[Coral-List] Social and natural coral reef science

[Peter Edwards]

Thank you Les...
Ecological Economics is a "cousin" to  Environmental Economics and Natural Resource Economics. We all trying to work towards similar ends.  Within these sub disciplines there are for sure a few differences in theoretical approach and application -- but we are all working together towards one overall goal.
It should be noted that the World Bank, UN and other multi-national agencies are now developing a  System of Integrated Environmental and Economic Accounting. Which will nations better reflect/include environment, ecosystems and natural capital in their annual reporting of GDP, GNP etc. This development is in no small part due to years of work (1949 - present day) on the economics of the environment. 
What has become more clear is the urgent need for natural and social scientists to collaborate even more to develop and improve models that can help predict the biological and human impacts of all sorts of drivers... the big one of which is climate change.
Synergy is what we need... not us vs them.
Peter Edwards



--- On Wed, 3/4/13, coral-list-request at coral.aoml.noaa.gov <coral-list-request at coral.aoml.noaa.gov> wrote:

From: coral-list-request at coral.aoml.noaa.gov <coral-list-request at coral.aoml..noaa.gov>
Subject: Coral-List Digest, Vol 56, Issue 6
To: coral-list at coral.aoml.noaa.gov
Date: Wednesday, 3 April, 2013, 12:00

Send Coral-List mailing list submissions to
    coral-list at coral.aoml.noaa.gov

To subscribe or unsubscribe via the World Wide Web, visit
    http://coral.aoml.noaa.gov/mailman/listinfo/coral-list
or, via email, send a message with subject or body 'help' to
    coral-list-request at coral.aoml.noaa.gov

You can reach the person managing the list at
    coral-list-owner at coral.aoml.noaa.gov

When replying, please edit your Subject line so it is more specific
than "Re: Contents of Coral-List digest...", e.g., cut and paste the
Subject line from the individual message you are replying to. Also,
please only include quoted text from prior posts that is necessary to
make your point; avoid re-sending the entire Digest back to the list.


Today's Topics:

   1. social and natural coral reef science (Kaufman, Leslie S)


----------------------------------------------------------------------

Message: 1
Date: Wed, 3 Apr 2013 13:41:20 +0000
From: "Kaufman, Leslie S" <lesk at bu.edu>
Subject: [Coral-List] social and natural coral reef science
To: Coral List <coral-list at coral.aoml.noaa.gov>
Message-ID: <17E1B7B3-1A1B-497D-825D-0D6D90A3260E at bu.edu>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"

Dear All-

The color of discourse might warm if everybody was aware that there does exist a discipline of ecological economics, and a science of coupled human and natural systems (CHANS).  Both are in their infancy, but they are real and are slowly grinding along in productive directions.  As a practitioner who happens to be a marine ecologist, I find the ecology much easier to deal with than the human behavior side of things; nonetheless we are attempting to broach that as well, as are many of our colleagues.

Ecological economics suffers under less unrealistic assumptions than classical economics, but any one model is fraught with hundreds of them- every equation is both an hypothesis, and an assumption depending upon your point of view and degree of religiosity about the model (ideally the modeler carries no such delusions).  I've noticed great reticence among some of my colleagues in abandoning old approaches for new ones that work better- for example, nonlinear mathematics to supplement structural equation models in complex systems.  Trying to parse even the ecological side of the system using only linear models is as suspect as any assumptions that economists have ever made, yet everybody does it...and they forget that it is an approximation only.

The problem we face is not one of social versus natural sciences, but of people's unique attributes as a functional element of nature.  The rest of nature evolves in a rational manner, strongly colored by chance, while people appear to operate by chance, with just a smidget of rational behavior.

This does complicate things a tad.

In any event, the problems before us involve both people and the rest of nature, and it is not just a matter of convincing people, but rather of anticipating how they might behave under different scenarios and taking that into account in designing policy.  Whether our subsequent actions are guided by wisdom alone or assisted by much fresh data and complicated models, the process is basically the same.   Science does offer a shot at avoiding past mistakes, and a lesser but still valuable chance of anticipating the unthinkable. ..but only if we stop avoiding the embarrassing inscrutability of human behavior.

Les


Les Kaufman
Professor of Biology
Boston University Marine Program
and
Marine Conservation Fellow
Conservation International
lesk at bu.edu<mailto:lesk at bu.edu>






------------------------------

_______________________________________________
Coral-List mailing list
Coral-List at coral.aoml.noaa.gov
http://coral.aoml.noaa.gov/mailman/listinfo/coral-list

End of Coral-List Digest, Vol 56, Issue 6
*****************************************