Applying the Environment Shaping Methodology: Conceptual and Practical Challenges

Abstract

In 2007 the authors presented a view of planning to confront the challenges for post-conflict and developing environments called Environment Shaping. In 2008, under contract to the US Army Corp of Engineers, the authors and their colleagues set about advancing the Environment Shaping concept into a detailed but practicable systems-based methodology and process for ‘real world’ planners in a project called Stake-Holder Asset-Based Planning Environment, or SHAPE. This article describes research and development efforts that traversed three primary avenues, each concerning different aspects of creating a workable process. First, it documents how the need to define what is meant by ‘system’ in post-conflict and development contexts requires identifying key descriptive characteristics and behaviors of the place of interest. To do so it relies on concepts from wicked problems, systems-of-systems approaches, and the authors’ own social-ecological systems perspective. Secondly, the authors discovered that one consequence of defining the environment in systems terms is the need for tools in the form of a systems-based criterion by which to understand and craft solutions consistent with the earlier re-characterization. A resilience approach featuring a social-ecological systems perspective provides the basis for just such tools, and enables planners to harness the dynamism and change inherent in post-conflict and developing environments. Thirdly, adapting the original Environment Shaping systems concepts to a usable business process required delving deeply into each component of Environment Shaping, demanding answers to questions such as ‘what does participation mean?’ Lastly, the authors take a step back and contrast the Environment Shaping view of post-conflict and developing world challenges to contrast their approach with the status quo, and document practical lessons learned from their experiences applying systems planning approaches like Environment Shaping from within the US government itself.