Papers, drafts, ideas on sustain- ability and related issues
- Dimensions of Sustainability
No agreed definition of sustainability has emerged. As a
result, people define sustainability in the ways that suit
their particular applications, often times with no explicit
evidence and recognition of the exact meaning being implied.
We analyze several definitions, and find that while there is
no common meaning, the definitions can be organized according
to a common set of dimensions. Space and time are common in
systems analysis and characterize all the definitions
considered. Added to these are structural and perceptual
dimensions. Our analysis indicates that sustainability should
be treated within the framework of a total system, taking into
account the ecological, social and economic as components of
the system. It is impossible to sustain one part of the total
system without the others being involved. It is therefore
more reasonable to speak about systems sustainability instead
of sustainability of resources or sustainable development
(economic bias with ecological concerns), or sustainability of
ecosystems (ecological bias with economic concerns) . We try
to merge ecology and economy into one system coming up with
the conditions for sustainability instead of defining the term
in an exact way.
- 2 Avenues of Sustainability
A simple model of an ecological economic system is
suggested to investigate some of the properties of system sustainability.
The variables are population, economic development, investment capital
and environment protection. The investment capital is generated by taxes
collected from the population and from the economic development. It may
be then spent to further development, to improve the social infrastructure
and thus increase the population growth, and to clean up the environment.
Decaying environment slows down or reverses population growth. The
system displays two distinct modes of development. Under high
environmental priorities of the population the system equilibrates at a
trajectory with low population numbers and low economic development.
With higher environmental tolerance of population the system follows a
trajectory of economic and population growth, when the capital produced
is sufficient both for economic development and environmental clean up.
However in this case the ever-growing rates within the system eventually
bring it to chaotic behavior with sharp fluctuations of investment
strategies. The two modes of system development are associated with
the two possible avenues of sustainability, one of which presents the
sustainable development of small isolated communities in remote locations,
based on native natural economics. The other avenue stands for the
intensive growth in economically developed nations, that manage to keep
the environmental conditions at reasonably high though artificially
maintained standards, due to intensive investments in clean up practices.
- Resource Management: Can It Sustain Pacific
Northwest Fishery and Forest Systems? (With Court Smith).
The relative effectiveness of resource management regimes is
widely discussed. Sustainability and ecosystem health are two dimensions upon
which the effect of management is judged. Evaluating resource management
requires long time spans. We look at the impact of management on fish and
forest resources by taking a life cycle approach to the exploitation of natural
capital. Russian ethnographer Gumilev describes the process of how human
systems go through a set of phases that parallel the birth, growth, maturity,
and death stages of the life cycle. The process of adaptive renewal proposed
by Holling, too, has life cycle characteristics. The primary variables used to
represent the phases of the renewal cycle are the amount of capital that is
accumulated and the connectedness in the system. We apply the renewal cycle to
a fishery and forestry example in the US Pacific Northwest to see how
management regimes alter the capital stock of these systems. In these two
examples 90% of the natural capital is lost or projected to be lost over a
century and a half of exploitation. The management regime in both cases
evolves toward greater inflexibility. Based on these two examples, resource
management does not seem to lead to sustainability or ecosystem health.
- Paradoxes of Sustainability
(Abstract in Russian - koi8)
The renewal cycle illuminates an internal contradiction
in the sustainability concept. Sustainability of a system borrows from
sustainability of a supersystem and rests on lack of sustainability in
subsystems. The only way to resolve this contradiction is to agree that
the biosphere as a whole is the only system which sustainability we are
to seek.
Gore's testimony to the Senate Committee on Environment, 21 March 2007.
It was quite encouraging to hear some of our most dear ideas (such as green tax reform, or small scale power production) displayed at the Hill. See for yourself how it went:
- Introductions 7.4Mb - some preliminary niceties, and some usual comments by Imhofe
- Talk 12.8Mb - a 30 minute presentation by Gore
- Discussion 44Mb - a 2 hour discussion that followed.
 HOME
|