Here's a piece I picked up from the US Forest Service. As an
environmentalist, there are some points Doug makes that I disagree with,
but one point in particular I am totally in agreement with: the necessity
of confronting consumption!
Eco-Watch
7/20/94
Reflections on "A Definition of Sustainability for Ecosystem Management,"
by Dave Iverson and Zane Cornett.
by Doug MacCleery_*_
I applaud the authors' efforts to come to grips with what is a central
issue to successfully implementing ecosystem management -- defining
sustainability, or to state it in another way, to define what values, uses,
and natural processes we will purposely seek to sustain over time. There
are many efforts currently going on to define sustainable development,
sustainable forest management as a subset of sustainable development, as
well as the criteria and indicators that will be used to measure them.
Your paper is a constructive addition to this discussion. You are brave to
take on the task -- doubly brave to seek to deal with it in a page and a
half. The following are some questions, thoughts, and suggestions.
1. Some examples are needed.
My overall reaction was that the definition of "sustainability" and of
"ecosystem integrity," and the axioms of ecosystems come across as somewhat
of an academic exercise, rather than having real world application. It
would be helpful if you were to give some concrete examples of where you
feel ecosystems either meet or violate your idea of sustainability and
ecosystem integrity.
For example, would the forest ecosystems of the eastern U.S., which were
heavily logged and burned in the late 19th century, but which have since
recovered, be sustainable under your definition? Do these ecosystems have
integrity, as you have defined it? What about the forests of Scandinavia,
which have been under active human management for at least 600 years.
Certainly, in both cases, human activities have eliminated all or most of
the late successional forest and have resulted in the extirpation of some
species characteristic of the original forest -- a loss in some components
of ecosystem complexity. But in other respects, these forests have
regained aspects of ecosystem complexity previously lost, as evidenced by
recovered populations of many wildlife species and development of mature
forest components. In many respects, these forests appear sustainable for
the objectives they are currently being managed for, as well as having the
capability to be managed for other objectives in the future, if need be.
How do they fare under your definition?
What about your definition if applied to predominantly agricultural
landscapes? Is it possible for landscapes which has been substantially
transformed and simplified by human action to be considered sustainable and
having integrity under your definition? Many such landscapes have been
maintained in agriculture for centuries, yet they continue to provide
important elements of the Earth's life support system, both for humans and
for a variety of native plant and wildlife species.
Some current efforts at defining sustainability also include identifying
the criteria and indicators for measuring it. Some examples of such
possible measures would be helpful to understand the practical application
of these definitions.
2. Understanding the role of human values in defining sustainability.
Most efforts to define sustainability have predominantly focused on
biological concepts and criteria. Discussions of ecosystem health and
biodiversity are usually couched in the jargon of biologists, ecologists,
and other natural resources professionals. Usually unstated are the
underlying social and cultural value sets that they are based on. I
believe this effort, although commendable, suffers from the same problem.
We sometimes forget that ecosystems themselves are value neutral -- they
just are. Sustainability and ecosystem health are entirely human
constructs. It is humans that define them and ascribe values to them.
While nature provides the physical and biological context, it is humans who
decide what it is we will seek to sustain and at what cost.
But not all human societies ascribe the same values that we do to forests
and biodiversity. Witness the position of the U.S. and other developed
countries today on the question of tropical rainforests, as compared to
that of the developing countries, such as Brazil, where those forests are
located.
Indeed, our own values on these matters have shifted rather dramatically
over the years. In the mid-1970s, there was a major national debate over
the future of the national forests. It was called the "Monongahela Crisis"
and led to the passage of the National Forest Management Act. Clearcutting
and conversion of hardwoods to pine in the South were the big issues then.
Much of what is so hotly debated today -- old-growth, spotted owls,
rainforests, biodiversity, global warming, and ecosystem management -- were
not even on the scope in the mid-1970s, a short 20 years ago.
And it really wasn't all that many decades ago that we in this country were
clearing forests in much the same way that many tropical countries are
today.
Today, we seem to have a raging intellectual debate going on between those
advocating what may be referred to as "biocentric" approaches to resource
decision-making, as opposed to "anthropogenic" approaches. While this may
be an interesting polemic, it seems in many ways similar to the Medieval
philosophical debates about how many angels can dance on the head of a
pin. It presumes that we have the power to decide whether we are a part
of, or separate from, the natural world.
While your definition of sustainability encompasses the need for
maintaining the "quality of life" for human individuals and cultures, by
far the most space is devoted to the biophysical world. Human activities
are mentioned primarily as things that need to be circumscribed to protect
"ecosystem integrity." Ecosystems in this instance, do not seem to include
humans, except as threats to their "self-organizing" capacities. Indeed,
the "axioms" appear entirely focused on the biophysical, rather than the
human, world. Maybe this was not intended, but it comes across as such.
The last axiom (differential fragility), which mentions that ecosystems
have varying capacities to "absorb and equilibriate human-caused
disruptions totheir creative processes," is a case in point. Is it only
human-caused disruptions that ecosystems must "equilibriate" as threats to
their "creative processes." Or would some natural processes and events
also fall into that category. Maybe if it's "natural" it's OK. Anyway,
the approach, whether intended or not, seems to separate humans from the
ecosystems in which they live.
To put it into one of the above categories, the definitions appear to be
strongly "biocentric." Actually "biocentric" is an oxymoron, for the
reasons described above -- that is, that all such definitions have a set of
human values embedded in them, whether recognized explicitly of not. I
believe the best approach is to make those values explicit from the start.
Even use of the terms "equilibriate" and ecosystem "self-organization" and
"creative processes" reflect a set of values and beliefs about how natural
systems work that may not be shared universally in the scientific
community. More about that later.
