Coerced regimes: management challenges in the Anthropocene

Area of Science:

• Ecology
• Environmental Management
• Complex Systems Theory

Background:

• Management in complex systems of people and nature often creates conditions that poorly mimic desirable self-organizing regimes.
• This management practice is widespread and likely to increase as systems face rapid environmental and social change.
• The long-term costs, including unintended consequences and social dynamics, of such management are uncertain.

Purpose of the Study:

• Introduce and define the concept of a "coerced regime" within resilience theory.
• Conceptualize management that artificially maintains desirable system conditions.
• Provide a framework for quantifying the management effort required to sustain these artificial conditions.

Main Methods:

• Define "coerced regime" as a management form encompassing proactive and reactive strategies.
• Introduce a quantifiable measure for the amount of management needed to artificially maintain desirable conditions.
• Demonstrate the concept's application across diverse complex systems.

Main Results:

• Coerced regimes contain "ghosts" of self-sustaining regimes but become "dead regimes walking" upon management discontinuation.
• The concept was applied to human subjects, aquatic and terrestrial environments, agriculture, and global climate.
• Analysis revealed commonalities and differences in management tradeoffs across these systems.

Conclusions:

• The "coerced regime" concept aids in understanding the duality of known versus unknown factors in sustainability.
• It highlights the pervasive sustainability conundrum as Earth faces unprecedented future conditions.
• Informing management requires acknowledging the potential for unintended consequences and the limitations of current knowledge.