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3 - Change, Sustainability, and Related Concepts

from Part I - Introduction, Dynamic Systems, and Change

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 July 2018

Chadwick Dearing Oliver  and
Fatma Arf Oliver
Chadwick Dearing Oliver
Affiliation:
Yale University, Connecticut
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Summary

A societal challenge is to become aware of and acknowledge change. Scientific understanding can alter changes from being harmful to opportunities. Preventive, adaptive, and reactive responses to change involve sustainability. Early foresters “sustained” timber; “sustainable development” later promoted intergenerational equity. Sustainability now includes maintaining what can/should not be changed while channeling changes desirably. Research is revealing the principles and opportunities of change. Resilience is the ability to absorb perturbations and maintain desired properties. Adaptability is the ability to recover from disturbances and retain a previous behavior, while transformability is to change to a system with different behaviors.A system can change by gradual, abrupt, and reversible shifts after thresholds are reached. Small action can produce large result (non-linearity) at leverage points-- characteristics of complex systems. Knowing how to change leverage points favorably is often more difficult than identifying them. Frameworks are conceptual structures of systems and provide guidelines for models. Resource management is the art and science of dealing with change.
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Global Resources and the Environment , pp. 22 - 32
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2018

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