When optimization for governing human-environment tipping elements is neither sustainable nor safe.

ABSTRACT: Optimizing economic welfare in environmental governance has been criticized for delivering short-term gains at the expense of long-term environmental degradation. Different from economic optimization, the concepts of sustainability and the more recent safe operating space have been used to derive policies in environmental governance. However, a formal comparison between these three policy paradigms is still missing, leaving policy makers uncertain which paradigm to apply. Here, we develop a better understanding of their interrelationships, using a stylized model of human-environment tipping elements. We find that no paradigm guarantees fulfilling requirements imposed by another paradigm and derive simple heuristics for the conditions under which these trade-offs occur. We show that the abs

SUBMITTER: Barfuss W 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6003916 | biostudies-literature | 2018 Jun

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature