We have progressed in this course from discussing sustainability in broad conceptual terms to working on specific planning skills, in particular systems mapping and scenario planning. Reflect – using at least one specific example from the readings, your experience, or general knowledge – on your views of how such planning skills can contribute – or not – to developing practical strategies to promote sustainability.
Provide your answer as a comment to this post. Remember – your comments are public.
In our learning and discussions in the past two weeks we learned about two important planning tools of systems mapping and scenario planing. Both of the tools are designed to help people better understand and address complicated problems in the world and I believe that they can be powerful methods of developing innovative strategies to promote sustainability in the world today.
Systems mapping, by describing graphically the different components in a complex system, the interconnections between the components and the flow of stocks through various pools, is a tool that allows people to visualize how the the elements in concern are connected in a “web of relations”. The strength of the tool lies in its ability to help its users to think systematically and thus understand the full impacts of changes made in the whole system. Since issues related to sustainability are often complex problems that involves stakeholders at various organizational levels and impacts across different social, economic and ecological systems, thinking in terms of “systems” is necessary in promoting sustainability so that “solution” of one problem would not lead to more adverse effects in other parts of the system.
For instance, in the controversies over biofuel that we discussed in our “Understanding Place” class, the mapping of the global biofuel production-consumption system and its implications on carbon emission played a significant role in changing people’s perception of the “sustainability” of biofuels. If we only look at the consumer side of the system, promoting biofuel seems to be a “sustainable” way to address the challenge of climate change, since increased use of biofuel can reduce the reliance of the economy on fossil fuels and consequently reduce gross carbon emission. However, in recent studies, scholars integrated the related land use changes and global market effects into the analysis of biofuels’ carbon footprints, and found that in many cases the expansion of biofuel does more harm than good to the climate since it encouraged land-conversion from forests and croplands into biofuel production, which may release more sequestered carbon from the soil than the reduction due to the substitution of fossil fuels. As shown in the case of biofuels, system mapping can help decision-makers find the indirect links between systems on different scales that and thus identity the “hidden dangers” that could have been overlooked otherwise. Therefore, analyzing the world as systems can help us get a more comprehensive picture about how the systems we work with function, and make wiser decisions that can account for the fuller costs and benefits generated by our decisions. Moreover, once the interacting systems are clearly mapped out, it is also easier to identify the “leverage points”, keynotes in the problem that can be and should be addressed first in a solution.
Scenario planning, the other important tool we learned about in the past weeks, is an powerful strategy in preparing for uncertainties about the future. In our workshops I came to realize that the process of scenario planning is very effective in encouraging the participants in the group to think about the future in terms of possibilities rather than a static future. When we came together to identify the key drivers influencing the course of the world and develop the scenarios about the future, we opened our minds to adopt a view of the world as always changing. Such an outlook was very helpful in guiding us to recognize what we are relatively certain about the future and what are the key uncertainties that we would be facing, and consequently make decisions that would allow us to thrive in different future worlds.
Sustainability is a target set for the long-run future, and one thing that we can be certain about the future is its uncertainty. Therefore, working toward sustainability requires us to find an appropriate strategy to deal with uncertainties about the future and scenario planning is a perfect candidate for it. Climate change, for example, is a central issue in the global discourse over sustainability. Although it is an accepted scientific truth that the emission greenhouse gases will lead to a warming trend of the global climate, how that change would affect different countries around the globe and whether the world will work in coordination to reduce global emission are largely uncertain. As a result, scientists and policy makers around the world tend to project the future global climate in terms of different “scenarios” like “Business as usual” and “Green world”, each telling a different story about the future climate changes’s effects and people’s likely responses. Policy decisions are largely made based on those scenarios so that the countries can adapt to different possible scenarios (e.g.: sea level rising, increased storms and droughts). Thinking the world in therms of possibilities also encourage people to further reflect on the influence of their own actions on the direction of the future. The disastrous impacts that would possibly come as a result of the “Business as usual” scenario, could have been a key motivator for the political leaders’ decision to reduce global greenhouse emissions with concerted efforts. Here we see that another important power of scenario planning is that by presenting people with the bleakness of the “bad scenarios” of future, it urges the stakeholders around the table to work together and strive for a better world.
