SUSTAINABILITY (Supply side) 2)
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T.F.H. ALLEN, who developed this model recommends the following steps (hierarchically organized), to create the general conditions for sustainability in complex systems:
- manage for whole ecosystems, not resources
- manage from the context to facilitate internal functioning: the healthy ecosystems in context subsidize the effort
- use positive feedbacks to achieve systems change (1998, p. 4)
In short, sustainability of processes must be subordinated to the system's sustainability
which in turn can be maintained only through a permanent symbiosis of the system with its environment.
Of course such a symbiosis implies some aspects that frequently remain hidden, as for example:
- the system's outputs must be carefully managed in order to avoid spoiling the environment
- technical change can (and generally does) modify the balance between the system and its environment. Such a change should be carefully scrutinized. Indeed a change can be initially beneficial and turn negative in the long run or it may be costly at the beginning and become positive later on
- the use of positive feedbacks to achieve systems change should be cautious, lest they lead to a global and possibly irreversible loss of dynamic stability, i.e. long term sustainability
Categories
- 1) General information
- 2) Methodology or model
- 3) Epistemology, ontology and semantics
- 4) Human sciences
- 5) Discipline oriented
Publisher
Bertalanffy Center for the Study of Systems Science(2020).
To cite this page, please use the following information:
Bertalanffy Center for the Study of Systems Science (2020). Title of the entry. In Charles François (Ed.), International Encyclopedia of Systems and Cybernetics (2). Retrieved from www.systemspedia.org/[full/url]
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