9 Developing Resilient Social-Ecological Systems
A thing is right when it tends to preserve the integrity, stability and beauty of the biotic community. It is wrong when it tends otherwise.
—ALDO LEOPOLD1
EARTH IS AN INTERCONNECTED WHOLE—or, more simply put by Barry Commoner, the renowned environmental activist and socialist, everything is connected to everything else. Data from satellites is confirming Commoner’s words and shedding new light on the ways in which life, land, oceans, atmosphere, the moon, and the star at the center of our solar system make up one interacting, dynamic system. The discipline of Earth systems analysis takes this approach, with researchers increasingly recognizing that physical phenomena can only be truly understood through their interactions and processes, that is, as an integrated system.
However, most scientists remain trapped in partial solutions because their comprehension of the biosphere is not yet fully integrated and combined with a critical analysis of social systems, like Barry Commoner’s was in the 1970s. We still need to apply the understandings about the connectivity of natural processes and cycles of the biosphere discussed in chapter 8 to the social-ecological project of creating an equitable and sustainable human society.
Unless a true tipping point is reached, the numerous ecological and social disturbances and degradations described in chapters 3 and 4 can be healed, and attempts must be made to limit and avoid them in the future. This requires a methodology for making economic decisions that recognizes the need to create resilient people, human economies, and ecosystems. We need to make decisions that take into account possible effects over the very long term. As Marx wrote in Capital, “Even an entire society, a nation, or all simultaneously existing societies taken together, are not the owners of the Earth. They are simply its possessors, its beneficiaries, and have to bequeath it in an improved state to succeeding generations.”2
Many pre-capitalist societies believe that Earth has a vital force that derives not just from plants and animals but from the land, the water, the sky (see pages 169–170). Millions of people around the world have been inspired by this conception of a vital biosphere, a constantly interacting whole across space and time. It provides a perspective in sharp contrast to the stark lifelessness of capitalist ideology and our part as mere cogs in the machine. This holistic view of the Earth can be combined and integrated with the latest science to promote new ethics toward the environment and sound practices for our interactions with each other and with the entire biosphere.
RESILIENCE AND REGENERATION
Any ecosystem can be degraded if it is affected by a huge shock or repeatedly subjected to moderate ones. But some ecosystems tend to be more stable and better able to resist extreme weather events, insects, disease, or harmful human activity. Ecosystems that go through periodic low to moderate disturbances become accustomed to these disruptions and develop ways to recuperate. They resist damage to their composition and functioning because of weather or long-lasting climate anomalies or other disturbances, and are able to recover quickly from most disruptions. This is the essence of resilience, a concept of importance to humans individually and collectively, as well as to watersheds, forests, deserts, agricultural fields, or grasslands. Resiliency is a measure of sustainability over the long term.
Conditions within a biome—a large geographic region with similar climate, vegetation, and animals—are in a continual state of flux as weather goes through its seasonal changes or varies within seasons, and as organisms live and reproduce, sometimes causing dramatic changes as they go about their activities.
Beavers provide an example of change over time within a biome. One of the essential life activities of beavers in North America is the damming of streams to provide ponds for protecting their dens. This turns a free-flowing network of streams into a series of lakes and ponds that provide habitat for fish, later becoming swampy marsh and, eventually, a soil with better drainage, suitable for the growth of forest.
Some ecosystems, or biomes, evolve because of long-term changes in weather patterns. Ten thousand years ago the world’s largest hot desert, the Sahara, began to receive significant rainfall, and what had been a desert became a lush savanna, with grassland interspersed with trees. Five thousand years later rainfall began to decrease again and eventually the region returned to its current arid state.3
Although small and frequent disturbances promote stability in most ecosystems, some have adapted to infrequent but periodic extreme events, and some species have even evolved to require disturbances in order to propagate themselves. The giant sequoia, the largest and one of the longest living individual life-forms on the planet, requires periodic fires to kill off less fire-resistant species, to dry out their cones so that the small seeds can be released, and to provide suitable forest floor conditions for seed germination.
