Cycle of poverty

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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cycle_of_poverty

United States. Map highlighting counties defined as "persistent poverty counties."

In economics, a cycle of poverty, poverty trap or generational poverty is when poverty seems to be inherited, preventing subsequent generations from escaping it. This is known as the cycle of poverty. It is caused by self-reinforcing mechanisms that cause poverty, once it exists, to persist unless there is outside intervention. It can persist across generations, and when applied to developing countries, is also known as a development trap.

Families trapped in the cycle of poverty have few to no resources. There are many self-reinforcing disadvantages that make it virtually impossible for individuals to break the cycle. Lack of financial capital, education, and social connections all play a role in keeping the impoverished within the cycle of poverty. Those who are born into poverty have been shown to consistently remain poor throughout their lives.

Educational psychologist Ruby K. Payne, author of A Framework for Understanding Poverty, distinguishes between situational poverty, which can generally be traced to a specific incident within the lifetimes of the person or family members in poverty, and generational poverty, which is a cycle that passes from generation to generation, and goes on to argue that generational poverty has its own distinct culture and belief patterns.

Measures of social mobility examine how frequently poor people become wealthier, and how often children are wealthier or achieve higher income than their parents.

Causes of the cycle

Economic factors

US federal minimum wage if it had kept pace with productivity. Also, the real minimum wage in inflation-adjusted dollars. It peaked in 1968.

 

Percent of Americans living below the poverty line in each U.S. state, and the District of Columbia. U.S. Census Bureau.

 

US map of hourly minimum wages by state and District of Columbia (D.C.), in US dollars. Date at top.

The US federal minimum wage has not kept up with inflation. It peaked in 1968 at $14 an hour in inflation-adjusted dollars. It has been at $7.25 an hour since 2009. Some, such as the Center for Law and Social Policy, the Center for American Progress, and Oxfam say that poverty is caused and maintained, to a significant degree, by low wages that some people in poverty earn. A low minimum wage also lowers wages above it too. It is more and more difficult for those households to get out of poverty, especially in states that haven't raised the minimum wage very much, or at all, since 2009. The Washington Center for Equitable Growth and The Review of Economic Studies noted studies that found that higher minimum wages in some places increased employment. One reason was that they lowered the rate of people leaving their jobs, thus increasing the number of filled jobs. The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation reported that researchers have determined that regardless of possible job losses (in some places) a federal minimum wage increase would bring great financial relief to many people.

However, some labor economists say that little poverty has been reduced following minimum wage increases. Others, such as the National Bureau of Economic Research, say their studies demonstrate that the negative consequences had on some low-wage earners due to minimum wage increases, such as minimum-wage earners in competitive markets having their work hours reduced or even losing employment after the minimum wage is increased, may not always be outweighed by the positive effects, depending on the unique circumstances of each labor market.

Some poor households, with or without full-time working members, have people that can not work very much, if at all. According to the United States Census, in 2012 people aged 18–64 living in poverty in the country gave the reason they did not work, by category:

• 31% – Ill or disabled
• 26% – Home or family reasons
• 21% – School or other
• 13% – Cannot find work
• 8% – Retired early

Some activities can also cost poor people more than wealthier people. For example, if unable to afford the first month's rent and security deposit for a typical apartment lease, people sometimes must live in a hotel or motel at a higher daily rate. If unable to afford an apartment with a refrigerator, kitchen, and stove, people may need to spend more on prepared meals than if they could cook for themselves and store leftovers.

According to the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO), about 20 percent of American families that include a worker earning up $7.25 per hour (the federal minimum wage), 13 percent of families with a worker earning from $7.25 to $12.00 per hour, and 5 percent of families with a worker earning from $12.01 to $16 per hour were in poverty over a period from 1995 to 2016.

In the case of banking, people who cannot maintain a minimum daily balance in a savings account are often charged fees by the bank, whereas people with larger amounts of wealth can earn interest on savings and substantial returns from investments. Unbanked people must use higher-cost alternative financial services, such as check-cashing services for payroll and money orders for transferring to other people. People who have had previous credit problems, such as overdrafting an account, may not be eligible to open a checking or savings account. Major reasons for not opening a bank account include not trusting banks, being concerned about not making a payment due to a bank error or delay, not understanding how banks work, and not having enough money to qualify for a free account.

