Complexity principles and policy making

Interesting paper released that demands that policy makers adopt a complexity approach to policy making around environmental decision making.  These principles are useful, and can you see how they would apply to social systems too?

• Create policies that have legs: When developing a policy to manage fisheries or allocate water distribution in agriculture, for example, make it flexible so it can continue to effectively manage the resource, no matter how it changes in the future.
• Support policies that encourage ecosystem diversity: Opt for plans that encourage organism and habitat diversity, because casting a larger net will let the policy be most responsive no matter what happens in the future.
• Invest more in monitoring: Don’t just collect data, but actively analyze the data, drawing connections to the past and assessing what that relationship might mean for the future. Do more field-based monitoring and less predictive modeling.
• Expect a future that’s different from the past: Move away from a “better safe than sorry” approach to management and assume the ecosystem will shift in unexpected ways. Design policies that can adapt based on how the ecosystem changes.

Good, basic complexity principles applied to the management of resources, an area often dominated by predictive, target-based planning approaches.

 

via Embrace unknowns, opt for flexibility in environmental policies | UW Today.