Institutions, Ecosystems, and Sustainability

by Costanza; Robert

• ISBN13: 9781566703895
• ISBN10: 1566703891
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2000-12-21
• Publisher: CRC Press

Summary

In the latter part of the 20th century, humans are doing a particularly poor job of managing natural resources in a sustainable way over the long term. Institutions, Ecosystems, and Sustainability focuses on long-term, sustainable natural resource management practices at the local, national, and international levels. The authors suggest that a major cause of the "sustainability problem" - regulatory policies for large areas that often threaten the sustainability of both natural resources and previously effective governance problems - lie in "scale" problems. Large scale ecosystems are not simply larger versions of smaller systems, and micro-scale ecosystems are not merely microcosms of large scale systems. The driving forces and feedback mechanisms operate at different levels and exhibit distinct patterns of their own. Traditional management practices that do well at the local level cannot be expected to do equally well in handling activities organized at the continental or global scale. Even more importantly, when local systems are superseded by national or international management practices, local ecosystems frequently suffer. The challenge is to match ecosystems and governance systems in ways that maximize the compatibility of these systems. This book builds upon this fundamental principle. Particularly valuable is the use of simulation exercises to explore the consequences of social institutions and a discussion of the progress being made in developing a broad global data base to test hypothesis about the relationship between ecosystems and social institutions, and to investigate ways to repair the damage already caused by scale mismatches. Features

Table of Contents

Section I: Introduction
Ecosystems and human systems: a framework for exploring the linkages	3	(18)
Robert Costanza
Bobbi S. Low
Elinor Ostrom
James Wilson
Dynamic systems modeling	21	(12)
Robert Costanza
Matthias Ruth
Section II: Models
Human-ecosystems interactions: a basic dynamic integrated model	33	(26)
Bobbi S. Low
Elinor Ostrom
Robert Costanza
James Wilson
Scale misperceptions and the spatial dynamics of a social-ecological system	59	(18)
James Wilson
Robert Costanza
Bobbi S. Low
Elinor Ostrom
Sustainability, equity, and efficiency of irrigation infrastructures	77	(42)
Nirmal Sengupta
Swati Sheladia
Elinor Ostrom
An introduction to mathematical models in fisheries ecology	119	(32)
Carl Simon
Section III: Models and empirical studies in the real world
Simulation of the market for the Maine lobster	151	(18)
James Wilson
Modeling for scoping, research, and management	169	(10)
Robert Costanza
Matthias Ruth
Patuxent River watershed, Maryland	179	(54)
Robert Costanza
Alexey Voinov
Roel of Boumans
Thomas Maxwell
Ferdinando Villa
Lisa Wainger
Helena Voinov
Section IV: Conclusions
Future directions	233	(14)
Robert Costanza
Bobbi S. Low
Elinor Ostrom
James Wilson
References	247	(14)
Index	261