In summary, because achieving the target of sustainability requires us to work with complex social and ecological systems that involve huge uncertainty, we need to equip ourselves with the skills and tools that can help us better analyze the complicated interconnections of systems and better adapt ourselves to a future full of uncertainties. It is precisely because of this nature of sustainability as a “tough goal” that systems mapping and scenario planning can be useful in helping us while working towards it.
Yellowstone Basin Watershed/Yellowstone County, Montana. (Blog Post #2)
Systems mapping and scenario planning are two very effective tools that not only identify resources or services within a system that are essential but also points of vulnerability within it. Yellowstone County in Montana has been forming new, and updating exciting sustainability plans for different potential scenarios. After completing an in depth system analysis of the needs and resources of Yellowstone County, one of the points vulnerability within the system was the area’s heavy reliance on the Yellowstone River. The river is the primary source of drinking and utility water for the city of Billings. The water is also used for the oil refineries in the region as well as large amounts of agriculture. The river’s role in the regions sustainability and survival has been put in danger before, during drought events and other non natural events such as oil spills into the Yellowstone river. In the past these events have contaminated the area’s drinking water and made the river’s water unusable for its other needs as well.
In 2013, the Yellowstone Basin Advisory Council joined together with the Montana State University –Billings to work through systems mapping to identify future issues and dangers to the sustainability of the Yellowstone watershed. Representatives from the 15 conservation districts and the 9 smaller watershed groups who were highly knowledgeable about the water use issues and interests from within their watershed or district were brought together to form the committee. Citizens and students (including myself during the summer of 2015) were also included in the issue identification and solution development stages. Citizen’s involved was pulled from different water interest groups such as agriculture, conservation, industry, recreation, municipal and tribal in order to have issues and solutions be fully informed and inclusive.
This department’s work, as well as efforts from the state, have led to very in-depth scenario plans that range from the possibility of drought or flooding to oil spills and increased pollution. The effort to have the state equipped with the most up to date environmental/sustainability scenario plans has spread beyond the Yellowstone Basin watershed and now has been completed in every watershed across the state. An overarching state plan has also been constructed and it, as well as the individual watershed plans, are updated and debated in committee every year to insure the most relevant and up to date solutions to the state’s water needs and future scenarios. By using system mapping and scenario planning, Yellowstone County as well as the state of Montana as a whole were able to identify potential weaknesses in their systems that would put their future population and industries in jeopardy. Now, with the constant updating and reanalysis of plans, Montana is more prepared for the environmental uncertainties of the future.
If I may be suffered to make so pedantic a specification, I would characterize systems mapping and scenario planning as effective tools for organization, visualization, and communication. (Of course, these skills fit importantly within planning as a whole, but more on that below.) This is the frame within which I’m looking at those techniques.
Systems mapping, basically meant to visualize the workings of an interconnected set of resources, really shows its practicality in procedure. That is, the active process of mapping a system requires practitioners to comprehensively investigate their subject, along with the intricate and nuanced relations and forces within and without it. This kind of thorough, entangled research directive takes the blinders off of what I think of as the dominant mode of inspecting specific environmental/economic/social issues — in isolation from adjacent and inter-influencing subjects and contexts. Thus, the greater depth of field of a system map helps us better understand questions of sustainability because, if not for any other reason, it captures a higher quantity and diversity of relevant variables, giving a fuller and more concrete picture of the area. This is not the only reason, though; systems mapping also calls on practitioners to grapple with the system structure, coalesce and document it, and figure out how best to represent it for accuracy, comprehensibility, explanation, and communication.
For an example, let’s look at Middlebury College’s 2008 Master Plan. In the Sustainability chapter, which includes an inventory of the College’s greenhouse gas emissions and recommendations to reduce them, I noticed the conspicuous absence of any mention of food. According to the Food and Agriculture Organization, livestock produce 14.5% of global greenhouse gas emissions, mostly from cattle (Gerber et al. 2013). I respect that the College’s inventory doesn’t claim to be comprehensive, but systems mapping might have pushed the boundaries of the analysis to reveal the magnitude of attributable emissions from dining purchases (especially of beef) and, perhaps, merit their inclusion into the document. The map might have also have conveyed other environmental impacts linked to food production, such as water footprint: in the US, one ton of beef requires an estimated 14191 liters of water on average (Table 4, Mekonnen and Hoekstra 2010).
