Gonzalez-Redin, J.; Gordon, I.J.; Polhill, J.G.; Dawson, T.P.; Hill, R. Navigating Sustainability: Revealing the Hidden Forces in Social–Ecological Systems. Sustainability2024, 16, 1132.
Gonzalez-Redin, J.; Gordon, I.J.; Polhill, J.G.; Dawson, T.P.; Hill, R. Navigating Sustainability: Revealing the Hidden Forces in Social–Ecological Systems. Sustainability 2024, 16, 1132.
Gonzalez-Redin, J.; Gordon, I.J.; Polhill, J.G.; Dawson, T.P.; Hill, R. Navigating Sustainability: Revealing the Hidden Forces in Social–Ecological Systems. Sustainability2024, 16, 1132.
Gonzalez-Redin, J.; Gordon, I.J.; Polhill, J.G.; Dawson, T.P.; Hill, R. Navigating Sustainability: Revealing the Hidden Forces in Social–Ecological Systems. Sustainability 2024, 16, 1132.
Abstract
At the Rio Conference in 1992, the sustainable development agenda promised a new era for natural resource management, where the well-being of human society would be enhanced through the sustainable use of natural capital. Several decades on, economic growth continues unabated at the expense of natural capital, as evidenced by biodiversity loss, climate change and further environmental issues. Why is this happening and what can be done about it? In this research, we present three Agent-Based Models that explore the social, economic and governance factors driving (un)sustainability in complex social-ecological systems. Our modelling results reinforce the idea that the current economic system does not protect the natural capital on which it depends. This is due to a disjunction between the economic and environmental elements upon which the sustainable development paradigm is founded. Additionally, various factors appear to enhance social-ecological system unsustainability: the role of financial entities and monetary debt; economic speculation; technological development and efficiency; lack of long-term views and late government interventions; inefficient tipping point management; and the absence of strong top-down and bottom-up conservation forces. Interestingly, alternative scenarios showed that these same factors could be redirected to enhance sustainable development. The current economic system may, therefore, not be inherently unsustainable, but rather specific economic mechanisms, agents’ decision-making, and the kinds of links between economic and natural systems could be at the root of the problem. We argue that short- and medium-term sustainability can be enhanced by implementing mechanisms that shift capitalist forces to support environmental conservation. Long-term sustainability, however, requires further paradigm change: where the economy integrates, and fully accounts for, externalities and recognises the actual value of natural capital.
Keywords
sustainability; social-ecological system; natural capital; ecosystem services; biodiversity agent-based model
Subject
Environmental and Earth Sciences, Other
Copyright:
This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
