Three entries in this encyclopedia serve as a trilogy that interconnects co-design, sustainable development, complex systems, and a whole-systems approach to sustainability. This entry helps build a whole-systems understanding of sustainability. Another entry of the trilogy – Complex Systems and Sustainable Development – addresses complex systems (using a complexity theory approach) and the relationship of complexity and sustainable development. The other entry of the trilogy – Co-Design Methods and Sustainable Development – focuses on the ongoing transformations in design methods and sustainable development.

Definition of Whole-Systems Approach

This entry introduces and defines a whole-systems approach to sustainability as viewed through the perspective of complex adaptive systems. Looking through this lens, a whole-systems approach appreciates the co-adapted relationships existing among the entities that constitute these systems, including both physical and behavioral co-adaptation. It appreciates the need to sustain the deep interconnectivity of these systems and their ability to co-adapt with broader system change. The whole-systems approach seeks to appreciate and collaborate in complex adaptive system functionality, sustainability, and regeneration.

Introduction

This presentation focuses on sustainability at three system levels. At the object-level, it focuses on entities and their co-adapted behaviors. At the systems-level, focus shifts to optimizing complex adaptive system performance through enhanced network conversation, life-cycle flows, and whole-systems functionality, regeneration, and resilience. At the meta-level, emphasis shifts again to sustaining the ability of complex systems to co-adapt at the intensity and rate of contextual change, to realign system with context, to build transformative resilience, and to provide the transformative innovations needed as feedstock for transformative change, complexification, and emergence to higher levels of biocapacity.

Whole-Systems Approach to Engaging Complex Adaptive Systems

From the complex adaptive systems perspective, a whole-systems approach calls for humanity to operate as an appreciative system (Jantsch 1975) that positively engages in the complex system it helps create. It calls for humanity to appreciatively engage systems in ways that help sustain continuous and non-interrupted functionality of the entirety of the complex adaptive system. This whole-systems approach appreciates how complex adaptive systems build greater complexity and regenerate higher levels of productivity through immense cycles of innovation and co-adaptation. It sees current challenges through a big history lens, with an emphasis on three transformations of complexity including the physically complex transformation of the universe, the profoundly greater transformation of a biologically complex planet earth, and the immense potential of the cognitively complex transformation of planet earth that is still in its immature stage (Swimme and Tucker 2011).

The whole-system approach appreciates how the recent history of human engagement in complex adaptive systems, empowered by advances in science and technology produced, from 1950 to 2000, what has been called the Great Acceleration of human knowledge, productivity, and well-being (Stokols 2018). The whole-systems view is also aware that the unsustainable behaviors during the period of the Great Acceleration also contributed to the subsequent Great Recession, with its compromised ability to sustain co-adapted complexity. There is a growing concern, also from the whole-systems perspective, that the rapid and massive growth in digital computing has expanded humanity’s ability to think logically, mathematically, and analytically without an equal expansion in the ability to think analogically (Callaos 2017). Looking through the whole-systems lens also reveals the crucial need at this pivotal time in human history to re-empower whole-systems network conversation to enable the massive amounts of co-adaptation needed to reactivate biological complexity and foster maturation of a cognitively complex planet earth.

Whole-Systems Approach to Sustainability

From a whole-systems perspective, and using systems language, a whole-systems approach to sustainability operates on three system levels: object, systems, and meta. At the object-level, a whole- systems approach focuses on entities including buildings, sites, built-sites, other objects of development, and their behaviors in relation to each other and the complex system of which they are a part. At the systems-level, a whole-systems approach promotes physically, biologically, and cognitively complex systems and network behaviors that are co-adapted and synergistic. At the meta-level, a whole-systems approach promotes the emergence of new systems with transformative resilience provided by objects, systems, and behaviors that promote co-adaptation with each other and changing conditions and collaborate with the complex adaptive system in transforming systems in ways that enable them to co-adapt at the rate and intensity of contextual systems change (see “Co-design Methods and Sustainable Development” entry of this Encyclopedia).

At this unique time in history, where humanity has developed the intelligence required to operate unsustainably outside metabolic processes at increasing rates and scales, but has not yet developed the intelligence needed to operate sustainably in ways that avoid the profound unintended consequences of unsustainable development, whole-systems are increasingly at risk of collapse. In addition, growing dis-alignment between whole-systems needs and human decisions has resulted in rapidly accelerating negative impacts. These impacts are currently motivating a shift to meta-level thinking with the robustness needed for humanity to realign whole-systems needs and human behavior, embrace the deep network conversations needed for co-adaptation, and implement the transformative innovations needed as feedstock for the emergence of transformative resilience and for complex system regeneration at higher levels of whole-systems complexity, productivity, and capacity to sustain life.

