Global Resource Scarcity

"A common perception of global resource scarcity holds that it is inevitably a catalyst for conflict among nations; yet, paradoxically, incidents of such scarcity underlie some of the most important examples of international cooperation. This volume examines the wider potential for the experience of scarcity to promote cooperation in international relations and diplomacy beyond the traditional bounds of the interests of competitive nation states. The interdisciplinary background of the book’s contributors shifts the focus of the analysis beyond narrow theoretical treatments of international relations and resource diplomacy to broader examinations of the practicalities of cooperation in the context of competition and scarcity. Combining the insights of a range of social scientists with those of experts in the natural and bio-sciences—many of whom work as ‘resource practitioners’ outside the context of universities—the book works through the tensions between ‘thinking/theory’ and ‘doing/practice’, which so often plague the process of social change. These encounters with scarcity draw attention away from the myopic focus on market forces and allocation, and encourage us to recognise more fully the social nature of the tensions and opportunities that are associated with our shared dependence on resources that are not readily accessible to all. The book brings together experts on theorising scarcity and those on the scarcity of specific resources. It begins with a theoretical reframing of both the contested concept of scarcity and the underlying dynamics of resource diplomacy. The authors then outline the current tensions around resource scarcity or degradation and examine existing progress towards cooperative international management of resources. These include food and water scarcity, mineral exploration and exploitation of the oceans. Overall, the contributors propose a more hopeful and positive engagement among the world’s nations as they pursue the economic and social benefits derived from natural resources, while maintaining the ecological processes on which they depend.

An efficient global resource constrained technique for exploiting instruction level parallelism

A new Global Resource-constrained Percolation (GRiP) scheduling technique is presented for exploiting instruction level parallelism. Other techniques that have been proposed either have been prohibitively expensive in terms of computation or have limited parallelism. The GRiP technique has been implemented and simulation results are presented

Global resource information database

The United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP)is responsible for initiating and stimulating environmental action and awareness at all levels of society worldwide and for coordinating the environmental work of all United Nations organizations and agencies. Within this framework, UNEP has established the Global Resource Information Database (GRID) to provide the world community with access to timely, usable environmental data and access to the geographic information system, satellite image processing, and telecommunication technology necessary for each data recipient to make the best use of these data and for global science applications, wise resource management, and sustainable development planning. Through GRID, UNEP will address environmental issues at global, regional, and national levels to bridge the gap between scientific understanding of earth processes and sound management of the environment. The long-term objectives of the GRID activity are to ensure that (1) all pertinent global and regional environmental data are available through GRID network to a range of users from students to scientists to politicians; (2) all United Nations specialized agencies and most major intergovernmental organizations will have access to modern technology and the opportunity to provide the necessary information-management support within their own organizations for the description, understanding, and solution of environment-related problems; (3) all countries will have access to GRID data and technology, with most having functioning GRID-compatible monitoring and assessment centers for national environmental assessment and management support. The GRID is designed to become a network of cooperating centers in various regions of the world. At present there are GRID centers in Geneva, Switzerland; Warsaw, Poland; Arendal, Norway; Nairobi, Kenya; Bangkok, Thailand; Kathmandu, Nepal: Tsukuba, Japan; and Siox Falls, United states. Soon there will be GRID centers in Brazil, Russia, Germany, the Caribbean, and the South Pacific. Each of these centers has specific functions within the network. Certain centers deal with sectorial or discipline-specific information; other centers have responsibility for specific geographic areas; still others deal with new technology and general data services

