Published in Ecosystem Health, 2, 145-158 (1996).

Resource Management: Can It Sustain Pacific Northwest Fishery and Forest Systems?

Courtland L. Smith

Department of Anthropology, Oregon State University, Waldo 238, Corvallis OR 97331-6403 Tel.:541/737-3858 smithc@ucs.orst.edu

Alexey A. Voinov

Gund Institute for Ecological Economics, University of Vermont, avoinov@uvm.edu

Abstract

The relative effectiveness of resource management regimes is widely discussed. Sustainability and ecosystem health are two dimensions upon which the effect of management is judged. Evaluating resource management requires long time spans. We look at the impact of management on fish and forest resources by taking a life cycle approach to the exploitation of natural capital. Russian ethnographer Gumilev describes the process of how human systems go through a set of phases that parallel the birth, growth, maturity, and death stages of the life cycle. The process of adaptive renewal proposed by Holling, too, has life cycle characteristics. The primary variables used to represent the phases of the renewal cycle are the amount of capital that is accumulated and the connectedness in the system. We apply the renewal cycle to a fishery and forestry example in the US Pacific Northwest to see how management regimes alter the capital stock of these systems. In these two examples 90% of the natural capital is lost or projected to be lost over a century and a half of exploitation. The management regime in both cases evolves toward greater inflexibility. Based on these two examples, resource management does not seem to lead to sustainability or ecosystem health.


The first myth of management is that it exists.
Heller’s Law

Introduction

When humans are included as part of ecological systems, we call these biosocial systems "fishery", "forestry", "husbandry", "agriculture", "aquaculture". Biosocial systems use ecological resources to meet human needs. Typically, management of biosocial systems attempts to protect natural resources from overexploitation. A common goal is sustainability.

A century and a half of Pacific Northwest fishery and forestry management questions how well management achieves the sustainability goal. Coupled with sustainability is the effect of management on ecosystem health. Neither sustainability nor ecosystem health have widely accepted and clear definitions (Levin 1993, Rapport 1995). Generally, sustainability connotes being able to use a resource in perpetuity. Ecosystem health we use in the sense of an ecological system’s resilience and counteractive capacity (Rapport 1995).

Critical to understanding sustainability and ecological health are the dynamic processes in biosocial systems. Ecological systems have life cycles of birth, growth, maturity, death, and renewal. Holling and Sanderson (1996) suggest that the renewal cycle of ecological systems can be applied to social systems. The phases of the renewal cycle take on special significance when moving from ecological to biosocial systems. Resource management that focuses on sustainability tries to maintain the growth and maturity phases of some ecological systems, keeping them from completing the renewal cycle. A major concern of Holling and Sanderson is trying to "sustain" a biosocial system by holding it at one phase in the life cycle. This prevents the process of renewal from occurring and may result in even worse consequences for biosocial systems.

Looking at management regimes within the framework of life cycles and renewal cycles can shed some light on their role in sustaining biosocial systems.


Ethnogenesis and the Life Cycle

A comprehensive study of the life cycle of biosocial systems, relatively unknown to Western scholars, is that of a Russian ethnographer Gumilev (first published in 1979, English translation - 1990), who integrates human and ecological systems as an ethnos. Gumilev defines an ethnos as a system characteristic of a large group of people originating from the same geographical landscape, feeling alike among themselves but different from the others in their behavioral patterns. For Gumilev, an ethnos is not a society, neither it is a race, nor a population. He stresses that it is a geographical phenomenon, based and supported by the landscape to which it is adapted. In other words, ethnoi are biosocial systems.

Gumilev describes ethnogenesis as the process of birth, growth, maturity, and death of ethnoi. Accordingly, he distinguishes the phases of ethnogenesis as growth, acme, break down, inertia, and obscurity. He views ethnogenesis as driven by passion, which is the human energy or vigor that stimulates the members of an ethnoi to commit themselves to activities that advance the process of ethnogenesis. He sees the energy source for ethnogenesis in the biogeochemical energy of living material of the biosphere as described by Vernadskii (1978). Figure 1 adapted from Gumilev (1990, p.240) shows the dynamics of passion among the members of an ethnos as the process of ethnogenesis proceeds.

According to Gumilev, the first phase in the process of ethnogenesis comes with the initial growth thrust, when passion peaks. Passion is the enthusiasm that gives people the energy to act in order to achieve some, oftentimes illusory, goal. Passion drives the human vigor to get things done. Growth in passion is created by the coincidence of human and geographical conditions. A newly emerging ethnos may or may not succeed. It may have a great deal of vigor, but may not generate enough capital to continue. Because many fledgling ethnoi may start, but one or none may take hold, the beginning of an ethnos is hard to identify. About 150 years need to elapse before the passion of the ethnos becomes evident.