There is no guiding purpose to an ecosystem, nor is there an inherent bias toward stability and equilibrium. However, there are certain characteristics of ecosystems that tend to make them relatively stable over many years, even centuries. When we construct buildings in cities or produce food on farms, reasonably stable local ecosystems and intimate knowledge of them are an advantage. They allow us to better plan for the future and be more confident that what actually happens is what we hoped would occur.
Resilience and sustainability have become buzzwords, almost universally embraced, which threatens to make them meaningless. After all, who would want to be unsustainable or lack resilience or have an unsustainable business? Companies, governments, and even the U.S. military regularly bandy about these terms. An article from Maxwell Air Force Base is titled “Airmen Learn to ‘Bounce Back’ at Resiliency Training.”4 In 2012 Donald Trump put into words the way that many feel about the concept: “Resilience is part of the survival of the fittest formula—make sure you remain adaptable.”5 Those on the resiliency and sustainability bandwagons use the terms to promote adaptation to social-ecological crises, avoiding consideration of potential political and economic causes. However, the basic concepts of resiliency and sustainability are extremely important when we consider people, societies, and ecosystems.
Animals, plants, and entire ecosystems lose resistance to adverse conditions and become less resilient when they experience severe stress. An ecosystem can be stressed by extreme weather events and fire or by removal of a keystone species—one that plays a singularly decisive role in the ecosystem. For example, when a synthetic chemical in India poisoned vultures, they no longer recycled the flesh of dead animals. With so much extra food, there was a large increase in the feral dog population and an increased incidence of human deaths because of rabies. Africa’s vultures are disappearing at a rapid rate, with six of the eleven species on the continent in danger of extinction. As in India, the disappearance of African vultures is a health risk to humans and farm animals “since populations of other scavengers such as rats and jackals could rise as a result.”6
When coastal mangroves are removed for such purposes as shrimp farming, roads, and tourist facilities, land nearby is no longer protected from the effects of sea level rise, salinization of groundwater and soil, and extremely high seas caused by tsunamis, cyclones, or other strong storm surges. It is estimated that over half of the world’s mangrove forests have been lost, increasing the vulnerability of all those exposed areas of the coast.
As with ecosystems, individual organisms can be more or less resilient in the face of challenges. When plants are stressed by growing in compacted soils or suffer rainfall extremes they become more susceptible to insect attack and root diseases. When humans are stressed by loss of employment or other adverse occurrences such as persistent poverty and discrimination, they are less resistant to illness, less able to bounce back from adverse conditions, and more likely to die at a younger age.
Just as with the human microbiome, balanced soil microorganism-plant-animal interactions capable of continual regeneration of functions are critical to maintaining stable and resilient ecosystems. This diverse population of soil organisms provides the nutrients and compounds that help plants grow and defend themselves against pests, allows only low populations of organisms that attack plants, and helps maintain a soil structure that enhances infiltration of rainfall and storage capacity for water. The interactions of the great diversity of soil organisms are essential for regulating the numbers of each individual species present, keeping biological balance, and sustaining the functioning of the whole system.
LEARNING FROM NATURE
In the nineteenth century Frederick Engels emphasized the need to align our thinking with the laws of nature. He wrote:
Freedom does not consist in any dreamt-of independence from natural laws, but in the knowledge of these laws, and in the possibility this gives of systematically making them work towards definite ends. This holds good in relation both to the laws of external nature and to those which govern the bodily and mental existence of men themselves—two classes of laws which we can separate from each other at most only in thought but not in reality.7
However, in the capitalist society in which Engels lived, business owners sought instead to learn how to overcome or circumvent the ways nature worked in order to exploit resources. There was no concern for negative short-term or long-term effects—a phenomenon Engels decried with great passion.