Though most industrialized countries have free universal health care, in the United States and many developing countries, people with little savings often postpone expensive medical treatment as long as possible. This can cause a relatively small medical condition to become a serious condition that costs more to treat, and may cause lost wages due to missed hourly work. Poor people may have lower overall personal medical expenses simply because illnesses and medical conditions go untreated, but on average life span is shorter. Higher-income workers usually have medical insurance, which shields them from excessive costs and often encourages preventive care. In addition to available personal savings, higher-income workers are more likely to be salaried with specified personal time and sick days that prevents them from losing wages while seeking treatment.

Because no skills or experience are required, some people in poverty make money by volunteering for medical studies or donating blood plasma.

Internal and external factors sustaining poverty

Amongst the most popular characterizations of the ongoing experience of poverty are that:

1. It is systemic or institutionalized or
2. A person is misguided by emotional challenges driven by historical experiences or
3. A person is affected by a mental disability,

or a combination of all three reasons.

Systemic factors

Donald Curtis (2006), a researcher at the School of Public Policy in the United Kingdom, identified that governments regard the welfare system as an enabling task. Curtis (2006) maintained, however, that the system lacks cohesiveness, and is not designed to be an empowerment tool.

For example, outside parties are funded to manage the effort without much oversight, creating a disconnected system, for which no one leads (Curtis, 2006). The result is mismanagement of budget without forwarding progress, and those that remain in the poverty loophole are accused of draining the system (Curtis, 2006).

Bias

Jill Suttie (2018), wrote that implicit bias can be transferred nonverbally to children with no more than a look or a gesture, and as such is a learned behavior. Critical thinking skills can ward off implicit bias, but without education and practice, habitual thoughts can cloud judgment and poorly affect future decisions.

Decision-making

A Dartmouth College (2016) study reported that probabilistic decision-making follows prior-based knowledge of failure in similar situations. Rather than choose success, people respond as if the failure has already taken place. Those who have experienced intergenerational poverty are most susceptible to this kind of learned behavior (Wagmiller & Adelman, 2009).

Intergenerational

Professors of Sociology Wagmiller and Adelman (2009) asserted that roughly 35–46% of people who have experienced hardship in young and middle adulthood also experienced moderate to severe poverty in childhood. As of 2018, 7.5 million people experienced poverty in California alone (Downs, 2018).

Mental illness

In a qualitative study, Rudnick et al., (2014), studied people living in poverty with mental illness and determined that participants felt that wellness care, nutrition, housing, and jobs were severely lacking. Respondents asserted that the most significant problem was access to quality services; bureaucratic systems appear to be devoid of logic and treatment by providers were often unaccommodating and uncooperative (Rudnick et al., 2014).

Lowered productivity

The stress of worrying about one's personal finances can cause lower productivity. One study on factory workers in India found payment earlier in the work period increased average worker output by 6.2%.

Choices and culture

According to a 2009 and 2011 study made by the Brookings Institution, people who finish high school, get a full-time job, and wait until age 21 to marry and have children end up with a poverty rate of only 2%, whereas people who follow none of the steps end up with a poverty rate of 76%.

Early childhood adversity and basic needs stressors contributing to the cycle of generational poverty

The stress of early childhood adversities, including basic need stressors, abuse, and neglect, are major causes of generational poverty. Studies have shown that the trauma of child abuse manifests negatively in adult life in overall health and even in employment status. Abuse and neglect are potential adversities facing those in poverty, the adversity that is shared among all below the poverty line is the daily stress over basic needs. "The stress of meeting basic needs takes all precedent in the family, and children learn that the only way to survive is to focus on getting basic needs met". Every member of a household in poverty is impacted by basic need stressors. The ability to secure and pay for childcare is another contributing factor to the problems those in poverty have with finding and keeping a job.

These stressors are not just unpleasant, they are catastrophic to a body's health and development. Exposure to chronic stress can induce changes in the architecture of different regions of the developing brain (e.g., amygdala, hippocampus), which can impact a range of important functions, such as regulating the stress response, attention, memory, planning, and learning new skills, and also contribute to dysregulation of inflammatory response systems that can lead to a chronic "wear and tear" effect on multiple organ systems. Chronic stress is detrimental to our health and has even been proven to harm memory and organs, including the brain. Working memory, defined as a human's capacity to store information in the brain for immediate use, is known to be shorter for children raised in poverty versus those raised in a middle-class environment. Children suffering through basic needs stressors from the earliest of years have to work harder than their peers to learn and absorb information.

