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A Reflection and Outlook

Evolution is special in islands . During his visit to the Galapagos in 1835 (Darwin et al. 1989), Darwin must have realized that island ecosystems constitute a set of independent experiments in how biological species develop as a result of their adaptation to new environments and associated forces of natural selection. From then till today, many critical insights into the nature and dynamics of biogeography and evolution are due to the study of island ecosystems (MacArthur and Wilson 2001; Whittaker and Fernández-Palacios 2007).

Evolution, however, proceeds not only by natural selection but, indeed, as the result of selection and shocks of any kind. The most compelling evidence for biological selection at work comes arguably from artificial selection – such as the breeding of dogs, cattle, or maize, by means of which humans shape these species for specific looks or purposes (Darwin and Mayr 2003). At present, most environments on Earth are disturbed by human activities (Crutzen 2006; Ellis and Ramankutty 2008; Ellis 2011), and while this creates sheer destruction in many places, the more complex reality is that nature continues to adapt and change in response to human activity; the islands of the Galapagos are no exception; see Chap. 6.

Thus, human activities create not only habitat loss and degradation directly but also a number of selective forces to which ecosystems respond and, given enough time, adapt. This adaptation shifts the emphasis (Chap. 4) for creating sustainable development away from simple conservation and places it on the forces created by humans on ecosystems. Critically, this shift of perspective leads to a more dynamic view of coupled urban-natural systems (Chap. 3) away from static conservation. Importantly, it opens up the possibility for future co-development and mutually beneficial synergies between nature and human societies.

Human development in islands is also special. Processes of economic growth, for example, though ubiquitous around the world today, still remain poorly understood. Policies to create economic development, for example, are variable in their attainments, and local successes remain largely not replicable when transplanted to new contexts. On a broad scale, we know that additional energy and resources are typically necessary for economic growth to persist. This view is often overextended and argued to imply that any new economic growth will require large amounts of energy and other resources typical of previous growth associated, e.g., with manufacturing. This is not true because most of the highest value-added goods and services are informational and urban, so that higher-income economies can indeed be less energy intensive in terms of unit of GDP per unit of energy used (Bettencourt and West 2010).

Nevertheless, this nexus between energy consumption and the creation of goods and services, which ultimately follows from the second law of thermodynamics in any complex (dissipative) system, creates pressures that in conventional scenarios make economic growth unsustainable because nonrenewable resources are consumed and not recycled within human societies. Thus, inputs to human societies from natural systems are necessary, for example, as timber or fossil fuels, while outputs as wastes are dumped back onto natural environments, such as CO2 or dirty water. These resource flows constitute, in more specific terms, drivers created by human societies on ecosystems, which may or may not be destructive, depending on what they are and how they are structured.

Additional perspectives on the drivers of economic growth emphasize knowledge and technological innovation as necessary for sustained growth (Romer 1990; Barro and Sala-i-Martin 2003). Other approaches to economic growth emphasize “better” institutions that reduce transaction costs (efficient bureaucracies, low corruption, stability) and create incentives for innovation and human capital accumulation (North 1987). Collective institutions, particularly those dedicated to handling commons, are also essential for responsible and sustainable stewardship of natural resources (Acemoglu et al. 2005; Jones and Romer 2010).

What this body of knowledge tells us is that how economic development happens matters a lot for sustainability. Though many past and present patterns of economic activity are unsustainable to natural environments, there are almost certainly paths to be discovered, associated with greater prosperity and well-being for both humans and nature; see on particular Galapagos narrative in Chap. 5.

Identifying such paths to sustainability requires active and intentional research in specific systems. The key property of islands is that flows in and out are much more clearly defined and measurable. The Galapagos, in particular, already have a number of systems in place to keep track of several of these key flows, such as human migration to the islands, boat movements, and tourism. Trade flows between the islands and the continent can also be tracked, measuring imported quantities such as food, building materials, vehicles, energy products, and other consumables. One aspect is addressed in Chap. 7.

