Systems Thinking and Sustainability Approach - Essay Example

SYSTEMS THINKING & SUSTAINABILITY APPROACH By Student’s Name Code + Course Name Professor’s Name University Cite, State Date Introduction The global policymakers have continued to face challenging choices in ascertaining the future possibility of sustaining economic growth and development as a way of avoiding intensive disruptions or ecological impacts. Following this line of reasoning, it can be said that effective and efficient search for global sustainability indeed calls for a system thinking approach in order to formulate distinctive policies and, also intervention strategies (Videira, Lopes, Antunes, Santos, & Casanova, 2012). Failure to adopt an effective system thinking approach posits a risk of unplanned outcomes; for instance, the adoption of advanced technologies focused on renewable resources like bio-fuels may result to invisible level of side effects upon the overall climatic change. Nowadays, it has become almost impossible to conduct self-contained evaluation of sustainability within a given sector without noticing the broader issues that arises in relation to climatic changes. The Current State of Sustainability In the past few decades, the need for sustainability development has increased tenfold amongst the numerous stakeholders involved like the government, the non-governmental agencies and, also the general public at large (Allen, 2010). There has been continued need for incorporating sustainability development and growth into numerous operations like urban and industrial growth for purposes of eliminating possible hurdles (Dominici, 2015). In effect, sustainable development has been made a core facet in tackling the strategic challenges faced in every aspect of industries across the globe. The current leading manufacturers operating in the United States of America and overseas as well have continued to emphasise on the need for sustainability in their respective internal business processess as well as in ascertaining the immediate customer value propositions (Henning & Henning, 2013). Interface is a perfect example of a firm that has continued to employ and emphasise on the need for sustainable development in its operations. The firm, being a well-known leader of industrial floor coverings, adopted sustainability principles through production of commodities with processess that are more sustainable in nature. For instance, the company has adopted policies that have enabled a fundamental reduction in the level of greenhouse gas emissions by at least 50 per cent (Nguyen & Bosch, 2013). Notwithstanding, the current redesign of each and every aspect of the company’s products has led to a significant reduction in their immediate life-cycle- environmental impacts. The efforts, as made by most of these companies, is an indication of the sustainability approach taken by all industries’ operations to maintain their processess in a way that does not affect the climate change through global warming mostly associated with unnecessary emission of greenhouse gases (Porter & Derry, 2012). It is now becoming much more clear that the voluntary as well as the presumed incremental environmental strides being made by individual companies continue to diminish in a way that fails to counter the extensive growth in the current global economy while the rapid growth witnessed in such countries as China, India and Africa economies will, in fact, trigger the problem as opposed to solving it altogether. The aspect of recent development within the urban systems is deemed to be the likely cause of increased environmental degradation that has a direct effect on the climatic changes being witnessed (Philippe, & Bansal, 2013). It is assumed, for instance, that by the year 2030 most of the world’s population will be dwelling in cities especially in the developing countries (Nguyen, Graham, Ross, Maani, & Bosch, 2012). The overpopulation of urban centres would likely result to natural disasters as well as unplanned depletion of existing natural resources hence; affecting the underlying environmental cycle. The Goals & Challenges Related to Sustainable Development It is important to note that the aspect of sustainability development for organisations is imperative. Sustainable development plays a significant role in prioritising matters regarding environmental protection especially in areas that are deemed to cause significant climatic alterations (Kwangseon, 2014). In essence, environmental sustainability is mainly attributed to a condition under which the systems thinking approach ensures a sustained natural-biological existence. These employed systems play a critical role in ensuring a sustainable urban development without the worry for climatic changes. Environmental sustainability faces a myriad of challenges especially in regards to its operability. For instance, the process of transforming the wider array of sustainability directly correlates into distinctive and specified phases within a short timeframe, which is a challenging task (Kuei & Lu, 2013). It is also almost impossible for industries to measure the level of sustainable development. Theoretically, people would desire to develop their organisations and attain positive success within a sustainable phase. However, it sometimes becomes an uphill task to analyse the manner for which actions and positions will act towards affecting growth and development over a specified period (de Jong, de Beus, Richardson, & Ruijters, 2013). For instance, it is common to note that people will always argue actions being not environmental unfriendly to cause a major climatic change but the causative that arises between actions and the end-results is the fundamental rationale behind why most decision may be perceived as being unsustainable in nature. This puts an emphasis on the criticality of establishing a wider and fairly-detailed comprehension of the system before engaging in making crucial decisions. The immediate planning of sustainable actions is deemed to be mostly dependent on the planner’s comprehension of the climatic change being faced, and it is directly affected by putting much emphasis on the overall goals and objectives in the developmental works. It is