Backbones: a metaphor
“Hope is important because it can make the present moment less difficult to bear. If we believe that tomorrow will be better, we can bear a hardship today.”
THICH NHAT HANH From Optimist Daily
In my previous Substack Of Hope and Trust, I talked about “Backbones”, the metaphor/framework we developed around the social infrastructure (what Francis Fukuyama calls “social capital”) that allow people to work together successfully.
While we were writing our most recent book, The Possibility Wheel, during the arm waving phase (when we debate what we are going to write and the narrative line), we decided that we would write not only about forces for change, but also the threats that are already disrupting outcomes now and will continue to do so in unpredictable ways. We initially chose these three threats because we thought they would have the greatest impact:
Global Heating – as evidenced by the increasing number and ferocity of major weather events, and the hottest year on record in 2024.
Breakdown in International Relations – evidenced by the changing world order as the USA links to autocratic regimes; conflicts between Russia and Ukraine, warring factions in Sudan, Israel and Palestine, Iranian proxies and Iran,….. plus all the places in the world where conflict is threatened.
Collapse of Global Health – evidenced by Antimicrobial Resistance, Pandemic Diseases X and Y, increasing zoonotic diseases (monkey pox, Covid), fungal infections…
When faced with threats like these, the first step towards tackling them is to figure out what is stopping people from being more effective at meeting these challenges.
Why are these threats so hard to confront?
These three challenges are global. They show up differently depending on where you live and what your organisation does, but sooner or later they affect everyone. Since they are global, they need a globally linked response – one which is based on our current context. We found that what was needed (and largely missing) was the sort of soft infrastructure that underpins the way things work. We called these “Backbones”.
Backbones are the soft social structures and agreements that make cooperation possible – what others might call ‘social capital’. They shape how we resolve conflict, trade, share information and ‘get things done.’ Like bridges and roads (hard infrastructure), they need maintenance and renewal if they are to remain fit for purpose as the world changes.
When Backbones are strong, they help us to tackle global and organisational challenges. Today, many of them are fracturing and no longer fit for purpose, which makes those other threats even harder to address. That is why we treat the fracturing of Backbones as a threat in its own right.
What do Backbones look like?
Examples of Backbones are:
· International Institutions (UN; WTO; IMF; World Bank; Asian Development Bank; NATO etc) which were established to sustain and enforce adherence to Backbones
· Rules and standards (Rule of Law; ISO standards; Montreal Protocol)
· Platforms and norms (currency exchange platforms; Social Media; Cultures – national, group, art; ‘How we do things around here’)
Backbones can take many forms, from formal institutions and organisations where they are explicit, to informal groups where they are implicit. We find it useful to think about four types of Backbones:
· Successful Backbones – these work well for all participants. An example is the Montreal Protocol to protect the Ozone layer. It has been adapted and renewed over the years so that it remains fit for purpose.
· Evolving Backbones - are Backbones that people recognise are in need of renewal. People are working on them, but they may become successful again, or they may become Fractured Backbones. An example is NATO which is facing many challenges.
· Fractured Backbones – are existing Backbones that no longer work as successfully as they need to and are in need of renewal but people are not yet working on renewal. An example is Copyright Law where companies train their LLMs on material scraped from the internet (for example using LibGen database) without permission asked - or granted - or royalties paid for use of the (entire) work. This is against the law of ‘Fair Use’; therefore stealing.
· Missing Backbones – are Backbones that we need but don’t yet have. An example is a Global AI Governance Framework which would have agreed upon rules and enforcement mechanisms for safety, ethics or misuse of AI systems.
What can we do?
Many Backbones are in need of attention. They need to evolve and renew. Where they are missing, new Backbones need to be created. Since they are agreements made between people, people have to talk about it. It isn’t easy and requires compromise and trade-offs.
There are people working on restoring Backbones — from citizen assemblies to cross-sector collaborations — and they all seem to share a belief that improvement is possible: they have hope. Without hope, it is hard to see why anyone would choose to trust. Trust is needed to build and restore Backbones. These are the kind of things they are doing:
· They have a positive vision of a possible, preferable future which they share (see here).
· They are willing to do the hard work of getting to agreement(s). This means they listen, they work with (and understand) trade-offs, and they make compromises. That way everyone wins some and everyone loses some.
· They create the conditions for trust through talking together and listening to one another. We hear what the other party is saying and acknowledge it.
· They prove themselves reliable – when they say they will do something, to do it as agreed.
That gets me back to trust: to renew and create Backbones, you need trust. I will explore how we can build more trust in my next Substack.
Early this week I saw an article in The Guardian about the launching of the National Conversation project which aims to rebuild social cohesion.
Convened by the Together Coalition – a nonprofit cohesion campaign co-founded by Brendan Cox, the widower of the murdered MP Jo Cox – the commission aims to use the project to map out a shared vision for the future in the fraught and fractured political climate.
… The research aims to determine what unites and divides us, what connects us to our neighbours, and what makes the country feel like home.
I’d like to share the Fix the News podcast. Always a place to find out what is going right:
Announcing the Fix The News Network
A collection of podcasts exploring progress, possibility and the forces shaping our future. Alongside our newsletter, you’ll now be able to find all our audio content in one place, and on YouTube, with long-form interviews, weekly news roundups, history series and video episodes.
Check it out at www.podcast.fixthenews.com. You can also search for and subscribe to any of these wherever you normally listen to your podcasts (Apple, Spotify, Amazon etc).
And more from Fix the News:
Brazil’s forest losses fell by 42% in 2025, helping pull the global tropical deforestation curve back from a record high. The country lost 16,000 km² of tropical primary forest, far below the 28,000 km² recorded in 2024, while non-fire-related losses fell 41% to their lowest level since records began in 2001. Agência Brasil
Can a chopped-down rainforest reassemble itself? Within 30 years, most animals and plants bounced back to over 90% of old-growth numbers and variety. The fastest returnees? Bees, bats, and fruit-eating birds — exactly the creatures the forest needs most, because they pollinate flowers and spread seeds. Trees, being trees, take longer (they’re not exactly known for speed). And the very slowest to recover were soil bacteria and tiny leaf-litter bugs — the stuff living in the dirt, which apparently holds a grudge against being plowed for a very, very long time. Nature
South Africa cuts extreme poverty despite economic strain.
South Africa’s share of people living below the food poverty line fell from 27.4% in 2006 to 17.6% in 2023. The proportion living below the lower-bound poverty line also dropped sharply, from 57.5% to 37.9%, even as unemployment remains severe. The figures suggest long-term gains from social support, education and public services have persisted despite Covid disruptions and weak economic growth, although 10.8M people still face food poverty. The Citizen
And finally:
In India, swapping winter wheat for cauliflower and spinach can triple rice farmers’ productivity and quintuple their net income. The East Indian rice-wheat-greengram rotation has been a safe bet since the Green Revolution, but the system is showing its age — yields stagnating, water tables falling — and Indian agronomists are trying new things. The big new, research-backed farm hack: replace the wheat with vegetables.
A rice-cauliflower-spinach-greengram rotation produced 34.26 tonnes of rice-equivalent yield per hectare against 12.29 for the standard cycle — a roughly threefold jump. Net income jumped further still, by closer to fivefold, because vegetables also sell for more per kilo than wheat does. The catch: vegetables rot, so this only works where farmers have fridges. Indian Journal of Agricultural Sciences
