The sustainability transition - Environmental and Human Security in the Arctic - page 89

of complex wiring diagrams that are far less tractable. Familiar statistical pro-
cedures (e.g. multiple regression) are hard to apply successfully to phenomena
of this sort. Measures of association that seek to attribute a proportion of the
variance in a universe of cases to individual variables often produce unsatis-
factory results in situations of this sort. What we find instead are distinct
combinations of circumstances or, as some would say, syndromes, any one of
which can lead to the outcomes of interest, such as patterns of land use change
or collapses of harvested stocks of renewable resources (Young 2002b; Lambin
et al . 2003).
What are the options for sharpening our understanding of these com-
plex systems? Thoughtful observers have proposed a variety of methods for
analysing such situations, including causal narratives, genetic explanations,
counterfactuals, qualitative comparative analysis, agent-based modelling and
computer simulations. What is unclear are the relative merits of these meth-
ods with particular reference to the subject matter under consideration here.
Preliminary research suggests that there are no silver bullets in this domain;
we are unlikely to find one or even two or three methods that can produce the
desired results in analysing socio-ecological systems. What is more likely is a
messier process in which a range of methods are employed on the part of those
concerned with the sustainability transition. Under the circumstances, we can
measure our confidence in the conclusions flowing from these procedures in
terms of the extent to which analyses using different procedures converge on
the same conclusions.
Designing governance systems
Institutions or governance systems created to address specific problems aris-
ing from the dynamics of socio-ecological systems occupy a critical role in
the analytic framework outlined in the preceding section. Not only do they
regulate human actions (e.g. the harvesting of living resources, the treatment
of wastes or residuals) likely to prove disruptive to such systems, but they
also influence both the timing and the nature of human responses to grow-
ing evidence of dysfunctions in socio-ecological systems (e.g. degradation of
large ecosystems, changes in the Earth's climate system). A structure of rights
that forces industrial facilities to engage in full-cost accounting, for instance,
may prevent problems like the build-up of greenhouse gases in the Earth's
atmosphere from occurring. Similarly, arrangements that monitor biophysi-
cal processes closely and include flexible response mechanisms may be able
to detect emerging problems early and take effective steps to deal with them
before they burgeon into issues like the contemporary problems of climate
change and the loss of biological diversity.
The fact that governance systems are social artefacts suggests that there is
more scope for (re)structuring them than there is for altering biophysical pro-
cesses. Yet designing, adopting and implementing institutional arrangements