ABSTRACT
The behavioral patterns of humans and in particular their reasoning, visioning and economic choices rely to a large extent on the existence of social constructions for mediating interactions between actors and their social, natural and physical environment. Processes of social construction and deconstruction are crucially conditioned and influenced by attributes of the physical and natural environment. Those physical stocks and natural systems show a wide range of properties and are extremely diverse and complex, ever changing and understood by humans only to a limited extent. This equally applies to the tools, technologies and infrastructures developed by humans and set up to use, manage, cope with and also protect those systems. Such diversity and complexity in nature together with associated technical systems which have been developed to use them require corresponding diversity and complexity in institutions and governance modes and structures.