The scientific understanding in industrial societies of nature’s laws, especially the complex interactions occurring within ecosystems and how to apply them to human endeavors, has only recently come into its own with developments in fields such as agroecology, ecological design, and most recently, biomimicry. Although there is overlap among them, the common denominator of these different fields is a commitment to providing human needs by using methods based on those of individual organisms or stable and resilient ecosystems and, when practical, by integrating these endeavors with an understanding of the processes of the surrounding living organisms. After all, over billions of years of evolution, life has come up with many elegant solutions to problems that vastly different organisms have encountered.
As with all living creatures, when humans interact with the rest of the biological world and other facets of the biosphere, we change the ecology of the land, rivers, forests, and oceans. However, it is possible to manage the areas we disturb in ways that minimize the negative impacts on the functioning of the ecosystem. A combination of sustainable practices makes this possible, through applications of local knowledge, the findings of science using whole-system approaches, understandings about how individual practices fit well together, and studying the ways that evolutionary processes have generated organisms and ecosystems adapted to a wide range of conditions. As we interact with the rest of the natural world, it is essential to keep an open mind and to reevaluate ongoing practices, with the benefit of experience and advances in scientific knowledge and technology, in order to ensure that the ecosystem is functioning in ways that promote long-term sustainability and human health.
Biomimicry
Biomimicry is an approach to working with and learning from nature by studying how organisms have overcome issues similar to ones we confront, and applying that knowledge to solve human social and technical issues in a more ecological and holistic manner. For example, Scott Turner, a professor of animal physiology at the SUNY College of Environmental Science and Forestry in Syracuse, studies tall termite mounds in Africa as an example of adaptive structures. The mounds don’t actually have any residences, they are structures built specifically to maintain throughput of oxygen in and waste gases out by having enough thermal mass and ventilation to bring in sufficient fresh air to replace air inside the mound:
Functionally, these mounds are devices for capturing wind energy to power active ventilation of the nest. They are adaptive structures, continually molded by the termites to maintain the nest atmosphere. This ability confers on the colony … the regulation of the nest environment by the collective activities of the inhabitants.8
This example of the termites inspired the design and building of the Eastgate Center for offices and shopping in Harare, Zimbabwe; the design has greatly reduced energy use for ventilation and cooling and did not require installation of an air-conditioning system.9 Other examples of using nature’s design in human activities include the invention of Velcro, based on the attaching and holding power of burrs; the modification of wind turbines based on the surface characteristics of whales’ tails; and, most famously, the design of an airplane wing that mimics that of birds. As biologist Janine Benyus writes in Biomimicry, by using this approach
we would manufacture the way animals and plants do, using sun and simple compounds to produce totally biodegradeable fibers, ceramics, plastics and chemicals. Our farms, modeled on prairies, would be self-fertilizing and pest-resistant. To find new drugs or crops, we would consult animals and insects that have used plants for millions of years to keep themselves healthy and nourished. Even computing would take its cue from nature, with software that “evolves” solutions, and hardware that uses the lock-and-key paradigm to compute by touch.10
Studies of biological systems in order to learn from them and adapt solutions developed over evolutionary time to our interactions with and use of materials is at an early stage. There is much to be learned continuing down this course.
STABLE, RESILIENT ECOSYSTEMS: IMPLICATIONS FOR HUMAN SOCIETY
A number of characteristics support stable natural ecosystems, allowing them to resist degradation and be resilient in the face of challenges. These can be considered and evaluated when managing ecosystems for agricultural or other purposes and can be investigated as to their suitability and usefulness for human societies.
Using Local Resources
As we discussed in chapter 8, ecosystems are not closed off, any particular area of forest or grassland may interact with other regions or even biomes, sometimes at extremely long distances.
However, examination of the characteristics of many terrestrial ecosystems with limited human damage—species-rich or species-poor, highly productive or not, easily disturbed or resistant to disturbance—indicates that all exist by relying primarily on locally available resources: sunlight, rainfall (and climate in general), the soil and its organisms, and the plants and animals living on the land.
