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.

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

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