The answer is 42 … What is THE question?

Ron McCormick () and Lawrence A. Kapustka ()
Additional contact information
Ron McCormick: Bureau of Land Management
Lawrence A. Kapustka: LK Consultancy

Journal of Environmental Studies and Sciences, 2016, vol. 6, issue 1, No 20, 208-213

Abstract: Abstract Much of policy is fast-tracked and driven toward answers. This approach engenders selecting a problem with short-term thinking, offering a narrowly focussed solution, and seldom considering the linkages to other parts of the overarching system. Short-term and ‘common-sense’ solutions often bear unintended consequences that may produce worse situations over the long term than if no action had been taken at all. The nexus of food, energy, and water illustrates the need for a holistic approach to evaluating alternative environmental management options and settling on policy initiatives. Successful solutions demand that we ask the right questions, and these should be informed by an understanding of how resilience of ecological systems influences the ability to provide ecosystem services and sustainable societal structures. By explicitly tying resilience to sustainability goals and gaging a society’s desired rate of use and associated total available stock of ecological goods and services, stakeholders can settle on what ‘the’ questions are and only then understand what the supporting ecological systems can actually provide in an equitable and economic fashion.

Keywords: Wicked problems; Social-ecological systems; Ecosystem services; Clumsy solutions; Resilience; Conceptual models; High gain drivers; Low gain systems (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2016
References: View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s13412-016-0376-7 Abstract (text/html)
Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:spr:jenvss:v:6:y:2016:i:1:d:10.1007_s13412-016-0376-7

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.springer.com/economics/journal/13412

DOI: 10.1007/s13412-016-0376-7

Access Statistics for this article

Journal of Environmental Studies and Sciences is currently edited by Walter A. Rosenbaum

More articles in Journal of Environmental Studies and Sciences from Springer, Association of Environmental Studies and Sciences
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().