Interpreting wicked problems

By Matthias Rhein
Research Director, Seventythree Foundation

One issue that arises frequently in discussions with our partner organisations in eastern Indonesia is how debt bondage is a widespread phenomenon in their communities. Statistics from Bank Indonesia suggest that this problem is most pronounced in fishing communities, where many small-scale fishers rely on credit from local traders and boat owners to meet their daily needs, pay for the education of their children, or cope with shocks. This often involves debt bondage arrangements that can entrap them in poverty for a lifetime, or even generations.

Generally speaking, this situation is the result of a bundle of wider social, ecological and economic developments that are inextricably linked, which makes the situation complex. Acting together they can lock fisher communities and fisheries into a downward spiral where poverty, ecological degradation, and economic decline mutually reinforce each other, which makes the situation complicated. In the academic literature, a situation like this is often referred to as a wicked problem, that is, a problem with high levels of complexity and non-linear dynamics that displays a strong resistance to resolutions by top-down policy interventions or technical-financial fixes.

When confronted with a wicked problem, it can be helpful to suspend our useful habit of dividing big problems into smaller ones, and then solving them one at a time, for a little while, and, instead, shift our attention to the bigger picture. Since this picture tends to be multi-facetted, we have to look at it from different angles. This is most successfully done when people with different life experiences and views are involved in the process. The objective is not only to identify the factors that contribute to the problem, but also to figure out how they interconnect and interact so as to create the situation that confronts us. The intention of this exercise is to gain a better understanding of the underlying causality and dynamics of the situation, including its likely responses to interventions.

Figure: A sketch of the inherent structure of a social-ecological debt trap

The diagram above offers my illustration of the situation. It is simple and limited to my own understanding, but sufficient for our purpose. This is not about the model itself, but about the mindset with which we perceive and think about wicked problems. If you like mental gymnastics, then I suggest using this model to think through the short and long term impacts of fuel subsidies for local fishers, which is one of the most popular policy responses to the described situation. Would it resolve the dilemma?

The model demonstrates how different factors interconnect and interact through a cascade of feedback loops to create a situation where overfishing and indebtedness mutually reinforce each other. Obstacles to the integration and diversification of local economies in remote areas prevent fishers from switching livelihoods, thereby further reinforcing the debt trap. Communities seem to be particularly vulnerable to this form of entrapment during the transition from a subsistence-based to a cash-based economy. In remote rural and coastal areas this transition can move so slowly that it takes on the appearance of a permanent condition. At the same time, investors, traders, seafood companies, and boat owners compete to maximise their turnovers and profits. They typically operate through supply chains that are structured to minimise the economic benefits for fishers, and to maximise the gains of exporters. 

Note that our conventional concept of a straightforward relationship between cause and effect breaks down in complex situations, where this relationship becomes more circular. This makes it more difficult to identify and understand it, especially when cause and effect are widely distributed across time, space and/or stakeholder groups. The resulting feedback dynamics often lead to the degradation of coastal fisheries and ecosystems, the decline of the fishing industry, and misery for local communities, although nobody desires these outcomes. Unrestrained market forces, as well as flawed policies and regulations, often accelerate these developments. Together they can create a situation that offers no real incentives for any of the participating groups to change their behaviour, or invest in the longer-term health and productivity of fisheries and coastal ecosystems, let alone in the well-being of local communities. 

Due to the inherent complexity of this situation, none of the groups involved can resolve this problem through its own efforts. Nor can one resolve the dilemma by merely treating its symptoms. Case studies suggest that even well-designed interventions to tackle debt bondage, such as the provision of micro-credit and social insurance for fisher households, or legislation prohibiting this practice, have found it difficult to penetrate the entrenched informal social networks, let alone resolve this dilemma. Broader policy interventions such as the Indonesian government's village fund initiative (Dana Desa) have often deepened the existing imbalances between local elites and local communities. Moreover, this initiative has led local governments to increasingly focus on, and respond to, the politics at the centre, while weakening their accountability to local communities. This has created yet another feedback loop that is changing the political dynamics between the centre and the periphery, while creating new layers of complexity and complication for populations of remote rural and coastal areas .

What all of this demonstrates is that without an understanding of the inherent causalities, dynamics and histories of complex and complicated situations, today’s solutions often turn into tomorrow’s problems. And since we are operating within this environment, this conclusion also applies to us. There is a certain logic to the persistent failure to deal with such situations, and it can be understood and improved upon. 

One step in this direction is to erase the term side-effect from our system thinking vocabulary. This is merely a mental construct that we have invented to obscure our own ignorance and limitations, along with our responsibility for the outcomes of our actions and decisions. According to psychological studies, we like to do that to preserve our sense of competence and identity. But when in system thinking mode, there appear to be only two types of effects, those that we understood, predicted and prepared for, and those that we did not see coming until they hit us. 

On a side note, this finding also relates to an important and widely confused distinction between a plan and a strategy. A plan shows you how to achieve something through a linear sequence of activities, along with the inputs and outputs that you will need at each step to get you there. A strategy is more akin to playing chess. It informs you about the moves to make under constantly changing circumstances, including shifts in the behaviour of other players or stakeholders. When facing wicked problems, one needs a sound strategy. Tools like the above model can be used for thinking through strategies and developing stratagems by constructing what-if scenarios.

Being able to identify and understand the inherent complexity and dynamics of the situations that confront us can be useful abilities in our field of work. This includes the ability to look at situations from different and contradicting perspectives while suspending judgement. If you are working in groups, it also includes the ability to facilitate a process that integrates different perspectives into a shared understanding of the situation to form a basis for collective action. This is reflected in your own experience about empathy being a critical ingredient to making methods such as Training for Transformation work in practice. Empathy implies that one can see the world through the eyes of others. 

In part two of this article I will explore how we can reconcile our own perspectives with those of the people on the ground, in order to disentangle wicked problems.