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Coffee consumption is changing. Monodose, flavoured coffee capsules provide new experiences beyond the traditional custom of brewing coffee. While these pods mean access to a selection of premium coffee worldwide, they create huge quantities of plastic-aluminium packaging waste. This paper examines the novelty of coffee capsule consumption in Brazil in terms of consumers' perspectives about ethical enterprise and environmental stewardship. We argue for 'waste to resource' management and applying reverse logistics to the coffee production supply chain. Based on Circular Economy principles and fuelled by the 'green' awareness of Brazilian coffee consumers themselves, we propose a conceptual framework to support business decision-making by adopting a systemic intervention from the consumer viewpoint. To structure and scope the problematic situation, we conducted over 40 interviews, using purposive sampling. Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP), Value Focused Thinking (VFT) and Rich Picture Technique also informed our problem structuring approach. Findings illustrate that the ambition for a reverse supply chain in coffee capsule manufacturing presents real challenges to achieving circular practice. Yet, the ecovalues of Brazilian coffee enthusiasts may be partly considered a 'wealth of information flow' and a potential driving force for change. This paper should be of interest to researchers and practitioners exploring how consumers may contribute to behavioural change, towards more circular business.

The recent outbreak of COVID-19 has been devastating for international tourism, adversely affecting destinations, organizations, and local communities. In particular, the crisis highlights the need for local communities reliant on rural tourism to enhance their resilience to the risks simultaneously generated by the pandemic and accelerating impacts of climate change. This is important as the effects of these hazards are intertwined and cannot be treated in isolation. We explore community responses and resilience through case study Quebrada Verde, Peru, a small rural community in the Andes Mountains. Specifically, we report on a qualitative examination involving in-depth semi-structured interviews and focus groups with key informants from the community, supplemented by relevant documentary analysis. Drawing on community resilience and social networks perspectives, we find that the community's preparedness to both threats is unbalanced. On one hand, the community eco-tourism system has developed sufficient tools to adapt to the temporary effects of COVID-19 derived from the community's self-organization skills and topophilia. Specifically, the community possesses a cohesive social structure, it has a solid cultural identity rooted in its customs and traditions, and maintains a social humour that enables it to see the positive aspects of adversity. On the other hand, the analysis of the measures towards strengthening the resilience to climate change delivers mixed results. In particular, the relationship that the community has built with other local organizations to successfully prevent and react to climate change is weak. Therefore, stronger efforts towards bridging this gap must be implemented in order to sustain the wider social network of such organizations, of which the community is a part. This would enable further development and implementation of appropriate risk management strategies to counteract climate change, enhancing the community's resilience of its eco-tourism system to this emergent threat. Importantly, this finding might be relevant to other local communities seeking to improve their resilience to COVID-19 and climate change.

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Soft System Dynamics Methodology (SSDM), a systemic methodology product of the combination of two widely used systems-based methodologies from two different systems thinking paradigms, Systems Dynamics (SD) and Soft Systems Methodology (SSM), is presented. The paper argues that by combining some of SD and SSM stages, within the intellectual framework proposed by SSDM, a methodology developed by one of the authors 1 much can be gained in a systemic intervention to tackle complex social problematic situations. A framework for comparing the ontological, epistemological and methodological principles of SD, SSM and SSDM is proposed and the synthesizing and dialectical role of SSDM is advanced. The 10 stages of SSDM are outlined and illustrated by an application on a small Peruvian company; and a set of conclusions and points for further research are discussed.

The COVID-19 pandemic offers an historic precedent to review and challenge the values of social, economic, environmental, and cultural belief systems. The concept of the “New Normal” and the experience of the global pandemic provide points of transition in thinking about our relationship to our planet and to each other. These include the fragility of contemporary economics, dependency on industrialized urban infrastructures, and reliance on top-down governance, vulnerability to climate disasters, dislocation from the natural world, societal inequalities, and the loss of cultural memory. The paper considers the potential role of systems thinking in attempting to manage societies’ responses to the pandemic. To provide the methodological context in which some systems thinking can be applied to alleviate the pandemic, we conduct a focused literature review of systemic frameworks, and using examples from Brazil and England, the paper questions the validity of existing disaster management systems and proposes an integrated critical systems approach. Reflecting on these experiences, questions of systems criticality are further developed and considered in relation to critical recovery from disasters and as integral critical systems (ICS) to interrogate the intention of systems. Finally, the paper reflects upon the value of systems and the values embedded in systems that may or may not promote equitable well-being in recovery from disasters such as COVID-19.

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