Systems Thinking Practice T 205 Block 3 Environment

Systems Thinking & Practice (T 205) Block 3 Environment and Sustainability

Introduction to Week 1 Block 3 § § Session 1 –Introduction to Block 3: Systemic decision-making in groups Session 2 –Sensing phase: Systemic views on sustainability Session 3 – Sensing: Integrating actions and learning Session 4 – Sensing: Stakeholders’ participation

Introduction to Block 3: Systemic decision-making in groups Block 3 week 1 Session 1 Focus on Ø how System thinking and practice can help in understanding groups and teams in their wider environment and how group members work with each other Ø How certain indicators, diagrams and quantitative modelling techniques can help in collective decision making and conflict resolution process Ø Important contributions of Block 3 to the overall objectives of T 205 are Ø To help to develop skills in systemic diagramming and quantitative modelling Ø To examine decision making processes in groups

Introduction to Block 3 week 1 Session 1 Ø Week by week organization Ø Week 1: Introduction and the sensing phase Ø Week 2 and first half of week 3 Understanding phase Ø Second half of week 3 and all of week 4: Deciding phase Ø Week 5: Acting phase

Introduction to Block 3 week 1 Session 1 Refer Case file 2 The environment Article 2 First stage; Second stage; Third stage Environmental thinking, Systems thinking and mess analysis describe the development of environmental understanding in terms of a mess analysis cycle by which policy makers, environmentalists, experts, campaigners and others understand issues faced by human kind in natural environment Reflect and Draw: Read Article 1 ‘Two key concepts: environment and sustainability’ in Case File 2 the draw the spray diagram for your learning file to summarize the concepts you learnt about natural environment and sustainability and their relationship Reflect and Write: In learning file write clear statement about the similarities and differences between the use of term environment and the use of the term in T 551 or T 552 Prepare a spray diagram to summarize what you have learnt about ‘environment’ from the activities Reread Case File 1: Supermarkets Article 2. 3 Identify some environmental issues related to supermarkets discussed by the article

Sensing phase: Systemic views on sustainability Block 3 week 1 Session 2 Concept Group: Sustainability Systemic views on sustainability Concept Group: Multiple perspectives and paradigms (refer Reading 12 in Concept File 2, or Block 2 Week 2 Session 2) Paradigm Shift Reflect & Write: How do the following three concepts introduced in Block 1 relate to the picture of the Earth from space System boundary; Holistic representation of a system; Living system Reflect & Write: Using the quote and image above, identify some examples of links that exist between different large scale system on planet Earth

Sensing: integrating actions and learning Block 3 week 1 Session 3 Growing concern with interactions between systems Importance of boundaries Human Impacts on environment: Two main types Ø exploitation of resources: renewable and non renewal Ø various types of pollution Rate of change: Ecosystem’s life cycle shocks are part of the norm Reflect & Write: List three examples of economic activities that create products, make money and so on Session summary

Sensing: stakeholders’ participation Block 3 week 1 Session 4 Participation as a systemic way of addressing environmental policy issues Valuing stakeholders’ participation Advantages of participation Effective participation Read: Concept File 4 Reading 28 ‘Decision making and freedom of choice’ Concept File 5 read section 8. 1 ‘Problem articulating skills’ in Reading 8 ‘Coping with the organizational environment’

Sensing: stakeholders’ participation Block 3 week 1 Session 4 Reflect & Write: Recall some situation from experience where several people in a group were trying to resolve some issue but disagree markedly on exactly what the problem was, write in learning file in response to followings. Were people in the group confident problem solvers or powerless victims? Why might they have felt like this? Did it change? How? Why? Did they follow some rational procedure? Did it help or hinder? What did they disagree on? The facts? The criteria? The actions? Did they put most effort into gathering information, understanding one another, exploring uncertainties or some other activity? Where did their information come from?

Summary of the week 1 Block 3 week 1 Session 4