Following up on my last post (You’ve Come A Long Way, Babushka”), this post is meant to be an example of how the concept of Systems Thinking fits into the intersection of project management and sustainability, and how becoming adept at this intersection can advance you from project manager to project leader.
Unfortunately, there are resplendent examples. The Flint, Michigan water supply cutover, the Aral Sea Desiccation, the Columbia Gas explosions in Massachusetts’ Merrimack Valley, and Volkswagen’s “dieselgate” are just a few. We may explore some of them in future posts.
This post focuses on the Bura Irrigation and Settlement Project in Kenya, both in its original deployment and (luckily) in a revamped version of the project. See maps below for orientation.
Background
The original Bura Irrigation and Settlement Project, launched in 1977, aimed to develop approximately 6,700 hectares of irrigated land and settle around 5,150 landless families. Despite being completed within its revised timelines and budget constraints, the project faced numerous challenges.
- Cost Overruns: Per-family costs escalated from an estimated $17,500 to $55,000, setting a record for World Bank-funded projects at the time.
- Reduced Scope: Due to funding constraints, the project's scale was reduced from the planned 6,700 hectares to about 2,500 hectares, even though infrastructure for the larger area was completed.
- Operational Challenges: The scheme suffered from unreliable water supply, pest infestations, and poor soil quality, leading to low agricultural yields.
- Economic Viability: The project's economic rate of return was negative, with annual operating and maintenance costs exceeding the benefits. Government subsidies amounted to about $1,000 per settler annually.
- Social Impact: Many settlers abandoned the scheme due to poor living conditions and lack of income, leading to the project's near-collapse by the early 1990s.
Note: sources for this information are listed at the end of this post.
Systems Thinking Lessons from the Bura Irrigation Settlement Project
Had the planners of the Bura Irrigation Settlement Project adopted a systems thinking approach, many of the project’s adverse outcomes—economic inefficiency, social distress, and ecological degradation—could have been anticipated and mitigated. A key failure was the lack of integration across subsystems: the project emphasized rapid irrigation infrastructure and settlement development without accounting for the interdependencies between environmental sustainability, social well-being, and long-term economic viability. This was failure to understand the interrelationships of these elements. For example, neglecting to implement fuelwood plantations led settlers to overexploit nearby forests, contributing not only to biodiversity loss but also to an unsustainable fuel source that burdened household labor and undercut food production efforts.
Moreover, health and social dynamics were largely ignored in the initial project logic. For example, the perspective of the farmers was largely ignored. Settling diverse communities without robust health infrastructure led to the spread of diseases like malaria and schistosomiasis, weakening labor productivity and increasing mortality—factors that directly impacted agricultural output and economic returns. Simultaneously, environmental consequences such as soil erosion from premature land clearing, contamination of the Tana River from biocide runoff, and disruption of wildlife corridors not only damaged the ecosystem but incurred hidden long-term costs that drained the already struggling economic model.
Systems thinking would have required the planners to recognize that success in one domain—such as infrastructure delivery—cannot offset failures in others. With systems thinking in mind, they could have incorporated robust stakeholder input, interagency coordination, and proactive environmental and social safeguards, the Bura project could have achieved more resilient and equitable outcomes. Instead, its singular focus on output metrics (hectares cultivated, families settled) over outcomes (sustainable livelihoods, environmental health) yielded biased perspectives and turned what was meant to be a flagship development initiative into a cautionary tale.
The planners of the Bura Irrigation Settlement Project were hindered from applying systems thinking by a combination of institutional, political, cognitive, and practical barriers—many of which are common in large-scale development efforts, especially those led by multi-agency, multi-national partnerships.
Why Systems Thinking Was Absent in the Bura Irrigation Project
The planners of the Bura Irrigation Settlement Project were hindered from applying systems thinking by a combination of institutional, political, cognitive, and practical barriers—many of which are common in large-scale development efforts, especially those led by multi-agency, multi-national partnerships.
1. Overvaluing only certain distinctions
The project was designed around visible, measurable indicators of success: number of hectares cultivated, number of settler families installed, irrigation canals completed, and cotton yields. This output-driven mindset—often reinforced by donor requirements—encouraged a narrow focus on infrastructure delivery and immediate agricultural productivity. Intangible or longer-term systemic indicators like environmental degradation, health dynamics, and social cohesion were sidelined or not measured at all.
