Читать книгу North American Agroforestry - Группа авторов - Страница 15

Management can be considered as the planned intervention into natural processes to assure predictable outcomes of benefit to the health and welfare of humans. Hence, sociological factors often become the driving principles determining many land use decisions. For example, a stewardship ethic that places long‐term social good above short‐term personal gain can move people to spend time, effort, and money assuring the ecological integrity of land they currently own. In contrast, a pioneer ethic emphasizing the immediate needs of the individual can promote destructive activities that negatively impact future generations (Nash, 1982). This anthropocentric focus for management has been challenged for decades (Stone, 1996). Obviously, different user groups can hold very different views concerning the utilization, conservation, and preservation of our natural resources, often making the social context in which land use decisions are made highly contentious.

The social context for land use decision‐making is also subject to increasingly rapid change as the pace of social evolution quickens in response to increased knowledge and technological advancements. For example, this century has witnessed major changes associated with the transition from a rural to an urban society, shifts in ethnic and age structures, a move to an information‐based society, and periodic resurgence in the public’s interest and concern about the environment and the use of the nation’s farm and forest lands. Hence, management decisions socially acceptable in one generation may not be accepted in another (e.g., clear‐cutting old‐growth forests, eradicating predators, or indiscriminate pesticide use).

The United States is a capitalistic society, and the economic bottom line continues to drive many decisions concerning the production of food, forage, livestock, and fiber. We have been so successful in creating a higher order of socioeconomic organization through our effective harnessing of energy that subsistence living remains for only a few in North America. Agriculture and forestry are now big businesses operating in a dynamic world economy. Fortunately, there is a sound theory base supporting our understanding of the economic variables driving capitalism, such as cost/benefit ratios, supply–demand interrelationships, and marketplace dynamics. Unfortunately, much of this neoclassical theory simplifies or neglects critical issues, such as the long‐term values associated with externalities arising from sound management practices, often making it inadequate for explaining the current realities of the land use and environmental decision‐making process (Daly & Cobb, 1989; Tisdell, 1990).

Nonetheless, during the past two decades there has been increased interest in internalizing the environmental costs and benefits not necessarily reflected by our market system (Mann & Wustemann, 2008; Wang & Wolf, 2019). Payments for environmental or ecosystem services have entered the discussion of policymakers at both the federal and state levels in the United States (Mercer, Cooley, & Hamilton, 2011; Potter & Wolf, 2014). We have a voluntary market for carbon offsets in the United States and a developing market for water quality credits, both patterned after what has been considered to be a successful cap‐and‐trade system to control sulfur dioxide emissions (Börner et al., 2017; Gordon, 2007; Jack, Kousky, & Sims, 2008; Lowrance, 2007; Palma, Graves, Burgess, van der Werf, & Herzog, 2007b; Wang & Wolf, 2019).

Land use management is inherently interdisciplinary because of the multitude of interrelated factors that must be considered when deciding how best to optimize the use of land for realizing its multiple values (Ferraz‐de‐Oliveira, Azeda, & Pinto‐Correia, 2016; Savory, 1988; Stankey, 1996). The extent to which scientific knowledge is useful in such a decision‐making process depends on its ability to deepen managers’ understanding of complex systems and how to adjust them to achieve specific objectives. An interdisciplinary approach is essential to the development of such knowledge (Chubin, Porter, Rossini, & Connolly, 1986). The study of interdisciplinary land use management systems, while previously overlooked (Stankey, 1996), has become a major topic of interest in the research and development community (LaCanne & Lundgren, 2018). The “tyranny of the disciplines,” while still the norm in creating institutional obstacles to effective integration (Campbell, 1986), is no longer the only paradigm being promoted and is actively being superseded during the past decade by a shift toward increased diversification of landscapes and cropping systems (Geertsema et al., 2016; Liebman & Schulte, 2015). The theoretical base for the management of complex agroecosystems often does not meet the practical needs of the field‐level manager (Wezel & Bellon, 2018). This can result in mismanagement by those owning land or controlling its use—unacceptable behavior in a society that is increasingly demanding sound ecological management of its natural resources.