Sustainability Risks under Lotka-Volterra Dynamics

Abstract

The record-breaking heat in recent years, along with other extreme weather conditions worldwide has not only warned us about the devastating effects of global warming but also revived our interest in studying sustainability risks on a broader scale. In this paper, we propose a generalised model of sustainability risks characterising the economic-environmental-social nexus (EVS) based on a classic Lotka-Volterra framework. Compared to the World3 model proposed by Meadows et al. (1972) in their landmark study "The Limits to Growth", our model has numerous advantages such as i) better analytical tractability, ii) more representative characterisation of economic development arising from innovation, and iii) can be adopted in many potential applications of modelling sustainability risks from its sub-dynamics.