Coupled human and natural systems and the ‘pristine myth’

The 2012 National Park Service report conceptualized humans as participants in ecosystems— a very different vision from the pre- contact conditions imagined by the Leopold Report. The 2012 report advised that cultural and natural resources cannot be separated and must be managed together; it used the American Bison as an example of a resource that is both ecologically important in maintaining grassland ecosystems and culturally significant.134 The report defines ecological integrity as ‘the quality of ecosys-tems that are largely self- sustaining and self- regulating. Such ecosysecosys-tems may possess complete food webs, a full complement of native animal and plant species maintain-ing their populations, and naturally functionmaintain-ing ecological processes such as preda-tion, nutrient cycling, disturbance and recovery, succession, and energy flow.’135 This image of the human- nature relationship resulted from decades of research that revealed human influences on what had appeared to be a virtually untouched continent.

It will be obvious that in Europe the human imprint is everywhere and ‘pristine’ envi-ronments are essentially nonexistent; it is less obvious but equally true in places like the

132 ibid. 4– 5.

133 Jonathon Rockström, Will Steffen, Kevin Noone, Åsa Persson, F. Stuart III Chapin, Eric Lambin, Timothy M. Lenton, Martin Scheffer, Carl Folke, Hans Joachim Schellnhuber, Björn Nykvist, Cynthia A. De Wit, Terry Hughes, Sander van der Leeuw, Henning Rodhe, Sverker Sörlin, Peter K. Snyder, Robert Costanza, Uno Svedin, Malin Falkenmark, Louise Karlberg, Robert. W. Corell, Victoria. J. Fabry, James Hansen, Brian Walker, Diana Liverman, Katherine Richardson, Paul Crutzen, and Jonathon Foley, ‘Planetary Boundaries:

Exploring the Safe Operating Space for Humanity,’ (2009) 14(2) Ecology and Society 32, at <http:// www.

ecologyandsociety.org/ vol14/ iss2/ art32/ > accessed June 2017. The boundaries are: climate change (CO2 concentration in the atmosphere <350 ppm and/ or a maximum change of +1 W m- 2 in radiative forcing);

ocean acidification (mean surface seawater saturation state with respect to aragonite ≥ 80% of pre- industrial levels); stratospheric ozone (<5% reduction in O3 concentration from pre- industrial level of 290 Dobson Units); biogeochemical nitrogen (N) cycle (limit industrial and agricultural fixation of N2 to 35 Tg N yr- 1) and phosphorus (P) cycle (annual P inflow to oceans not to exceed 10 times the natural background weath-ering of P); global freshwater use (<4000 km3 yr- 1 of consumptive use of runoff resources); land system change (<15% of the ice- free land surface under cropland); the rate at which biological diversity is lost (annual rate of <10 extinctions per million species); chemical pollution (no boundary determined yet) and atmospheric aerosol loading (no boundary determined yet).

134 NPS 2012 (n 131) 9. Anderson and Barbour argue that ‘many of the classic landscapes of our national parks . . . were shaped by the unremitting labor of generations of indigenous peoples’, that they are now changing because the cultural and natural processes that shaped them are missing, and that restoration will not work unless indigenous practices are reintroduced. See M. Kat Anderson and Michael G. Barbour,

‘Simulated Indigenous Management: A New Model for Ecological Restoration in National Parks’ (2003) 21(4) Ecological Restoration 269, 270.

135 NPS 2012 (n 131) 12.

pre- contact Americas.136 Just as idealized images of climax ecosystems reflected lim-ited knowledge and short- term observations, the ‘pristine myth’ has been refuted by evidence that Native Americans altered their environments to enrich the species, loca-tion, and life- stage of plants and animals that they used for food, shelter, and goods.137 There is evidence that fire and cultural practices have shaped Amazonian forests, the Great Plains, and the Pantanal to suit the human inhabitants to such an extent that Denevan says ‘There are no virgin tropical forests today, nor were there in 1492.’138 Human impact is so significant that serious people propose identifying a new geologic epoch as the ‘Anthropocene’; they debate whether the boundary line should be at the point when dams blocked sedimentation transport to continental shelves; when CO₂ added to the atmosphere lowered the pH of the ocean; when radiation was released to the atmosphere from the first atomic tests; or when genes were first modified.139

Coupled human and natural systems, like those observed in these examples, are now studied in different settings, including cities, rural areas, developed and developing countries.140 They can be defined as ‘integrated systems in which people interact with natural components’.141 A synthesis study of six case studies observed several common features:  ‘nonlinear dynamics with thresholds, reciprocal feedback loops, time lags, resilience, heterogeneity, and surprises . . . past couplings have legacy effects on present conditions and future possibilities’.142

This realization led land managers to the conclusion that desirable ecological con-ditions that seemed to characterize the Americas have to be actively managed,143 an enterprise which has its own problems when applied to natural or cultural landscapes.

To explain the problem, the ecologist David Ehrenfeld invoked von Neumann and Morgenstern’s theorem demonstrating the mathematical impossibility of maximiz-ing more than one variable at a time in an interlinked system.144 In other words, it might be possible to manage a forest to maximize the deer population, but the results (empirically demonstrated) are likely to reduce or extirpate populations of other spe-cies. There is no general rule to solve the paradox that this creates: that there is no

136 ‘Pre- contact’ refers to the period before Europeans contacted the peoples of the Americas.

