But what are the rules for stopping the search for bad effects? Search hard enough 

 and practically anything has deleterious consequences. What is the balance between 

 prediction, regulation and adaptation? Swing one way and it is too dangerous, swing 

 the other and it smothers innovation. 



The Embrace of Ignorance 



In many situations we have discovered what seems to be an explicit wish to be 

 ignorant: 



• "If I remain ignorant I can't be held culpable." That seems to motivate 

 expensive surveys and the fear of evaluation. 



• "If everyone, including me, remains ignorant I have the chance of seeming to be 

 decisive. "That seems to be the regulator's dilemma. It has led to the forcing of 

 tertiary water treatment requirements, ostensibly to protect an endangered fish 

 species when the real threat probably relates to spawning and homing 

 questions. But no one wants to find out because it is easier to force the policy. 



• "If I keep others ignorant, then life is easier and I will win." That is a common 

 syndrome for reasons of negotiation, fear of losing control, and protection of 

 power. Every one of our projects has encountered that problem to some degree. 



• "If I remain ignorant of others' goals, approaches and insights, I can retain my 

 purity in defense of those values that I cherish." Parochialism and adherence to 

 cherished beliefs are major causes of miscalculation. 



Public Involvement 



The adaptive approach in principle would seem to be tailored for the public. At the 

 minimum it makes assumptions visible, forces unanticipated questions, leads to 

 design of alternatives, and defines the reasons for leaving things out. And it certainly 

 worked having direct involvement of the people of Obergurgl. But the problem is 

 size. Workshops (as distinct from information sessions) can contain only about 25 

 participants. Perhaps the route is to involve those publics who wish to contribute 

 (from each according to his ability, to each according to his work?). That could lead 

 to management experiments, monitoring and response in which public groups were 

 an integral part of the design and operation. Hardly an easy thing to do in the 

 unforgiving society where, with some reason, some publics have lost their trust. But if 

 it is not attempted as a creative and balanced effort of integration, environmental and 

 resource management will be faced with ever-increasing surprises and failures. 



ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS 



This work would have been barren and academic but for those wise men from key 

 agencies who I: new what implementation means and who became partners in specific 

 endeavors— particularly Gordon Baskerville, Al Wood, and Allan Hirsch. Carl 

 Walters was as much the innovator and developer of the whole process as I, and we 

 are indebted to a remarkable set of colleagues and coauthors from our Institute, 

 IIASA, and other collaborating institutions. 



REFERENCES 



1. Holling, C. S., ed. 1978. Adaptive Environmental Assessment and Manage- 

 ment. John Wiley and Sons. Chichester, England. 377 pp. 



2. Anon. 1979. Expect the unexpected. Executive Report I. International 

 Institute for Applied Systems Analysis. A-2361. Laxenburg, Austria. 



3. Holling, C. S. 1968. A resource science program. Internal Document. Univ. of 

 British Columbia. Vancouver, B.C., Canada. 



4. Holling, C. S., and A. D. Chambers. 1973. Resource science: the nurture of an 

 infant. Bioscience. 23(1): 13-20. 



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