Steven Stone is chief of UN Environment's Resources & Markets branch (R&M). He has 20 years of experience in environmental and natural resource management where he has helped several global, cross-discipline teams tackle complex environmental issues.

Climate change is an increasingly multi-faceted problem, which requires cross-department collaboration to tackle it. But breaking through government silos is not always easy.

In this Q&A, Stone provides tips on how public servants can break through government silos to achieve zero-carbon policies.

Why is it important to work across departments on climate change and carbon neutrality?

The issues are so complex now. The Newtonian physics approach to science or social science—breaking down the problem down into smaller pieces and specialising—doesn't work anymore.

The climate challenge basically forces us to rethink so many different parts of our economy and the broader policy space, so specialising won’t cut it, even for the environmental specialists.

The complexity of the challenge forces us to think beyond our silos and that’s why collaboration is more important than ever.

What are the biggest challenges public servants face when trying to work on cross-government issues?

The challenges are not unique to climate change. There are so many cross-border and cross-disciplinary issues that are creeping up on us and are challenging the way we traditionally make policies.

We work a lot on sustainable trade issues, with the World Trade Organization (WTO) and with partner countries who are interested in green trade and opportunities for green markets.

But a lot of people within the trade department are not responsible for climate issues. They are not the ones that negotiate climate treaties or the Paris Agreement, and they are not talking to each other often because they don’t have a lot of opportunities to do that.

Unless you have a higher force like in the case of France, where President Macron has made climate a central policy for the whole of government, then often different ministries don’t discuss policy. Macron has the central bank talk to the trade ministry and the environment ministry to discuss climate issues.

It’s pretty rare to have leaders that force different parts to come together. But another way to approach this is from the bottom up, where people can collaborate because they see they can’t solve part of the issue without one another.

The sum of everyone’s contributions goes way beyond what any one person can bring to the table.

Are government departments outside of environment ministries prepared to take on climate change and work together on the issue?

Here’s an example from Central America, Honduras, one of the most disadvantaged countries in Latin America and also one of the most vulnerable to extreme weather events. It’s interesting that in a country like Honduras, which is extremely vulnerable and has a lot of recurring hits to its current account and its GDP, there is a minister of finance who is very attuned to the cost of climate change.

For example, Hurricane Mitch destroyed six to seven percent of their GDP in three days. They experience a lot of recurring extreme weather events, but the ministry responsible for paying for reconstructing the roads, bridges, schools and hospitals is the finance ministry. So you have a Minister who understands the fiscal and economic implications of climate change.

Then in other countries where it might be not so evident, where other ministries have other things they are coping with or dealing with, climate isn’t always on their radar. But my sense now is that it’s getting harder and harder to abstract yourself and abstract from the reality of a changing climate, particularly extreme weather events which imposed costs of over USD 160 billion in 2018 alone.

What helps public servants breakthrough government silos?

Curiosity. It’s the one word I would use and it’s huge because cross-border collaboration involves learning. It’s an attitude towards life. Public servants can continually learn and add value by remaining in a posture of curiosity. You can keep adding value by understanding beyond the border of your discipline, which applies to the most forward-thinking policy champions.

People who work in ministries that we work with at the UN are very open to thinking creatively about problem-solving, going back to these complex problems and benefiting from collective intelligence.

There’s something powerful about working on a cross-disciplinary team on a common goal. Typically that requires forming a team that has formal recognition and states that they’re working on a complex issue so they are going to create a task force. Each person can offer something and co-create innovative solutions to complex problems to unlock growth that is more sustainable, which is what countries need right now. In terms of life-long learning, these teams can help expand your skills, approaches and tools.

These kinds of new approaches of bringing together expertise can help shed new light on issues that weren’t seen together before, making it hard to find solutions.

If someone wants to work across fences, it entails no more than finding out who’s interested in a certain topic and joining together.

How can public servants get cross-department collaboration started?

I find what works is looking for really good spontaneous opportunities.

Organisations within ministries offer a lot of opportunities, like brown-bag lunches or informal seminars. Public servants can always go to management or can ask to create these spaces. If you’re in management, putting a complex issue on the table and seeing what kind of talent comes to the surface and mobilising the talent around a complex challenge is also a good approach. If you’re in management, it’s your task to create an environment where these teams can form. If you're a technical specialist, look for these opportunities because they are extremely rewarding, and frankly, given where we are with the climate challenges they are extremely necessary.

What are some notable examples of governments doing cross-disciplinary work on climate change well?

There are some really interesting efforts out there. There's a country at the tip of South America called Guyana that’s been taking really big steps. They discovered oil and gas fairly recently and they have a huge forest endowment. Their president created the Green State Development Strategy as a cross-cutting vision for how to make Guyana carbon neutral by 2030 and how to build the oil and gas windfall in a way that could diversify the economy and make it stronger.

South Africa has also done a lot to transition to a green economy. For example, when Cyril Ramaphosa was elected President, one of the first things he did was put a carbon pricing law in effect. The law built on all the cross-disciplinary research and previous administration’s efforts and put it in motion in a way that didn't cause all the unrest that some of the carbon pricing initiatives have run into such as the yellow vest movement in France. He did it smartly because he’s going to monitor and track across the different enterprises and put the price in play over a transition period.

The UK has done a lot on the economics of nature and biodiversity. The Treasury is undertaking a review called the Dasgupta review, which Cambridge University is leading. It’s interesting because the Treasury is looking at an issue like managing nature and the wealth of nature, which is something that typically the Treasury wouldn’t be involved in but there are enough people in the Treasury that know it’s part of their wealth endowment and their wealth base and crossing disciplines to put that together.

The interview has been condensed for clarity.

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