This study explores the application of systemic design approaches used in a complex commercial context to create positive and sustainable change. The case study was a business case on sustainable parenthood, in which the company tried to balance its ambitions for environmental sustainability with the need to survive in a highly competitive market. In close collaboration with the internal business company stakeholders, a causal loop diagram was created. The diagram mapped relations between global relevant trends for emerging young adults within the DACH market, sustainability, and parenting as a business. Leverage points for systemic change were identified which were explored through in-depth user interviews (n=10). This process eventually identified ten systemic insights, translated into insight cards to facilitate business actions.Based on these combined approaches, the MINT framework (Mapping Interventions and Narratives for Transformation) was developed, with a strong emphasis on co-creation, iteration, translation, and communication of systemic interventions. However, while the internal business stakeholders and company representatives appreciated the bird’s eye view that systemic design gave them, they were challenged by the methods’ abstract language and translation of systemic insights into concrete action. To address this, the developed framework utilized systemic design artefacts such as a storytelling map and user-centred insight cards to facilitate a more comprehensible systemic design approach.Overall, this study provides a first attempt at creating an actionable systemic design framework that can be used in commercial settings to promote positive systemic change. Future research will require further validation.
Climate change is undermining the importance and sustainability of cooperatives as important organizations in small holder agriculture in developing countries. To adapt, cooperatives could apply carbon farming practices to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and enhance their business by increasing yields, economic returns and enhancing ecosystem services. This study aimed to identify carbon farming practices from literature and investigate the rate of application within cooperatives in Uganda. We reviewed scholarly literature and assed them based on their economic and ecological effects and trade-offs. Field research was done by through an online survey with smallholder farmers in 28 cooperatives across 19 districts in Uganda. We identified 11 and categorized them under three farming systems: organic farming, conservation farming and integrated farming. From the field survey we found that compost is the most applied CFP (54%), crop rotations (32%) and intercropping (50%) across the three categorizations. Dilemmas about right organic amendment quantities, consistent supplies and competing claims of residues for e.g. biochar production, types of inter crops need to be solved in order to further advance the application of CFPs amongst crop cooperatives in Uganda.
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