Abstract
The persuasive power of apparently simple ecological concepts – such as ecosystem stability, balance of nature, sustainability – is expected to result in successful environmental planning. However, these concepts disregard ecological reality whose main feature is huge complexity. Ecological theory tries to explain complexity by means of systems theory, hierarchical organization levels, regulation and control strategies, and evolutionary aspects, both for living and non-living components of the environment. Human manipulation of the environment, bringing on cultural evolution, by far preceded knowledge and understanding of basic ecosystem functions, thus promoting the erroneous idea of prediction and planning based on holistic concepts. Thus actual environmental planning and much of environmental legislation is doomed to failure and frustration, and has to be replaced by an environmental strategy taking into account selforganization ot systems, hierarchical regulation processes, and chaos theory.
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