As passion reaches its zenith, the number of passionaires grows, culminating in overproduction that threatens social systems. The only way for the ethnos to survive and develop at the acme is to find an outlet for passionaires. This is the time, says Gumilev, for conquering new lands, for traveling and investigating new resources, for occupying new colonies. At this time the ecological resources upon which the people depend start to suffer, but it is mostly due to expansion, when new territories are conquered and ecosystems are somewhat altered.

The acmatic phase of ethnogenesis may be short; as perceived opportunities are not realized, people’s passions burn out. A high level of passionarity can be observed for a long time, but the growth of enthusiasm that generates change stops and overall passion begins to decline. The acmatic phase may be extended if an external sink is found. In this way Gumilev says Europe used the Americas, which served as a sink for passionaires for quite a long time.

The breakdown phase is always very painful for the passionaires. Their energy causes conflicts within the ethnos, further reducing their total numbers. This results in revolutions, religious movements, and civil wars, which usually lead to additional violence and dissipation of energy for change.

The inertial phase signals the end of turbulence and is the time for persistent work. Some in the ethnos achieve their expectations. The potential developed from the previous phases is now being used to enhance the ethnoi; the ethnoi is converting its passion into structure to accumulate total capital. Therefore the florescence of an ethnos can be observed, but the civilizations thus produced turn out to be very unstable--they may be in place for relatively long time periods due to the accumulated inertia, but eventually they disintegrate. The ethnos faces loss of vigor and connections between groups in the ethnos become inflexible and brittle.

None of the previous passionate efforts is as devastating for nature as this inertial development. During the growth phase nature is kept for future generations. In the acmatic phase people are mostly concerned with the social construction of the system, resolving their internal social contradictions. In the inertial phase most of the human efforts are being redirected towards conquering nature. During the inertia phase the theory of progress developed in Europe, which viewed resources as infinite and the purpose of human society being to take them and use them.

The florescence of the ethnos occurs at the expense of both the human (passion) and natural resources accumulated during pervious periods. In the following obscurity phase Gumilev sees two different future developments. First, the obscurity phase may well turn into homeostasis. Homeostasis is a good time for average people to exercise their abilities, living quietly and happily on the carrying landscape for as long as there are no extreme situations, triggered either by external invasions or natural disasters. Any sort of crisis, however, easily disintegrates the ethnos, and this is the second type of development in this phase. Smaller groups remain living with reminiscences of the past. Gradually they dissolve and vanish.

By the end of ethnogenesis, the health of ecological systems worsens. Gumilev attributes many deserts, saline lands, and eroded soils to ethnogenesis. Ethnoi eventually fall apart, into smaller groups, and finally individuals, which start to reintegrate again in new landscapes, oftentimes much more degraded than the original ones. Unlike ecological systems, an ethnos does not renew itself. More common is for a new ethnoi to emerge that has a whole new relation with ecological systems.

From the viewpoint of an ethnos there is an ending to the cycle. Ethnoi die out. In Figure 1 we see an oscillation, that is provoked by an initial thrust, impulse, and then gradually dies off, dissipating energy.



Figure 1. The process of ethnogenesis, showing the typical life cycle of an ethnoi (adapted from Gumilev 1990, p.240).
The life cycle is based on the degree of passion and is divided into the phases defined by Gumilev.

Gumilev, using the Eurasian experience for several thousand years prior to the twentieth century , estimates the time of such an oscillation as 1100-1500 years, unless there is strong exogenic influence such as epidemics and invasion that disturbs the process. The phases vary in duration, and regeneration makes it difficult to identify the current phase. From the viewpoint of the history of ethnoi, we observe a cycle, by the end of which a new biosocial arrangement, a new ethnos is born.

Gumilev's interest in the persistence of ethnoi parallels work of anthropologists. Service (1975) discusses the formation of states in a way comparable to Gumilev's ethnoi. Service (1975, p.311) says "states fail because of . . . the failure of the government to fulfill its primary mission of maintenance, of saving the society from external and internal threats to its integrity." He talks of the polity as becoming brittle or inflexible and thus unable to resist well, or easily readapt to changing circumstances (Service 1975, p.312).

Many have recognized the cycles in nature and society. Hegel's dialectics very much resemble the description of cycles given by Gumilev. Economists discuss the business cycle. Similar processes have been observed in the microworld. Zotin and Zotina (1969) have described the ontogenesis of a cell identifying the phases of ogenesis, development, growth and aging. If the external dissipation of a cell is plotted as a function of the particular phases of the cell’s cycling, the graph obtained very much resembles the dynamics of passion in Figure 1.


