This book includes chapters by experts from developing and developed countries that apply game theory to issues in natural resources and the environment, demonstrating the usefulness of game theory in policy-making and appealing to a wide audience.
The sustainable governance of water resources relies on processes of multi-stakeholder collaborations and interactions that facilitate knowledge co-creation and social learning. Governance systems are often fragmented, forming a barrier to adequately addressing the myriad of challenges affecting water resources, including climate change, increased urbanized populations, and pollution. Transitions towards sustainable water governance will likely require innovative learning partnerships between public, private, and civil society stakeholders. It is essential that such partnerships involve vertical and horizontal communication of ideas and knowledge, and an enabling and democratic environment characterized by informal and open discourse. There is increasing interest in learning-based transitions. Thus far, much scholarly thinking and, to a lesser degree, empirical research has gone into understanding the potential impact of social learning on multi-stakeholder settings. The question of whether such learning can be supported by forms of serious gaming has hardly been asked. This Special Issue critically explores the potential of serious games to support multi-stakeholder social learning and collaborations in the context of water governance. Serious games may involve simulations of real-world events and processes and are challenge players to solve contemporary societal problems; they, therefore, have a purpose beyond entertainment. They offer a largely untapped potential to support social learning and collaboration by facilitating access to and the exchange of knowledge and information, enhancing stakeholder interactions, empowering a wider audience to participate in decision making, and providing opportunities to test and analyze the outcomes of policies and management solutions. Little is known about how game-based approaches can be used in the context of collaborative water governance to maximize their potential for social learning. While several studies have reported examples of serious games, there is comparably less research about how to assess the impacts of serious games on social learning and transformative change.
This book includes chapters by experts from developing and developed countries that apply game theory to issues in natural resources and the environment, demonstrating the usefulness of game theory in policy-making and appealing to a wide audience.
Game theory has emerged as a powerful tool in environmental economics, especially in the study of such transboundary pollution problems as global warming and acid rain. This book addresses key issues in the application of game theory to environmental economics and environmental management.
Abstract: This paper provides a review of various applications of cooperative game theory (CGT) to issues of natural and environmental resources. With an increase in the level of competition over environmental and natural resources, the incidents of disputes have been at the center of allocation agreements. The paper reviews the cases of common pool resources such as fisheries and forests, and cases of environmental pollution such as acid rain, flow, and stock pollution. In addition to providing examples of cooperative solutions to allocation problems, the conclusion from this review suggests that cooperation over scarce environmental and natural resources is possible under a variety of physical conditions and institutional arrangements. CGT applications to international fishery disputes are especially useful in that they have been making headway in policy-related agreements among states and regions of the world. Forest applications are more local in nature, but of great relevance in solving disputes among communities and various levels of governments.
The WSPC Reference on Natural Resources and Environmental Policy in the Era of Global Change provides a comprehensive and prominent reference of various highly authoritative volumes of long-term scientific value, for milestone concepts and theories. The books in the reference set are edited by leading experts in the fields of: Game Theory, International Relations and Global Politics, Computable General Equilibrium (CGE): Economy-Wide Modeling, and Experimental Economics. Each book in the reference set includes chapters that are laid out by recognized, broadly respected researchers, in fields associated with issues related to natural resources and environmental policy in the era of global change. The reference set focuses on the economic and strategic aspects of interactions among various parts of society, all dependent on the availability and utilization of limited natural resources and their impact on the environment. Policy implications are addressed, including current challenges and future perspectives.The combination of the four books provides a unique perspective on the issues that engage the public discourse of researchers and policy-makers at state, regional, and global levels. Each of the books in the reference set and all four books as a whole provide coverage of disciplines and angles through which the reader can obtain an understanding of the state-of-the-art of dealing with natural resources and environmental policy in the era of global change. The books in the reference set complement each other and provide a scientific understanding of our ability to address the issues covered.
The science and management of environmental problems is a vast area, comprising both the natural and social sciences, and the multidisciplinary links often make these issues challenging to comprehend. Economics, Game Theory and International Environmental Agreements: The Ca' Foscari Lectures aims to introduce students to the multidimensional character of international environmental problems in general, and climate change in particular.Ecology, economics, game theory and diplomacy are called upon and brought together in the common framework of a basic mathematical model. Within that framework, and using tools from these four disciplines, the book develops a theory that aims to explain and promote cooperation in international environmental affairs.Other books on the topic tend to be research-oriented volumes of various papers. Instead, this is a book that offers a reasonably-sized synthesis of the multidimensional societal problems of transfrontier pollution, particularly of climate change. It uses mathematical modeling of economic and game theory concepts to examine these environmental issues and demonstrate many results in an accessible fashion. Readers interested in understanding the links between ecology and economics, as well as the connection between economics and institutional decision-making, will find in this text not only answers to many of their queries but also questions for further thinking.
This paper provides a review of various applications of cooperative game theory (CGT) to issues of natural and environmental resources. With an increase in the level of competition over environmental and natural resources, the incidents of disputes have been at the center of allocation agreements. The paper reviews the cases of common pool resources such as fisheries and forests, and cases of environmental pollution such as acid rain, flow, and stock pollution. In addition to providing examples of cooperative solutions to allocation problems, the conclusion from this review suggests that cooperation over scarce environmental and natural resources is possible under a variety of physical conditions and institutional arrangements. CGT applications to international fishery disputes are especially useful in that they have been making headway in policy-related agreements among states and regions of the world. Forest applications are more local in nature, but of great relevance in solving disputes among communities and various levels of governments.
This volume examines all aspects of using agent or individual-based simulation. This approach represents systems as individual elements having their own set of differing states and internal processes. The interactions between elements in the simulation represent interactions in the target systems. What makes this "social" is that it can represent an observed society. Social systems include all those systems where the components have individual agency but also interact with each other. This includes human societies and groups, but also increasingly socio-technical systems where the internet-based devices form the substrate for interaction. These systems are central to our lives, but are among the most complex known. This poses particular problems for those who wish to understand them. The complexity often makes analytic approaches infeasible but, on the other hand, natural language approaches are also inadequate for relating intricate cause and effect. This is why individual and agent-based computational approaches hold out the possibility of new and deeper understanding of such systems. This handbook marks the maturation of this new field. It brings together summaries of the best thinking and practices in this area from leading researchers in the field and constitutes a reference point for standards against which future methodological advances can be judged. This second edition adds new chapters on different modelling purposes and applying software engineering methods to simulation development. Revised existing content will keep the book up-to-date with recent developments. This volume will help those new to the field avoid "reinventing the wheel" each time, and give them a solid and wide grounding in the essential issues. It will also help those already in the field by providing accessible overviews of current thought. The material is divided into four sections: Introduction, Methodology, Mechanisms, and Applications. Each chapter starts with a very brief section called ‘Why read this chapter?’ followed by an abstract, which summarizes the content of the chapter. Each chapter also ends with a section on ‘Further Reading’. Whilst sometimes covering technical aspects, this second edition of Simulating Social Complexity is designed to be accessible to a wide range of researchers, including both those from the social sciences as well as those with a more formal background. It will be of use as a standard reference text in the field and also be suitable for graduate level courses.