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The Integration of Social-Ecological Resilience and Law
Citation:
Garmestani, A., C. Allen, J. Ruhl, AND C. Holling. The Integration of Social-Ecological Resilience and Law. Chapter 12, Social-Ecological Resilience and Law, ISBN9780231160599. Columbia University, New York, NY, , p.365 - 382, (2014).
Impact/Purpose:
Humankind’s rich heritage of experimentation in governance and management offers hope that some of the ideas that have been forwarded here will be embraced. The critical lesson of resilience theory is that barring some significant actions on humankind’s part, the further accrual of increasingly rigid and complicated regulations and laws will inevitably result in collapse of the system. The approaches forwarded here offer a different path and outcome.
Description:
Growing recognition of the inherent uncertainty associated with the dynamics of ecological systems and their often non-linear and surprising behavior, however, presents a set of problems outside the scope of classic environmental law, and has lead to a fundamental understanding about the interaction of environmental law and ecological systems: Rigid legal standards are largely incompatible with our current understanding of the dynamics of social-ecological systems. Nature is not static, and thus environmental law must be adapted to reflect our current understanding of nature.
URLs/Downloads:
http://cup.columbia.edu/book/socialecological-resilience-and-law
http://pubs.er.usgs.gov/publication/70047328