The Renewal Cycle and the Life Cycle

The process of ethnogenesis bears similarity with many other life cycle type processes, particularly the renewal cycle discussed by Holling (1986; 1992; Holling and Sanderson 1996). The renewal cycle is defined in four phases in terms of capital and connectedness (Figure 2, from Holling and Sanderson 1996). Capital is accumulated biomass, wealth, or stored energy. Connectedness is the ability of the components of the system to change arrangements among one another.



Figure 2. Renewal cycle (from Holling and Sanderson 1996, with permission).

The first phase, called exploitation, is one of rapid growth and increases in capital accumulation. During this phase the structure for growth develops. This phase favors pioneers, opportunists; what ecologists call r-strategists.

The second phase, conservation, is a time when the accumulation of capital slows, but when the amount of capital accumulated becomes largest. The connections in the system get increasingly brittle and vulnerable. The conservation phase characterizes k-strategists.

Conservation is followed by two new phases in system succession. A period of release or creative destruction is the third phase during which the system becomes increasingly fragile (or overconnected). Forest fires, insect pests or intense pulses of grazing release biomass and nutrients (Holling and Sanderson 1996). The fourth phase is reorganization in which the system begins the process of developing new linkages. With the end of the reorganization phase capital reaches its lowest point and the system is least connected. A new life cycle begins with the exploitation phase when capital begins to accumulate and connections begin to form that increase the ability of the system to store capital.

A unique difference between ecological and social systems according to Holling and Sanderson (1996, p.20-21) is, ". . .society does not repeat its history except in the most trivial sense. That is, the four-box cycle in social systems will never accomplish the reorganization phase in the same historical state as it began the process of release." The central question for human-managed systems is their ability to synchronize not only with the expected values of natural system dynamics, but to recognize the variability in its flows and functions, and to act accordingly.

Holling and Sanderson (1996, p.12) propose extending the concept of the renewal cycle to social systems saying, ". . . our hope was more to expose its inadequacies and perhaps to expand its generality." They observe, "Although we see fundamental similarity between adaptive ecological and adaptive human systems, human systems have much greater powers for both rigidity and novelty . . ." (p. 21). Applying the renewal cycle to social systems means that different processes in history may be considered as life cycle phenomena very similar to Gumilev’s process of ethnogenesis (Figure 1).

Rather than applying ecological concepts to social systems, we see ecological and social systems as integrated, complex, adapting, "biosocial" systems. We seek the parallels between Gumilev’s life cycle of an ethnoi and Holling’s renewal cycle. A major element of our integration is to view the capital and connectedness variables as common to both ecological and social systems.

Vigor, Connectedness, and Capital

Gumilev’s focus on the growth and decline in passion is really about the human energy that increases the productivity of a system. This increase in productivity might be thought of as the vigor of a system. Costanza (1992) defines vigor as a cardinal measure of system activity. He says that vigor might be gross primary productivity, gross domestic product, or the metabolism of a system. Gumilev’s passion and Costanza’s vigor are analogous to what economists call income. The net storage of the productivity generated by the passion or vigor of a system becomes system capital. One of the things that the energy of passionaires does is create a structure that generates capital. In this way passion generates connectedness. High passion stimulates adaptation, it leads the system through a multitude of trial and error acts, many of which are destructive by themselves, but lead to building system structure and capital. During the growth phase the rate of change in gross productivity is high, but the net accumulation of capital is low. Much is produced, but a lot is spent as a price for adaptation. While vigor is high the connections remain flexible, they are easily established and equally easily modified. During the exploitation and conservation phases of the renewal cycle more and more capital is stored. As the vigor of the decreases the connections that are already in place lose flexibility. During the renewal cycle’s release and reorganization phases the connections start to break and capital is dissipated.

Slope changes in the hypothesized curve showing the relation between productivity and stored capital define the phases in the life cycle of a biosocial system (fig. 3). Phase 1, growth in ethnogenesis, exploitation in the renewal cycle, is when vigor stimulates rapid increase in productivity. As this phase proceeds, the rate of capital accumulation increases. Initially, there is very little capital and a slowly rising rate of accumulation. At the end of this phase the amount of capital has increased and the rate of capital growth reaches its maximum. Phase 2, the acme of passion and conservation in the renewal cycle, begins when the rapid rate of capital growth begins to slow. Phase 2 starts at the inflection point in the growth portion of the capital curve. When capital reaches a maximum at the end of the breakdown phase, this signals the start of phase 3, the inertial phase for ethnogenesis and beginning the release phase for the renewal cycle. The rate of capital dissipation initially increases as the decline proceeds. The inflection point for the decline portion of the capital curve, the place where the rate of capital decline starts to slow, defines the beginning of phase 4, reorganization in the renewal cycle.



Figure 3. The hypothesized relationship between passion and capital.

