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Program in Community and Agroecology, Department of Environmental Studies, University of California, Santa Cruz, CA 95064
(gliess{at}ucsc.edu)
MARIOGIAMPIETRO. CRC Press, 6000 Broken Sound Parkway NW, Suite 300, Boca Raton, FL 33487. 2004. Hardcover, 472 pp., $109.95. ISBN 0-8493-1067-9.
Agroecosystem sustainability is as much a process as it is a goal. This book is an innovative attempt to integrate both aspects of sustainability, and at the same time, challenge the reader to participate in creating a paradigm shift. So much of the current literature in sustainability analysis is focused on the development of indicators of success, as if models can be developed, key indicators identified, and progress towards sustainability achieved. But Giampietro reminds us that agroecosystems are complex, dynamic, evolving, and unpredictable, and therefore require a paradigm shift away from reductionist thinking to multi-criteria holism.
This book is a recent contribution to the useful CRC Press series Advances in Agroecology and adds greatly to the diversity of the growing collection. Like many of the other books in the series, the book is not aimed at providing a framework for defining what "more" sustainable means for a particular social and ecological context. The author stresses this point because there will always be legitimate contrasting views of what constitutes an "improvement," and changes always have unknown implications. Also, what is optimal in a given time and place will constantly change. For these reasons, optimizing models are extremely limited.
Furthermore, reductionist approaches require reducing wholes into parts and then measuring parts to characterize the whole. As a result, much scientific analysis represents a shared perception about reality, not actual reality, and models are simplified representations of such a shared perception. However, sustainability analysis needs to be able to deal with chicken-egg paradoxes—when the identity of the parts determines the identity of the whole, and likewise, the identity of the whole determines the identity of the parts. The author puts his considerable expertise as a leader in agroecosystem analysis towards a similar paradox in sustainability analysis by trying to answer three questions.
The book is divided into three parts. Part one is an in-depth exploration of the epistemological roots of complex systems analysis, the many ways we perceive reality, and the challenge of operationalizing sustainability analysis in decision making systems. The language of sustainability analysis is incredibly complex, and it is a daunting, yet necessary, task for the reader to work through this section. But the second part of the book rewards this effort, by then giving the reader a look at Giampietro's way of dealing with complexity in unpredictable systems. Concepts such as multi-scale mosaic effects and impredicative loop analysis stretch the imagination, yet at the same time open the door to new opportunities for integrating social and ecological components while "surfing" the complexity of time. Finally, if the reader has survived the challenge of the first two sections, the final section of the book examines a range of case studies and applications of the author's analytical framework. This section is really a look at complex systems thinking in action and forms the heart of MSIA—multi-scale integrated analysis of agroecosystems. The reader is led through the multiple pathways of bridging disciplinary gaps across hierarchical levels, bridging changes in societal metabolism to the impact generated on the ecological context of agriculture, and the use of benchmarking and tailoring MSIA for work across multiple levels.
This book will be most useful for the advanced reader with experience in agroecology and food system issues, and who has a desire to explore new considerations in the emerging field of "sustainability science." It will be less useful for people not willing to challenge their own academic dogmas and frames, or able to question current paradigms in dealing with complexity and uncertainty. This is especially true for those of us who work at the interface between ecological and economic approaches to agroecosystem study. This book is much less for the reader looking for a simple model for sustainability. As Giampietro puts it, "in farming system analysis it is better to use a mix of high-tech tool kits, gut intuition, political skill and common sense (to be a 007 researcher), than to base the research activity on formalisms, statistical tests and complicated mathematical models (to be a p = .01 researcher)."
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