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Conservation Ecology 7(3): 10 Copyright © 2003 by the author(s). Published here under licence by The Resilience Alliance. Abel, T. 2003. Understanding complex human ecosystems: the case of ecotourism on Bonaire. Conservation Ecology 7(3): 10. [online] URL: http://www.consecol.org/vol7/iss3/art10 Report Understanding Complex Human Ecosystems: The Case of Ecotourism on Bonaire Thomas Abel ABSTRACT. It is suggested that ecotourism development on the island of Bonaire can be productively understood as a perturbation of a complex human ecosystem. Inputs associated with ecotourism have fueled transformations of the island ecology and sociocultural system. The results of this study indicate that Bonaire's social and economic hierarchy is approaching a new, stable systems state following a 50-yr transition begun by government and industry that stabilized with the appearance of ecotourism development and population growth. Ecotourism can be understood to have "filled in" the middle of the production hierarchy of Bonaire. Interpreted from this perspective, population growth has completed the transformation by expanding into production niches at smaller scales in the production hierarchy. Both a consequence and a cause, ecotourism has transformed the island's social structure and demography. The theory and methods applied in this case study of interdisciplinary research in the field of human ecosystems are also presented. INTRODUCTION receiver value used in conventional economics. Emergy is the "energy memory" (emergy) of all prior In this paper, I explore the impacts of ecotourism work contributed by ecosystems, global processes, and development on the socioeconomic structure of a small human systems. Unlike traditional energy currencies island in the Caribbean. Understanding the effects of of calories or joules, emergy values account for the an unplanned intervention or perturbation of whole chain or web of processes at different temporal and systems is an appropriate subject of study for the spatial scales that contributed to the production of the interdisciplinary science of complex systems as service or product. Emergy therefore belongs within advocated by Holling (1998). This paper presents the the emerging field of complex-systems science that results of an interdisciplinary social and ecological studies multiscaled self-organizing systems. As a study (Abel 2000) of whole-systems transformations single currency, emergy can be used to compare brought about by an exceedingly popular formula for dissimilar natural resources and ecosystem objects, as economic development, namely, ecotourism. Although well as social and cultural capital. ecotourism development on the island of Bonaire, as elsewhere, aims to minimize negative impacts on local The case study that concludes this paper focuses on populations and environments, I expected that the transformations of the socioeconomic structure of many new inputs to the region beyond the narrow Bonaire. The principles of hierarchy and self- tourism sector would bring changes to the economy organization used in studies of complex systems are and ecology of the island. Those transformations can applied to recent and historical data from Bonaire to be understood and evaluated from the perspective of produce some aggregate measurements of change. The complex systems. results indicate that the preconditions for the development of ecotourism on Bonaire were created To understand the impacts of tourism, the study used a by government spending, the presence of nearby form of ecological economics known as "emergy refineries, and the arrival of some small export accounting." A full explanation of emergy accounting industries, a setting from which ecotourism "took off" can be found in Odum (1996). In brief, emergy in the mid 1980s. It is argued here that ecotourism accounting evaluates the energy contributions to a represented a "filling in" of the middle scales in a service or product, of natural or human design, rather production hierarchy. By doing this, ecotourism than the amount it sells for in the marketplace. It is amplified production both at smaller and larger scales, thus a donor value, which contrasts with the type of reaching a new and relatively stable regime in a 50-yr University of Florida Conservation Ecology 7(3): 10. http://www.consecol.org/vol7/iss3/art10 self-organized transition. It is further argued that the natural environment, and the people who system self-organization in this development context continuously produce and renegotiate their forms. has led to an expanded labor population. Although not These components always co-occur. uncommon in a development context, it is suggested here that population growth is a "product" of whole- The biosphere context of the sociocultural system is system self-organization in the context of material and represented in highly aggregated form to the left in the energetic influxes, the effects of which are increased diagram. Natural resources in earth systems are fertility and immigration. The end result is a model of commonly grouped into the categories of renewable, population pull, rather than the model of population e.g., sun, tide, and uplift; slow-renewable, e.g., timber, pressure that is more common in the anthropological topsoil, groundwater; and nonrenewable, e.g., coal, oil, literature. natural gas, metals. This categorization scheme indicates the turnover time of these resources relative Before these results are presented, I will review and to human life-spans. For example, because a cleared discuss a model of sociocultural systems. The rest of forest may not fully regenerate in the lifetime of a the paper will apply this sociocultural systems logger, forest timber is considered a slow-renewable perspective to understanding the impacts of economic resource. Coal or oil, although renewable on the time development on the social structure of the island of scale of geologic processes, are nonrenewable at the Bonaire. scale of people or even civilizations. SOCIOCULTURAL SYSTEMS The interactions among the components of the sociocultural system and among ecosystem resources This paper makes liberal use of systems diagrams, a are aggregated into one interaction symbol. This well-known graphic technique for representing indicates that the dynamics of each affects the others. systems of any kind and one that is most prominently The fact that the nonrenewable storage in the diagram associated with H. T. Odum (Odum 1971, Odum and is not reproduced, i.e., there is no inflow, only outflow, Odum 1976, Odum 1983, Odum 1996, Odum and at this temporal scale, indicates that there are limits to Odum 2001). Although this technique does have the growth of our contemporary sociocultural systems, shortcomings for anthropologists (see Ellen 1982), which are systems that supplement renewable energies systems diagrams can be of great value as both a with fossil fuels. heuristic and an analytical tool. Systems diagrams force the researcher to make explicit the components In Fig. 1, the source of cultural change is not restricted of an argument, exposing any proposition to its to single biological "prime movers" such as population material situation. Systems diagrams, by design, pressure, which is popular in many cultural evolution demand that a modeler identify the energetic, material, models (Harris 1977, Johnson and Earle 1987). or information "sources" (circles) that enter and Change in open self-organizing systems is expected animate an analytic frame. "Storage" symbols (tanks) and incessant because of the teleomatics of energy within a frame further account for the concentrations dissipation, which Prigogine and Stengers (1984) of matter, energy, and information that drive describe as an "arrow in time." A sociocultural system opportunistic pathways. Systems diagrams are simple is conceived as a self-organizing system of to construct from a handful of symbols and can be amplification, constraint, and pulsing dynamics with easily used by interdisciplinary teams to brainstorm on many shifting limiting factors within ecosystems and complex questions. Analyses based on systems within itself; population density is only one of these diagrams can produce indices for comparison across factors. Within these material constraints are situated systems. Simultaneously, systems diagrams can lead the human symbolic systems of cultural models, which directly to the production of computer simulations possess a structure and dynamics of their own. (Odum and Odum 2000). Intentionality and agency can be understood to self- organize within a highly dynamic human and extra- Systems diagrams were used extensively in this human environment. research project. In Fig. 1, a systems diagram of a "sociocultural system" is defined to include material The label "sociocultural system" was chosen over assets, people, social structure diversity, cultural "culture" in Fig. 1 because the latter is often taken to models, and language. This diagram also includes the mean human symbolic behavior alone. The term often ignored interactions between these components, "sociocultural system" more precisely conveys the fact Conservation Ecology 7(3): 10. http://www.consecol.org/vol7/iss3/art10 that humans have co-evolved an integrated repertoire interaction symbol, indicating that no component is of symbolic behavior plus material assets, "prior," each is potentially limiting, and all may technologies, and social organization, each within amplify production with autocatalytic feedback, as language contexts. In Fig. 1, these
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