Vigor and capital seem to be the key system indicators for identifying where a system is in ethnogenesis or the renewal cycle. The inflection points where these curves change slope helps identify each of the phases. During the early phases, however, the change in vigor and capital can be quite erratic and do not signal a clear direction. In ecological and economic systems vigor results in higher gross productivity. Capital results from the net product which can be stored as accumulated energy or material. Holling and Sanderson (1996) say that capital is nutrients, biomass, carbon. In socioeconomic systems it can be measured in monetary, information, or energy terms.

Some ecological and neo-classical economists tend to define sustainability in terms of capital (Castle et al. In press; Costanza and Daly 1992; Ervin and Berrens 1993; Pearce 1993; Solow 1991, 1992). A broad definition (Ervin and Berrens 1993) of total capital (TK) is the sum of nonrenewable resource capital, e.g., oil or minerals; renewable resource capital, e.g., fish and forests; human-made capital, e.g., a manufacturing plant and equipment; and human or intellectual capital, e.g., education and acquired knowledge. To this could be added cultural capital, e.g., art and music, and institutional or social capital, e.g., legal principles and regulatory rules.

A debate among ecological and neo-classical economists over the sustainability of biosocial systems is the relationship between natural and human-made capital. Solow (1991, 1992), for example, says that as long as TK is equal or greater in the next generation the system is sustainable. Costanza and Daly (1992) argue that sustainability only occurs when there is no decline in natural capital. Ervin and Berrens (1993) call these weak and strong criteria for defining sustainability. The crux of the argument is whether natural and human-made capital are seen as complements of one another or substitutes (Folke et al. 1994). Ecological economists see natural capital as becoming more and more limiting for the further development of human society. Classical economists take the view that human ingenuity will find new forms of natural capital and adopt ways to save and more effectively use natural capital.

Management

What influence does the goal of sustainability have on the life cycle process? Can carefully managed systems or particular property rights arrangements assure that fishery, forestry, and like systems are sustainable? Will management maintain or improve the health of ecosystems? How do various management regimes work with respect to capital accumulation and connectedness?

McCay (1995, 1996) identifies three property types--private, common, and open access--and, five types of management regimes--laissez-faire, communal, market, state regulation, and international governance.

Laissez-faire management is equivalent to having no management regime. It is most commonly associated with open access property. "The combination of laissez-faire with open access is indeed prone to ‘tragedies of the commons’ if pressure on resources is high enough" (McCay 1996, p.8).

Communal governance highlights ". . .user-governance and local-level systems of common pool resource management . . ." (McCay 1993, p.2). There is an extensive literature describing these systems (Berkes 1989; McCay and Acheson 1989; Pinkerton 1989; McGoodwin 1990; Dyer and McGoodwin 1994). Because of the local-level and communal nature of these systems, their capital and rate of capital change are not usually measured. The user-governance characteristic of these systems make them very organized and quite flexible. When an environmental problem or change occurs the user-participants can respond quickly.

A problem for communal management regimes is when they come in contact with laissez-faire and market-based systems. Laissez-faire and market-based systems greatly diminish the effectiveness of the local-level user-governance, because they take capital away from the communal system and weaken its organization. State and international governance can either strengthen or weaken communal governance systems, depending on the status given to them.

Market-based management regimes are often associated with principles of private property ownership. "Private property is relevant to management insofar as it allows market mechanisms to work more effectively" (McCay 1996, p.8-9)

State and international management recognizes the role of centralization in management processes. State and international management recognizes the need to make decisions about the claims of competing groups for use of resources.

Do any of these management regimes offer advantages to systems in terms of perpetuating their existence? We address this question, considering two case studies from the Pacific Northwest.


Changing Natural Capital in the Pacific Northwest Salmon Fishery

The Pacific Northwest constitutes a large socioeconomic system of a scale similar to that of an ethnos as described by Gumilev. These fishery and forestry examples are subsystems of this larger system. How do the management efforts for sustainability of both the salmon fishery and Douglas-fir forests affect their life cycles?

The American Indian tribes of the Pacific Northwest depended on salmon for a substantial portion of their subsistence. The amount varied from place-to-place, but in most tribal communities it was substantial. Prior to settlement of the Pacific Northwest by non-native peoples, salmon sustained an estimated 75,000 people in the Columbia River basin (Boyd 1990). As settlers from outside the region increased in number during the early nineteenth century, there were greater conflicts as a private property rights came in increasing conflict with the communal system of the Native Americans.

To deal with this the U.S. signed a number of treaties in the mid 1850s. These treaties assigned reservations to tribes and groups of tribes, while allowing them to fish "at all usual and accustomed grounds or stations . . . in common with all citizens of the Territory . . ." (Swindell 1942, p.45, 60). Private property like rights were known to the tribes. Individuals and families were said to own fishing sites (Swindell 1942)

Typically, in a fishery a key indicator tells both the status of the resource subsystem and the human subsystem. Since those fishing depend on the viability of the fish stocks, the status of the stocks becomes an indicator for both the health of the resource subsystem and the human subsystem.

