Panarchy: Insights Into Our Civilization

As valuable as Dr. Buzz Holling’s notion of panarchy theory is in helping us understand the cyclical changes in forests — the way they move through continuous phases of regeneration, growth, increasing connectivity, and then rigidity, crisis, collapse and regeneration again — his thinking is much more valuable in helping us identify and correct the same trends occurring in our modern civilization. It, too, is a natural system that has been moving through a growth phase for the last several centuries and is now becoming increasingly interconnected and rigid, conditions that are prelude to a crisis.

Indeed, the course of our globalized world has been following all the adaptive characteristics of Holling’s notion of panarchy theory. If he is correct, we are approaching the end of a growth phase, a time when the rising “dependence” within the system, together with increasing specialization and efficiency, create a fatal loss of resilience. As we continue to exploit every possible resource and niche on the planet, our entire socio-economic system loses its adaptive options as it becomes more dependent on the smooth functioning of a rising proportion of its interlinked components. This “peaking”, Holling contends, usually leads to a collapse.

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