Learning for sustainability: A systemic approach to behaviour and beliefs

Abstract

Human capacities and beliefs tend to lead us to construct systems that are inherently unsustainable. With the modern capability of humankind to extract more and more resources globally, resources are rapidly depleting and the effects are escalating. The human capacity for reflection and conscious action seems not to have kept pace with the capacity and desire to use more and more resources. Further, the emerging problems appear to be global, not solvable locally. This gives rise to a feeling of disempowerment that is a basic dysfunctional belief system. It may lead either to paralysis of decision-making, or too rushed action in which each stakeholder lobbies for their own solution and competes with others. This is part of the challenge of sustainable development: to bring back the sense that action, especially cooperative action, can bring results, also in the context of the need for transformational rather than marginal change. A second key challenge is to enable much more effective learning from experience. This paper documents an action research journey that took its departure point in this second challenge, expanded to include consideration of dysfunctional belief systems (patterns), and converged to prioritize a key question: how to design a process that will significantly enhance learning from experience, in the short and long term. The resulting methodology–a workshop format and toolbox–are the major focus of this paper. It can be used in any context, though conceived for initiatives for sustainable development. It has been designed to support conscious decisions of where and how to act, including an improved capacity to choose for transformational change.