Design and Implementation of an Adaptive, Integrated Approach to Health and Sustainability in a Smallholder-Dominated Agroecosystem - Integrated Assessment of Health and Sustainability of Agroecosystems - page 25

2 Design and

Implementation of an
Adaptive, Integrated
Approach to Health
and Sustainability in a
Smallholder-Dominated
Agroecosystem

2.1 IntRoductIon
How can knowledge and research be structured to help people make better decisions
with regard to managing their agroecosystems? Increasingly, recognition is growing
among researchers and development workers that people are part of complex systems
(Fitzhugh, 2000). Through various activities, they influence the structure and func-
tion of these agricultural and ecological systems to increase the benefits they derive
from them, serving—in this way—as the primary managers of the system. The sys-
tems, however, consist of extensive, complex, and dynamic interrelationships, such
that activity at one point of the system results in complex, sometimes counterintuitive
or unpredictable reactions at other spatial or temporal points (Holling, 1986, 1992).
Furthermore, the reactions may be lagged in time or difficult to perceive because of
the scale at which they occur. Because of these, the consequences of various man-
agement strategies are not always easily recognized, making purposeful manage-
ment of these complex systems difficult.
The concept of health has been found useful in structuring the processes of man-
aging an agroecosystem toward the desired or ideal state (Rapport, 1995; Waltner-
Toews and Nielsen, 1995; Haworth et al., 1998). Agroecosystem health is a metaphor
that helps to organize knowledge about agroecosystems, structure our evaluative
judgments concerning their current state, and reflect them against our hopes for the
future so that they (agroecosystems) might be monitored and managed adequately
(Haworth et al., 1998). Agroecosystem health management consists of five steps:
(1) describing the system of interest; (2) identifying the owners, actors, and custom-
ers; (3) setting or naming the goals and objectives of the system; (4) identifying
and implementing feasible and desirable changes; and (5) monitoring appropriate

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