256 pages
6 x 9
five (5) black and white illustrations, photographs, line art, and maps
For most of Elizabeth Sawin’s career, she was not a multisolver. Instead, she worked on a single, albeit immensely important problem: climate change. Despite tremendous effort—long hours of teaching, attending conferences, publicizing analysis—at the end of the day, she felt like she was chasing her tail. Unless people began to recognize the multitude of unexpected benefits from ratcheting down emissions, climate change would remain a losing political issue.
That experience, along with the guidance of leaders in systems thinking and racial justice, convinced her that the world’s thorniest problems may be easier to tackle together than one by one. That’s multisolving: using a single investment of time or money to solve many problems at the same time. (Reduced fossil fuel use = improvements in climate, health, equity, economics, and more.) While the idea of killing two birds with one stone (or “filling two needs with one deed”) is age-old, and the notion of co-benefits in policy-making has been around for years, Multisolving addresses the current mismatch between complex, deeply intertwined societal issues and our siloed approach to them.
This unique resource is for local school boards that need revenue for their students but don’t want to overtax low-income seniors. It is for nonprofits working to reduce food waste and combat the root causes of hunger while increasing racial justice. It is for seaside communities that can protect themselves from flooding while also improving biodiversity with a living coastline. It may also be for you: doing the work you know is imperative but that is sometimes overwhelming, a tiny drop in a swirling ocean.
Multisolving can’t promise a list of “fifty simple things to make everything OK.” What it does offer are strategies to build solidarity between diverse groups, overcome powerful interests, and create lasting change that benefits us all.
"Multisolving is essential reading for anyone seeking to be a node of possibility in our troubled yet beautiful world. Beth Sawin shares a lifetime of learning about systems with clarity and care. A true companion for the path ahead."
--Dr. Katharine K. Wilkinson, co-editor of All We Can Save and lead writer of Drawdown
"Efforts to halt the cascading crises of our times often trade one trouble for another. However, systems thinking helps us see where a single action can address two or more problems at once. Never has ‘multisolving’ been more needed. A brilliant, timely book!"
--Richard Heinberg, Senior Fellow, Post Carbon Institute
"Feeling helpless at the scale of the polycrisis we face and wondering how to address everything everywhere all at once? This book is for you! Infused with ambition, courage, hope, and assurance rising from experience, it shows us how we can solve multiple problems through simple systems-based solutions."
--Dekila Chungyalpa, Director, Loka Initiative, University of Wisconsin - Madison
INTRODUCTION: Converging Crises, Cascading Solutions
CHAPTER ONE: Multisolving: Promises and Obstacles
CHAPTER TWO: Stocks
CHAPTER THREE: Flows
CHAPTER FOUR: Reinforcing Feedback
CHAPTER FIVE: Balancing Feedback
CHAPTER SIX: The Behavior of Whole Systems
CHAPTER SEVEN: Rising to the Challenge of Complex Systems
CHAPTER EIGHT: Steering Systems
CHAPTER NINE: Multisolving in Action
CHAPTER TEN: Multisolving and Equity
CHAPTER ELEVEN: Multisolving in Tumultuous Times
CHAPTER TWELVE: Going Forth
Acknowledgments
Notes
Index
About the Author
Do you find people changing the subject when you speak up about climate change? Have you ever torpedoed the mood of a get-together just by mentioning an environmental problem? Well, you’re in good company. Could it be that we—well-intentioned environmentalists—should be doing something different?
Years ago, Dr. Elizabeth Sawin, founder of the Multisolving Institue, realized that when she talked with people about our sustainability crises, she was effectively “bumming people out.” As a systems thinker (trained by the esteemed Donella Meadows) she knew she had to try something different to make a better case for environmental and social action. Dr. Sawin is the author of the upcoming book, Multisolving: Creating Systems Change in a Fractured World.
Join us for a conversation with Dr. Sawin on Thursday, September 26, 2024 at 11:00am Pacific. In this live, online, 75-minute event, Dr. Sawin will share how she turned her focus to visioning and “multisolving” to communicate more effectively and develop more inspiring projects. Beth will be joined by Rob Dietz, Program Director at Post Carbon Institute.
Purpose
Attendees of this special Resilience+ event will have an opportunity to:
About Dr. Sawin
Dr. Elizabeth Sawin is Founder and Director of the Multisolving Institute and an expert on solutions that address climate change while also improving health, well-being, equity, and economic vitality. She developed the idea of ‘multisolving’ to help people see and create conditions for such win-win-win solutions.
Register for FREE
You will get access to the live event on September 26, 2024. (If you are already a recurring monthly donor to Post Carbon Institute, you will also receive the event recording.)
Join us for an enlightening event as we welcome Dr. Elizabeth Sawin, Founder and Director of the Multisolving Institute, to discuss her new book, Multisolving: Creating Systems Change in a Fractured World.
In this compelling work, Dr. Sawin explores the concept of "multisolving," a transformative approach that addresses interconnected global challenges—like climate change, health inequities, and economic disparities—through coordinated, collective action. Drawing from her decades-long career in climate activism and systems thinking, Dr. Sawin offers insights into how individuals, organizations, and communities can work together to tackle multiple crises simultaneously, creating solutions that foster equity, sustainability, and resilience.
