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 a 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.)
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.