Which form of corporate governance is best to foster territorial resilience?

atelier de la première session du collectif +1 à la REcyclerie

Tuesday 28 June 2022 marked the launch of the second round of meetings of the "+1, the ecology turned into actions" consultation process initiated by Veolia in 2021, in partnership with Usbek & Rica, La REcyclerie, and supported by Comité 21, which brings together a collective of 50 Group stakeholders. This initial working session focused on one key question: Which form of corporate and organisational governance is best to foster territorial resilience? Report of the morning’s discussions.

"Governance & resilience": why this theme?

Crises of different natures, whether health, environmental or economic, are likely to multiply in the years to come. Faced with these crises, the ability of organisations and territorial units to adapt is a key issue, and essential for a successful ecological transformation!

  • Does a more open form of governance guarantee that companies and territorial units will be more resilient, like a biotope whose equilibrium requires the presence of a large number of complementary species?
  • What internal and external alliances should be developed?
  • How should co-operation and complementarity between stakeholders be organised?

During this first session of 2022, the “+1” collective explored various options for developing modes of governance and solutions to foster territorial resilience to tackle the challenges of ecological transformation.

3 speakers to inspire participants

The morning of debates started with an inspirational keynote. Three experts gave an overview of the most pressing issues and challenges linking the topics of governance and territorial resilience:

  • Matthieu Auzanneau, Director of the Shift Project
  • Nicolas Beaurez, Head of the Resilience-Transitions-Climate mission of Cerema Territoires et Villes
  • Anne Le Guennec, CEO of France Waste Recycling & Recovery Solutions Zone

Activating collective intelligence through the fishbowl discussion method

After this opening speech, the group took part in a collective intelligence workshop led by bluenove, in the form of a fishbowl discussion.

  • The fishbowl method consists of creating a conversation by building ideas with a group of people around a particular question or issue in order to explore it further through open discussion.
  • In the context of +1, the objective was to propose open dialogue between these stakeholders from different backgrounds.

Different ideas and best practices emerged from the fishbowl, such as:

  • introducing a reward system (financial or not) to encourage people from all backgrounds to participate in debates and collective decision-making at the territorial level;
  • training local decision-makers and exchanging best practices between territorial units;
  • ​​​​​​​modulating part of managers’ salary based on the climate and environmental objectives of their organisation;
  •  inviting the living world to the discussion table as a partner, taking the “Loire Parliament” as an example, whose aim was to create a constitution guaranteeing the river would achieve the status of legal person;
  • ​​​​​​​etc.

Debates, speeches, methodology and more... find the detailed account of this morning of meetings on the website of our media partner, Usbek & Rica.