Techno-Social Differentiation Applying to Adaptive Management

Posted: August 26th, 2021

ESEM Principle Essay

Name

Institutional Affiliation

ESEM Principle Essay

Techno-Social Differentiation Applying to Adaptive Management

Earth Systems Engineering and Management (ESEM) principles have merit and are applicable in many domains of discourse. ESEM arises fromthe industrial revolution with changes seen in agriculture, culture, human systems, and population levels (Hewett et al., 2020). The developments in these aspects demonstrate that the world is becoming a human artifact. However, the ethical infrastructure, institutional, science, and technology required to support these responses have not been developed. There are 16 principles of sustainable engineering, as proposed by Brad Allenby (Allenby, 2007). All the principles are equally important, and no order in the implementation is required, depending on the application, they may not all be of equal relevance.

One of the ESEM principles is Techno-Social Differentiation.  According to Allenby, ESEM projects combine both the technical-scientific and engineering issues and the efforts to change behavior, that is, social engineering (Allenby, 2007). In this regard, every effort is required in differentiating the discourses and political contexts where the degree of complexity involved is quite different. Also, the agendas of implicit social engineering and reflexivity make value implications and macro-ethical inherent in all Earth Systems Engineering and Management activities (Allenby, 2007).For example, climate change maybe used to provide a distinction between technical and social engineering. In this case, if climate change occurs because of excess carbon in the atmosphere leading to global warming, the technological fix maybe required to curb this problem, like deploying carbon capture methods (Hewett et al., 2020).Therefore, there will be a need for a common fix, which may include the reduction of carbon emissions through a change of lifestyle.

Besides, adaptive management refers tothe active adaptation and learning on how to deal with the uncertainty in managing complex regional ecosystems. Thus, it is a technique that may be employed in managing the wicked complexity (Allenby, 2007). As such, adaptive management tries to develop some methods and tools which enable active adaptation and learning, that is when dealing with uncertainty and the unpredictability in engineering. However, being a process, it emphasizes procedural or institutional controls besides providing a different approach in understanding and integrating with the system (Hewett et al., 2020). Thus, it focuses on management but not producing particular engineering requirements.

Adaptive management may be applied to Techno-Social Differentiation as one of the ESEM principles. For example, based on one ofthe adaptive management requirements,that is adaptive policies, flexibility, which are not rigid and locked in ones that can be applied climate change (Hewett et al., 2020).As proposed in the example technological fix and the social fix is required to control the climate change. Hence, in this case,the continuous dialogue is required and adjustment in the policies as they shift. The policies should be flexible and not rigid, where both stakeholders may agree (Hewett et al., 2020). However, there may be difficulties in the implementation process, as some may resist the proposed changes. Therefore, it requires both sides to embrace an active adaptation and learning in dealing with the management of climate change.

References

Allenby, B. (2007). Earth Systems Engineering and Management: A Manifestor. Environmental Science & Technology, 41 (23) 7960-7965.

Hewett, C.,J.,Wilkinson, M., E.,Jonczyk,J.,& Quinn, P., F. (2020). Catchment systems engineering:An holistic approach to catchment management. Wiley Interdisciplinary Reviews: Water, 7 (3), e1417.