Be fore start ing to model, it is cru cial to un der stand the con text, the cause of the prob lem, and the ob sta cles to solv ing the prob lem. This re quires en gag ing with all stake hold ers, from gov ern ment and com pa nies to civil so ci ety and acad e mia. Speak ing to these groups re veals what they are con cerned about, as well as who the project or pol icy might aff ect, why, and how. Col lect ing this in for ma tion de ter mines the bound aries of the model: the in di ca tors to in- clude and ex clude.
Tak ing an ex am ple of an ac tual process il lus trates the use ful ness of this ap proach. In 2013, the gov ern ments of Thai land and Myan mar were plan ning to build a road be tween Bangkok (Thai land) and the coastal city of Dawei (Myan mar). The gov ern ments hoped that it would help peo ple and busi nesses de liver their goods faster and at lower costs to new mar kets across south east Asia, while the road con struc tion work it self would cre ate jobs.
The World Wildlife Fund (WWF) was brought in to eval u ate the road project. WWF first or ga nized meet ings to bring gov ern ment, con struc tion com pa nies, the busi ness com mu nity, aff ected com mu ni ties and other civil so ci ety or ga ni za tions to gether to share in for ma tion about ex pected ben e fits, un ex pected syn er gies and the costs that might emerge. Thirty par- tic i pants were in volved, rep re sent ing local ac tors with a stake in the road: towns peo ple, farm ers, re searchers with in ter est in land pro duc tiv ity, and landown ers con cerned about the value of land (Bassi et al., 2016). The goal was to have as many voices as pos si ble, to iden tify any con flict ing pri or i ties and find shared ap proaches to mit i gate such con flicts.
4.1
To sup port this en gage ment with stake hold ers, WWF used a sys tem map (also re ferred to as a Causal Loop Di a gram, CLD). A sys tem map is a way to ex plore and graph i cally rep re sent the in ter con nec tions be tween the key in di ca tors of a sys tem, in this case a sys tem of groups that might be aff ected by the road project (Probst and Bassi, 2014). A sys tem map is a form of qual i ta tive mod el ling. The stake hold ers first build the map through their ideas and opin- ions gath ered at meet ings. This then de fines the bound aries of the analy sis, and helps the stake hold ers bet ter un der stand how the sys tem re sponds to the im ple men ta tion of a project or pol icy.
WWF drew a sys tem map (see Fig ure below) based on the meet ings with stake hold ers. Par- tic i pants said that the road (in or ange) was to be im ple mented for two rea sons: jobs and ac- cess to mar kets. Par tic i pants also thought that build ing the road would cre ate jobs and there- fore in crease the pop u la tion in the area. This in turn would in crease de mand for food, and thereby in crease agri cul tural pro duc tion. The par tic i pants also iden ti fied that the in creased ac cess to mar kets would en cour age local landown ers to in vest and buy more land, with the prospect of higher rev enues, in clud ing from ex ports.
Figure 7 — System map of the Dawei Road construction outcomes
How ever, peo ple also iden ti fied costs from the road project. The farm ers em pha sized the im por tance of in creas ing pro duc tiv ity to sup ply the new de mand, but this would ne ces si tate in creas ing chem i cal fer til iz ers and pes ti cides. Civil so ci ety said that to ex pand the areas of land de voted to farm ing would mean cut ting down forests, which would threaten tigers and other en dan gered species. This would also lead to a re duc tion in avail able water and would
erode soil qual ity, ex ac er bated by the use of chem i cal fer til iz ers and pes ti cides. By map ping these fac tors, the WWF team saw new dy nam ics in the sys tem: fac tors that might un der- mine the po ten tial eco nomic ben e fits of the road. For ex am ple, the re duced water sup ply could limit the ex pan sion of agri cul tural pro duc tion (es pe cially ir ri gated land) and the di- min ished soil qual ity would even tu ally re duce farm ing yields. This led to a new dis cus sion about what com ple men tary in ter ven tion op tions could be iden ti fied to main tain the pos i tive out comes of road con struc tion while at the same time avoid ing its side- effects (see vari ables high lighted in green) (Bassi and Gal lagher, 2013).
By map ping these fac tors and the re la tion ships be tween them, the sys tem map ex er cise clar i- fied the in di ca tors to in clude a quan ti ta tive as sess ment (road con struc tion, em ploy ment, agri cul ture land, de for esta tion, waste avail abil ity and soil qual ity) as well as op tions for al ter- na tive sce nar ios (e.g. in vest ments in water effi ciency, sup port in the adop tion of sus tain able agri cul ture prac tices and re for esta tion). From here, the quan ti ta tive mod el ling could begin.