Information Theory Perspective on Modeling Sustainability

Abstract

Sustainability requires integrated models for the description of the co-evolving relationships between the economy, society and nature. The paper argues that information theory as a transdisciplinary approach can provide the basis for new theoretical and practical developments in the modeling of sustainability. The methodological problems of its present paradigms (cybernetic, epistemological and pragmatic) however are currently being challenged by the requirements of sustainability. There is a need for a new approach to modeling based on information theory taking into account the assumptions about the nature of information processes, i.e. that they are real, spontaneous and subject to the principle of information relevance. The new sustainability modeling also needs to include intelligence as an information category. A global green information system (GGIS) is a possible example for the application of these concepts.

Modelling sustainability

“…What we have put forward elsewhere is the need for the new science of sustainometrics to be informed by two transdisciplinary theories, namely co-evolution and information theory [48] which will generate models that are dynamic, global and general. Such models will need to represent:…”