Being at the United Nations and listening to the speakers made me (yes made me) think about the concept of WEIRD. Listening to marginalized peoples speak on their experiences of climate crisis and their efforts to share in the decision-making; they all came (across cultures, speakers and topics) to the same conclusion: if it is for us it must include us.
This seems logical; in most capitalistic systems (the United Nations included) the peoples who are impacted by the decisions being made are consulted in the making of those decisions; or they are the decision-makers. For exampleexamples, products are made through extensive processes of research and development whichto confirm they havethat the thing being pitched has a market. The same can be said of for profit services that are for profit. Climate and development more broadly sit outside of this paradigm.
The decision-makers tend to be WEIRD. This is an acronym first coined by behavioral scientists Joseph Henrich, Steven Heine, and Ara Norenzayan to describe populations that are Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, and Democratic. Like MATES, this acronym can be used sensically in expression of its concept and within normal English speaking. Example: it is WEIRD that peoples who are the affected parties are not consulted.
WEIRD has a psychological component; people in WEIRD cultures tend to be more individualistic and analytical. In his broader work, Henrich notes that this specific cognitive style insists on breaking complex realities down into rigid, quantifiable parts. This manifests itself in development throughin the need for funders donors needing to have a set of projects with defined outcomes before funding is secured. This results in projects that are often defined before consultation, which often leaves out the community of concern. because only from the point of funding is the time spent paid for. Impact reporting is also limited.
MATES is 100% volunteer run and 100% of donations goes to ourthe projects: these stats are easy to digest stats. But they skirt around the best parts of our work; that communities build capacity and dignity, that there is no leakage of funding and that the projects that we select to do—because they are not defined from the outset—are able to be flexible to the needs of communitiespeople.
An example might be our work in Pakistan; because the girls selected at the end of the process go to different schools in different cities, the costs involved in their costs of living (that the scholarship covers) are different. If we were bound by a strict WEIRD bureaucracy, the amount would be set and no flexibility could be afforded for those differences in costs; let alone the other fluctuations including changes in inflation and the buying power of the Australian dollar.
Coming back to WEIRD at the UN’s Climate Conference, when we are hearing about the experiences of people in the climate crisis, I feel that understanding this concept in its entirety could be a helpful way to quickly define and then move into stronger inclusion of all peoples in decision-making and project development. This aligns with broader systemic critiques in global sociology, where experts note that forcing rigid, off-the-shelf Western blueprints onto highly variable global crises is an inherently flawed strategy.
It should be noted that this framework is not intended to create a rigid binary; rather, its purpose is to define categories that are otherwise mal-defined by standard geopolitical labels. For instance, Australia cannot be categorized as 'Western' by any strict geographical or logical definition. Conversely, nations like South Korea and Japan seamlessly fit the structural components of the acronym—operating as highly Educated, Industrialized, Rich, and Democratic (EIRD) societies—despite their non-Western heritage. Meanwhile, countries such as Brazil, Peru, Colombia, Romania, Albania, and Moldova share deep historical ties to the Western tradition, yet they lack the specific socioeconomic markers that define the WEIRD baseline. By separating institutional structure from civilizational history, we can see that 'WEIRD' characteristics exist on a spectrum rather than a neat geographic map.
Ultimately, the problem is not that WEIRD institutions are inherently incapable of delivering meaningful development. It is that the assumptions underpinning these institutions are too often treated as universal, rather than as products of particular cultural, economic and political contexts.
If we are serious about addressing the climate crisis, we have to recognise that the people experiencing its consequences are not simply beneficiaries of our solutions. They are experts in their own experiences, with knowledge that cannot always be reduced to predetermined outcomes, reporting frameworks or funding cycles.
This requires more than consultation. It requires a genuine redistribution of decision-making power, and the flexibility to allow communities to define not only what progress looks like, but how it is achieved.
At MATES, we have a saying: There is no progress without our process.
Coming away from these discussions at the UN, I am reminded that this is not simply a principle of good community development. It is a fundamental requirement for meaningful climate action.
If it is for us, it must include us.
References
[1] Henrich, J., Heine, S. J., & Norenzayan, A. (2010). The weirdest people in the world? Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 33(2-3), 61-83.
[2] Henrich, J. (2020). The WEIRDest People in the World: How the West Became Psychologically Peculiar and Particularly Prosperous. Farrar, Straus and Giroux.
[3] Modern sociological development literature natively mirrors this, detailing how top-down, standardized developmental models consistently fail to account for local, organic variables on the ground.
