Posts Tagged ‘systems thinking’
USSEE Conference and Call for Papers
Posted by Sarah Parkinson, Published: February 12th, 2013
The U.S. Society for Ecological Economics (USSEE) will hold its 2013 Conference on June 9-12 at the University of Vermont (UVM) in Burlington, Vermont. DMI is pleased to be a sponsor for the conference, which will be hosted by the Gund Institute for Ecological Economics. The event is organized around the theme of “Building Local, Scaling Global: Implementing Solutions for [...]
Learning to Connect the Dots: Developing Children’s Systems Literacy
Posted by Sarah Parkinson, Published: October 24th, 2012
By Linda Booth Sweeney
A brief interaction between the author and her four-year-old son at a traffic rotary illuminates the awareness young children have, often overlooked, of systems and connectedness. (Image credit: Tauno Tõhk)
In Brief
How can can adults nurture children’s capacity to “connect the dots” through everyday conversations and activities? How can educators build an environment that leads children to see the patterns that [...]
Managing Complexity: A Simulation’s Insights into Climate Change
Posted by Sarah Parkinson, Published: October 19th, 2012
By Sarah Parkinson
Using the En-ROADS simulation tool to visualize our energy choices and understand their implications
Elizabeth Sawin
When we talk about climate change, we’re really talking about systems—a whole web of linked issues. We can’t really discuss the eroding health of our planet without bringing up the causes of that decline, such as habitat destruction and resource extraction. Mention of resource extraction brings [...]
From Sustainability Science to Real-World Action: A Short History of the Balaton Group
Posted by Sarah Parkinson, Published: October 15th, 2012
By Neils Meyer, Alan AtKisson
The Balaton Group is named for Lake Balaton in Hungary, where meetings have been held for most of the past 30 years. In the 1980s, Hungary proved an informally neutral ground between the Soviet bloc and Western nations. (image credit: Zsolt Halasi)
The Balaton Group has been responsible for the creation or accelerated development of a number of innovations in the [...]
Dancing With Systems
Posted by Sarah Parkinson, Published: August 10th, 2012
The following introduction to the essentials of systems thinking is an excerpt from Donella Meadow’s book Thinking in Systems. It was originally published in issue 74 of Timeline magazine, March 2004.
People who are raised in the industrial world and who get enthused about systems thinking are likely to make a terrible mistake. They are likely to assume that here, in systems analysis, in interconnection and complication, [...]
