Some Further Economics of Easter Island: Adding Subsistence and Resource Conservation

We extend Brander-Taylor's model of development on Easter Island by adding a resource subsistence requirement to people's preferences, and a conservation incentive in the form of a revenue-neutral, ad valorem tax on resource consumption. Adding subsistence improves plausibility; makes overshoot and collapse of population more extreme, and the steady state less stable; and allows for the possibility that statue building and erection will suddenly stop, in line with the archaeological evidence. We find a tax rate path which almost completely prevents overshoot, and conjecture that the overall strength of this path must rise when the subsistence level rises.

Interactive Diary of Hollywood Lyricist Ray Evans

Essay about digitized version of Ray Evans\u27 diary for 1939-194

Wilderness Preserves: Still Relevant and Resilient After All These Years

This chapter explores the continuing relevance of preserving wilderness by preventing active human intervention. It concludes that the symbolic and ecological benefits of wilderness are as significant today as they were fifty years ago. Indeed, the importance of preserving wilderness areas will only increase as the climate changes. Land managers face complex challenges, however, when they are managing wilderness resources that are already degraded due to climate change or other human impacts and that may require intervention to prevent further degradation. Deciding whether and how to intervene with active management tools while maintaining the overarching “wild” values of wilderness is a difficult but perhaps not impossible task. It’s a fair bet, though, that historic characteristics and variability can no longer be the primary reference points for decisionmaking, and that strategic approaches to monitoring and managing existing, expanded, and new preserves will be necessary. (Craig 2010) We propose three threshold inquiries to be answered in the affirmative before a wilderness restoration project is undertaken. First, is there sufficient understanding about reference conditions and processes, as well as the long term effects of restoration actions? Second, is restoration even possible in a particular wilderness area, given the pervasiveness of ecological change? Finally, can humans extricate themselves within some discrete period of time and let the ecological processes indicative of pre-degraded characteristics resume functioning? If the answer to all of these questions is yes, then it may be acceptable to prioritize the need of the natural system for active restoration-oriented interventions over society’s need to keep wilderness areas wild and untrammeled

Some Further Economics of Easter Island: Adding Subsistence and Resource Conservation

We extend Brander-Taylor's model of development on Easter Island by adding a resource subsistence requirement to people's preferences, and a conservation incentive in the form of a revenue-neutral, ad valorem tax on resource consumption. Adding subsistence improves plausibility; makes overshoot and collapse of population more extreme, and the steady state less stable; and allows for the possibility that statue building and erection will suddenly stop, in line with the archaeological evidence. We find a tax rate path which almost completely prevents overshoot, and conjecture that the overall strength of this path must rise when the subsistence level rises

Resilience: A Literature Review

Resilience has, in the past four decades, been a term increasingly employed throughout a number of sciences: psychology and ecology, most prominently. Increasingly one finds it in political science, business administration, sociology, history, disaster planning, urban planning, and international development. The shared use of the term does not, however, imply unified concepts of resilience nor the theories in which it is embedded. Different uses generate different methods, sometimes different methodologies. Evidential or other empirical support can differ between domains of application, even when concepts are broadly shared. The review centres on three resilience frameworks, of increasing complexity: Engineering Resilience (or ‘Common Sense’ resilience); Systems Resilience, called Robustness in economics; and Resilience in Complex Adaptive Systems. Although each framework has historical roots in particular disciplines, the frameworks themselves can be applied to any domain: Engineering Resilience is utilised in some child development studies; Systems Resilience is often used in governance and management; and the Complex Adaptive Systems approach has been applied to economics, innovation in technology, history, and urban planning. Thus different frameworks along the spectrum offer a choice of perspective; the acceptability of trade-offs between them, and not subject matter, will ultimately determine which perspective is chosen.The Rockerfeller Foundatio

Should I Stay or Should I Go? The Emergence of Partitioned Land Use Among Human Foragers

Taking inspiration from the archaeology of the Texas Coastal Plain (TCP), we develop an ecological theory of population distribution among mobile hunter-gatherers. This theory proposes that, due to the heterogeneity of resources in space and time, foragers create networks of habitats that they access through residential cycling and shared knowledge. The degree of cycling that individuals exhibit in creating networks of habitats, encoded through social relationships, depends on the relative scarcity of resources and fluctuations in those resources. Using a dynamic model of hunter-gatherer population distribution, we illustrate that increases in population density, coupled with shocks to a biophysical or social system, creates a selective environment that favors habitat partitioning and investments in social mechanisms that control the residential cycling of foragers on a landscape. Our work adds a layer of realism to Ideal Distribution Models by adding a time allocation decision process in a variable environment and illustrates a general variance reduction, safe-operating space tradeoff among mobile human foragers that drives social change

A multiscale analysis of social-ecological system robustness and vulnerability in Cornwall, UK

Understanding social-ecological system (SES) feedbacks and interactions is crucial to improving societal resilience to growing environmental challenges. Social-ecological systems are usually researched at one of two spatial scales: local placed-based empirical studies or system-scale modelling, with limited efforts to date exploring the merits of combining these two analytical approaches and scales. Here, we take a multiscale interdisciplinary approach to elucidate the social dynamics underpinning cross-sectoral feedbacks and unintended consequences of decision-making that can affect social-ecological system vulnerability unexpectedly. We combined empirical place-based research with the Robustness Framework, a dynamic system level analysis platform, to analyse the characteristics and robustness of a coastal SES in Cornwall, UK. Embedding place-based empirical analysis into a broader institutional framework revealed SES feedbacks and “maladaptations”. We find that decentralisation efforts coupled with government austerity measures amplify second-order (reputational) risks. This prompted temporal policy trade-offs, which increased individual and community vulnerability and reduced social-ecological system robustness, impeding local adaptation to climate change. We identify opportunities to ameliorate these maladaptations by (1) implementing coordination rules that can guide policymakers in instances of conflicting coastal management pressures, and (2) recognising how second-order risks influence decision-making. This work demonstrates the strengths of combining local and regional analyses to assess the robustness of social-ecological systems exposed to environmental changes, such as climate change and sea level rise. Our results show how analysis of the multiscale effects of climate policies, decision-making processes and second-order risks can usefully support local climate change adaptation planning