Sunday, 19 July 2015
Friday, 17 July 2015
Thursday, 16 July 2015
Article - UK supermarkets criticised over misleading pricing tactics
Great steps forward in the UK. Helping consumers feel justified in their feelings of anxiety, confusion and mistrust. I know in the past, supermarket managers have hidden behind trading standards and claimed that their price tactics are in line with the rules and fully endorsed by the trading standards office.
And, this argument is very relevant everywhere where are market systems at work!
When working in 'retail' as a market system intervention, one thing that development projects need to remember is their role in market regulation. This means the policies and institutions and an adequate oversight function in the system to curtail predatory, confusing, misleading behaviour by retailers. Including agro-inputs firms (agrovets), animal and human health service providers, small grocery shops for the urban or rural poor etc...
The article was originally published here on the Guardian website.
UK supermarkets criticised over misleading pricing tactics
http://www.theguardian.com/business/2015/jul/16/uk-supermarkets-criticised-misleading-pricing
And, this argument is very relevant everywhere where are market systems at work!
When working in 'retail' as a market system intervention, one thing that development projects need to remember is their role in market regulation. This means the policies and institutions and an adequate oversight function in the system to curtail predatory, confusing, misleading behaviour by retailers. Including agro-inputs firms (agrovets), animal and human health service providers, small grocery shops for the urban or rural poor etc...
The article was originally published here on the Guardian website.
UK supermarkets criticised over misleading pricing tactics
Rebecca Smithers Consumer affairs correspondent
Thursday 16 July 2015 09.09 BST
The competition regulator has criticised the UK’s leading supermarkets over their pricing, after a three-month inquiry uncovered evidence of “poor practice that could confuse or mislead shoppers”.
The Competition and Markets Authority stopped short of a full-blown market investigation but has announced a series of recommendations to bring more clarity to pricing and promotions to the grocery sector.
It plans to work with businesses to cut out potentially misleading promotional practices such as “was/now” offers, where a product is on sale at a discounted price for longer than the higher price applied. It also wants guidelines to be issued to supermarkets and has published its own at-a-glance guidance for consumers.
The investigation by the CMA was launched following a “super-complaint”lodged by the consumer group Which? in April, which claimed supermarkets had duped shoppers out of hundreds of millions of pounds through misleading pricing tactics.
Which? submitted a dossier setting out details of “dodgy multi-buys, shrinking products and baffling sales offers” to the authority, saying retailers were creating the illusion of savings, with 40% of groceries sold on promotion. Supermarkets were fooling shoppers into choosing products they might not have bought if they knew the full facts, it complained.
The supermarket sector was worth an estimated £148bn - 178bn to the UK economy in 2014.
In its formal response to the super-complaint, the CMA said the problems raised by the investigation were “not occurring in large numbers across the whole sector” and that retailers were generally taking compliance seriously. But it admitted more could be done to reduce the complexity in the way individual items were priced, particularly with complex ‘unit pricing’.
We have found that, whilst supermarkets want to comply with the law and shoppers enjoy a wide range of choices, with an estimated 40% of grocery spending being on items on promotion, there are still areas of poor practice that could confuse or mislead shoppers. So we are recommending further action to improve compliance and ensure that shoppers have clear, accurate information.”Nisha Arora, the CMA’s senior director, consumer, said: “We welcomed the super-complaint, which presented us with information that demanded closer inspection. We have gathered and examined a great deal of further evidence over the past three months and are now announcing what further action we are taking and recommending others to take.
Richard Lloyd, the executive director of Which?, said: “The CMA’s report confirms what our research over many years has repeatedly highlighted: there are hundreds of misleading offers on the shelves every day that do not comply with the rules.This puts supermarkets on notice to clean up their pricing practices or face legal action.
“Given the findings, we now expect to see urgent enforcement action from the CMA. The government must also quickly strengthen the rules so that retailers have no more excuses. As a result of our super-complaint, if all the changes are implemented widely, this will be good for consumers, competition and, ultimately, the economy.”
The CMA has been in close contact with retailers cited in the dossier, asking them for explanations for the misleading pricing and promotions. For the first time in its history, it has used social media including Twitter and Facebook to get more consumer and focus group feedback.
