| Chapter : | Introduction: Putting Ecological Economics into Sustainable Agricultural Practices |
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Sustainable agricultural development requires the active and meaningful participation of the public in decision making. The objective of this endeavour is to incorporate meaningful community knowledge into the decision-making process and to support learning through a properly facilitated process. This is a contention that will be considered later in the book (see chapters 6 through 8). The system dynamics modelling approach provides a sophisticated systems technique for the articulation and analysis of the dynamic interaction of complex ecological, economic, and sociocultural relationships. It features computer modelling oriented to learning and helps develop insights into the complexity of real needs and conditions. In this regard, system dynamics modelling is articulated in this research as a participative framework that accommodates the diversity of perspectives and system elements in a holistic and integrated way. This book focuses on the research of ecological economics through a case study of ecological agriculture in China; it attempts to examine a specific manifestation of the promotion of sustainable agricultural development within a unique political economy setting. Therefore, the research will not be confined to agroecosystem aspects, but will also deal with the interactions of sociocultural, economic, and political dimensions that have greatly influenced—and will continue to influence—the evolutionary process of agricultural development. The combination of the ecological economics framework and system dynamics modelling as a holistic approach for dealing with problems of sustainability in the context of Chinese ecological agriculture will be explicitly addressed in chapters 7 and 8.
Outline of the Book
This book is divided into 10 chapters. This introductory chapter provides an overview of the book, outlining its scope, identifying the key research problems, and stating the main themes that are developed. Chapter 1 presents an articulation of ecological economics from an international perspective. Following that, chapter 2 focuses on the articulation of ecological economics from a Chinese perspective. The major