Global crises—from accelerating climate change to biodiversity collapse—are exposing a troubling truth: our institutions are not equipped to respond effectively. Annual UN climate conferences (COPs) and similar forums demonstrate persistent stagnation, despite decades of negotiation. The world lacks not just transformative policies but also the mechanisms to decide how to create them.

This is the central insight of the MDPI Sustainability study “Decision Change: The First Step to System Change". The authors argue that before meaningful system change can occur, we need decision change: a transformation of how decisions about system change are made.

Source: Encyclopedia Video abstract. (https://encyclopedia.pub/video/1729)

1. Why Current Governance Fails

Existing structures face a “meta-coordination problem”: they can manage routine decisions but lack the capacity to decide how to redesign themselves. COPs illustrate this: emissions rise, fossil-fuel reliance persists, and geopolitical interests often outweigh scientific guidance. Previous proposals—citizens’ assemblies, UN reforms, world federalist models—exist, but none provides a legitimate procedure for evaluating and implementing systemic alternatives.

Without a “meta-decision structure,” the world is trapped in procedural paralysis. Incremental reforms cannot match the scale or speed of current crises.

2. A Three-Step Programme for Decision Change

The study proposes a structured, three-step programme designed to establish a legitimate, ethical, and transparent meta-decision process.

Step 1: Independent Experts Design the Procedure

Specialists in collective decision-making, institutional design, and procedural engineering—not political negotiators or domain experts—would create the procedure for deciding on system change. Their mandate includes:

• Diagnosing governance failures.

• Building safeguards for transparency, resilience, and fairness.

• Embedding ethical principles and norms.

• Mitigating conflicts of interest and bias.

Oversight bodies ensure methodological rigor and accountability. Crucially, these experts do not decide on system change themselves.

Step 2: Broadly Collect System-Change Proposals

Once the procedure exists, proposals for transforming governance, economic structures, or crisis-response strategies would be solicited from:

• Scientific communities.

• Civil society and indigenous groups.

• Governments and policy think tanks.

• Independent experts.

Wide participation ensures diversity, credibility, and legitimacy, making eventual decisions more broadly accepted.

Step 3: Decide on System Change

A separate body applies the designed procedure to evaluate proposals and decide on system change. Auxiliary verification, oversight, and argumentation mechanisms maintain fairness, transparency, and resistance to political capture. This separation prevents technocracy while ensuring robust, legitimate decisions.

3. Strengths and Challenges

Strengths

• Addresses the failure of current governance systems.

• Embeds ethics, transparency, and procedural fairness.

• Broad participation enhances legitimacy and acceptance.

• Encourages innovative solutions often overlooked in traditional politics.

Challenges

• Designing a meta-decision procedure may be contested.

• Experts may carry implicit biases.

• Administrative complexity and resistance from vested interests could slow progress.

• Misperception as technocratic control is a risk.

The authors argue that these challenges are manageable with oversight mechanisms and ethical safeguards—and far preferable to continuing under current ineffective systems.

4. Why Decision Change Matters

Even well-designed institutions will face public resistance, geopolitical obstacles, and structural inertia. Yet relying on existing governance mechanisms, such as future COPs, to produce systemic transformation is increasingly unrealistic.

Decision change lays the foundation for meaningful system change. By creating a legitimate, transparent, and ethically guided procedure for deciding on systemic transformation, the world can move beyond incremental reforms toward solutions capable of addressing planetary-scale crises.

The call is clear: leadership must extend beyond governments. Independent experts, auxiliary oversight bodies, and inclusive participation are essential to ensure that decisions are legitimate, ethical, and resilient. Only then can humanity hope to make the systemic transformations needed to keep the planet habitable.

For more information about topic, you can view the online video entitled "Decision Change".