This book presents a systems thinking approach in relation to the Sustainable Development Goals for sustainable national development in vulnerable countries. Systems thinking is a process for understanding the interrelationships among the key components of a system; this book illustrates sustainable development as a system. Key environmental issues are discussed showing their relationship to socioeconomic aspects of development, in the light of increased climate threats and environmental disasters.

How to sustain our world for future generations has perplexed us for centuries. We have reached a crossroads: we may choose the rocky path of responsibility or continue on the paved road of excess that promises hardship for our progeny. Independent efforts to resolve isolated issues are inadequate. Different from these efforts and from other books on the topic, this book uses systems thinking to understand the dominant forces that are shaping our hope for sustainability. It first describes a mental model - the bubble that holds our beliefs - that emerges from preponderant world views and explains current global trends. The model emphasizes economic growth and drives behavior toward short-term and self-motivated outcomes that thwart sustainability. The book then weaves statistical trends into a system diagram and shows how the economic, environmental, and societal contributors of sustainability interact. From this holistic perspective, it finds leverage points where actions can be most effective and combines eight areas of intervention into an integrated plan. By emphasizing both individual and collective actions, it addresses the conundrum of how to blend human nature with sustainability. Finally, it identifies primary three lessons we can learn by applying systems thinking to sustainability. Its metaphor-rich and accessible style makes the complex topic approachable and allows the reader to appreciate the intricate balance required to sustain life on Earth. Highlights the application of system thinking in economics Identifies systemic leveraging actions for achieving sustainability Outlines a comprehensive and integrated plan for achieving sustainable stewardship in the future

This Systems Thinking Special Issue contains 12 papers on the nature of systems thinking as it applies to systems engineering, systems science, system dynamics, and related fields. Systems thinking can be broadly considered the activity of thinking applied in a systems context, forming a basis for fundamental approaches to several systems disciplines, including systems engineering, systems science, and system dynamics. Although these are somewhat distinct fields, they are bound by common approaches in regard to systems. Whereas systems engineering seeks to apply a multidisciplinary, holistic approach to the development of systems, systems science seeks to understand the basics related to systems of all kinds, from natural to man-made, and system dynamics seeks to understand system structures in order to influence its dynamics. Man-made systems have become more ubiquitous and complex. The study of systems, both natural and engineered, presents new challenges and opportunities to understand emergent, dynamic behaviors that inform the process of sense-making based on systems thinking.

Environmental Life Cycle Assessment (ELCA) that was developed about three decades ago demands a broadening of its scope to include lifecycle costing and social aspects of life cycle assessment as well, drawing on the three-pillar or ‘triple bottom line’ model of sustainability, which is the result of the development of the Life Cycle Sustainability Assessment (LCSA). LCSA refers to the evaluation of all environmental, social and economic negative impacts and benefits in decision-making processes towards more sustainable products throughout their life cycle. Combination of environmental and social life cycle assessments along with life cycle costing leads to life cycle sustainability assessment (LCSA). This book highlights various aspects of life cycle sustainability assessment (LCSA).

The classic book on systems thinking—with more than half a million copies sold worldwide! "This is a fabulous book... This book opened my mind and reshaped the way I think about investing."—Forbes "Thinking in Systems is required reading for anyone hoping to run a successful company, community, or country. Learning how to think in systems is now part of change-agent literacy. And this is the best book of its kind."—Hunter Lovins In the years following her role as the lead author of the international bestseller, Limits to Growth—the first book to show the consequences of unchecked growth on a finite planet—Donella Meadows remained a pioneer of environmental and social analysis until her untimely death in 2001. Thinking in Systems is a concise and crucial book offering insight for problem solving on scales ranging from the personal to the global. Edited by the Sustainability Institute’s Diana Wright, this essential primer brings systems thinking out of the realm of computers and equations and into the tangible world, showing readers how to develop the systems-thinking skills that thought leaders across the globe consider critical for 21st-century life. Some of the biggest problems facing the world—war, hunger, poverty, and environmental degradation—are essentially system failures. They cannot be solved by fixing one piece in isolation from the others, because even seemingly minor details have enormous power to undermine the best efforts of too-narrow thinking. While readers will learn the conceptual tools and methods of systems thinking, the heart of the book is grander than methodology. Donella Meadows was known as much for nurturing positive outcomes as she was for delving into the science behind global dilemmas. She reminds readers to pay attention to what is important, not just what is quantifiable, to stay humble, and to stay a learner. In a world growing ever more complicated, crowded, and interdependent, Thinking in Systems helps readers avoid confusion and helplessness, the first step toward finding proactive and effective solutions.

The goal of Sustainable Human and Environmental Systems (SHES) education is to prepare students to facilitate social learning in communities that builds knowledge of, capacity for, and commitment to sustainability to facilitate the emergence of sustainable societies. The SHES approach to sustainability education relies on complexity-based systems thinking that transcends disciplinary boundaries. This book provides a comprehensive guide to the SHES approach, including its rationale and theoretical foundation, its pedagogy and practical applications in curricula, and ways to support the approach through institutional administration. This book will be of great interest to academics and students of education, environmental sciences and studies, sustainability and sustainable development, natural resource management, conservation, environmental policy, environmental planning, and related fields in higher education. Educators can use this book as a guide to SHES pedagogy, curriculum design, sustainability, environmental studies, sustainable development, and sustainable well-being. Administrators will find the book useful in establishing, evaluating, staffing, and promoting programs based on the SHES approach.

This encyclopedia serves as a tool to support universities across the world to implement sustainable development in higher education in a number of key areas, spread over 5 volumes:1. Policy-making, visioning, structures, management and strategies 2. Teaching, learning and competencies 3. Research and transformation 4. Campus greening, design, operations and carbon impacts5. Students and stakeholders ́ initiatives and involvement The encyclopedia will be of special interest to administrators and managers at higher education institutions; academic staff (e.g. lecturers, professors, researchers); technical staff and students. Also, other groups working outside higher education, but interested on the theory and practice of sustainable development, will find its contents useful.