3. Human oriented approaches to defining sustainability.
A piece that recently came over the DG illustrates an alternative approach
for defining sustainability. It was a review by Bruce Renh of a book
titled Population, Technology, and Lifestyle: The Transition to
Sustainability, ed. by Robert Goodland, Herman E. Daly, and Salah El
Serafy, Island Press, 1992.
According to Rehn, the book is partially a response to the 1987 report
titled "Our Common Future" by the World Commission on Environment and
Development (also called the "Brundtland Report"), which defines
sustainable development as that which "meets the needs of the present
without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own
needs" In addition, Rehn listed three complementary definitions of
sustainability given in the book:
- "development without growth in throughput beyond environmental
carrying capacity" (p. xiii);
- "a condition of nondecreasing per capita well-being across
generations" (p. 81);
- "the amount of consumption that can be continued indefinitely without
degrading capital stocks - including natural capital stocks" (p. 112).
All of these definitions reflect a much stronger human link than those
proposed in the paper. While I am not advocating any particular definition
of sustainability, my plea is to seek somehow to converge the human and
natural sides of the equation. We are currently too far apart.
4. The need to consider social and economic scale in assessing
sustainability.
Today, it is frequently pointed out that ecosystems must be studied at
their various scales -- from site level, to landscape level, to
regional, national and global. Your write-up certainly reflects this
understanding.
What I would like to see more people recognize and talk about is that today
human societies and economies are also linked at various scales. And those
linkages have environmental consequences that also should be considered
when we assess sustainability. One prime example is the fact that reducing
federal timber harvesting in the Pacific Northwest to protect the northern
spotted owl did not eliminate the impact of timber harvesting. It merely
transferred it to ecosystems somewhere else -- to private lands in the
Pacific Northwest or to the U.S. South, to British Columbia, or overseas.
It also resulted in higher consumer prices for wood products and increased
the use of wood substitutes, such as steel framing, which require
considerably more energy to produce than does wood, therefore putting more
C02 going into the atmosphere.
We hear a lot of rhetoric today about the need to think holistically --
that everything is connected. The buzz word is "Think globally, act
locally." I'd like to see a lot more people recognize that this idea
applies as equally to economic and trade flow linkages, as it does to
natural ecosystems. What we see is a lot of people acting locally and
ignoring globally. Much of the current rhetoric on ecosystem management on
the National Forests suffers from this same blind spot. We are virtually
ignoring the environmental transfer implications related to National Forest
management. That's not what ecosystem management should be about.
Unless and until our concept of sustainability encompasses these national
and global human dimensions, it will be limited and parochial.
5. What is meant by "self-organizing" when it come to ecosystems?
The frequent use of the term "self-organizing" in referring to ecosystems,
raises a whole range of images and concepts that you may or may not intend,
eg. the Clementian view of nature as a "superorganism;" the idea of nature
seeking to achieve a steady-state equilibrium balance, with "climax" plant
communities (self-sustaining and self-replicating) being the ultimate
"goal" and norm of "Nature's grand design." It even raises the specter of
the "Gaia Hypothesis," the quasi-religious view of a purposeful nature with
a soul.
I am not suggesting that you subscribe to any of the above, but there is so
much baggage associated with these concepts that your use of the term
"self-organizing" cries out for further explanation. At some level, even
highly degraded ecosystems will have some dimensions of what might be
called self-organization. How does one determine when things have become
unsustainable? Again, it comes back, I believe, to human values and
objectives concerning what we wish to sustain over time. Whether our
motivation is enlightened self-interest, or a feeling that all forms of
life have a right to exist, it is us who determines what we will seek to
sustain.
Conclusion
To define "sustainability" in the abstract is likely to be nigh on to
impossible. A decade or more ago Marion Clawson asked the question,
"Forests, for whom and for what?" Those same questions are also central to
defining sustainability. Before one can define it, one must ask,
"Sustainability, for whom and for what?" Once those questions are
addressed, the task becomes more manageable, albeit still very
complicated. I suspect that while the questions remain relevant today, our
answers would be different now than what they were when Clawson first asked
them. And there was no consensus then, either.
Is it possible to develop rational strategies for forest sustainability
that encompass many decades, or even centuries, when our human concepts
about what we want to sustain are so illusive? When our growing urban
populations are so divorced from a knowledge of what sustains them
economically, and of the environmental consequences of their consumption
choices? And when the world is so complicated? I don't claim to have a
lock on the answer to that, but think that there are at least three
dimensions that are important.
One is to seek to understand our past and how we got to be where we are
today. Today, we have a vast collective blind spot when it comes to
understanding the natural and human history of our ecosystems and their
role in sustaining us as human communities.
The second is to seek to obtain better data and information, through forest
inventory and research, to assess where we are today and to help us
understand the biological and social implications of alternative approaches
to forest sustainability at various scales. We need better biological and
environmental information. We need better economic and social
information. Specifically, we need better information on the implications
of our individual and collective consumption habits on the ecosystems that
sustain us. The lack of these kinds of information causes debates on these
issues to be more ideological than they ought to be. Information can help
narrow the debate and focus it more constructively.
And the third is to be flexible about the future -- what is often called
"adaptive management" under the new ecosystem management paradigm. We need
to be able to respond to new information, of course. But history
demonstrates that the most volatile dimension in this arena is changing
human ideas about the values and objectives we would like to see
sustained. The need to seek a global social consensus on these
values/objectives is one of the single biggest challenges that faces us.
Yours is a constructive effort to grapple with this formidable challenge.
Good luck on your search, and thanks for the opportunity to comment!
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_*_ Doug MacCleery, Asst. Director Timber Management, Washington Office,
US Forest Service (D.MacCleery:W01C)
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