this planet with all their challenges and opportunities?
Reading this post it strikes me that we have a 5 billion + people blindspot and not having "them" IN on conversations as you were involve with..... well let me just say that numbers count.... IN THE LONG RUN... and we seem to be setting up ourselves for a big surprise.
The big problem I have with the current (much needed) conversations going on all over the world about the new pathways and learnings we need as a planet is that if feels very much like the old way of doing things. So we have educated, articulate people from the west telling the rest of the planet HOW things are going to be.
Sorry that is not going to work. Period