Brittle Power- PARTS 1-3 (+Notes) - Natural Capitalism Solutions

Chapter Thirteen: Designing for Resilience 185but multiple domains of stability. Each domain represents a “basin withinwhich the behavior of the system can “slop around” without dramatic change.The greater the deviation from normal behavior, the more steeply the “walls”of the “basin” curve upwards and the greater the resistance to climbing them.But given a big enough disturbance in some key variable, the system can suddenlychange into a different “basin” of behavior by “slopping” up over the“ridge” between adjacent “basins”.Eutrophication of a pond is such a change. 29 If more and more nutrients(e.g., phosphates) are added to the water, eventually its limits of tolerance willbe reached. With one component allowed to flourish at the expense of others,the pond will suddenly develop an algal bloom, which can lead to rotting ofthe plant matter and the irreversible creation of anaerobic conditions. Thepond can then not support its original species or perhaps any others. As theecologist Dr. William Clark points out, 30 similarly abrupt transitions, triggeredby seemingly small disturbances to critical variables, can occur in fisheries, 31marine biology, 32 insect ecology, 33 other ecosystems, 34 global climate, 35 andeven political and economic systems (as in the Great Depression, revolutions,and similar cataclysms).If ecosystems have multiple domains of stability and can be easily triggeredto switch from one to another, the strategy for avoiding such a transition is tostay far away from the “ridge” separating one domain or “basin” of stabilityfrom the next. This is precisely, as Holling remarks, “in the highly responsibletradition of engineering for safety, of nuclear safeguards, or environmentaland health standards.” But, to add emphasis, this approachdemands and presumes knowledge. It works beautifully if the system is simple andknown—say, the design of bolts for an aircraft. Then the stress limits can beclearly defined, these limits can be treated as if they are static, and the boltcan be crafted so that normal or even abnormal stresses can be absorbed.The goal is to minimize the probability of failure. And in that, the approachhas succeeded. But in parallel with that achievement is a high cost of failure—the very issue that now makes trial-and-error methods of dealing with theunknown so dangerous. Far from being resilient solutions, they seem to be the opposite,when applied to large systems that are only partially known. To be able to identify…[safelimits]…presumes sufficient knowledge. 36Thus the engineering-for-safety approach “emphasize a fail-safe design at theprice of a safe-fail one.” If the inner workings of a system are not perfectlyunderstood and predictable, efforts to remain within its domain of stabilitymay fail, leading not to safety but to collapse. And if, as is inevitable, the fullrange of potential hazards is not foreseen, but simple precautions nonetheless