Coevolution, agricultural practices and sustainability: some major social and ecological issues

Clement Tisdell

International Journal of Agricultural Resources, Governance and Ecology, 2000, vol. 1, issue 1, 6-16

Abstract: This paper outlines the major social and ecological issues involved in the coevolution of social and ecological systems by initially reviewing relevant aspects of the recent literature relating to economic development and their implications for agricultural development. Coevolutionary qualitative-type models are presented. There has been a failure among advocates of structural adjustment policies (involving the extension of markets and economic globalisation) to take account of coevolutionary principles and to allow for historical differences in the evolution of communities and their varied circumstances. This lack of sensitivity has had unfortunate social and ecological consequences for some communities in, for example, the Russian Federation and for subsistence agriculturalists in some less developed countries. The evolution of globalised market systems involving industrial/commercial agriculture (largely dependent on inputs external to the farm) under the "patronage" of oligopolistic suppliers is seen to increasingly threaten the balance between social and ecological systems and as undermining the sustainability of both. Capitalistic processes of technological change, such as advances in biotechnology, play a major role in this evolution.

Keywords: coevolution; ecological systems; globalisation; industrial/commercial agriculture; property rights; social systems. (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2000
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.inderscience.com/link.php?id=5 (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
Chapter: Coevolution, agricultural practices and sustainability: some major social and ecological issues (2003)
Working Paper: Coevolution: Agricultural Practices and Sustainability: Some Major Social and Ecological Issues (1999)
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:ids:ijarge:v:1:y:2000:i:1:p:6-16

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in International Journal of Agricultural Resources, Governance and Ecology from Inderscience Enterprises Ltd
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sarah Parker ().