The 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), adopted by the UN general assembly, constitute a new, coherent way of addressing the diverse societal problems of our time. The SDGs include issues such as poverty and hunger, education and innovation, as well as climate change and biodiversity. The initial value of SDGs lies in their global political support and visibility, and the potential to drive policy-making, and academic research. However, the ultimate objective and biggest challenge is their implementation, which is interlinked, context-dependent, and needs to happen at multiple scales of governance. Nilsson et al. (2016), introduce a seven-point scale, illustrating the positive and negative interactions between SDGs from cancelling, where reaching one goal makes it impossible to reach another one, to indivisible, when the achievement of one goal is inextricably linked to another goal. The authors intend this framework as a starting point for building evidence on SDG interactions and enable policy learning.
While systems analysis for a long time remained a term that was considered empty and meaningless, currently it has regained some prestige in the face of the ever-increasing complexity of societal problems. Systems thinking more broadly, engenders all the particular skills that are required to think about and analyze complexity, such as for example dynamic, closed loop and operational thinking (Richmond 1993). These are not necessarily new skills, but often neglected skills, or skills that have been applied in isolation rather than in combination, an important prerequisite to do actual systems thinking and in turn systems analysis.
For IIASA this lecture series provides an opportunity to come to terms with its legacy, making explicit (more than before), how what we do is systems analysis. For the students of Social Ecology and any similar interdisciplinary courses, this lecture series provides the chance to gain an overview of what systems analysis can be and how it is useful in and beyond academia. The aim is thus not to teach how to apply each method, but to provide enough information for students to navigate the discourse on systems analysis, to recognize systemic patterns in societal issues, and to be able to identify appropriate methods to solve and illustrate such patterns.
8.10.2018, Susanne Hanger-Kopp: “Introduction I (Systems Analysis)”
Societal problems reflected in the Sustainable Development Goals are increasingly complex. Solving, or at least managing them requires a holistic or systems view and adequate tools to analyze and understand processes, interactions, barriers, consequences, and trade-offs. In the first introductory session to this lecture series, we talk about the origins and fundamental ideas of Systems Theories, what Systems Analysis can be in and across disciplines, and how Systems Thinking is relevant beyond academia. In this first session, we will also introduce the overall objectives of the lecture series, as well as all the terms and modalities related to the course. We will gage and manage expectations, and hopefully create excitement for the up-coming lectures.
15.10.2018, Verena Winiwarter: “Introduction II (SDGs)”
The largest ever consultation process lead to the definition of 17 goals that the United Nations have developed for the world to be reached by 2030. This Agenda 2030, also known as the Sustainable Development Goals are further broken into 169 targets and a complex logic of interdependencies and relations is employed to make cherry-picking difficult. The SDGs were ratified by many nations, and a time-consuming and expensive monitoring and reporting process has begun, but not all countries are prioritizing the goals and it remains to be seen if they are able to change the world's trajectory towards a sustainable, inclusive and peaceful world society. Since 2015, when they were announced, the scientific community has embraced the goals and a huge amount of work related to them has since been published. This intro will try to give you a roadmap of the SDG landscape in order to navigate through the common thread of the lecture series.
22.10.2018, Veronika Gaube: “From farmer, livestock and biodiversity: integrating decisions on land use and climate change to assess biodiversity changes in Austrian cultural landscapes”
Land-use and climate change are important drivers of environmental change and pose major threats to biodiversity. Even though it is expected, that systemic feedbacks between changes in climate and land use will have important effects on biodiversity, research has rarely focused on the interaction between both drivers. This talk will present an integrated socio-ecological approach for a case study in the LTSER region Eisenwurzen (Austria) consisting of three principal components: (1) an agent-based model (ABM) called SECLAND, which simulates decisions of relevant actors (mostly farm owners) between the years 2014 and 2050, (2) a spatially explicit GIS model that translates these model outputs into changes in land cover and land use patterns, and (3) a species distribution model (SDM) that calculates changes in biodiversity patterns following from both changes in climate and the land-use decisions from SECLAND. General applications of ABMs have proven their utility in analysing the dynamics of socioecological systems in which decisions of actors influence biophysical dynamics. SECLAND is based on an integration of quantitative (statistical and spatial explicit) and qualitative data, of which the latter was derived through 30 interviews with local farmers and regional decision stakeholders makers in the fields of agriculture, forestry, regional planning.
