Blog: Two-way thinking in natural resource management
In California, we know the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta is in a prolonged state of decline and the status quo is not working – at best. Time is increasingly limited before more species go extinct. More research along the lines of the last 40 years is unlikely to yield novel breakthrough information and abate the trajectory. More research is always needed, but more decisions are also needed – if they are the right decisions. However, it is challenging, especially given the ever-changing mix of system thinking needed for each problem and through time. This disorientation contributes to our bad intuition about probability, poor perception of time, and faulty decisions overall (Nowotny 2016).