Protected Areas and Dynamic Complexity

Our house remodel is almost done. We have redone the dining room, kitchen and family room as well as the deck outside. Its been a major project, but it has fixed up our long-ignored house. That process has reinforced the notion of dynamic complexity, a characteristic of many systems we deal with on a day to day basis.


An example: the countertop fabricator forgets to drill a hole in the countertop for a code-required vent, a small mistake indeed, one that involves only about 15 minutes of time out of several hundred hours of work involved in the remodel. However, that forgetfulness leads to the plumber not being able to finish his job under the sink, and as a result, the electrician cannot complete the wiring needed for the garbage disposal. So, rather than come out for just the completion of the garbage disposal, the electrician waits, meaning that other electrical needs go unfinished. This in turn leads to further delays in completion of other jobs.

While a house remodel may indeed represent a dynamically complex system, it’s at a scale we can easily relate to. But think about a protected area, potentially comprising tens of thousands, or even hundreds of thousands of hectares, rivers, forests, grasslands, animals, birds, insects, mountains, valleys, cliffs, lakes and swamps. That system most likely includes visitors, in some cases, hundreds of thousands, roads, trails, perhaps visitor centers, accommodation, a restaurant, or several, bathrooms, water supplies, administrative facilities, sewage disposal and so on. Many protected areas may also have farmers, pastoralists, vendors and people living within them. These are indeed complex systems, and changes in any one of these attributes may have tremendous, and unpredictable impacts throughout the system.

My friend and colleague Charles Breen has argued that the complexity of the systems we deal with today have grow dramatically, and non-linearly, from what we had to deal with in the past—the growing interconnectedness represented by geopolitics, economic globalization, international travel, climate change. However, many of our solutions come from the past, solutions that were both socially acceptable and effective in solving problems. These solutions while once working are neither acceptable nor effective for the complexity we live in today. One of the challenges, Charles has noted, is that we may not be willing to tackle the complexity of today with solutions that are effective—that is as complexity grows, so must our willingness to engage it.

So, the simple solutions required in the past to address visitor problems, carrying capacity for example, simply are not going to be effective in a much more complex system, where the relationship between causes and effects, largely unknown, are not linearly related. And, the notion of “solutions” may not be appropriate. Solutions imply answers—but answers only come about if we (1) understand the question and (2) understand the system. Our systems are simply too complex in many cases for a complete understanding.

Perhaps what we come up with are resolutions—which is agreement—on how to address a particular issue. Agreements imply that things can change, indeed will in a complex system, so a problem, as Russell Ackoff argued, never stays solved. So perhaps we engage people with a diversity of backgrounds, expertise, interest and experience in developing the resolutions to complex protected area challenges.