Ecological systems engineering: toward integrated management of natural and human complexity in the ecosphere

Abstract Sustainability of the biosphere requires conscious and responsible management of available resources on a global scale. Up to now it has not been possible to deal with the full complexity of interaction between human society and nature. The complexity of tasks required to assure the base of human existence calls for means to overcome disciplinary fragmentation of knowledge. This paper discusses how modelling activities can contribute to interdisciplinary planning on a regional scale as parts of a global interaction network. Conceptual modelling workshops are advocated as the basis for a new type of institution elaborating management scenarios and political decision alternatives on the level of geographic landscape units. Interdisciplinary modelling, in its conceptualization phases, is seen as the basis for organizing such institutions to provide an interface between science and government, and achieve a more integrative science of holism to meet the needs of the next decades.