Ecosystem management


Ecosystem management is an approach to natural resource management that aims to ensure the long-term sustainability and persistence of an ecosystem's function and services while meeting socioeconomic, political, and cultural needs. Although indigenous communities have employed sustainable ecosystem management approaches implicitly for millennia, ecosystem management emerged explicitly as a formal concept in the 1990s from a growing appreciation of the complexity of ecosystems and of humans' reliance and influence on natural systems.
Building upon traditional natural resource management, ecosystem management integrates ecological, socioeconomic, and institutional knowledge and priorities through diverse stakeholder participation. In contrast to command and control approaches to natural resource management, which often lead to declines in ecological resilience, ecosystem management is a holistic, adaptive method for evaluating and achieving resilience and sustainability. As such, implementation is context-dependent and may take a number of forms including adaptive management, strategic management, and landscape-scale conservation.

Formulations

The term “ecosystem management” was formalized in 1992 by F. Dale Robertson, former Chief of the U.S. Forest Service. Robertson stated, “By ecosystem management, we mean an ecological approach… must blend the needs of people and environmental values in such a way that the National Forests and Grasslands represent diverse, healthy, productive and sustainable ecosystems.”
A variety of additional definitions of ecosystem management exist. For example, Robert T. Lackey emphasizes that ecosystem management is informed by ecological and social factors, is motivated by societal benefits, and is implemented over a specific timeframe and area. F. Stuart Chapin and co-authors emphasize that ecosystem management is guided by ecological science to ensure the long-term sustainability of ecosystem services, while Norman Christensen and coauthors emphasize that it is motivated by defined goals, employs adaptive practices, and accounts for the complexities of ecological systems. Peter Brussard and colleagues emphasize that ecosystem management balances preserving ecosystem health while sustaining human needs.
As a concept of natural resource management, ecosystem management remains both ambiguous and controversial, in part because some of its formulations rest on contested policy and scientific assertions. These assertions are important for understanding much of the conflict surrounding ecosystem management. For instance, some allege that professional natural resource managers, typically operating from within government bureaucracies and professional organizations, mask debate over controversial assertions by depicting ecosystem management as an evolution of past management approaches.

Principles of ecosystem management

A fundamental concern of ecosystem management is the long-term sustainability of the production of goods and services by ecosystems, as "intergenerational sustainability a precondition for management, not an afterthought." Ideally, there should be clear, publicly stated goals with respect to future trajectories and behaviors of the system being managed. Other important requirements include a sound ecological understanding of the system including ecological dynamics and the context in which the system is embedded. An understanding of the role of humans as components of the ecosystems and the use of adaptive management is also important. While ecosystem management can be used as part of a plan for wilderness conservation, it can also be used in intensively managed ecosystems.
Core principles and common themes of ecosystem management:
  1. Systems thinking: Management has a holistic perspective rather than focusing on a particular level of biological hierarchy in an ecosystem.
  2. Ecological boundaries: Ecological boundaries are clearly and formally defined, and management is place-based.
  3. Ecological integrity: Management is focused on maintaining or reintroducing native biological diversity and on preserving natural disturbance regimes and other key processes that sustain resilience.
  4. Data collection: Broad ecological research and data collection is needed to inform effective management.
  5. Monitoring: The impacts of management methods are tracked, allowing for their outcomes to be evaluated and modified, if needed.
  6. Adaptive management: Management is an iterative process in which methods are continuously reevaluated as new scientific knowledge is gained.
  7. Interagency cooperation: As ecological boundaries often cross administrative boundaries, management often requires cooperation among a range of agencies and private stakeholders.
  8. Organizational change: Successful implementation of management requires shifts in the structure and operation of land management agencies.
  9. Humans and nature: Nature and people are intrinsically linked and humans shape, and are shaped by, ecological processes.
  10. Values: Humans play a key role in guiding management goals, which reflect a stage in the continuing evolution of social values and priorities.

