Firewood Collection in South Africa: Adaptive Behavior in Social-Ecological Models

Ulfia A. Lenfers, Julius Weyl and Thomas Clemen
Additional contact information
Ulfia A. Lenfers: Department of Computer Science, Hamburg University of Applied Sciences, Berliner Tor 7, 20099 Hamburg, Germany
Julius Weyl: Department of Computer Science, Hamburg University of Applied Sciences, Berliner Tor 7, 20099 Hamburg, Germany
Thomas Clemen: Department of Computer Science, Hamburg University of Applied Sciences, Berliner Tor 7, 20099 Hamburg, Germany

Land, 2018, vol. 7, issue 3, 1-17

Abstract: Due to the fact that the South Africa’s savanna landscapes are under changing conditions, the previously sustainable firewood collection system in rural areas has become a social-ecological factor in questions about landscape management. While the resilience of savannas in national parks such as Kruger National Park (KNP) in South Africa has been widely acknowledged in ecosystem management, the resilience of woody vegetation outside protected areas has been underappreciated. Collecting wood is the dominant source of energy for rural households, and there is an urgent need for land management to find sustainable solutions for this complex social-ecological system. However, the firewood collection scenario is only one example, and stands for all “human-ecosystem service” interactions under the topic of over-utilization, e.g., fishery, grazing, harvesting. Agent-based modeling combined with goal-oriented action planning (GOAP) can provide fresh insights into the relationship between individual needs of humans and changes in land use. At the same time, this modeling approach includes adaptive behavior under changing conditions. A firewood collection scenario was selected for a proof-of-concept comprising households, collectors, ecosystem services and firewood sites. Our results have shown that, even when it is predictable what a single human agent will do, massive up-scaling is needed in order to understand the whole complexity of social-ecological systems. Under changing conditions, such as climate and an increasing population, fair distribution of natural goods become an important issue.

Keywords: firewood collection; savanna; Bushbuckridge; Kruger-to-Canyon Biosphere; goal-oriented action planning/GOAP; adaptive behavior; MARS; social-ecological systems (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: Q15 Q2 Q24 Q28 Q5 R14 R52 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2018
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (6)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/2073-445X/7/3/97/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/2073-445X/7/3/97/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jlands:v:7:y:2018:i:3:p:97-:d:163948

Access Statistics for this article

Land is currently edited by Ms. Carol Ma

More articles in Land from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().