(The blog has been reproduced from where it was originally found on the Practical Action website here.)
Resilience v efficiency: a systems thinking heavyweight bout
By Glen Burnett, September 3rd, 2014
Sometimes, Practical Action can really get absorbed in systems thinking. We’ve been working in this space since about 2003, and some of its principles have served as the foundation of some great successes we have had. For an oversimplified approach, think of a terrarium. You have soil, plants water and air all living inside a closed pot (it isn’t considered a true closed system, because sunlight gets in, but you get the idea). If you were to adjust different segments of the system, you might see different developments: more water might mean more growth, or more growth might also mean the system burns out.
So what happens when this system shifts, and you start looking at populations? Plants become people, soil becomes the economy, maybe even water stays the same, and you consider the impacts of clean water in a community. That evaluation is a key part of how Practical Action often engages with communities. Two key features of systems are resilience, which often shows up in our climate adaption work, and efficiency, which is often considered key to creating transformative impact in the lives of the poor—because if something isn’t efficient, it will probably not be as replicable, and you lose that whole transformative impact component.
These two systems characteristics are inversely related: resilience is a trade-off for efficiency.
What does that mean? When we talk about resilience in relation to the extreme poor, we are often talking about those who are able to bounce back when they face a system shock. That could be a drought, a flood, or an economic collapse. If you think about it, resilience gets built up by being able to quickly adapt to a change in a system, and that often means there are multiple support systems created that can create the flexibility needed for that change. In the case of drought, that might mean there are several different kinds of crops that are raised, some that work better in wet seasons and some that work better in dry seasons. This could also mean there exists a knowledge base that allows for more resilience as well—you become a generalist as opposed to a specialist so you can perform multiple tasks.
Then there is efficiency. However you achieve it, be it economies of scale, or through specialization, efficiency is important, because it means you are completing a task more effectively. If you can increase efficiency, you will be able to replicate that task. So when people talk about creating transformative change in a community, efficiency is often necessary for that change to take root. Think of a treadle pump. The first time someone built one, it probably didn’t work very well, but over thousands of years, the design has been improved upon, to the point where many look very similar: they are cheap to build, easy to replicate, and in a word, efficient, given their circumstances.
These days, efficiency is a major focus in many drives to end poverty. You have limited resources, and efficiency allows for expansion that maximizes those resources. But it also means that you are developing systems that require many of your “resources” (READ: people) to specialize in a given approach. As a result, you aren’t as flexible, and your trade-off is resilience. Think of GMO super crops—they are efficient, because they can be made to resist certain pesticides, and can grow bountifully. But they aren’t resilient, because once an infestation comes along that is particularly brutal to that crop, there is no other crop there to create resilience—food prices go up, and people go hungry.
So does this mean that the world should be extremely resilient? Or should we focus our efforts wholeheartedly on efficiency, hoping to create economies of scale that are extremely good at overcoming system shocks? Ultimately, this conversation starts sounding more like one with a personal finance advisor. If you are preparing for the future, you need a diversified portfolio. Like in that terrarium, finding the appropriate balance is key, and it will rarely be wholly efficient or wholly resilient.
http://practicalaction.org/blog/programmes/climate_change/resilience-v-efficiency-a-systems-thinking-heavyweight-bout/
