Ecological Management ~ Sustainability

Background

People on Earth face the following challenges:

• identification and management of ecological systems— finding sustainable solutions
• marshal of technology and expertise
• engagement and education of populations
• management of financial and natural resources

Human well-being cannot be sustained unless ecosystems function effectively and within optimum parameters of climate, without significant contamination. Ecosystems are influenced by environmental, biological, social and political influences. All ecosystems are extensively influenced by human populations.

Production and harvesting of earth’s resources affects sustainability and the ecological services available to humanity). Ecosystem services support the effective functioning of ecosystems and contribute to their resilience. Ecological services can be stabilized by effective management of resources and maintaining biodiversity (species redundancy).

Ecosystem management is the application of ecological science to resource management, in order to promote long-term sustainability of ecosystems and the delivery of essential ecosystem goods and services to society.

Ecologists play an important role in decisions involving trade-offs between present and future generations, by documenting the sensitivity of ecosystem services to alternative management actions and their subsequent rates of renewal and by providing information to assist decision making.

Ecological Science helps us to:

• identify ecological processes, disturbances, services and transitions
• identify the structures of ecological communities and services and characterize their functional roles and relationships
• identify the roles and relationships of ecosystem components
• understand how services are bundled together
• measure interactions, responses of ecological systems to disturbances, extinctions and other changes
• identify factors that contribute to resilience of ecosystems and stabilizing functions

Steady State or Adaptive Management

It is no longer possible to manage ecological systems with the goal of sustaining past ecological patterns. Ecological systems must be managed to anticipate the impact of the changes which humanity work on ecological systems. Managers need to adopt a different focus.

The following chart provides a comparison of two management foci using: state and adaptive management strategies:

Goals

The goals of ecosystem management are:

• to maintain the integrity of earth’s ecological systems, preventing harm to them
• to enhance the functional properties of ecosystems that support biodiversity and the ecosystem services on which they depend
• to provide a sustainable flow of ecosystem services to society, today and in the future so as to meet humanity’s needs, with sufficient production to allow people to subsist, while avoiding social conflict
• to avoid unmanageable disaster

These goals are applied to guide decisions at the global, national and individual levels.

Strategies – How

All ecosystems experience directional changes in controls, creating novel conditions, in many cases amplifying feedbacks. Changes require the use of effective management approaches. There are a number of strategies for the management of earth’s resources:

• Human Dimension : meet the needs of a human population within the limits of available ecological resources requires:
  1. long-term social-ecological planning
  2. finding ways to engage people to pursue sustainable management goals that maintain natural capital, with investment and by
     1. limiting the use of resources to the rate at which they can be replenished without exhaustion of non-renewable resources,
     2. reusing rather than wasting resources and

• Ensuring that ecological services remain intact.
• Adaptability : fostering adaptation and renewal based on ecological research in a rapidly changing world. Management approaches must change in response to changes in scientific knowledge and human values. Adapting requires advancement of the study and development of workable approaches to the management of ecosystems. The ability to adapt requires:
  1. the identification of critical ecosystems
  2. the identification of ecosystem response to particular actions and the impact of human interactions on ecosystems
  3. identification of dynamic changes occurring within ecosystems with intervention occurring before ecosystems crash:
     1. a recognition of ecosystem responses to multiple driving forces
     2. attention to contamination, climate change and other trends
  4. developing an understanding of how complex adaptive systems work, how changes in ecological services affect production
  5. adopting both a landscape perspective that considers interactions among ecosystem components, (eg., in forests and surrounding lakes, managing to maintain the filtration effects of riparian vegetation and wetlands and consider the role of species in recycling and absorbing of nutrients) and monitoring keystone species
• following resilience-based ecosystem stewardship. Maintain ecosystems, an approach which is more cost effective than attempting to restore depleted ecosystems.
• Adopting nature-based solutions.