Global Resource Scarcity

A common perception of global resource scarcity holds that it is inevitably a catalyst for conflict among nations; yet, paradoxically, incidents of such scarcity underlie some of the most important examples of international cooperation. This volume examines the wider potential for the experience of scarcity to promote cooperation in international relations and diplomacy beyond the traditional bounds of the interests of competitive nation states. The interdisciplinary background of the book’s contributors shifts the focus of the analysis beyond narrow theoretical treatments of international relations and resource diplomacy to broader examinations of the practicalities of cooperation in the context of competition and scarcity. Combining the insights of a range of social scientists with those of experts in the natural and bio-sciences—many of whom work as ‘resource practitioners’ outside the context of universities—the book works through the tensions between ‘thinking/theory’ and ‘doing/practice’, which so often plague the process of social change. These encounters with scarcity draw attention away from the myopic focus on market forces and allocation, and encourage us to recognise more fully the social nature of the tensions and opportunities that are associated with our shared dependence on resources that are not readily accessible to all. The book brings together experts on theorising scarcity and those on the scarcity of specific resources. It begins with a theoretical reframing of both the contested concept of scarcity and the underlying dynamics of resource diplomacy. The authors then outline the current tensions around resource scarcity or degradation and examine existing progress towards cooperative international management of resources. These include food and water scarcity, mineral exploration and exploitation of the oceans. Overall, the contributors propose a more hopeful and positive engagement among the world’s nations as they pursue the economic and social benefits derived from natural resources, while maintaining the ecological processes on which they depend

Evolutionary freezing in a competitive population

We show that evolution in a population of adaptive agents, repeatedly competing for a limited resource, can come to an abrupt halt. This transition from evolutionary to non-evolutionary behavior arises as the global resource level is changed, and is reminiscent of a phase transition to a frozen state. Its origin lies in the inductive decision-making of the agents, the limited global information that they possess and the dynamical feedback inherent in the system.Comment: LaTeX file + 4 separate (pdf) figures. Revised version has minor change in Fig. 3 axis labe

Knowledge-based design of generate-and-patch problem solvers that solve global resource assignment problems

We present MENDER, a knowledge based system that implements software design techniques that are specialized to automatically compile generate-and-patch problem solvers that satisfy global resource assignments problems. We provide empirical evidence of the superior performance of generate-and-patch over generate-and-test: even with constrained generation, for a global constraint in the domain of '2D-floorplanning'. For a second constraint in '2D-floorplanning' we show that even when it is possible to incorporate the constraint into a constrained generator, a generate-and-patch problem solver may satisfy the constraint more rapidly. We also briefly summarize how an extended version of our system applies to a constraint in the domain of 'multiprocessor scheduling'

Erasing Boundaries: Global Resource Sharing in the 21st Century

Academic libraries have long been accustomed to participating in cooperative ventures with neighboring institutions as well as with those in other regions of their country. In large part, such activities have grown out of a desire to reduce or control costs, as well as to provide users with a broader base of materials for research, study, and teaching. Because not even a well-developed national library is able to fulfill all its users\u27 needs all the time, today\u27s university libraries must depend upon one another to fulfill those needs. For many decades, the resource sharing tradition has been particularly strong among academic libraries in the United States, Canada, Great Britain, and Western Europe. Rising costs, increased user demand, and enhancements in technology, has all contributed to a steadily growing interest in sharing collections, services, and expertise. Indeed, as the end of the century approaches, resource sharing programs continue to grow in number and scope, now often extending beyond one\u27s own national borders to the world at large. The focus of this paper is to explore some of the important issues related to international resource sharing and to underscore why it is so vital to the academic library community

Memory and self-induced shocks in an evolutionary population competing for limited resources

We present a detailed discussion of the role played by memory, and the nature of self-induced shocks, in an evolutionary population competing for limited resources. Our study builds on a previously introduced multi-agent system [Phys. Rev. Lett 82, 3360 (1999)] which has attracted significant attention in the literature. This system exhibits self-segregation of the population based on the `gene' value p (where 0<=p<=1), transitions to `frozen' populations as a function of the global resource level, and self-induced large changes which spontaneously arise as the dynamical system evolves. We find that the large, macroscopic self-induced shocks which arise, are controlled by microscopic changes within extreme subgroups of the population (i.e. subgroups with `gene' values p~0 and p~1).Comment: 27 pages, 31 figure