Successful implementation of sustainability ideas in ecosystem management
requires a basic understanding of the often non-linear and non-intuitive
relationships among different dimensions of sustainability, particularly the
system-wide implications of human actions. This basic understanding further
includes a sense of the time scale of possible future events and the limits of
what is and is not likely to be possible. With this understanding, systematic
approaches based on control theory can then be used to develop policy
guidelines for the system. Therefore, controllability of the system is very
important to determining long term sustainability of the system. A recent
article in the journal Nature (1) presents a new analytical approach to study
the controllability of complex systems. We apply this approach to three dynamic
systems developed to study the sustainability of our planet. These three
systems consist of an ecosystem based on wild and domesticated compartments,
the ecosystem model with an industrial system and a simple economic model, and
an integrated model involving the ecosystem, industrial systems, and energy
producers. We argue that controllability of this system is linked with the long
term sustainability, and we present our arguments in the light of previous
studies of these systems.
1. Liu, Y. Y., Slotine, J. J., Barabási, A. Controllability of complex
networks. Nature. 2011, 473, 167.