#23: Systems Thinking - An Intro for Climate Action in Cities

[Music] Welcome to the Green Urbanist, podcast for Urbanist, fighting climate change. I'm Ross. [Music] So, a few months ago, my friend Adam in Dublin set me a book. "Thinking in Systems" by Don Ella Meadows. It's one of those few books that you read throughout life that can totally change how you look at the world and how you think about things. I've since gotten really obsessed with the potential for systems thinking to provide clarity and direction for doing, well, what this podcast is all about, fighting climate change and creating happier healthier cities. I'm still only at the beginning of my journey in systems thinking. It's a vast field and I'm certainly not an expert. But it's something that I have already touched on in early episodes without necessarily having the vocabulary around it. And I'll definitely be weaving it into future episodes as well. So, I thought it would be a good idea to provide a kind of introduction systems thinking. So, all of you listening can get to grips with the basics and maybe start using it yourself in a practical way. So, in this episode, I'm going to give you an idea of what systems thinking is and also give you sort of my top tips for to get started thinking in systems in a systematic way. And I'll also give you lots of kind of case studies and examples of how you can put these things in place to understand the systems around us. To explain systems thinking, it's useful to compare it to what you could call reductionist thinking. Now, reductionist thinking is really the bedrock of Western scientific, the Western scientific method. It's about breaking things down into distinct elements and studying them in isolation. This approach is incredibly useful and has given us amazing advances in all scientific fields from physics to medicine to psychology. However, for dealing with incredibly complex interconnected problems like climate change and urbanism, reductionist thinking will only get you so far. And this is where systems thinking comes in. A system is a set of things interacting in a way that produces something greater than the sum of its parts. And so, systems thinking is just a way of analyzing the world around us, not as as if it's lots of isolated objects, but looking at how everything interacts together and affects each other. It's not particularly mysterious. All of you listening right now can probably identify lots of systems. Here are a few examples, all living organisms are systems. A city is a very large system and within it it's made up of lots of other systems that are nested within it like transport system, drainage system, even individual buildings are systems. But also consider non-physical systems like organizations of people, political systems, economic systems. Oh, is everything a system? Well, not quite. Don Elimedals writes that a system requires three things. Elements, interconnections, and a function or purpose. For instance, a tree is made up of individual elements like leaves, roots, bark, which are all interconnected to serve the purpose of being alive and growing. But another example is some sand that's just scattered on the floor is not a system. It has elements, grains of sand, but no interconnections or purpose. You can add or take away sand and it's just still sand on the ground. It's not a system. Interestingly, Meadows in her book uses lots of different examples and some of them are from the world of urbanism. Early on in the book, she uses this example of an old city neighborhood where people know their neighbors and interact with each other. She describes that as a kind of social system. An in contrast, a new apartment building where nobody knows or speaks to each other is not a social system. It's just a bunch of people living in close proximity. But it has the potential to become a complex social system in time. Now you might think that this is all pretty obvious. And actually it is common sense to an extent. But when you start analyzing how systems work, you find that they're often surprising and they don't behave how you expect them to initially. You would also be surprised how often people doggedly ignore the systems around them and carry on as if the world was simple. As we are at this pivotal moment for taking action on climate change, we can't afford to be sidetracked by overly simplistic, poorly thought through or reductionist solutions. We need to somehow get our heads around the vast complexity of the global climate system, how that interacts with our economic systems, our cultural norms, our health, social equality, and then we need to figure out solutions. Not just one solution, we need hundreds of innovations and tweaks across multiple scales and industries, and we need that very quickly. That, to me, is why systems thinking is such an important skill for us to consider. In fact, it could be argued that a system's perspective is actually necessary to really understand climate change and take it seriously. A 2018 study from Yale surveyed 1558 US adults and found that people who score higher on systems thinking are consistently more likely than those who score lower to understand global warming, is happening and human caused. And to worry about it, view it as a serious threat, value it as a personally important issue, and understand that most climate scientists think human caused global warming is happening. Before I start talking about some of the technical things of like how systems are structured and how you can start to visualise them, I just thought I'd begin by just thinking about some high level sort of the key lessons that I've learned so far in my reading and what I've been trying to understand about systems. So I've come up with basically five key lessons that I'm going to briefly share with you now to sort of get your mind working and sort of understanding how systems work. Number one, systems transcend boundaries. We all tend to work within certain boundaries, geographical boundaries, political boundaries and professional boundaries of course. But systems don't care about that. Take for example the system of a river. Let's say the river in your city is flooding, so you build a