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Human adaptations in food, energy, and water systems

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Abstract

The impacts of recent natural disasters highlight the hidden vulnerabilities in society’s food, energy, and water systems and the potential for climate change to amplify these social liabilities. Some have pointed to technological solutions to reduce vulnerabilities and to build resiliency into food, energy, and water systems (FEWS). While technological advances to upgrade human systems, e.g., in agriculture, urban planning, pollution abatement, and green energy development, are critical, these technical advances are insufficient on their own. Effective FEWS management depends on understanding human decision-making, including adaptations to new environmental, social, or economic changes and the responses of individuals and communities to new technologies intended to improve FEWS resilience and sustainability. This paper draws on multiple social science perspectives, including decision science, economics, and sociology, to consider the fundamental role that human behavior and adaptations play in FEWS. We discuss the importance of accounting for human behavior within a coupled human-natural systems framework in which a range of human adaptations and feedbacks are considered, including how humans might respond directly to press-pulse dynamics and indirectly through their adoption of new technology. Following a brief summary of key concepts of decision-making theory at individual and community scales, we then focus on migration and land use changes, the two types of human adaptations that are particularly important for FEWS modeling and management. The paper concludes with a discussion of key knowledge gaps and research needs in the social sciences related to human adaptations in the context of FEWS.

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Notes

  1. Here we use the term “socially desirable” to represent the aggregate well-being of all individuals within a community or society (also referred to as social welfare). This includes the total utility or value that individuals receive from their consumption of goods and services, as well as the total value of public goods (e.g., education) and common pool resources (e.g., water bodies) that are typically undervalued by individuals. In addition, social welfare reflects future values discounted at the “social” discount rate, which may differ from individual discount rates, e.g., due to externalities associated with future resource losses that are valued by society but undervalued by individuals.

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Acknowledgments

We gratefully acknowledge research support from the following National Science Foundation grants: Division of Behavioral and Cognitive Sciences Grant 1541844, Coupled Natural Human Systems Grant 1114934, Water Sustainability and Climate Grant 1058059, and Division of Environmental Biology Grant 0410336.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Agricultural, Environmental and Development Economics, Ohio State University, 2120 Fyffe Road, Columbus, OH, 43210, USA

    Elena Irwin, Alessandra Faggian & Nicholas Irwin

  2. School of Environment and Natural Resources, Ohio State University, 2021 Coffey Road, Columbus, OH, 43210, USA

    Joseph Campbell, Robyn Wilson & Richard Moore

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  1. Elena Irwin
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Correspondence to Elena Irwin.

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Irwin, E., Campbell, J., Wilson, R. et al. Human adaptations in food, energy, and water systems. J Environ Stud Sci 6, 127–139 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s13412-016-0375-8

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