This is only the sixth time Which? has used its super-complaint power since it was granted the right in 2002. It last issued a super-complaint in 2011 when it asked the Office of Fair Trading (OFT) to investigate excessive credit and debit card surcharges. The OFT upheld its complaint. The right to make a super-complaint to the CMA or an industry regulator is limited to a small number of consumer bodies such as Which? and Energywatch. After Which? submitted its dossier to the CMA, the regulator had 90 days in which to respond. Which? said more than 120,000 consumers had signed a petition supporting the super-complaint and urging the CMA to take action.
A decade ago Citizens Advice helped bring the payment protection insurance scandal to public attention by lodging a super-complaint with the now-defunct Office of Fair Trading.
http://www.theguardian.com/business/2015/jul/16/uk-supermarkets-criticised-misleading-pricing
Working with the private sector in market systems projects
What have I learnt working with the private sector in market
systems projects?
Identify the systemic
constraint and address the change at that leverage point. It is important
to identify what is stopping the private sector from already reaching out to
these markets. In one project, we found that livestock inputs suppliers were
interested in developing distribution networks in very poor marginalised pastoralist
communities but what had stopped them in the past was a lack of experience in in
these markets. For them, lack of experience made the cost of market entry and
market testing too high. The project therefore supported a market entry testing
process for the firms. Each one carried out market research, tested their own distribution
models and learnt from successes and failures. Over time, specific firms saw
market potential and fully immersed themselves in the process, often evolving
their strategies to respond to their insights on market dynamics.
From the outset, build
in a pathway to market outreach with the private sector. In one project, we
solicited proposals from firms to provide business services to agriculture
firms working with smallholder farmers. We added a question asking firms to
describe a) what they would try and find out about the market through the grant
and b) how they would design market outreach and development strategies beyond
the grant to continue interactions with market actors. The outcome was that firms
better understood the catalyst nature of the grant. This also aligned
expectations and incentives and all subsequent discussions between the firms
and the project focussed on what was being learnt about the market and how the
firm would scale out in the future.
Look at the market
actor and seek out evidence of internal leverage points. Many firms will
have engaged with hard-to-reach markets in the past. They may have made
investments that have not worked out, or at least, invested in some basic
research (codified or tacit) to test the water. When talking to firms about partnerships,
look for resources that are vestiges of this history (a person, a report, a
process, etc.). These can be put into the mix. A project can layer in additional
resources, or improve the functioning of the resource, or help scale out out
the resource, etc. In one project, we found that a university had set up an
internship programme for agribusinesses students. However, this internship was
not very successful because the university did not have the networks and
knowledge to develop relationships with the private sector in rural areas. The
project helped build these relationships. At the same time, the project helped train
the interns who then on-trained rural firms> Over time, the university gathered
enough knowledge to develop appropriate short courses for these rural firms –
incorporating the expertise from the project as well as through the interns.
Article - Are we spoiling the private sector?
This blog was originally published here on the SEEP MaFI website.
Are We Spoiling the Private Sector?
by Md. Rubaiyath Sarwar in 2012
"As market facilitators, we strive to make the market inclusive...facilitate some small changes with the hope that the market system will open up to the poor! And we work with our ever so accommodating partners-more often than not lead firms. In the process, we keep on knocking from door to door, asking the private sector if they are willing to partner with us. And then, we negotiate, select the partners and implement our interventions. The interventions fetch excellent results. So much so that we do the same thing with the same partner in a larger scale. We call it replication. And then we involve more partners to do the same thing. We call it scale up. In some cases we say no to our beloved partner as we believe we have solved the market problem. But to our surpise, few months later, we see our partner doing almost the same thing with another project funded by another donor. Do we see another form of distortion taking place? Aren't we making ourselves too dependent on the lead firms? Why are our interventions often skewed towards the lead firms? What about other market system actors which include- civil society, professional associations, the government, the NGOs, cooperatives...? Do we always need to have commercial incentives to have sustainable impacts on scale?"