Family background

A 2002 research paper titled "The Changing Effect of Family Background on the Incomes of American Adults" analyzed changes in the determinants of family income between 1961 and 1999, focusing on the effect of parental education, occupational rank, income, marital status, family size, region of residence, race, and ethnicity. The paper (1) outlines a simple framework for thinking about how family background affects children's family and income, (2) summarizes previous research on trends in intergenerational inheritance in the United States, (3) describes the data used as a basis for the research which it describes, (4) discusses trends in inequality among parents, (5) describes how the effects of parental inequality changed between 1961 and 1999, (6) contrasts effects at the top and bottom of the distribution, and (7) discusses whether intergenerational correlations of zero would be desirable. The paper concludes by posing the question of whether reducing the intergenerational correlation is an efficient strategy for reducing poverty or inequality.

Because improving the skills of disadvantaged children seems relatively easy, it is an attractive strategy. However, judging by American experience since the 1960s, improving the skills of disadvantaged children has proved difficult. As a result, the paper suggests, there are probably cheaper and easier ways to reduce poverty and inequality, such as supplementing the wages of the poor or changing immigration policy so that it drives down the relative wages of skilled rather than unskilled workers. These alternative strategies would not reduce intergenerational correlations, but they would reduce the economic gap between children who started life with all the disadvantages instead of all the advantages.

Another paper, titled Do poor children become poor adults?, which was originally presented at a 2004 symposium on the future of children from disadvantaged families in France, and was later included in a 2006 collection of papers related to the theme of the dynamics of inequality and poverty, discusses generational income mobility in North America and Europe. The paper opens by observing that in the United States almost one half of children born to low income parents become low income adults, four in ten in the United Kingdom, and one-third in Canada. The paper goes on to observe that rich children also tend to become rich adults—four in ten in the U.S. and the U.K., and as many as one-third in Canada. The paper argues, however, that money is not the only or even the most important factor influencing intergenerational income mobility. The rewards to higher skilled and/or higher educated individuals in the labor market and the opportunities for children to obtain the required skills and credentials are two important factors. Conclusions that income transfers to lower income individuals may be important to children but they should not be counted on to strongly promote generational mobility. The paper recommends that governments focus on investments in children to ensure that they have the skills and opportunities to succeed in the labor market, and observes that though this has historically meant promoting access to higher and higher levels of education, it is becoming increasingly important that attention be paid to preschool and early childhood education.

Lack of jobs due to deindustrialization

Main article: Spatial mismatch

Sociologist William Julius Wilson has said that the economic restructuring of changes from manufacturing to a service-based economy has led to a high percentage of joblessness in the inner-cities and with it a loss of skills and an inability to find jobs. This "mismatch" of skills to jobs available is said to be the main driver of poverty.

Effects of modern education

Research shows that schools with students who perform lower than the norm are also those hiring least-qualified teachers as a result of new teachers generally working in the area that they grew up in. This leads to certain schools not producing many students who enter tertiary education. Graduates who previously attended these schools are not as skilled as they would be if they had gone to a school with higher-qualified instructors. This leads to education perpetuating a cycle of poverty. People who choose to work in the schools close to them do not adequately supply the school with enough teachers. The schools must then outsource their teachers from other areas. Susanna Loeb from the School of Education at Stanford conducted a study and found that teachers who are brought in from the suburbs are 10 times more likely to transfer out of the school after their initial year. The fact that the teachers from the suburbs leave appears to be an influential factor for schools hiring more teachers from that area. The lack of adequate education for children is part of what allows for the cycle of poverty to continue. The problem undergoing this is the lack of updating the knowledge of the staff. Schools have continued to conduct professional development the same way they have for decades.

Culture of poverty

Another theory for the perpetual cycle of poverty is that poor people have their own culture with a different set of values and beliefs that keep them trapped within that cycle from generation to generation. This theory has been explored by Ruby K. Payne in her book A Framework for Understanding Poverty. In this book she explains how a social class system in the United States exists, where there is a wealthy upper class, a middle class, and the working poor class. These classes each have their own set of rules and values, which differ from each other. To understand the culture of poverty, Payne describes how these rules affect the poor and tend to keep them trapped in this continual cycle. Time is treated differently by the poor; they generally do not plan ahead but simply live in the moment, which keeps them from saving money that could help their children escape poverty.

