Now published: Leverage Points for Sustainability Transformation
ideas4sustainability.wordpress.comSaved by Adam Zeiner
Now published: Leverage Points for Sustainability Transformation
“leverage points.” These are places within a complex system (a corporation, an economy, a living body, a city, an ecosystem) where a small shift in one thing can produce big changes in everything.
Donella Meadows • Leverage Points: Places to Intervene in a System
As Fritjof Capra says: a machine can be controlled, a living system can only be disturbed. At best, we will find ways of carefully nudging a living system. According to Donella Meadows, we must find its leverage points, those pivots that allow us to influence system behavior. Most importantly: after each cautious inter- vention, we must patiently o... See more
Understanding Living Systems
PLACES TO INTERVENE IN A SYSTEM
(in increasing order of effectiveness)
- Constants, parameters, numbers (subsidies, taxes, standards).
- Regulating negative feedback loops.
- Driving positive feedback loops.
- Material flows and nodes of material intersection.
- Information flows.
- The rules of the system (incentives, punishments, constraints).
- The distribution of po
Donella Meadows • Leverage Points: Places to Intervene in a System
PLACES TO INTERVENE IN A SYSTEM
(in increasing order of effectiveness)
- Constants, parameters, numbers (such as subsidies, taxes, standards).
- The sizes of buffers and other stabilizing stocks, relative to their flows.
- The structure of material stocks and flows (such as transport networks, population age structures).
- The lengths of delays, relative to the