argued that the sustainability development can be a significant and efficient planning tool in the event that it is put under redefinition and implementation within political terms. In the long term, sustainability can only trigger political debates to effect environmental policies set in place to protect possible climatic changes. A power imbalance might likely occur in case environmental justice ensures allegiance to procedural equity. Notably, system thinking and system thinking skills will therefore help endorse the aspect of sustainability in action-taking processess by way of indulging and activating numerous stakeholders as well as notable interest groups. It is important to understand that sustainability is thus not the end-product but rather a business process that cannot happen by itself over-time. A Need for System Thinking Approach The fundamental approach that has continued to be related to sustainability is now being presented by industrial ecology, which is basically a distinctive framework for moving existing industrial systems. The shift in these industrial systems occurs from a linear to a closed-loop model that can be related to the cyclical flows of ecosystems in place. It is important to understand the fact that nature does not allow for any waste since they are deemed to be food for other organisms. In consequence, the aforementioned industrial ecology avails a fundamental platform used for rethinking traditional products or processess’ technological advancements as well as in figuring out unique innovative ways needed for recovering and reusability of waste streams in relation to untouched natural resources. Notwithstanding, the overall commencement of industrial ecology has continued to focus on eliminating un-sustainability as opposed to reinforce its systematic groundwork. The existing frameworks put in place to attain sustainability are directed in great measure towards eliminating, as much as possible, climatic changes s measured in relation to the resource consumption as well as waste emissions (Dilley, 2014). For the case of climatic changes being an effect of un-sustainability, it is deemed a crucial step to reconsider and redesign ecosystems as well as industrial systems as distinctive and open systems that are left to function away from equilibrium, postulating a non-linear and in other cases conflicting behaviour. In better understanding on how system thinking approach assist sustainability, numerous researches have indicated that the need for bio-complexity, which is attributed to attaining significant levels of interdependence of both human and biophysical systems (Willard, Wiedmeyer, Warren Flint, Weedon, Woodward, Feldman, & Edwards, 2010). The failure to attain a sustainability development indicates that steady equilibrium is never realistic. The forces of changes like the recent climatic shifts go a long way to distort the cycles of environmental flows. For that reason, attaining sustainability development will mostly necessitate the generation of resilience and adaptive industrial as well as societal systems that reflect all distinctive element of the ecological systems (Sekerka & Stimel, 2012). In business environment, resilience is perceived as a capability for a firm to survive, adapt and develop even in the presence of hurdles. A real issue arises whenever companies focus more on increasing the level of shareholder value without a need for improving the overall material output (Sekerka & Stimel, 2012). The adaptive capacity is set to result to the setting of a newer equilibrium. Resilient- generated systems that include environmental entities are likely to survive and adopt even in cases of uncertainties and imminent ecological disruptions that might cause negative climatic changes (Emery, 2013). A formidable alternative proposed to counter possible failure to attain equilibrium lies in the designing of inherent resilience through ensuring to assume advantage of critical properties like diversities, efficiencies and, also aspects related to cohesion. In the case of green engineering, designs have been made to generate products and processess within distinctive attributes that can help eliminate hazardous consequences to the overall climatic conditions (Chazal, 2010). Subsequently, given that the need for system thinking approach becomes visible for daily operations of organisations, there have been noted deficiencies of underlying reductionist models that are indeed disclosed. The formulation and implementation of tools meant to assess the highly-positioned interactions amongst interdependent systems calls for efficient tools of emergent relationships (Sekerka & Stimel, 2012). A good example of the system thinking approach that can be perceived in climate impacts relates to urban-based infrastructural developments. It is noted that urban systems are long term based investments that depict highly placed impacts on sustainability and, are critically sensitive to aspects of climatic changes and resource demands (Seebode, Jeanrenaud, & Bessant, 2012). For this reason, global policymakers are called to comprehend the immediate effects of climatic changes on underlying level of infrastructure. To sum up the discussion above, it can be noted that effective and efficient search for global sustainability indeed calls for a system thinking approach in order to formulate distinctive policies and, also intervention strategies to curb possible climatic changes. Business operations would however have to create resilient-based systems as a way of ensuring that they can formulate and implement a sustainable development at all times. References List Allen, TH 2010, 'Making liveable sustainable systems unremarkable', Systems Research & Behavioural Science, vol. 27, no. 5, pp. 469-479. Chazal, Jd 2010, 'A systems approach to livability and sustainability: Defining terms and mapping relationships to link desires with ecological opportunities and constraints', Systems Research & Behavioural Science, vol. 27, no. 5, pp. 585-597. Dominici, G 2015, 'Systems Thinking and Sustainability in Organisations', Journal of Organisational Transformation & Social Change, vol. 12, no. 1, pp. 1-3. 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