Embarking Complexity in Environmental Management

The concept of ecosystem is often presented as a paragon of complexity. Accordingly, ecology plays a key role in the intellectual landscape of complexity. However, complexity-associated concepts or, more broadly, ideas, are by and large absent from environmental policies and environmental management practice. This text is devoted to understanding this predicament, and proposing solutions to overcome it. I start by showing that, in environmental management practice, one unmistakably and systematically witnesses “traces of complexity”, defined as evidence that complex processes are at play, without one being rigorously in a position to prove the existence of this complexity, for lack of deployment of the needed conceptual and technical apparatus. I then argue that this lack of conceptual tools and techniques betrays a generalized “flight from complexity”, i. e., a systematic, active ignorance and eschewing of the issue of complexity. This flight from complexity materializes through various processes that I inventory. Based on this two-fold diagnosis, I champion what I call a “procedural” approach, which aims to spark off consciousness of the significance of general issues associated with complexity, including uncertainty, indeterminacy and unpredictability, by shaking up people’s reliance on the seemingly firm ground provided by accepted knowledge, existing models and representations, allegedly reliable data and supposedly solid previsions.