Are We Spoiling the Private Sector?
by Md. Rubaiyath Sarwar in 2012
"As market facilitators, we strive to make the market inclusive...facilitate some small changes with the hope that the market system will open up to the poor! And we work with our ever so accommodating partners-more often than not lead firms. In the process, we keep on knocking from door to door, asking the private sector if they are willing to partner with us. And then, we negotiate, select the partners and implement our interventions. The interventions fetch excellent results. So much so that we do the same thing with the same partner in a larger scale. We call it replication. And then we involve more partners to do the same thing. We call it scale up. In some cases we say no to our beloved partner as we believe we have solved the market problem. But to our surpise, few months later, we see our partner doing almost the same thing with another project funded by another donor. Do we see another form of distortion taking place? Aren't we making ourselves too dependent on the lead firms? Why are our interventions often skewed towards the lead firms? What about other market system actors which include- civil society, professional associations, the government, the NGOs, cooperatives...? Do we always need to have commercial incentives to have sustainable impacts on scale?"
Over the last decade we have observed increasing donor investment on market development projects for ‘large scale,’ ‘systemic ‘ and ‘sustainable change’ in agricultural and industrial sectors in Africa, South Asia and South East Asia. The projects proved that the donors can get better value for their investment if the private sector is attracted to invest on the interventions. More importantly, the partnership between the private sector and the project on cost sharing basis evolved as a principle tool to reposition development projects from being providers of critical services to being facilitators of the services. I have been a direct participant in this paradigm shift and evolved from being a project manager to becoming a technical advisor and evaluator of market development projects in agricultural, industrial and health sectors in several countries that include Bangladesh and Nigeria, the two hotspots for market development projects in the world.
As my roles shifted and my exposure expanded across different sectors in different countries and contexts, I observed an alarming trend. It was becoming increasingly evident that (i) market development and support to lead firms was becoming increasingly synonymous (ii) there were projects inThe question attracted wide range of participants contributing to a technically rich discussion. Contributors included Mary Morgan-Inclusive Market Development Expert, Scott Merrill- Independent Consultant, Marcus Jenal, Specialist on Systemic Approaches for Development and James Blewett, Director of Markets, Enterprise and Trade Division at Landell Mills Ltd. All the contributors shared the feeling that indeed there is a risk that market development projects, if not carefully managed, can lead to a new form of market distortion where the private sector become reliant on donor funds. However, they also reiterated the importance and significance of the collaboration with the lead firms and suggested several approaches that could mitigate the risk of the private sector becoming reliant on donor funds.
Mary suggested that partnerships work when the disparate goals of the private sector (making profits), vulnerable and poor producers (being able to produce and sell their produce at an acceptable price) and the development projects (increasing income and employment for the poor) converge towards the overall goal of inclusive market development (sustainable and systemic change in the market for employment and income generation of the poor). While acknowledging the potential pitfall of partnerships, Mary pointed out that the risk might be higher in their absence. She contributed further to the discussion by raising the point that often the support provided by the projects is much too heavy for the private sector to deliver once project support is withdrawn. As evidence, she cited a case involving Wal-Mart and Mercy Corps in an intervention on developing an inclusive supply chain for Wal-Mart in Guatemala.
The questions raised by Mary were addressed by Scott who argued that the risk of distortion is high when the projects fail to adopt good practices for partnerships. He proposed that instead of pushing the private sector towards the partnership, the development projects should seek to pull the private sector towards the development goal by soliciting proposals from the lead firms. He suggested that we should be careful with how we use the term ‘partnership’ since it could be interpreted as the lead firms being subcontractors or sub-grantees. Scott emphasized on the need to establish objective selection criteria, conduct due diligence and structure relationships with lead firms to ensure sustainability of the interventions. Scott proposed to support the lead firms to develop a business plan so that the commercial benefit from the intervention could be laid out in details prior to the inception of the intervention. This could ensure that the firm owned the development activities and continued to deliver the service after the project support was withdrawn.
