Sustainability and Adaptive Management: Toward a Normative Approach to Nature Protection

1. Bryan G. Norton School of Public Policy ISC Conference: Basel Switzerland August 30, 2012 Sustainability and Adaptive Management:Toward a Normative Approach to Nature Protection

2. My talk will be in three parts: • Part 1-Normative Sustainability: Any adequate definition of the contested term “sustainable” must be normative in nature: We must know what is important and valuable before we can form a responsible bequest to future generations • Part 2- The Challenge: How can we respond to theneed for important value judgments as we make decisions about what to protect and what to alter? • Part 3- Roles: What is the role of institutions on a sustainable path through this challenge?

3. Part 1: “Sustainability” is a contested concept • It gained currency and power as a political concept before it was given a clear meaning by academics • Result: a disciplinary turf war as different academic fields and practices compete to capture by definition the political effectiveness of the term • This turf war creates situations exemplifying “Wicked Problems.” WP’s are problems that are not given clear formulation because discussants cannot agree on the nature of the problem at hand • Progress on complex, Wicked Problems requires evolution of polycentric institutions

4. A Conceptual Geography of Sustainability Concepts

5. The Crucial Contrast between Strong vs. Weak Sustainability: Weak Sustainability emphasizes economic analysis • Sustainability is defined as “maintenance of undifferentiated capital” • Sustainability is measured by comparing the ability of later generations with those of former ones to achieve constant or increased levels of welfare Strong Sustainability emphasizes cultural and ecological values • Includes some form of economic sustainability • Goes beyond economic measures to require protection of “stuff” • Identifies particular activities (options) that are essential to continuing what is valued in the community • Resilience of ecological systems • Perpetuation of “sense of place” values

6. A Model: Nature experienced as opportunities to express and act upon the community’s values

7. Sustainability is: Brundtland: “Sustainable development is development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs. It contains within it two key concepts: • the concept of 'needs', in particular the essential needs of the world's poor, to which overriding priority should be given; and • the idea of limitations imposed by the state of technology and social organization on the environment's ability to meet present and future needs.”* * WCED, Our Common Future Oxford U. Press, 1987

8. Norton’s Definition of Sustainability A society is living sustainably if prior generations fulfill their individual wants and needs so as not to destroy opportunities valued by the community. This requires protecting the physical and ecological processes necessary to support those opportunities for future generations.”** Note that the Brundtland definition does not directly refer to physical or ecological pre-requisites necessary to protect opportunities.  ** modified from Norton, Sustainability, U. of Chicago Press, 2005.

9. Sustaining Community Values O’Neil, Holland and Light speak of “managing the transition from past to the future so as to preserve meaning.”* • My definition tries to capture this idea by connecting important community values with the physical and ecological processes and features that provide the opportunities to enjoy those values • Strong, normative Sustainability requires the perpetuation of important community values across generations *Environmental Values, Routledge , 2008

10. My Argument Summarized: Any adequate definition of the contested term, sustainability, must (in addition to protecting economic well-being) require: • That we protect the cultural values that make a community what it is • That we protect the ecological systems and processes that support those values. Therefore, understanding the sustainabilty of communities must require a normative definition of “Sustainability”

11. Part 2: This argument presents a challenge: How can we identify and articulate the cultural and ecologically based values that give a community an identity and sense of place?

12. Disciplinary Conflict One might expect that we can gain insight into the challenge by reference to work in Environmental Economics and/or Environmental Ethics. BUT: No unified approach to evaluating changes has developed because their theories create conflicting understandings of environmental value THEREFORE: This conflict leaves environmental evaluation in a hopeless deadlock.

13. This difference corresponds to another, historical divide: • Those who favor economic analysis as the central methodology of environmental decision making (Gifford Pinchot) • Those who believe environmental goals should be set by political means, which includes a public debate about aesthetic and moral values, including "non-instrumental" value (John Muir)

14. Breaking the Deadlock: I propose to short-circuit this interminable debate and shift the question from: What is valuable? To: How can we learn to make better, more sustainable choices?

