Ciencia Ergo Sum ISSN: 1405-0269 [email protected] Universidad Autónoma del Estado de México México Calderón-Contreras, Rafael Between Environmental Policy and Scientific Knowledge: How Might Dryland Environments Challenge Ideas Regarding Ecological Dynamics? Ciencia Ergo Sum, vol. 17, núm. 1, marzo-junio, 2010, pp. 81-87 Universidad Autónoma del Estado de México Toluca, México Available in: http://www.redalyc.org/articulo.oa?id=10412443011 How to cite Complete issue Scientific Information System More information about this article Network of Scientific Journals from Latin America, the Caribbean, Spain and Portugal Journal's homepage in redalyc.org Non-profit academic project, developed under the open access initiative Between Environmental Policy and Scientific Knowledge: How Might Dryland Environments Challenge Ideas Recepción: 23 de abril de 2009 Aceptación: 7 de diciembre de 2009 Regarding Ecological Dynamics? * Postgraduate Researcher at the University of East Anglia, Norwich, United Kingdom. Correo electrónico: Rafael Calderón-Contreras* [email protected] The author wishes to thank Juan Carlos Barron, Citlalli Becerril and Rafael Guerrero from the The desert teaches by taking away School of International Development of the Arab Proverb University of East Anglia for their valuable insights and two anonymous referees for their accurate comments and suggestions on earlier versions of the paper. Special thanks to Tomas Chaigneau for his help on correcting the final version of this paper. Entre la política ambiental y el conocimiento científico: cómo Abstract: The main objective of this essay is to analyze how the rise of ambientes desérticos y semidesérticos desafían ideas sobre perspectives towards dryland environments challenges traditional ideas dinámicas ecológicas about ecological dynamics. To reach that goal, the essay is divided in three Resumen. El objetivo principal de este trabajo es analizar cómo las sections: the first part analyzes the characteristics of ecology systems and perspectivas acerca de los ambientes semidesérticos y desérticos desafían the way in which dryland environments challenge the traditional concepts las ideas tradicionales acerca de las dinámicas ecológicas. Para alcanzar of loading capacity, the area-biodiversity postulate and the biodiversity- este objetivo, el artículo se divide en tres partes: la primera analiza las stability postulate. The second part will analyse the rise of “new ecology” características de la ecología de sistemas y la forma en la que dichos and how concepts from non-equilibrium ecology diverge from those in the ambientes disputan los conceptos tradicionales de capacidad de carga conventional ecology systems. The third part considers some features of y los postulados de área-biodiversidad y estabilidad. La segunda parte dryland environments in which this conceptual shifting has been evident; analiza el resurgimiento de la “nueva ecología” y cómo los conceptos this part highlights the ecological postulates adopted on policy design and de no-equilibrio divergen de aquellos pertenecientes a la corriente implementation regarding management, administration and support for más convencional de ecología de sistemas. Finalmente se consideran dryland environments. algunas características de los ambientes semidesérticos y desérticos que Key words: dryland environments, carrying capacity, area-biodiversity evidencian dicha dicotomía conceptual; esta sección busca acentuar postulate, stability, new ecology. los postulados ecológicos adoptados en el diseño e implementación de políticas en torno al manejo, administración y conservación de ambientes semidesérticos y desérticos. Palabras clave: ambientes desérticos y semidesérticos, capacidad de carga, area-biodiversidad, estabilidad, nueva ecología. Introduction place, elaborating in the way in which different ecological systems cope with degradation and global environmental In 1987 the United Nations Environmental Programme change. The case of dryland environments is central to the (UNEP ) stated that 27 million hectares of productive land study of ecological dynamics; firstly, because the observed were being lost to deforestation each year; according to that trend of desertification has been supported and used as a ge- estimate, all productive land on the planet would disappear neral discourse for diverse International Funding Institutions in 200 years time (Thomas, 1993; Swift, 1994). To reach such (IFI s) and Big Non-Governmental Organizations (BiNGO s); a conclusion, an extensive array of academic research took and secondly, because dryland environments degradation CIENCIA ergo sum, Vol. 17-1, marzo-junio 2010. Universidad Autónoma del Estado de México, Toluca, México. Pp. 81-87. 