Scenario planning is useful for the same general reason as systems mapping, as I’ve explained it: broadening perspective; expanding conceptions; pushing past assumptions. In our classroom experience with the technique, I found choosing critical uncertainties and enumerating possible futures helpful because it both focused our attention to a manageable scope and ensured that we considered possibilities in all directions. The specific and formal approach allowed us to systematically exhaust the possibilities in our scenario space with more or less equal weight — and keep track of them.
Really, I’m tempted to consider scenario planning as little more than a framework that keeps practitioners organized, focused, and comprehensively-oriented. And within this shell is where real insight and change happens. The core of our short experience was in the communication within our team, when we debated the importance of forces and brainstormed solutions. Even more so, [what we’ve read so far of] Adam Kahane’s “Solving Tough Problems” seems mostly focused on the spaces, conversations, and relationships that the scenario planning setting opens up. For one, the major planning events that he has facilitated have brought together opposing, even warring, parties and forced them to engage in critical and rational dialogue and compromise.
To return to the example of emissions from agriculture in this light, I could easily see scenario planning being used to propel creative solutions to food production for more people and with a smaller environmental footprint (I would be down to try entomophagy). Just as importantly, such an exercise could enable much-needed dialogue between, say, multinational meat suppliers, leaders of malnourished communities, local farmers, and environmental activists.
How do these tools fit into planning? Well, as I hinted at above, systems mapping and scenario planning can’t be the whole story. They undoubtedly play a major role in the kind of planning process that we’re embarking on, but they themselves are not methodologies for planning. By this, I mean that they require creative human input; e.g., scenario planning seems to work best with divergent and out-of-the-box thinking to generate innovative solutions, but that thought process is not included in the scenario planning specification — it’s a black box. So I think that the next step for us is to formalize and codify procedures, that are replicable and effective like the tools we already have, for this kind of thinking.
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Gerber, P.J., Steinfeld, H., Henderson, B., Mottet, A., Opio, C., Dijkman, J., Falcucci, A. and Tempio, G. 2013. Tackling climate change through livestock – A global assessment of emissions and mitigation opportunities. Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), Rome.
Mekonnen, M.M. and Hoekstra, A.Y. 2010. The green, blue and grey water footprint of farm animals and animal products. Value of Water Research Report Series No. 48. UNESCO-IHE, Delft, the Netherlands.
Oiling Squeaky Leverage Points… Systems Mapping and Divestiture Activism
Post No. 2
If you will allow me for the next six paragraphs to indulge my nostalgia for St. Lawrence, I will be thinking about my work with our divestment movement through the lens of systems planning…
One of the most challenging parts of working with DivestSLU for the past three semesters was convincing people of the impending change to the status quo. Forgetting for a moment the importance of the movement’s moral implications, dissecting and evaluating the impacts of peak oil’s 10th birthday, the ratification of the Paris Accord around the world, growing pressure on publicly traded energy companies to disclose risks to their profitability stemming from environmental regulation, and the role of institutions such as St. Lawrence and Middlebury in the years to come was hard enough. Distilling these factors down to their core, and presenting them not only to our peers and professors, but to trustees, whose fiduciary responsibilities presented yet another axis to be reckoned with, was a task that evolved throughout the year.
I’m not here to convince you that divestment is a worthy cause (although I believe it to be so) but by the time we made our presentation to the board or trustees, we had garnered the support of over half the student population through financial analysis and forecasting, moral and ethical debate, and a lot of creativity. What I found to be the most frustrating part of the whole thing, however, was the tendency by those I discussed the issue with to parse the various factors apart from an interconnected system which spans across temporal boundaries and several seemingly distinct domains of our lives “Oil has always been a safe investment, what does one activist movement have to do with it?” or “I believe we need to do something to fight climate change, but university endowments don’t have anything to do with that,” the list of binary distinctions separating institutions’ (and individuals’) finances from their implications were endless, as were the argumments for acknowledging their roles within a larger system.
