Integrated Planning Support in Resource Management Part I: on Shifting Paradigms and the Changing Role of Science
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Integrated planning support in Resource Management Part I: On shifting paradigms and the changing role of science Thorsten Arnold, Zentrum für Entwicklungsforschung (ZEF), [email protected] (Abstract submitted in separate file) CONTENT 1 INTRODUCTION ...................................................................................................... 2 1.1 The rise of holistic management 2 1.2 What is complexity? 6 2 MANAGING COMPLEXITY – ON THE MINDSETS OF RESEARCHERS .............. 8 2.1 Accepting complexity 8 2.2 Cooperation as key principle of evolution – in biology and economy 9 2.3 Understanding self-organization and path dependency 11 2.4 From linear research to innovation as a complex process 13 2.5 Re-defining the role of research and researchers 15 2.6 Understanding Adaptive Co-Management as an emergent property 16 3 RESEARCH NEEDS AND KNOWLEDGE REQUIREMENTS............................... 18 3.1 From dictating solutions towards integrating multiple views 19 3.2 From predicting the future towards multiple scenarios and options 21 3.3 From generalization towards typical patterns 22 3.4 From single projects towards coordination of multiple actors 23 4 CONCLUSION ....................................................................................................... 25 5 LITERATURE......................................................................................................... 26 Thorsten Arnold ZEF Term paper 1 Introduction I often say that when you can measure what you are speaking about, and express it in numbers, you know something about it; but when you cannot measure it, when you cannot express it in numbers, your knowledge is of a meagre and unsatisfactory kind. (Lord Kelvin) I confess that I prefer true but imperfect knowledge, even if it leaves much undetermined and unpredictable, to pretence of exact knowledge that is likely to be false. (Friedrich A. von Hayek, Nobel price lecture, in criticism against dogmatic and over-simplistic contemporaneous economic mainstream beliefs) Until now, many development institutions pursue a quest for ready-made solutions, to give advice from disciplinary perspectives. Following the Transfer of Technology-model (Douthwaite 2002, Chambers 1993), scientists made use of well-accepted international institutions to recommend innovations1 to national research- and policy systems, to be implemented on a local basis. Such distance to local realities and the lack of recursive elements makes adaptive, multiple-goal management impossible in a changing world – and ignores procedural principles of sustainable development. 1.1 The rise of holistic management With the rise of science in 17th -18th century Europe, all-round talents like Leibnitz, Alexander v. Humboldt or J. W. Goethe contributed major discoveries. Such personalities were trained in humanities, philosophy, physics and biology and often enough were artists in their spare time. Nowadays, science produces new insights with such a speed and in such a quantity that high levels of specialization are required for a scientific career. Highly differentiated scientific disciplines and institutions are responsible for knowledge production and knowledge management. Such a differentiating approach has shown remarkable successes in engineering science, e.g. in the development of computers, machinery, genetic engineering and biotechnology. The technical euphoria of the 1970s led to large-scale projects that changed the appearance of our earth - the green revolution, dams, river regulations, and land consolidation are a few 2 Thorsten Arnold ZEF Term paper examples. Institutions relied on top-down approaches based on the recommendations of northern experts. During the 1980s, these approaches resulted in impressive successes, but also in enormous drawbacks. Displacement of people, migration into mega-cities, soil erosion, loss of biodiversity, poverty and hunger are ubiquitous phenomena. Last but not least, the technical approaches are highly cost-intensive and threw countries into debt crises. Consequently, the interconnectedness of development issues became apparent. It led to the call for multiple- goal approaches that enable some balance between incommensurable dimensions. The term sustainable development became widely used and accepted as a leitbild (overall goal). Instead of focusing on single economic objectives, it calls for a holistic, long-term perspective on societal, environmental, economic and institutional goals and principles2 – and fair procedures should balance the multitude of trade-offs. This leitbild is founded on change, and thus requires permanent feedback from on-the-ground observations into decision- making and