Ecosystem Health最新文献

ABSTRACT

The Network of Centres of Excellence (NCE) in Sustainable Forestry Management is a new research initiative in Canada that examines management practices that protect boreal forest resources while permitting controlled economic development. A critical factor in the viability of such practices is socioeconomic and cultural acceptability in the communities of the region. Health is an essential factor in this dimension of sustainability. The NCE includes a health component that examines issues of human and ecosystem health related to boreal forest communities in western and northern Canada. These may be direct, involving direct health effects on the human body, or indirect, mediated by social mechanisms. Communities in the region are generally small, remote, limited in economic resources, and support a mixed economic development of forest products, oil and gas, and traditional aboriginal activities. The small and dispersed population and the time frame for the study do not permit application of the usual methods of broad-based community health research. Instead, emphasis is placed on four main elements with a variety of robust and sometimes qualitative methods to suit the problems. The four elements are: (1) ”Population health,“ a conceptual model of determinants of health, as interpreted for boreal forest communities; (2) application of the population health model to anticipate and prevent human health problems associated with various scenarios of sustainable forestry management; (3) occupational health and safety issues associated with increased activity in the forest products sector; and (4) large-scale ecosystem change and human health. The NCE presents an unusual opportunity to study both the ecosystem and human health implications of an ecological intervention. Its activities may provide insight into the complex relationship between human and ecosystem health.

Sustainable use of the planet is based on the assumption that social evolution and changed human behavior can produce a sustainable society. This paradigm is vastly different from the notion that humans possess a common set of rigid, genetically specified behavioral predilections that are unlikely to be altered by circumstances. This manuscript examines two beliefs that are arguably root causes of the present human predicament.

Exceptionalists believe that some humans are vastly exceptional to most humans and, as a consequence, are entitled to a markedly disproportionate share of the planet's resources. In addition, humans are regarded as entitled to a vastly disproportionate share of the planet's resources compared with other species, for the same reason. Exemptionalists believe that human ingenuity, technology, and creativity free them from the iron laws of nature that limit and control other species. Both views constitute major obstacles to achieving sustainable use of the planet and require rigorous reexamination if sustainability is to be achieved.

Declining ecosystem health worldwide arguably is partly a consequence of a cultural and political economic disconnect between policy makers and scientists. Previous authors of “Viewpoint” describe this gap in terms of the relative inaction of policy makers in response to warnings from the scientific community. We provide an expanded perspective by considering the sociocultural evolution of political economies, and by contextualizing this dilemma within our overspecialized contemporary society. Our commentary suggests the ecosystem health community can work toward narrowing the policy-science disjunction despite the disparate cultures of these communities.

With the current struggle to “sustainably” exploit our biosphere, the “paradox of enrichment” remains an issue that is just as relevant today as it was when it was first formalized by Rosenzweig in 1971. This paradox is relevant because it predicts that attempts to sustain a population by making its food supply more abundant (e.g., by nutrient enrichment) may actually have the reverse (paradoxical) effect of destabilizing the network. Originally, this paradox was based upon studies of “reasonable,” but quite simple, predator-prey models. Here, we attempt a more “realistic” revision of the paradox that explicitly accounts for the embedded nature of the human system in a complexly interwoven set of hierarchical (spatial, temporal, and organizational) relations with the rest of the ecosphere-a relationship whose exploitative nature continues to grow in intensity and extent. This revision is attempted with the aid of a combined thermodynamic and network approach. The result is that a scaledependent asymmetry in the action of the second law of thermodynamics is shown-an asymmetry that results in the creation of two antagonistic propensities: local order and local disorder. The point of balance between these two propensities is empirically measurable and represents a balance between processes and constraints internal (growth and development) and external (interactive and perturbing influences) to a system-a balance that may be called the most “adaptive” state (after Conrad 1983). The use of such an index of this balance is demonstrated and it is used to clarify the relevance of the paradox to more complexly organized systems. As a consequence, we conclude that the concept of “sustainable exploitation and growth” is an oxymoron.