LITMIR.BIZ

      Figure 1.9 Waters Center’s iceberg model. (Source: Adapted from Aki Fukutani (2015), Iceberg..Seeing What’s Below the surface. Retrieved from: https://yourlearningresource.wordpress.com/2015/02/12/iceberg-model/.)

      For the ambitious climate leader in the city, architecting a transition to “Net-Zero” would benefit tremendously from a completed “iceberg” diagram, as shown in Figure 1.9 from the Waters Center for Systems Thinking.³¹

The fourth dimension of systems thinking talent useful for leaders of the ambitious city is connected to action: the ability to analyse and pull the levers to change the system in ways that further the goal of addressing climate change while also increasing equity and social cohesion. Jay Forester defined leverage points “where a small shift in one thing can produce big changes in everything” and are often counterintuitive. Donella Meadows is arguably the definitive source on defining the levers of system change, and the league table reproduced here is drawn from her book:³²

      Places to Intervene (in increasing order of effectiveness):

      Interestingly, much better researched and most-often tried are the shallower, less-effective methods, while the more-effective levers are less researched and less obvious. The applicability of “lever-pulling” to managing a city to address climate change is energizing, and would support efforts to increase listening, communication, and genuine understanding as deep paradigm-shifting system change efforts, and not just a box-ticking exercise on the way to “Net-Zero”. “Net-Zero” is likely not to remain elusive unless these “deep” efforts to change beliefs and social structures are part of the plan.

      Conclusion

      For the ambitious city to succeed in leading the world on climate action, we have considered how four powerful descriptors could bring new power and clarity to the concept of “Net-Zero” and defined the crucial marker we have to pass to get to a regenerative, sustainable world:

      Fully Scoped, Science-Based, Paris-Agreement-Compliant, Cumulative “Net-Zero”.

      We then considered how the ambitious city benefits from connected leadership that appreciates, embraces, and is trained in complex systems, creating:

      Consequence-curious, Wide-perspective-taking, Depth-finding, Lever-pulling systems thinkers.

      As Martin has challenged us all in his Introduction, “How we as leading cities solve the climate crisis will inevitably lie in solving these problems at scale and at a pace that is more aggressive than the national governments the cities reside within”. The city has always been a magnet to ambition. Imagine your city pointing to a clear goal of “Net-Zero” by 2040; led by purpose-driven, connected leaders; aware of, embracing, and trained in the complex system thinking required to accelerate the just transition.

      Notes