Leverage system thinking to achieve sustainable development goals

It has been a year since the post millennium development goals, sustainable development goals (SDGs), were launched in New York, USA. These far, considerable progresses have been made by governments, non-governmental organizations, business partners and other international agencies. The progresses include and not limited to: identifying what is material, making commitments and confirming shared roles to achieve the seventeen ambitious goals contained in SDGs by 2030.

However, system thinking, the binding factor that holds all the activities aimed at achieving the goals has been overlooked in developing various road maps to achieve these goals, and, in few instances that it is employed; it is often mentioned in passing but never actualized. The main function of system thinking is to identify the interactions between different parts of a system –health or education or agricultural system– and ensures they deliver more than the sum of the parts.

Presently, we have perfected the art of setting goals and then laboriously and slavishly work to achieve them. However, there is need for a paradigm shift in thinking if SDGs are to take a sustainable and resilient path. It is imperative to have a platform that brings together technocrats for collective thinking to provide shared ideas and opinions that goes deeper to address underlying causes.

To successfully deliver SDGs, we must have a strong systems approach. To effectively achieve this, the various stakeholders that want to rise to the occasion and accept this challenge, must take cognizance of the three operating levels: First, joining up with others’ efforts to achieve individual goals; second, looking at the inter-relationships between all the goals; and, Finally, delivering the goals in a way that models the characteristics we need for a robust and resilient sustainable society.

Joined-up efforts on individual goals

How are we ensuring that the combined activities across the country and world on ending poverty or achieving gender equality or universal quality healthcare coverage add up to more than the sum of their parts? 

To achieve this goal, there is need for the system experts to identify what system are for, where the interlinkages are, and who holds the power, resources and innovations that work for (or against) change. Understanding the system in detail means we can find and unlock the most powerful opportunities for significant shifts (universal coverage of quality healthcare, for example, underpins a number of goals directly or indirectly). It also means we can start making assumptions about how individual organizational efforts combine, and ensure that all this work is truly complementary.

It is also very important to work collectively with others to better understand the wider system they’re all aiming to fix – be it education, health, or gender equality – and find the best points of leverage- the places within a complex system (economy, education, health) where a small shift in one thing can produce big changes in everything.

It’s essential to make visible and learn from the different individual actions underway so they all add up, or at the very least don’t conflict with each other. This is hard - it requires real collaboration, and real collaboration takes time and resources that may feel at odds with the need for urgency. This is succinctly summarized in this African say, “If you want to fast, go alone; if you want to go further, go together.”

A ‘network set’ of goals

What are the inter-relationships across the goals? How can we understand the different drivers and root causes of a number of different goals regionally, nationally and globally? Which goals work together to deliver a change in a system, and how do we make the most of those combinations? Where are the tensions between them?

Mapping the activities around the individual goals will certainly accelerate progress. But looking across the goals at possible synergies and trade-off takes us to the next level. Clearly the SDGs do not work in isolation. For example–, SDG 3 (Health) is impacted by food and nutrition, sanitation, education and increasingly climate change.

There is need to rigorously leverage and learn more about these interactions – particularly when looking at the more cross-cutting goals such as sustainable consumption and production, infrastructure and industrialization, and climate change. And we need to find ways to do this together. National government should be looking for a joined-up approach, because once they understand how the goals link, it’s easier to see how to develop action and policies framework to tackle a number at once.

The ‘how’ of sustainable development

How are we addressing the Sustainable Development Goals? What are the underlying principles that will drive success?

If the current global system was efficient and effective for everyone; we wouldn’t need to set goals for ending poverty and hunger, improving health outcomes. Seldom do we set up system with sustainable development in mind, so it risks consistently reversing the gains made. How we go about tackling the SDGs is as important as what we do to tackle them: are we modeling the values and behaviors a sustainable world or country requires?

That means being inclusive in the activities that we develop and in their governance, it means naming the assumptions we’re making about what will work and in what context, and, finally, it means getting serious about mindset change and enabling people to take control of their own destiny.

As we go into the second year of the SDGs, let’s make systems thinking core to how we address the goals as a country or institutions. We need to be practical but with one ultimate endpoint in mind: a robust and resilient sustainable society that is responsive to the needs of every citizen wealth status or geographical status notwithstanding. 

Martin is the Senior Operation research Monitoring and Evaluation Manager with HealthRight International in a USAID Maternal and Child Survival Project and a Global health Fellow at the University of Edinburgh, Scotland. Above all, he is a global-public health specialist and crusader with keen interest in building resilient and robust health systems that optimizes interventions benefits along the continuum of healthcare service delivery to achieve better health outcomes for mothers, newborns and children