Ecologic agency: Human behavior within the boreal forest

Economic models of agency founded upon an egotist interpretation of human behavior (i.e. homo economicus), dominate our understanding of human interaction with the environment, and represent the starting point for most forms of natural resource analysis. Alternatively, the doctrines of 'sustainable development' rest upon the ethical imperatives of inter-generational equity (i.e. altruism), and shift our vision from the exploitation of single resources over economic horizons, to the maintenance of 'total' ecosystems over ecological scales. As a result, conflicts and tradeoffs between short-term, reactive, 'economic' behaviour and long term, proactive 'sustainable' behaviour would appear inevitable, yet no recognized model of the latter form of agency exists to facilitate comparative analysis. This thesis seeks to determine whether the motivational impetus underlying 'sustainable development' is amenable to formal representation in the form of a Weberian 'ideal type' (i.e. homo brundtlandus), as per homo economicus.; After an iterative developmental process, an abstractive, existential formulization of human intent is created upon which to base analysis (i.e. homo ecologicus). The influence of 'ecologic' agency within a specific environmental setting (i.e. the boreal forest) is determined and compared to that of economic agency under similar circumstances. Specifically, a whole forest optimization model is used to ascertain the cost an economic agent would incur to maintain the productivity (i.e. long term site productivity) and form (i.e. species composition) of natural capital stocks through time. Under reasonable conditions an economic agent would willingly forego future wood flows to increase current flows, permanently divesting from natural capital. Ecologic agency is examined under similar circumstances (i.e. maintenance of species' composition) utilizing a dynamic and spatially explicit representation of the boreal forest in concert with a genetic algorithm. In contrast to economic agency, ecologic agency enlists natural processes to maintain environmental stability and species persistence. The theoretical implications of this analysis are then examined in terms of the plausibility of results (i.e. correspondence to actual circumstances) and the heuristic utility of homo ecologicus. Factors are discovered which limit the successful utilization of environmental agency, portending to methodological deficiencies in more traditional forms of human agency (i.e. most notably homo economicus).