local flood defence. This keeps the water within its channel as it flows through your city, but that water gets pushed downstream at a higher velocity into another settlement and it causes even worse flooding there. That's exactly why rivers are managed not on the local level, but on the catchment level taking into account their whole length. Another example, think of large cities. You know, often large cities are split up into many local government areas that are all managed separately. Now this can cause problems when one burrow or precinct acts as if it is in competition with another. Or when they take very different approaches to the same challenge like delivering housing or sustainability. And that's why most large cities like London have another overarching authority like the mayor to ensure that there is at least some level of consistency and shared purpose across the many political boundaries. Now how successful that is in any given city is another question. That's definitely, you know, part of the reason why it's there. But also consider that systems also transcend our professional boundaries. The likelihood of flooding to use that example again is affected by a whole host of things including development patterns, drainage infrastructure, green space, urban design, architecture, and lots of other disciplines that don't neatly fall into one professions remit. In her book Thinking in Systems, Donnella Meadows writes, "It's a great art to remember that boundaries are of our own making and that they can and should be reconsidered for each new discussion, problem, or purpose. It's a challenge to stay creative enough to drop the boundaries that worked for the last problem and to find the most appropriate set of boundaries for the next question. It's also a necessity if problems are to be solved well." Moving on to my second lesson, which is "acknowledge your limited mindset." This ties in, you know, quite closely to this idea of boundaries that we all have, probably professional boundaries, boundaries on our experience, boundaries on our knowledge. But also consider that we all view the world through a particular lens. We're not objective. We have lots of blind spots and gaps in our knowledge. We just can't be experts at everything, nobody can. And this makes analyzing systems difficult because they're so interdisciplinary in nature. Meadows has another great quote about that in her book, which I'll read now. She says that studying systems keeps reminding her of three truths. 1. Everything we think we know about the world is a model. Every word and every language is a model. All maps and statistics, books and databases, equations and computer programs are models. So are the ways I picture the world in my head, my mental models. None of these is or ever will be the real world. Two, our models usually have a strong congruence with the world. That is why we are such a successful species in the biosphere, especially complex and sophisticated, are the mental models we develop from direct, intimate experience of nature, people and organizations immediately around us. Three, however and conversely, our models fall far short of representing the world fully. That is why we make mistakes and why we are regularly surprised. In our heads, we can keep track of only a few variables at one time. We often draw illogical conclusions from accurate assumptions or logical conclusions from inaccurate assumptions. So to address climate change in cities, we need the perspective and skill sets of many different people working together, including architects, planners, ecologists, economists, entrepreneurs, lots of other people working to find collaborative solutions. So if we can acknowledge personally where our own limitations are, that can actually be a strength, because we then know who we have to go to for help. Open collaboration, communication, and a willingness to learn and change our minds are essential to thinking in systems. Lesson number three, put everything in context. Often you will see people arguing over a little bit of data around climate change. Things like, oh, this study says that retrofitting a building is less carbon intensive than building a new building. Therefore, we should always retrofit end of discussion. Or another common one is, you know, a keelogram of beef has higher carbon footprint than a keelogram of lentils. So if you're not living on lentil soup, you're clearly not a real environmentalist. That is part of that reductionist approach that I talked about earlier. This idea of zooming in on the detail on one aspect and getting some information, it has a really valid approach when we need to do robust studies to figure out, what is the carbon footprint of beef, that kind of thing? You have to take that information and then put it back into context. So let's take an example of tree planting. Everyone says that planting trees is one of the best things we can do to sequester carbon and fight climate change. But the next question is, or should be, what tree and where are you planting it? Because that context is so important and makes the difference between a net positive or negative impact. For instance, the Irish government, as part of their climate response, is planting thousands of sitka spruce trees in monoculture plantations across the country. These trees grow well in Ireland and absorb a lot of carbon. But that's about it for the good news. This is a North American tree. It's not native to Ireland. It doesn't really do anything to build biodiversity because none of the native wildlife is adapted to it. And these are monocultures. They also cause acidification of the soils and nearby water courses. And what's more, these plantations are facing huge local opposition because people don't feel that they're aesthetically or culturally appropriate for their local context. Now compare all that to any mixed native forest, a natural forest that you might have been in. These are teeming with life, and they're generally well-loved and protected by local people. So in this context, planting trees may be absorbing carbon, but it's having lots of other negative impacts. And what's more, you're missing so many opportunities to build