CII Sustainability Summit app for iPhone and iPad

We are an amazingly interconnected world. This happened millions of years before modern trade and tech made the world flat and interconnected. Interconnected organic and inorganic microsystems interact to form a complex system.

Different but related terms - Chaos Theory, Butterfly Effect, Telecoupling, Gaia Hypothesis – are used to express the interconnectedness between and the impacts on different microsystems. A policy decision, a natural occurrence, a social event, a technology application, may cascade events with effects elsewhere.

We are beginning to realise the strength of interconnectedness and interactions between microsystems. Big problems like those we are faced with require big solutions, based on a systems approach.

Clayton and Radcliffe in Sustainability – A Systems Approach note that “A systems approach… provides a multi-dimensional framework in which information from different disciplines and domains can be integrated without being forced into a one-dimensional mapping”

The whole must be looked at, as well as the parts and the connections between the parts and the influence they exact upon each other in order to understand it fully (as well as the environment in which the system is placed and any external factors or mitigating forces) OCONNOR & MCDERMOTT in The Art of Systems Thinking.

Advanced technologies are aiding comprehension and in speculating the impacts, but the real impacts are still largely unknown. The complexity of system grows with the increasing understanding of the interconnectedness.

Scientific understanding of complex interactions between microsystems and a systems approach are required to build the regenerative capacity of Earth to sustain life. Development and deployment of solutions, including data analytics, artificial intelligence, biomaterials, genetics, must identify their impact on microsystems and be based on systems thinking.

CII’s 14th Sustainability Summit is designed to bring to fore science-based (natural sciences, social sciences and philosophy) understanding, examples of systems approach in policy making, product design, and business reengineering, and sustainability solutions that provide intergenerational justice.