Using Systems Thinking and Complexity Approaches to Address the SDGs

The world is a long way away from the ideal envisioned in the 17 Sustainable Development goals and these problems from alleviating poverty to environmental degradation; lack of access to education and reduction of inequalities around the world, these are all intrinsically systems problems.

In this session, we introduce Systems Change as a necessary approach to deploy the SDG17, key opener to achieve the Agenda2030. For this we explore how System thinking and Complexity Theory help to understand what System Change is about as the former addresses the root causes of societal challenges, while the latter focuses on transitioning systems.

Finally the session provides practical tools to implement this approach such as the six conditions of systems change to achieve the SDGs; and conditions required for community systems to transition to new states that are better able to address the SDGs.