Implementing a Whole-Systems Approach to Sustainability

A whole-systems approach appreciates that complex adaptive systems operate, sustain functionality of the system and its interdependent parts, regenerate system capacity, and emerge to higher levels of complexity, productivity, and stability through deeply interconnected metabolic processes. This approach contends that to be sustainable, development must integrate into these metabolic processes (Lyle 1994; Fisk 1989). Recent and growing awareness of profound and irreversible complex system change due to the history of unsustainable development is now pushing humanity toward a whole-system, complexity-appreciative awareness that to be sustainable, development must sustain the immense regenerative cycles of innovation and co-adaptation that characterize complex systems (Swimme and Tucker 2011; Johnson 2001).

Complex adaptive systems operate through network flows of massive amounts of information that inform physical and behavioral coordination and co-adaptation among immense numbers of diverse participants to empower whole-systems functionality and complexification. To sustain these systems and their interdependent parts, intervention strategies must collaborate in renewing and enhancing this massive network conversation. In the current period of massive system change resulting from unsustainable development, a whole-systems approach is needed to help humanity quickly learn how to thrive, operate in today’s unsustainably provisioned system, and simultaneously learn how to reprovision planet earth to catalyze a future where humanity thrives by living appreciatively within complex adaptive systems (CMPBS 2009).

Mark Lawrence (2015) sees Anthropocene consciousness at a turning point, and challenges humanity to replace its immature Anthropocene 1.0 consciousness and resulting impacts with a more mature Anthropocene 2.0 consciousness, where humanity participates appreciatively in renewing and re-empowering complex adaptive systems. Several streams of knowledge are being developed within higher education and society that can increase humanity’s ability to make this shift. As an overview of ongoing activities to meet this challenge, this section looks at entities and activities that use whole-systems approaches to re-empower planet earth as a biologically complex system. It discusses how these entities and activities are reprovisioning the planet for the emergence of a mature cognitively complex system. It closes with a discussion of professional urban design project proposals, motivated by Anthropocene 2.0 consciousness, which are building an understanding of how cognitively complex development and learning-by-doing can reprovision urban neighborhoods and promote the identification of transformative innovations that can help transform planet earth into a cognitively complex adaptive system while empowering design professionals to bring the knowledge gained to their courses in higher education.

Whole-Systems Approach to Re-empowering Biologically Complex Systems

As a catalyst for re-empowering living systems and a biologically complex world, a whole-systems approach can reactivate the immense amount of genetically and epigenetically coordinated network information flow and co-adapted behaviors needed for ecological systems to regenerate their performance and whole-systems functionality. At the most basic life-sustaining level, this includes empowering complex adaptive systems to regenerate the deeply coordinated action needed to harvest energy from immense numbers of photons of sunlight, concentrate the low-level energy from these photons into higher-energy chemical bonds, and use this concentrated energy to transform what was originally a gray planet earth into the ecological complex, productive, and regenerative network of interconnected ecosystems that constitute the biologically complex planet earth that sustains the web of life including all of humanity.

Challenge Presented by Unsustainable Anthropocene 1.0 Provisioning

By the end of the twentieth century, the immature mind had developed the intelligence needed to operate outside complex system limits, but not the wisdom to appreciatively collaborate in the full regeneration of biologically complex systems. Anthropocene 1.0 awareness, grounded in the false belief that humanity could sustain itself without co-adapting in ways that regenerate positive eco-balance in the complex system, had become empowered by science and technology to unsustainably operate at scales and intensities that profoundly degrade the highly productive and interconnected networks of biologically complex adaptive systems. Unsustainable development had also loaded ecosystems with residuals that compromise the ability of these biologically complex adaptive systems to renew their full functionality and productivity and to co-adapt and complexify at levels needed to complete planet earth’s transformation into a cognitively complex adaptive system.

Two-Phase Strategy for Reactivating Biologically Complex Systems

In 2007, the Buckminster Fuller Institute created the Buckminster Fuller Challenge as an annual international design competition to provide awards for comprehensive solutions to crucial global problems (BFI 2018). By its focus on comprehensive solutions, this Challenge helps build appreciation of whole-systems approaches to understanding and intervening to today’s complex adaptive systems.

