Human Ecology
Basic Concepts for Sustainable Development
Table of Contents
- Foreword (by Maurice Strong)
- Preface
- Acknowledgments
- Key Concepts
- Glossary
- Further Reading
1. Introduction
2. Populations and feedback systems
- Exponential population growth
- Positive feedback
- Negative feedback
- Population regulation
- The practical significance of positive and negative feedback
- Things to think about
3. Human population
- Human population history
- Social mechanisms of population regulation
- The population explosion and quality of life
- Things to think about
4. Ecosystems and social systems as complex adaptive systems
- Hierarchical organization and emergent properties
- Self-organization
- Stability domains
- Complex system cycles
- Things to think about
5. Ecosystem organization
- Coadaptation
- Ecosystem design
- Ecosystem homeostasis
- Comparison of natural, agricultural and urban ecosystems
- Landscape mosaics
- Things to think about
6. Ecological succession
7. Coevolution and coadaptation of human social systems and ecosystems
- Coadaptation in traditional social systems
- Coevolution of the social system and ecosystem from traditional to modern agriculture
- Things to think about
8. Ecosystem services
- Material cycling and energy flow
- Ecosystem services
- The relation between ecosystem services and intensity of use
- The fallacy that economic supply and demand protect natural resources from overexploitation
- Things to think about
9. Perceptions of nature
- Common perceptions of nature
- Attitudes of religions toward nature
- Notes of caution about romanticizing nature and traditional social systems
- Things to think about
10. Unsustainable human – ecosystem interaction
- Human migrations
- New technologies
- Portable capital in a free market economy
- Tragedy of the commons
- Large inputs to agricultural and urban ecosystems
- Urbanization and alienation from nature
- The rise and fall of complex societies
- Wishful thinking and the precautionary principle
- Things to think about
11. Sustainable human – ecosystem interaction
- Human social institutions and sustainable use of common property resources
- Coexistence of urban ecosystems with nature
- Resilience and sustainable development
- Adaptive development
- Things to think about