4.1 Introduction
and multiple modes of inquiry are more appropriate to identifying gaps in understanding and developing shared meaning on which collective action can be based. But few resource scientists as a
community of scholars have yet to embrace the
dream of unified science-based learning.
4.1.2 Management
Management is in an unenviable predicament. The
public has lost confidence in government's capacity to accomplish desired ends. They sense an overall decline in performance simply based on the relatively narrow breadth and depth of public sector
innovation when compared with that required by
corporate and nonprofit sectors to stay competitive.
Government rarely seems to fundamentally rethink
the way it approaches management. The critique of
resource management by Aldo Leopold (1949) over
50 years ago seems even more relevant today.
Leopold was never enamored with the idea that
more government was the answer to the conservation ills of the nation. He realized that government's influence for conservation was overestimated. Leopold saw society relegating "to
government many functions eventually too large,
too complex, or too widely dispersed to be performed by government." For him, there was no substitute for the ethical obligation on the part of the
individual citizen. But this is not how our society
has responded to increased complexity.
Instead, our penchant is for creating bureaucracies and then figuring out how to restructure, rename, and recast stale approaches and messages
that seem to have as much consequence as shuffling deck chairs on a doomed ship. The results
merely add costs for more information, coordination, and control. Real creativity, ingenuity, and
breakthrough thinking are the casualty. One fundamental reason for this is that resource management agencies view workplace behaviors of the individual professional as filling a disciplinary niche,
not as a boundary spanner or facilitator of change.
Behind it all is the gnawing sense that John Q.
Public cannot comprehend the bureaucratic systems that we have created, let alone engage them.
Increasingly, it appears that bureaucracy actually
prohibits community from arising and from trying
out new and creative solutions. In the Upper Mississippi River, the Corps of Engineers' presence is
so pronounced, so entrenched in the status quo, and
so indifferent to ecological concerns that some
community-based conservationists appear to have
give~ up hope of restoring the river's ecosystem,
despIte the fact that 50% of the upper river's floodplain is repairable.
57
4.1.3 Public Policy
Lobbyists and experts who are only surrogates for
real interests and values increasingly dominate public policy formation. They get paid for keeping the
policy pot sufficiently stirred to ensure their continued employment and that vested interests remain
invested and advantaged. As competing scientific
explanations for the more intractable problems proliferate, political powers survive by manipulating
information to suit their ends. Public policy
processes are so fragmented and fraught with misinformation that many citizens don't know what to
believe. Others fight back by creating their own forums filled with more half-truth messages in a variety of media venues-talk shows, public hearings,
Web sites, newspapers, and periodicals.
At every tum, the resource professional seems
hampered to the point of immobility-unchecked
complexity is in the saddle. The megastate created
to house the nation's technical prowess seems incapacitated. Attempts to put natural systems into
straightjackets of consistency through science,
management, and public policy have failed. Fresh
thoughts, real dialogue, and bold measures are
needed. Improvements at the margin-tinkeringwill not work. It is time to become adaptive, to fundamentally rethink resource assessment and management.
4.1.4 The Path of Last Resort?
Human efforts to subdue and control nature's dynamism over the past century have effectively decoupled social and ecological systems. The consequences have been the dramatic loss of biodiversity
and the accumulation of evidence that nature's disturbance regimes continue to exceed human predictions and control strategies. Our resource science and management agencies have become
proficient at documenting the price tag of our folly,
but are incapable of discovering creative solutions
that fundamentally learn how to live with and profit
from the variability that is inherent in complex,
adaptive biophysical systems. A new social culture
must be implanted in our public policy processes;
a culture based on public interest governed by informed skepticism and precautionary action toward
nature. Resource policies must be viewed as hy~otheses to be tested, evaluated, and continuously
Improved on. The presumption that resource policy is fail-safe must be deserted. Precautions must
be embedded in practice to avoid the implementation of policy at temporal and spatial scales that are
too large to be safe to fail. Through the unquestioned application of science to technological in-
and multiple modes of inquiry are more appropriate to identifying gaps in understanding and developing shared meaning on which collective action can be based. But few resource scientists as a
community of scholars have yet to embrace the
dream of unified science-based learning.
