RE: [Fis] Focussing our discussion

From: Loet Leydesdorff <[email protected]>
Date: Mon 10 Nov 2003 - 08:59:50 CET

Dear Luis,
 
A problem with "sustainability" has been that is was not clearly defined
in the Brundland report "Our Common Future" (1987, at p. 9), notably as
"a process of change in which the exploitation of resources, the
direction of investments, the orientation of technological development,
and institutional change are made consistent with future as well as
present needs." While one can measure present needs and investments, it
is extremely difficult to measure "future needs" particularly if one
does not specify the time horizon for these needs.
 
For example, a development which can be characterized as sustainable
during the next 50 years may be unstainable when evaluated over het next
100 or 200 years. The alternative of bringing all fluxes in steady state
is not available because we have no central control center (like
"Moscow" in the former Soviet-Union). The ideas of Forrester and Meadows
were therefore sociologically naive. The new ideas often assume too
easily a common clockwork in the systems. I have written a paper about
this entitled <http://users.fmg.uva.nl/lleydesdorff/dto/index.htm>
Sustainable Technological Developments and Second-Order Cybernetics,
Technology Analysis & Strategic Management 9, (1997, no. 3) 329-341;
preprint at http://www.leydesdorff.net/dto .
 
In practice, the discussion on sustainability has in the last few year
been boiled down to a set of criteria which includes both economic,
ecological and social viability of a new development. From this
perspective, an indicator scheme in three dimensions can be developed.
This scheme can be considered as an information system and perhaps be
improved by considering it thus more abstractly. For example, one can
raise questions about the value of the mutual information in three
dimensions. Perhaps, a development which is indicated as a negative
entropy can be sustained more (as a "self-organizing" system) than a
development which fails to do so. This is just a suggestion for the
operationalization using information theory.
 
With kind regards,
 
 
Loet
  _____

Loet Leydesdorff
Amsterdam School of Communications Research (ASCoR)
Kloveniersburgwal 48, 1012 CX Amsterdam
Tel.: +31-20- 525 6598; fax: +31-20- 525 3681
 <mailto:loet@leydesdorff.net> loet@leydesdorff.net ;
<http://www.leydesdorff.net/> http://www.leydesdorff.net/

 
 <http://www.upublish.com/books/leydesdorff-sci.htm> The Challenge of
Scientometrics ; <http://www.upublish.com/books/leydesdorff.htm> The
Self-Organization of the Knowledge-Based Society

-----Original Message-----
From: fis-bounces@listas.unizar.es [mailto:fis-bounces@listas.unizar.es]
On Behalf Of Luis Serra (by way of "Pedro C. Mariju�n"
<marijuan@posta.unizar.es>)
Sent: Friday, November 07, 2003 11:05 AM
To: fis-listas.unizar.es
Subject: [Fis] Focussing our discussion

Dear Jerry,
Dear All,
 
Answering to your last posting, I formulated my questions in the
introductory text, particularly questions 1-7, because I would like to
find some light concerning measurable properties (physical ones,
informational ones...) and/or methodologies, in relation with the
evaluation of natural resources and the interaction of our society with
the environment (how to measure the environmental impact provoked by
technological and economic activities?). That understanding could be
relevant for sustainable development.

Ecological economics basically deals with the distribution and
management of limited natural resources in order to reach a real
sustainable development, in which human beings and their social,
technological and economical development would be fully integrated with
nature creating a real constructive symbiosis. In my opinion, at the
present FIS discussion entitled "Economical Ecologics and Information",
we are looking for the "Scientific Fundamentals of Sustainability",
which is really a huge and major task with quite many different branches
and addresses of discussion.
 
>From the different postings received during this week I consider that
there are at least three different branches of discussion already open.
I suggest that we deal with the three of them in depth (and perhaps
separately):
 
1) Evaluation of natural resources (Pavel, in his very interesting
comments, has already advanced some thoughts about that).

2) Evaluation or measurement of "ecosystems health" or in other words,
measurement of the environmental impact provoked by the activities of
human beings. This is related with the previous issue, and both Jerry's
opening text and Pavel's posting have inspiring directions about the
problem of carrying capacity of Earth (e.g. Ascendancy). In my viewpoint
the carrying capacity of ecosystems does not only relate with the
depletion of natural resources but also with the quality or health of
ecosystems, 'polution' for instance.
 
3) Formal characterization of markets. This a very wide and deep topic
suggested by Pedro, which is also present in several postings (Karl,
Pavel, Loet). It is likely to be one of the key points of the present
FIS discussion: the really dense relationship between natural
resources/ecosystems, value, price and information.
 
I hope this modest synthesis/suggestion could help us to focus our
further discussion efforts, and avoid the peril of becoming lost in this
vast and ambitious session. By the beginning of next week I will try to
prepare some further comments related with the first issue --Evaluation
of Natural Resources--which is the aspect closest to my own specialized
thermoeconomic field.

In the interim let me kindly invite to the experts on these three
fields, recently subscribed in the FIS list, to share their viewpoints
with all of us.

Have a nice weekend,
 
Luis
Received on Mon Nov 10 09:01:53 2003

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