2. Political and Donor Pressures
With financial support from the World Bank, and others, there was significant political pressure to deliver visible results quickly. National leaders, keen to demonstrate development progress, prioritized speed and scale over inclusiveness or resilience. At the same time, donor agencies of the 1970s–80s often lacked strong environmental or social safeguards. As noted in the report, the World Bank’s own environmental policies had not yet evolved into the more robust frameworks we see today. This institutional lag encouraged a 'build now, fix later' mentality.
3. Limited Local Engagement and Feedback Loops
The project was designed and largely executed in a top-down manner, with minimal involvement of local communities in planning or decision-making. This not only led to the neglect of local knowledge systems—such as sustainable riverine agriculture and forest use by the local residents —but also eroded community ownership. Without effective feedback mechanisms or iterative review structures, early warning signs (like wood shortages, illness, or settler attrition) failed to trigger adaptive responses. In fact, the project planners were unaware of these risk triggers.
4. Cognitive Biases and Silofication
They were not aware of the system within which they worked. Engineers focused on canal design, agronomists on cotton yields, and economists on repayment models—each optimizing their part while overlooking the whole. This siloed approach led to cascading failures: for example, ignoring fuelwood needs led to forest destruction, which in turn created erosion and worsened settler hardship.
In summary, the absence of systems thinking in Bura was not due to ignorance of the issues, but rather to structural, cultural, and institutional blind spots that prioritized speed, scope, and siloed expertise over holistic, adaptive, and inclusive design. The result was a project that fulfilled its blueprint but failed its purpose.
So…What Went Wrong? Siloed Thinking.
The Bura project was a classic case of cognitive silofication: each domain—engineering, agriculture, economics, health, environment—was treated as separate, unconnected units. The planners saw infrastructure as the primary success metric. But as any systems thinker knows, success in a complex project isn't additive—it’s structural.
In DSRP terms*:
- Distinctions (D) were rigid: “farmers” vs “engineers,” “agriculture” vs “ecology”—with little attention to the interplay.
- Systems (S) were underspecified: the “project” wasn’t seen as an integrated system with interacting parts.
- Relationships (R) between water use, health, fuel, income, and biodiversity were ignored or oversimplified.
- Perspectives (P)—especially those of local settlers—were largely excluded from project logic.
*If you want a refresher on how DSRP plays into this, please revisit the previous post and the outstanding 11-minute video embedded in it! Or just click here.
How a DSRP Approach Could Have Helped
Using DSRP systems thinking means structuring information explicitly and cognitively. Here’s how it might have changed the outcome:
- Make better distinctions: Recognize that “success” isn’t just measured in concrete output, but in quality of life, resilience, and sustainability.
- See the whole system: Model the project as a dynamic set of interacting parts (agriculture, ecology, health, social cohesion).
- Map relationships: Understand how health impacts labor, how water affects both agriculture and disease, how forests tie into energy and soil conservation.
- Take multiple perspectives: Include the lived experience of settlers, the knowledge of local communities, and the feedback loops embedded in ecological cycles.
These moves aren’t technical. They’re cognitive. And they’re accessible to any project leader willing to shift from task-based management to structural thinking.
The Good News
Current Revitalization Efforts
Recognizing the past shortcomings, the Kenyan government, through the National Irrigation Authority, has undertaken significant efforts to rehabilitate and modernize the Bura Irrigation Scheme, but this time with an expanded, systems thinking view.
- Infrastructure Upgrades: Transitioning from a pump-fed to a gravity-fed irrigation system to reduce operational costs and improve reliability. Source: Irrigation Authority
- Expanded Irrigation: Plans to increase the irrigated area from the current 12,000 acres to 20,000 acres, with a long-term goal of reaching the full potential of 176,000 acres. Source: Irrigation Authority
- Crop Diversification: Encouraging the cultivation of various crops, including rice, maize, cotton, and horticultural produce, to enhance food security and farmer incomes.
- Community Engagement: Involving local communities in decision-making processes and providing training to improve agricultural practices.
These revitalization efforts aim to address the systemic issues that plagued the original project by adopting a more holistic and sustainable approach. While challenges remain, the current initiatives represent a significant shift towards integrating environmental, social, and economic considerations into the project's framework.
Additional information on the Bura project’s initial version:
Extracts from the World Bank report from the initial project’s limited systems view:
References
https://www-jstor-org.ezproxy.bu.edu/stable/2385881?seq=1
https://documents1.worldbank.org/curated/en/503041468046825515/pdf/multi-page.pdf
https://www.irrigationauthority.go.ke/projects/bura-irrigation-development-project/