Had I been equipped with the scenario planning tools I am engaging with now in our Sustainability Practicum, I think I would have had a much easier time mapping the larger system in which university endowments and fossil fuel companies play a part.
For the sake of exploration, let’s give fossil fuel companies and universities each their own axis along a spectrum of political engagement. On one end of the spectrum, universities are completely a-political. Students may engage in political conversations and activism on campus, but the university does its best to distance itself and its image from these movements. On the other end of the spectrum, universities identify themselves with the political views of their students and faculty and use all the tools at their disposal, from endowment investments to publications, to affect the social change their students, faculty, and board believe in. Both of these are, of course, exaggerations and simplifications of potential realities, but such is the interesting narrative power of scenario planning – one is allowed to follow these extremes to their ends and explore all possible compromises.
Intersecting this collegiate axis would be the political engagement of energy companies (let’s let this encompass renewable and nonrenewable energy companies). On one extreme, these companies are apolitical – they do not lobby, make political donations, etc. On the other extreme, representatives energy companies are allowed seats in congress.
Now we can look at the four stories which would develop from the intersection of these axes – would an a-political college and energy company nexus make ‘the market’ the distributor of social licenses? Or would über engaged energy companies and colleges lead to social change? Today, we fall somewhere in the middle of the other two quadrants – colleges and energy companies are engaged in the political process in some way or another and to varying degrees. It is our job as students and concerned citizens to try to evaluate the big picture before making decisions be they institutional or personal – scenario planning is just one way of doing so.
Practicality versus optimism is a key distinction to acknowledge when deciding upon ways of system thinking and mapping; or any type of thinking or mapping of ideas or thoughts. Being able to map out various sequences and scenarios are a vital aspect of system thinking. The most interesting idea this week for me has been the emphasis of having a ‘toolkit’ to formulate ideas and thoughts, that are presumably both certain and uncertain. After a number of team exercises, I have already found there to be a logical benefit in thinking of both uncertainties and certainties in unlikely or likely scenarios.
Creative confidence is essentially the backbone of all prosperous ideas that go on to become implementations of some sort. Out of everything that is suggested in system mapping and thinking as essential aspects to the process, creative confidence is what drives people to make change. Without proper investment of practice and faith in what one is confident in, the mind is capable of building barriers around thoughts and ideologies. This key element of mapping and thinking is the most efficient manner to adopt, in terms of building on aspects that will best help push for resilience and sustainability in the environment. Outside of the environment perspective, I also feel that creative confidence goes much further than only thinking within systems. Creative confidence shapes people ethics, thoughts, and building upon my initial statement, creative confidence helps one determine what they see as practical versus optimistic.
Optimism is often ideal in difficult situations, but more practical in more easygoing controversies. This has both benefits and drawbacks, but what is more important than there differences is the fact there needs to be a proportional, better yet rational mix of optimism and practicality when thinking within systems. Pursuing sustainability is in a way more perplex than most of today’s concerns, simply because we have a lot of inexperience as a world right now, as to what sustainability is supposed to encompass. Systems mapping and thinking is particularly beneficial for sustainable thinking because based on our success with sustainability up to this point in the world, we have tried to build for sustainability but have been countered by many unanalyzed uncertainties. This type of thinking can potentially reduce the surprise of uncertainties and deteriorates that take away from the goal of sustainability.
In class, we have been learning and practicing using two tools in particular for understanding and helping to create a more sustainable environment. These two tools, system mapping and scenario planning are both incredibly useful tools that can be used to help with many different problems from peace building efforts to climate change concerns. I would like to argue however that without group work or interdisciplinary work these tools would be far less effective. Both group work and interdisciplinary work are spoken about in Adam Kahane’s book Solving Tough Problems, as being critical to the success of the scenario planning that he does.
