Jaidyn Sibaja
Dr. Hildebrant
CODE 120-003
12 October 2023
Defining The System and Classifying the Drivers Of The MOBOT
In my CODE120 research team we have been working on really taking a deeper look into our wicked problem and what is really causing issues – and more importantly what we can do as a team to make strides in making positive change. Part of this process is being able to identify the drivers of our wicked problem. We need to have a solid understanding of what a driver is first. Drivers are separated into two different groups. In chapter 3 of Sustainable World by Sonya Remington-Doucette, it talks about direct drivers, which are defined as “drivers that clearly and unequivocally influence the behavior of a system” and indirect drivers, which are defined as “drivers that influence the behavior of a system in a more diffuse way by altering one or more direct drivers.”
The Missouri Botanical Gardens were founded in 1859 by Henry Shaw, English philanthropist, businessman, and amateur botanist. Today more than 160 years after opening, the Missouri Botanical Gardens is widely considered one of the three most famous botanical gardens in the world. Along with the Missouri Botanical Gardens, Henry Shaw also created Tower Grove Park. Both the gardens and the park are considered national historic landmarks. One of the many stunning features of the MOBOT is the herbarium. The herbarium houses more than 6.5 million specimens, making it the second largest herbarium in the United States and one of the largest in the world.
Although the herbarium is a beautiful place and allows the garden to have access to so many different specimens, there is a multitude of problems that the gardens still face. One of the main problems being a lack of representation of where the plants originate and the native history of these plants that are coming from around the world. A large contributing factor to this could be the history of the gardens and their roots of colonialism, racism, and slavery. A big indicator of this is not using the native names of the plants and the westernization of science, especially regarding botany. When we fail to include indigenous knowledge and perspectives of the different plants and their usages, we are directly contributing to the erasure of culture and experience that could be beneficial.
If we look below, we can see the diagram I created of the direct and indirect drivers I have identified. As we can see in the diagram, the erasure of indigenous history and knowledge may be an indirect driver, but it impacts more than one direct driver and other indirect drivers, and overall plays a large role in the problems we are seeing in the herbarium.
It is stated in Sustainable World that there is no solution that will directly fix a wicked problem, and while that may be true, I am very confident in the CODES students, MOBOT staff, and anyone that helps us continue to make improvements in gardens so that we can make it the best institution it can be. While there may not be a solution there are resolutions we can take as a team.