The combination of population growth and finite limits on the natural resources we depend on to sustain us is creating a sustainability crisis affecting the natural environment from which these resources are drawn (such as water, food, minerals, fuel). This environmental sustainability crisis is accelerated through the side effects of producing goods and services (such as pollution, and other impacts on the environment like soil degradation, and climate change).
In turn, limits and impacts on environmental sustainability are affecting economic sustainability (such as food and fuel prices going up), that in turn aggravate the sustainability (i.e. stability) of governments and societies that depend on environmental and economic sustainability.
Thus we face a triple crisis in Social, Economic, and Environmental (SEE) Sustainability as each affects the other.
To understanding these interdependent and interrelated connections we view these issues systemically, in systems thinking terms, where we recognise and understand how causes separated by time and distance effect us.
Systems Thinking can not only be used to track what is happening through cause and effects, but also used to show how we can design ways to address SEE sustainability by identifying key points, or levers, where change can have the greatest effect. Part of this response has seen governments progressively move to regulate and penalise activities adversely affecting sustainability both in terms of protecting social rights but also protecting the natural environment. Individuals, groups, and organisations have also taken “Direct Action” initiatives as there is greater understanding through systemic thinking of how causes and effects are linked and Effecting SEE Sustainability, and terms like "green" friendly services and products and "circular economies" arise in the media.
Human activity and the activity of organisations such as the United Nations (UN), governments, and businesses can themselves be viewed in systems thinking terms; as actors in networks of interactions affecting SEE Sustainability.
As actors, humans and organisations can themselves be viewed as special types of systems: As systems thinkers with the capability to not only improve SEE Sustainability but also in doing so changing (learning). That is, not only do humans and organisations interact with elements affecting SEE Sustainability, but the way we interact depends on the way we think; how we perceive and justify our actions.
In the Cycle of Equilibrium and Transformation diagram below, by Vladislav Fomin, this process of changing our thinking involves changing the meaning we attach to our actions. In the process of changing something so fundamental we can undergo a sense of conflict (Passage 2), which in turn requires a different way of thinking (Passage 3), that then requires different ways of resolving differences in our interests and needs with others (Passage 4), before we find a new sustainable equilibrium (Passage 5).
References include:
Organizations as Learning Systems: “Living Composition” as an Enabling Infrastructure. By Marjatta Maula. Published by Elsevier, 2006.
Equilibrium and transformation in the Standard Making Process by Vladislov Fomin at http://www.pacis-net.org/file/2000/600-614.pdf
