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Copyright © 2001 by the author(s). Published here under license by The Resilience Alliance.
The following is the established format for referencing this article:
Mathias, J. 2001. Path dependence as an example of dysfunctional panarchy. Conservation Ecology 5(2): r4. [online] URL: http://www.consecol.org/vol5/iss2/resp4/
Response to Henderson 2000. "Path dependence, escaping sustained yield." Path Dependence as an Example of a Dysfunctional Panarchy Jack Mathias
Fisheries and Oceans Canada
Published: November 1, 2001
The problem of "path dependence" as defined by Henderson (2001) illustrates the notion of "panarchy" as defined by Holling (2000), i.e., an interlinking of never-ending adaptive cycles of growth, accumulation, restructuring, and renewal.
Holling raises the notion of fast, inventive, experimental cycles nested within slower, more conservative cycles, nested again within very slow, very conservative cycles. Henderson discusses the conservatism of the [fisheries] management bureaucracy as it clings to the principle of maximum sustained yield (MSY) as a [salmon] management tool, despite the fact that MSY has been discredited as unworkable in the present social context.
Based on Henderson’s salmon management example, these four classes of adaptive cycles can be discerned:
These cycles form a panarchy by working together on different time scales to " ... combine learning with continuity ... " (Holling 2000). In this panarchy, rapid, inventive cycles quickly adapt strategies for exploiting salmon. Slower "learning" cycles that focus on how salmon populations adapt to that exploitation lead to an even slower "continuity" cycle involving the development of a bureacracy designed to manage the salmon exploitation system.
As Henderson points out, the fact that the speed of these cycles is out of synchrony poses a problem. The "adaptive" cycle of the industry is too fast for the learning cycle of science, let alone the "management" cycle of the bureaucracy. Henderson calls this "path dependence." When the problem is viewed in this way, the solution seems to lie in designing the speed of the cycles so that they are more synchronous. Also required is more attention to feedback loops so that adaptive action between cycles takes place more rapidly.
The design of adaptive cycles can be traced back to the "structure" of our management institutions. In the salmon example, we need to examine the structural relationships between the economic, social, and natural systems that prevent the management cycle from changing more quickly. Henderson suggests that path dependence is, in fact, a failure to examine the economic and institutional framework within which the resource management regime is set, i.e., a failure to address the power relationships between the companies that benefit from sustained yield and the government that regulates the fishery. The concept of panarchy allows us to view resource management in a more structured way that illuminates the constraints, discontinuities, asynchronies, and other warts and bumps that frustrate the proper interlinking of adaptive cycles.
Responses to this article are invited. If accepted for publication, your response will be hyperlinked to the article. To submit a comment, follow this link. To read comments already accepted, follow this link.
Henderson, B. 2001. Path dependence, escaping sustained yield. Conservation Ecology 5(1): r3. [online] URL: http://www.consecol.org/Journal/vol5/iss1/resp3
Holling, C. S. 2000. Theories for sustainable futures. Conservation Ecology 4(2): 7. [online] URL: http://www.consecol.org/vol4/iss2/art7
Address of Correspondent:
Jack Mathias
Freshwater Institute Science Laboratory
501 University Crescent
Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada R3T 2N6
Phone: (204) 983-5155
mathiasj@dfo-mpo.gc.ca