Hundreds of stocks make up the salmon fisheries of the Pacific Northwest. Very few fisheries match up with a single stock. One set of stocks and fishery for which there are long-term data is the Columbia River canned salmon industry. The industry relied primarily on Columbia River stocks from the industry’s inception in the 1860s to the end of the canned salmon industry life cycle in the 1970s.

Prior to the influx of non-native peoples estimates of the numbers of salmon have been made for all of the US West coast (Hewes 1949). The most comprehensive data are for the Columbia River basin, one of the prime salmon producing regions. The precontact estimate is that the Columbia River had salmon returns of 10-16 million fish each year (NPPC 1987, 1992). This number sums across all the species of salmon that inhabited the Columbia basin at the time of contact.

Using the Columbia River basin as one fishery subsystem, the Northwest Power Planning Council’s (NPPC) average precontact annual run size would be 13 million fish. Actually, runs return on 2, 3, 4, and 5-year intervals. There is also variability between runs in their time of return. If 3 years is used as the average life cycle for each of the different salmon species, the capital stock was 39 million salmon. Not all these salmon reached the spawning grounds. Native American fishers took an estimated 10% of the returning capital stock, leaving a net capital stock of 35 million salmon.

Salmon are natural capital (Costanza and Daly 1992). As natural capital, 35 million salmon are only one of the capital components of the Pacific Northwest. With the influx of non-native peoples, the salmon capital was extracted and used to increase the total capital of many who lived within and outside the region. Thus, the laissez-faire management system of the non-natives, led to both the extraction of capital and its greater transfer to other systems.

In the 1980s, the number of salmon returning annually to the Columbia basin were only 1.8 million, which is a total natural capital stock of 5.4 million fish (ODFW and WDFW 1995, p.95, 96). Of this capital stock, an average of 10% are killed at each Columbia River Dam. For salmon traveling through eight dams, this can be a loss of over 50%. Dams, pollution, and fishing reduce the capital stock returning to the river by at least half. This is 8% of the stored salmon capital at the time of contact. The habitat available has declined by half, and instead of the stocks being fully wild, over half came from hatcheries. Hatcheries take advantage of the homing instincts of salmon. Because there are a few large hatcheries compared to thousands of separate spawning areas in streams, hatcheries further reduce natural variability.

By the 1990s, returning salmon were down to 1.25 million with the same levels of loss due to dams, pollution, and fishing, leaving natural capital of less than two million fish. By any yardstick this is a phenomenal decline in salmon stocks. They are much less able to bounce back and recolonize spawning habitats. After a century of exploitation by non-native peoples, the natural capital of salmon was one-twentieth the historic level. Based on the rapid loss of capital we would say that the salmon stocks are late in the release phase of the renewal cycle, perhaps beginning reorganization.

Within this more general decline of natural capital, the commercial salmon canning industry went through a complete life cycle. Figure 4 shows a complete life cycle of the canned salmon industry. The salmon caught were canned and sold worldwide. By the end of the 1970s, the canned salmon industry ceased to exist. The industry was begun with one cannery and two gillnet boats. At one time there were 35 canneries and 3000 fishermen. By the 1970s all the canneries had closed, while 1500 gillnetters continued fishing, although at a much reduced rate. The available salmon were sold fresh and frozen.


Figure 4. The life cycle of the Columbia River canned salmon industry using canned salmon as an indicator of the accumulated natural capital.

Using the amount packed to represent the vigor of the canned salmon industry, the cycle is like Gumilev's curve for the passion of an ethnos. The curve has an early peak when there was the most enthusiasm and vigor in developing the worldwide sale of canned salmon. The peak is followed by a long and slow decline. Salmon management during this decline became much more intensive. While there are still salmon available, the focus of management has been conservation. The salmon conservation objective was to retain as much of the remaining natural capital as possible while continuing to maintain the normal operation of hydroelectric, industrial, forestry, urban and suburban growth, agriculture, transportation, and fishing activities. The early salmon canners had turned the natural capital into human-made capital of canneries and other material investments. At the request of the industry, government became more involved in fishery management. Managers tried to hold this system in the conservation phase of the renewal cycle. As the fishery continued through the life cycle, the management regime shifted from laissez-faire to more and more state and international governance.

Initially, there were closed seasons in the river, where most of the fishing took place. Within the fishery, gillnetters developed a communal system of drift rights (Martin 1994). Then, government extended control three miles in the ocean, then 12 miles, and finally 200 miles, and for salmon, the Magnuson Fishery Conservation and Management Act claims management authority throughout their range. Canada and the United States negotiated the Pacific Salmon Treaty in 1985, which was successor to the International North Pacific Salmon Commission (INPSC). Increased state and international governance did not reverse the decline in natural capital and the fortunes of those who depended on the salmon fishery. Management was not the only factor affecting the system. Preferences changed from canned to fresh salmon. Technology changed to increase human involvement in the salmon life cycle.

