EmergentSustainability

1. The goal

"Sustainable development is development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs."

The UN Millenium Development Goals:

• Eradicate extreme poverty and hunger

• Achieve universal primary education

• Promote gender equality and empower women

• Reduce child mortality

• Improve maternal health

• Combat HIV/AIDS, malaria, and other diseases

• Integrate the principles of sustainable development into country policies and programmes; reverse loss of environmental resources

• Reduce by half the proportion of people without sustainable access to safe drinking water

• Achieve significant improvement in lives of at least 100 million slum dwellers, by 2020

• Develop a global partnership for development

2. The old way: The Green Revolution

• Normal Borlaug and the International Wheat Improvement Program

• In 1956 Mexico imported half its wheat. By 1964 Mexico was a wheat exporter.

• Top-down knowledge-transfer model was adopted around the world:

                          advanced research centers
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                                    V
                       national ag research programs
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                                    V
                             extension programs
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                                    V
                                 farmers

• Global rain production / ha grew enormously through the use of high-yield genetic varieties, chemical fertilizers, irrigation, agricultural machinery, and pesticides.

• Side effects

• farmers become dependent on petrochemicals

• soil fertility decreases

• streams and groundwater are polluted

• Scale effects

• farming becomes industrialized, corporatized

• crop biodiversity decreases

• fertilizer demand accelerates global mineral mining

3. Integration

Bruce Campbell

• Integrated natural resource management

• Integrated catchment management

• Integrated water resource management

• Community-based natural resource management

• Integrated rural development

• Integrated conservation and development programs

• Ecosystem approaches

• Landscape management

• Adaptive collaborative management

• Multifunctional agriculture or forestry

4. Scale

Lovell et al. 2002

Scale-effect examples quoted from Sayer and Campbell:

• improved plot-level water-use eficiency may not, in fact, lead to improved water-use at the level of the whole irrigation system

• changes in land-use or crop management on hillsides may improve or may downgrade the quantity and quality of water available to downstream users

• more efficient fishing practices used by one person may destroy fish stocks if used by everyone

5. Adaptive management

http://www.for.gov.bc.ca/hfp/amhome/Amdefs.htm

• environmental and social conditions are always changing

• best bet is to build ability to adapt to change

• emphasize learning, decison-support infrastructure, assessment, decision-making process

6. Simulation vs representation

From Gonzalo Frasca. 2003. "Simulation versus narrative: introduction to ludology." In Mark J.P. Wold and Bernard Perron, eds., The Video Game Theory Reader, Routledge.

Traditional media are representational, not simulational. They excel at producing both descriptions of traits and sequences of events (narrative).... A film about a plane landing is a narrative: an observer could interpret it in different ways (i.e., "it's a normal landing" or "it's an emergency landing"), but she cannot manipulate it and influence how the plane will land since film sequences are fixed and unalterable. By contrast, the flight simulator allows the player to perform actions that will modify the behavior of the actual plane. If the player increases the power variable on the simulator, the simulated plane will move faster through the virtual sky on the computer screen. As we will later see, video games are just a particular way of structuring simulation, just like narrative is a form of structuring representation.

...Traditional storytelling normally deals with endings in a binary way. When Zola wrote Germinal he faced two options: the strikers could win or lose. He opted for the second one, probably for conveying the idea that the social revolution was going to be a hard task. By contrast, Loach seems more optimistic. He depicts these oppressed janitors who stood up for their rights and were able to obtain better working conditions.... Narrative rhetoric is a well-lubricated tool. As we can see in these two examples (Zola's Germinal and Loach's Bread and Roses), it allows authors to state that even a defeat could mean hope and even victories cannot be attained without losing something. Both storytellers are arguing that change is possible. However, neither of them is telling us to what degree that change is possible. We learn that workers may fail or win, but diagetic media is not able to break its inherent binary structure. Narrative authors or "narrauthors" only have one shot in their gun -- a fixed sequence of events. At most, they could write five or six different stories describing strikes, so the reader could make an average and decide the probabilities that the workers have to succeed. But traditional narrative media lacks the "feature" of allowing modifications to the stories, even if exceptions happen in oral storytelling and dramatic performances. In such media, it is always possible for an audience to go through several iterations of a story. In a game, going through several sessions is not only a possibility but a requirement of the medium. Games are not isolated experiences: we recognize then as games because we know we can always start over. Certrainly, you could play a game only once, but the knowledge and interpretation of simulations requires repetition.

(Similar article available online: Frasca 1999)

7. Simulation case studies

From Lynam et al. 2002

7.1. Zimbabwe

7.1.1. Study goals

"In the Zimbabwe case study, a collaborative research project was initiated in early 2000 with the community of Mahuwe Ward, Guruve District, a semiarid area, of about 400 km2, in the eastern Zambezi valley of Zimbabwe. The project's objectives were the design of management strategies for the common-pool vegetation resources that would improve productivity in terms of the supply of livestock feeds as well as other goods and services that households use (e.g., timber, wild fruits, thatching grass). A major objective of the donor funding the project was the development of a replicable approach to improving management of common-pool vegetation resources. Recognition of the failure of so many similar development initiatives prompted the Zimbabwean research team to ask themselves what would most meaningfully contribute to the sustainability and replicability of their initiatives. The answer was obvious: enhancement of the capacity of local managers to manage adaptively. As a consequence, the project shelved many of its pre-determined objective and activity sets, and focused instead on how to enhance local adaptive capacity." (Emphasis added.)

