Manoa Valley viewed from Waikiki Ahupua’a By Enoch Wood Perry 1865

1. The Pathology of Disease Management (Or, “Fast Variables”, “Slow variables” and the tragedy of social ecological system behavior) & The Ecosystem Approach Manoa Valley viewed from Waikiki Ahupua’a By Enoch Wood Perry 1865

3. Example of a “Fast variable” – A storm event and associated stream flow Estimated storm hydrographs for 1939, 1955, 1976 and 2005 from excess precipitation associated with a six hour storm total of 8.71 inches. Walker et al. In prep. (According to NOAA the estimated return rate for an event of this magnitude is 50 years, i.e., there’s a 2% probability any given year.)

4. Cause of the Oct ‘04 Flood Manoa Flood NOAA’s interpretation: heaviest rain in the Koolau Mountains…resulting in Manoa Stream overflowing its banks and causing significant flooding….including the University of Hawaii Campus What actually happened, i.e., the causal chain of events (social ecological perspective): The City and County of Honolulu’s engineering and flood protection activities lagged behind the “hardening” of the upper Manoa watershed due to continual development (slow variable). NOAA meterologists and C&C of Honolulu engineers don’t share information – so the government failed to “connect the dots.”

5. World Health Organization, Tropical Disease Research (WHO TDR) Technical Reference Group on Agriculture, Environment and Emerging Infectious Diseases Bruce Wilcox Xiao-Nong Zhou Unidentified Government Bureaucrat All of us equally clueless about…how to implement this even if we an describe what EBM is! “Ecosystem-based Interventions for Infectious diseases” Shanghai Meeting, January 2010

6. Holling and Colleagues’ Discovery C.S. “Buzz” Holling • A number of cases point to a common cause behind such examples of failure of management of renewable resources (Holling 1986; Gunderson et al. 1995). The same principles appear to apply to disease control (Wilcox and Colwell 2005): • Some fisheries have collapsed in spite of widespread public support for sustaining them and the existence of a highly developed theory of fisheries management. • Moderate stocking of cattle in semiarid rangelands has increased vulnerability to drought. • Pest control has created pest outbreaks that become chronic. • Flood control and irrigation developments have created large ecological and economic costs and increasing vulnerability.

7. Holling’s Pathology of Resource Management Resource System Initial success in achieving narrowly defined goals  dependence encourages continuation, ecological support erodes  increasingly undesirable and difficult to avoid ecological change  unwanted change in nature, loss of ecological resilience  conservative management policies, loss of trust in management agencies Management Agencies Complexity of issues  institutional inertia  institutional gridlock (when inaction causes ecological issues to be ignored and existing policies continued)  managers surprised with inadequacies of policies revealed by ecosystem dynamics

8. Target “ecological” variable(s) is/are identified and successfully controlled. The character of the response, and the magnitude of the collapse, including whether the system shifts to another stability domain, depends on the flexibility built into the institutional system and resilience of the biophysical system. Uncertainty in nature is presumed replaced by certainty of human control. Social systems, and economic opportunity, initially flourish with increased success and efficiency. Initial signs of system instability or distress are ignored, until a surprise event, which may or may not result in a timely adaptive response while the institutional system remains in denial. The success is relatively short-lived as the stabilization of target variability leads to slow changes in other ecological, social, and cultural variables. Artificially constraining the ‘natural’ variability ultimately undermines system resilience and it becomes ‘an accident waiting to happen.’ ‘Pathology’ of Regional Development and Disease Management [Gunderson and Holling, Wilcox and Colwell (for EIDs)]

9. Holling’s Explanation of Reductionism vs. Holism in Biology (ecology) Two Streams of Ecological thought in Science Holling, C.S. 1998. Two cultures of ecology. Conservation Ecology [online] 2(2): 4 These are … the philosophies of two streams of science…(we need both).. …One is brilliantly represented by the advances in molecular biology and genetic engineering. That stream of science promises to lead to health and economic benefits of biotechnology but also to a journey on an uncertain sea of changing social values and consequences. It is an analytical stream of biology that is essentially experimental, reductionist, and disciplinary in character… …The other stream is integrative and is represented within biology by evolutionary biology and by systems approaches that extend to include the analysis of populations, ecosystems, landscape structures, and dynamics and, more recently, further extends to include biotic and human interactions with planetary dynamics.

10. In Summary, Real World Complexity and “Science” (reductionistic) Conflict • The world is complex; maybe more so than “normal” science can understand. • It is complex in the sense there are a lot of parts, interacting in numerous ways….and all of it is continuously changing. • To try to understand it is like hitting a moving target. • Scientists invented systems thinking* as a way of attempting to deal with this complexity in the world • *Recall systems approach or thinking involves recognizing approximately distinct entities (that make up the world) that can be characterized (in terms of their structure, organization, components) and have certain properties that are more than the sum of their parts - emerging properties.

11. One kind of Complex Systems Model: Holling et al’s Renewal (or Adaptive) Cycle From Gunderson and Holling (2002)

12. Moving from r to K Reorganization Exploitation Conservation Target “ecological” variable(s) is/are identified and successfully controlled. Uncertainty in nature is presumed replaced by certainty of human control. Social systems, and economic opportunity, initially flourish with increased success and efficiency. The success is relatively short-lived as the stabilization of target variability leads to slow changes in other ecological, social, and cultural variables.