The actual result was a long slow decline in salmon stocks, more like the long slow decline of passion. Several of the salmon species were listed as endangered in 1992. In 1995, the river fishery for the spring chinook fishery was closed completely for the first time. It was the spring chinook runs that had sustained the canned salmon industry during its peak years.

These are very gross estimates, but they indicate that the capital of salmon stocks and of salmon fishermen declined. The capital stocks of salmon are one-twentieth of what it was at the time of influx of non-native peoples to the region. The management regime is a complex mix of laissez-faire, state, international, and communal property, none of which effectively protect the salmon resource. As the problems of open access grew, more and more government regulation came to the fishery. The fishery is one subsystem within the larger regional economy. For decades regional economic decisions paid little attention to the impacts that activities like electricity development, urbanization, expansion of irrigation, forest harvest, promoting navigation, and growth of manufacturing would have on the salmon resource, thus compounding management problems (Bessey 1963). The life cycle of the cannery superimposed on the life cycle of salmon fishery brought both systems to the reorganization phase, and it is not clear when or how they are going to reorganize.

In this context state and international regulation are ineffective in returning the system to the previous state of abundance that people in the region prefer. Managers look to past stock sizes and set them as the sustainability goals for the future. Efforts to reach these goals appear futile and often times counterproductive. Hatcheries are implicated as being a cause of decline (NRC 1995). Salmon ranching is emerging as a substitute for consumers who choose salmon to eat. The sustainability perspective of management appears to look backward to return past conditions, protecting what natural capital is left. Reorganization seems to be taking place. Rather than restoring the old, a new loop in the life cycle of the local biosocial system may be beginning.


Northwest Forestry Market-Based and State Management

The forests west of the Cascade Mountains in California, Oregon, and Washington are a mix of private property and areas managed by several state and federal agencies. The U.S. Forest Service has the largest land holdings. Few people live in the forests, but people surrounding the forests are very concerned about what happens within the forested ecosystem.

The values about how these lands should be used vary considerably. Some favor liquidation of old growth forests to maintain jobs and communities. These people argue that with modern forest management productivity will be even greater if silviculture techniques are allowed to improve on ecosystem processes.

A capital measure for a forest ecosystem could be the amount of old growth. The definition of old growth and the measurement of the amount is complex. It is subject to differing interpretation, and data through time have not been gathered according to a common metric. Old growth is sometimes defined by the age of trees--trees greater than 180 to 220 years old. Old growth also refers to the health of forest conditions. Old growth forests have the complete life cycle--tree establishment, maturation, and death. In old growth forests there is gap formation and filling, understory development, adjustment to small and large disturbances, decomposition, nitrogen fixation, canopy interception, and energy and matter transfers between the forest and the atmosphere (FEMAT 1993, p.IV-51).

The first comprehensive forest surveys were done in the 1930s and 1940s. The productive forest area of California, Oregon, and Washington was 26.9 million hectares in 1930 (Bolsinger and Waddell 1993, p.2). Two-thirds of this is private lands and one third is public. Of the private and public lands, 13.3 million hectares, or 49%, were old growth prior to World War II. Given fire, disease, flood, and landslide history, old growth probably never exceeded two-thirds or 18 million hectares of productive forest land (FEMAT 1993, p.IV-51). By 1990, old growth was estimated to be 4.2 million hectares, 16%, on 22.9 million hectares of the productive forest land. Of the 4.2 million hectares, a third, 1.4 million hectares, is on reserved public land that under current rules would not be harvested.

Land use practices on private and federal forest lands have different impacts on the forest ecosystem. On federal lands the clear-cut is the common method for harvesting. In order to reduce the visual impact on a landscape that is aesthetically as well as economically important, federal lands have emphasized relatively small clear-cuts. Clear-cutting is also practiced on private lands, but the size is much larger. On private lands disturbances are more extensive (Spies et al. 1994).

Forests are being regrown on harvested areas. The regenerated forests lose some of the characteristics of old growth. The stands tend to become more even-aged and homogeneous. Since forests are characterized by their age, one way to describe the forests is in the diversity of age classes. If we assume that old growth forests are the key to ecosystem sustainability, we can calculate changes in capital accumulation for the Pacific Northwest forest region.

To project what the future holds, figure 5 shows the age class distribution for harvest projected to occur on federal and private lands (Sessions 1990, p.93). The report covers Oregon and the figure is for the Eugene district, but the pattern is generally representative for the region as a whole. Law suits over the amount that can be harvested have affected the actual outcomes, but it still foretells the long-term future. Economic and political pressures move the system more rapidly toward these outcomes.



