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

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 absence of such a master paradigm is of special relevance for governing real-world tipping systems such as climate, fisheries, and farming, which may reside in a parameter regime where economic optimization is neither sustainable nor safe.

Donges, Jonathan F.Stockholms universitet,Stockholm Resilience Centre,Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, Germany(Swepub:su)jdong (författare)
Lade, Steven J.Stockholms universitet,Stockholm Resilience Centre,The Australian National University, Australia(Swepub:su)slade (författare)
Kurths, Jürgen (författare)
Stockholms universitetStockholm Resilience Centre (creator_code:org_t)

Ingår i:Nature Communications: Springer Science and Business Media LLC92041-1723

Av författaren/redakt...: Barfuss, Wolfram; Donges, Jonathan ...; Lade, Steven J.; Kurths, Jürgen

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