13. Moving from K to Ω Surprise Crisis Reformation Crisis occurs when it becomes unambiguously clear the existing policies caused the surprise. Followed by period of denial and resistance, and finally a period of reformation when new policies are developed and implemented. It is during the period of crisis that institutions and connections between them are most open to dramatic transformation.

14. Adaptive Cycle From Gunderson and Holling (2002)

15. Northwestern Hawaiian Islands Fisheries & Ecosystem Collapse • Comparatively intact marine ecosystem. • Inadequate data on key fish stocks as a basis for stock assessment and sustainable fishery management. • High degree of uncertainty due to unpredictable ecosystem behavior and absence of scientific data makes fishery management challenging. • History of fishery management difficulties and conflicts with conservation values. • Collapse of commercial stocks (e.g. black lipped pearl oyster in the 1920s, lobster in the 1980s-1990s) • Early signs of possible over-fishing of commercially important bottomfish. • Inconsistency between ecosystem conservation policies as in the Sustainable Fisheries Act and the National Marine Sanctuaries Act and the actions of NOAA Fisheries/WPRFMC. Bishop Museum

16. Example: NWHI Lobster Fishery 1983-2000 From DiNardo and Marshall 2001 Fishery Closed Fishery Closed

17. Adaptive Cycle Applied to Fishery Management in the NWHI 90’s: Crisis; Ecological issues Pre-70s Lazze faire fishery development/management 80’s – 90’s: Ecosystem shift/lobster collapse (‘Surprise’) 90’s: NGOs 80’s:‘Success’ 00’s: EO, ecosystem protection, and new alternative futures 70’s: NOAA/WPRFMC regional fishery development Adapted from Gunderson and Holling (2002)

18. Dysynchronous Natural and Institutional System Dynamics Time and space scales of ecosystems Institutional hierarchy of rule sets of Social Systems Adapted from Holling 2001

19. Ecosystem-based Management or Intervention criteria • Disciplinary integration – toward a transdisciplinary eco-bio-social approach • Institutional bridging and stakeholder participatory engagement • Recognition of the dynamics, non-linearity of ecosystem behavior • Adaptive management • Accounting for the hierarchy and scale, and cross-scale interactions • Adopting a “total human ecosystem” perspective and using “coupled natural-human ecosystem analytical framework where appropriate • Defining the ecosystem’s boundaries – as distinct from geopolitical boundaries

20. Adaptive management (and social learning) • The basic tenets of adaptive management deals with the unpredictable interactions between people and ecosystems [including diseases] as they evolve together. • The primary expectation of adaptive management is the unexpected – because systems are unpredictable. • Natural systems evolve and co-evolve with management and change. • Surprises are inevitable, hence policies must always be adaptive. Some surprises come from outside the system being managed (hurricane/typhoon or importation of an exotic pathogen) and some from inside (biocide or antimicrobial resistant pests or microbes). • Surprises turn into crises when extreme external events interact with internally generated vulnerability.

21. The Players in Adaptive Management Three Groups commonly interact in adaptive management arena: • managers who must manage and make decisions within the existing policy framework and partial knowledge; • scientists who attempt to understand and communicate the system dynamic; and, • citizenry who benefit from or must endure the policies and results of management.

22. Tools for Adaptive Management The adaptive approach uses a variety of tools to: • share and communicate understanding of disease issues • expose uncertainties • embrace alternatives • develop robust policies  use their consequences to adapt and shape policies and actions further.

23. Adaptive Management as a (experimental) Science • “Adaptive management is an inductive approach, relying on comparative studies that blend ecological theories with observation and with design of planned intervention.” • Adaptive management is a kind of research! • Traditional ecological knowledge systems typically employ adaptive management.

24. BARRIERS BROKEN AND BRIDGES BUILT Players on the Institutional Scene Four types of players: • Bureaucrats • Activists • Catalysts • Formal decision makers From Gunderson, Light and Holling. 1995. Barriers and Bridges to the Renewal of Ecosystems and Institutions. Columbia Univ. Press.

25. Bureaucrats • “Bureaucrats carryout out activities from the exploitive to conservation phase in the process of implementing given policies” • They focus during the exploitation phase is on increasing efficiency of the execution of their tasks. • Progress is gauged in terms of are we “doing things right” rather than are we “doing the right things” • Institutions tend to become detached from the people they are supposed to serve. One bureaucrat’s response to the suggestion for ‘citizen science’: “don’t you realize the public creates these problems?”

26. Activists • Activists are critical to the ‘creation’ of the crisis. • They open up the possibility of a shift from the K to the omega phase of the adaptive cycle. • Activists identify single issues (real or imagined) that they are inadequately addressed by the institutions – pollution, threats to human health, ecological deterioration, economic disparity…. • Activists tenacious focus can arouse public scrutiny of institutions, exposing institutional vulnerabilities, resulting in a period of ‘institutional crisis’.

27. New ‘Actors’ – Omega phase • “Crises create the demand for new approaches and ideas. • “The initial foundation for effective adaptation is formed by developing an integrated understanding of the system, and by defining possible futures.”

28. Key Omega Phase Players Visionary – capable of transforming myths among a wide group of people: technical, institutional, political. Wise integrator – respected by players both inside and outside the system and is able to utilize traits of honesty “while connecting knowledge to power in spite of countervailing winds. Loyal heretic – a rebel bureaucrat critically important in preparing bureaucracies and agencies for change by maintaining strong personal contacts inside out outside the organization.