1.

What are the factors and assumptions that have shaped the faith in management as the solution to social and ecological problems? 2. What are the weaknesses and consequences of this kind of thinking? 3. How has this kind of thinking been changing? 4. What are the implications for the changing understanding of management for engaging with communities in resource management? Management of resources has been seen as the solution to social and ecological problems. This is because it has achieved certainty through science and technology resource and environmental management. However this is influenced the rise of industrial societies, and been proven to be undemocratic and unsustainable with respect to human communities and biophysical ecosystems as well as guides most of the response to environmental problems, (Bavington 2002). In management, democratic politics and environmental ethnics have been side-stepped in favour of top-down humancentered administration. The practice of control has been the preferred method of management. However, this method had some weaknesses to it. As Bavington (2002) states ecological scientists questioned the feasibility of the method of control due to the fact that complex systems were involved. Nature is dynamic self organizing system, in a continuing chaotic flux but with the control method, it was seen as a collection of linear mechanisms striving towards predictable equilibrium states, (Bavington 2002). There were also many failed attempts of controlled management schemes, such as the case with the Newfoundland Cod Fishery Management at the end of the 19th century, where the control method was being used, (Bavington, Managing to Endanger: Creating Manageable Cod Fisheries in Newfoundland and Labrador, Canada 2009). With the failure of the control method, and a management crisis in resource management ensuing, the thinking of control as management has been changed to coping. Coping now focused on dealing with uncertainty and complexity in dynamic and in interconnected ecological systems. The Coping strategy does what the control method failed to take into consideration. It highlights the importance of political and moral ecology, (Bavington, Managerial Ecology and its Discontents: Exploring the Complexities of Control, Careful Use and Coping in Resource and Environmental Management 2002). By doing including these, the best interest of nature will be taken into consideration. Before with the control method that failed, communities were told what to do, and their livihoods were affected. In the case with Newfoudland they adapted the control method with science and technology. They calculated the amount of cod and had everything under their control. They even predicted the amount of cod it was have had and where it would be. However, this method failed. The problem here was that real fish and real fishermen were replaced by numbers, (Bavington, Managing to Endanger: Creating Manageable Cod Fisheries in Newfoundland and Labrador, Canada 2009). Nature is something that is always changing, and as a result it cannot just be managed and controlled.

References

Bavington, Dean. "Managerial Ecology and its Discontents: Exploring the Complexities of Control, Careful Use and Coping in Resource and Environmental Management." Environments 30, no. 3 (2002): 321. Bavington, Dean. "Managing to Endanger: Creating Manageable Cod Fisheries in Newfoundland and Labrador, Canada." Mast 7, no. 2 (2009): 99-121.