communities, build biodiversity, create a local resource for people when all you're focusing on is that reductionist approach of we have to absorb carbon, let's just plant these spruce trees. In reality, there's no one-size-fits-all solution for climate change. Everything needs to be put in context and applied to local areas specifically. In fact, you can apply this principle to architecture, to food, to economics, really everything is context-specific. Lesson four, consider system behavior. Systems can sometimes seem to have a mind of their own in that they exhibit behaviors that are a result of their structure. And they do this even when we expect or wish them to do something else. Meadow says that understanding the historical behavior of a system is a good starting point for predicting future behavior. And that's why when discussing the amount of carbon in the atmosphere or global average temperature, we always put it in the context of the data from the past, whether it's the last 100 years or the last 10,000 years. Without understanding the past behavior of the global climate, our current data is basically meaningless. But let's look at a more urban, let's say, a kind of a trickier example of a system's behavior when we don't really understand why it's creating a behavior. So we may wonder why is it that people still drive combustion engine vehicles so much, even after years of information about how bad they are for the environment, even after incentives like discounting bus fares or helping people to purchase bicycles, even after disincentives like congestion charging or parking charges. People will still get in their car as a first option rather than take a more sustainable mode transport. But perhaps the reason is because our cities and our transport systems incentivize the behavior of driving. They actually create the behavior because of their structure. In many cities, we provide lots of road space in comparison to infrastructure for cycling or for public transport. All these roads provide direct routes. There's ample parking, not to mention cheap fossil fuels to fuel journeys and often a lack of attractive alternatives in the way of cycling or taking public transport. When you consider all that, it's clear that the underlying system behavior is to encourage people to drive their cars. So of course they do. It shouldn't really be a surprise. And we'll talk a bit later on about some ways you can approach changing the behavior or the outcome of the system. And the final point I just want to share to get you thinking in systems is an addition of my own, which is to think about the three pillars of sustainability. Now you've all heard of the three pillars. I'm sure it's quite dated at this point. It's thinking about sustainability in terms of the environment, society and the economy. And the three things together should create a sustainable future. I've used this in previous episodes, like my Tall Buildings episode, as a framing tool to structure my thinking. And also to remind us that sustainability is not just about greenhouse gas emissions. We also need to work towards a more equal society and ensure everyone can be healthy and fulfilled. And we need an economy that can be sustained into the future to support us. So whenever you're considering issues around climate change, remind yourself of the three pillars and it will instantly get you thinking bigger and in a more systematic way. That being said, at this point, the notion of three pillars is actually quite old. It originated from a United Nations Brompton Report in 1987. And at this point, it's starting to feel a bit dated. More recently, many people have been arguing that there is in fact a fourth pillar. The world organization of United Cities and local government has put forward the idea that culture is the fourth pillar. Arguing that sustainability also means the preservation and celebration of local indigenous cultures, arts and creativity. They say, the world is not only facing economic, social, or environmental challenges, creativity, knowledge, diversity, and beauty at the unavoidable basis for dialogue, for peace, and progress as these values are intrinsically connected to human development and freedoms. This is definitely a concept. I'm still trying to get my head around personally, but I invite you to consider that a bit more, as I think there's probably a lot to be said about integrating that into our thoughts, our thinking on sustainability. Also to consider the fact that our worldview on what a sustainable future looks like is probably very different to someone else in a different part of the world or even a different part of our country. And so bearing in mind that this idea of a fourth pillar, which I've heard called worldview as well, in this case, called culture, is definitely one to consider and think about. OK, we should take a moment here to think about actually, how our system's structured. You'd be surprised actually how similar many different systems are in their structure. And systems thinkers, like Meadows, like to use lots of ways to visualize systems. And it's really it's best done with a pen and paper. And it's difficult to convey that over audio only. So I'd invite you that if you want to dive deeper into this topic, I recommend that you pick up a book like Thinking Systems, which is full of illustrations, although there are all the books on systems thinking out there. There's also a great web resource that I'm using called ClimaxInteractive.org and they have a kind of learning course that's free to take, called the Climate Leader Course, which is video based, and it takes you through all the different concepts and visualizes systems in this way. Really, really good content. I've been enjoying it, so I'll leave a link to that. But I'll try to convey a little bit so you can imagine. You can start to think about how systems are made up, and you'll probably be able to identify this with the systems that are around you. So as a starting point, you can think of systems very simply as being a combination of stocks and flows. A stock is a store, a quantity, and a accumulation of something. Whatever is the subject of the system we're looking at. Then there