Redundancy and diversity: do they influence optimal management?

doi:10.1017/CBO9780511541957.007

4 - Redundancy and diversity: do they influence optimal management?

Published online by Cambridge University Press: 13 August 2009

Bobbi Low ,

Carl Simon and

Edited by

Johan Colding and

Bobbi Low: Affiliation:
School of Natural Resources and Environment, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, Michigan 48109, USA
Elinor Ostrom: Affiliation:
Center for the Study of Institutions, Population, and Environmental Change (CIPEC), Indiana University, 513 North Park Street, Bloomington, Indiana 47408, USA
Carl Simon: Affiliation:
Center for Study of Complex Systems, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, Michigan 48109, USA
James Wilson: Affiliation:
School of Marine Sciences, University of Maine, Orono, Maine 04469–5782, USA
Fikret Berkes: Affiliation:
University of Manitoba, Canada
Johan Colding: Affiliation:
Beijer International Institute of Ecological Economics, Stockholm
Carl Folke: Affiliation:
Beijer International Institute of Ecological Economics, Stockholm

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Summary

The command-and-control approach, when extended uncritically to treatment of natural resources, often results in unforeseen and undesirable consequences. A frequent, perhaps universal result of command and control as applied to natural resource management is reduction of the range of natural variation of systems – their structure, function, or both – in an attempt to increase their predictability or stability.

(Holling and Meffe, 1996: 329).

Introduction

In many fields, there are fashions in favored approaches – what is assumed to be ‘best.’ A recurrent theme in American academia – particularly among students of public administration, policy analysis, and resource economics – has been to criticize ‘redundancy’ in government, decrying the number of governments that exist in the USA and the competition that exists among them. Consider education policy: beliefs that large numbers of schools were inefficient and that massive consolidation would be effective led to the reduction of ‘redundant’ school districts in a massive campaign during the first half of the twentieth century. In 1932, there were almost 130000 school districts in the USA. This number was halved by 1952 and quartered by 1962, and halved once again by the early 1970s. The massive consolidation of school districts has slowed down during the past two decades. However, today we have around 15000 school districts in the USA for a population that has almost doubled since the campaign to consolidate schools was initiated (see Ostrom, Bish, and Ostrom, 1988).

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Type: Chapter
Information: Navigating Social-Ecological Systems
Building Resilience for Complexity and Change
, pp. 83 - 114

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511541957.007 [Opens in a new window]

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Print publication year: 2002

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