James Blewett reflected on his experience in managing a challenge fund project in Afghanistan and argued that challenge funds reduce the risk of distortion in private sector engagement since it seeks to proactively engage the prospective grantees (which include lead firms) in design, co-investment and management of the interventions. He also suggested the use of financial modeling tools used by investment projects to determine ‘tipping points’ so that the project’s financial contribution to the intervention is just enough to incentivize the private sector to address the investment risk associated with the intervention.
A very important contribution to the discussion came from Marcus who suggested that before deciding on the financial arrangements and technical support, the projects should ask why the private sector is not investing on the intervention on its own if it made commercial sense. He advocated for ‘form follows function’ approach and suggested that the projects should partner with lead firms when it is clear that the vulnerable will benefit from the partnership. Marcus argued that the lead firms often do not invest to reach out to the vulnerable not because they haven’t seen the opportunities, but because of a dysfunctional regulatory system, which according to him is the systemic constraint that needs to be tackled.
From the discussion it was evident that while the need for collaboration with the private sector is real, there needs to be further push from the donors, development projects and practitioners to ensure good practices and reduce risk of distortion in the market systems due to over-engagement with the private sector. The discussion also revealed that there are good practices and models that are being followed and discussion around these models could help market development practitioners to be better able to answer to why they have partnered with the lead firm, what support (financial and technical) they should be providing and why, and finally, how the lead firm is expected to sustain the intervention after the project support is withdrawn. the same region or country competing for partnership with same lead firms (given that there are not too many in the country that qualifies to become a partner) (iii) the proliferation of market development projects in the same sector led to increasing number of lead firms receiving funds from them that ended up subsidizing their R&D, distribution and marketing costs and (iv) it was becoming difficult to evaluate whether the intervention resulted in systemic change since the lead firms continued to replicate the intervention with funds from other projects once the support from the original project was withdrawn. This prompted me to ask the members of the Market Facilitation Initiative (MaFI) whether they shared the feeling that probably it is time for us market development practitioners to be a little cautious when we approach lead firms.
Wednesday, 15 July 2015
Do housing vouchers work for poor people?
One way of reducing poverty is by increasing the ability to pay. And one mechanism is to give cash directly to low-income people either as cash itself or through a voucher system.
This piece of research from the Urban Institute looks at using vouchers (i.e. one type of conditional cash transfers) to help families pay for housing. The theory goes that helping families pay rent (the largest part of household budgets), they are less likely to experience economic stress and food insecurity.
The research is very optimistic about vouchers. But, it is very important to point out the potential impacts of using vouchers as welfare support on the system.
This piece of research from the Urban Institute looks at using vouchers (i.e. one type of conditional cash transfers) to help families pay for housing. The theory goes that helping families pay rent (the largest part of household budgets), they are less likely to experience economic stress and food insecurity.
The research is very optimistic about vouchers. But, it is very important to point out the potential impacts of using vouchers as welfare support on the system.
- Vouchers can create perverse incentives. Low-income families may go to shelters in order to be eligible for vouchers. This points to a need to identify the deeper problem within the system. Families that leave housing for shelters to get vouchers to go back to housing must be thinking about things that we can't see. What are the incentives to drive this kind of behaviour? Who is making that decision to move? Is it the family career or is there pressure coming from elsewhere? What is the quality of the housing? What makes shelters (and vouchers) so attractive compared to housing?
- Vouchers can create free rider effects and increase welfare and reduce employment. However, this is a simplistic understanding of the problem. The article points out that we should also keep in mind that helping families get jobs and better-paying jobs is not just about getting rid of disincentives to work; it is also about opportunities for people to build job skills, and access basic benefits, such as health insurance.
- Vouchers can be expensive. A systemic analysis would look at the costs of different options and determine if vouchers is the most value-for-money considering the systemic constraints. Additional information would be needed to build a value/cost model: How long do families remain on vouchers? How do the ongoing costs of vouchers compare with not providing vouchers (i.e. families cycling in and out of shelter)? How do count families that cycle in and out of shelter (i.e. churn)?
A systems-thinking approach to public policy
(The blog has been reproduced from where it was originally found on the LSE website here.)
A systems-thinking approach to public policy eschews linear model for more holistic understanding of decision-making.
