“生态系统健康”内涵探讨

Ecosystem Health:Concept Analysis

"生态健康"、"土地健康"、"生态系统健康"、"生态系统完整性"等概念正在引起广泛的关注。人们期望它们能为环境管理提供明确的目标,为生态系统的状态评估提供客观的尺度,为决策者、大众以及专业人士之间的交流提供方便的"平台"。但是,对于如何理解"生态健康"或者"生态系统健康"这些概念,研究者们尚存在根本性的分歧,直到目前生态健康、生态系统健康还没有一个确切公允的定义。本文着重对"生态系统健康"概念进行了探讨。文中首先介绍了围绕生态系统健康概念的内涵而展开的相关争论,然后分析了"健康"概念之所以难于定义的原因。通过对"概念"的产生机制进行分析,认为"健康"是作为"疾病"的对立物而被建构出来的一个概念,因此,理解"生态系统健康"的切入角度不应该是"健康",而应该是"疾病"。这个角度就是所谓"广义进化论"的角度,它是医学乃至整个自然科学之所以取得扎实进展的内在动力。

The notion of ECOSYSTEM HEALTH is attracting more and more Chinese ecologists' attention. It is highly expected to provide a well-defined aim for environmental management, to provide an objective benchmark for ecosystem assessment, and to provide a 'platform' for the communication between decision makers, researchers and public. However, 'ecosystem health' has yet not gotten a precise definition in consensus, partly because of the complications of an ecosystem and of the all-embracing nature of 'ecosystem health.' Here, four highly controversial issues are introduced firstly. They are: 1)Does an ecosystem have intrinsic value? 2)Is there exist an objective benchmark for the health degree of ecosystems? 3)The multiplicity of interests among groups of human being, and 4) ambiguity as a platform for public communication. Secondly, why ecosystem health is so ambiguous is explained, and social construction theory is involved to analyze the origin of the abstract concept 'health'. Why 'ecosystem health' is hard to define arose from the difficulty of defining the concept 'health', which is coined as a counterpoint to the concrete concept 'disease.' A disease is concrete and easy to define because any specific 'disease' was sensible for a sufferer, or could be measured with medical instruments in principle, while a 'healthy' statue is achieved operationally only after all 'diseases'—known or unknown—are excluded. Thirdly, why the medicine as a science achieved tangible and huge progress in history is analyzed. It is the process conquering the diseases one by one that promotes the medicine science moving ahead, and during the process a theoretical scheme is constructed to make a more general understanding about more diseases. Surely during the process human being becoming more 'healthy' than ever, but it is as the result rather than as the reason of the progress that made. The case was described by Karl Popper as: we are making progress because we know more and more about what's wrong, rather than what's right. This is the mechanism that similar with that of the evolution of life, and is named after 'generalized evolution theory'. We suggest that the generalized evolution theory should be used as the working theory in environment management and ecosystem assessment process. In short, ecosystem health could be understood in respect of 'disease', instead of 'health.'