Figure 5. Projected age classes for harvests on public and private lands in Western Oregon (reprinted with permission, from Sessions 1990).

The figure shows projected harvests for the next century by decade beginning in 1990. Note that initially all five age classes are represented in the 1990's harvest projections on federal lands. We can see all the old growth on federal lands not in reserves being harvested in the 2040 decade. On private lands, note there are only the three younger age classes.

Harvest is not a precise indicator of the age distribution of the timber stock, but it suggests that private lands have much less old growth than federal lands. Both, however, are projected to lose all but the reserved 1.4 million hectares of old growth. This is just 8% of the original old growth. All of the old growth is only in reserved areas on federal lands. Old growth on private lands went first, followed by the old growth available for harvest on federal lands. Private ownership protected less old growth than federal land management. Like salmon, completing the life cycle of full utilization of old growth is projected to take slightly over 100 years. Federal ownership slowed the decline and in the long-run may protect a small percentage of old growth forests. The difference between private and federal lands seems to be a question of restoring past conditions or adopting a new system configuration. As the total amount of old growth declined, the tension between those who want to preserve as much of what is left of old growth and those who saw the future system as one of silviculture became the central debate in decision making.

Neither market-based nor state management regimes seem effective at retaining old growth, and like salmon, the Northwest forestry system is moving into the reorganization phase of the renewal cycle. Law suits and legal action relating to endangered species are in the process of defining what the reorganization will be.

While these estimates lack precision, the pattern of decline in natural capital is clear. Forests like the fisheries of the Pacific Northwest have much less natural capital. In the forestry case, federal lands are more fragmented, while private lands are more disturbed (Spies et al. 1994). In both the salmon fishery and the old growth forest systems, the natural capital build-up was expended to the purchase of other types of capital assets. Both federal and private lands experienced the same result. On private lands projections show the harvest of all the old growth before the year 2000.

Different management regimes seem to be associated with the various phases in the life cycle of a biosocial system. The laissez-faire management is specific to systems with very loose connectedness, which occurs right after the release phase. Market-based regulation seems to be developing as the system structure is gradually built during the growth phase. As the system continues to evolve, with the connectedness and capital growing there is no need to change the management practices, however, when a decline in capital becomes obvious there is a trend towards increasing regulation. State and then international regulation is introduced with the connections losing flexibility and becoming more brittle. The communal governance remains as a special case, just like the homeostasis period identified by Gumilev for ethnoi as having harmony with the carrying landscape for as long as there are no crisis or external invasions.

In the forest case, as with the one for salmon, the pattern is toward greater governmental intervention in management. The view of sustainability looks backward to restoring old growth habitats and restoring stream habitats for the benefit of fish and wildlife, yet the capital stock indicators suggest that the system is nearing the reorganization phase.


Discussion

The implications of ethnogenesis and the renewal cycle are that all biosocial systems go through life cycles. If this is the case, then, managing for sustainability turns out to be the human desire to extend a life cycle beyond its natural course. The goal of sustainability is most prevalent during the conservation or release phase of our fishery and forestry examples. The conservation and release phases are the times when extending the life cycle is most desirable from a human perspective. During these two phases, extending the growth of capital or reducing the rate at which capital is dissipated both work to extend the life cycle of the system. During the exploitation and reorganization phases there is less concern about sustainability, either the system is not endangered and therefore causes no alarm, or preserving its current state is clearly not possible. The fishery and forestry examples indicate that striving towards sustainability usually occurs when it may be too late to maintain the biosocial system as it was when it maximized production of capital stock. Rather than achieving sustainability, the system appears to be reorganizing--seeking a new loop of the cycle instead of the extension of the current phase of the life cycle.

Laissez-faire management regimes transfer natural capital to other forms of capital very rapidly, initially, but they face problems later in the life cycle and often become state governance systems. Market-based management regimes are continually extending their organization through trading and political relationships, but market factors may result in decisions to expend natural capital now rather than save it for future generations. In figure 6 we show the major differences in system organization for each of the management regimes.



Figure 6. System relations between user and resource subsystems in various management systems.

In laissez-faire regimes the resource subsystem is in interaction with several user subsystems that each use the resource without coordination. As a result, if more and more users seek to exploit the resource it is quickly depleted and the user subsystems disintegrate as a result of overexploitation of the resource. Management measures that restrict open access to the resource modify the laissez-faire nature of the management system. The resource is protected in order to sustain the dependent social systems. This occurred in both the fishery and forestry example. Management regimes evolved to increasingly more intrusive state and international systems. This is the mutual coercion, mutually agreed upon that Hardin (1968) suggests as a way for solving the laissez-faire, open-access problem.