7.1.2. Agreed-on broad management goals

• To conserve our natural, grazing and browse resources.

• To protect and respect the traditionally sacred places, our spirit mediums and traditional leaders.

• All residents to be aware of their rights pertaining to the use of common pool resources.

• Residents to appreciate the importance of wise use of natural resources for the benefit of future generations.

• To generate income from the natural, graze and browse resources.

• For future generations to learn from these resources (so they know how to use and benefit from the resources).

• To carry out research on how best to manage and use natural, graze and browse resources in partnership with other interested parties.

1. To carry out reclamation work so as to protect and improve the status of our natural resources.

7.1.3. Sub-objectives feeding a broad management goal

(Sub-objectives associated with the community objective of resource conservation and their associated importance scores.)

7.1.4. Clearly defined objectives

• human popn growth stabilized --> "To stop accepting new settlers in Mahuwe Ward by 2003."

• livestock popns at K --> "To adopt a grazing systems management plan in Mahuwe Ward by the year 2003 that would ensure the provision of adequate grazing resources for livestock."

• land-use planning --> "Demarcation of all six VIDCOs (Village Development Committees, the smallest unit of management in the current Zimbabwean rural administration) of Ward 7 into grazing, residential, fields, and kraals by the year 2002, accepted by the people."

7.1.5. Factos affecting those objectives

(Spidergram of factors affecting the amount of graze and browse available to livestock in Mahuwe Ward, Zimbabwe.)

(Factors affecting the local acceptance of management plans developed through the research process. Numbers on the spidergram arms indicate the relative importance of each factor at each level.)

7.1.6. Building the Bayesian network

• Choose states for the factors

• Assign probabilities (and conditional probabilities) to each state

• Main utility was collaborative representation of the problem. Also:

"The resulting model of factors influencing the availability of graze and browse indicated that three sets of interacting factors were of primary concern. The first factor was the size of the grazing areas themselves, which were a major concern because corrupt local leaders were allocating grazing lands to new settlers for fields and home sites. The second component was the amount of graze or browse available on each unit of land, and the third component was the number of animals. This model provided a first iteration of a locally developed and manipulatable model of the issues that were of primary concern to the project."

7.2. Senegal

7.2.1. Project goal

"...the goal was to develop simulation tools to help the Rural Councils to explore new land-use rules. For example, it was intended to explore what parts of space would be reserved for specific activities; what the rules of access might be; which users might be encouraged and which might be controlled; etc. The Rural Councils were seen as the client group; they were sets of elected farmers in charge of managing resources of the Rural Community (20–300 villages). The goal was to find solutions that allowed multiple uses of a common space."

"...we describe the case of Ngnith village, situated on the west side of Lake de Guiers. The main problem, as defined by local people, was a conflict between herders and farmers. The farmers cultivated crops along the riverside and the cattle had to cross the fields in order to have access to the river for drinking. Damage and conflicts often occurred."

7.2.2. Role-playing game

"The first day, the needs of each group were identified. Each player was alternatively farmer and herder, depending on the season. For the cattle, the distance to water was recorded, as was soil quality. The farmers cultivated two crops a year. For the crop cultivated at the beginning of the wet season, the soil indicator was the unique constraint. The second crop was for market garden produce, when the plots had to be near permanent water. The agents simply looked for places that satisfied their constraints. Consequently, problems emerged for the cattle, which had no access to water."

(Illustration of map for Ngnith Village, Senegal, used in a role game. Each month, the player comes and places a mark on the map to reflect his position on the spatial grid.)

7.2.3. Algorithm for RPG and for computer simulation

(General algorithm of the role game and the model. At each time step (monthly), all agents look for a good place to make crops or to harvest pasture. The agents represent the actors, who may be farmers or herders. At ime step 1 (July, in reality), they look for a good place for the wet season crop, and time step 6, they look for a good place for the dry season crop. At the end of the year, there is a regeneration of the resource.)

7.2.4. Computer implementation of RPG as simulation

"Once the role games were completed, the rules and spatial relationships that were presented in these role-play games were used to develop and parameterize the simulation model. This model was presented to the participants and was validated by them on the third day. The model was then used to explore different scenarios that could be used to resolve the conflict situations that had emerged"

(The initial map of Ngnith village, Senegal. The lake is in blue and water holes are blue dots.)

(End of a yearly simulation. Black dots are the crops and white dots are areas where resources have been consumed. On this screen copy, one can see that the herders who have no access to the lake go west.)

7.2.5. The actual result

"The first scenario resulted in overexploitation of pasture around the water points. Then discussion about the channels occurred. Without access rules these channels were not useful. Farmers located their crops all along the channel and herders found that there was no access to the water. Proposals were then suggested to prohibit agriculture on the last kilometer of channel to allow cattle to have access to the water. These proposals were simulated and resulted in a broadly acceptable solution to the conflict problem, which has since become the focus of a set of implementation meetings involving the stakeholders and the Rural Council."

Immutable page (last edited 2011-07-20 19:42:59 by DouglasBlank)

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