(Illustration courtesy of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation)
To achieve climate justice, biodiversity, and health equity goals, most societies need rapid change. From equitable policies and low-carbon infrastructure to values like collaboration and fairness, we need deep shifts, and we need them soon. As many examples in this series have shown, facilitating the flow of ideas back and forth across national borders is one way to accelerate change.
Crossing other types of borders can accelerate change too.
Borders between issue areas get in the way of solutions. Take the way that energy and health are often treated as separate issues. They are typically studied by different researchers, and policy choices on energy and health are usually made in isolation from each other. According to the World Health Organization (WHO), the health systems’ savings from phasing out fossil fuels would more than offset the costs of the transition to clean energy. Yet, in a 2021 survey, WHO found that only 1 in 5 countries bring health considerations into climate and energy policy.
Borders between jurisdictions also work against solutions. Water challenges in cities—from flooding to scarcity to pollution—can be reduced by upstream wetlands. But a 2018 study of the world’s largest cities found that only 14 percent had been able to invest in upstream watershed services. Even when the most cost-effective solution is to use downstream funding sources to restore and protect upstream wetlands, it is not easy to cross the jurisdictional barriers between two parts of the same watershed.
Within organizations, borders can stand in the way of solving problems too. The health-care sector is responsible for 8.5 percent of greenhouse gas emissions in the United States. Within a hospital system, medical providers are responsible for the delivery of care, while other departments steward the physical plant, and administrative departments are responsible for the bottom line. Investments toward climate goals might pay off financially in the long-term but usually require upfront investments that can challenge health systems with narrow operating margins. And clinicians’ expertise in health isn’t always accompanied by climate change expertise.
National borders, issue areas, jurisdictions, or departments all represent what systems analysts call system boundaries. System boundaries divide the big, messy, interconnected world into smaller subsystems. This is useful, even necessary. Our minds and our collective governance systems would bog down if we had to always consider all the connections of everything to everything else.
But dividing systems into subsystems can sometimes break a natural synergy. This can happen when costs are borne in one subsystem and benefits accrue in another. For instance, a decarbonizing country will spend money in its energy and transportation sectors and save money in its health system. Decarbonization could be a win for the whole, but it might be experienced as a burden for particular subsystems.
Donella Meadows, the early systems modeler, wrote that system boundaries are “lines in the mind, not in the world.” And that is actually good news.
If departments, jurisdictions, and disciplines are just ideas, then there is nothing immovable about them. We can make these borders more permeable and conduct partnerships across them. We can even redraw them to include more of what matters in a single project or investment. That’s the premise of multisolving—using one investment of time or effort to steer toward several goals at once.
Multisolving Successes
Often the best way to explain multisolving is to share examples of it:
Warm Up New Zealand upgraded the energy efficiency of residential buildings and provided jobs in the building sector after a financial downturn. The project resulted in better health for residents, as well. That translated into health systems savings. Taken together, a 2011 study estimated that across all these benefits, the project saved $3.90 for every $1 invested.
Another example is the Healthy Meals for Patients and Environment project at the Tzu-Chi Dialysis Center in Penang, Malaysia, which provides free dialysis treatment for patients in need. The project multisolves for goals in patient care, community care, and environmental care. The hospital operates a recycling center that employs patients, allowing them to contribute to society and live independent lives. And to reduce waste and greenhouse gas emissions, the hospital only serves vegetarian meals and solely uses recyclable containers.
Multisolving seems possible everywhere and like an obvious choice. Yet, it is very much the exception, not the rule. When time and money are short, why not use each hour and each dollar in ways that can meet multiple goals at once? Why is multisolving still so rare when it has the power to boost progress on some of the most urgent issues we face?
Unfamiliarity stands in the way, as does an oft-unexamined assumption that making issues smaller makes them easier to address. We often hear the sentiment, “I already work on poverty (or climate or health disparities, etc.) and that’s hard enough. Why should I add biodiversity or pollution to the mix?” We hope the answer to that is obvious: When one action can solve several problems, bundling goals together means you have bigger budgets and constituencies with which to make change.
Borders create some of the biggest obstacles to multisolving. Multisolving is hard when money is allocated in siloed budgetary categories; or when experts use discipline-specific jargon, conduct research in different departments, and publish in different journals. It’s hard when community groups don’t have access to elected officials, or elected officials don’t have approved channels to share resources with communities.
With all these obstacles in the way, multisolving successes are a testament to the dedicated people making it happen.
We recently completed a set of interviews with multisolvers. We spoke with nine leaders, six working in the United States, and three working in other countries. Their goals include improvements in health, racial equity, economic well-being, biodiversity, climate protection, transportation, and community well-being. They work at the local to national level and in government, academia, NGOs, businesses, and philanthropy.