In a communal management system, the community is closely connected as one system with the resource subsystem. Being small and without much capital, communal systems adjust very quickly to changes in the resource subsystem. Communal systems turn out to be vulnerable to external action of other systems. Coming in contact with market-based systems adds complexity to this relationship, as was the case when Europeans settled the Columbia Basin. On the one hand, the market-based system offers a greater diversity of system linkages. These linkages, however, usually result in the breakdown of the structure of the communal system.

In market-based management regimes based on private property, the resource is split among the users and each develops the resource separately to maximize individual profits. In the forestry example, short-term benefits outweighed the concerns for sustainability and conservation of old growth ecosystems.

In state management regimes a centralized agency controls the resource subsystem. The user subsystems come under the control of the state bureaucracy, which often must manage conflicting interests and priorities. The state ownership acts as a common denominator tending to represent the opinion of the majority and balance the interests of many different views. The variety of conflicting opinions makes it difficult for the state bureaucracy to take decisive action and conflicts between users results in decision making that is very conservative and not responsive to change. Thus in both the fishery and forestry examples state management regimes appeared to extend the release phase, but could not stop the overall decline. In an attempt to suit the varying interests and meet the expectations of the majority, greater pressures are placed on the resource subsystem, which makes it much more susceptible to various environmental and ecological perturbations .

In actual biosocial systems, many management approaches interact. This corresponds with findings by Feeny et al. (1990) that property rights and management regimes have no common one-to-one relationship. There can be communal property rights within market-based systems. Markets exist within and outside of state and communal systems. To speak of a property rights or management approach fails to recognize the nested, multi-scale, and complex interactions in these systems. To deal with complexity and the difficulty in predicting the results of actions, Lee (1993, 1995) and FEMAT (1993) propose adaptive management as a means for dealing with the complexity of fishery and forestry systems.


Conclusion

The life cycle of systems, as represented by the process of ethnogenesis and the cycle of adaptive renewal, is broadly applicable to many types of systems and the components of systems. The life cycles of nested systems are much more complex than any simple presentation can portray them.

We are left with the hypotheses that no management regime gives an advantage over others in terms of being able to perpetuate sustainability and not be vulnerable to the life cycle. Management regimes tend to change with the phases of the life cycle. The change of life cycle phases seem to set the constraints for management, rather than vice versa. Capital accumulation can extend, but does not assure sustainability. Communal management systems do not stand up well when interacting with laissez-faire and market-based regimes. This is because the new technologies and opportunities available from markets lead to depleting natural capital, and converting it to other forms of capital. Often times this expenditure of capital yields no long-term gain for the communal property system and makes it more vulnerable to loss of identity as a system.

A life cycle metaphor for biosocial systems suggests that nothing is forever. Ethnoi and all complex systems ultimately move through the life cycle. The role of management in the fishery and forestry example was to prolong the conservation or release phases of the life cycle. Yet while systems may fail, the nested nature of these systems suggests that what the whole is undergoing is not necessarily the same as each of the parts. The converse also is true in that what is happening with the parts is not necessarily the same as the whole.

Since we treat fishery and forest systems in a statistical, thermodynamic manner, this may be the reason why we obtain the close resemblance of the passionarity cycle and the thermodynamic function of external dissipation in such a system as a living cell. In fact, if humans act as thermodynamic components recombining and grouping together and then falling apart, interacting with their environment and with each other according to some yet unknown but chaotic principles, the pattern is probably wave-shaped with eventual dissipation and regeneration through the adaptive renewal. As the rapid capital accumulation of the exploitation phase of the renewal cycle wanes, biosocial systems experience more centralized control, i.e., state and international management designed to extend the conservation and release phases of the renewal cycle. The management of natural resource systems struggles against the final and apparently necessary reorganization phase of the renewal cycle.

Management for sustainability, rather than maintaining biosocial system in perpetuity, actually tries to stop the process of adaptive renewal. The effort to perpetuate the life cycle can lead to more catastrophic readjustments. More species may be lost. The natural capital stock may be taken to a level where the biosocial system makes a very dramatic reorganization. Management driven by the concept of sustainability is more prone to try and prevent readjustment and flexibility when it is most needed.

Recognizing the life cycle, management might shift from looking backward to sustain some past condition to looking forward to the adjustments a system must make as it cycles through the process of release and reorganization.


Acknowledgment

This project resulted from the Property Rights and the Performance of Natural Systems program of the Beijer International Institute of Ecological Economics, The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, Stockholm, Sweden, with support from the World Environment and Resources Program of the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation and the Environment Division of the World Bank. We also acknowledge assistance from the Oregon Sea Grant College Program, the Sustainable Forestry Program at Oregon State University, and Center for Analysis of Environmental Change.

References

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