In its 2009 submission to the BFI challenge, the Center for Maximum Potential Building Systems (CMPBS) provided a two-pronged response. The first sought to optimize human engagement within today’s unsustainable Anthropocene 1.0 human support systems and the second to build knowledge needed to reprovision the complex adaptive system for a sustainable future. CMPBS used the term Proto-1 to refer to a systems-level focus on optimizing engagement in current unsustainably provisioned development; and Proto-2 to refer to the meta-level focus on reprovisioning for a sustainable future. At the Proto-1 level, CMPBS sought to optimize performance and enhance functionality of the whole-systems within current unsustainable provisioning and to build the knowledge system needed for Proto-2 level reprovisioning as meta-level change. In the BFI competition, CMPBS sought to re-empower coastal regions as biologically complex systems and as a global region case study to re-enable planet earth to fully function and regenerate as a biologically complex system (CMPBS 2009).

Reprovisioning for Emergence of a Mature Cognitively Complex System

At the meta-level, Motloch (2016) called for a big science project and research agenda for unlocking biologically complex adaptive systems so they can regenerate the higher levels of complexity and biocapacity needed for maturation of cognitive complexity. He lamented how residuals of Anthropocene 1.0 engagement have locked up biologically complex systems and compromised their ability to sustain whole-systems functionality, regeneration, complexification, and emergence of conditions conducive to transforming to cognitively complex systems. He called for unlocking complexity through massive innovation and co-adaptation cycles as feedforward-feedback loops that help build the wisdom needed to enable local networks to co-adapt the immense, deeply coordinated behaviors needed to re-empower biologically complex adaptive systems, metabolize interconnectivity, reactivate positive eco-balance, and unlock the arrested maturation of planet earth as a cognitively complex adaptive system (2016). Unlocking complexity requires massive growth of key knowledge system dimensions that are currently being empowered by diverse initiatives, including but not limited to the following.

Empowering Information, Collaboration, and Co-reliance

A whole-systems approach to re-empowering biologically complex systems and accelerating maturation of cognitively complex systems begins with undistorted information flow, deep collaboration, and transparency. As discussed by Rushkoff, this requires a meta-system reversal of the 800+ year trajectory of increasing waves of hierarchical messaging – including chartered monopolies, global corporations, platform monopolies, and digital corporations – that disempowered local capacity building networks (2016). It requires that humanity implement a meta-level shift to healthy local and community networks, economies, and metabolic flows and that economic systems be changed to unlock network conversation by addressing the needs of the full diversity of agents needed to empower whole-systems network conversation.

Building Healthy Networks

Various entities are engaged in activities that together can have potential to reprovision complex adaptive systems in a way that can re-empower biological complexity and promote cognitively complex systems. Together these initiatives are helping shift systems from ones provisioned to maximize human need satisfaction to ones that optimize satisfaction of the needs of all human and nonhuman entities. They are also helping build the cognitive-complexity knowledge system. This knowledge system includes the generation, application, management, and diffusion of knowledge about complex system concepts, dynamics, and complexity-centric co-design strategies (Motloch 2017) needed to effectively manage whole-systems metabolic processes (Fisk 1989), positively balance life-cycle resource flows (Fisk 2008), and implement built-sites and community regions as complexity-centric systems (Motloch 2017). As a mosaic, they are collectively building the knowledge needed for complexity-centric co-design and the deep, robust collaboration needed to reverse social fragmentation, address individual and collective needs, promote living in safe and just space (Raworth 2012), and deepen the interconnectivity among development and the physicality and behavior of complex adaptive systems (Motloch 2017).

One of the most comprehensive initiatives is UNESCO’s program since 1992 to build the Encyclopedia of Life Support Systems (EOLSS) as a global repository of regional e-books and other key components of the knowledge system that can sustain earth as a life-supporting system. Other entities are developing and applying qualitative models to use these and other data to conceptualize complex adaptive systems and subsystems with the analogical richness needed to provide insights into whole-systems complexity and using user-friendly software like the Kumu System, to visualize complex systems, model the relationships between people or organizations, and map large networks (Kumu 2018). Still others are developing and applying quantitative modeling software such as iThink systems dynamic modeling software to predict, quantify, implement, and evaluate aspects of system performance (ISEE 2018). Together, the EOLSS, qualitative modeling, and quantitative modeling are building components of the new knowledge system that can facilitate meta-level change of Anthropocene consciousness to its 2.0 ability to catalyze cognitively complex systems.

