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Twelve leverage points
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== History == The leverage points, first published in 1997, were inspired by Meadows' attendance at a [[North American Free Trade Agreement]] (NAFTA) meeting in the early 1990s, where she realized a very large new system was being proposed but the mechanisms to manage it were ineffective. Meadows, who worked in the field of [[systems analysis]], proposed a scale of places to intervene in a [[system]]. Awareness and manipulation of these levers is an aspect of [[self-organization]] and can lead to [[collective intelligence]]. Her observations are often cited in [[energy economics]], [[green economics]] and [[human development theory]]. Meadows started with the observation that there are levers, or places within a [[complex system]] (such as a firm, a city, an economy, a living being, an [[ecosystem]], an [[ecoregion]]) where a "small shift in one thing can produce big changes in everything" (compare: constraint in the sense of the [[theory of constraints]]). She claimed we need to know about these shifts, where they are, and how to use them. She said most people know where these points are instinctively, but tend to adjust them in the wrong direction. A greater understanding would help solve global problems such as [[unemployment]], [[hunger]], [[economic stagnation]], [[pollution]], [[resources depletion]], and [[Conservation ethic|conservation]] issues. Meadows started with a nine-point list of such places, and expanded it to a list of twelve leverage points with explanations and examples, for systems in general. She describes a [[system]] as being in a certain state, consisting of a [[stock and flow]], with inflows (amounts entering the system) and outflows (amounts leaving the system). At a given time, the system is in a certain perceived state. There may also be a [[goal]] for the system to be in a certain state. The difference between the current state and the goal is the discrepancy. {{quote|For example, one might consider a [[lake]] or reservoir, which contains a certain amount of water. The inflows are the amount of water coming from rivers, rainfall, drainage from nearby soils, and waste water from a local industrial plant. The outflows might be the amount of water used up for irrigation of nearby cornfield, water taken by that local plant to operate as well as the local camping site, water [[evaporating]] in the [[atmosphere]], and trickling surplus water when the reservoir is full. Local inhabitants complain about the water level getting low, pollution getting higher, and the potential effect of hot water release in the lake on life (in particular, the fish). This is the difference between the perceived state (pollution or low water level) and the goal (a non-polluted lake).}}
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