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An image of Amanda Kiessel

“Changing the economic story” – how visibility builds the momentum to change the system

By: Mirabelle Morah Published: 21/10/24 — Last edited: 21/10/24

The movement to prioritise people and the planet over private profit is incredibly vast. And while that is one of the movement’s biggest strengths, it can present challenges. Individual organisations can easily get lost in the diversity of terms, models and structures and without a way to spotlight who they are and what they do, their impact can go unnoticed.

We recently spoke with Amanda Kiessel, one of Good Market’s co-creators and a Board Member of the Social Enterprise World Forum, about the importance of visibility, networks and verification for organisations telling a new story of how to do business. We also learned about how Good Market helps organisations find that visibility and Amanda’s hopes for the future of regenerative business.

Can you tell us a bit about your career?

My background is in agroecology and sustainable food systems or what you might call regenerative agriculture today. I’ve spent the last 20 years based out of Asia, mostly in Sri Lanka, working with local initiatives that had self-sustaining models.

 

How did you first get involved with Social Enterprise World Forum?

I started working with Social Enterprise World Forum (SEWF) in 2017 after going to one of their events in Christchurch, New Zealand. Back then I used to tell people that I was done with conferences. I’d participated in too many events that didn’t feel like a good use of time. But you could tell as soon as you entered the SEWF event that this was something different, that this was created by and for practitioners who were out there doing the work.

Since then, I’ve been to every SEWF event, from Scotland to Ethiopia. I’ve served on the SEWF board since 2020 and my work has mostly been to make connections and help bring in other networks.

 

How did Good Market come about?

Good Market started from a realisation of just how big the movement is. We have this dominant economic story that the way to measure success is through growth and maximising profits. But once you tap into this movement, you realise that there are millions of individuals and enterprises out there who are choosing a different story, who are choosing to put people and the planet first.

The problem is that it’s not easy to fully see how big that movement is because it’s emerged  bottom up. The different communities involved are often siloed based on how they’re registered, how they’re certified, what sector they’re in and so on.

The idea with Good Market came from meeting people around the world who had different terminologies and structures for what they were doing but were part of the same movement and asking how we could increase everyone’s visibility and make it easier to find and connect with each other.

 

What is Good Market and how does it work?

Good Market is a digital commons, which means it’s a shared resource that belongs to the people who use it, not to a single company or organisation. It’s self-governed according to agreed rules and has a self-sustaining model under a not-for-profit structure. 

One part of this shared resource is a free online curation process that works across languages, sectors and other divides. There are community-owned minimum standards everyone has to meet in order to participate. Approved enterprises have a public profile that includes all of their claims from the application form.

There’s also a crowdsourced monitoring system, so if you’re engaging with an organisation and think they’re not living up to one of their claims, you can flag the profile to start a review process – just like you can flag inaccurate information on a Wikipedia page, for example.

A second part is shared software infrastructure. That means that not every organisation and network has to build the same thing. They’re able to use the shared software to support their own work and because it’s a digital commons, if one enterprise or network invests in new functionality, everyone benefits. The functionality that SEWF is using to coordinate the global People and Planet First verification was initially developed by a farmer group to manage their organic participatory guarantee system.

 

Why is verification important for purpose-driven businesses?

When all of us are working and trading with each other, verification isn’t always necessary because it’s all about relationships rather than transactions. You’re working with groups in your local area or community, you know who they are and you can see what they’re doing.

Verification becomes really important when there’s an opportunity attached to meeting certain standards – like a procurement opportunity, tax benefits or preferential trade access. When that happens, there’s a high risk of greenwashing and socialwashing by organisations that are set up to maximise private profit.

That’s when you need to have some kind of boundary that’s been publicly agreed on, with a transparent process and set of standards.

 

What changes have you seen within the ethical business space over your career?

One of the things I’m really excited about is that there’s a bigger discussion around redesigning business models. There have always been organisations operating with a different model and set of values because it’s what felt right to them, but a lot of the public attention has been on making products more environmentally responsible instead of transforming the business model itself.

When everything about your structure is designed around putting people and the planet first, it unlocks a completely different way of doing business. You can do things that you just can’t do as a profit-maximising business or a grant-dependent charity.

Another change I’ve been glad to see is a shift in how much we value the input of different communities. For a long time there’s been an assumption from certain core economies that all the innovation is coming from them and spreading to the rest of the world. It’s been really refreshing to see greater recognition of the fact that these values and approaches have always been there in Indigenous and traditional communities and that innovation can come from anywhere.

 

What do you hope that we will see in the future, what do you believe we need?

What we’re really talking about is changing an economic story and that in itself helps shift people’s thinking. The way we think about the world right now is a story – it’s not a natural law, it’s just a story we humans made up and can rethink if it’s not working for us. And linked to that is changing our rules, whether that’s our social norms, policies within organisations, or public policy.

What I hope to see is greater collaboration between all the different communities in this movement. The social and environmental challenges we’re facing are too big for any single network or organisation to solve on its own. We have to come together around shared leverage points.

It’s the choices we’re all making – choosing to tell a new story, choosing to prioritise people and the planet, choosing to collaborate – that are helping to shift the system. By changing the story and changing the rules, we’re co-creating a 21st century economy that puts people and the planet first.