A five-part framework for using systems thinking to help communities facing ecological decline that is pushing them toward environmental and social collapse. Where a turnabout is possible, it starts with strategic choices: positive tipping point levers that intentionally create virtuous cycles powerful enough to tip the balance towards harmony.
Everywhere communities depend on their lands and waters for survival, people are fighting the damage to them. Their efforts are well intentioned, but many do little more than swim against the current. They soften the blows while the ecosystem keeps spiraling towards collapse. Changing the direction of that spiral takes more than managing symptoms of decline one at a time. Vicious cycles of decline take hold when problems for the ecosystem are built into how communities work, live, and subsist. These are the cycles that need to be broken.
Many communities have shown that even the most dire conditions can be turned around. Applied in the right places, force can reverse the current and send the spiral toward regeneration instead of collapse. Those well chosen sites of intervention are EcoTipping Points, or points in the human-environment system where a turnabout can be generated if the right changes are set in motion. Those successful communities wielded the force of a positive tipping point lever. Their actions successfully set in motion the changes needed to make a switch from decline to restoration and sustainability. Not all restorative actions carry enough force to tip conditions in the human-environment system from decline to restoration, but our case studies have provided crucial insights into the qualities of positive tipping point levers and what it takes to put them into action.
Our Systems Thinking framework gives you the tools to devise positive tipping point levers. With it, communities can use a systems lens to understand what's driving their ecological decline, then find well-chosen actions that put the power of EcoTipping Points to work and create a turnabout towards restoration.
Using the lens of Systems Thinking, the five steps give you the tools to:
Our strategies for identifying effective modes of intervention draw from patterns reflected in more than 100 case studies that we have documented from around the world, case studies where local communities have found effective levers for positive change.
We use two case studies for illustrative purposes in the explanations that follow. Before continuing, we suggest watching these two videos, which present the story narratives for these case studies:
Before analyzing a particular place, build a general understanding of what EcoTipping Points are and why a systems lens reveals where decline can be turned around.
Review the history of the problem you are working with and assess the current situation to bring to light the interconnected elements perpetuating decline across the human-environment system.
Diagram the connections between current and historical elements of the problem, and recognize where self-reinforcing feedback loops are coming into play.
Use the diagram to identify root causes driving decline, sites for effective intervention, and feasible actions with enough force to trigger systemic change.
As initial interventions take hold, build the economic and social connections that make recovery self-sustaining and help it spread to other communities.