Reverse It in Practice

This session uses the map the community built to find where and how to intervene. There's no formula: every community faces a different set of environmental and social challenges. But this framework will guide the community in their search for strategies that are forceful and doable: a vicious cycle mapped, levers strong enough to turn things around identified, and a test of whether the community has the resources and commitment to pull it off.

1. Reconnect to the map

Distribute printed copies of the Map It diagram. Having the map in hand changes the dynamic: participants can annotate, point, and return to it throughout the session.

Walk through it briefly. Don't assume people remember the previous session:

"Last time we mapped how [X, Y, Z] connect and reinforce each other. At the end, the group identified places where the community might have some ability to act. Today: what would actually change this?"

Return to those circled nodes from the Map It session. Invite participants to add any new ones they've thought about since. That's where this session begins.

2. Look for where the connection broke

Before the decline started, the ecosystem and community usually supported each other. Something broke that relationship: a new market, a technology, outside pressure, a policy change. Those break points are worth locating precisely.

Ask:

"Where in this diagram did things once work differently? Was there a time when the health of [the forest / the fish / the soil] and the wellbeing of families here supported each other, before they started working against each other?"

Mark those points. There may be several; in a system that has spiraled deeply, an early break often gets amplified by reinforcing cycles that came later. Look for breaks at different points in the chain, not just the earliest one.

Then ask which of them the community can actually influence. The overlap between "where the connection broke" and "where we have agency" is the shortlist.

This overlap is a useful starting point for finding levers. Some levers will map directly to where the break happened. Others will work at different points in the chain. The goal is to find the places with the most pull on the whole system.

3. Ask if someone nearby already solved this

Before designing anything, ask:

"Is there a household, a village, a farm nearby where this problem doesn't exist, or where it used to exist and got better? What are they doing differently?"

If yes, study it before inventing anything. A solution developed within the same ecological and social constraints (same soils, same seasons, same pressures) is often more credible and easier to adopt than one brought in from elsewhere.

4. Bring in patterns from similar cases

Bring in ETP case material as analogy, not prescription. For each candidate intervention point, ask whether any case looks structurally similar:

• Resource extracted faster than it regenerates: Apo Island. Fishers agreed on two rules: a permanent no-take sanctuary covering a fifth of the reef, and a ban on destructive fishing methods. Fish populations recovered within a few years, and the surrounding fishery improved because the protected area was producing more fish than before. The community gave the reef the conditions to restore itself.
• Community benefit disconnected from ecological health: Khao Din. Restructure farming so the land's health and the family's income move together.
• Dependence on external inputs: Punukula. Replace cash inputs with labor and local knowledge.
• Degraded water or soil: Gopalpura, Rajasthan. Restore the infrastructure that natural cycles depend on to support community life.

The question isn't "do what they did." It's: what structural move made this work, and is that move available here?

5. Hybridize knowledge

The NGO or outside facilitator brings a broader range of experience: work in other regions, exposure to other communities' solutions, and familiarity with how systems thinking applies across different ecological contexts. The community brings knowledge no outsider has: what the constraints are, what can go wrong, what has been tried, and what would have to be true for something to actually get done here.

The planning process works by hybridizing these two kinds of knowledge. Neither is sufficient alone. The facilitator who arrives with the answer already formed is running a ratification exercise (see Watch For below). The community without exposure to how similar problems were solved elsewhere may not see options that are available to them.

"The local community — they've lived there for a long time, they know what happens, they know what the constraints are, they know what can go wrong, they know what is necessary to make things go right. And they bring their knowledge to the table."

The consensus that emerges from combining external and local knowledge — "this is the way we should go" — carries more commitment than either source could produce alone.

6. Generate lever candidates

Ask the group to identify 3–5 specific things the community could do that might shift the system. Push past the obvious: the most effective lever often isn't the most visible one. Encourage candidates that work with what the ecosystem can do on its own, given the right conditions.

Useful prompts:

"If you could change one thing in this diagram that you actually have some control over, what would it be?"

"What would have to be true for the ecosystem to begin recovering on its own?"

"Is there a practice, a rule, or a resource that used to exist here that the community has the knowledge to restore?"

A lever that draws on ecological memory (on species behaviors and ecosystem cycles the community already understands) is often more durable than one that requires new outside knowledge. Nature's own self-healing capacity is one of the most powerful forces available; the facilitator's job is to help the group find where to let it through.

7. Test each candidate

Run 3–5 candidates through a group feasibility check. The questions below apply to rules, collective agreements, restoration practices, governance changes, and other types of initiatives:

• Can people tell whether this is being followed or carried out?
• Can the community track progress without sustained outside help?
• Can it be adapted as conditions change, using knowledge that already exists here?
• Does it require governance structures that don't yet exist?
• Can the community provide the time, energy, and resources to carry it out?
• Will it involve short-term sacrifices that create excessive burdens for some members? If so, how will those burdens be shared?
• Does the community have the leadership needed to manage and enforce commitments?
• Starting small: can you run a pilot version that builds commitment and resources before scaling up?
• Does this change who benefits from the resource, or does it just change how things are done while leaving the same people in control?

8. Rank and close

Help the group rank candidates on three dimensions: how many loops in the system does this affect (leverage), how significantly does it shift the system dynamic (impact), and what can they realistically start (feasibility). Give weight to candidates that harness natural recovery processes (what the land or water will do if given the chance).

Close with:

"The point isn't to find the perfect lever. It's to find one worth testing. What would tell you, within the first year or two, whether this is working?"

Watch For

The facilitator who already knows the answer. If you already have a sense of what the lever should be, hold it back. Share it only after the group has generated its own candidates. Present it as one more option to evaluate. A process that performs participation while seeking ratification is the most common failure mode in this work. The cauliflower story from Map It in Practice applies here with equal force.

The group jumps to solutions early. Let them name the solution, then run it through the feasibility check rather than shutting down the energy.

Every option feels too small. Usually means the group has correctly identified that real change requires structural shifts that feel politically impossible. Ask: "Given that, what's a move that still points in that direction?"

The group can't agree. Either the analysis wasn't complete (go back to the map) or there's a real conflict of interest that hasn't surfaced yet. Ask: "What's the disagreement actually about?" Disagreement about the right lever is productive if it's about substance; unproductive if it's about who benefits. Surface which one it is.

Consensus traps. The same consensus dynamics from Map It apply here, often more sharply. Majority-rule voting on which lever to pursue will produce a result the minority doesn't commit to. Consensus takes longer but produces levers with real backing. If the group can't reach consensus, the shortlist should include the competing candidates rather than forcing a premature choice. A pilot approach (start small, see what works) can sometimes break a deadlock that debate cannot.

Livelihoods left out of the calculation. If a candidate lever asks the community to give up income or access to a resource, and there's no visible path to recovering it, that candidate will fail regardless of its ecological logic. Probe for this explicitly.