The event will be introduced by MIT Sloan Professor John Sterman, a renowned expert in system dynamics and sustainability. Don’t miss this opportunity to engage with Dr. Sawin as she shares practical strategies and examples of multisolving in action, illustrating how the world’s most complex issues can be addressed more effectively by breaking down silos and building solidarity.
We will be raffling several copies of Dr. Sawin's book to in-person attendees.
Food Provided (Food Provided (Vegetarian / plant-based lunch options will be provided to in-person attendees. Please note any food allergies and be sure to cancel registration if you can no longer attend (let's do our bit to reduce food waste!).)
In times of profound disruption and discontinuity, finding ways to work together across traditional boundaries becomes essential for building resilient futures and navigating current crises. Join us for an interactive dialogue and workshopping session with Dr. Beth Sawin whose groundbreaking book Multisolving invites us to address interconnected challenges through radical collaboration and systemic solutions.
Multisolving identifies and implements solutions that address multiple challenges at once – from climate change to health, equity, and biodiversity. This approach recognizes that our greatest challenges are interconnected and require breaking down silos both across and within organizations.
As we face interlinked crises from climate change to social inequity, the need for transformative solutions has never been greater. Multisolving offers a way to work together to address multiple challenges today while also building resilience for the future
Drawing on decades of research and real-world examples, Beth will reflect on how nurturing trusting relationships across silos can promote the emergence of solutions that serve multiple needs and constituencies at once. Beth will provide practical tools for multisolving and showcase the attitudes and approaches that help multisolving flourish and build adaptative capacity for navigating shocks, disruptions and unexpected opportunities.
For anyone working at the intersection of climate, health, equity, and social justice – or seeking hopeful pathways through our current crises – this session offers both inspiration and practical guidance for creating positive change.
This will be a highly interactive session designed to share practical tools and approaches that you can apply in your own work. Featuring case discussions, small group work, and opportunities to connect with others working to bridge divides for greater impact, it will aim to explore and share, collectively, how multisolving appraoches are used in different regions and contexts to deal with the interconnected and intersecting challenges of our time.
Join us for a special event in celebration of Dr. Elizabeth Sawin’s newly released book, Multisolving: Creating Systems Change in a Fractured World. This exclusive session for the System Dynamics Society is part of Dr. Sawin’s virtual book tour, where she shares the insights and practical strategies behind her approach to multisolving—an innovative way of addressing multiple, interconnected challenges with singular, unified actions. Dr. Sawin’s work brings systems thinking to the forefront of tackling global issues, showing how the principles of System Dynamics can be applied to create powerful, multi-layered solutions in real-world contexts. In this event, she will delve into how multisolving can transform complex, entrenched problems by aligning efforts across sectors like climate, health, equity, and economic resilience. The event will feature an engaging presentation, followed by an interactive session where participants can discuss multisolving within their own projects and communities. Dr. Sawin’s journey in writing Multisolving highlights the potential of systems-based solutions to bring about enduring change, making this session a valuable opportunity for our members to explore fresh applications of System Dynamics and contribute to impactful solutions on a broader scale.
We are delighted to invite you to our rescheduled session on Multisolving: Creating Systems Change in a Fractured World.
What is Multisolving? In times of profound disruption and discontinuity, finding ways to work together across traditional boundaries becomes essential for building resilient futures and navigating current crises. Join us for an interactive dialogue and workshopping session with Dr. Beth Sawin whose groundbreaking book “Multisolving” invites us to address interconnected challenges through radical collaboration and systemic solutions.
Multisolving identifies and implements solutions that address multiple challenges at once – from climate change to health, equity, and biodiversity. This approach recognizes that our greatest challenges are interconnected and require breaking down silos both across and within organizations.
As we face interlinked crises from climate change to social inequity, the need for transformative solutions has never been greater. Multisolving offers a way to work together to address multiple challenges today while also building resilience for the future.
Drawing on decades of research and real-world examples, Beth will reflect on how nurturing trusting relationships across silos can promote the emergence of solutions that serve multiple needs and constituencies at once. Beth will provide practical tools for multisolving and showcase the attitudes and approaches that help multisolving flourish and build adaptative capacity for navigating shocks, disruptions and unexpected opportunities.
For anyone working at the intersection of climate, health, equity, and social justice – or seeking hopeful pathways through our current crises – this session offers both inspiration and practical guidance for creating positive change.
Format: This will be a highly interactive session designed to share practical tools and approaches that you can apply in your work.
Read the Introduction: Converging Crises, Cascading Solutions below or download it here.
Download the expanded table of contents here or read it below.
Get the classroom slides here or read them below.
In a new op-ed published in collaboration with Island Press, Elizabeth Sawin (author of Multisolving) highlights actions that enable us to both cope with crises and step into opportunities.
She writes:
Uncertain times are uniquely suited to an approach I call “multisolving” — acting in service of multiple goals with a single action. For example, multisolvers plant orchards that feed people and cool cities; they design solar panels that provide clean energy and habitat for native plants. Their work has shown me that some types of action are likely to be beneficial no matter what comes next.
Read the full piece on Medium HERE.