Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin - IRI THESys

Dealing with public goods and common pool resources

Friday, 20 March2015, 3 pm, IGB

Dealing with public goods and common pool resources is a problem that faces organisms from microbes to human societies, and poses great challenges with reference to global environmental problems like climate change. Much can be learned from how evolution has dealt with such problems, and human societies rely on insurance arrangements, social norms, regulations and laws to avoid tragedies of the commons. As the scale of the ensemble increases, however, cooperation becomes more difficult to achieve. Global environmental management, therefore, will need to develop new approaches, possibly building on modularity and Vincent and Elinor Ostrom’s notions of polycentricity.  This lecture will explore various dimensions of this problem.

Simon Levin is Professor of Biology at Princeton University's Department of Ecology & Evolutionary Biology. His research interests are focused on how macroscopic patterns and processes are maintained at the level of ecosystems and the biosphere, in terms of ecological, behavioral, and evolutionary mechanisms that operate primarily at the level of the organisms. In recent years, he has turned his attention to the parallels between ecological systems and financial and economic systems, particularly with regard to what makes them vulnerable to collapse, and to the evolution and development of structure and organization.

This lecture is funded by the Princeton-Humboldt-Universität Centre for Reality Mining of Animal-Human Systems and organized by the Division of Integrative Fisheries Management at the Faculty of Life Sciences in cooperation with IRI THESys and the Leibniz-Institute of Freshwater Ecology and Inland Fisheries (IGB).
 

Location:

Lecture Hall of IGB, Müggelseedamm 310, 12587 Berlin-Friedrichshagen

Have a look at the poster!