29.10.2018, Sibel Eker: “Systems modelling to investigate sustainable consumption dynamics”
Achieving Sustainable Development Goals requires understanding many social, economic and technical systems, which are interconnected via complex relationships. Models, whether they are quantitative or qualitative, have long been used to capture the complexity of such systems, to enhance our understanding about them, and to provide policy recommendations. In this lecture, I will first discuss the conceptual basis of systems modelling, and I will demonstrate how we can build and use a small model. I will then present an application that addresses the sustainable production and consumption goal. With this example, we will explore the mechanisms behind global diet change dynamics and their environmental effects.
5.11.2018, Gerhard Reese: “Systems in my mind – defining the psychological underpinnings of systems thinking and its consequences”
The 17 sustainable development goals (SDGs) circle around the question of how the current world could be transformed into a sustainable one. The SDGs are diverse in their themes and complexity, are inherently linked to each other, and thus require interdisciplinary analytical approaches. All goals have in common that they can only be reached by tremendous political efforts and behavioural change on the individual and group level. This behavioural change is at the heart of environmental psychology analysis. In this talk, I will briefly discuss environmental psychology’s contribution towards the SDGs, and then present a psychological approach to systems thinking. Specifically, I will introduce systems thinking as an operational psychological construct that has consequences for individuals’ attitudes, intentions, and behaviours. I will present some studies developing and positioning a scale to measure systems thinking, and then present work from our own lab suggesting that systems thinkers are more likely to engage in behaviors related to many of the SDGs, including responses to migration, terrorism, and climate action. I will conclude with an outlook on ongoing, interdisciplinary research at the nexus of psychology and sustainability.
12.11.2018, Ted Veldkamp: “Water and the SDGs: a systems approach to evaluate chances, threats, and trade-offs”
Water is key to the Sustainable Development Goals, being directly linked to SDG 6 and indirectly to SDG 2 (food), SDG 3 (health), SDG 13 (climate change), and SDGs 14 and 15 (live below water and on land). In a continuously developing world (i.e. economic developments, globalization and climate change) water can act at both as a threat as well as an opportunities to societies to maintain and/or achieve the SDGs. Whilst the availability of freshwater resources over the past has boosted societies to flourish; hydrological extremes (i.e. floods, droughts) or the constant lack of resources (water scarcity) may significantly threaten or hinder socioeconomic well-being. The world and its socio-economic structures are under constant pressure. Population numbers are rapidly growing in less developed or less stable countries, resulting in an increase in demand and use of scarce water, energy and food resources. Climate change and attribution studies suggest at the same time that climate change leads to worsening of water scarcity conditions and more extreme hydro-climatic conditions all over the globe, witnessed by extreme events such as the 2018 Northern Hemisphere Drought. This talk will focus on water in light of achieving the SDGs. As such, I will outline the importance of water as part of daily life, explain the concept of water security, and describe how climate change and socioeconomic developments may influence this. Finally, I will illustrate the role of water within the socio-hydrological system and how we can use a systems approach, e.g. by means of modelling tools and scenarios, to assess current and future chances, threats, and trade-offs related to water and the SDGs.
19.11.2018, Verena Winiwarter: "A spiral of risk. Understanding the environmental, social and economic consequences of tourism in fragile landscapes"
In 2016, about 5% of Austria's GDP and about 6 % of the jobs came directly from tourism. The indirect share was calculated at about 15% of GDP and 17% of employment, making the sector a relevant part of Austria's economy. 79.000 ha of the country were skiing domain, and 3016 ski transportation facilities created a turnover of 901 Million Euros already in 2003/04. Ski transportation facilities (commonly known as "lifts") and the related infrastructure, from roads to snow making equipment are an important and often contested feature of the Alpine regions of the country. Climate change is moving the regions of safe snow further up fragile mountain slopes and makes snow storage and artificial snow imperative. many of the ski tourism enterprises are hardly profitable and face dire consequences from increased costs. Looking at the development of ski tourism from the 1920s onwards presents us with the unique opportunity to investigate the factors that lead to the present situation. Stakeholders' perspectives give insight into the reasons for their decisions and how they deal with their consequences. The spiral of risk concept, holding that successful dealings with one perceived risk more often than not lead to an unintended consequence that demands further action, but will again lead to unintended side-effects has proven a useful heuristic model to develop a respectful, but analytically productive interpretation of long-term developments in Alpine Ski tourism.
26.11.2018, Katya Perez-Guzman: “Global trade of commodities and the SDGs: a network analysis of the input-output databases related to mining”
Global trade of commodities is a driver of many of the challenges we face in our societies today. Environmental pollution, inequality, underdevelopment, injustice in global value chains are few of the problems that have as a common cause the extraction and export of natural resources. The input–output tables are one of the main databases where a detailed country-sector network of the flows of goods can be analyzed. More recently, network analysis has been used to extract valuable information on the structure of global trade, which determines many of its unintended negative effects. Still, much remains to be done, since most of the centralities and methods of graph theory are ill-suited for the specificities of input-output tables. In the end, the combination and improvement of these methodologies can provide good insights about how the structure of global trade of raw materials like mining products affects the potential for attaining several of the Sustainable Development Goals.
