Obstacles and opportunities in environmental management

Environmental management presents major challenges and a variety of obstacles stand in the pathways to solutions. These obstacles, however, also present opportunities, and this lecture will explore some of these. Key among them are the development of truly multidisciplinary approaches, exemplified by the Beijer Institute and the Stockholm Resilience Centre, to the development of general conceptual and theoretical frameworks that lead to practical solution to specific problems.

Ecosystems and the biosphere are complex adaptive systems, and are parts of a larger coupled social-environmental complex adaptive system that presents unique challenges for management.

About Simon Levin
Professor Levin's research interests include complexity, and understanding how macroscopic patterns and processes are maintained at the level of ecosystems and the biosphere, in terms of ecological, behavioral, and evolutionary mechanisms that operate primarily at the level of the
organisms.

His book, "Fragile Dominion: Complexity and the Commons", is an introduction to his view of the issues underlying the dynamics and management of ecological systems, with broad analogies to socioeconomic systems.

The seminar is free of charge and open to the public

Download seminar invitation Pdf, 233.8 kB. (Pdf, 233.8 kB)