Detailed studies of these flows and their transformations in the several island towns have the potential for providing a full, dynamical characterization of how the human presence in islands functions, how it creates rising livelihoods and value, and how its adverse effects can be mitigated or eliminated toward creating truly sustainable development; see Chaps. 5, 6, and 7.

A Research Agenda for Sustainability in Island Systems

The general considerations of the previous section map into a general scheme, organizing necessary research toward a sustainability plan for any island system:

A research agenda can be formulated in three parts :

  1. 1.

    Map the structure of inflows and outflows to each system. This includes energy, resources, people, construction materials, etc., as inputs , and money, wastes, and people as outputs. This produces an input-output matrix, similar to what is sometimes done in both regional science (Isard 1972) and urban metabolism (Kennedy et al. 2011; Sahely et al. 2003). Critically, this methodology unifies these two approaches by tracking and connecting interdependent flows with different units, such as people, energy and goods, and their economic value.

  2. 2.

    Create a model of each human settlement to track the local transformation and accumulation of inputs. This includes the consumption of certain products, the expenditure of energy, and the creation of corresponding wastes, as well as the accumulation of people and construction materials. This model should be spatially explicit and disaggregated, so that construction, population, and economic activity can be understood in detail.

  3. 3.

    Propose and evaluate explicit interdependent changes to inputs, transformation, and outputs toward sustainability. This can happen, for example, through the substitution of inputs and/or the modification of processes, such that adverse effects can be eliminated or made beneficial while desirable outputs can continue to grow (Jacobs 1985). This means, for example, substituting fossil energy and nonrenewable material inputs with green energy and locally sourced resources (Chap. 2) and eliminating or recycling pollutants. The key to these processes at the social and economic level is to be able to create new economic opportunities and collective stewardship within local communities, growing the value of tourism and other tradable local services while maintaining patterns of biodiversity on land and sea.

These steps and their articulation are illustrated in Fig. 10.1. Detailed plans associated with each measurable, specified over time and space must be developed for each island system .

Fig. 10.1
figure 1

Input and output flows of human activity in an Island system (Puerto Baquerizo Moreno, San Cristobal, Galapagos). The transformations of inputs (red arrow) into outputs (green arrow) are described in terms of a model of the urban settlement (blue box) specified in terms of dynamical networks of people, infrastructure, and places. The return blue line connecting outputs back to inputs via the model represents potential changes in the integrated operation of the system toward sustainability

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Outlook

There is a critical need for a deeper, more operational understanding of processes of human development that are sustainable. The focus has recently shifted from global effects, such as CO2 in the atmosphere, to sources and control points, such as the localized processes where energy is consumed and where unsustainable consumption and waste production take place.

Island systems present a perfect opportunity for creating true sustainable dynamics of human development. This is not only because these natural systems are unique and therefore irreplaceable – a fact long known to evolutionary biologists – but also because their human settlements are fairly small and far less complex than megacities elsewhere. Because of their physical separation and relative simplicity, island urban systems can now be mapped in terms of their structure and flows in an increasingly complete way; see Fig. 10.1.

Island urban systems are challenging in other ways that make a local solution play to higher standards relative to more contiguous geographic settlement systems . Their physical isolation strongly suggests that most input resources and energy should be sourced locally and that likewise all wastes should be processed in place so that they are not harmful to the environment. These constraints depend on how sustainable transportation in and out of islands becomes, a process that is also undergoing transformations (McConnell 2002; Ng and Song 2010; Upham 2003), and on relative advantages of production and post-consumption processes in islands versus in other locations.

Going forward, it will become critical to carefully lay out and map these sustainability scenarios, especially those in which the flows of production and consumption underlying the (tourism) economy of islands such as the Galapagos are to be closed either locally or more globally, if transportation itself becomes sustainable.

While it remains true that the battle for sustainability will need to be won in cities, it may well be that it is in coupled urban-natural systems in islands (Chap. 3) that the most critical breakthroughs will be made. Making economic growth and sustainability mutually supportive in island urban systems is therefore a critical – more tangible and more exacting – step toward realizing global sustainability goals everywhere.