From Systems-Level Thinking to Systems-Level Shaping

As our sustainable investing consulting project draws to a close, I find myself with weighted reflections on how much of this journey has magnified, beyond technical skills, my ability to think — and act — systemically.

At the outset, I had imagined the consulting arc as a linear experience: identifying gaps, recommending fixes, and slotting them in for execution. It took little time for this assumption to collapse. There is unsparing clarity that sustainable investing, especially in areas like renewable energy credits and frontier markets, seldom unfolds in neatly engineered sequences. Systems are messy. Stakeholders’ incentives are diverse. Progress is incremental.

This felt like an aperture, and to treat widening apertures as openings, rather than gaps, was key. It is an unshakeable recognition that our work is less about solving a problem than navigating a live ecosystem –without insulation from history – that batters current contexts. Sustainable finance cannot simply impose technical solutions onto deeply human systems. We see distributive injustices account for 58% of all injustices in renewable energy projects across Africa when communities hosting solar installations in Ghana and Burkina Faso create solar surplus populations — displaced from traditional livelihoods without integration into new economic systems. In Somalia, the gradual restoration of Mogadishu’s grid in the late 2010s saw informal private operators outpacing state-led energy reforms, resulting in a patchwork of microgrids with wildly varying prices and reliability. The public sector's inability to coordinate fractured actors rendered formal regulatory frameworks practically inert. Even the best-designed mechanisms falter if they fail to account for the lived power dynamics shaping implementation.

Similarly, Mozambique’s gas boom in the 2010s — initially hailed as a beacon of post-conflict recovery — inadvertently fuelled insurgencies in Cabo Delgado, as rapid resource investment widened inequalities and displaced local communities. Rural cooperatives in Liberia, many established during wartime, resisted private mini-grid developers despite enabling regulations. By 2022, despite Liberia adopting a forward-looking mini-grid framework, rural electrification remained stagnant at under 5% outside Monrovia. Policy, without community trust, was a paper tiger.

In our own consulting work, I could sense these lessons taking root. Despite the commendations for our final presentation, I am acutely aware that systemic change will depend less on the elegance of our deliverables and more on how well they embed into live, evolving environments. 

We often navigated these dilemmas at micro-scale. Change unfolded not through imposition but through plots of negotiated pathways. Our client’s vision — using P-RECs not just as carbon instruments but as vehicles for peace premiums — embodies this ethos of humility, systems-awareness, and commitment to sustainable peace. In fragile contexts, the returns to peace, trust, and inclusive local empowerment are often far greater than the returns to energy access alone. This is what drove the profundity of this project with close promise and meaning: to work at the intersection of renewable energy, development, and conflict resilience — domains that are wrested apart in siloes but remain inextricably connected on ground.

Ultimately, the project reshaped my understanding of what it means to “consult” in sustainability work. It is not about forcing transformation through inflated blueprints. It is about working with systems — as they are — and shaping better possibilities from within.