Jennifer's Blog Post 1: Donella Meadows, Thinking in Systems, Chapters 1 and 2

Toward the end of her second chapter, A Brief Visit to the Systems Zoo (great title!), Meadows reveals the trick she's been describing in detail, with flows and stocks and feedback loops:

The trick, as with all the behavioral possibilities of complex systems, is to recognize what structures contain which latent behaviors, and what conditions release those behaviors—and, where possible, to arrange the structures and conditions to reduce the probability of destructive behaviors and to encourage the possibility of beneficial ones. (Meadows, p. 72)

The previous few pages graphically representthe results, over time, of a renewable resource or stock (fishes swimming and making baby fishes and growing and eating and frolicking in the sea), harvested by varying quantities of capital stock (fishing boats, nets, sonar).

Not everyone knows this, but I grew up in Massachusetts, on Cape Cod (named for a fish!), near the famous Georges Banks, one of the world's most important fishing resources (!), according to Wikipedia.  Early European settlers and fishers of North America describe this resource as so abundant that you could reach into the water with a basket, and pull the basket out, full of fish.

As Meadows describes, there are a few scenarios that can play out in a system that involves harvesting this renewable resource.  From page 71:

I’ve shown three sets of possible behaviors of this renewable resource system here:

• overshoot and adjustment to a sustainable equilibrium,
• overshoot beyond that equilibrium, followed by oscillation around it, and
• overshoot followed by collapse of the resource and the industry dependent on the resource.

Despite these readily comprehensible truths, a complete collapse of the 400 year-old Newfoundland cod fishery in 1992 led to a moratorium on fishing. It left more than 30,000 people without jobs as the industry dependent on the resource collapsed along with the cod population.

In 1972, Donella Meadows co-authored a controversial but compelling book that acknowledged The Limits to Growth. Some observers who've been made wise by experience are now working to remain inside the limits, and, like Bren Smith, are taking to heart the data that results from modelling this system.  A stable rate of capital stock (investment and annual reinvestment) leads to a harvest that is stable through time.  

As Meadows says, we have choices, and we can learn to choose wisely.  With or without painful experience as our teachers.

My favorite line in these first two chapters, the line that ignites my heart and soul and passion, that sparks  my hope, is this one: 

You can use the opportunities presented by a system’s momentum to guide it toward a good outcome —much as a judo expert uses the momentum of an opponent to achieve his or her own goals.

I want to understand our political, social, human systems better, so that I can better achieve my good goals.  Donella, I’m calling to your wise spirit, make me a Judo master now!  May we all of us become Judo masters!

Comments

[Gabrielle Makatura]

I thought your fishing example was a great personal touch to help convey the idea of a renewable stock in a system that can crash.

last semester I took a quantitative methods class wherein many examples actually included fishing and different policies to address the issues of over-fishing these resources. When examining these different policies to enact (theoretically of course) we were urged to not only look at the policies themselves, but something called critical descriptors. These critical descriptors were a list of top stakeholders in the process, what helped run the system, and how each policy would affect the resource.

Many times when looking at policy solutions the answer seems obvious at first. For example, in many cases of over-fishing one would look at a policy that halts fishing to solve the problem. When one begins to understand the momentum and complexity of this renewable resource though policies such as limited fishing turn out to be more promising.

While the class did not specifically call this systems thinking, it is exactly what you described above. While a system including fish seems simple, it is in reality very complex. We must, with failure and experience as our guide, learn where the momentum is in a system in order to more successfully achieve our goals. In your example it sounds like a business-as-usual approach was used and that no real work was put into understanding what drives and kills the system.