    History

Pre-industrialization

Sustainable ecosystem management approaches have been used by societies throughout human history. Prior to colonization, indigenous cultures often sustainably managed their natural resources through intergenerational traditional ecological knowledge. In TEK, cultures acquire knowledge of their environment over time and this information is passed on to future generations through cultural customs including folklore, religion, and taboos. Traditional management strategies vary by region; examples include the burning of the longleaf pine ecosystem by Native Americans in what is today the southeastern United States, the ban of seabird guano harvest during the breeding season by the Inca, the sustainable harvest practices of glaucous-winged gull eggs by the Huna Tlingit, and the Maya milpa intercropping approach.

Post-industrialization

In industrialized Western society, ecosystems have been managed primarily to maximize yields of a particular natural resource. This method for managing ecosystems can be seen in the U.S. Forest Service's shift away from sustaining ecosystem health and toward maximizing timber production to support residential development following World War II. Furthermore, natural resource management has typically assumed a view that each ecosystem has a single best equilibrium and that minimizing variation around this equilibrium results in more dependable, greater yields of natural resources. For example, this perspective informed the long-held belief in forest fire suppression in the United States, which drove a decline in populations of fire-tolerant species and a buildup of fuel, leading to higher intensity fires. Additionally, these approaches to managing natural systems tended to be site- and species-specific, rather than considering all components of an ecosystem collectively, employ a “command and control” approach, and exclude stakeholders from management decisions.
The latter half of the 20th century saw a paradigm shift in how ecosystems were viewed, with a growing appreciation for the importance of ecological disturbance and for the intrinsic link between natural resources and overall ecosystem health. Simultaneously, there was acknowledgment of society's reliance on ecosystem services and of the inextricable role human-environment interactions play in ecosystems. In sum, ecosystems were increasingly seen as complex systems shaped by non-linear and stochastic processes, and thus, they could not be managed to achieve single, fully predictable outcomes. As a result of these complexities and often unforeseeable feedback from management strategies, DeFries and Nagendra deemed ecosystem management to be a “wicked problem”. Thus, the outcome of natural resource management's "evolution" over the course of the 20th century is ecosystem management, which explicitly recognizes that technical and scientific knowledge, though necessary in all approaches to natural resource management, are insufficient in themselves.

Stakeholders

Stakeholders are individuals or groups who are affected by or have an interest in ecosystem management decisions and actions. Stakeholders may also have power to influence the goals, policies, and outcomes of management. Ecosystem management stakeholders fall into the following groups based on their diverse concerns:
  1. Stakeholders whose lives are directly tied to the ecosystem
  2. Stakeholders who are not directly impacted, but have an interest in the ecosystem or its ecosystem services
  3. Stakeholders concerned with the decision-making processes
  4. Stakeholders funding management plans
  5. Stakeholders representing public interest

    Strategies to stakeholder participation

The complexity of ecosystem management decisions, ranging from local to international scales, requires the participation of stakeholders with diverse understandings, perceptions, and values of ecosystems and ecosystem services. Due to these complexities, effective ecosystem management is flexible and develops reciprocal trust around issues of common interest, with the objective of creating mutually beneficial partnerships. Key attributes of successful participatory ecosystem management efforts have been identified:
  • Stakeholder involvement is inclusive, equitable, and focused on trust-building and empowerment.
  • Stakeholders are engaged early on, and their involvement continues beyond decision and into management.
  • Stakeholder analysis is performed to ensure parties are appropriately represented. This involves determining the stakeholders involved in the management issue; categorizing stakeholders based on their interest in and influence on the issue; and evaluating relationships between stakeholders.
  • Stakeholders agree upon the aims of the participatory process from its beginning, and the means and extent of stakeholder participation are case-specific.
  • Stakeholder participation is conducted through skilled facilitation.
  • Social, economic, and ecological goals are equally weighed, and stakeholders are actively involved in decision making, which is arrived at by collective consensus.
  • Stakeholders continually monitor management plan’s effectiveness.
  • Multidisciplinary data are collected, reflecting multidisciplinary priorities, and decisions are informed by both local and scientific knowledge.
  • Economic incentives are provided to parties responsible for implementing management plans.
  • To ensure long-term stakeholder involvement, participation is institutionalized.