Systems thinking is the ability to describe and/ or visualise a part of a complex reality, express that part of reality as a model, understand the model as a system, use the model to explain the behaviour of the system, anticipate the behaviour of the system, and evaluate its impacts on sustainable development, identify potential points of, and types of interventions, generate options to act, assess their impacts in the frame of sustainable development, and decide whether further actions are necessary or not.
What is the aim?
To enable learners to:
- Assess whether interventions in the system resulted in improved sustainability outcomes,
- Assess whether the choice of intervention in the system was appropriate to effect improved sustainability outcomes, and
- Decide if further interventions are needed.
Activities, tasks, and suggested learning methods
Activity: SDG Analysis
System to be analysed: Future vision of potato chips design from Step 9.
Share copies of the worksheet “SDG Analysis Matrix” with the learners.
Their task is to review the vision of the future integrated in Step 9 and analyse which elements (actions needed) in the system contribute to a specific SDG or do not help achieve SDG targets. They should write their conclusions in the first and second column. In the third column they may identify and write any dilemmas that they identify between two SDGs – the situation where meeting some SDG targets becomes counterproductive for other SDG.
In case the action to achieve the vision of the future does not improve sustainability outcomes, learners would have to go back to Step 8 and analyse other leverage points of intervention to progress towards the desired common future.
Worksheet
Reflect on the following questions:
- How do my actions impact the system?
- Which factor/leverage points am I not able to change and why?
- How can I influence the change in the leverage points that I cannot influence directly? What would be some concrete actions to achieve it?