are inflows, which add to stocks, and outflows, which reduce stocks. Let's put this into context, or something we talk about a lot, global average temperature. So if we were to draw a simple system model of this, the average temperature is the stock at center of the page, which at the moment is about 1.3 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels. The main inflow, of course, is greenhouse gas emissions, released from the burning of fossil fuels. And the outflow is the amount of greenhouse gases that get reabsorbed into the earth's soils, forests, and oceans. So the rate of inflow at the moment far exceeds the ability of the outflow to absorb greenhouse gases. And so the amount of carbon in the atmosphere has been increasing year on year, leading to global temperature increase as well. Okay, so pretty simple, right? And you can add more and more, you know, you can start to think about methane, and other greenhouse gases from agriculture, from industrial processes, and make that, you know, builds up that picture. But if we keep it a bit more simple for the moment, we're going to add in what are called reinforcing and balancing loops. So reinforcing loops essentially calls something to grow exponentially, and balancing loops, as the name suggests, keep everything in balance. There are tons of examples of each of these when it comes to climate change, many of which we're still just learning about, and are surprising us. In fact, there's a great article on the website, climaterealityproject.org, that explains examples of reinforcing loops in particular. So here's one that they call Arctic methane and carbon, the time bomb in the soil. According directly from that article now, they say, in the Arctic methane and carbon can be found in permafrost, as well as in frozen peat bugs, and under sediment on the seafloor. As these bugs and permafrost thaw, thanks to climate change, the methane and carbon within are released into the atmosphere, adding yet more greenhouse gas emissions that can lead to further global warming. More warming results in more permafrost loss, adding yet more greenhouse gas emissions to the atmosphere to create even more warming and more melting permafrost and on and on. Given that frozen Arctic soil holds an estimated 1,460 to 1,600 billion tons of trapped carbon, almost twice the amount of greenhouse gases currently in the atmosphere, scientists are deeply concerned about the unprecedented warming in the region, and what it could mean for global efforts to hold rising temperatures. End quote. There are many of these scary reinforcing loops in the climate system, which means that if we keep pumping greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, we run the risk of creating runaway global heating by kick-styling effects beyond our control. It's almost like hitting a domino. Balancing loops, on the other hand, create a virtuous circle that keep emissions and global warming in check. We are all as a society going through a kind of balancing loop right now. In the last few years, we have seen unprecedented wildfires, heat waves, floods, and hurricanes. Seeing and experiencing these climate change-fueled natural disasters have caused people to demand action from governments and organizations on climate change. As we see more of the effects of climate change, we will see more public support and pressure for serious action to curtail it. That is a balancing loop. However, the question is, is it enough to save us? Likely, we will have to step in to the system and create new balancing loops. For instance, many people believe that a carbon price, where polluters need to pay, depending on how much they emit, could have a profound effect on reducing carbon emissions by adding a balancing loop, where currently there is none. If you look at any kind of system from a building to an ecosystem, you'll find stocks, flows, and feedback loops, just like these. They are the building blocks for creating mental models of systems and figuring out how they work. And then, at some point, figuring out how we can successfully change systems when necessary. So reinforcing and balancing feedback loops are powerful leverage points within systems for an acting change. But they're not the only ones. In the book, Thinking in Systems, Donella Meadows, goes through a list of potential leverage points within systems, counting down from the least effective to the most effective. You might be surprised to learn that flows, the quantity of the things moving through the system, are actually the least effective points of leverage. In our climate system, that means the amount of greenhouse gas being emitted and reabsorbed. But how can this be? Surely that's the most important thing. But actually, if you only focus on adjusting the flows, you're really only making small changes without changing the underlying system. Yes, we can plan forests to absorb CO2, but that doesn't change the fact that our economic system is rewarding fossil fuel extraction. Carbon sequestration may slow the rate of climate change, but it won't stop or reverse it, not without some major interventions to the system structure to make it behave differently. So let's look further up Meadows list of interventions to the really good ones. Number three on the list is Goals, the purpose or function of a system. The author says that changing the goals of a system can have profound effects on its behavior. This is something that Kate Rauerth explores in her book, Donus Economics, which puts forward a new economic model for the 21st century. She says that to make the economy work for us, "First change the goal. For over 70 years, economics has been fixated on GDP or national output as its primary measure of progress. That fixation has been used to justify extreme inequalities of income and wealth coupled with unprecedented destruction of the living world. For the 21st century, a far bigger goal is needed, meeting the human rights of every person within the means of our life-giving planet." She goes on to say, "Today we have economies that need to grow, whether or not they make us thrive. What we need are economies that make us thrive, whether or not they grow. That radical flip