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Sustainability is possible despite greed - Exploring the nexus between profitability and sustainability in common pool resource systems

The sustainable use of common pool resources has become a significant global challenge. It is now widely accepted that specific mechanisms such as community-based management strategies, institutional responses such as resource privatization, information availability and emergent social norms can be...

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Autores principales: Osten, Friedrich Burkhard von der, Kirley, Michael, Miller, Tim
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Nature Publishing Group UK 2017
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5442134/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/28536450
http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41598-017-02151-y
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author Osten, Friedrich Burkhard von der
Kirley, Michael
Miller, Tim
author_facet Osten, Friedrich Burkhard von der
Kirley, Michael
Miller, Tim
author_sort Osten, Friedrich Burkhard von der
collection PubMed
description The sustainable use of common pool resources has become a significant global challenge. It is now widely accepted that specific mechanisms such as community-based management strategies, institutional responses such as resource privatization, information availability and emergent social norms can be used to constrain individual ‘harvesting’ to socially optimal levels. However, there is a paucity of research focused specifically on aligning profitability and sustainability goals. In this paper, an integrated mathematical model of a common pool resource game is developed to explore the nexus between the underlying costs and benefits of harvesting decisions and the sustainable level of a shared, dynamic resource. We derive optimal harvesting efforts analytically and then use numerical simulations to show that individuals in a group can learn to make harvesting decisions that lead to the globally optimal levels. Individual agents make their decision based on signals received and a trade-off between economic and ecological sustainability. When the balance is weighted towards profitability, acceptable economic and social outcomes emerge. However, if individual agents are solely driven by profit, the shared resource is depleted in the long run - sustainability is possible despite some greed, but too much will lead to over-exploitation.
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spelling pubmed-54421342017-05-25 Sustainability is possible despite greed - Exploring the nexus between profitability and sustainability in common pool resource systems Osten, Friedrich Burkhard von der Kirley, Michael Miller, Tim Sci Rep Article The sustainable use of common pool resources has become a significant global challenge. It is now widely accepted that specific mechanisms such as community-based management strategies, institutional responses such as resource privatization, information availability and emergent social norms can be used to constrain individual ‘harvesting’ to socially optimal levels. However, there is a paucity of research focused specifically on aligning profitability and sustainability goals. In this paper, an integrated mathematical model of a common pool resource game is developed to explore the nexus between the underlying costs and benefits of harvesting decisions and the sustainable level of a shared, dynamic resource. We derive optimal harvesting efforts analytically and then use numerical simulations to show that individuals in a group can learn to make harvesting decisions that lead to the globally optimal levels. Individual agents make their decision based on signals received and a trade-off between economic and ecological sustainability. When the balance is weighted towards profitability, acceptable economic and social outcomes emerge. However, if individual agents are solely driven by profit, the shared resource is depleted in the long run - sustainability is possible despite some greed, but too much will lead to over-exploitation. Nature Publishing Group UK 2017-05-23 /pmc/articles/PMC5442134/ /pubmed/28536450 http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41598-017-02151-y Text en © The Author(s) 2017 Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons license and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.
spellingShingle Article
Osten, Friedrich Burkhard von der
Kirley, Michael
Miller, Tim
Sustainability is possible despite greed - Exploring the nexus between profitability and sustainability in common pool resource systems
title Sustainability is possible despite greed - Exploring the nexus between profitability and sustainability in common pool resource systems
title_full Sustainability is possible despite greed - Exploring the nexus between profitability and sustainability in common pool resource systems
title_fullStr Sustainability is possible despite greed - Exploring the nexus between profitability and sustainability in common pool resource systems
title_full_unstemmed Sustainability is possible despite greed - Exploring the nexus between profitability and sustainability in common pool resource systems
title_short Sustainability is possible despite greed - Exploring the nexus between profitability and sustainability in common pool resource systems
title_sort sustainability is possible despite greed - exploring the nexus between profitability and sustainability in common pool resource systems
topic Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5442134/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/28536450
http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41598-017-02151-y
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