Safeguarding the Elephant’s Child: From what and why to how, where, when and who of sustainability

In Kipling’s Just So story ‘The Elephant’s Child’, he invokes:

“Six honest serving-men
(They taught me all I knew);
Their names are What and Why and When
And How and Where and Who.”

This has given rise to the ‘Kipling Method for Effective Analysis’ with the acronym 5W1H. 

As we strive to make progress towards more sustainable ways of living, the Kipling Method can be a useful way to think about the complex and wicked issues we face. Indeed, in the context of sustainability, the method was used in the analysis phase of an Italian case study exploring the components and implementation of smart energy in cities.

There is already a surfeit of thought on ‘why’ and ‘what’, and it’s not worth repeating beyond saying:

Why? Because there is no Planet B; there is no business on a dead planet; we’re in a polycrisis with volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous (VUCA) and brittle, anxious, non-linear, and incomprehensible (BANI) conditions (Cascio, 2020), and because futures for collective flourishing demand it.

What? We must change, transition, and transform social, economic, and ecological systems; stabilising then reducing greenhouse gas concentrations; adapting to baked-in climate change, protecting ecosystems; creating a circular economy; tackling inequality, and more - as set out in the UN’s 17 Sustainable Development Goals and 169 targets.

These arguments are well known and have been subject to much discussion. And multiple international scientific assessments from IPCC, IPBES, and UNEP GEO have made clear the position: we know that we must change, why we must change, and what needs to change.

Open questions: How, where, when, and who?

Answers to the other aspects of 5W1H are perhaps less well-known:

• How? While we know well what needs to change, we know much less about what we need to do to make the change happen – i.e. how to make the necessary changes. Might we use some or all of the following in come combination:  technology, governance, markets, or shifts in social values and ways of living? And how will we decide which course(s) of action to take, taking account of social, economic and political realities?
• Where? Are the changes required just in the Global North, within other regions, or across the globe? At what scales, and how do these scales interact? How might action in one place affect another through the notion of ‘telecoupling’.  Liu (2013) defined this as “socioeconomic and environmental interactions between multiple coupled human and natural systems over distances” and found that an increase in China's forest cover was affected by local, regional and global trade in food and forest products, raising issues such as food security, water security, human well-being and environmental sustainability across these scales.
• When? Over what timescales, and how fast might we make the changes? How might the rhythms and pace of natural and social processes affect the pace of change? And how might actions in the present affect the futures that might emerge?
• Who? Which groups in society need to make the changes, and should everyone make the same changes? Who might be the winners and who might be the losers in the processes of change? Who should be included in these decisions? How do we take account of the needs of those who cannot participate, such as future generations and non-human species?

Considering the 5W1H questions in relation to sustainability leaves us with another ‘What?’, and this relates to the outcomes and implications of the changes we might put in place. As we seek to transform systems, pursuing globally equitable and just transformations over urgent but pragmatic timescales, we must continue to ask what might we transform into?

Looking ahead: What awaits the Elephant’s Child?

How can we think about the futures we might create?

Firstly, the future is not predetermined nor is it predictable to a high degree of reliability. The past is rarely a good guide to the future. But some things are more determined than others. We are committed to climate change, that’s clear, but how, where and when the effects of climate change emerge, and the implications for different human and non-human groups, is much less clear.

Also, and crucially, the future is plural – there is no single future, many futures could emerge – and the future doesn’t have an end-point. The future is a space of unfolding possibilities; we make the future everyday through all our decisions and actions: the notion of ‘generative futures’. As the Spanish poet Antonio Machado put it: “Traveller, there is no path; we make the path by walking”.

Yet we know that we face profound complexity and uncertainty as we make the journey. We can ‘navigate the swamp’, equipped with the aides of anticipation and foresight, systemic thinking and practice, and clarity of values, principles and ethics. It is insufficient to ask how things are now, and how they ought to be. We must also ask how they might be in a range of possible futures.

To help progress towards multiple positive futures of collective flourishing, we need capabilities spanning the 5W1H to enable ‘systemic foresight’, anticipating and feeling our way ahead, joining together in collective learning, and influencing transformations of social, technological, economic and ecological systems.

For the futures we create, Safeguarding the Elephant’s Child means we must employ 5W1H to think about not just why we need to change course and what we need to change, but – crucially – how we make the changes, paying close attention to the questions of where and when changes happen and who is involved and excluded in making these choices. We have to keep doing this – this is not a puzzle for which there is a single one-off solution, and problem-solving mindsets will not be sufficient. This is an evolving situation, an unfolding canvas on which to work collectively to continually paint the picture of thriving futures.

What next?

As the global professional body for environmental scientists, the IES is committed to supporting this work, mobilising its unique combinations of expertise, experience and ways of working.

The IES Policy Programme is addressing the issues presented here and readers are invited to collaborate with the IES, to forge collaborations, alliances, coalitions and partnerships as we work for the futures we need.

For further details, or to explore opportunities, please contact:

• Gary Kass, Chair of the IES External Policy Advisory Committee, Visiting Professor, Imperial College and Honorary Professor University of Nottingham. (g.kass@imperial.ac.uk; gary.kass@nottingham.ac.uk) 
• Joseph Lewis, IES Head of Policy (joseph@the-ies.org).

Header image credit: © May Chanikran | AdobeStock