There are many issues that remind us of the fragility of our world and its ecosystems – climate change, habitat destruction, GM plants and so on ad infinitum and these multifarious issues generally lead us to worry about the uncertainty in the ecological balance of nature and whether this uncertainty can be managed and by whom. We are so bombarded with stories of doom and gloom that it seems to us all that our world is very fragile. Is this the case?
Associate Professor Ann Kinzig of the Arizona State University School of life Sciences has doubts about this and says that the answer to the question depends on whom you ask.
According to her research, ideas about nature’s balance diverge across
lines of culture, livelihood and political ideology. She says that some view nature as fragile, easily upset by human activity and in need of protection, whereas others see nature as extremely robust and nearly endless in its capacity to continue to supply needed resources in the face of heavy human exploitation. Still others have more nuanced viewpoints or inconsistent perceptions.
Her view is that the condition of the natural world is not an either-or proposition — the biosphere is never perfectly balanced or wholly poised on the brink of a precipitous crash. It can be at once robust and fragile, stable and unstable. Moreover, instability in one part of the ecological system may be required to maintain stability in another, for example when variations in the populations of individual plant species act to stabilize the overall biomass of an ecosystem. Interpretation of the state of the balance of nature is greatly dependent upon which features are examined and at what scale.

We often regard humans as the great unbalancing agents of the natural world whereas humans can in fact have a beneficial or a detrimental effect on resilience, or both. Kinzig believes that there is no theoretical reason to conclude that ecological systems would grow more resilient in absence of human influences.

Human interaction could, in theory, serve to either increase or decrease
resilience. In practice, it does both, though the examples of human
interaction degrading resilience are more numerous.`

If uncertainty can never fully be eliminated from our understanding of nature,
then scientists, decision makers and the public must consider it in their
deliberations — and ask what risks they are willing to take in managing the
world’s ecological systems.

“Uncertainty can and should influence management decisions,” Kinzig says. “Our perceptions about the robustness or vulnerability of nature may be wrong. If we have as our model that nature is fragile, and it isn’t, what opportunities do we miss? If we perceive it to be robust, and it isn’t, what consequences do we suffer?”
Kinzig presented her observations on Feb 17 2008 at the American Association for the Advancement of Science annual meeting.

Adapted from materials provided by Arizona State University
Reference: Arizona State University (2008, February 20). Managing Uncertainty Important In Ecological Balance.

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