Notes from the Greenhouse World: A Study in Coevolution, Planetary Sustainability, and Community Structure

This paper explores coevolution and governance of common goods using models of coevolving biospheres, in which adapting populations must collectively regulate their planet’s climate or face extinction. The results support the Gaia hypothesis against challenges based on the tragedy of the commons: model creatures are often able to work together to maintain the common good (a suitable climate) without being undermined by “free riders.” A long-term dynamics appears in which communities that cannot sustain Gaian cooperation give way to communities that can. This result provides an argument why a Gaia scenario should generally be observed, rather than a tragedy of the commons scenario. Second, a close look at how communities fail reveals failures that do not fit the tragedy of the commons framework and are better described in terms of conflict between differently positioned parties, with power over different aspects of the system. In the context of Norgaard’s work, all these observations can be read as narratives of coevolution relevant to social communities as well as ecological ones, contrasting with pessimistic scenarios about common governance and supporting respect for traditional arrangements and restraint in intervention.