UN Development Information Day 24th October2012 Poverty and ecology: developing a new evolutionary approach Ke Zhang John Dearing, Richard Treves (Southampton University); Xiangdong Yang, Xuhui Dong (NIGLAS, Nanjing); Weiguo Zhang (East China Normal University, Shanghai); Terry Dawson (Dundee University) Paul Sillitoe (Durham University)

Project objective Developing an evolutionary framework to understand the long-term dynamics of coupled socio-ecology system

Study region

(Dearing et al 2012, PNAS)

Tradeoffs

Tipping point and early warning signal Rising variance gives early warning signal ~30 years before threshold

Critical transition of water quality in the whole region Zhang et al., unpublished

Decoupling economic growth from environmental degradation Zhang et al., unpublished

 Palaeoenvironmental sources of ‘regulating services’ provide new and important long term perspectives on ecological stability/degradation  The environment are approaching or already in the critical transition period since 1980s.  Tradeoffs patterns between provisioning services and regulating services in the last 100 years are clear unsustainable.  There is no sign of decoupling economic growth from the environmental degradation in east China Conclusion

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