A systems approach to climate transitions 

SEVEN’s work is grounded in a systems approach to climate change. This approach underpins our research, collaboration and stakeholder engagement, and provides a shared framework that can be adapted to different research questions, disciplines and partnership settings. 

At its core, SEVEN’s approach is concerned with understanding why well-intentioned climate solutions so often fail to deliver lasting impact, and with using that understanding to identify where change is possible. Promising technologies, policies or initiatives may stall, remain marginal, or generate unintended trade-offs when they interact with existing economic, social, legal or institutional structures. SEVEN analyses these recurring patterns as systemic barriers to sustainability transitions, and uses this analysis to identify leverage points for targeted interventions and alternative pathways 

Understanding barriers and leverage points 

A central insight guiding SEVEN’s work is that systemic barriers are often maintained by self-reinforcing dynamics. These may take the form of feedback loops, routines, incentives or expectations that stabilise existing systems and make change difficult, even when alternatives are available. 

At the same time, these dynamics also point to leverage points for change. By analysing how systems are structured and how different elements interact, SEVEN seeks to identify where targeted interventions can disrupt lock-in, weaken stabilising forces or open up alternative pathways. 

In addition to barriers, SEVEN pays attention to enabling conditions: features of a system that do not produce change by themselves, but strongly influence whether interventions can gain traction. These may include institutional arrangements, governance capacities, social acceptance, or access to resources. Understanding and shaping such conditions is often crucial for making transitions possible in practice. 

From system understanding to action 

SEVEN’s systems approach is explicitly oriented towards action. Starting from a shared framing of complex climate challenges, SEVEN works with researchers and societal partners to define what system is being addressed and where its boundaries lie. Existing scientific knowledge is brought together with diverse perspectives, including insights from practice and non-dominant approaches, to build a richer understanding of how systems function. 

This understanding is used to develop conceptual representations of key dynamics and relationships within a system, and to explore how different interventions might interact with them. On that basis, SEVEN, together with its partners, identifies leverage points and supports the development of solution directions and practical interventions that are grounded in system analysis and responsive to the needs and capacities of societal actors.