4.1.2 Management
Management is in an unenviable predicament. The
public has lost confidence in government's capacity to accomplish desired ends. They sense an overall decline in performance simply based on the relatively narrow breadth and depth of public sector
innovation when compared with that required by
corporate and nonprofit sectors to stay competitive.
Government rarely seems to fundamentally rethink
the way it approaches management. The critique of
resource management by Aldo Leopold (1949) over
50 years ago seems even more relevant today.
Leopold was never enamored with the idea that
more government was the answer to the conservation ills of the nation. He realized that government's influence for conservation was overestimated. Leopold saw society relegating "to
government many functions eventually too large,
too complex, or too widely dispersed to be performed by government." For him, there was no substitute for the ethical obligation on the part of the
individual citizen. But this is not how our society
has responded to increased complexity.
Instead, our penchant is for creating bureaucracies and then figuring out how to restructure, rename, and recast stale approaches and messages
that seem to have as much consequence as shuffling deck chairs on a doomed ship. The results
merely add costs for more information, coordination, and control. Real creativity, ingenuity, and
breakthrough thinking are the casualty. One fundamental reason for this is that resource management agencies view workplace behaviors of the individual professional as filling a disciplinary niche,
not as a boundary spanner or facilitator of change.
Behind it all is the gnawing sense that John Q.
Public cannot comprehend the bureaucratic systems that we have created, let alone engage them.
Increasingly, it appears that bureaucracy actually
prohibits community from arising and from trying
out new and creative solutions. In the Upper Mississippi River, the Corps of Engineers' presence is
so pronounced, so entrenched in the status quo, and
so indifferent to ecological concerns that some
community-based conservationists appear to have
give~ up hope of restoring the river's ecosystem,
despIte the fact that 50% of the upper river's floodplain is repairable.
57
4.1.3 Public Policy
Lobbyists and experts who are only surrogates for
real interests and values increasingly dominate public policy formation. They get paid for keeping the
policy pot sufficiently stirred to ensure their continued employment and that vested interests remain
invested and advantaged. As competing scientific
explanations for the more intractable problems proliferate, political powers survive by manipulating
information to suit their ends. Public policy
processes are so fragmented and fraught with misinformation that many citizens don't know what to
believe. Others fight back by creating their own forums filled with more half-truth messages in a variety of media venues-talk shows, public hearings,
Web sites, newspapers, and periodicals.
At every tum, the resource professional seems
hampered to the point of immobility-unchecked
complexity is in the saddle. The megastate created
to house the nation's technical prowess seems incapacitated. Attempts to put natural systems into
straightjackets of consistency through science,
management, and public policy have failed. Fresh
thoughts, real dialogue, and bold measures are
needed. Improvements at the margin-tinkeringwill not work. It is time to become adaptive, to fundamentally rethink resource assessment and management.
4.1.4 The Path of Last Resort?
Human efforts to subdue and control nature's dynamism over the past century have effectively decoupled social and ecological systems. The consequences have been the dramatic loss of biodiversity
and the accumulation of evidence that nature's disturbance regimes continue to exceed human predictions and control strategies. Our resource science and management agencies have become
proficient at documenting the price tag of our folly,
but are incapable of discovering creative solutions
that fundamentally learn how to live with and profit
from the variability that is inherent in complex,
adaptive biophysical systems. A new social culture
must be implanted in our public policy processes;
a culture based on public interest governed by informed skepticism and precautionary action toward
nature. Resource policies must be viewed as hy~otheses to be tested, evaluated, and continuously
Improved on. The presumption that resource policy is fail-safe must be deserted. Precautions must
be embedded in practice to avoid the implementation of policy at temporal and spatial scales that are
too large to be safe to fail. Through the unquestioned application of science to technological in-