Systems and Systems Thinking
A system is considered to be a group of interacting or interdependent components that form a complex whole. Systems thinking is defined as a mindset for understanding how things work, a perspective for going beyond events, to looking for patterns of behavior, to seeking underlying systemic interrelationships which are responsible for the patterns of behavior and events. See here for further details.
An important aspect of systems thinking is that that cause and effect are not always close in time and space. Current thinking, however, often does not recognize this delay, leading to short-sited decision-making that does not adequately address this nor linkages between systems. This is particularly true in the environmental realm, where individuals, as well as societies, often do not acknowledge the connections between actions and environmental impacts. Another main element of systems thinking acknowledges the fact that system behavior is often non-linear, so changes in systems are not easily understood or predicted.
A good example of what this means may be the research that suggests that the current decline in bee populations worldwide is linked to cell phones. Since most cell phone companies probably did not consider bees and pollination as part of their system, effects on what might happen as the presence of cell phone radio waves increase were not taken into account. For more information, click here.
Ecological Economics stresses the importance of actively engaging individuals and communities to expand comprehension of the interdependence and connectivity of and between systems and promotes the use of post-normal science, innovative tools and policies to develop systems-thinking. Multi-scale Integrated Model of the Earth's Systems (MIMES), is one important tool that demonstrates behavioral impacts on ecosystems.
