Roughly 15 years ago Donella H. Meadows, founder of the Sustainability Institute and professor in the Environmental Studies Program of Dartmouth College, wrote an introduction to systems thinking titled Thinking in Systems: A Primer. Last year the book was edited by Diana Wright of the Sustainability Institute and published (by Chelsea Green Publishing), seven years after her death (the eulogy for which was mentioned here in a previous post). Meadows, along with Peter Senge, author of Necessary Revolution, is a seminal figure in systems thinking, which “is a critical tool in addressing the many environmental, political, social, and economic challenges we face around the world. Systems, big or small, can behave in similar ways, and understanding those ways is perhaps our best hope for making lasting change on many levels.”

One of the main implications for sustainability relates to what is often referred to as the tragedy of the commons. Meadows explains that “tragedy of the commons comes about when there is escalation, or just simple growth, in a commonly shared, erodable (sic) environment.” The tragedy ensues when “a resource that is commonly shared” is “not only limited, but erodable (sic) when overused.”

Meadows presents three options to prevent the tragedy of the commons:

1. Educate and exhort: Help people see the consequences of unrestrained use of the commons. Appeal to their morality. Persuade them to be temperate. Threaten transgressors with social disapproval or eternal hellfire.
2. Privatize the commons: Divide it up, so that each person reaps the consequences of his or her own actions. If some people lack the self-control to stay below the carrying capacity of their own private resource, those people will harm only themselves and not others.
3. Regulate the commons: Garret Hardin [ecologist and systems thinker] calls this option, bluntly, ‘mutual coercion, mutually agreed upon.’ Regulation can take many forms, from outright bans on certain behaviors to quotas, permits, taxes, incentives. To be effective, regulation must be enforced by policing and penalties.

Meadows offers important insights as to how systems behave and how to fix common problems – or traps as she refers to them – that occur. One issue is “intervenors”, those organizations, governments, or companies that step in to ostensibly fix systems, but often (and inadvertently) cause the opposite of the desired effect. In fact, Meadows suggests that intervenors “work in such a way as to restore or enhance the systems’ own ability to solve its problems.”

Much of what Meadows has to say throughout Thinking in Systems is applicable to sustainable development. Environmental and economic systems are impacted by so many different factors that they both benefit from systems analysis. Meadows argues, however, that too often analysts take insular approaches to these complex systems. By employing systems thinking (i.e. considering all facets of a system), many of the environmental and economic concerns can be addressed in a more effective manner.

- Eric Wilson

[image source: Chelsea Green Publishing]