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Conflict is a major facet of many environmental challenges of our
time. However, growing conflict complexity makes it more difficult
to identify win-win strategies for sustainable conflict resolution.
Innovative methods are needed to help predict, understand, and
resolve conflicts in cooperative ways. Agent-Based Modeling of
Environmental Conflict and Cooperation examines computer modeling
techniques as an important set of tools for assessing environmental
and resource-based conflicts and, ultimately, for finding pathways
to conflict resolution and cooperation. This book has two major
goals. First, it argues that complexity science can be a unifying
framework for professions engaged in conflict studies and
resolution, including anthropology, law, management, peace studies,
urban planning, and geography. Second, this book presents an
innovative framework for approaching conflicts as complex adaptive
systems by using many forms of environmental analysis, including
system dynamics modeling, agent-based modeling, evolutionary game
theory, viability theory, and network analysis. Known as VIABLE
(Values and Investments from Agent-Based interaction and Learning
in Environmental systems), this framework allows users to model
advanced facets of conflicts-including institution building,
coalition formation, adaptive learning, and the potential for
future conflict-and conflict resolution based on the long-term
viability of the actors' strategies. Written for scholars,
students, practitioners, and policy makers alike, this book offers
readers an extensive introduction to environmental conflict
research and resolution techniques. As the result of decades of
research, the text presents a strong argument for conflict modeling
and reviews the most popular and advanced techniques, including
system dynamics modeling, agent-based modeling, and participatory
modeling methods. This indispensable guide uses NetLogo, a widely
used and free modeling software package, to implement the VIABLE
modeling approach in three case study applications around the
world. Readers are invited to explore, adapt, modify, and expand
these models to conflicts they hope to better understand and
resolve.
In this book 60 authors from many disciplines and from 18 countries
on five continents examine in ten parts: Moving towards
Sustainability Transition; Aiming at Sustainable Peace; Meeting
Challenges of the 21st Century: Demographic Imbalances, Temperature
Rise and the Climate-Conflict Nexus; Initiating Research on Global
Environmental Change, Limits to Growth, Decoupling of Growth and
Resource Needs; Developing Theoretical Approaches on Sustainability
and Transitions; Analysing National Debates on Sustainability in
North America; Preparing Transitions towards a Sustainable Economy
and Society, Production and Consumption and Urbanization; Examining
Sustainability Transitions in the Water, Food and Health Sectors
from Latin American and European Perspectives; Preparing
Sustainability Transitions in the Energy Sector; and Relying on
Transnational, International, Regional and National Governance for
Strategies and Policies Towards Sustainability Transition. This
book is based on workshops held in Mexico (2012) and in the US
(2013), on a winter school at Chulalongkorn University, Thailand
(2013), and on commissioned chapters. The workshop in Mexico and
the publication were supported by two grants by the German
Foundation for Peace Research (DSF). All texts in this book were
peer-reviewed by scholars from all parts of the world.
Severe droughts, damaging floods and mass migration: Climate change
is becoming a focal point for security and conflict research and a
challenge for the world's governance structures. But how severe are
the security risks and conflict potentials of climate change? Could
global warming trigger a sequence of events leading to economic
decline, social unrest and political instability? What are the
causal relationships between resource scarcity and violent
conflict? This book brings together international experts to
explore these questions using in-depth case studies from around the
world. Furthermore, the authors discuss strategies, institutions
and cooperative approaches to stabilize the climate-society
interaction.
