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Introduction


The concept of sustainability is one that has been with us for a long time. Several definitions come to mind (Orr 2002, Solow 1998)

  • Sustain -- 1) To cause to continue or maintain at length without interruption.
  • Sustainability -- 2) Meeting the needs of the present generation without compromising the ability of future generations to do the same (Brundtland 1987).
In fisheries, sustainability has become institutionalized in the mathematical term sustainable yield (SY). When maximized for a particular harvested stock, SY becomes MSY. SY and MSY are based on the concept of equilibrium yield, and thus actually reflect the projection of stability principles of systems onto the natural world - or as Botkin (1990) so eloquently points out, provide a machine metaphor for nature. This machine metaphor for the balance (and order) of nature, expressed in formal mathematical models, has become the basis for renewable resource management as well as the contemporary environmental movement. Botkin goes on to say that change is intrinsic at most scales of time and space in the natural world and that the machine, with its internal controls, is not the right metaphor for nature or, we would add, human society.

Recently there has been a serious attempt to join the concept of sustainability with the growing scientific understanding that both human and natural systems are complex and adaptive (Holling 2001). Holling and Meffe (1995) made the point that when it comes to natural resource issues, science and policy are inextricably linked. What they call "command and control" policy (reduce system variability and make the system more predictable) is based on a "first stream" scientific view of natural and social systems that concentrates on stability near an equilibrium steady-state-- what they call equilibrium resilience. Clearly, the concept of sustainable yield falls into this realm. An alternative basis for natural resource policy, what they call "golden rule" policy (retain or restore critical types and ranges of natural and social variation, facilitate existing processes and variabilities), is based on a "second stream" scientific view of natural and social systems that concentrates on conditions far from any equilibrium. In this case, instabilities can flip a system into another regime of behavior -- what they call ecosystem resilience.

Lead by Holling and colleagues, these concepts have formed the basis for an integrated concept of humans in nature, called social-ecological systems (Berkes et al 2003), and a new field of sustainability science that seeks to understand the fundamental character of interactions between nature and society (Kates et al 2001).