Payne emphasizes how important it is when working with the poor to understand their unique cultural differences so that one does not get frustrated but instead tries to work with them on their ideologies and help them to understand how they can help themselves and their children escape the cycle. One aspect of generational poverty is a learned helplessness that is passed from parents to children; a mentality that there is no way for one to get out of poverty and so in order to make the best of the situation one must enjoy what one can when one can. This leads to such habits as spending money immediately, often on unnecessary goods such as alcohol and cigarettes, thus teaching their children to do the same and trapping them in poverty. Payne states that leaving poverty is not as simple as acquiring money and moving into a higher class but also includes giving up certain relationships in exchange for achievement. A student's peers can have an influence on the child's level of achievement. Coming from a low-income household a child could be teased or expected to fall short academically. This can cause a student to feel discouraged and hold back when it comes to getting involved more with their education because they are scared to be teased if they fail. This helps to explain why the culture of poverty tends to endure from generation to generation as most of the relationships the poor have are within that class.

The "culture of poverty" theory has been debated and critiqued by many people, including Eleanor Burke Leacock (and others) in her book The Culture of Poverty: A Critique. Leacock claims that people who use the term, "culture of poverty" only "contribute to the distorted characterizations of the poor." In addition, Michael Hannan in an essay argues that the "culture of poverty" is "essentially untestable." This is due to many things including the highly subjective nature of poverty and issues concerning the universal act of classifying only some impoverished people as trapped in the culture.

Life shocks

2004 research in New Zealand produced a report that showed that "life shocks" can be endured only to a limited extent, after which people are much more likely to be tipped into hardship. The researchers found very little differences in living standards for people who have endured up to 7 negative events in their lifetime. People who had 8 or more life shocks were dramatically more likely to live in poverty than those who had 0 to 7 life shocks. A few of the life shocks studied were:

• Marital
  • Marriage (or similar) break-ups (divorce)
  • Becoming a single parent
  • Unplanned pregnancy and birth of a child
• Lost of income (or increase in debt):
  • Bankruptcy
  • Substantial financial loss
  • Redundancy (being laid off from a job)
  • 3 months or more unemployed
  • Unexpected and substantial drop in income
  • A non-custodial sentence (community service, or fines, but not imprisonment)
• Forced sale of house
• Eviction
• Major damage to home
• House burgled
• Victim of violence
• Incarceration
• Illness lasting three weeks or more
• Major injury or health problem

The study focused on just a few possible life shocks, but many others are likely as traumatic or more so. Chronic PTSD, complex PTSD, and depression sufferers could have innumerable causes for their mental illness, including those studied above. The study is subject to some criticism.

Tracking in education

History in the United States has shown that Americans saw education as the way to end the perpetual cycle of poverty. In the present, children from low to middle income households are at a disadvantage. They are twice as likely to be held back and more likely not to graduate from high school. Recent studies have shown that the cause for the disparity among academic achievement results from the school's structure where some students succeed from an added advantage and others fail as a result of lacking that advantage. Educational institutions with a learning disparity are causing education to be a sustaining factor for the cycle of poverty. One prominent example of this type of school structures is tracking, which is predominantly used to help organize a classroom so the variability of academic ability in classes is decreased. Students are tracked based on their ability level, generally based on a standardized test after which they are given different course requirements. Some people believe that tracking "enhances academic achievement and improves the self-concept of students by permitting them to progress at their own pace."

The negative side is that studies have shown that tracking decreases students' opportunity to learn. Tracking also has a disproportionate number of Latinos and African Americans that have low socioeconomic status in the lower learning tracks. Tracking separates social classes putting the poor and minority children in lower tracks where they receive second-rate education, and the students who are better off are placed in upper tracks where they have many opportunities for success. Studies have found that in addition to the higher tracks having more extensive curriculum, there is also a disparity among the teachers and instructional resources provided. There appears to be a race/class bias which results in intelligent children not receiving the skills or opportunities needed for success or social/economic mobility, thus continuing the cycle of poverty. There is an overall perception that American education is failing and research has done nothing to counter this statement, but instead has revealed the reality and severity of the issue of the existence of tracking and other structures that cause the cycle of poverty to continue.

