Our modern world deals with, and designs, things as isolated systems. Thus power supply designers give no regard to agriculture, which gives no regard to transport, gives no regard to housing... and so on. The result is a disjointed world of dysfunctional systems that bog down and stall whenever they trip over each other. All of these isolated systems are based on an economy of perpetual growth in a finite world, which is in turn based upon the premise of perpetual, cheap energy from fossil fuels.
The consequences of this approach have given rise to a world which started outstripping it's resources back in 1980 and is now rapidly consuming it's capital. Global warming, impending water/food shortages and energy decline are all going to lead to global economic collapse within 10-20 years, unless we change the way we live and do business.
Those are big assertions and I'm not going to argue the validity of them here, as you can research that for yourself (see links section). Global warming, at least, has finally been accepted by the UK government as real, even if they do (including sir Nicholas Stern) assume that energy supplies will go on for the next 50 years or more. They won't and in 10 years time, the cost of fossil fuels will be so high as to be largely unaffordable.
Whole systems design is literally, looking at all of life in an holistic manner, seeing the big picture. No one person can do this, but if specialists and professionals are willing to break down the barriers they have so deliberately built, we can start a new way of designing solutions to the world's problems.
Landscape is much more than the medium in which all other systems exist, it is the fabric which holds our society together, contains all the elements of life, provides us with our food and water, gives us energy and which reflects back to us all the ills and poisoning of the planet that accumulates incessantly.
Landscape and architecture are perhaps the two most obvious elements of holistic design, around which all other systems build. No longer can the open spaces between buildings be seen as simply leftover areas to make pretty. If you read through the the other articles in this section, you will see how landscape plays a crucial role in providing real solutions to the world's problems.
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