Perspectives on Ecological Integrity

Recently, concepts of ecological integrity have been proposed to facilitate enhanced protection of biological and ecological resources against the threat of human activities. The promotion of ecological integrity as a basis for public policy and decisionmaking stems from scientists and others concerned about the threats of human activities to ecosystems and species, and from philosophers attempting to derive a more suitable ethic to the relationships between humans and the nonhuman environment.

The concept of ecosystem integrity figures prominently in a large number of regulatory and legislative documents. From the time of the 1972 Clean Water Act to the recent vision and mission statements following the Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro, the term and concepts of “integrity” have appeared in the Great Lakes Water Quality Agreement (1978), the Canada Park Service Regulations (1988), the Great Lakes Science Advisory Board Report (1991), Agenda 21, Ascend 21, the draft Montana Environmental Protection Act (1992), Environment Canada’s Mission Statement (1992), UNCED documents (1992), World Bank reports (particularly in the bank’s 1992 discussion of biodiversity), and many other documents, including the Constitution of Brazil (Chapter 6, Meio Ambiente).

Human history, like evolution itself, has been marked by relative stasis punctuated by periods of rapid change. Harnessing fire, making and using tools and weapons, and inventing the wheel were early mileposts signaling, we are told, an unbounded human ingenuity. These and other innovations allowed humans to tap natural capital and spread virtually throughout the world, living year-round from sea level to mountain tops, from equatorial heat to polar cold. The success of humans in these diverse natural settings resulted directly from the ability to adapt to diverse regional conditions and to develop and modify culture and religion.

As environmental degradation and change continues, decision makers and managers feel significant pressure to rectify the situation. Scientists, in turn, find themselves under pressure to set out simple and clear rules for proper ecosystem management. The response has been one of frustration. Michael Soulé and Laurence Slobdokin both loudly complain that ecology is an intractable science, immature and not very helpful. Kristin Shrader-Frechette and Robert Peters reproach ecologists for not producing simple testable hypotheses.¹ Meanwhile policy makers and managers clamour for a measure of ecosystem integrity whose value in different situations can be predicted by simulation models. The question on everyone’s mind is “what does ecosystem science identify as the main, simple, basic, universal laws which will allow quantitative prediction of ecosystem behaviour and what are the resulting rules for ecosystem management?”

The politics of conservation might be seen by an outside observer as a battle of buzzwords. On one side stand the deep ecologists, wilderness advocates, and many biologists proclaiming the values of wildness, naturalness, biodiversity, and ecological integrity. On the other side the bureaucrats, politicians, resource managers, international development planners, and a few biologists chant sustainable development, multiple use, and ecosystem management. Sometimes the distinctions blur as “moderate” conservationists in the middle discuss sustainability, ecosystem management, and biodiversity all in one breath, optimistically believing that development and conservation are interdependent and compatible. A major problem is that everyone seems to have something different—sometimes slightly and other times radically different—in mind when using these terms. What one person sees as sustainable development, another sees as destruction of a priceless heritage. A timber company may justify clearcutting as enhancing biodiversity, while an environmentalist claims that such cutting will lead to loss of old-growth species.

Ecosystem integrity has become very topical of late. As is usual with emerging concepts, the bulk of what has been written on integrity deals with progressive definitions of the concept. For example, it has been necessary to distinguish between the integrity of an ecosystem and it’s “health”—another popular notion. Ecosystem health was crafted to quantify how well a system is functioning. Costanza (1992), for example, cites three aspects of ecosystem health—vigor, organization and resilience. The first two components refer to the system in its current state. Only the last property addresses the immediate future of the system.

Western culture apparently crossed a great historical divide some two to three decades ago, with a bit of help from ecostudents. Seers or prophets as gifted people who can see into the present are offering their perceptions about the new realities and their perspectives on the new mores. Ideologues and theologues committed to fundamentals imposed in an earlier age decry what they take to be agnosticism, relativism and manifold heresies. Creative pathfinders of early post-modernism have been discovering how the new culture and the old nature may interact harmoniously ecosystemically. Entrepreneurs of obsolescent mindsets have attempted to subvert the new to discredited old ends, as in the greedy neo-conservative echo of capitalism that metastasized in Western countries in the 1980s.

This paper seeks to focus the definition of environmental sustainability (ES), partly by distinguishing ES from social sustainability and from economic sustainability. The challenge to social scientists is to produce their own definition of social sustainability, rather than load social desiderata on to the definition of ES. Similarly with economic sustainability; let economists define it or use previous definitions of economic sustainability. The three types of sustainability—social, environmental and economic—are clearest when kept separate. They are contrasted in Table 1. While there is some overlap among the three in the goals of economic development (Figure 1), and certainly major linkages, the three are best disaggregated and addressed separately by different disciplines. Social scientists are best able to define social sustainability, and environmentalists do not have a major role in that task. The disciplines best able to analyze each type of sustainability are different; each follows different laws and methods. After disaggregating environmental sustainability we show that it is not ecosystem or nation specific, rather it is universal. Furthermore, we show that while all nations and eco-regions may need their own different approaches to ES, it is essentially non-negotiable.

