Alfred Marshall, Evolutionary Economics and Climate Change

2019 ◽

Vol 28 (4) ◽

pp. 386-411

Author(s):

Natalie Kopytko

Keyword(s):

Climate Change ◽

Evolutionary Economics ◽

In Situ Conservation ◽

Financial Capital ◽

Traditional Practices ◽

Agricultural Policies ◽

Dynamic View ◽

Agrobiodiversity Conservation ◽

Open Source Systems

Critical to sustainable agriculture, agrobiodiversity conservation provides immediate benefits and retains options for climate change adaptation. Reframing conservation as sustainable seed innovation allows for a dynamic view of farmer contributions. Sustainable seed innovation entails in situ conservation and the innovation of new plant varieties through traditional practices. Farmer interviews from regions throughout India form the empirical basis, while the concept intellectual property-broad, integrated with evolutionary economics, informs theory. Sustainable seed innovation within India receives support primarily from nonprofit groups favoring open-source systems. Conserving natural and financial capital motivated farmers to adopt sustainable techniques, but farmers believed attracting additional innovators required development of new markets. India’s Protection of Plant Varieties and Farmers’ Rights Act recognizes farmers as plant breeders but does not provide incentive to innovate sustainably. Moreover, agricultural policies reinforced by an underlying discourse where “progressive” farmers follow unsustainable practices incentivizes formal innovations, at the expense of sustainable innovations of farmers.

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Socio-Technical Transitions to Sustainability

Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Environmental Science ◽

10.1093/acrefore/9780199389414.013.587 ◽

2018 ◽

Cited By ~ 8

Author(s):

Frank W. Geels

Keyword(s):

Climate Change ◽

Food Systems ◽

Business Models ◽

Evolutionary Economics ◽

Biodiversity Loss ◽

Analytical Framework ◽

Green Economy ◽

Sustainability Transitions ◽

International Panel ◽

Integrative View

Addressing persistent environmental problems such as climate change or biodiversity loss requires shifts to new kinds of energy, mobility, housing, and agro-food systems. These shifts are called socio-technical transitions because they involve not just changes in technology but also changes in consumer practices, policies, cultural meanings, infrastructures, and business models. Socio-technical transitions to sustainability are challenging for mainstream social sciences because they are multiactor, long-term, goal-oriented, disruptive, contested, and nonlinear processes. Sustainability transitions are being investigated by a new research community, which uses a socio-technical Multi-Level Perspective (MLP) as one of its orienting frameworks. Focusing on multidimensional struggles between “green” innovations and entrenched systems, the MLP suggests that transitions involve alignments of processes within and between three analytical levels: niche innovations, socio-technical regimes, and an exogenous socio-technical landscape. To understand more specific change mechanisms, the MLP mobilizes ideas from evolutionary economics, sociology of innovation, and institutional theory. Different phases, actors, and struggles are distinguished to understand the complexities of sustainability transitions, while still providing analytical traction and policy advice. The MLP draws attention to socio-technical systems as a new unit of analysis, which is more comprehensive than a micro-focus on individuals and more concrete than a macro-focus on a green economy. It also forms a new analytical framework that spans several stale dichotomies in environmental social science debates related to agency or structure and behavioral or technical change. The MLP accommodates stability and change and offers an integrative view on transitions, ranging from local projects to niche innovations to sector-level regimes and broader societal contexts. This new interdisciplinary research is attracting increasing attention from the European Environment Agency, International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), and Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD).

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Averting robo-bees: why free-flying robotic bees are a bad idea

Emerging Topics in Life Sciences ◽

10.1042/etls20190063 ◽

2019 ◽

Vol 3 (6) ◽

pp. 723-729

Author(s):

Roslyn Gleadow ◽

Jim Hanan ◽

Alan Dorin

Keyword(s):

Climate Change ◽

Computer Simulation ◽

Food Security ◽

European Countries ◽

Plant Interactions ◽

Plant Insect Interactions ◽

Native Habitat ◽

Insect Pollinators ◽

Insect Interactions

Food security and the sustainability of native ecosystems depends on plant-insect interactions in countless ways. Recently reported rapid and immense declines in insect numbers due to climate change, the use of pesticides and herbicides, the introduction of agricultural monocultures, and the destruction of insect native habitat, are all potential contributors to this grave situation. Some researchers are working towards a future where natural insect pollinators might be replaced with free-flying robotic bees, an ecologically problematic proposal. We argue instead that creating environments that are friendly to bees and exploring the use of other species for pollination and bio-control, particularly in non-European countries, are more ecologically sound approaches. The computer simulation of insect-plant interactions is a far more measured application of technology that may assist in managing, or averting, ‘Insect Armageddon' from both practical and ethical viewpoints.

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Modelling ecosystem adaptation and dangerous rates of global warming

Emerging Topics in Life Sciences ◽

10.1042/etls20180113 ◽

2019 ◽

Vol 3 (2) ◽

pp. 221-231 ◽

Cited By ~ 4

Author(s):

Rebecca Millington ◽

Peter M. Cox ◽

Jonathan R. Moore ◽

Gabriel Yvon-Durocher

Keyword(s):

Climate Change ◽

Global Warming ◽

Diffusion Rate ◽

Individual Species ◽

Genetic Evolution ◽

Rates Of Change ◽

Rapid Climate Change ◽

Warming Climate ◽

Intraspecies Competition ◽

High Trait

Abstract We are in a period of relatively rapid climate change. This poses challenges for individual species and threatens the ecosystem services that humanity relies upon. Temperature is a key stressor. In a warming climate, individual organisms may be able to shift their thermal optima through phenotypic plasticity. However, such plasticity is unlikely to be sufficient over the coming centuries. Resilience to warming will also depend on how fast the distribution of traits that define a species can adapt through other methods, in particular through redistribution of the abundance of variants within the population and through genetic evolution. In this paper, we use a simple theoretical ‘trait diffusion’ model to explore how the resilience of a given species to climate change depends on the initial trait diversity (biodiversity), the trait diffusion rate (mutation rate), and the lifetime of the organism. We estimate theoretical dangerous rates of continuous global warming that would exceed the ability of a species to adapt through trait diffusion, and therefore lead to a collapse in the overall productivity of the species. As the rate of adaptation through intraspecies competition and genetic evolution decreases with species lifetime, we find critical rates of change that also depend fundamentally on lifetime. Dangerous rates of warming vary from 1°C per lifetime (at low trait diffusion rate) to 8°C per lifetime (at high trait diffusion rate). We conclude that rapid climate change is liable to favour short-lived organisms (e.g. microbes) rather than longer-lived organisms (e.g. trees).

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