By Joseph A. Curtatone and Mark Esposito, September 25th, 2014
In Somerville, we’re working to bring this kind of intuitive, systems-focused thinking into the policy-making process in partnership with an internationally acclaimed systems-thinking course now in its fourth summer at Harvard University and taught by one of the authors of this article. Harvard students are working with staff from the city’s SomerStat Office of Innovation and Analytics, thinking holistically about how, for instance, a policy decision regarding affordable housing might affect education and public health, and vice versa. This class is serving as an ideas incubator for the city’s new NEXUS initiative, which aims to engage city officials and residents alike in thinking about issues facing the community not as isolated threads but as part of an interwoven community fabric.
This isn’t a theoretical exercise. It’s about applying this holistic way of thinking in a practical way to real-world problems. Opioid abuse and overdose, for example, is an urgent and critical issue facing Somerville and other cities, and intuitively we know that there are many factors driving this epidemic. It’s a question that the students are examining this summer with a wide-angle lens, trying to understand how this issue enmeshes with others such as education, housing and social cohesion within the community.
As for childhood obesity, Somerville has employed systems thinking to tackle that problem as well. The city’s Shape Up Somerville program instituted healthier school food menus and policies focused on getting kids active at school and beyond. Infrastructure, zoning and planning work aim to make the city more walkable and bikeable. Parks, open spaces and community events invite people out. Families have better access to healthier foods through Shape Up-approved restaurants as well as farmers’ markets and a year-round mobile market where people can use their SNAP and WIC benefits. And the city’s urban-agriculture ordinance makes it easier to grow fresh, healthy foods at home. By attacking the problem of childhood obesity holistically, Somerville created a model that has achieved real, measurable results: fewer Somerville children were obese or overweight after two full years of the intervention. Shape Up Somerville was cited by first lady Michelle Obama’s “Let’s Move” program.
The impact of the systems-thinking approach can already be felt far beyond Somerville: The Harvard students are getting real-world experience in applying concepts that they’ll be able to take into their respective fields and careers. Many of the students come from business backgrounds, a realm where systems thinking has been in use for decades. The Harvard course was selected in 2013 by European Parliament President Martin Schulz as an incubator for ideas for dealing with the European Union’s financial crisis.
We live in the era of Big Data. But while number-tracking and crunching have deepened our understanding of issues, data analytics is mostly aimed at figuring out linear relationships. The other piece of the puzzle is discerning complex webs of interrelationships — the broader, more holistic approach to policy-making that we need to tackle problems that are rarely linear.
This article first appeared at Governing.
http://blogs.lse.ac.uk/impactofsocialsciences/2014/09/25/systems-thinking-approach-to-public-policy/
Article - Resilience v efficiency: a systems thinking heavyweight bout
(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/
Quotes on how systems work by Humberto Maturana
"A living system, due to its circular organization, is an inductive system and functions always in a predictive manner: what happened once will occur again. Its organization, (genetic and otherwise) is conservative and repeats only that which works. For this same reason living systems are historical systems; the relevance of a given conduct or mode of behavior is always determined in the past."
"Coherence and harmony in relations and interactions between the members of a human social system are due to the coherence and harmony of their growth in it, in an ongoing social learning which their own social ( linguistic) operation defines and which is possible thanks to the genetic and ontogenetic processes that permit structural plasticity of the members."
"By organization Maturana refers to the relations between components that give a system its identity, that make it a member of a particular type. Thus, if the organization of a system changes, so does its identity. By structure Maturana means the actual components and relations between components that constitute a particular example of a type of system. The organization is realized through the structure, but it is the structure that can interact and change. So long as the structural changes maintain the organization, the system’s identity remains." - John Mingers about Humberto Maturana
"Coherence and harmony in relations and interactions between the members of a human social system are due to the coherence and harmony of their growth in it, in an ongoing social learning which their own social ( linguistic) operation defines and which is possible thanks to the genetic and ontogenetic processes that permit structural plasticity of the members."