Theories and strategies for breaking the cycle

General approaches

While many governmental officials are still trying to solve poverty, many states and localities are making an effort to break the cycle. Mayor Bloomberg of New York City has been advocating a plan where parents are paid up to $5,000 a year for meeting certain goals that will better their lives. This policy was modeled after a Mexican initiative that aims to help poor families make better decisions that will help them in the long-term and break cycle of poverty and dependence that have been known to last for generations. In addition, many states also have been making an attempt to help break the cycle. For example, a bill has been proposed in the California Assembly that "would establish an advisory Childhood Poverty Council to develop a plan to reduce child poverty in the state by half by 2017 and eliminate it by 2027". Even when the plan has poverty reduction as the goal, a rise in child poverty might be the reality for many states as it was in Connecticut. States are attempting to not only decrease the number of people in the cycle of poverty, but to also adjust the stringent work requirements that resulted from Congress's welfare reform. The tougher work restrictions have upset many poverty advocates who believe the new regulations prevent individuals who are vulnerable or who lack skills from preparing for work. California Democratic Representative McDermott believes as a result of this and other effects of the new limitations, it has been harder for individuals to escape a life of poverty.

Relatively modest increases in benefit levels for programs that assist nonworking individuals and low-income workers might well be sufficient to bring the United States into line with...other affluent nations in its degree of poverty reduction.

Lane Kenworthy

In his book Children in Jeopardy: Can We Break the Cycle, Irving B. Harris discusses ways in which children can be helped to begin breaking the cycle of poverty. He stresses the importance of starting early and teaching children the importance of education from a very young age as well as making sure these children get the same educational opportunities as students who are richer. Family values such as nurturing children and encouraging them to do well in school need to be promoted as well as a non-authoritarian approach to parenting. Harris also discusses the importance of discouraging teenage pregnancy and finding ways in which to decrease this phenomenon so that when children are born they are planned and wanted and thus have a better chance at breaking the cycle of poverty.

It has been suggested by researchers like Lane Kenworthy that increasing welfare benefits and extending them to non-working families can help reduce poverty as nations that have done so have had better results.

The Harlem Children's Zone is working to end generational poverty within a 100-block section of Harlem using an approach that provides educational support and services for children and their families from birth through college. This approach has been recognized as a model by the Obama administration's anti-poverty program.

Two-generation poverty alleviation approach

A two-generation poverty alleviation approach focuses on the education, health and social services, and opportunities that parents and children desperately need to lift their families from the depths of the bondage of poverty to a stable and healthy state mentally, physically, and financially. A two-generation approach is a holistic plan for poverty alleviation and "is needed to help low-income parents and children improve their situation". Using a two-generation approach, parents are taught additional career skills, provided leadership training, and given access to job opportunities with higher wages. Children are given access to better educational programs, free preschool, free childcare, and the supplies they'll need to be successful in school. The family unit receives counseling for the current stressors of poverty as well as childhood trauma. All members of the household are given access to full healthcare benefits, food services at home and in school, and financial relief for their bills, clothing, and transportation in the short-term to relieve the basic needs stressors that prevent the family from taking the time to learn and grow. The preschool program Head Start believes that the only system that works for a preschool is one where the child as a whole is considered, which includes their health and their parents' ability to succeed. The two-generation poverty alleviation approach sees each member relieved of the basic needs stressors that plague their minds, ensures that they are physically and mentally healthy, provides them the opportunities to learn the skills needed for higher wage jobs, and gives them access to higher wage jobs without discrimination.

Austerity

In his 2014 book, Mark Blyth claims that austerity not only fails to stimulate growth, but effectively passes that debt down to the working classes. As such, many academics such as Andrew Gamble view Austerity in Britain less as an economic necessity, and more as a tool of statecraft, driven by ideology and not economic requirements. A study published in The BMJ in November 2017 found the Conservative government austerity programme had been linked to approximately 120,000 deaths since 2010; however, this was disputed, for example on the grounds that it was an observational study which did not show cause and effect. More studies claim adverse effects of austerity on population health, which include an increase in the mortality rate among pensioners which has been linked to unprecedented reductions in income support, an increase in suicides and the prescription of antidepressants for patients with mental health issues, and an increase in violence, self-harm, and suicide in prisons.