These initiatives are helping build the knowledge needed to reprovision development (Armistead 2011) as nested human support systems (Motloch 2016) and to envision transformative innovations needed to build transformative resilience (Wahl 2017). They are also building knowledge needed for this nested support system at all three system levels: the object-level of designing buildings, sites, and built-sites as appreciative systems; the systems-level of co-designing and co-managing development as sustainable systems; and the meta-level of transformative resilience and emergence of ability to change as rapidly and intensely as the complex adaptive system is changing.

Reprovisioning Local Metabolics

Emergence of Anthropocene 2.0 consciousness and maturation of cognitive complexity are enabled by interventions that promote metabolically complex, interdependent, and co-adapting local networks (CMPBS 2010; Motloch 2016). Complex systems can function better if human interventions support these systems as metabolic networks by realigning the location and scale of decisions with whole-systems feedback that encourages co-adaptation of decisions and the complex systems with which they are interdependent. Since coordinated flow and behavior happen most easily at the local level, sustainability is a global concept which is best achieved through human engagement integrated into locally coordinated networks. These local metabolic networks, in turn, are enhanced and empowered by decisions that appreciate the full spectrum of capitals (Armistead 2011) and internalize all costs so local socio-ecological systems can sustain their full functionality, build virtuous cycles, fully regenerate their biocapacity, and develop transformative resilience (Wahl 2017). An excellent example of ongoing maturation of planning and design methodologies informed by cognitive complexity that are helping build an Anthropocene 2.0 consciousness is the Center for Maximum Potential Building System’s proposal – Beyond the Petroleum Era: A Proto-Cooperative Means for Re-mineralizing Coastal Regions – to the Bucky Fuller Challenge (CMPBS 2009).

Co-building Whole-Systems Functionality

Complex adaptive systems build whole-systems functionality through interconnected behaviors of immense numbers of diverse entities co-adapted in ways that produce deeply coordinated flows of information and coordinated action. Anthropocene 2.0 consciousness seeks to deeply embed human actions in the immense numbers of cycles of innovation and co-adaptation through which complex adaptive systems operate as deeply interconnected networks. It shifts focus from linear to circular economies, from waste-producing production of things to networked production and net-zero production streams, from wealth-extraction hierarchies to wealth-building networks, and from decisions informed by bounded knowledge to decisions robustly and analogically informed by diverse knowledge systems: indigenous, vernacular, scientific, informal, community-based, and other. Anthropocene 2.0 consciousness also shifts the goal of engagement from humanity creating new systems to humanity and complex adaptive systems collaborating in co-designing deeply interconnected and co-adapted systems. Initiatives seeking to co-build whole-systems functionality will appreciate the catalytic role of the local scale and will therefore shift decision loci from external entities and global economies that mine local wealth to local entities and economies that regenerate local performance and build local wealth (Neighborhood Economies 2018).

Optimizing Intelligent Assets, Analogical Thinking, and Life-Cycle Flow

Diverse streams of knowledge are being developed to enhance the ability of people, as intelligent agents, to leverage the analogical power of the mind to think in ways that optimize whole-systems life-cycle flows. The streams are growing from initiatives such as Raworth’s call for humanity to live within safe and just space (2012), Sustainable Communities Institute strategies for Living in Systems™ (2015), Callaos’ focus on accelerating the analogical power of the mind to understand complexity (2017), and initiatives using digital platforms to organize complex system data, visualize system complexity, and make appreciative decisions about complex systems (Kumu 2018). These diverse initiatives are collectively building capacity to produce transformative innovations as feedstock for building transformative resilience during periods of rapid system change (Wahl 2017) and to implement complexity-centric co-design processes to catalyze complex system co-adaptation that builds transformative resilience (Motloch 2017).

The Ellen MacArthur Foundation (2018) is contributing to the shift from Anthropocene 1.0’s linear economy focus to an Anthropocene 2.0 consciousness of people as intellectual assets of circular economies. Glendenning and Armistead are similarly focused on helping humanity move from its Anthropocene 1.0 story of maximizing financial capital by mining all other capitals to co-management of the full spectrum of capitals and network flows including natural capital, energy capital, time capital, material capital, labor capital, human skill capital, financial capital, social network capital, knowledge capital, community capital, empathy capital, and wisdom capital (2018). Equally important are Wahl’s focus on the big questions humanity must address (2016), Motloch’s call for unlocking complexity as big science project and research agenda (2016), and Armistead’s focus on empowering wisdom leaders as wise men and visionaries (2011).