"By organization Maturana refers to the relations between components that give a system its identity, that make it a member of a particular type. Thus, if the organization of a system changes, so does its identity. By structure Maturana means the actual components and relations between components that constitute a particular example of a type of system. The organization is realized through the structure, but it is the structure that can interact and change. So long as the structural changes maintain the organization, the system’s identity remains." - John Mingers about Humberto Maturana
Article - How systems thinking can impact climate change
(The blog has been reproduced from where it was originally found on the Clinton Foundation website here.)
How Systems Thinking Can Impact Climate Change
I was fortunate to be raised by systems thinkers as I grew up in the Netherlands, where everything and everyone is close together. Since there is no wilderness, very little land and very little space, we have to be thoughtful about our resources and about each other, and I have carried these lessons with me to where I am today.
The world, as I see it, is made up of systems, and is the result of any interconnected set of elements that is coherently organized in a way that achieves an outcome.
The world, as I see it, is made up of systems, and is the result of any interconnected set of elements that is coherently organized in a way that achieves an outcome. A tree is a system. A forest is a system. I am a system. Systems are often embedded in larger systems, which are embedded in yet larger systems. The earth’s climate is a system comprised of the subsystems of our atmosphere, our oceans, the land, and human society.
The earth’s climate is a system comprised of the subsystems of our atmosphere, our oceans, the land, and human society.
“Systems Thinking” views outcomes as the result of the interactions between the various elements of a system and recognizes that systems often contain within them the causes of their own success, and — this is critical— the causes of their own failure. Similarly, “Systems Problems” are problems that have origins in the interactions of the elements of a system, characterized by a high degree of interconnection and interdependence with other variables around them.
Climate change may well be the most complex systems problem that we have ever faced. In our modern economy, almost every human activity is linked to the use of fossil fuels or other sources of climate-altering greenhouse gases. Every time we buy or download a book, every time we cook a meal, every time we travel across town, we are impacting the climate.
In our modern economy, almost every human activity is linked to the use of fossil fuels or other sources of climate-altering greenhouse gases. Every time we buy or download a book, every time we cook a meal, every time we travel across town, we are impacting the climate.
At the same time, almost everything that sustains and enriches our lives is affected, directly or indirectly, by the changing climate. At the Clinton Foundation, we realize that access to clean water, the price of our food, national security, the health of ourselves and our loved ones, economic opportunity for this generation and those to come, all are placed in jeopardy by climate change.
We must insist on solving more than one problem at a time and on tackling multiple interrelated challenges at the same time. We need the resolve to address systems rather than symptoms. A solution will not be effective or enduring if it creates new problems. And so, we need new business models, new technologies, new policy frameworks, and most importantly, new ways of engaging with each other.
We are moving away from focusing on single technologies to using a whole systems approach as we recognize that there is no single silver bullet solution to stopping climate change.
The Clinton Climate Initiative (CCI) does exactly that in its unique systems thinking approach. We are moving away from focusing on single technologies to using a whole systems approach as we recognize that there is no single silver bullet solution to stopping climate change. Rather than narrowly focusing on one approach, like renewable energy as the only solution, we take a more holistic view to developing systemic solutions. We collaborate with world-class partners to increase the resiliency of communities facing climate change and to create replicable and sustainable models for others to follow.
At the core of our engagement philosophy is Systems Thinking; identifying and activating leverage points that can create significant, positive impact in climate change mitigation and energy transition for communities around the world. CCI has worked with governments and communities to build data systems to better inform decisions and policies on the management of land and natural resources. CCI has also developed waste, water, and energy strategies with our Small Islands partners to create impact from boosting the local economy to women’s empowerment. Finally, CCI has introduced innovative financing mechanisms by partnering with employers to bring energy efficiency benefits to lower home energy expenses and improve people’s lives and their living and working environments.
Through our programs, focused on landscapes and land use, energy supply and energy demand, and energy efficiency, we aim to work together to tackle these systems problems. Now we call on you to take action, to start thinking about your home, your country, your world, and your climate as a system. We ask that you join us in creating solutions that take into account the entire system and all its complexities. Together, we can work to create measurable, meaningful and lasting contributions—one system at a time.