Things to understand and balance when managing ecosystems:

• Disturbances : management that allows small, naturally-occurring disturbances to occur, creates spatial heterogeneity that reduces disturbance spread and the likelihood of large, catastrophic disturbances.
• Identifying and keeping within limits : patterns of production, consumption and reproduction must safeguard earth’s regenerative capacities. This requires:
  1. Limiting harvesting rates to match the regeneration rates of products or the rate of creation of renewable substitutes (sustainable limits)
  2. Limiting emission rates so that they do not exceed the assimilative capacity of the environment
  3. Limiting land use to maintain the minimum level of biodiversity required to sustain ecological services
• Management involves trade-offs:
  1. Balancing agricultural, forest production  and recreational opportunities while recognizing the impact of choices on ecosystem services. This involves recognizing key linkages between ecosystems and society, (eg.):
     1. Loss of flood control delivered by wet-land drainage reduces sediment delivery to barrier islands (Mississippi River)
     2. Construction of levees and reservoirs reduces sediment delivery
  2. Identify, monitor and balance the three types of ecological services, provisioning (production), sustaining and regulation services in order to balance current harvesting needs the need to sustain the ecosystem that produces the harvest
  3. improving the quality of goods and services while reducing quantity
• see Biodiversity Management

We must adopt a flexible approach to managing resources focused on sustaining the functional properties of systems that are important to societies while shaping change in ways that benefit societies, under conditions where the system itself is constantly changing.

Well-informed managers follow guidelines for sustainably managing ecological systems. Guidelines provide a framework for practical decisions, and criteria for maintaining ecological sustainability. Guidelines identify best practices.

Ecological consequences of choices and actions may not be obvious but need to be monitored.

Adapting to the Unknown

Ecosystem management that emphasizes multiple use of a broad range of ecosystem services is challenging to implement. Services whose value is uncertain or unknown tend to be undervalued. Economic costs and benefits are constantly in flux and strongly influence ecosystem management.

The lag factor must be accounted for in the planning process. For example, there is a time lag of many years before trees and their associated ecosystems regenerate. Failure to anticipate oncoming problems, learn about the behaviour of ecosystems in changing conditions, delay in response to change, and the time it takes to develop responses to the changes in conditions result in a failure to adapt and to meet challenges, with the associated loss of productivity in ecosystems.

Outcomes

Depending on how humanity manages resources, three outcomes are possible:

• Persistence of the capacity of Earth’s capacity to produce goods and services
• Transformation of the system to increase the capacity of Earth’s systems to produce goods and services
• Passive changes, degrading Earth’s capacity to produce goods and services

Political Realities

We are at the point in history when the international community, led by the United Nations, is developing policies needed for a sustainable approach to management of Earth’s resources. In the meantime, people often advocate for unsustainable harvest, for short term economic gain.

Management of sustainability requires close collaboration. Management goals are most acceptable when directed at improvement of living conditions. Management strategies must adapt to conditions such as availability of natural resources and population growth. Policies that promote ecological sustainability at the expense of human residents can’t be effectively implemented. A policy that sacrifices long-term ecological or sustainability can’t be maintained. Policies that align economic incentives with sustainability goals improve the opportunities for sustainable resource use.

Maladaptive subsidies that encourage unsustainable behaviour to maintain harvests when stocks decline below economically profitable levels reduce the likelihood of sustainable resource use.

Process

Management of common-pool resources is most likely to lead to sustainability when:

• users and people who benefit have the means to organize and participate in forming and modifying policy
• the process for decision-making is effectively managed to include all useful perspectives
• policy considers the knowledge base and knowledge gaps in arriving at decisions
• users and people who benefit monitor resource use to ensure agreed sharing
• there are easy ways to resolve conflicts
• users who violate the rules are punished

The use of cascade development assists the planning process.

Innovation and adaptive management

Integrated project management assists choosing the types or resources used, intensity of resource use and distribution of goods, compatible with the conservation of biodiversity and the maintenance of ecological processes. Site-based management addresses specific problems.

Learning and education works at three levels:

• providing the knowledge base needed to meet previously agreed management goals such as changes in harvest levels—improving on current strategies in use
• developing ideas that can lead to thinking and innovation, ideas that will alter the rules and patterns of thinking and problem solving
• altering beliefs, assumptions and perspective

Currently only a small fraction of scientific research influences policy. To influence policy, science must be credible, be viewed as legitimate and be presented to the right people at the right time. Conditions for linking scientific knowledge to action are:

• recognize the need to consider scientific research
• joint identification of problems requiring research by managers and science
• leveling of asymmetries of influence so that all important voices are heard: science, management, consumers and producers
• establishment of communication pathways needed to overcome communications gaps, and
• broadening and building capacity for management of resources