Re-empowering Living Systems

The emergence of an Anthropocene 2.0 consciousness and maturation of conscious complexity needed to re-empower living systems can be catalyzed by activities that help heal and re-empower the complex adaptive systems that have been compromised by consumption-driven Anthropocene 1.0 consciousness and lifestyles and the chemically enriched, fossil-fueled powered unsustainable systems implemented by Anthropocene 1.0 consciousness. This healing can be triggered by removing – from soil, air, and water systems – the fossil fuel residuals, accumulated chemicals contaminants, and other agents that have them currently locked up, thereby re-empowering living systems.

Optimizing the EWF Nexus

At the heart of maturation to an Anthropocene 2.0, consciousness is the shift in intention from maximizing human benefits to optimizing whole-systems functionality. As indication that this shift is in-progress is the growing recognition of the need to sustain, regenerate, and co-manage the energy-water-food nexus as interdependent set of essential life-supporting systems. Various entities are building the knowledge system needed to optimize this EWF Nexus. These include urban planning and design approaches like the Center for Maximum Potential Building System’s processes of Metabolic Planning and Design™ and Eco-balance Design™ (CMPBS 2010) and the Sustainable Community Institute’s four-stage learning-by-doing strategy for Living in Systems™ – training > seeding > building > living – that seeks to transform communities into complex systems where people thrive by optimizing and collaborating in the local energy-water-food nexus so the community and nexus thrive together as a cognitively complex system (SCI 2015). Grounded in complexity science, these and other transformative urban planning and design initiatives can help communities as whole-systems build the deep interconnections among diverse systems needed to sustain and regenerate complex systems, including the complex system needs to regenerate the EWF Nexus and its ability to help communities thrive now and into the future.

Implementing Cognitive-Complexity Knowledge-Building Projects

As stated in the “Complex Systems and Sustainable Development” entry (this Encyclopedia), humanity is shifting to its third development tradition. In the first, people lived within local systems, struggled with limited resources, and survived by co-adapting within these systems. In the second, technology and science empowered humanity to mine resources, externalize costs, and degrade systems at increasing rates, intensities, and scales. In the emerging third tradition, system breakdown is motivating humanity to become an appreciative system (Jantsch 1975) that co-adapts in ways that help build complexity, transformative resilience, and sustainability. Diverse streams of knowledge are analogically developing understanding to enhance human ability, as intelligent agents, to build the Anthropocene 2.0 consciousness needed to optimize whole-systems life-cycle metabolic flows. In one of these streams, the Sustainable Community Institute has been envisioning analogically robust urban planning and design project proposals, including one for a neighborhood in Baltimore and another in Indianapolis. These proposals seek to help people and their local communities thrive by integrating analogically robust knowledge systems designed to inform local system reprovisioning for sustainability and transformative resilience (2015). The projects each integrate complexity science knowledge and community-based knowledge about local complex systems to help people live appreciatively by managing their local EWF Nexus; by harvesting from, using and regenerating the EWF Nexus; by integrating ecological, infrastructural, and built-environment supports; by interconnecting previously disconnected decisions; by building life and job skills; and by appreciatively managing the local EWF Nexus.

The first project is a prototype urban farmstead proposed for the Sandtown-Winchester neighborhood in West Baltimore – where the profound need for transformational change resurfaced following the death of Freddie Gray (Reid 2015). The project is part of the ministry of Martha’s Place, a center for peace and justice, with a recovery program for women overcoming substance abuse and homelessness. At Martha’s Place, people help women who are overcoming drug addiction and homelessness maintain sobriety, develop vital life skills, enhance nutritional intake, develop healthy diets, and learn food production, preparation, and value-adding skills. The prototype urban farmstead project built on previous urban agricultural activities by Martha’s Place, to develop an urban homestead on property managed by the center. The project also sought to address local water and food problems and catalyze transitional housing and life skills. It included an urban agriculture initiative to provide organic food and help Martha’s Place become more self-sufficient. It also proposed launching micro-businesses as value-adding activities (food service, processing, and products) and food distribution activities (food carts and food trucks). The urban farmstead project, proposed as a catalyst for self-sufficiency and community thriving, included skill development and training for the women in recovery, with skill-building and knowledge in the areas needed to build the local neighborhood economy. The proposed project received a first place award in the 52nd International Making Cities Livable conference and the People’s Choice Award in the Baltimore Growing Green Initiative design competition sponsored by the City of Baltimore, US Environmental Protection agency, and Chesapeake Bay Trust (Truex 2015).