To the extent that it is reasonable and avoids duplication or waste of resources, there is an analogy to the workings of ecosystems for human society: each community, town, city, region, and multiregional area should emphasize using locally available resources to provide the goods and services needed by all their inhabitants. Although this is a general concept, with the details to be worked out during the process of change to a new society and economy, the point is that what can logically be done locally should be—from growing some of the basic foods to feed the local population, to being able to install and repair domestic water and electricity systems, to generating electricity, to having access to educational and recreational opportunities, medical care, and so on. (See “Location of Production” in chapter 11 for further discussion of this issue.)
This is a very different notion than the one advanced by the contemporary localist movement that stresses the importance of stimulating local economic activity. In a capitalist society, in which so much money leaves the local area to be funneled to large corporations hundreds or thousands of miles away, a primary goal of the localist movement is to help provide jobs by keeping more money circulating locally. But the real problem is not things and where and by whom things are produced and in what kind of store they are sold; it is the relations between the things in question and people. In an ecological society, there can be no problem of insufficient jobs: if less labor is required to produce what we need, workers will just work fewer hours. If the goal of society is to maximize equal access to resources needed for a high quality of life while minimizing negative environmental effects over the long term, then the questions become: Which industrial production processes and types of agriculture should be used? Where should they occur? How should goods be moved? How should goods be distributed?
STRENGTH IN DIVERSITY
A diversity of organisms characterizes many stable, relatively undisturbed ecosystems in temperate and tropical regions. But diversity is important not only because of the number of different species. Because some organisms carry out the same or similar functions, the extent of functional diversity (organisms performing different types of tasks) influences how an ecosystem performs. And though the presence of many species carrying out different functions is important, the relative abundance of organisms also determines the level of stability and resilience. The rich metabolic connections between so many species provide biological synergies and nutrient availability and reduce the possibility that a single causal factor will undermine the whole ecosystem.
A similar principle applies to human societies. A diverse array of human contributions, skills, and knowledge—what is referred to as functional diversity—confers a strength and resiliency on society. It contributes to the vibrancy of the social, cultural, and economic life of communities. Societal diversity can also occur as communities experiment and find a variety of different ways to organize, communicate, and solve particular problems—as long as all are dedicated to the goals of equity and ecological stability. Multiplicity in opportunities for work, education, recreation, and the development of one’s own interests will characterize stable and resilient communities—communities that evolve and change over time.11
SELF-REGULATING SYSTEMS
High levels of biological diversity tend to produce so many interactions and multiple pathways among organisms that outbreaks of diseases and parasites or overabundance of herbivores or predators, in concentrations large enough to compromise the integrity of the ecosystem, are uncommon. With so many different species competing and cooperating for resources and living off one another in various ways, populations stay in relative balance over the short and medium term. Populations of individual species on land and in the soil, oceans, and rivers will naturally vary with the time of day, the time of year, the amount and frequency of rainfall, and so forth. But a high degree of functional activity is usually maintained. The efficient cycling of inorganic nutrients through biological processes is a type of regulation that makes large and constant additions of nutrients normally unnecessary to maintain fully functioning non-managed ecosystems.
Examples of regulation that enhance survival include the many systems animals have to defend themselves when under attack by other organisms. But plants also have a number of defense mechanisms that help protect them from attack by fungi and bacteria. There are also beneficial insects that prey on (or lay their eggs in) other insects that feed on plants. Plants being eaten by herbivores produce chemicals that slow insect feeding, produce substances that can be used by beneficial organisms, and send out chemical signals that recruit the specific organism to attack the particular herbivore (see Figure 9.1).12
Even more awe-inspiring is the biological control of an insect that feeds on tomato plants, the hornworm caterpillar. The small parasitic wasp that lays its eggs in the caterpillar—after having been enticed by the gaseous chemicals released by the plant—simultaneously injects a virus that deactivates the immune system of the caterpillar.13 This allows the eggs to develop inside the caterpillar, eventually killing it. Without the virus from the wasp, the caterpillar’s immune system is able to destroy the wasp’s eggs—an astonishing example of interactions among species brought about by their co-evolution.