Mass incarceration

Several scholars have linked mass incarceration of the poor in the United States with the rise of neoliberalism. Sociologist Loïc Wacquant and Marxist economic geographer David Harvey have argued that the criminalization of poverty and mass incarceration is a neoliberal policy for dealing with social instability among economically marginalized populations. According to Wacquant, this situation follows the implementation of other neoliberal policies, which have allowed for the retrenchment of the social welfare state and the rise of punitive workfare, whilst increasing gentrification of urban areas, privatization of public functions, the shrinking of collective protections for the working class via economic deregulation and the rise of underpaid, precarious wage labor. By contrast, it is extremely lenient in dealing with those in the upper echelons of society, in particular when it comes to economic crimes of the upper class and corporations such as fraud, embezzlement, insider trading, credit and insurance fraud, money laundering and violation of commerce and labor codes. According to Wacquant, neoliberalism does not shrink government, but instead sets up a "centaur state" with little governmental oversight for those at the top and strict control of those at the bottom.

Effects on children

Main article: Child poverty

Children are most vulnerable to the cycle of poverty. Because a child is dependent on their guardian(s), if a child's guardian is in poverty, then they will be also. It is almost impossible for a child to pull themself out of the cycle due to age, lack of experience, lack of a job, etc. Because children are at such a young and impressionable age, the scars they gain from experiencing poverty early in life inevitably carry on into their adult life. "Childhood lays the foundations for adult abilities, interests, and motivation." Therefore, if they learn certain poverty-related behaviors in childhood, the behaviors are more likely to perpetuate.

Studies have shown that household structure sometimes has a connection to childhood poverty. Most studies on the subject also show that the children who are in poverty tend to come from single-parent households (most often matriarchal). In 1997, nearly 8.5 million (57%) poor children in the US came from single-parent households. With the rate of divorce increasing and the number of children born out of wedlock increasing, the number of children who are born into or fall into single-parent households is also increasing. However, this does not mean that the child/children will be impoverished because of it.

According to Ashworth, Hill, & Walker (2004), both urban and rural poor children are more likely to be isolated from the nonpoor in schools, neighborhoods, and their communities. Human nature is to have relationships with others but when a child is isolated due to their socioeconomic status, it is hard to overcome that when the status does not improve. Therefore, poor children also have more tense relationships which sometimes results in abnormal, non-constructive, or other unexplained behaviors.

There have been programs developed to specifically address the needs of poor children. Francis Marion University's Center of Excellence to Prepare Teachers of Children of Poverty has a number of initiatives devoted to equipping teachers to be more effective in raising the achievement of children of poverty. It is located in South Carolina and provides direct teacher training as well as facilitates research in the area of poverty and scholastic achievement. Head Start is a program for low income families who provides early childhood education as well as parent involvement. Results show that attending these programs increases children's academic outcomes. The problem is that in high poverty areas this is supposed to be a helpful resource, but they start to hold lower quality due to lack of funds to keep places updated.

Often the communities in which impoverished children grow up in are crime ridden areas; examples of these areas in America are Harlem and the Bronx. Crime and maltreatment at a young age may reduce a child's ability to learn by up to 5%. Adopting a criminal lifestyle only worsens the effects of the cycle as they are often incarcerated or killed in many types of gang violence.

Developing world

In the developing world, many factors can contribute to a poverty trap, including: limited access to credit and capital markets, extreme environmental degradation (which depletes agricultural production potential), corrupt governance, capital flight, poor education systems, disease ecology, lack of public health care, war and poor infrastructure.

Jeffrey Sachs, in his book The End of Poverty, discusses the poverty trap and prescribes a set of policy initiatives intended to end the trap. He recommends that aid agencies behave as venture capitalists funding start-up companies. Venture capitalists, once they choose to invest in a venture, do not give only half or a third of the amount they feel the venture needs in order to become profitable; if they did, their money would be wasted. If all goes as planned, the venture will eventually become profitable and the venture capitalist will experience an adequate rate of return on investment. Likewise, Sachs proposes, developed countries cannot give only a fraction of what is needed in aid and expect to reverse the poverty trap in Africa. Just like any other start-up, developing nations absolutely must receive the amount of aid necessary (and promised at the G-8 Summit in 2005) for them to begin to reverse the poverty trap. The problem is that unlike start-ups, which simply go bankrupt if they fail to receive funding, in Africa people continue to die at a high rate due in large part to lack of sufficient aid.