I have seen this experientially myself that working in a group and an interdisciplinary group at that can be incredibly productive. Last year I was part of a project working with the Cape Fear River Watch to integrate and create a curriculum that included lessons from a book called The Watermans Song by David Cecelski. There were four students and an advisor. In the group was a biology major, an art and African studies major, a social justice and environmental studies double major and an economics major, our advisor was a photography professor. We were linked by our passion for the environment and believed that by creating a love and understanding of place through this new curriculum we could make a different in getting children to care about the environment and live more sustainable lives. We did not explicitly use scenario planning or system mapping but we did use some of the underlying concepts of finding leverage points in ways to approach our challenge.
Another tool we used that comes from the creative ideation is asking the community what they want and need. We were able to talk with the people who worked at Cape Fear River Watch to see what they wanted to see from us. We would not have been as effective if we did not have that baseline understanding of the community we were working with.
All of these tools were useful in creating and implementing a successful curriculum but would not have been possible with just one person or just one way of thinking. The five of us working on this project all brought different perspectives, understandings, and methods for tackling this challenge. Because we were able to build our ideas off of each other we were able to create a more interesting and dynamic final product and successfully implement this new curriculum to help make a difference in a lot of young children’s lives. This was accomplished without having been given the tools of scenario planning, system mapping and the creative ideation process but was successful because of the group work involved and the strength that the diversity added to the group.
The tools we have been introduced to in this class, such as systems mapping and scenario planning, have allowed us to explore the world around us, consider every facet that affects sustainability, and to look into changes that can be made to allow us to move forward.
Systems mapping helped us to pay attention to connections, conspicuous or not, and consider each stock and flow’s role in a system. This is essential to understanding a place, it’s various stockholders or natural elements. One important thing I learned was that though we may try to be more sustainable in our immediate environment, outside factors may affect that. For instance, where our recycling goes or how we obtain materials.
Reading Solving Tough Problems was an appropriate way in which to delve into scenario planning. Adam Kahane and the team at Mont Fleur used this tool in order to effectively transition South Africa away from the apartheid, and it has since helped solve other world issues. One thing that resonated with me was that the Mont Fleur team “understood that one reason the future cannot be predicted is that it can be influenced”. To those who are unfamiliar with scenario planning, it involves looking at various driving forces that can influence the future- these can be economic, social, political, environmental, and so on- and creating uncertain futures that can have an impact on your respective interest, whether it be a business, government, or the planet.
When creating our scenarios in class, it was mind-boggling how many different driving forces we could think of, and wondering how we could possibly solve them. But considering various possible futures and how one reacts to such changes allows us to reconsider our immediate actions and the way in which they affect future sustainability.
There is the common theme in our readings: Adam Kahane’s Solving Tough Problems, Ehrenfeld and Hoffman’s Flourishing, and “The Field Guide to Human-Centered Design” by IDEO.org, and that is people. Focusing on human relationships can be beneficial by moving us away from conspicuous consumption and becoming more self-aware, as Hoffman describes, or empowering members of a community to become agents of decision-making.
Kahane stated in his book: “… one reason the future cannot be predicted is that it can be influenced.” Referring to the Mont Fleur scenario-team that helped shape an ascent in South Africa, he brings to light the importance of planning skills. The two planning skills discussed this week – systems mapping and scenario planning – essentially are tools used to foresee possible outcomes and changes in the future. Kahane demonstrated how systems mapping and scenario planning could be essential tools to prepare for issues or engage in systems in a new way.
Engaging in these tools is a collaborative process, which can lead to gaining new insights, perspectives, and theories about various systems. This can give a more enriched view in the possibilities in planning for the future of the environment and reexamining the current structures in place. The groups we were assigned into took on both skills. We utilized systems mapping in Middlebury’s organic garden, and took on a plethora of environmental issues in scenario planning. With both, a team member would throw out an idea, which others would build upon – creating a more comprehensive picture of the issue at hand. In promoting sustainability, systems mapping can demonstrate a more concrete chart of focus points. With the organic garden laid out, we could’ve pointed to points of improvement, and from there gone on to make the garden more sustainable. This practice could be carried out in most settings to better environmental standards. With scenario planning, we were able to think about what the future might hold environmentally, and what the biggest key factors might be. Kahane already demonstrated the large-scale implications this could have – and after completing the practice in a classroom setting, it was apparent the range of topics scenario planning could be applied to.