What you take as your starting point depends on where you want to go. If you want to sail due south to the Dry Tortugas, then you start with plenty of fresh water, some food, a good navigational system, and arguably a ship-to-shore radio for the long trip. But if you want to sail due west to nearby John’s Pass, then you might need some fresh water, but no food, no sophisticated navigational system, and no radio. How you begin a journey depends on where you want to go. So it is with environmental ethics.

Science always evolves, responding to its leading challenges as they change through history. After centuries of triumph and optimism, science is now called on to remedy the pathologies of the global industrial system of which it forms the basis. Whereas science was previously understood as steadily advancing in the certainty of our knowledge and control of the natural world, now science is seen as coping with many uncertainties in policy issues of risks and the environment. In response, new styles of scientific activity are being developed. The reductionist, analytical world-view which divides systems into ever smaller elements, studied by ever more esoteric specialties, is being replaced by a systemic, synthetic and humanistic approach. The old dichotomies of facts and values, and of knowledge and ignorance, are being transcended. Natural systems are recognized as dynamic and complex; those involving interactions with humanity are “emergent,” including properties of reflection and contradiction. The science appropriate to this new condition will be based on the assumptions of unpredictability, incomplete control, and a plurality of legitimate perspectives.

The concept of integrity is a normative one; it presupposes that some good is at stake. This essay does not attempt to define ‘integrity” in an ecological context but seeks to understand why integrity in that context is valuable and worthy of protection.

Recently, concepts of ecological integrity have been proposed to facilitate enhanced protection of biological and ecological resources against the threat of human activities because ecosystems that encompass facets of integrity would be protected better against activities that cause ecological change or impairment (Johnson 1993, Westra 1994). Angermeier and Karr (1994) propose that ecological integrity refers most appropriately to ecosystems whose operations and evolution have been minimally influenced by human interventions. Consequently, they propose that the natural integrity of national parks, nature preserves, and other similar areas be protected. However, few case studies have been conducted on the theoretical and practical implications that might arise from the use of ecological integrity as the basis for management decisions about natural resources.

Ecosystem integrity consists of two parts: functional integrity and structural integrity (Westra 1994). An ecosystem’s functional integrity is the maintenance of characteristic ecosystem processes, such as primary production, decomposition, energy flows and nutrient cycling. Structural integrity encompasses the persistence of specific organisms and biotic communities in the ecosystem. It also includes the spatial extent, heterogeneity, configuration (or spatial arrangement) and connectivity of landscape or terrain patterns representative of the ecosystem, upon which the organisms depend. Functional integrity might be sustained even if an ecosystem affected by human impact has lower species diversity compared with the natural ecosystem, but the affected system would be lacking in structural integrity.

According to Leopold (1949), “A thing is right when it tends to preserve the integrity, stability, and beauty of the biotic community. It is wrong when it tends otherwise.” Leopold’s list of desirable ecosystem attributes has undergone various additions and subtractions. Rodman (1983) added diversity, complexity, harmony, and scarcity, to this multifaceted norm, but removed the notion of beauty—perhaps because he thought that it existed more in the eye of the beholder than in nature itself. Contemporary ecologists raise questions about whether stability is a necessary feature of natural ecosystems, given their dynamical character. For example the fire ecology and disease patterns of most boreal forests in Canada have the result that virtually no forest stands reach 200 years of age without a natural catastrophic destruction. On the other hand, biological diversity and the sustainability of humanly exploited ecosystems are norms that are more recently in focus. Suppose, now, we omit mention of all of the qualities of the biotic community except integrity; will we then have a sufficient principle to guide our conduct affecting ecosystems or nature at large? Can we dispense with the other qualities proposed by Leopold, Rodman, sustainable development theory and others as redundant additions to the norm of integrity?

The world’s human population is currently more than 5.6 billion, projected to reach nearly 8.4 billion by the year 2025 and may reach a disastrous 15 billion by 2100 (PCC 1989). Presently a quarter million humans are added each day. Many leading scientists and public organizations are concerned about the rapid growth in population numbers and the deterioration of natural resources and the environment caused by human numbers and activities (CEQ 1980, Keyfitz 1984, Hardin 1986, Demeny 1986, Ehrlich and Ehrlich 1990, Holdren 1992). As populations and their consumerism increase basic resources are depleted, this leads to environmental degradation while freedom of individual choice and quality of life decline (Durning 1989, Durham 1992). At present, from 1.2 billion (Durning 1989) to 2 billion people (Abernethy, Vanderbilt University, PC, 1992) worldwide are living in poverty, malnourished, diseased, and experiencing short life-spans. In the United States 36 million now are living in poverty (USBC 1994).

Since its introduction into mainstream environmental thought via the Brundtland Commission report (Brundtland 1987), the meaning of the term ‘sustainable development’ has seemingly acquired several connotations based on its broad definition. One is that, to many environmentalists, sustainable development is desirable only if it means economic development without growth. This position is exemplified by economist Daly (1993) who writes:

In its physical dimensions the economy is an open subsystem of the earth ecosystem, which is finite, nongrowing, and materially closed. As the economic subsystem grows it incorporates an ever greater proportion of the total ecosystem into itself and must reach a limit at 100 percent, if not before. Therefore its growth is not sustainable….The term ‘sustainable development’ therefore makes sense for the economy, but only if it is understood as development without growth-i.e., qualitative improvement of a physical economic base that is maintained in a steady state by a throughput of matter-energy that is within the regenerative and assimilative capacities of the ecosystem.