Panarchy: Understanding Transformations in Human and Natural Systems

Gunderson, Lance H. [Editor]; Holling, C. S. [Editor];

ISBN 10: 1559638575 / ISBN 13: 9781559638579

Verlag: Island Press, 2001

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Bibliografische Details

• Titel: Panarchy: Understanding Transformations in Human and Natural Systems
• Verlag: Island Press
• Erscheinungsjahr: 2001
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN-10: 1559638575
• ISBN-13: 9781559638579
• Einband: paperback
• Auflage: 3. Auflage
• Zustand: New
• Gewicht: 26 Unzen

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Inhaltsangabe

Creating institutions to meet the challenge of sustainability is arguably the most important task confronting society; it is also dauntingly complex. Ecological, economic, and social elements all play a role, but despite ongoing efforts, researchers have yet to succeed in integrating the various disciplines in a way that gives adequate representation to the insights of each.Panarchy, a term devised to describe evolving hierarchical systems with multiple interrelated elements, offers an important new framework for understanding and resolving this dilemma. Panarchy is the structure in which systems, including those of nature (e.g., forests) and of humans (e.g., capitalism), as well as combined human-natural systems (e.g., institutions that govern natural resource use such as the Forest Service), are interlinked in continual adaptive cycles of growth, accumulation, restructuring, and renewal. These transformational cycles take place at scales ranging from a drop of water to the biosphere, over periods from days to geologic epochs. By understanding these cycles and their scales, researchers can identify the points at which a system is capable of accepting positive change, and can use those leverage points to foster resilience and sustainability within the system.This volume brings together leading thinkers on the subject -- including Fikret Berkes, Buz Brock, Steve Carpenter, Carl Folke, Lance Gunderson, C.S. Holling, Don Ludwig, Karl-Goran Maler, Charles Perrings, Marten Scheffer, Brian Walker, and Frances Westley -- to develop and examine the concept of panarchy and to consider how it can be applied to human, natural, and human-natural systems. Throughout, contributors seek to identify adaptive approaches to management that recognize uncertainty and encourage innovation while fostering resilience.The book is a fundamental new development in a widely acclaimed line of inquiry. It represents the first step in integrating disciplinary knowledge for the adaptive management of human-natural systems across widely divergent scales, and offers an important base of knowledge from which institutions for adaptive management can be developed. It will be an invaluable source of ideas and understanding for students, researchers, and professionals involved with ecology, conservation biology, ecological economics, environmental policy, or related fields.

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Panarchy

Understanding Transformations in Human and Natural Systems

By Lance H. Gunderson, C. S. Holling

ISLAND PRESS

Copyright © 2002 Island Press
All rights reserved.

ISBN: 978-1-55963-857-9

Contents

About Island Press, 
Title Page, 
Copyright Page, 
Table of Figures, 
List of Tables, 
LIST OF BOXES, 
PREFACE, 
Acknowledgments, 
Part I - Introduction, 
CHAPTER 1 - IN QUEST OF A THEORY OF ADAPTIVE CHANGE, 
Part II - Theories of Change, 
CHAPTER 2 - RESILIENCE AND ADAPTIVE CYCLES, 
CHAPTER 3 - SUSTAINABILITY AND PANARCHIES, 
CHAPTER 4 - WHY SYSTEMS OF PEOPLE AND NATURE ARE NOT JUST SOCIAL AND ECOLOGICAL SYSTEMS, 
CHAPTER 5 - BACK TO THE FUTURE: ECOSYSTEM DYNAMICS AND LOCAL KNOWLEDGE, 
CHAPTER 6 - THE DYNAMICS OF POLITICAL DISCOURSE IN SEEKING SUSTAINABILITY, 
Part III - Myths, Models, and Metaphors, 
CHAPTER 7 - COLLAPSE, LEARNING, AND RENEWAL, 
Chapter 8 - DYNAMIC INTERACTION OF SOCIETIES AND ECOSYSTEMS—LINKING THEORIES FROM ECOLOGY, ECONOMY, AND SOCIOLOGY, 
CHAPTER 9 - A FUTURE OF SURPRISES, 
CHAPTER 10 - RESILIENCE AND SUSTAINABILITY: THE ECONOMIC ANALYSIS OF NONLINEAR DYNAMIC SYSTEMS, 
Part IV - Linking Theory to Practice, 
CHAPTER 11 - RESILIENT RANGELANDS—ADAPTATION IN COMPLEX SYSTEMS, 
CHAPTER 12 - SURPRISES AND SUSTAINABILITY: CYCLES OF RENEWAL IN THE EVERGLADES, 
CHAPTER 13 - THE DEVIL IN THE DYNAMICS: ADAPTIVE MANAGEMENT ON THE FRONT LINES, 
CHAPTER 14 - PLANNING FOR RESILIENCE: SCENARIOS, SURPRISES, AND BRANCH POINTS, 
Part V - Summary and Synthesis, 
CHAPTER 15 - DISCOVERIES FOR SUSTAINABLE FUTURES, 
CHAPTER 16 - TOWARD AN INTEGRATIVE SYNTHESIS, 
APPENDIX A. - A MODEL FOR ECOSYSTEMS WITH ALTERNATIVE STABLE STATES, 
APPENDIX B. - OPTIMIZING SOCIAL UTILITY FROM LAKE USE, 
APPENDIX C. - TAX AS A WAY TO DIRECT SOCIETY, 
APPENDIX D. - COLLECTIVE ACTION PROBLEMS AND THEIR EFFECT ON POLITICAL POWER, 
REFERENCES, 
LIST OF CONTRIBUTORS, 
INDEX, 
ISLAND PRESS BOARD OF DIRECTORS, 

