Abstract for: Eco-Eco-System Dynamics

The United Nation’s promotion of Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) requires researchers and practitioners in the planning and policy making community to take fuller account of dynamic interactions. Rio ’92 and the Millennium Declaration supported “integrated assessment models” for long-term policies. Most work still relies on economic framework (e.g. Stern Report) which incorrectly monetize environmental and social variables and obscure the dynamics of natural resources essential for economies and societies to function. The global economic ecosystem’s complexity requires an integrated, multidisciplinary, systemic approach to make better sustainability policies. System Dynamics provides an ideal basis for integrated, multidisciplinary models by incorporating real world causal relations, cross-sector effects, resource stocks in addition to flows, and long-term effects of policies and assumptions. It must be used more extensively to generate sustainable economic policies that take account of externalities, avoid theoretical relations, give politicians an integrated long-term outlook, and take account of the interactions between the economy, society, and ecosystem. System dynamic modeling must address these relations more completely; convince more people to use these models; and convey the results to politicians. The Millennium Institute’s Threshold21 model includes analysis of SDGs and sustainable development strategies -- a major step towards eco-eco system dynamics.