Sachs points out that the extreme poor lack six major kinds of capital: human capital, business capital, infrastructure, natural capital, public institutional capital, and knowledge capital. He then details the poverty trap:

The poor start with a very low level of capital per person, and then find themselves trapped in poverty because the ratio of capital per person actually falls from generation to generation. The amount of capital per person declines when the population is growing faster than capital is being accumulated ... The question for growth in per capita income is whether the net capital accumulation is large enough to keep up with population growth.

Sachs argues that sufficient foreign aid can make up for the lack of capital in poor countries, maintaining that, "If the foreign assistance is substantial enough, and lasts long enough, the capital stock rises sufficiently to lift households above subsistence."

Sachs believes the public sector should focus mainly on investments in human capital (health, education, nutrition), infrastructure (roads, power, water and sanitation, environmental conservation), natural capital (conservation of biodiversity and ecosystems), public institutional capital (a well-run public administration, judicial system, police force), and parts of knowledge capital (scientific research for health, energy, agriculture, climate, ecology). Sachs leaves business capital investments to the private sector, which he claims would more efficiently use funding to develop the profitable enterprises necessary to sustain growth. In this sense, Sachs views public institutions as useful in providing the public goods necessary to begin the Rostovian take-off model, but maintains that private goods are more efficiently produced and distributed by private enterprise. This is a widespread view in neoclassical economics.

Several other forms of poverty traps are discussed in the literature, including nations being landlocked with bad neighbors; a vicious cycle of violent conflict; subsistence traps in which farmers wait for middlemen before they specialize but middlemen wait for a region to specialize first; working capital traps in which petty sellers have inventories too sparse to earn enough money to get a bigger inventory; low skill traps in which workers wait for jobs using special skill but firms wait for workers to get such skills; nutritional traps in which individuals are too malnourished to work, yet too poor to afford sustainable food; and behavioral traps in which individuals cannot differentiate between temptation and non-temptation goods, and therefore cannot invest in the non-temptation goods which could help them begin to escape poverty.

Biosphere

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biosphere

A false color composite of global oceanic and terrestrial photoautotroph abundance, from September 2001 to August 2017. Provided by the SeaWiFS Project, NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center and ORBIMAGE.^{[citation needed]}

The biosphere (from Ancient Greek βίος (bíos) 'life' and σφαῖρα (sphaîra) 'sphere'), also called the ecosphere (from Ancient Greek οἶκος (oîkos) 'settlement, house' and σφαῖρα (sphaîra) 'sphere'), is the worldwide sum of all ecosystems. It can also be termed the zone of life on the Earth. The biosphere (which is technically a spherical shell) is virtually a closed system with regard to matter, with minimal inputs and outputs. Regarding energy, it is an open system, with photosynthesis capturing solar energy at a rate of around 100 terawatts. By the most general biophysiological definition, the biosphere is the global ecological system integrating all living beings and their relationships, including their interaction with the elements of the lithosphere, cryosphere, hydrosphere, and atmosphere. The biosphere is postulated to have evolved, beginning with a process of biopoiesis (life created naturally from non-living matter, such as simple organic compounds) or biogenesis (life created from living matter), at least some 3.5 billion years ago.

In a general sense, biospheres are any closed, self-regulating systems containing ecosystems. This includes artificial biospheres such as Biosphere 2 and BIOS-3, and potentially ones on other planets or moons.

Origin and use of the term

A beach scene on Earth, simultaneously showing the lithosphere (ground), hydrosphere (ocean) and atmosphere (air)

The term "biosphere" was coined in 1875 by geologist Eduard Suess, who defined it as the place on Earth's surface where life dwells.

While the concept has a geological origin, it is an indication of the effect of both Charles Darwin and Matthew F. Maury on the Earth sciences. The biosphere's ecological context comes from the 1920s (see Vladimir I. Vernadsky), preceding the 1935 introduction of the term "ecosystem" by Sir Arthur Tansley (see ecology history). Vernadsky defined ecology as the science of the biosphere. It is an interdisciplinary concept for integrating astronomy, geophysics, meteorology, biogeography, evolution, geology, geochemistry, hydrology and, generally speaking, all life and Earth sciences.

Narrow definition

Geochemists define the biosphere as being the total sum of living organisms (the "biomass" or "biota" as referred to by biologists and ecologists). In this sense, the biosphere is but one of four separate components of the geochemical model, the other three being geosphere, hydrosphere, and atmosphere. When these four component spheres are combined into one system, it is known as the ecosphere. This term was coined during the 1960s and encompasses both biological and physical components of the planet.

