Taking Measures

... I never ceased to ponder [in the early 1950s] ... the obvious deterioration in the quality both of American life itself and of the natural environment.... Allowed to proceed unchecked, they spelled—it was plain—only failure and disaster. But what of the conceivable correctives? ... Would they not involve hardships and sacrifices most unlikely to be acceptable to any democratic electorate? Would they not come into the sharpest sort of conflict with commercial interests? Would their implementation not require governmental power which, as of the middle of the twentieth century, simply did not exist, and which no one as yet—least of all either of the great political parties—had the faintest intention of creating?

—George F. Kennan, Memoirs

We've been in bad shape ever since Columbus landed.... But that's O.K. You can't go back. We must live in this modern world and do what we can to keep it livable.

—Billy Frank, Jr., chairman, Northwest Indian Fisheries

Human activity disrupts environmental stability on a planetary scale. Spectacular instances—the erosion of the ozone layer, the creation of long-lived toxic and radioactive wastes—receive increasing public attention. But it is the mundane momentum that is impressive in the long run. Humans already appropriate 40 percent of net primary productivity on land; two of every five beams of sunlight captured by living things are already in the service of our species. Our demand for energy, mostly from nonrenewable fossil sources, equals 2 tons of coal per person per year; each human accounts for more than 300 pounds of steel annually. The world population is expected to double over the next century, with most of the increase occurring in the developing countries. In 1989 a United Nations panel on sustainable development estimated that economic output must rise between five and ten times to keep up with minimal aspirations for betterment. What remains unanswered is how we might double our numbers and quintuple our economic activity without impairing the longterm ability of the natural environment to feed, clothe, house, and inspire our species.

Social Learning

Today, humans do not know how to achieve an environmentally sustainable economy. If we are to learn how, we shall need two complementary sorts of education. First, we need to understand far better the relationship between humans and nature. The strategy I discuss in this book is adaptive management—treating economic uses of nature as experiments, so that we may learn efficiently from experience. Second, we need to grasp far more wisely the relationships among people. One name for such a learning process is politics; another is conflict. We need institutions that can sustain civilization now and in the future. Building them requires conflict, because the fundamental interests of industrial society are under challenge. But conflict must be limited because unbounded strife will destroy the material foundations of those interests, leaving all in poverty. Bounded conflict is politics.

This combination of adaptive management and political change is social learning. Social learning explores the human niche in the natural world as rapidly as knowledge can be gained, on terms that are governable though not always orderly. It expands our awareness of effects across scales of space, time, and function. For example, we pump crude oil from deep within the earth and ship it across oceans; we burn in a minute gasoline that took millennia to form; with petroleum and its end products we foul water, soil, and air, overloading their biological capacity. Human action affects the natural world in ways we do not sense, expect, or control. Learning how to do all three lies at the center of a sustainable economy.

The Compass

Adaptive management is an approach to natural resource policy that embodies a simple imperative: policies are experiments; learn from them. In order to live we use the resources of the world, but we do not understand nature well enough to know how to live harmoniously within environmental limits. Adaptive management takes that uncertainty seriously, treating human interventions in natural systems as experimental probes. Its practitioners take special care with information. First, they are explicit about what they expect, so that they can design methods and apparatus to make measurements. Second, they collect and analyze information so that expectations can be compared with actuality. Finally, they transform comparison into learning—they correct errors, improve their imperfect understanding, and change action and plans. Linking science and human purpose, adaptive management serves as a compass for us to use in searching for a sustainable future.

To see how adaptive management differs from the trial and error by which humans now learn, consider what happens when a tract in the rain forest is logged. Cutting and removing trees tests beliefs about soil erosion, what plants will grow in the cleared space, pollution of the streams that drain the land, and other aspects of that ecosystem's response to logging. If those beliefs are correct, lumber or cleared land can be obtained without permanent damage to the ecosystem's ability to support life, and understanding is affirmed. Unforeseen results, however, usually bring only loss, because people are seldom prepared to infer lessons that are both clear and capable of being checked against others' experience. In contrast, adaptive managers make measurements so that action yields knowledge—even when what occurs is different from what was predicted. Properly employed, this experimental approach produces reliable knowledge from experience instead of the slow, random cumulation gleaned from unexamined error. When reliable learning prevails, a wide range of outcomes is valuable, and unexpected results produce understanding as well as surprise.

Adaptive management plans for unanticipated outcomes by collecting information. Usually, the greater the surprise, the more valuable the information gained. But the costs of information often seem too high to those who do not foresee such surprises. Framing an appropriate balance between predictable cost and uncertain value is a principal task of the chapters ahead.

The Gyroscope

The environment is necessarily shared by us all; but as every littered park reminds us, what is shared by many is typically abused. Reconciling control with the diversity and freedom essential to a democratic society is the task of bounded conflict.

The conflicts that already pervade environmental policy are likely to...