Figure 9.1: Plants Use a Number of Defense Strategies Following Damage by Feeding Insects.
Source: Modified from unpublished slide of W. J. Lewis.
A particular beetle that feeds on plants may encounter numerous other competing or antagonistic species that keep its population from getting too high. For instance, the Colorado potato beetle can be attacked “by a variety of predatory bugs and beetles in the foliage of the plants, and pathogenic nematodes and fungi that inhabit the soil.”14 This means that human management—in the examples of the beetle and the hornworm caterpillar, by farmers in agricultural ecosystems—must have the development and maintenance of a rich diversity of species as an important overall strategy to limit outbreaks of pests.
An interesting illustration of self-regulating behavior in the wild that seemingly replicates, in an unconscious way, the democratic decision making of humans, occurs when the number of bees in a hive grows too large:
Bees swarm to a temporary location. Scouts go out in different directions and then report back by performing a dance that provides information about the location scouted and its conditions. Other bees congregate around the original scout they think has selected the best site. When enough bees agree on one of the locations, the entire swarm then goes off to build a hive there. When a large enough number of bees agree about a site, they end up selecting the best one.15
There are similar examples in other species. For example, European bison, when deciding which direction to move after exhausting local feed, “operate by majority rule.”16
Self-regulation in human society corresponds to profound democracy, beginning at the productive base of society, in which all voices participate and make decisions on group needs to provide everyone with the essentials of a good and fulfilling life. At the society-wide level, it implies democratically decided regulation of interactions with fellow humans and the rest of the natural world. This means conscious and well-thought-out management and use of resources to supply human needs so that the maintenance of healthy environmental functions and succeeding generations are accounted for. When provided with the necessary information, groups of people tend to make better decisions than individuals making decisions for the group. And when people are meaningfully involved in the decision-making process, they feel more personal involvement and more desire to help implement group decisions.
Balanced natural cycles occur as a result of closely linked biological interactions, associations, and synergies. Terrestrial ecosystems with healthy soils and diverse plant species tend to be efficient in mobilizing and cycling nutrients and in capturing, using, and storing rainfall, particularly in more arid areas and during dry spells in humid regions. Ecosystems are maintained by their efficient pattern of consumption, production, and cycling of nutrients, continuous flow of stored solar energy and material, and ability to accept and store plentiful rainwater, averting downward spirals resulting from excessive loss of energy, nutrients, and topsoil.
In human economies and societies there is much to be learned by studying ecosystems, efficiently cycling nutrients taken up by agricultural plants and maintaining healthy forests and healthy agricultural soils. Examples of ways to enhance nutrient cycling and infiltration of rainfall (instead of allowing it to run off) on farms and in cities will be discussed in chapter 10.
Self-Renewal Following Disturbances
Ecosystems that are more stable are more resistant to disturbances; less damage is done, and they are able to bounce back more quickly. Such resiliency is a key characteristic of stable ecosystems, with other characteristics contributing to self-renewal. A seed naturally stored in the soil that germinates after a fire is an example of the self-renewal of plants. A nearby habitat with the same species as in an area that has been disturbed and lost biodiversity will allow more rapid reintroduction of plant and animal species into the habitat suffering the disturbance.
