A Strategy of Sustainability: A Systems Perspective on Environmental Initiatives

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A Strategy of Sustainability A Systems
Perspective on Environmental Initiatives

• Professor Doug Cerf
• Donald Bren Graduate School of Environmental
  Science and Management
• Environmental Risk Management (ESM 286)
• Winter 2008

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An Overview of Systems Thinking

• Another framework
• A method to test new ideas related to social
  systems
• Systems thinking is a discipline for seeing
  wholes. It is a framework for seeing
  interrelationships rather than things, for seeing
  patterns of change rather than static snapshots.
• Makes understanding of social systems explicit so
  they can be improved
• Much in the same way that systems thinking is
  used to understand and improve mechanical systems
  in engineering

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Properties of Systems

• Whole and not parts
• Inter-relationships and inter-dependencies
• Cause and effect are not connected in time and
  space.
• Time Delays
• Patterns NOT Events
• Structure is crucial
• Structure influences behaviour

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An Overview of Systems Thinking

• Fundamentally different from traditional forms of
  analysis
• Analysis means to break into constituent parts
• Systems thinking in contrast focuses on how the
  thing being studied interacts with the other
  constituents of the system
• For systems that are dynamically complex or where
  there is a great deal of feedback from external
  and internal sources, the results can be
  strikingly different.
• Source http//www.thinking.net/Systems_Thinking/
  OverviewSTarticle.pdf

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Systems Thinking Exercises

• The Systems Thinking Playbook
• Exercises to Stretch and Build Learning and
  Systems Thinking Capabilities by Linda Booth
  Sweeney and Dennis Meadows
• (ISBN 0-966127-7-9)