Managerial ecology and its discontents: exploring the complexities of control, careful use and coping in resource and environmental management.

Abstract

Managerial ecology is embedded within a complex set of historical relationships. The institutions and processes of resource and environmental management have traditionally been the means by which a select few (managers) have side stepped democratic politics and environmental ethics in favour of top-down anthropocentric administration. By assuming an unlimited capacity to eliminate indeterminism and achieve certainty through science and technology, resource management (as conceptualized and practiced) has proven itself to be extremely undemocratic and unsustainable with respect to human communities and biophysical ecosystems. Recent developments within the science of ecology have challenged managerial approaches to nature by shifting attention away from the "balance of nature" paradigm that permitted certainty, command, and control toward a "flux of nature" paradigm focused on coping with uncertainty and complexity in dynamic and interconnected ecological systems. The change in emphasis within managerial ecolo gy from "control" to "coping" strategies has the potential to undermine control while highlighting the importance of political and moral ecology -- that is the need to make good ecological decisions in the presence of conflict and in the absence of universal Truth. However, the shift from a confident ecological science of control to a tentative and ambiguous science of coping has also encouraged the relocation of projects of managerial control from biophysical systems onto the behaviours, attitudes and values of individual human beings and the collective behaviour of their societies and cultures. By describing the ambivalent responses to this shift within the field of resource and environmental management, the paper questions the legitimacy of managerial approaches to natural and cultural worlds, while clearing a path for recognizing and re-imagining alternatives.

L'ecologie gestionnaire fait partie d'un reseau complexe de relations historiques. Traditionnellement, les institutions et les procedes associes a la gestion des ressources et de l'environnement ont ete des moyens grace auxquels un petit nombre de personnes (les gestionnaires) a contourne les politiques democratiques et l'ethique environnementale en faveur d'administrations anthropocentriques descendantes. En attribuant a la science et a la technologie une capacite illimitee d'eliminer l'indeterminisme et de parvenir a des certitudes, la gestion des ressources (telle qu'elle est pensee et pratiquee) a demontre qu'elle etait grandement antidemocratique et non viable pour les collectivites humaines et les ecosystemes biophysiques. De recents developpements dans la science de l'ecologie ont remis en question les approches gestionnaires de la nature en deplacant l'attention auparavant portee au paradigme << equilibre de la nature >> (associe a la certitude, l'ordre et le controle) vers le paradigme << flux de la nature >> (qui met l'accent sur la capacite de se debrouiller avec l'incertitude et la complexite de systemes ecologiques dynamiques et interrelies). Dans l'ecologie gestionnaire, le passage d'une strategie de << controle >> a une strategie de << debrouillardise >> permet d'ebranler le controle tout en soulignant l'importance de l'ecologie politique et morale, c'est-a-dire le besoin de prendre de bonnes decisions ecologiques lors de conflits et en l'absence de verite universelle. Ce passage d'une science de l'ecologie confiante et en controle a une science incertaine et ambigue qui prone la debrouillardise a transforme des projets de controle gestionnaire de systemes biophysiques en comportements, attitudes et valeurs humaines individuelles et en comportements collectifs associes aux societes et cultures. En decrivant les reactions ambivalentes a ce changement dans le champ de la gestion des ressources et de l'environnement, cet article questionne la legitimite des approches gestionnaires des univers naturels et culturels, tout en ouvrant la voie a la reconnaissance et a la << re-imagination >> de solutions de rechange.

Keywords

Resource and environmental management, managerial ecology, complexity, control, coping

Managerial Ecology and Its Discontents

Management is a tertiary skill -- a method, not a value. And yet we apply it to every domain as if it were the ideal of our civilization (Saul 1995: 200).

This paper attempts to understand how "management," what the philosopher John Ralston Saul calls a tertiary skill and method, has become a central value that guides how environmental issues are understood and addressed. As Paehlke and Torgerson observe, faith in management has a pervasive influence over environmental imaginations.

If there is a problem, better management is often assumed to be the solution. This assumption has deeply influenced the rise of advanced industrial societies and now guides much of the response to environmental problems (Paehlke and Torgerson 1990: 5).

Understanding how and why managerial solutions dominate responses to complex environmental issues is crucial if we are to address the numerous crises developing in the field of resource and environmental management. The institutions and processes of resource and environmental management have traditionally been the means by which a select few (managers) have side stepped democratic politics and environmental ethics in favour of top-down human-centered administration. By assuming an unlimited capacity to eliminate indeterminism and achieve certainty through science and technology, resource and environmental management -- as conceptualized and practiced -- has proven itself to be extremely undemocratic and unsustainable with respect to human communities and biophysical ecosystems. Recent developments within the science of ecology, however, have challenged managerial approaches to nature by shifting attention away from the "balance of nature" paradigm that permitted certainty, command, and control toward a "flux of nature" paradigm focussed on coping with uncertainty and complexity in dynamic and interconnected ecological systems (Botkin 1990, Pimm 1991, Thompson and Trisoglio 1997).

This paper argues that changes in ecological science have the potential to undermine management as a central value and dominant way of framing environmental issues while clearing a space for radical alternatives. Indeed, ecological scientists who are focussed on understanding the complexity of the natural world have argued that the "era of management is over" (Ludwig 2001: 758). This observation has led scholars in the field to increasingly stress the importance of political and moral ecology -- that is the need to make good ecological decisions in the presence of conflict and in the absence of universal Truth (Peet and Watts 1996, Keil et al 1998, Cortner and Moote 1999, Torgerson 1999, Coward et al 2000). However, the shift from a confident ecological science of control to a politicized science of coping has also encouraged the relocation of projects of managerial control from biophysical systems onto the behaviours, attitudes and values of individual human beings and their collective expressions in societi es and cultures. By exploring the negative effects of the decline of control and the rise of coping, the challenges and complexities of contemporary resource and environmental management can be clarified and spaces can be made available to recognize and re-imagine alternatives to managerial ecology.

Managerial ecology, or the unquestioned faith in management as the solution to deep seated ecological and social problems, is founded on the belief in, and desirability of, control (Evemden 1985, Ehrenfeld 1991, Luke 1997). Despite laudable attempts at redefinition, in an age of rampant capitalist globalization, progress continues to be equated with the ability of human beings to increasingly control external biophysical nature and internal human nature through scientific understanding and technological organization (Parker 2002: 3). The Progressive Era (1890-1920) in the United States, which gave birth to the conservation movement, and later the field of resource management, embraced the vision of efficient and effective control projects (Hays 1974). Gifford Pinchot, the American father of conservation, promoted managerial ecology in direct opposition to the ideas of John Muir and the preservationists who advocated versions of moral ecology. John Muir and the preservationist movement emphasized the importanc e of aesthetic and spiritual appreciation of nature. Their movement was based on deontological arguments focussed on the intrinsic value of the natural world. Pinchot's conservation movement was founded on a consequentialist, or utilitarian ethic, which emphasized the instrumental, economic and functional value of nature conceptualized as a collection of natural goods and services (Oelschlaeger 1991). The managerial essence of Progressive Conservation is perhaps best illustrated in Pinchot's insistence that "the first duty of the human race is to control the earth it lives upon" (1967:45).