The Systems Approach

Systems

• A systems approach is the term used to describe a method of simplifying and understanding a complicated set of interactions

  • Systems, and the interactions they contain, may be environmental or ecological (e.g. the water cycle or predator-prey relationships), social (e.g. how we live and work) or economic (e.g. financial transactions or business deals)

• The interactions within a system, when looked at as a whole, produce the emergent properties of the system

  • For example, in an ecosystem, all the different ecological interactions occurring within it shape how that ecosystem looks and behaves - if the interactions change for some reason (e.g. a new predator is introduced), then the emergent properties of the ecosystem will change too

• There are two main ways of studying systems:

  • A reductionist approach involves dividing a system into its constituent parts and studying each of these separately - this can be used to study specific interactions in great detail but doesn’t give the overall picture of what is occurring within the system as a whole

  • A holistic approach involves looking at all processes and interactions occurring within the system together, in order to study the system as a whole

• For example, sustainability or sustainable development depends on a highly complex set of interactions between many different factors

  • These include environmental, social and economic factors (sometimes referred to as the three pillars of sustainability

  • A systems approach is required in order to understand how these different factors combine and interact with one another, as well as how they all work together as a whole (the holistic approach)

A systems approach is a way of visualising a complex set of interactions, which may be ecological, societal or economic in nature - a holistic systems approach is required when considering sustainable development