Systems thinking is the ability to describe and/ or visualize a part of a complex reality, express that part of reality as a model, understand the model as a system, use the model to explain the behaviour of the system, anticipate the behaviour of the system, and evaluate its impacts on sustainable development, identify potential points of, and types of interventions, generate options to act, assess their impacts in the frame of sustainable development, and decide whether further actions are necessary or not.
What is the aim?
To enable learners to:
- recognize that it may be possible to anticipate potential futures of the jeans production using a systems model, and
- use systems models to make projections about the Jeans production.
Activities, tasks, and suggested learning methods
- Ask the learners to form pairs. Then, the class should use Internet Researchto answer the following questions:
- How much water do we use to take a 10-minute shower?
- How much water is needed to produce a pair of jeans?
- How many showers can we take with the amount of water used to produce a single pair of jeans (considering a shower of 10 minutes)
- How many jeans are produced every year?
- Ask the learners to think about the future of cotton and jeans production. What in their view would be the worst- and the best-case scenarios in the future?
- Use the method Scenario Analysisto engage learners in predicting the future behaviour of the system.
The question for the scenario analysis is “How much water will be needed to produce the estimated number of jeans in a year under two different scenarios?”
- Scenario 1 – Calculate the amount of water used and the number of jeans produced per year if we increase the production by 50%
- Scenario 2 – Calculate the amount of water used and the number of jeans produced per year if we decrease the production by 50%
Questions to think about:
- How much freshwater is available in the country in a year?
- Is the amount of fresh water available in the country adequate for jeans production? Consider jeans production under the two scenarios of water availability.
- Ask the learners to continue the groups from Step 4 to review the graphs they drew representing the behaviour with regard to the selected elements (e.g. fertilizer, income, soil quality, cotton production etc). They should draw a graph representing their projection.
Suggested information resources for this step
Life cycle of a jeans
https://www.levistrauss.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/03/Full-LCA-Results-Deck-FINAL.pdf
Life Cycle of a Denim Jeans
RiverBlue
For these different activities, learners may be supported by learning methods such as:
Further leading questions
- What is the use of looking into the future (with a systems model)?
- Having anticipated future situations with the help of systems analysis, can you also understand whether these will be positive or negative situations? Is that the future you want?
- Can human beings change the behaviour of systems?
Scenario Analysis of Water for Jeans
Present Situation
- Ask the learners to form pairs. Then, the class should use Internet Research to answer the following questions related to the present situation:
- How much water do we use to take a 10-minute shower?
About 10 to 20 litres per minute, on average. The water use depends on the type of shower and the source.
- How much water is needed to produce a pair of jeans?
An average of 6,840 litres is needed to produce a pair of jeans.
- How many showers can we take with the amount of water used to produce a single pair of jeans (taking into consideration an average shower of 10 minutes)?
6,840/ 100 litres = 68.4 (Two months)
6,840/ 150 litres =45.6 (1 and a half month)
6,840/ 200 litres = 34.2 (1 month and almost a week)
10 litres per minute x 10 minutes = 100
15 litres per minute x 10 minutes = 150
20 litres per minute x 10 minutes = 200
- How many jeans are produced every year?
Comprehensive information about the total number of jeans produced every year is not available.You may draw the learners’ attention to how complicated it is to really know what the industry is producing.
According to the website ‘30 Fascinating Facts About Jeans & Denim’, about 450 million pairs are sold in America annually.
- Based on the previous question, how much water is used to produce the number of jeans sold in America every year?
450 000 000 x 6,840 = 3,078,000,000,000 litres of water.
- Share with your learners this link of the trailer of the movie RiverBlue. Ask the learners to take note of the amount of water used in industry every year.
Trailer for RiverBlue. https://youtu.be/pfPMeMGbrj4
28 trillion litres of water.
- How much percentage of the total water used in the industry represents the jeans sold in America?
28,000,000,000,000 – 100%
3,078,000,000,000 – x
3,078,000,000,000 x 100 = 307,800,000,000,000
307,800,000,000,000/ 28,000,000,000,000= 10.99%
Future Scenario
Using the method Scenario Analysis, learners can calculate the worst and the best scenario in the future. What are the best and the worst-case scenarios for jeans production? Learners may give a range of answers. Let us assume 50% increase and 50% decrease as two different scenarios.1.Calculate the number of jeans per year if we increase the production of jeans by 50% and the amount of water required for that number of jeans.
50% of 450 million = 225 million pairs of jeans
675 million pairs of jeans
675,000,000 x 6840 litres = 4,617,000,000,000 litres of water
2.Calculate the number of jeans per year if we decrease the production of jeans by 50% and the amount of water required for that number of jeans.
50% of 450 million = 225 million pairs of jeans
225,000,000 x 6840 litres = 1,539,000,000,000
3.How much freshwater is available in your country per year?
Taking Mexico as an example, the freshwater available in a year is
https://agua.org.mx/cuanta-agua-tiene-mexico/
4.Is the amount of fresh water available in your country adequate for jeans production? Take into consideration the two scenarios
471 000 000 000 – x
x = 10.20% (of the production)
471 000 000 000 – x
x= 30.60% (of the production)
In both scenarios, the amount of water available in Mexico is not enough to cover more than 10-30% of the production in a year.
The learners can reflect on the possibility that it would require between 3 and 10 times the total freshwater in Mexico to meet the water needs for one year of jeans production for the US.
Note that this example uses the number of jeans sold in America and not the total production of jeans in the world.