CHAPTER 1

IN QUEST OF A THEORY OF ADAPTIVE CHANGE

C. S. Holling, Lance H. Gunderson, and Donald Ludwig

In all things, the supreme excellence is simplicity. —Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

In the last decades of the twentieth century, cascades of changes occurred on a global scale. Collapse of the former Soviet Union and its continuing struggle for stability and for ways to restructure have propagated international reverberations far beyond its borders. Increases in connectivity through the Internet are stimulating a flowering of novel experiments that are affecting commerce, science, and international community. Migrations of people, some forced by political upheaval and some initiated as a search for new opportunity, are both threatening and enriching the international order. There have been dramatic changes in global environmental systems—from climate change that is already upon us, to the thinning of the stratospheric ozone layer. Novel diseases have emerged in socially and ecologically disturbed areas of the world and have spread globally, through the increased mobility of people. The tragedy of AIDS, and its origins, transformation, and dispersion because of land-use and social changes, is a signal of deep and broad changes that will yield further surprises and crises. More and more evidence indicates that global climate change has already produced an increase in severe weather that, combined with inappropriate coastal development, has caused dramatic rises in insurance claims and human loss of life. Still other more subtle changes linking ecological, economic, and social forces are occurring on a global scale, such as the typical example described in Box 1-1, regarding the collapse of fisheries.

These examples of global environmental change signal that the stresses on the planet have achieved a new level because of the intensity and scale of human activities. Are these activities leading to a world with impoverished natural endowments, even deeper inequities among peoples, and the ultimate collapse of civil society? Or is that too easy a conclusion? Contradicting projections of collapse is the possibility that human foresight and innovation can reverse those trends and develop paths that sustain natural diversity and create opportunity.

We do not intend to evaluate the degradation and potential for collapse of human and natural systems in this book. That has been done as well and as objectively as can be expected elsewhere (McNeill 2000). Even raising the question triggers controversy that is not particularly well founded on objective fact or adequate theory.

Instead, our purpose is to develop an integrative theory to help us understand the changes occurring globally. We seek to understand the source and role of change in systems—particularly the kinds of changes that are transforming, in systems that are adaptive. Such changes are economic, ecological, social, and evolutionary. They concern rapidly unfolding processes and slowly changing ones—gradual change and episodic change, local and global changes.

The theory that we develop must of necessity transcend boundaries of scale and discipline. It must be capable of organizing our understanding of economic, ecological, and institutional systems. And it must explain situations where all three types of systems interact. The cross-scale, interdisciplinary, and dynamic nature of the theory has lead us to coin the term panarchy for it. Its essential focus is to rationalize the interplay between change and persistence, between the predictable and unpredictable. Thus, we drew upon the Greek god Pan to capture an image of unpredictable change and upon notions of hierarchies across scales to represent structures that sustain experiments, test results, and allow adaptive evolution.

We start the search for sufficient theory by turning to examples where there is adequate history—examples of interactions between people and nature at regional scales. There we see patterns of change that are similar to the more recent global ones—but examples where there has been more history of response. These include dramatic changes in the ecosystems and landscapes of ecosystems, with subsequent changes for society and economic conditions. There have been spasms of biodiversity loss as a consequence of the intersection of climate extremes, poor land use, and global economic pressures. In places, such as in some nations in southeast Africa, these exacerbate political instability. The results are not only erosion of the natural world but also erosion of trust in the institutions of governance. But in other places there has been notable learning. Degraded systems have been restored, organizations restructured, and management revitalized.

How do we begin to track down the cause of the failures and explain the occasional successes? Consider some recent resource management failures:

• Some fisheries have collapsed in spite of widespread public support for sustaining them and the existence of a highly developed theory of fisheries management.

• Moderate stocking of cattle in semiarid rangelands has increased vulnerability to drought.

• Pest control has created pest outbreaks that become chronic.

• Flood control and irrigation developments have created large ecological and economic costs and increasing vulnerability.

A number of cases point to a common cause behind such examples of...