Systems Mapping for Environmental Conservation Initiatives — Part I
Looking for acupuncture points to improve impact
This article is a part of my ongoing documentation of my Masters of Design which is focused on improving the social and environmental impact of conservation/restoration initiatives.
Last week I shared some insights from my latest critique, in which I talked about the importance of my practice being situated within the realm of ‘working on complex problems’.
One of the factors we often struggle to understand when working on complex problems, is how the challenge we’re facing is situated within its larger context — i.e. the system it exists within.
One approach I’m developing at the moment is how to best develop and share system maps, as ‘boundary objects’ which people can talk about, build shared understanding of, and then use to find where and how to intervene, to change the system.
To that end, here’s a first systems map from my recent research into environmental conservation groups:
What insights did I gain?
There’s a couple of clear patterns which emerged from this work:
- Group Coordinators often sit at the nexus of pretty much everything that is happening in a conservation initiative. Some will be less involved in the Governance function than others, however they will likely still be required to provide reports and updates.
- There’s an enormous amount of ‘coordination’ happening. Lots of individual and sub-group relationships which need to be invested in and managed.
- There’s three main functions of an conservation initiative: Governance | Admin & Coordination | On Ground Operations
What are the problems with the map?
This was very much a first draft of the map, but I noticed a couple of areas which might improve this as an approach to build shared understanding:
- This is one level of the system which I decided to begin with. However the boundary of the map feels arbitrary; these are the main people and organisations interacted with on a monthly basis, however conservation happens on a landscape scale, in the context of ecology, society and economy.
- The map is generic, made with the data I had from interviews and observations. It would be hugely enriched by mapping an existing organisation, however I wanted to start with an abstract based on observations from several groups.
- The representation of ‘nodes’ on the map doesn’t acknowledge the people and organisations themselves. It’s very easy to get abstracted when you’re doing systems mapping, and forget that each of the nodes is a living system of it’s own — people, with lives and hopes and dreams.
What’s next?
This is a starting point, and I intend to build out both this map and my practice to help support my Masters project over the coming year. Some initial improvements I’ll look to make are:
- Collaborative mapping — re-run this process with multiple people in a group to build further understanding and nuance as to how different people see and experience a system.
- Build up — more information and data layered onto these foundations can help uncover ‘forcings’ such as where decision making is made, or how resources flow. These are the gold in systems mapping which help to uncover hidden relationships which improve interventions.
- Build out — beyond this initiative lies 100’s of others. Explore nesting these ‘systems within systems’ to zoom in and out to build the kind of depth of insight and empathy which helps us shift entrenched patterns.
Keep in touch
If you’d like to keep track of how this map evolves, you can see the permalink here.
If you want to keep in touch with this project, and would like the odd email to your inbox, please feel free to drop me your details in this form. Or just follow the Medium collection here!
