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This assessment is designed to apply the knowledge and skills developed by the students in evaluating the role of systems thinking in global and local sustainability challenges. The topic for your paper is:

‘Systems thinking is critical in developing solutions to sustainability challenges.’

To what extent do you agree with this statement, and why? Draw on one of the following wicked problems to illustrate your answer:

Increasing women’s participation in senior executive roles in Australian corporations
Shifting to more renewable sources of energy in Australia

Sustainability is the capacity of biological systems to be able to endure and remain productive and diverse in the long run (Martin, S. 2002, 12). The leading principle for the process of sustainability is the agenda for sustainable development that has various interconnected components namely; economics, ecology, culture and politics. There are manydifferent problems that have confronted our reality in the quest for attainment of developmental sustainability. Such problems have been termed by some scholars as wicked problems, because they cannot be fully defined and have no final solutions where all stakeholders’ interests are optimal. They are always complex and have constantly changing requirements and by trying to solve a single aspect, there arises new multiple problems making it more difficult to find an optimal solution (Kolko. 2012, 25). Wicked problems are hence a set of unique difficulties considered to be symptoms of other problems (Rittel and Webber, 1973, 39). For us to be able to develop solutions to sustainability challenges there is a big need for us to change from the conventional way of thinking and improve our mental models. That is where systems thinking comes in as a model to help us develop the necessary solutions to sustainability challenges.Systems thinking refers to an inter-disciplinary framework used to visualize the interrelationships for seeing various patterns of change rather than static snapshots (Nguyen and Bosch, 2012, 18). Although systems thinking is an old concept (Midgley, G. 2003, 29), it is regarded as the new way of thinking to understand and manage the existing complex problems both globally and locally. It is a method for development planners to conceptualize and act towards the systematic integration of socio-environmental and economic dimensions of sustainability. The approach facilitates the provision for leveraging management complexities relative to other methods. It also entails seeing the whole picture and understanding the broader context while simultaneously appreciating interactions among levels.