This book is a collection of chapters concerning the use of biomass
for the sustainable production of energy and chemicals-an important
goal that will help decrease the production of greenhouse gases to
help mitigate global warming, provide energy security in the face
of dwindling petroleum reserves, improve balance of payment
problems and spur local economic development. Clearly there are
ways to save energy that need to be encouraged more. These include
more use of energy sources such as, among others, manure in
anaerobic digesters, waste wood in forests as fuel or feedstock for
cellulosic ethanol, and conservation reserve program (CRP) land
crops that are presently unused in the US. The use of biofuels is
not new; Rudolf Diesel used peanut oil as fuel in the ?rst engines
he developed (Chap. 8), and ethanol was used in the early 1900s in
the US as automobile fuel [Songstad et al. (2009) Historical
perspective of biofuels: learning from the past to rediscover the
future. In Vitro Cell Dev Biol Plant 45:189-192). Brazil now
produces enough sugar cane ethanol to make up about 50% of its
transportation fuel needs (Chap. 4). The next big thing will be
cellulosic ethanol. At present, there is also the use of Miscanthus
x giganteous as fuel for power plants in the UK (Chap. 2), bagasse
(sugar cane waste) to power sugar cane mills (Chap. 4), and waste
wood and sawdust to power sawmills (Chap. 7).
Concerns about energy security, uncertainty about oil prices,
declining oil reserves, and global climate change are fueling a
shift towards bioenergy as a renewable alternative to fossil fuels.
Public policies and private investments around the globe are aiming
to increase local capacity to produce biofuels. A key constraint to
the expansion of biofuel production is the limited amount of land
available to meet the needs for fuel, feed, and food in the coming
decades. Large-scale biofuel production raises concerns about food
versus fuel tradeoffs, about demands for natural resources such as
water, and about potential impacts on environmental quality. The
book is organized into five parts. The introductory part provides a
context for the emerging economic and policy challenges related to
bioenergy and the motivations for biofuels as an energy source. The
second part of the handbook includes chapters that examine the
implications of expanded production of first generation biofuels
for the allocation of land between food and fuel and for food/feed
prices and trade in biofuels as well as the potential for
technology improvements to mitigate the food vs. fuel competition
for land. Chapters in the third part examine the infrastructural
and logistical challenges posed by large scale biofuel production
and the factors that will influence the location of biorefineries
and the mix of feedstocks they use. The fourth part includes
chapters that examine the environmental implications of biofuels,
their implications for the design of policies and the unintended
environmental consequences of existing biofuel policies. The final
part presents economic analysis of the market, social welfare, and
distributional effects of biofuel policies.
This book is a collection of chapters concerning the use of biomass
for the sustainable production of energy and chemicals-an important
goal that will help decrease the production of greenhouse gases to
help mitigate global warming, provide energy security in the face
of dwindling petroleum reserves, improve balance of payment
problems and spur local economic development. Clearly there are
ways to save energy that need to be encouraged more. These include
more use of energy sources such as, among others, manure in
anaerobic digesters, waste wood in forests as fuel or feedstock for
cellulosic ethanol, and conservation reserve program (CRP) land
crops that are presently unused in the US. The use of biofuels is
not new; Rudolf Diesel used peanut oil as fuel in the ?rst engines
he developed (Chap. 8), and ethanol was used in the early 1900s in
the US as automobile fuel [Songstad et al. (2009) Historical
perspective of biofuels: learning from the past to rediscover the
future. In Vitro Cell Dev Biol Plant 45:189-192). Brazil now
produces enough sugar cane ethanol to make up about 50% of its
transportation fuel needs (Chap. 4). The next big thing will be
cellulosic ethanol. At present, there is also the use of Miscanthus
x giganteous as fuel for power plants in the UK (Chap. 2), bagasse
(sugar cane waste) to power sugar cane mills (Chap. 4), and waste
wood and sawdust to power sawmills (Chap. 7).
Concerns about energy security, uncertainty about oil prices,
declining oil reserves, and global climate change are fueling a
shift towards bioenergy as a renewable alternative to fossil fuels.