15. The Challenge and a Possible Answer: The Challenge: to devise some way that complex and diverse democratic societies can, through a process of deliberation about what is really valuable in their community, learn their way toward more sustainable living. A Possible Answer:Adaptive Management, if developed in a particular direction, could help us to learn to live sustainably by addressing both uncertainty in science, and disagreements about what is valuable, within a deliberative and collaborative process of seeking community sustainability.

16. The new approach in a nutshell Aldo Leopold • Thinking Like a Mountain: a multi-scalar approach to environmental management • The first “adaptive manager”

17. C. S. Holling, Adaptive Environmental Assessment and Management, 1978 • Holling has argued that we cannot define “Sustainable living” in advance • Understanding sustainability goals is as uncertain as our scientific knowledge • We must learn our way toward sustainability

18. Two Reactions to Uncertainty: • Study, then act: perform studies until uncertainty is reduced/eliminated OR • Learn by Doing: Act experimentally in the face of uncertainty, using the scientific method to learn and reduce uncertainty at the next decision point Leopold and Holling recommend Learning by Doing!

19. Definition of Adaptive Management • Experimentalism: AMs respond to uncertainty by undertaking reversible actions and studying outcomes to reduce uncertainty at the next decision point • Multi-Scalar Modeling: AMs model environmental problems within multi-scaled (“hierarchical”) space-time systems • Place-Orientation: AMs address environmental problems from a “place”; embedded in local natural and political contexts

20. Beyond Ecology: • Holling and Leopold, while aware of the importance of values, nevertheless focused mainly on scientific uncertainty • I propose that we expand the application of experimentation and the scientific method to learning about human values.

21. John Dewey’s Experimental Ethics of Action Dewey proposes: • A unified, scientific method for all questions, descriptive and normative • “x is desired” Leads to a hypothesis: “x is desirable.” • Experience—experimentation when possible, careful observation otherwise—is the method by which we determine what is desirable. • We must learn our way toward sustainability goals in our community

22. Elements of a process approach • We must shift to a more procedural approach which emphasizes community participation and deliberation about sustainability goals • We should evaluate “development pathways” using as tools: • Scenarios • Back-casting • Multiple criteria

23. Part 3: Sustainability and Institutions So far, I have emphasized what we (should) mean by sustainability, and the challenge this definition poses for those who evaluate environmental change. In keeping with the theme of the conference, let me add a brief response to the above conclusion that, being a contested concept, sustainability poses wicked problems for communities.

24. Institutions and Wicked Problems • Wicked problems arise when individuals and groups are unhappy about a situation, but when they understand the problem differently • Wicked Problems usually reveal an underlying difference of perspective and values • One form of “wickedness” manifests when participants see problems at different scales of space and time

25. A traditional—but inadequate—response: It is tempting to think that, when an environmental problem arises, we should: • Characterize the problem • Identify an existing political institution/jurisdiction that should address the problem • Initiate steps to solve the problem through existing political and legal channels

26. Today, problems often manifest at different scales or at multiple scales • Most environmental problems have impacts beyond existing political boundaries • Addressing wicked environmental problems requires getting the scale at which to address the problem right • Clarification of problem boundaries and horizon often requires the development of new institutions that stitch together multiple agents across multiple scales

27. Institutional Polycentrism • Addressing multiscalar problems usually exceeds the scope of existing institutions • The clarification of problems often requires developing new institutions to address them (or at least new relations between existing institutions) • Addressing the long-term questions raised by seeking sustainability requires creativity in developing institutions

28. Different Roles for Local and Central Governments • Central governments: The Hammer • Local governments: Responsive to stakeholders • Can central governments create incentives so that, for most stakeholders, cooperation is better than staying with a deteriorating status quo • Successful examples in US: • Northwest Timber Plan • Platte River Habitat Recovery Program

29. Conclusion: • We do not know what to sustain until we know what we VALUE • Learning to live sustainably will be a matter of identifying important community values as well as reducing scientific uncertainty • Environmental Evaluation must be approached as a matter of community deliberation in an ongoing process • Community deliberation may require new institutions of governance that can span multiple, polycentric scales of time and space