OADD 2325 - Systems Thinking for Sustainability

Current global sustainability challenges, both social and ecological, have arisen and persist because the modern world has predominantly self-organized around ideas from a Western, reductionist intellectual tradition that has unwittingly eclipsed older systemic insights and wisdom.

Systems thinking suggests we are a complex system – ‘humankind’ – in adaptive crisis. This recognition now forces urgent reappraisal of the ‘sort of thinking’ we have been doing that has shaped the norms and institutions guiding our behavior. Today’s ‘polycrisis’ is no longer just an economic, technological, or political challenge, it is also a cognitive challenge.

This course will use systems thinking frameworks to assess responses to the sustainability crisis as well as to highlight better ways forward.

Learning Outcomes:

• Develop a deep-rooted understanding of the structure and origins of current unsustainable behaviour of humankind.
• Understand how and why the ‘sustainability’ discourse has evolved as it has over the last several decades.
• Develop a systems-anchored perspective on sustainability solutions and ability to discriminate between authentic and inauthentic solutions.
• Develop a critical understanding of how different sectors of society can differentially catalyze sustainability.
• Identify more credible sustainability solutions from a systemic perspective.

Professional Skills

• Learn to assess and communicate social and ecological problems in systems terms, at a time when systems thinking is coming into ascendancy.
• Practice in preparing and delivering group presentations.
• Practice in writing short and long assignments in modern ‘real world’ formats.

Feedback will be given in written form in the week after an assignment has been submitted.

Assessment will be according to four deliverables:

• Participation in class 15%
• Oral group presentation on a key sustainability issue, group work 25%
• Writing task: a social media-style thread on a sustainability challenge, individual work (25%)
• Writing task: a 3,500 word policy brief analysing a sustainability challenge from a systems perspective, individual work (35%)

• In Class Presence: 24 hours a semester
• Reading and Preparation for Class: 60 hours a semester
• Research and Preparation for Group Work: 20 hours a semester
• Research and Writing for Individual Assessments: 46 hours a semester.