Engineering Within Ecological Constraints (1996) / Chapter Skim
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Designing Sustainable Ecological Economic Systems
Designing Sustainable Ecological Economic Systems
Pages 79-96
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From page 79... ...
Usually there is so much uncertainty in our ability to estimate natural rates of renewal and our ability to observe and regulate harvest rates that a simple prediction such as this is, as Ludwig et al.
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From page 80... ...
The second problem is that when one says a system has achieved sustainability, one does not mean an infinite life span, but rather a life span consistent with its time and space scale. Figure 1 indicates this relationship by plotting a hypothetical curve of system life expectancy on the y axis as a function of time and space on the x axis.
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From page 81... ...
They provide raw materials, food, water, recreation opportunities, and microclimate control for the entire human population. In the long run a healthy economy can exist in symbiosis only with a healthy ecology.
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From page 82... ...
that were adapted to the lower nutrient conditions are outcompeted by faster-growing species adapted to the higher nutrient conditions. But the shift in nutrient regime is so sudden that only the primary producers are changed and the result is a disorganized collection of species with much internal disruption (i.e., plankton blooms, fish kills)
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From page 83... ...
The places where toxic chemicals can most readily find a productive use are probably in other industrial processes, not in natural ecosystems. The solution in this case is to encourage the evolution of industrial processes that can use toxic wastes as productive inputs, or, if these cannot be found, to eliminate their production and replace them with alternatives that do have positive uses.
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From page 84... ...
We refer to the total of all variations of the analysis of ecological or economic networks as network analysis. Network analysis holds the promise of allowing an integrated quantitative treatment of combined ecological economic systems.
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From page 85... ...
Starting with a more realistic commodity by process description of ecosystem networks, which allows for joint products, one can calculate ecological interdependence factors (EIFs) to convert the multiple commodity description ultimately into a pair of matrices that can serve as the input for standard (single-commodity)
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From page 86... ...
, but the one I like best is John Platt's notion of "social traps" (Brockner and Rubin, 1985; Costanza, 1987; Cross and Guyer, 1980; Platt, 1973; Teger, 1980~. In all such cases the decision maker may be said to be trapped by the local conditions into making what turns out to be a bad decision viewed from a longer or wider perspective.
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From page 87... ...
The Importance of Uncertainty and How to Deal with It One key element that has limited our perception of the long run and frustrated environmental policy is the enormous degree of uncertainty about long-run human impacts on the biosphere. Ignorance about the consequences is a particularly effective cause of social traps (Cross and Guyer, 1980~.
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From page 88... ...
History has shown that resource constraints can be circumvented by new ideas. Technological optimists claim that Malthus's dire predictions about population pressures have not come to pass and that the "energy crisis" of the late 1970s is behind us.
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From page 89... ...
that could happen if we pursue that policy, and pick the policy with the best worst case. In the case stated above, we should pursue the pessimist policy because the worst possible result under that policy ("Tolerable")
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From page 90... ...
On the other hand, the problems with religion and social customs as means to avoid social traps are that the moral code must be relatively static to allow beliefs learned early in life to remain in force later, and it requires a relatively homogeneous community of like-minded individuals to be truly effective. This system works well in culturally homoge
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From page 91... ...
Many trap theorists believe that the most effective method for avoiding and escaping from social traps is to turn the trap into a trade-off. This method does not run counter to our normal tendency to follow the road signs; it merely corrects the signs' inaccuracies by adding compensatory positive or negative reinforcements.
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From page 92... ...
Two suggestions for handling these problems are the system of ecological tariffs and the natural capital depletion tax mentioned briefly below. CONCLUSIONS Balancing the human species in the ecosystem and developing sustainable, nonpolluting ecological economic systems is, in principle, a simple problem.
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From page 93... ...
Ecological tax reform. A natural capital depletion tax aimed at reducing or eliminating the destruction of natural capital would assume more of the tax burden instead of taxes on labor and income.
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From page 94... ...
Once a few large countries implemented the system, the rest of the world would be forced to follow suit. The ecological tariffs, in conjunction with the 4P system and the natural capital depletion tax, would provide the appropriate incentives to turn many of our current ecological traps into trade-offs and provide the appropriate constraints to lead to a sustainable ecological economic system.
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From page 95... ...
1990. A flexible assurance bonding system for improved environmental management.
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