Systems Mapping for Environmental Conservation — Part II

Exploring Forces And Systems Change

Image by Sam Rye @ Friends of Sassafras Creek Planting Day

A little while back, I wrote “Systems Mapping for Environmental Conservation Initiatives — Part I” (as part of my Masters Collection) in which I shared my preliminary steps to build a systems map to look for acupuncture points for change.

I quickly realised that this map was wholly insufficient for what I was exploring, as it focused on the actors in the system, but not the forces at play.

Since then, I overhauled my approach to systems mapping and have run a couple of workshops to explore the practice further with other people.

The Systems Mapping Redux

To start exploring the forces at play, I generated a wide variety of data about the context of the system — people, trends, organisations, norms/beliefs, etc.

You can see some of that initial work here:

Step 1: Build context

But clustering and theming is only half the battle. The next step in the process is to generate Cause & Effect data for the themes or even sub-factors.

So I chose to focus on areas I have personal experience in, to supplement the research I’d already completed as part of my MDes (Masters of Design):

• Underinvestment in Environmental Conservation
• Ageing Volunteer Force
• Nature Connection

With these 3 topics, I generated some top line thoughts about what causes them, and what effect they have on the world, using a ‘Structural, Attitudinal & Transactional’ framework(1) to help stretch my thinking.

I then began playing with creating chains or loops of these causes & effects, to find patterns which I’d observed / found through my research. That’s taking shape here:

Step 2 & 3 — Cause & Effect Analysis and Causal Loops

Insights:

As per my previous post, here’s some top line insights I’m seeing from this mapping exercise:

• Volunteering plays a key role as a bridge between improved biodiversity outcomes, and culture change.
• Business has a significant role to play in enabling a positive loop of culture change.
• The underinvestment in Conservation sector is at the heart of several vicious cycles.
• There’s a self perpetuating cycle of young people’s exclusion from Conservation which is causing several other vicious cycles.
• At the heart of so many issues in the Political & Policy sphere (which control significant amounts of the funding and ‘landscape level’ levers of change) is anthropocentric world views.

What’s next

Deepen understanding. I want to do some more analysis with this data set, and continue to broaden it. The Kumu platform I’ve used enables me to do some smart analysis such as increasing the size of the most connected nodes of the map, which can very quickly help me see acupuncture points for intervention, as well as intersections of cause/effect.

Critique with good brains. I’m planning to share this with some excellent people who think deeply about change ‘in the wild’, and running an online session to pull this apart and see some patterns from their points of view.

Use the snapshot. I stress this is just a 2D slice in time, built from a couple of perspectives. It’s not the truth. It will change, because that’s what complex systems do. However, it can serve as a diagnostic to support me to further define a couple of areas to focus my Masters in on, in my final year.