The contrast between more and less resilient agricultural ecosystems was strikingly observed after Hurricane Mitch tore into Central America in 1998. The U.S. Climate Data Center described the storm as follows:
In an awesome display of power and destruction, Hurricane Mitch will be remembered as the most deadly hurricane to strike the Western Hemisphere in the last two centuries. Not since the Great Hurricane of 1780, which killed approximately 22,000 people in the eastern Caribbean, was there a more deadly hurricane. Mitch struck Central America with such viciousness that it was nearly a week before the magnitude of the disaster began to reach the outside world.17
A participatory study during the following year—involving farmers, NGOs, and scientists—examined the damage and recovery of agricultural areas in Nicaragua and found that “on average, agroecological plots on sustainable farms had more topsoil, higher field moisture, more vegetation, less erosion and lower economic losses after the hurricane than control plots on conventional farms.”18
What we need to do is to combine the eradication of poverty and inadequate access to resources that led to so much human tragedy with agroecological practices. If societies plan well for possible infrequent occurrences such as earthquakes and hurricanes, people shouldn’t die during predictable natural disasters. And ecosystems, including human-dominated ones, should be able to recover quickly from periodic large disturbances and extreme weather events.
Community, regional, and intercontinental social structures and economies that embrace and enhance diversity of backgrounds and ideas, and exhibit democratic communal regulation and balanced social-ecological cycles, will better withstand adverse events and regenerate all their functions more quickly following such events. An entire human society built on principles of solidarity, reciprocity, and cooperation across geographic regions will immeasurably enhance resiliency.
DESIGNING RESILIENT HUMAN COMMUNITIES
Design of resilient human infrastructure and living and work environments can benefit from observations of how nature works and how well connected communities function. Increasing the connectivity between people in their communities as well as among other communities and regions enhances resilience. In addition, the best possible and most appropriate architecture and construction possible should be used only after objectively assessing local environmental risks, such as storm surges or earthquakes, and meshing these with local cultural knowledge and experience. Building locations will be chosen to avoid known hazardous situations, such as active flood plains or along a coast with inadequate height above sea level or protection from storm surges.
Coastal communities in some locations can be protected from storm surges by reintroduction of mangroves, wetlands, and oyster beds and integration of those with the edges of coastal cities; another is reforesting denuded slopes and changing land use so that marginal terrain does not have to be farmed. There are other obvious benefits to doing these things: increasing biodiversity, allowing people to observe wildlife from their homes and workplaces, and creating living cities that are, in a very literal sense, green.
However, all those physical changes won’t be possible unless they are embedded in an economic and social structure that has eradicated poverty and values equality, cooperation, and solidarity. Communities will then be protected because decisions about land and resource use will be based on the interests and desires of the community in question and utilizing the relevant scientific and local knowledge. In addition to planning for possible disasters, multiple threads of support will exist, internally and from surrounding areas, with which to pull the community together in the event of an extreme weather event. In such a society, an earthquake, major storm, hurricane, or other natural event will be just that—something that periodically happens but that everyone in society sees as their responsibility to do something about, using all available resources.
There are also ways to increase an individual’s resilience. For example, better nutrition, access to preventive medical care, and eliminating exposure to toxins will greatly aid efforts to improve human health and resilience. Frequent human contact with relatively undisturbed forests, lakes, prairies, even agricultural areas interspersed with grasslands and forested areas, helps people appreciate these ecosystems and is healthy for body and mind.
Overcoming what has been called “nature-deficit disorder,” resulting from spending so much time indoors and involved with electronic gadgets, promotes a child’s well-being. Just living near green spaces in a city helps improve people’s health, emphasizing the importance of providing quality green spaces in and near cities and encouraging people to engage with the sights, smells, and sounds of birds, trees, streams, and rocks. Human-dominated habitats such as cities need to be redesigned so as to mesh better within cycles of nature and overcome the idea that “nature” is somewhere other than in urban landscapes.
Truly ecological systems of production and living cannot become the norm today because that would go against the logic of capitalism. A capitalist economic and social system is simply incapable of doing more than occasionally adopting ecologically sound techniques here or there in piecemeal fashion, and only if they don’t interfere with the mandate for profits and growth. However, an ecological society would open the door to a completely different logic, one that treasures fulfillment of genuine human needs while regenerating and maintaining ecosystem health. The following chapter examines some examples of alternative approaches to managing our interaction with resources used to provide our basic needs.