81 CIEN C IAS SO C IALES has been considered a global environmental problem as a features of dryland environments in which this conceptual result of mismanagement and human activities that lead to shifting has been evident; this part aims at highlighting the an irreversible ecological change through desertification (Illius perspective of the local population, government and IFIs and O’Connor, 1999; Larsen, 2003). ‘Overgrazing’ as a threat regarding management, administration and support for to global sustainability was embedded in the environmental dryland environments. doctrine adopted by different governments decision-makers, development practitioners and institutions to deal with issues 1. Systems Ecology: The Conventional Perspective of desertification (Sullivan, 2000; Sullivan and Rhode, 2002; Warren, 1995). Discourses about encroaching deserts, deser- The main precept of systems ecology is that environments tification, and land degradation as means of socio-political tend toward equilibrium state and temporal and spatial and economical struggles became the basis for policy imple- homogeneity characterized by mechanical regularity (Zi- mentation along the late twentieth century (Semple, 1971; mmerer, 1994; Sullivan and Rohde, 2002). Systems eco- Grainger, 1983; UNEP , 1992). logists hold that for each environment there is a process These statements based on traditional ecological postulates of niche specialization, in which every organism plays an fulfilled the interests of colonial and national governments, important and unique ecological role (Zimmerer, 1994; international aid donors, specially United Nations (UN ) Adler, 2000). This idea helped to create a narrative in which agencies; and some scientists that, adopting the ideas of the the modification of the role of ecological components in conventional systems ecology, and have been justifying their dryland environments lead to desertification, and that this interventions and policies by arguing that land degradation modification is encouraged by human activities particularly and desertification have broken the fragile ecological equili- overgrazing in communal forms of land tenure (Sullivan brium of dryland environments (Ellis, Coughenour and Swift, and Rohde, 2002; Blaikie, 2006). 1993; Adger, et al 2001; Sullivan, 1996). Recent research about The ecological theory that supported these mainstream the natural fluctuation in dryland vegetation communities ideas was based on the ‘succession theory’ of Clements and the management of its resources (Behnke, Scoones, (1916; in Warren 1995), in which vegetation ecologist argue and Kerven 1993; Thomas, 1993; Warren, 1995), added to that each organism reaches a climax that leads to the decline the rising of “new ecology” postulates; which challenges the of the specie (ibid.). Later, in 1930, following the work of traditional ideas about a nature which tends to equilibrium, Malthus (1798), the population growth models gave origin stability and balance (Botkin, 1990; Zimmerer, 1994). to the concepts of intrinsic growth rate and carrying capa- The main objective of this essay is to analyze how rising city, describing the supposed stable features of ecological of perspectives towards dryland environments can challenge dynamics (Behnke, Scoones, and Kerven 1993; Scoones, traditional ideas about ecological dynamics. By no means 1999:482). By 1950, systems theory established the basis does this essay aim at providing new conceptual or meth- of ecosystems ideas that described natural environments as odological frameworks on ecological studies. Its purpose is complex networks with stable and defined interchange of to highlight the theoretical and conceptual underpinnings energy and nutrients (ibid.). Finally, conservation biology, that ecology has brought regarding dryland environments’ based on the principles of island biogeography (McArthur management, and the consequent policy implementation. It and Wilson, 1967; in Scoones, 1999) represents another is necessary therefore to analyze to what extent research and tendency of ecological theory in which equilibrium plays a programmes regarding dryland environments have adopted central role. The debate about the role of applied biology the postulates of the new ecology of non-equilibrium and regarding equilibrium in ecological dynamics came to a how this conceptual shift can lead to a better understand- point whereby the scientific rationality was rarely being ing of terms as desertification and dryland degradation. To tested (Margules, Higgs and Rafe 1982; Zimmerman and reach that goal, the essay is divided in three parts: the first Bierregaard 1986). Assumptions about Homogenous one analyzes the characteristics of systems ecology and the habitats (Margules, 1982), unsubstantiated