By Ann Zulliger, AWC Zurich

In 1992, a book appeared that was important enough to be translated into 30 foreign languages and 30 million copies were printed. Donella Meadows was the lead writer of The Limits to Growth, a book that has gone through three updates and outlined scenarios that presented the various consequences of our behavior that could affect the future of our planet. Many of these scientists’ guesses have proven to be almost prophetic.

Donella Meadows went on to write, teach, explain, involve others and advocate. Her early death at the age of 59, after contracting cerebral meningitis (probably due to a tick bite) in February of 2001, was a huge loss to environmental scientists and to her lay supporters. The draft of Thinking in Systems: A Primer¹ had been completed before her death and was published at the end of 2008. Any motivated reader can study it and use it to support her decision-making and activities. This primer is rich in information and guidelines for living with systems in ways that benefit the earth and its residents.

Thinking in Systems: A Primer

The book’s rich content is too much for this column, and I have selected only a part of it to present. Every chapter of the book requires thorough chewing and digesting. It is a gift of love to the earth’s future, and that love fueled all of Donella Meadows’ work. The two major intertwined problems of our times are the COVID-19 pandemic and the destruction of our planet’s natural systems. The damage we have done to nature has enabled zoonotic diseases to flourish and to be passed on to humans. We must learn to respect and begin to understand more about how systems function so that we can maintain resilience in ourselves and nature and promote this for our own good. Resilience is described in Chapter 3: “Why Systems Work so Well.” 

What is a System?

Meadows uses the dictionary definition of a system: “A set of elements or parts that is coherently organized and inter-connected in a pattern or structure that produces a characteristic set of behaviors, often classified as its ‘function’ or ‘purpose.’” She also uses the dictionary to define resilience: “…the ability to bounce or spring back into shape, position, etc., after being pressed or stretched. Elasticity. The ability to recover strength, spirits, good humor or any other aspect quickly.” This is what we must encourage as much as possible. 

As in all systems, we need to know more about them before we start trying to serve resilience. Nature is so much bigger and smarter than we are that we must approach it humbly. Donella Meadows crystallized her knowledge in several principles. The first is that “there are always limits to resilience.” This is another way of saying that we can’t push a system beyond the point of no return. We are already losing species and experiencing the consequences of the connections between human illness and environmental damage and pollution. We cannot bring back the carrier pigeons and many other species that were important links in biological systems. Nor can we completely heal the damage that intense, long-term air pollution does to children’s lungs. We cannot know what the consequences of these losses will be, but we know that “recovery” will not produce a 100% return to what we called “normal.”

Manage for Resilience

The second point on Meadows’ list is: “Systems need to be managed not only for productivity or stability; they also need to be managed for resilience.” We cannot fish to the point where the remaining stocks do not have reserves that are renewable. One never knows when an oil spill, disease or illegal fishing will occur. Thus, we must be generous with nature, just as she has been with us. We must leave her “extra” resources for emergencies. Firmly placed in the chain of life, our enormous populations and technological power require us to intervene in nature’s processes carefully. The Precautionary Principle is an important tool to avoid doing more damage. One of Barry Commoner’s ecology rules is to be cautious, because there is a price for every “solution” humans propose.

Systems Can Self-Organize

Another important feature of systems is their ability to self-organize. They can create new structures and can learn, diversify and complexify. This is part of evolution. We are residents of a living planet. If you are interested in an excellent introduction to the evolutionary process, the book A Walk Through Time: From Stardust to Us—the Evolution of Life on Earth, by Sid Liebes, Elisabeth Satoris et al. is a good place to start. The Stiftung Drittes Millennium Foundation will be showing the German outdoor exhibit version of the Walk Through Time at Lassalle-Haus Bad Schönbrunn in Switzerland from May 2 through August 30, 2021. The 52 posters set up on the grounds are spaced according to the time spans between each development. An online German version is also on the foundation’s website. An English version is available online here. 

Systems Evolve from the Bottom Up

The fourth point Donella Meadows makes about resilience is that hierarchical systems evolve from the bottom up, and the purpose of the upper layers of the hierarchy is to serve the purposes of the lower ones. Here is where we see that nature is constantly creating new ways of promoting life and effective systems. This is a kind of mutual networking for the benefit of the whole. Humanity’s current rampant efforts to make economic profit instead of promoting well-being serve disease, not health: witness the devastation of the rainforests and damage to water supplies and their purity. Those of us who realize this and change our consumption are contributing to a life-supporting future. We need to see what kind of hierarchies we live with and how we use them.

Thinking in Systems is for those who want to learn from Donella Meadows and become more supportive and effective in their efforts to heal and serve life on earth. In the preface she writes that the “…book has been distilled out of the wisdom of thirty years of systems modeling and teaching carried out by dozens of creative people, most of them originally based at or influenced by the MIT System Dynamics group.” I wish I could have attended her lectures. 

More information about Donella Meadows and her best-known books:

Wikipedia: Donella Meadows

Chelsea Green Publishing: Thinking in Systems

Wikipedia: The Limits to Growth

A Synopsis: The Limits to Growth – 30-Year Update

The Donella Meadows Project, Archives: Limits to Growth

Foundation for the Third Millennium Agenda

¹Thinking in Systems: a Primer is available at Chelsea Green Publishers or via Amazon.

 Image of Donella Meadows: Courtesy of the Donella Meadows Project at the Academy for Systems Change

All other images: Pixabay