Marco A. Janssen

Global groundwater resources are threatened by over-extraction. Castilla-Rho et al. develop an agent-based model of irrigated agriculture based on cooperative and collective action theory, incorporating results from the World Values Survey. The model captures the cultural, socioeconomic, institutional and physical conditions that determine how likely people in different at-risk regions are to comply with regulations.

To evaluate possible futures with regard to economy, energy and climate, a multi-agent modelling approach is used. Agents hold different perspectives on how the world functions (worldview) and how it should be managed (management style) and this is implemented in a simple dynamic model of the economy-energy-climate system. Each perspective is supported by a proportion of the agents, but this proportion changes in response to observations about the real world. In this way the totality of agents learn from their observations. It is concluded that this approach is a good illustration of how adaptive behavior can be included in global change modelling. Some exploratory experiments are done to address the consequences of surprises.

Keywords: Global change; Integrated assessment modeling; Perspectives; Multi-agent modeling.

Cultural perspectives play an important role in framing international climate policy. The concept we have introduced is designed to enable quantification of the influence of such cultural perspectives on the allocation of fossil CO2 emission rights. A model is presented which allocates future emission rights to world regions. An emission budget which incorporates an historical component is defined for the specific period which is required if climate change policy targets are to be met. Allocation of the budget to regions is based on a weighted mix of indicators such as population size, GNP and energy consumption. Subtracting historical emissions results in future regional emission rights. Uncertainties in the selection of parameter values for the model and in generating scenarios of future developments are here regarded as being related to cultural perspectives. We have assumed that cultural perspectives can be quantified by reference to distributions of preferred parameter values and preferred future scenarios. Distributions of regional emission rights biased towards preferred allocations as determined by the perspectives can thus be described. In fact, the proposed approach envisages an uncertainty analysis based on the characteristics of cultural perspectives.

Keywords: Climate change; CO2; Cultural perspectives; Allocation of emission rights.

Addressing global change demands an integrative consideration of interactions between humans and the environment on a world wide scale. An assimilative integrated system approach seems to be appropriate for investigation of this complex global problem. In this paper an integrated modeling approach is proposed that is based on an evolutionary view on global change. A case study is worked out where images of the future using a multi-agent model are assessed, and where agents differ in their world view and thus also in their preferred management style. The perspective of agents may change due to new information they derive from the system. A simple model is constructed to illustrate the consequences of this approach on climate change scenarios.

In this chapter we present simulation experiments and outcomes of the energy submodel TIME. First, the major controversies and uncertainties are discussed. Next, the cultural perspectives are introduced with reference to world energy, after which we clarify the way in which these are linked to assumptions and model routes. Some results of sensitivity and uncertainty analyses are also given. We discuss a few energy dystopias which could emerge if, for a given population-economy scenario, the world view and the management style within the energy system are discordant. Some conclusions are presented about the plausibility of and risks related to the Utopian energy futures. The impacts of the emissions from fossil fuel combustion on water, land, and element cycles are discussed in the next three chapters.