The Degradation of Nature and the Growth of Environmental Concern: Toward a Theory of the Capture and Limits of Ecological Value

In this paper we overcome limitations of extant models of long-term social evolution by developing a formal theory that explains the emergence of environmental injustices and movements for environmental protection by incorporating the concept of ecological value, a value derived from the supply and quality of ecological services demanded by a society or group(s) within a society. The theory explains how intraand inter-societal imbalances of political and/or economic power are harnessed to capture distant ecological value in response to selection pressures resulting from reductions in the local level and/or quality of ecological services and in response to the growth of environmental concern. Opposing the continued capture are the same forces that generate it-ecological degradation and ecological concern-the dynamics of which shift along with the scale; as the forces move from the local to the global they lead to a bifurcation point at which either solutions for ecological sustainability are implemented or failure occurs in the form of ecological collapse. We close by considering the ramifications of this model in which the relative levels of these forces shape the future.