Saving the Planet, from a Mathematical Perspective

August 23, 2006

For those of you in the Boston area: On Wednesday, July 12, 2006 from 6:15 PM - 7:15 PM, Prof Simon Levin of Princeton University will deliver the I.E. Block Community Lecture, "Individual Choices, Cooperation, and the Global Commons: Mathematical Challenges in Uniting Ecology and Socioeconomics for a Sustainable Environment."

Prof. Levin's talk will explore the modeling challenges in dealing with problems associated with the interdependence of those ecosystems that form the complex web of life on this planet and the human societies in which we live.

In old English law, the common (or commons) was a tract of ground shared by residents of a village, but belonging to no one. It might be grazing grounds, or the village square, but it was property held in common for the good of all.

Today, the term "global commons" refers to the Atmosphere, Hydrosphere, Lithosphere and Biosphere shared by all.

We live in a place and a time, says Prof. Levin, in which not only individuals, but societies and nations, act in their own interest, leading to problems for the biosphere as a whole, including the depletion of common resources, the toxification of the environment, and even the loss of effectiveness of the antibiotics that are so fundamental to public health.

In the terminology of economists, conventional markets have failed to restrain our harmful activities, like overconsumption, because those markets do not adequately incorporate the social costs, the externalities.

How, he asks, can we resolve this situation and develop patterns of social behavior that hold out greater hope for a sustainable future? What can we learn from evolutionary theory, and how can mathematical approaches improve our ability to devise strategies?

Ecological and socioeconomic systems alike are complex adaptive systems in which patterns at the macroscopic level emerge from interactions and selection mechanisms mediated at many levels of organization, from individual agents to collectives to whole systems and even above.

This lecture will explore these phenomena from the perspectives of dynamical systems and the theory of games, and will look at the mathematical challenges in dealing with such problems.

In particular, Professor Levin will address our understanding of how, and under what conditions, cooperation and altruism have arisen in the process of evolution; why social norms, including punishment, have arisen to reinforce socially beneficial behavior; and how those social norms can lead to inter-group conflicts.

Attention will focus on the socioeconomic systems in which environmental management is based, the lessons that can be learned from our examination of natural systems, and the ways in which we can modify social norms to achieve global cooperation in managing our common future.

Prof. Levin received the Kyoto Prize in 2005 from the Inamori Foundation of Japan for his honorable contributions to environmental science. The 50 million yen award (approximately $460,000) is given in recognition of lifetime achievement in the categories of basic science, advanced technology and arts and philosophy.

"In proposing many methods of biological conservation and ecosystem management, Professor Levin has made fundamental contributions to environmental science," the foundation wrote.

The lecture is sponsored by The MathWorks www.mathworks.com and organized by SIAM (Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics, www.siam.org).