The system dynamics approach for a global evolutionary analysis of sustainable development

Abstract

The challenge of pursuing sustainable development highlights the relevance of the complex mechanisms through which natural and social selection processes affect and are affected by the economic system. Current economic development is unsustainable because it fails to generate long-term systemic compatibility between firms and their natural and social environment. This paper evaluates the issue from an evolutionary perspective by conceptualising unsustainability as the emergence of negative macro-selection effects, arising from both the natural and social domains, and argues for a methodological need for closer integration of system dynamics modelling within the evolutionary field. The Earth4All model is then used to illustrate the complex interactions between economic, social, and natural selection processes. The model results illustrate that the current global development trajectory is strongly unsustainable from both a natural and a social perspective, leading to the emergence of relevant natural and social macro-selection mechanisms, whose systemic interactions bring further complex adverse effects.