constant adaptation of rules and institutions to a changing context. Participation of civil society and recursive policy making are means to achieve such aim. ‘Interdisciplinary’ or ‘transdisciplinary’ research are becoming widespread buzzwords. So far, no convincing ways to successfully operationalize the leitbild SD on a large scale was found. It hasn't been developed under the pure market ideology, or under hierarchical institutions or central planning. The implementation of holistic concepts appears as a challenge. Hierarchical institutions are rigid. Bureaucrats in power were often trained in times of technical euphoria, and their career was built in the era of disciplinary successes. It is all too human for them to advocate to others what was successful for them. Challenging these professions, the development expert Robert Chambers summarizes: “We do not know much on general principles of development. We only know: Development is change” (Chambers, speech in FAO, 2003). He stresses the need to find new institutional arrangements fit for such change - and suggests an effective mix 1 Innovation is used in this paper in a general sense, comprising technical, social and institutional change. Innovation can actively be spread (i.e. by extension or as a scaling-up), or diffuse without external effort. 2 The Indigenous People, as a major group of civil society, also stress the cultural dimension of sustainability, see IITC 2003. 3 Thorsten Arnold ZEF Term paper between ‘conventional, top-down institutions’ and new forms of bottom-up linkage. Meanwhile, the development community is faced with the rise of market institutions – often intentioned as substitute for state institutions. Governmental institutions de-legitimized themselves for many reasons: institutional rigidity, orientation towards out-dated rules and regulations, corruption, reliance on top-down approaches. Many lagged behind reality and were unable to react to challenges in a globalizing world. After the collision of the soviet block, such inefficiency gave rise to a paradigm based on a pure market ideology: the Washington consensus, the retreat of state influence, privatization and trade liberalization. The chief economist at the World Bank, Joseph Stiglitz, points out that such politics did benefit some states, but - as one- fits-all approach – have caused severe distress for other countries. In recent years, efforts were made to meet the challenge of balance between market- and state institutions. Ravi Kanbur3, former director of the World Development Report 2000/2001 - Attacking Poverty, described a deep conceptual divide during the scientific preparatory meetings for that report. He classified them into two groups: the first insisted that poverty is diminishing, while the other insisted that it is rising. Kanbur labeled these groups as 'financial ministers' and 'civil society' (Kanbur 2001). After his resignation, a famous compromise was found, based on population growth: (a) poverty rises, in absolute terms, and (b) poverty diminishes, in relative terms. Both groups can therefore continue their policies as usual – but maintain incoherency. Daniel Kahnemann (Nobel price lecture for economics 2002:483) uses psychology to explain how the human mind reacts if our rational reasoning mismatches observed reality. We adapt our ideas based on intuitive judgment build on past experience (‘anchoring’). Thus, our thinking is likely to remain unchanged in its structure. It is the most difficult intellectual task to identify structurally new solutions once intuition has anchored our thoughts in old structures. Or, as Tony Allan rephrased Einstein: “You can’t solve a problem with the mindsets that caused that problem” (Conference in ZEF, Bonn 2005). 4 Thorsten Arnold ZEF Term paper The structure of research funding, the organization of knowledge management and the prevailing research paradigms reflect the confinement of the disciplines. Attempts to mainstream more interdisciplinary research is often antagonized by the structure of research institutions and the pressure to publish in highly specialized journals. Such organizational set-up has lead to huge successes in engineering-type problems, but also lead to failure with more complex tasks like NRM, poverty and environmental degradation. Such analysis seems pessimistic, and does not give adequate weight to the manifold of small- and medium scale initiatives for true integration in science, and implement sustainable resource management that succeeds to balance ecology, economy, societal issues and institutions (see e.g. the compendium from Pretty 2002). I argue that a new approach that integrated the paradigms of both groups described by Kanbur is necessary, to manage systems with methods appropriate to system complexity. Instead of aiming to rule out one or the other paradigm, efforts should be