in perspective invites us to become agnostic about growth and to explore how economics and to explore how economies that are currently financially, politically and socially addicted to growth could learn to live with or without it. If you haven't heard of Donus Economics, it's just a really, really fascinating and exciting idea. The author Kate did a TED talk, which you can find. And once I finish the book, and one was finished, I'll definitely be doing some sort of episode on that as well, because I think it's a really important topic. Moving on to number two, the second highest leverage point for enacting change in systems. That is what Meadows calls paradigms, the mindset out of which the system, its goals, structure, rules, delays, arises. Meadows writes, "The shared idea in the minds of society, the great big, unstated assumptions constitute the society's paradigm, or deepest set of beliefs about how the world works. These beliefs are unstated because it is unnecessary to state them. Everyone already knows them. For instance, money measures something real and has real meaning. Therefore, people who are paid less are literally worthless. Growth is good. Nature is a stock of resources to be converted to human purposes. Evolution stopped with the emergence of homo sapiens. One can own land. These are just a few of the paradigmatic assumptions of our current culture, all of which have utterly dumbfounded other cultures who thought them not the least bit obvious. She goes on to say, "The end." Ancient Egyptians built pyramids because they believed in an afterlife. We build skyscrapers because we believe that space in downtown cities is enormously valuable. Whether it was Copernicus and Kepler showing that the Earth is not the center of the universe or Einstein hypothesizing that matter and energy are interchangeable or Adam Smith, postulating that the selfish actions of individual players in markets wonderfully accumulate to the common good. People who have managed to intervene in systems at the level of paradigm have hit a leverage point that totally transforms systems. So what does this mean for climate change? Well I can tell you personally, one paradigm shift I suppose that I've had in my mind over the last year has been the idea that taking action on climate change is actually a huge opportunity to of course not only reverse the effects of climate change but also to improve our health, well being and quality of lives. For decades the mainstream paradigm around the climate crisis has been one of sacrifice. We've been telling people that it is their lifestyles, over consumption, travel habits, diet that is the problem and to save ourselves from catastrophe we all need to make sacrifices. We must drastically scale back all the enjoyable things in life in the name of reducing our carbon footprints. But there are two problems with this narrative. Firstly it's not particularly motivating, I mean it doesn't inspire people to take action and clearly it has failed to enact real change over the years. But secondly this perspective or paradigm misses out on one simple but crucial fact. Our modern western lives are not actually that great. In Britain we're in the midst of several mental and physical health crises, I'm not even talking about COVID-19 here, rising inequality, a housing shortage, failing town centres and an acknowledged lack of beauty in our built environments. We could in theory reach carbon zero without solving any of these problems. All of this is to say that taking action on climate change doesn't have to be a sacrifice, it can actually be a huge opportunity, an opportunity to address many of our other problems as well. That is now my personal paradigm on the issue. It won't change the world but if we can start to have these discussions and start questioning the paradigms that we live in, then we may just achieve together enough of a paradigm shift to realign our systems towards a better future. The top intervention point number one on Meadows list is a bit of a thought experiment. It is the ability to transcend paradigms. Meadows writes, "There is one leverage point that is even higher than changing a paradigm. That is to keep oneself unattached in the arena of paradigms, to stay flexible, to realize that no paradigm is true, that everyone, including the one that sweetly shapes your own world view, is a tremendously limited understanding of an immense and amazing universe that is far beyond human comprehension. It is to get at a gut level the paradigm that there are paradigms and to see that that itself is a paradigm and to regard that whole realization as devastatingly funny. It is to let go into not knowing, into what the Buddhist call enlightenment. People who cling to paradigms, which means just about all of us, take one look at the spacious possibility that everything they think is guaranteed to be nonsense and pedal rapidly in the opposite direction. Surely there is no power, no control, no understanding, not even a reason for being much less acting, embodied in the notion that there is no certainty in any world view. But in fact, everyone who has managed to entertain that idea for a moment or for a lifetime has found it to be the basis for radical empowerment. If no paradigm is right, you can choose whatever one will help you achieve your purpose." Ok, a bit philosophical there in the end. Really meadows is inviting us to stay flexible with our approach and to stay humble. Even those who have studied systems for decades like Donella meadows admit that they can still make mistakes and are still very tricky to intervene in systems, to identify the correct intervention points and then to push them in the right direction. So we need to stay open to trial and error. We opened testing things and changing course when necessary. What I've shared today is really just scratching the surface. If you want to learn more about systems thinking there are links in the episode description for more resources. If you've enjoyed this episode, you know, would love to hear from you, you can contact me on Instagram, Twitter and LinkedIn. Links to all that stuff is in the show description. Until next time, thanks very much. (upbeat music)