Stability and Sustainability of Resource Consumption Networks

Abstract: In this paper, we examine both stability and sustainability of a network-based model of natural resource consumption. Stability is studied from a dynamical systems perspective, though we argue that sustainability is a fundamentally different notion from stability in social-ecological systems. Accordingly, we also present a criterion for sustainability that is guided by the existing literature on sustainable development. Assuming a generic social network of consuming agents' interactions, we derive sufficient conditions for both the stability and sustainability of the model as constraints on the network structure itself. We complement these analytical results with numerical simulations and discuss the implications of our findings for policy-making for sustainable resource governance.