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How Systems Thinking Can Impact Climate Change
By Dymphna van der Lans
Sep 19 2014
Systems thinker: a phrase that has come to define my method for problem solving, my approach to tackling the world’s greatest challenges, and most importantly, who I am today. When I was asked to serve as the CEO of the Clinton Climate Initiative, I had the opportunity to reflect on what led me to this point and how my identity as a systems thinker would ultimately shape our mission moving forward to confront the complicated threats of climate change.
I was fortunate to be raised by systems thinkers as I grew up in the Netherlands, where everything and everyone is close together. Since there is no wilderness, very little land and very little space, we have to be thoughtful about our resources and about each other, and I have carried these lessons with me to where I am today.
The world, as I see it, is made up of systems, and is the result of any interconnected set of elements that is coherently organized in a way that achieves an outcome.
The world, as I see it, is made up of systems, and is the result of any interconnected set of elements that is coherently organized in a way that achieves an outcome. A tree is a system. A forest is a system. I am a system. Systems are often embedded in larger systems, which are embedded in yet larger systems. The earth’s climate is a system comprised of the subsystems of our atmosphere, our oceans, the land, and human society.
The earth’s climate is a system comprised of the subsystems of our atmosphere, our oceans, the land, and human society.
“Systems Thinking” views outcomes as the result of the interactions between the various elements of a system and recognizes that systems often contain within them the causes of their own success, and — this is critical— the causes of their own failure. Similarly, “Systems Problems” are problems that have origins in the interactions of the elements of a system, characterized by a high degree of interconnection and interdependence with other variables around them.
Climate change may well be the most complex systems problem that we have ever faced. In our modern economy, almost every human activity is linked to the use of fossil fuels or other sources of climate-altering greenhouse gases. Every time we buy or download a book, every time we cook a meal, every time we travel across town, we are impacting the climate.
In our modern economy, almost every human activity is linked to the use of fossil fuels or other sources of climate-altering greenhouse gases. Every time we buy or download a book, every time we cook a meal, every time we travel across town, we are impacting the climate.
At the same time, almost everything that sustains and enriches our lives is affected, directly or indirectly, by the changing climate. At the Clinton Foundation, we realize that access to clean water, the price of our food, national security, the health of ourselves and our loved ones, economic opportunity for this generation and those to come, all are placed in jeopardy by climate change.
We must insist on solving more than one problem at a time and on tackling multiple interrelated challenges at the same time. We need the resolve to address systems rather than symptoms. A solution will not be effective or enduring if it creates new problems. And so, we need new business models, new technologies, new policy frameworks, and most importantly, new ways of engaging with each other.
We are moving away from focusing on single technologies to using a whole systems approach as we recognize that there is no single silver bullet solution to stopping climate change.
The Clinton Climate Initiative (CCI) does exactly that in its unique systems thinking approach. We are moving away from focusing on single technologies to using a whole systems approach as we recognize that there is no single silver bullet solution to stopping climate change. Rather than narrowly focusing on one approach, like renewable energy as the only solution, we take a more holistic view to developing systemic solutions. We collaborate with world-class partners to increase the resiliency of communities facing climate change and to create replicable and sustainable models for others to follow.
At the core of our engagement philosophy is Systems Thinking; identifying and activating leverage points that can create significant, positive impact in climate change mitigation and energy transition for communities around the world. CCI has worked with governments and communities to build data systems to better inform decisions and policies on the management of land and natural resources. CCI has also developed waste, water, and energy strategies with our Small Islands partners to create impact from boosting the local economy to women’s empowerment. Finally, CCI has introduced innovative financing mechanisms by partnering with employers to bring energy efficiency benefits to lower home energy expenses and improve people’s lives and their living and working environments.
Through our programs, focused on landscapes and land use, energy supply and energy demand, and energy efficiency, we aim to work together to tackle these systems problems. Now we call on you to take action, to start thinking about your home, your country, your world, and your climate as a system. We ask that you join us in creating solutions that take into account the entire system and all its complexities. Together, we can work to create measurable, meaningful and lasting contributions—one system at a time.
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https://www.clintonfoundation.org/blog/2014/09/19/how-systems-thinking-can-impact-climate-change
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