137 M. Kat Anderson, ‘The Fire, Pruning, and Coppice Management of Temperate Ecosystems for Basketry Material by California Indian Tribes’ (1999) 27(1) Human Ecology 79– 113; William M. Denevan,

‘The Pristine Myth: The Landscape of the Americas in 1492’ (1992) 82(3) Annals of the Association of American Geographers 369– 85.

138 Denevan (n 137) 375.

139 Davor Vidas, ‘The Anthropocene and the International Law of the Sea’ (2011) Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society 369, 909– 25.

140 Jianguo Liu, Thomas Dietz, Stephen R. Carpenter, Marina Alberti, Carl Folke, Emilio Moran, Alice N.

Pell, Peter Deadman, Timothy Kratz, Jane Lubchenco, Elinor Ostrom, Zhiyun Ouyang, William Provencher, Charles L. Redman, Stephen H. Schneider, William W. Taylor, ‘Complexity of Coupled Human and Natural Systems’ (2007) 317 Science 1513– 17.

141 ibid. 1513. 142 ibid. 1513.

143 M. Kat Anderson and Michael G. Barbour, ‘Simulated Indigenous Management: A New Model for Ecological Restoration in National Parks’ (2003) 21(4) Ecological Restoration 269– 77.

144 David Ehrenfeld, ‘The Management of Diversity’ in F. Herbert Bormann and Stephen R. Kellert (eds.), Ecology, Economics Ethics: The Broken Circle (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1991) 26– 39, 30.

‘natural’ condition; that there are preferable conditions; that management is necessary to maintain them; and that managing complex natural systems145 is prone to failure.

The proponents of warfare ecology as a new discipline are intensely aware of these dynamics. They argue that the ‘distinctive characteristics of warfare ecology emerge from the deliberateness (often to deprive enemies of advantage), destructiveness, and intensity of ecological and socioeconomic perturbations brought on by warfare’ and that coupled systems frameworks adapted to these particular conditions are needed.146 They call attention to cascading effects of reconstruction. In a typical post- conflict situ-ation, humanitarian efforts to provide potable water and fuel for human survivors may have widespread negative consequences for key components of the ecosystems they will rely on in the future— fisheries, agricultural land, forests, soil, climate, and so on.

As the factual connections between coupled biophysical and socioeconomic systems become clear, the gaps and incongruities in a legal regime that does not fully recognize them become clear.

2.3.3 Goals

The pristine myth dissipates in light of the knowledge that environmental conditions are and have been shaped by natural forces and human intention. The 2012 National Park Service report argued that essential characteristics and processes of healthy eco-systems are equally important management goals as ‘observable features of iconic spe-cies and grand land- and seascapes’.147 One of these is system resilience.

System resilience can be analysed in terms of ‘animal movements, gene flow, and response to cycles of natural disturbance’148 or other features like watersheds and air-sheds. For seasonally mobile migratory species and other species that move in response to short- and long- term system changes (including armed conflict), life- cycle steward-ship and collaborative resource management are needed to achieve system resilience.

Lonergan made this point in his analysis of the stop and start restoration of the Iraqi Marshes (perhaps the original Garden of Eden).149 The marshes were drained by Saddam Hussein to quash political dissidents in the region. After the 2003 inva-sion forced Hussein from power, an international coalition contributed funds, tech-nical support, and political assistance to restore the marshes. Fed by the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers, the marshes’ ultimate health would depend on cooperation with the upper riparians— Syria and Turkey— and with neighbouring Iran. Natural drought conditions, exacerbated by the failure of collaborative management efforts with Turkey and Iran, have led to inadequate water supply. Lonergan predicted that climate change will worsen this situation. He also found that in some areas the marshes had lost so

145 Note that ‘complex system’ is a term of art in systems theory. Systems may be simple, complicated, complex, or chaotic. In complex systems, ‘there is no immediately apparent relationship between cause and effect, and the way forward is determined based on emerging patterns’. David Snowden and Mary E. Boone,

‘A Leader’s Framework for Decision Making’ (2007) Harvard Business Review 69– 76, 72. See also, Cymie R. Payne, ‘Balancing the Risks: Choosing Climate Alternatives’ (2009), 8 IOP Conference Series: Earth and Environmental Science 53– 7.

146 Machlis and Hanson (n 122) 733. 147 NPS 2012 (n 131) 10. 148 ibid. 9.

149 Steve Lonergan, ‘Ecological Restoration and Peacebuilding: The Case of the Iraqi Marshes in Assessing and Restoring Natural Resources in Post- Conflict Peacebuilding’ in Jensen and Lonergan (n 1).

much ecosystem function that ‘the marshes’ resiliency might be exhausted’, although other areas began to recover naturally once water was restored. In his view, though the Convention on Wetlands of International Importance (the Ramsar Convention) could have provided a useful institutional structure for the riparian states to cooperate, it lacked incentives to force them to work together. He believed that the Iraqi Marsh res-toration was not a peacebuilding success.