Our Panarchic Future (Thomas Homer-Dixon)

  A theory that explains the evolution of ecosystems may apply to civilizations as well-and it says we're approaching a critical phase.

  Thomas Homer-Dixon -- World-Watch 

  [Editor's note: The following article is adapted from The Upside of Down: Catastrophe, Creativity, and the Renewal of Civilization, by Thomas Homer-Dixon (copyright © Resource & Conflict Analysis, Inc.) and printed by permission of Island Press, Washington, D.C. (www.islandpress.org).]

  Buzz Holling, one of the world's great ecologists, is a kind and gracious man, with a shock of white hair and a warm smile. Born in Toronto and educated at the University of Toronto and the University of British Columbia, he worked for many years as a research scientist for the government of Canada, where he pioneered the study of budworm infestations in the great spruce forests of New Brunswick. Later, as an academic researcher and eventually as director of the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis in Austria, he created powerful mathematical models to explain the ecological phenomena he saw in the field. Using these models, he achieved major breakthroughs in understanding what makes complex systems of all kinds-from ecosystems to economic markets-adaptive and resilient.

  Since the early 1970s, Holling's research has attracted attention in disciplines ranging from anthropology to economics. His papers have been distributed like samizdat through the Internet, and Holling himself has become something of a guru for an astonishing number of very smart people studying complex adaptive systems. Some of these researchers have coalesced into an international scientific community called the Resilience Alliance, with over a dozen participating institutions around the world. Although Holling is now retired from his last academic position at the University of Florida, he's still terrifically vigorous and focused on furthering the Resilience Alliance's work.

  Holling and his colleagues call their ideas "panarchy theory"-after Pan, the ancient Greek god of nature. Together with anthropologist and historian Joseph Tainter's ideas on complexity and social collapse, this theory helps us see our world's tectonic stresses as part of a long-term global process of change and adaptation. It also illustrates the way catastrophe caused by such stresses could produce a surge of creativity leading to the renewal of our global civilization. 

  Dangerous Efficiency

  Panarchy theory had its origins in Holling's meticulous observation of the ecology of forests. He noticed that healthy forests all have an adaptive cycle of growth, collapse, regeneration, and again growth. During the early part of the cycle's growth phase, the number of species and of individual plants and animals quickly increases, as organisms arrive to exploit all available ecological niches. The total biomass of these plants and animals grows, as does their accumulated residue of decay-for instance, the forest's trees get bigger, and as these trees and other plants and animals die, they rot to form an ever-thickening layer of humus in the soil. Also, the flows of energy, materials, and genetic information between the forest's organisms become steadily more numerous and complex. If we think of the ecosystem as a network, both the number of nodes in the network and the density of links between the nodes rise.

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