Though the context of their work is very different, common themes about multisolving emerged in our conversations (Figure 1). In discussing how leaders can tap the power of multisolving, we’ll use illustrative examples from three of the multisolvers: Lakshmi Charli-Joseph, PhD, works at the Laboratorio Nacional de Ciencias de la Sostenibilidad in Mexico. She spoke with us about the Transformation Laboratory (T-Lab) project, which brought stakeholders together on behalf of a wetland threatened by urbanization. Kady Cowan is a Canada-based consultant. Over her career, she’s worked on a range of multisolving projects at the intersection of climate, energy, and health care. Mary Pickering is senior advisor at Low Carbon Cities Canada (LC3). LC3’s work helps city regions across Canada meet climate goals with a multisolving approach.
(Figure 1 courtesy of Multisolving Institute)
Here’s what we learned:
Multisolving starts by creating conditions that allow people to cross borders. Trust building, deep listening, and partnership building are essential to multisolving. LC3 invested in partnership skills by working with the Partnership Brokers Association, a professional body for those working to foster collaboration. Patience is a key ingredient too. The T-Lab project brought farmers, NGO practitioners, academics, artists, and residents of informal settlements together at least a dozen times over the course of three years for workshops and “walkshops,” including a hike to the crater of an inactive volcano to look down upon the wetland whose health was at the center of their project. Charli-Joseph explained:
We started going up, which was very difficult because it was very slippery. So, we were laughing and making fun of each other and then completely dirty. And on the top of the volcano we saw the wetland. Some participants shared profound impressions of seeing the wetland from outside. Like, “Oh, wow! Look! It looks bigger than I thought, the wetland is still ‘alive’,” and “that water body is connected with that other one.” They were seeing the system through each other’s eyes.
New connections and new ways of thinking emerge with the crossing of borders. In multisolving projects, trust building, listening, and learning create shifts in thinking and framing. That can look like shifts in attitudes. Participants in the T-Lab shifted from blaming others for the plight of the wetlands to expressing a sense of agency and responsibility.
When people can see the whole system, they can find novel solutions. Cowan shared a health system example of this. Clinicians and facilities managers initially felt that their individual goals around a therapeutic pool were incompatible. The facilities team wanted to reduce energy by turning off the heater when not in use. The clinicians felt strongly that the pool should consistently be available at the proper temperature. They met both goals with an insulating cover.
When we cross borders, new relationships form and some relationships transform from adversarial to supportive. In the wetlands project, farmers and other residents came to support one another’s goals and struggles. During the LC3 work, developers and climate advocates came to deeper trust and understanding.
Visible results emerge from the new connections and capacities. Stronger relationships and new ways of thinking and framing problems enable visible changes. In LC3’s work, policies to lower carbon footprints in the building sector emerged with the support of both climate advocates and developers. Breaking down silos in Cowan’s work with health systems created spaces for executives, clinicians, and facilities staff to speak and listen to each other on critical service and operational issues. This translated into lower emissions and reduced maintenance costs, without negative impacts on patient care. Furthermore, those relationships stayed in place and could be activated when the next issue emerged that needed a shared response.
Not all multisolving results are as concrete as policy or technology change, and not all of them are predictable. The T-Lab project offers a good example. After an earthquake near Mexico City, the relationships developed during the wetlands project found new importance and meaning as people helped each other navigate the recovery process. In a world likely to experience increasing destabilization due to climate change, the networks that emerge in multisolving can be a source of resilience.
Future dividends are expected as a changed system persists. The new thinking and new connections of multisolving projects tend to drive ongoing change even after formal projects conclude. That might be as simple as new practices—like turning off equipment when not in use—that generate benefits year after year. But it can be more complicated and less predictable too. A new nonprofit meant to foster citizen science from decolonial and transdisciplinary approaches to research was inspired by the T-Lab project, though it wasn’t on anyone’s mind at the beginning. Lessons learned in Toronto are now being built upon in the LC3 project by linking up seven Canadian cities into a learning community to accelerate the achievement of climate goals by including jobs, health, and other benefits in the mix.
Realizing the Potential of Multisolving
Modest investment in crossing borders can yield all sorts of dividends. Projects experience less pushback when they have cross-sectoral support. When advocates for multiple goals are incorporated early on, projects pay back with a wider suite of benefits. And policy change can be more durable when support for it comes from many sectors.
But multisolvers tell us that fundraising for crossing borders can be a struggle. Funders want the “visible results” shown above in Figure 1, but they don’t always see crossing borders as an essential part of achieving those results.
We’d encourage funders to widen their view. Set ambitious goals and make sure there is ample support for listening, learning, connecting, and relationship-building in pursuit of them.
For their part, we’d invite practitioners who have border crossing as part of their strategy to be overt about this aspect of their work. It is easy to devalue and underemphasize connection-building. After all, it can be subtle and not always visible. But in our fragmented world, crossing borders doesn’t only make systems more whole, it helps them become more just, healthier, and sustainable too.
Support SSIR’s coverage of cross-sector solutions to global challenges.
Help us further the reach of innovative ideas. Donate today.
Read more stories by Elizabeth R. Sawin, Kelsi Eccles, Susanne Moser & Tina A. Smith.