From the Oberlin Project, class readings and group work I have learned some practical skills that can contribute to my ability to look at the Town of Middlebury and Middlebury College to focus on the resilience and sustainability of the system. I believe that the work of the Oberlin Project and other analogous problems would not be possible without a few key factors. I believe that many aspects of the system including social, political, environmental and technological must all be included in order to combat complex issues – this inclusive approach is known as systems mapping. Once the system has been identified scenario planning must be implemented in order to envision the various outcomes for the future. Only when all possible outcomes have been identified can we, as Adam Kahane demonstrates time and time again, develop solutions to work collectively towards a new reality.
In reading about the Oberlin Project I saw connections to the planning skills we have been learning during the first two weeks of this course. The Oberlin Project brings together the city of Oberlin, and the college as well as private and institutional partners with the goal of cultivating the “resilience, prosperity and sustainability” of the community. This is what would be referred to as an analogous problem, one that we can gather inspiration and actionable steps from in order to apply them to the system of the Town of Middlebury and Middlebury College.
In the Oberlin Project I see ways in which the concepts of creative ideation have been implemented. Oberlin has effectively used the principle of building a team by bringing together a community-based group to create the 2013 Climate Action Plan. I find this principle to be a crucial one as the team, and who is being invited to the table, will determine which perspectives are included when enacting change. As previously stated this team came together to write the 2013 Climate Action Plan and now the Oberlin Project includes measurable goals that will push the community towards a sustainable future; here the team used the creative ideation principle of creating a project plan.
I also see some of the mindsets of human-centered design included in the Oberlin Project. Creative Confidence is a critical one when setting out to be a project that can be a model for future sustainable communities. As a pioneer in developing sustainable communities the people working on the Oberlin Project must recognize that they are working on solutions to problems that are thus far unanswered. As such, they will also fail and learn from those failures. Optimism is a mindset that really interests me here because in both the Adam Kahane novel Solving Tough Problems and the introductory video for the Oberlin Project they refer to this idea of being not optimistic, not pessimistic but hopeful because hope is “that sweet spot where you have got to roll up your sleeves” (The Oberlin Project).
References:
IDEO.org. 2015. The Field Guide to Human-Center Design.
Kahane, A. 2004. Solving Tough Problems.
The Oberlin Project. (n.d.). Retrieved July 13, 2016, from http://www.oberlinproject.org/
In the conversation of sustainability and especially sustainable development, we tend to zoom out and think globally, regionally, or otherwise on a large, broad, and general scale. This is something that, in our systems map creations and scenario planning collaborations, I find myself habitually doing as a way to look at a system or process. This has its faults, in that it tends to be too broad to really focus on any specific issue. There are always so many different problems and issues to look at, that it can often get overwhelming. The importance of systems mapping and scenario planning lies in finding connections between aspects of a system, uncovering the easy-to-miss details, and spotting problems and vulnerabilities.
Systems mapping is a challenging, at times fun tool to dissect the different parts of a system. As Kahane focused on temporarily in his book, Solving Tough Problems, group work is essential for the optimal success of solving a tough problem. Contributions from a group are also crucial when diving into scenario planning. The aspect of collaboration almost becomes like a group member in itself, because as each participant comes up with new ideas and trains of thought, it is molded and directed by the conversation of the whole group together. The creative ideation of each member forms a strong foundation for all of us to play on each others’ thoughts, especially if one person becomes stuck. In just the past few weeks of working in many different groups with everyone here, I have been able to really observe to how one person’s small idea can turn into a major aspect, or even the main topic, of a project.
Coming back to the conversation of sustainability and the links that scenario planning and systems mapping provide, I would say it is incredibly useful in implicating strategies to promote sustainability. I think a main reason that these are such helpful resources is that they allow us to look very deeply into the possible consequences of any one action. The systems mapping shows you how exactly each aspect is connected to another, and gives a visual representation of where the consequences would move in a system. Scenario planning is a more creative way to envision how certain factors of a system would play out over the long run, which may easier allow you to find the faults and loopholes in the system map. Using both of these tools together, you develop a very strong grip of understanding on a system, its parts, and the possible outcomes of those connections.