The second project included community visioning to provide analogically informed insight around a food hub proposal for a challenged Indianapolis urban neighborhood with an aging population, employment challenges, and health issues. A Quality of Life Plan had recommended development of a food hub as a community and economic redevelopment catalyst. In this project, the Sustainable Communities Institute partnered with the engineering firm designing the site redevelopment project and the existing steering committee to develop the vision for the food hub. In community visioning sessions, participants from diverse community and societal sectors self-identified their biases by declaring the relative value they placed on job creation, healthy food, and a stronger community. Each team of similar biases, with members from diverse community sectors, then engaged in an interactive board game designed to stimulate network conversation among different sector-framed views. Each team placed game pieces over tabletop community maps while engaging in deep conversations to dialectically decide how best to allocate land. Each team allocated land to diverse components of a food hub, local food system, and community development. Components of the food system included land for growing food, distribution, job training, education, value-adding, and food consumption, as well as employment centers, new housing, start-up businesses, community space, and education and wellness services. After making its land allocations, each team received a scorecard and scored its solution. Then the collection of solutions, each generated by visioning through a unique set of lenses, were used to stimulate network conversation among all teams, each of which had make its own land allocations looking through its unique set of lenses. This analogically rich network conversation provided insight for robust design proposals for the project.

The game created for this community-based visioning was later evolved by Sustainable Communities Institute into a learning tool where teams in academic and nonacademic contexts can engage in four cycles of play. In each cycle, teams allocate lands based on a specific economic paradigm and then are given a score sheet which they use to score their solutions. In the first cycle, teams allocate land based on market value and perceived first cost/benefit of solutions. In the second cycle of play, they allocate lands based on market considerations adjusted to optimize the energy-water-food nexus. In the third cycle, teams allocate land based on market considerations, optimization of EWF nexus, and provision of green infrastructure as secondary supports that collaborate with ecological systems as primary supports. In the fourth cycle, teams allocate land based on market considerations, optimizing the EWF nexus, green infrastructure as secondary supports and built environments as tertiary supports that collaborate with ecological systems as primary supports. This evolved game has been used by the designers as a sustainable development learning tool in a range of academic contexts (master’s degree programs, undergraduate programs, high school, etc.) and global contexts (US and international).

Sustainability Through a Whole-Systems Approach

In summary, a whole-systems approach to sustainability focuses on complex adaptive systems, how they build complexity and transformative resilience, how the history of unsustainable economic and community development has arrested co-adapted complexity, and how development can unlock complexity, reactivate biologically complex system, and reprovision for emergence of conscious complexity. This whole-systems approach operates at all three systems-levels: the object-level of entities and their co-adapted behaviors; the systems-level of optimizing complex adaptive system performance through network conversation, life-cycle flows, and systems functionality, regeneration, and resilience; and the meta-level of transformative innovations as feedstock for co-adapting with rapidly changing complex systems, building transformative resilience, and facilitating transformative system change, complexification, and higher levels of biocapacity.

The whole-systems approach appreciates that sustainable development must operate within current conditions while simultaneously reprovisioning for a sustainable future. It must also have the transformative resilience to survive the inevitable changes that are the deepest metabolic dynamic of complex adaptive systems.

The whole-systems approach appreciates the profound and rapid ongoing change in complex systems due to the history of Anthropocene 1.0 unsustainable development. It also appreciates that when complex systems are changing rapidly, as they are now and in the next few decades, development and support systems must be provisioned to enhance transformative resilience. Since complex adaptive systems build resilience through innovation/co-adaptation cycles, in these times of profound change, a whole-systems approach sees transformative innovations essential for providing feedstocks to build transformative resilience. It sees this feedstock fueling the boundary-expanding robustness needed to reprovision development in ways that help people and the complex systems of which they are part sustain, enhance metabolic capability, regenerate their health and productivity, build new potential, and thrive into the future. It also sees complexity-centric co-design processes as catalysts for transformative change to a sustainable future.

Cross-References