Understanding human ecology: a systems approach to sustainability

Cover -- Half Title -- Title Page -- Copyright Page -- Dedication -- Table of Contents -- List of Figures -- List of Tables -- List of Boxes -- Foreword -- Preface -- Prologue: Six Impossible things Before Breakfast -- Part I: The Challenge -- 1 Human Ecology: An Evolving Perspective -- 1.1 Introduction -- 1.2 Human Ecology: An Evolving Perspective -- 1.3 The Challenge of Human Ecology -- 1.4 Conclusion: A Systems Approach to Sustainability -- 2 Dynamics of Conflict and Change in the Snowy Mountains -- 2.1 Introduction -- 2.2 The Australian Snowy Mountains -- 2.3 The First Nations: Peoples at Home in the High Country -- 2.4 New Arrivals: Stockmen and Graziers -- 2.5 Inland Irrigators -- 2.6 Changing Flows: The Snowy Hydro Scheme -- 2.7 New Expectations - New Pressures -- 2.8 Conclusion -- Part II: Building Shared Understanding -- 3 Thinking Together -- 3.1 Introduction -- 3.2 Mental Models and Prediction -- 3.3 Conceptual Metaphor, Understanding, and Reasoning -- 3.4 Categories: Classical and Fuzzy -- 3.5 The Conduit Metaphor and Communication -- 3.6 Powerful Ideas -- 3.7 Conclusion -- 4 System Dynamics I: Stocks and Flows -- 4.1 Introduction -- 4.2 Accumulation and the Water Tank Metaphor -- 4.3 Stocks Control Flows, Flows Change Stocks -- 4.4 Causal Diagrams -- 4.5 Stocks and States -- 4.6 Conclusion -- 5 System Dynamics II: Feedback -- 5.1 Introduction -- 5.2 Feedback and Endogenous Behaviour -- 5.3 Basic Feedback Dynamics -- 5.4 System Archetypes -- 5.5 Cross-Sector Feedback: An Invisible Force -- 5.6 Conclusion -- 6 Systems and Sustainability -- 6.1 Introduction -- 6.2 Sustainable Processes -- 6.3 Limits to Growth -- 6.4 Delays, Oscillation, Overshoot, and Collapse -- 6.5 Extending the Ehrlich-Holden Relation -- 6.6 Conclusion -- 7 Towards A Shared Theoretical Framework -- 7.1 Introduction.

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We are facing hugely complex challenges - from climate change to world poverty, our problems are part of an inter-related web of social and natural systems. Human Ecology provides an approach to address these complex challenges, a way to understand them holistically and to start to manage them more effectively. This textbook, which has been road-tested and refined through over a decade of teaching and workshops, offers a coherent conceptual framework for Human Ecology - a clear approach for understanding the many systems we are part of and how we frame and understand the problems we face. By g