Abstract

This report documents the current research on developing a generalized mathematical model depicting an economic, ecological, and social system with the goal of making it available to the scientific community. The model is preliminary; it has not been tested or fully explored.

The model is intended to represent the first steps in combining the basic dynamic elements of an ecosystem functioning with a human society and an economy in a closed system with a nonlimiting supply of energy. The model is based on flows of mass between system compartments, while the total mass is conserved.

In this preliminary model, optimizing economic agents (firms and households) interact in specific markets with an ecological system consisting of resource pools and several domesticated and wild species. The result is an interdependent system that attempts to model macroeconomic variables based on underlying property rights and environmental stocks and flows.

The report contains four chapters and four appendices:

• Chapter 1 introduces the project's objective and approach, provides a background on sustainability as a complex system composed of several dimensions interacting through time, and provides an overview of the integrated economic, ecological, and social model and its development.
• Chapter 2 gives a detailed description of the integrated model as it currently exists with equations and explanations.
• Chapter 3 provides the model solution and operational equations.
• Chapter 4 provides a summary of the report.
• The appendices contain a glossary of terms and the computer code used to implement the model in a form suitable for simulating different scenarios.

This report covers work done from March 3, 2004, to August 15, 2005. The work was completed February 28, 2006.

Contact

Heriberto Cabezas

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