Using System Thinking approach to assess the contribution of Nature Based Solutions to Sustainable Development Goals

Abstract

Nature Based Solutions are routinely claimed to support the Sustainable Development Goals, and the claim is rarely tested. This study uses a System Thinking approach to make the link explicit and inspectable, building a Fuzzy Cognitive Map of the causal relations through which an intervention at a demonstration site propagates into outcomes that the Goals describe.

The map was constructed with stakeholders in a Group Model Building process, so that the relations it contains are the ones local actors recognise rather than the ones a literature review would supply. It was then analysed qualitatively, to identify the pathways and the feedback loops that carry an intervention's effects, and semi-quantitatively, to examine how the co-benefits behave over time — which of them appear early, which accumulate, and which depend on another benefit having been realised first.

The final step maps those pathways onto the Goals. What emerges is a more disciplined account of the SDG claim: some contributions are direct and robust, others depend on assumptions about how benefits are distributed, and some apparent contributions turn out to be side effects of a single underlying mechanism rather than independent gains.