Fikret Berkes and Carl Folke, eds.: Linking Social and Ecological Systems. Management Practices and Social Mechanisms for Building Resilience

摘要

It is possible to have an entire academic workshop about say, environmental valuation or environmental law, in which the economic and social concepts of valuation and regulation are discussed at length without once linking those concepts to the actual properties of the environment. That is not to dismiss the discussions at these workshops, they are often brilliant and incisive. But the environment is simply an icon that could be replaced by a completely different topic without much changing the conclusions. For example, a lawyer might set about valuing the environmental damage caused by oil spills in the recent Gulf war so that reparations could be made by using the case of the Exxon Valdez. The ecology of the two sites is completely different, but the environment as an icon is the same.