Managing Complexity, Holistic Management
Holistic Management is about managing complexity. It is the most effective way to improve the human relationship with nature.
Naturalist and wildlife expert Allan Savory spent many years working to combat desertification in his native Zimbabwe. Livestock were seen as the main cause of desertification, but Savory realized that the problem was not the animals themselves, but the way humans managed them.
Savory developed a grazing plan that mimicked the movement of wild herds across the landscape. This had surprisingly good results. But grazing planning alone was not enough to create healthy soils. As a result of this work, Savory developed Holistic Management based on ecosystem processes. Holistic Management was born from this understanding.
Holistic Management offers decision-making and planning procedures that provide people with the insights and management tools needed to work with nature's complex systems. It equips us to understand the "whole" we are managing and to make decisions that produce abundant outcomes that regenerate life.
As Anatolian Grasslands, we define Holistic Management as “A whole-planning, implementation and re-planning theme in which a management that creates fertile and productive high efficiency in every sense is implemented by using all kinds of periodic tools and resources that can serve them with the main purposes that the managed whole wants to achieve”.
Although Holistic Management has its roots in the fight against desertification, its methodology can be successfully applied to decision-making processes in social, economic and environmental management in Turkey and around the world, from community communication to governance.