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Working Paper Systems Perspective on the Interrelations between Natural, Human-made and Cultural Capital(1993) Berkes, Fikret; Folke, Carl"In recent years substantial progress has been achieved in the field of ecological economics for clarifying human-nature interrelations. The fundamental role of the life-support functions of the environment (Odum, 1975) for economic development and sustainability has entered from ecology into economics, and has started to be theoretically as well as empirically analyzed. This has, in part, given rise to the terminology of natural capital and human-made capital. In contrast to the assumptions of standard economic theory, ecological economists regard human-made capital and natural capital as fundamentally complementary. Natural capital and its derived goods and services are the preconditions or the basis for economic development. It is not possible for human ingenuity to create human-made capital without support from natural capital (e.g. Daly, 1990). Moreover, it is not possible to approach sustainability by only focusing on these two factors, natural capital and human-made capital interrelations. We need a third dimension, what we refer to as cultural capital, as well. From a systems perspective, we emphasize that the three types of capital are strongly interrelated and form the basis for guiding society towards sustainability."Working Paper Cultural Capital and Natural Capital Interrelations(1992) Folke, Carl; Berkes, Fikret"The importance of natural capital and the relationships between natural capital and human-made capital are of fundamental interest in ecological economics. But a consideration of these two kinds of capital alone fall short of providing the essential elements for the analysis of sustainability. A more complete conceptualization of the interdependency of the economy and the environment requires attention to social/cultural /political systems as well. We use the term cultural capital to refer to factors that provide human societies with the means and adaptations to deal with the natural environment. Cultural capital, as used here, includes factors such as social/political institutions, environmental ethics (world view) and traditional ecological knowledge in a society. The three types of capital are closely interrelated. Natural capital is the basis for cultural capital. Human-made capital is generated by an interaction between natural and cultural capital. Cultural capital will determine how a society uses natural capital to create human-made capital. Aspects of cultural capital, such as institutions involved in the governance of resource use and the environmental world view, are crucial for the potential of a society to develop sustainable relations with its natural environment."Working Paper Linking Social and Ecological Systems for Resilience and Sustainability(1994) Berkes, Fikret; Folke, Carl"Traditional resource management systems or other local-level systems, based on the knowledge and experience of the resource users themselves, may have the potential to improve management of a number of ecosystems types. A considerable amount of evidence has accumulated to suggest that ecologically sensible indigenous practices have or had existed, for example, in the case of some tropical forests, island ecosystems, tropical fisheries, and semi-arid grazing lands. Given that Western resource management has not been all that successful in many of these environments, perhaps there are lessons to be learned from the cultural capital of societies which have elaborated these practices, a view echoed in Our Common Future. Ancient cultures and indigenous peoples do not have monopoly over ecological wisdom; there are cases of local, newly emergent or 'neo-traditional' resource management systems which cannot claim historical continuity over generations but which are nevertheless based on local knowledge and practice appropriately adapted to the ecological systems in which they occur."Working Paper Fisheries and the Prisoner's Dilemma Game: Conditions for the Evolution of Cooperation among Users of Common Property Resources(1987) Berkes, Fikret; Kence, Aykut"Recent studies using Prisoner's Dilemma framework have led to a theory of cooperation based on repeated encounters and the development of reciprocity. The theory is applicable to a diversity of disciplines and has implications fort he use of common property resources such as fisheries, i.e. what are the conditions under which the users of a fishery resource will cooperate to avoid, what some consider, the inevitable 'tragedy of the commons'? The Prisoner's Dilemma approach helps formalize some of the recent theoretical developments on conditions of successful common property use. In particular, it offers insights regarding the importance of probability of encounter among users, development of reciprocal relations among them, the number of users in an area and the degree of crowding, heterogeneity of user groups, the importance of local residency, and the supply-demand characteristics of the resource."