Green & Sustainability

Green & Sustainability >> Sustainability and Systemic Change

People often think sustainability is about planting trees and recycling. That is exactly what my classmates and I thought when we started a six-month course about sustainability. But soon, we started to realise that it is something very different.

Our teacher was incredibly passionate about sustainability, and after years of research, he had become an expert on the immense variety of concepts and models it includes. One of the first tools he taught us was the Compass Model, a method of ensuring that all aspects of an issue are considered. It involves four lenses: Nature, Society, Environment and Wellbeing, which are represented by the four NSEW compass points. When trying to solve an issue, our solution must benefit all four aspects of the compass. This was one of the most radical concepts for us to grasp—sustainability isn’t a choice between the environment and the society, or between the economy and people’s wellbeing. It’s about finding a perfect solution—one that will benefit all the aspects, without causing any harm.

Next, we learnt about systems thinking, an extension of the compass model that can be used to find this perfect solution. Every issue is a complex system including many interconnected ‘indicators’, which are parts or aspects of that system. For example, for the issue of air pollution, indicators may include ‘people’s health’, ‘fossil fuel industry’ or ‘global warming’. To truly understand how our system functions, we must consider a broad range of indicators, and to do this, we can use the compass model, giving each compass point a roughly equal number of indicators. Then, we must map out the system, drawing cause-and-effect arrows between the indicators. The more connections there are, the better, and doing research into the issue is often a useful way of getting more arrows.

Once a systems diagram is complete, with all its indicators and arrows, it can look very complex and intimidating. But we learnt to embrace this complexity, because once we do so, everything falls into place, and the solution becomes apparent. The ultimate aim of systems thinking is to find a ‘leverage point’—the indicator which, when modified, will have the greatest impact on the issue, without leading to any unintended consequences. By analysing the arrows in a systems diagram, we can draw conclusions about each indicator, such as how much influence it has, how easily it can be changed, which indicators it will affect, and what second-degree impacts those indicators will have. This allows us to pinpoint exactly which indicator to target, so that we are able to solve the issue successfully.

Equipped with these skills, we each chose an issue, and practiced using the compass model, brainstorming indicators, and drawing systems diagrams. Our school’s service programme offers a variety of service opportunities, including at school, in the local community and globally. This makes it difficult for students to decide which programmes to participate in. Before learning about systems thinking, I would have immediately jumped to a straightforward solution, like raising awareness. However, when I mapped the system, an unexpected solution arose. Almost every indicator relating to the issue seemed linked very closely with the fact that there were lots of similar service opportunities which students couldn’t distinguish between. This reduced the number of people that were signing up for each programme. My solution was to create an online quiz that would suggest to students the services that would best fit them, based on questions they answered about their personality traits. When a leverage point is found in this way, with all the indicators and connections being kept track of, the solution is almost guaranteed to work.

Our world can be thought of as a large system, containing lots of smaller, interconnected systems within it. Sustainability is the ability of this large system to continue functioning in balance. The issues we face today have arisen because we modified the system, without realising the full impact of our actions. To fix these issues, we must choose our leverage points carefully, and bring the system to a state of balance again; only then can we truly achieve sustainability.

By Nishant Kumar Singhal Grade 9 United World College South East Asia (East Campus)