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Increasingly, environmental decision making is like playing a multidimensional game of chess. With interactions between the atmosphere, the litho-hydrosphere, and the biosphere, the game is at once a measure of complexity, uncertainty, interdisciplinary acuity, social-environmental sustainability, and social justice for all generations. As such, it demands a systemic point of view. Decision Making for a Sustainable Environment: A Systemic Approach gives readers the tools to replace the dysfunctional, symptomatic decision making that has plunged the world into environmental crises with a systemic approach that fosters social-environmental sustainability.
A new paradigm for environmental decision making based on the author's more than 45 years of research and broad, international experience, Decision-Making for a Sustainable Environment guides policy makers and managers to work with-rather than within-theoretical and methodological frameworks to achieve multidimensional and multilayered policy decisions. It discusses systemic thinking as a rational, viable alternative to competitive, materialistic, and symptomatic decision making.
Insights, approaches, and examples for leadership organized into three parts, Decision Making for a Sustainable Environment: A Systemic Approach begins by describing the inviolable biophysical principles that define the limitations of human choices. The second part examines in depth why the conventional command-and-control form of decision making tends to become dysfunctional and fails. It also explains how to break the cycle of such behavior. A case study by Jessica K. La Porte explores the challenges of creating a program of environmentally sustainable decision making.
The third part of Decision Making for a Sustainable Environment: A Systemic Approach explores what it takes to be a psychologically mature decision maker. A peaceful path toward social-environmental sustainability for all generations proposing new ways of thinking and problem solving, Decision-Making for a Sustainable Environment provides readers with the ideas, language, approaches, and examples to move toward genuine social-environmental sustainability. It offers counsel on how to be a psychologically mature trustee of planet Earth and leave a more viable legacy for future generations.
NATURE’S URGENT MESSAGE TO THE WORLD’S DECISION MAKERS
The Principles of Biophysical Sustainability
The Waterbed Principle
The Law of Cosmic Unification
Nature’s Inviolable Biophysical Principles
Decision Making and Nature’s Rules of Engagement
Every Decision Has Its Antithesis
The Inviolable Rules of Decision Making
WHEN THE DECISION MAKING BECOMES SELF-SERVING
The Stages of an Environmental Agency
Introduction
An Introduction to Command-and-Control Decision Making
The Inception of an Agency
We Are the Agency
Stages in the Cycle of an Agency
When Dysfunctional Decision Making Creeps In
The Homeostatic Command-and-Control of Decision Making
The Mythology of Abnegating Personal Responsibility
The Unpredictability of Environmental Laws
Setting the Stage for the Engagement of Coping Mechanisms
How Coping Mechanisms Influence the Effectiveness of Decision Making
Dissonance within Duplicity: Sustainability Programs at the Southern Nevada Water Authority, a Case Study
Jessica K. La Porte, PhD
Breaking the Dysfunctional Cycle of Environmental Agency Decision Making
How Job Descriptions Limit Professional Decision Making
Leaders and Managers Make Fundamentally Different Kinds of Decisions
Categories of Value
Why a Vision Is Important
Understanding a Vision
WHAT MAKES A PSYCHOLOGICALLY MATURE DECISION MAKER?
The Essence of a Responsible Decision Maker
Personal Values and Philosophy of Life
Characteristics of an Effective Decision Maker
Coping with the Responsibilities and Pressures of Social-Environmental Decision Making
Introduction
Circumstances Faced by Decision Makers
Being and Disclosing Yourself
Perfectionism and the Fear of Making Decisions
Coping with Someone You Dislike
Imagine Yourself as Different People
Inspiring Performance
Nurturing Creativity
Making Do with What You Have
Establishing Realistic Objectives
The Need for Urgency
Give Counsel, Not Advice
The Questions We Ask
Maintaining Viability as a Leader
Social-Environmental Decision Making within Organizations
Giving Children a Voice in Their Future through Shared Decision Making
The Great American Irony: Children Have No Voice in Their Future
Changing Our Adult Thinking
The Ultimate Democratic Revolution in Decision Making: Giving Children a Voice in Their Future
Afterword
Appendix: Common and Scientific Names of Plants and Animals
Index
Chris Maser was trained in zoology and ecology and worked for 25 years as a research scientist in agricultural, coastal, desert, forest, valley grassland, shrub steppe, and subarctic settings in various parts of the world before realizing that science is not designed to answer the vast majority of questions society is asking it to address. Maser gave up active scientific research in 1987 and has since worked to unify scientific knowledge with social values in helping to create sustainable communities and landscapes, part of which entails his facilitating the resolution of social-environmental conflicts. He has contributed to more than 286 publications, including 34 books, mostly dealing with some aspect of social-environmental sustainability. Although he has worked and lectured in Canada, Egypt, France, Germany, Japan, Malaysia, Mexico, Nepal, Slovakia, and Switzerland, he calls Corvallis, Oregon home.
