Making Tradeoffs for Agroecosystem Health

ABSTRACT

Existing definitions of agroecosystem health do not address one of the most important issues, namely, how tradeoffs should be made among different components of an agroecosystem. To resolve this issue, it is important to be clear on which perspective is being taken in any health assessment. An internal perspective would focus on the health of the biophysical components of the agroecosystem, whereas an external perspective would focus on human communities. This article proposes a three-stage, transdisciplinary approach to agroecosystem health, called a Framework for Agroecosystem Health Tradeoffs, which uses internal and external perspectives at different stages. In the first stage, the type of ecosystem and the time and spatial scale of concern are identified. Once this is established, required levels of biophysical indicators are set and monitored to ensure that basic internal needs for agroecosystem survival are met. In determining levels of biophysical indicators, “positivistic” scientific analysis would be required as well as normative judgments by society on acceptable levels of risk. The third stage involves determining the potential for making tradeoffs in the agroecosystem that would be beneficial to society without affecting the required levels of biophysical indicators specified in the second stage. Economic analysis and community consultation would be used to determine which agroecosystem components or services are valued most by society so that decisions on tradeoffs could be made. Although there remain practical problems in implementing this approach, the notion of setting minimum constraints which human activity cannot violate and making the best tradeoffs possible after these constraints are met provides a useful framework to begin putting agroecosystem health into practice.