Public policies and private investments around the globe are aiming
to increase local capacity to produce biofuels. A key constraint to
the expansion of biofuel production is the limited amount of land
available to meet the needs for fuel, feed, and food in the coming
decades. Large-scale biofuel production raises concerns about food
versus fuel tradeoffs, about demands for natural resources such as
water, and about potential impacts on environmental quality. The
book is organized into five parts. The introductory part provides a
context for the emerging economic and policy challenges related to
bioenergy and the motivations for biofuels as an energy source. The
second part of the handbook includes chapters that examine the
implications of expanded production of first generation biofuels
for the allocation of land between food and fuel and for food/feed
prices and trade in biofuels as well as the potential for
technology improvements to mitigate the food vs. fuel competition
for land. Chapters in the third part examine the infrastructural
and logistical challenges posed by large scale biofuel production
and the factors that will influence the location of biorefineries
and the mix of feedstocks they use. The fourth part includes
chapters that examine the environmental implications of biofuels,
their implications for the design of policies and the unintended
environmental consequences of existing biofuel policies. The final
part presents economic analysis of the market, social welfare, and
distributional effects of biofuel policies.
This book is the outcome of a project that started with the
organisation of
theTopicalWorkshopon"Agent-BasedComputationalModelling. AnInst-
ment for Analysing Complex Adaptive Systems in Demography,
Economics and Environment" at the Vienna Institute of Demography,
December 4-6, 2003. The workshop brought together scholars from
several disciplines, all- ing both for serious scienti?c debate and
for informal conversation over a cup co?ee or during a visit to the
wonderfulmuseums of Vienna. One of the nicest features of
Agent-Based Modelling is indeed the opportunity that scholars ?nd a
common language and discuss from their disciplinary perspective, in
turn learning from other perspectives. Given the success of the
meeting, we found it important to pursue the purpose of collecting
these interdisciplinary contributions in a volume. In order to
ensure the highest scienti?c standards for the book, we decided
that all the contributions (with the sole exception of the
introductory chapter) should have been accepted conditional on peer
reviews. Generoushelpwasprovidedbyreviewers, someofwhomwereneither
directly involved in the workshop nor in the book. All this would
not have been possible without the funding provided by the Complex
Systems N- work of Excellence (Exystence) funded by the European
Union, the Vienna Institute of Demography of the Austrian Academy
of Sciences, Universit a Bocconi, and ARC Systems Research GmbH,
and the help of the wonderful sta? ofthe Vienna Institute of
Demography(in particular, Ani Minassianand Belinda Aparicio Diaz).
Agent-Based Modelling is important, interesting and also fun-we
hope this book contributes to showing that. Milano Francesco C.
Conflict is a major facet of many environmental challenges of our
time. However, growing conflict complexity makes it more difficult
to identify win-win strategies for sustainable conflict resolution.
Innovative methods are needed to help predict, understand, and
resolve conflicts in cooperative ways. Agent-Based Modeling of
Environmental Conflict and Cooperation examines computer modeling
techniques as an important set of tools for assessing environmental
and resource-based conflicts and, ultimately, for finding pathways
to conflict resolution and cooperation. This book has two major
goals. First, it argues that complexity science can be a unifying
framework for professions engaged in conflict studies and
resolution, including anthropology, law, management, peace studies,
urban planning, and geography. Second, this book presents an
innovative framework for approaching conflicts as complex adaptive
systems by using many forms of environmental analysis, including
system dynamics modeling, agent-based modeling, evolutionary game
theory, viability theory, and network analysis. Known as VIABLE
(Values and Investments from Agent-Based interaction and Learning
in Environmental systems), this framework allows users to model
advanced facets of conflicts-including institution building,
coalition formation, adaptive learning, and the potential for
future conflict-and conflict resolution based on the long-term
viability of the actors' strategies. Written for scholars,
students, practitioners, and policy makers alike, this book offers
readers an extensive introduction to environmental conflict
research and resolution techniques. As the result of decades of
research, the text presents a strong argument for conflict modeling
and reviews the most popular and advanced techniques, including
system dynamics modeling, agent-based modeling, and participatory
modeling methods. This indispensable guide uses NetLogo, a widely
used and free modeling software package, to implement the VIABLE
modeling approach in three case study applications around the
world. Readers are invited to explore, adapt, modify, and expand
these models to conflicts they hope to better understand and
resolve.
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