C.S. "Buzz" Holling
"Panarchy: Understanding Human and Natural Systems"
Wednesday, March 05, 2003, 11:30 AM
Dr. C. S. Holling has done nothing less than revolutionize the field of natural resource management. He possesses over two decades of experience working through tough environmental problems in places like the Florida Everglades and the Great Lakes. Among his many achievements, his early work established major principles that are still linchpins of modern predator-prey theory. Besides these contributions to basic ecological research, Dr. Holling has introduced important ideas in the application of ecology and evolution, including adaptive ecosystem management, the Adaptive Cycle, and the recognition that evolution was the best model for the origins of novelty in management crises. Throughout his career, Dr. Holling has sought to bring abstract science to the real temporal and spatial scales of resource management. This approach has led to his continuing involvement with social science. His goal has always been to blend concepts of stability theory and ecology with modeling and policy analysis, and to develop integrative theories of change that have practical utility.
Dr. Holling has also led extensive international programs of research. The most recent, "Resilience of Ecological, Economic and Institutional Systems" was jointly sponsored by the University of Florida and the Beijer International Institute of Ecological Economics. Its purpose was to develop a theory of change in complex systems that integrates ecological, economic and social science theory and examples. It has led to the publication of over 150 papers in different disciplinary journals by the collaborators and to the publication of a synthesis volume that presents the foundations for integrative theory: Panarchy: Understanding Transformations in Human and Natural Systems.
"Panarchy represents a hierarchical structure in which natural systems are linked together in adaptive cycles of growth, accumulation, restructuring and renewal. By examining complex natural systems within this structure it should be possible to identify instances within the adaptive cycles where the system is most receptive to actions that create positive change and enhance sustainability."
Crawford Holling received his B.A. and M.S. at the University of Toronto, and his Ph.D. at the University of British Columbia.
LECTURE SUMMARY
Crawford S. “Buzz” Holling is one of ecology’s great integrators. During his career he has tackled subjects from predator-prey interactions, to resilience in non-linear ecosystems, to adaptive management, and now adaptive cycles in ecological, economic and social systems.
The culmination of his quest to understand large complex systems is summarized in his latest book, Panarchy: Understanding Transformations in Human and Natural Systems. Buzz coined the word "panarchy" (as he did the term “adaptive management” a quarter century ago) with the root “pan” coming from the Greek god of nature, a mysterious, mischievous god, full of surprise.
This book is actually the summary of a large, ambitious project that involved 300 top scientists, economists and social thinkers, who came together periodically over six years to explain the behavior of complex environmental – economic – institutional systems. Twenty five case studies, 150 papers, and four books later, they think they may be on to something. And that something is panarchy.
The group recognized that most ecological and economic theories are right. And wrong. These theories are right for the small parts of systems that they tackle, but wrong when you scale up to a bigger picture, or try to integrate environment, economics and human behavior.
Over the six years of meetings and mutual exploration, this panarchy group boiled their findings to fifteen key discoveries. We won’t list them all here. Instead, here are a few highlights:
Learning tends to happen in one of three ways: incremental, spasmodic, and transformational. We’ve all experienced these three kinds of learning: grinding through a tough course, coming to a sudden realization, and coming to that realization at a time when it changes your behavior profoundly. It turns out that ecosystems, economies, institutions – all sorts of systems – “learn” or change in these three ways as well.
Buzz’s panarchy group ran into the same two resource management puzzles time and time again, whether the case study was African savannas, or Pacific salmon, or boreal forests.
First, there is a “natural resource pathology” puzzle that goes something like this: An apparently simple but tough problem arises (spruce budworm, salmon decline). We find a simple solution (spray the budworm, raise hatchery salmon). The solution works. Society shifts its resources from understanding the problem to applying the solution more and more efficiently. Agencies streamline, save money, curtail monitoring and reduce basic science. Meanwhile, the natural system becomes less diverse, and declines or crashes. This may lead to the collapse of a sector or a society or a culture.
But humans as a species have persisted. Why? Buzz maintains that humans have persisted because nature is resilient. It bounces back – most of the time. And it bounces back because it’s complex. The panarchy group found that rather than one or two variables, the key drivers of most systems consist of two to six SETS of variables or relationships.
Many of these systems and variables can be described using this description. Consider a forest, exploitation describes the weedy phase soon after forest fire, which is followed by the development, over a long time, of a mature forest. As that forest stores or conserves wood, leaves and soil matter, it becomes more vulnerable to fire, wind, or humans looking for high-quality wood. Resources are released; that is, the forest blows over, is burned or is cut down, and it goes through a rapid phase of reorganization. Nutrients wash away for a few years, but are quickly retained by new vegetation, invading species enter the area, and we’re back to the “weedy” stage of forest succession. You could use the same framework to describe the evolution of a company or a country or just about any system.
Now let's make it a little more complicated. Consider multiple systems, all moving through similar adaptive cycles, but at different speeds and different scales, and these systems affect one another. In terms of the forest example, you could draw another one of these diagrams for climate, another for insect populations, another for human resource demands, and so on. All these things affect the forest, and some of them affect each other. Smaller scale things like insect populations can “revolt” and disturb the forest. Larger scale things like long-term climate change provide “memory” and affect what seed sources are available to a recently disturbed forest, or what seedlings can grow there.
Depending on how these cycles affect each other, some systems can “flip” into a completely different state. When this happens, it’s very difficult to go back to the previous state. Forests being transformed into deserts is one example. Wetlands being eliminated by land-use practices is another. The alteration of The Everglades is just such an example. The current restoration effort underway there will be the most expensive such undertaking ever.
Dr. Holling went on to show how social systems can be flipped into “poverty traps” and “rigidity traps” and how system transformation may require several sets of variables, operating at different scales and speeds, to be “lined up.”
This stuff gets pretty complex. But should we be surprised? The subject here is complex systems. Over the course of the talk, Dr Holling reiterated what several speakers have said before: humans are now a global force. Capitalism is now the dominant economic paradigm. We face some critical forks in the road.
But panarchy theory puts these trends in a new light. Have past civilizations collapsed because they couldn’t get past the reorganization phase of the adaptive cycle? Are we de-coupling complex natural cycles, such that we’ll “flip” systems into conditions that are nearly impossible to reverse (climate change, genetically modified organisms). Could we push parts of the globe into poverty or rigidity traps. Have we done this already?
Dr. Holling was hopeful that a brilliant social innovation, democracy, with its forced reorganization every three to five years, might be the mechanism that allows societies the flexibility to adapt to new challenges rather than snap. His one caveat: for this to work, democracy can’t be been subverted.
