Science and Policy in Natural Resource Management Understanding System Complexity

About this book

This book was first published in 2006. Despite many well-intentioned policies and changes to management practices, the world's natural resources continue to decline. The roles and interplay between science and policy in the regional broadacre agriculture landscape are examined here, offering readers a thorough understanding of the complex interactions that occur across spatial scales to produce the regional-scale impacts.

The fundamental causes of resource degradation, social decline and environmental pollution are addressed, examining the cross-scale drivers from the individual farm level to the global level of commodity systems. Broadacre agriculture is a common land use throughout all continents of the world and is driven by the same type of dynamics, and this case study of the Western Australia agricultural region can be used to clearly demonstrate the principles for other agricultural systems. Aimed at academics, ranging from researchers through to policy analysts, this book will inspire innovation and action in sustainable natural resource management.

Contents

List of illustrations
List of tables
Foreword C. S Holling

1. Introduction
2. Historical and policy context
3. Natural resource degradation: a resistant problem of the twentieth century
4. The epistemology of natural resource management of the twentieth century
5. A contemporary epistemology and framework for natural resource management of the twenty-first century
6. Model conceptualisation of the Western Australian agricultural region: Part 1. Resilience analysis
7. Model conceptualisation of the Western Australian agricultural region: Part 2. System dynamics analysis
8. Synthesis

Appendices
Glossary
Acronyms

Customer Reviews

Biography

Helen E. Allison is a researcher into complex systems and has experience working terrestrial and aquatic systems in tropical, temperate and Mediterranean climates in Australian, Europe and South Africa. She is a Post-Doctoral Fellow at Murdoch University in Perth, Western Australia.

Richard J. Hobbs is Professor of Environmental Science at Murdoch University, where he teaches Environmental Restoration. He is the author of over 230 refereed publications, many magazine articles and unrefereed publications, and author/editor of 12 books. His particular interests are in vegetation dynamics and management, fragmentation, invasive species, ecosystem restoration, conservation biology and landscape ecology.