Managing the global commons
Several important resources must be managed collectively, and this recognition has renewed efforts to establish effective systems of global governance. Evolving from a coalition of sovereign states concerned with world security, attention has increasingly turned to economy, food, environment, climate and infectious disease. Representation of sovereign states has been broadened to include inter- and non-government organizations. The problem extends beyond representation, power and authority. The complexity and scale of global issues stretch human capacity. The recent global credit crisis may reflect this lack of comprehension. Part of the problem is the way individuals and organizations deal with complexity. They minimize the overhead associated with reasoning in several ways:
1) Analogy associates something new with something already known. Instant understanding is conveyed by clever captions, slogans, or iconic representations.
2) Standardization is embodied in codes, rules, standards and conventions that ensure consistency and relieve the need for context-dependent judgements.
3) Fundamentalism organizes ways of knowing and doing things into those that are right and the rest that are wrong. Market and scientific fundamentalism are important examples.
4) Divide-and-conquer assigns coherent manageable pieces to disciplines or departments. This controls the distraction of connectedness and provides the laser focus that has propelled contemporary science and service.
Although these filters help us manage information overload, they may not always lead us along the right path.
Race against time
Agrologists see their work as a race against time – providing food for growing populations and creating wealth that will stabilize them. At the turn-of-the-century, the focus was on bringing land into production by settlement, clearing, drainage and irrigation. Technological emphasis was on engineering and importing or developing adapted breeds and varieties. This was followed by the celebrated Green Revolution with selection of crops that were responsive to fertilization, irrigation, and protection by pesticides. This will be branded the chemical era built on advances in biochemistry and physiology. The current era has been called the Gene Revolution (Kav et al. 2007) that allows rapid development of traits related to quality, efficiency, disease resistance, and drought tolerance. In many ways, this softens the collateral environmental damage caused by the chemical supplements that supported the green revolution. Optimists imagine that biotechnology also may provide tools to generate biodiversity, and hence, hasten adaptation of ecosystems to climate change.
Changing course
Complementing this continuing succession of technologies to improve productivity and efficiency, agricultural science is branching in two other directions; namely, the life and environmental sciences (Dwyer 2008). Life sciences focus on human nutrition and well-being. Environmental sciences deal with resource issues such as agro-ecology, multipurpose agriculture, integrated pest management, fertility and water quality. Collectively, they cover the three domains of sustainability – economic, social and environmental.
Although these elements can be conveniently circled in this way, some authorities see this as a struggle of paradigms – a war over minds, mouths and markets (Lang and Heaseman 2004). Whether strategic evolution or victory, it is a view from within. The bigger question is how the food system is integrated with other sectors striving to sustain human well-being.
Integration
The UN Millennium Ecosystem Assessment [www.millenniumassessment.org] evaluated global ecosystem status and trends and projected an unfolding future of the human condition under four scenarios framed by proactiveness and scale. Because of our limited understanding of global dynamics, these should be considered as plausible outcomes rather than predictions. As expected, proactive is better than reactive management and global solutions better than regional ones. The same general conclusions apply to narrowing the gap of benefits to developed and underdeveloped countries. However, the important insight is that success in the short term does not necessarily mean success in the long-term. This is significant because strategic planning is usually based on targets and actions prescribed at an inappropriately fine temporal and spatial scale.
The succession of technologies is based on trust that populations and demand for food will stabilize as the agricultural industries generates the wealth and stability associated with declining population growth rates.
-- Future