3.12.2018, Franziska Gaupp: “Food systems risks and possible solutions for a sustainable future of food”
Governments, financial institutions, multilateral organizations and the private sector have made commitments to “sustainable development” in 2015. This includes the goal to “end hunger, achieve food security and improved nutrition, and promote sustainable agriculture”. This talk will focus on food systems risks and on how to increase agricultural resilience to a changing climate. I will talk about long-term trends in agriculture such as soil erosion or water quality degradation, shocks such as climate extremes and triggers that lead to cascading effects in our inter-linked food system such food prices spikes or trade bans. I will introduce possible solutions to those risk factors and talk about research that is done at IIASA to model food system risks such as a global bio-economic land-use model and other risk analysis tools.
10.12.2018, Jessica Jewell: “Tensions between global and national priorities: implications for the climate SDG (13)”
Climate change is a global problem and its effects will be felt worldwide. Yet the political power and resources to solve it are concentrated at the national (and partly local) level. Given that national priorities have shorter time horizons and narrower constituencies, can we expect national policies to deliver on this global challenge? This lecture explores this question with two specific policy cases: fossil fuel subsidy removal and energy independence. While both have been promoted as a means to align global climate goals with national energy priorities, the actual interplay is much more interesting, complex and instructive. I show how systems analysis tools can be used to analyse the interaction between competing priorities at different scales and probe into the implications of solving climate change and other energy goals.
17.12.2018, Alison Heslin: “Natural Disasters and Urban Displacement: The Gentrifying Effects of Disaster-Induced Outmigration”
With so many major cities located in coastal areas throughout the world, efforts to ensure safe, resilient, and affordable urban housing must engage with the increasing severity of natural disasters, particularly in coastal areas. This lecture addresses the role that destructive natural disasters play in displacing urban populations and how the process of rebuilding changes the socioeconomic make-up of cities. This research links the growing flow of people pushed by disaster from their homes to the subsequent gentrification of affected urban areas. Using existing theory at the intersection of migration, urban sociology, and natural disasters, this lecture uses the example of the United States to understand what happens to urban communities after the recovery from natural disasters. Drawing on census data pre- and post-natural disaster, we can identify patterns in who is displaced by disasters and who is able to return and rebuild. Efforts to ensure sustainable, inclusive urban housing must take these tendencies into account when building resilience for increasingly severe coastal storms.
7.1.2019, Adriana Keating: “Disaster resilience: useful systems concept or meaningless buzzword?"
Disasters pose a growing threat to the achievement of the SDGs. Disaster risk management efforts have largely failed to arrest the underlying drivers of increased global risk: uncontrolled urbanization and proliferation of assets in hazardous areas. Resilience has risen to the fore as a concept with the potential to tackle this challenge - everyone is now claiming to be ‘building resilience’! Is the resilience buzz meaningful, or simply rhetoric? This lecture will argue that if the systems analysis roots of resilience are embraced, then it does indeed provide an opportunity to confront the social‐ecological foundations of risk and development. Yet to-date it has been vaguely conceptualized, without offering a concrete approach to operationalization. This lecture will present a systems based conceptual framework of disaster resilience centred on well‐being. This framework will help students understand the interconnections between disasters and achievement of the SDGs, and outline how it is being operationalized in practice.
14.1.2019, Piotr Magnuszewski: “Navigating complexity through social simulations”
Climate change. Shrinking natural resources. Growing inequalities and resulting conflicts. Natural and man-made disasters. The complexity behind these challenges requires insight and collaboration at many different levels, from local to global. The urgency is clear. However, far too often, promising efforts fail due to misconceptions, lack of trust, or poor communication. How can we make sense of complex problems on such a scale? Can we safely explore multiple ideas to tackle sustainability challenges? Social simulations offer a combination of group scenario building, role-playing, and game-like mechanisms. They bring together stakeholders with diverse backgrounds and values. For a couple of hours, they interact with each other in a shared, safe environment, which reflects the key aspects of the real world. In this simulated reality, participants take on specific roles, representing different sectors: research, administration, business, NGOs. In this way, they have a chance to face real problems, confront opposing views, and solve conflicts via negotiations and dialogue. Together, they creatively experiment, tinker, and test in practice new ideas by instantly facing the outcomes of their decisions This lecture will explain the underlying concepts of social simulations and its participatory approach to systems analysis. It will also present many examples of applications including the areas linked with the SDGs.