The Second International Conference on Closed Life Systems defined biospherics as the science and technology of analogs and models of Earth's biosphere; i.e., artificial Earth-like biospheres. Others may include the creation of artificial non-Earth biospheres—for example, human-centered biospheres or a native Martian biosphere—as part of the topic of biospherics.

Earth's biosphere

Overview

Currently, the total number of living cells on the Earth is estimated to be 10³⁰; the total number since the beginning of Earth, as 10⁴⁰, and the total number for the entire time of a habitable planet Earth as 10⁴¹. This is much larger than the total number of estimated stars (and Earth-like planets) in the observable universe as 10²⁴, a number which is more than all the grains of beach sand on planet Earth; but less than the total number of atoms estimated in the observable universe as 10⁸²; and the estimated total number of stars in an inflationary universe (observed and unobserved), as 10¹⁰⁰.

Age

Stromatolite fossil estimated at 3.2–3.6 billion years old

The earliest evidence for life on Earth includes biogenic graphite found in 3.7 billion-year-old metasedimentary rocks from Western Greenland and microbial mat fossils found in 3.48 billion-year-old sandstone from Western Australia. More recently, in 2015, "remains of biotic life" were found in 4.1 billion-year-old rocks in Western Australia. In 2017, putative fossilized microorganisms (or microfossils) were announced to have been discovered in hydrothermal vent precipitates in the Nuvvuagittuq Belt of Quebec, Canada that were as old as 4.28 billion years, the oldest record of life on earth, suggesting "an almost instantaneous emergence of life" after ocean formation 4.4 billion years ago, and not long after the formation of the Earth 4.54 billion years ago. According to biologist Stephen Blair Hedges, "If life arose relatively quickly on Earth ... then it could be common in the universe."

Extent

Rüppell's vulture

Xenophyophore, a barophilic organism, from the Galapagos Rift

Every part of the planet, from the polar ice caps to the equator, features life of some kind. Recent advances in microbiology have demonstrated that microbes live deep beneath the Earth's terrestrial surface and that the total mass of microbial life in so-called "uninhabitable zones" may, in biomass, exceed all animal and plant life on the surface. The actual thickness of the biosphere on Earth is difficult to measure. Birds typically fly at altitudes as high as 1,800 m (5,900 ft; 1.1 mi) and fish live as much as 8,372 m (27,467 ft; 5.202 mi) underwater in the Puerto Rico Trench.

There are more extreme examples for life on the planet: Rüppell's vulture has been found at altitudes of 11,300 metres (37,100 feet; 7.0 miles); bar-headed geese migrate at altitudes of at least 8,300 m (27,200 ft; 5.2 mi); yaks live at elevations as high as 5,400 m (17,700 ft; 3.4 mi) above sea level; mountain goats live up to 3,050 m (10,010 ft; 1.90 mi). Herbivorous animals at these elevations depend on lichens, grasses, and herbs.

Life forms live in every part of the Earth's biosphere, including soil, hot springs, inside rocks at least 19 km (12 mi) deep underground, and at least 64 km (40 mi) high in the atmosphere. Marine life under many forms has been found in the deepest reaches of the world ocean while much of the deep sea remains to be explored.

Under certain test conditions, microorganisms have been observed to survive the vacuum of outer space. The total amount of soil and subsurface bacterial carbon is estimated as 5 × 10¹⁷ g. The mass of prokaryote microorganisms—which includes bacteria and archaea, but not the nucleated eukaryote microorganisms—may be as much as 0.8 trillion tons of carbon (of the total biosphere mass, estimated at between 1 and 4 trillion tons). Barophilic marine microbes have been found at more than a depth of 10,000 m (33,000 ft; 6.2 mi) in the Mariana Trench, the deepest spot in the Earth's oceans. In fact, single-celled life forms have been found in the deepest part of the Mariana Trench, by the Challenger Deep, at depths of 11,034 m (36,201 ft; 6.856 mi). Other researchers reported related studies that microorganisms thrive inside rocks up to 580 m (1,900 ft; 0.36 mi) below the sea floor under 2,590 m (8,500 ft; 1.61 mi) of ocean off the coast of the northwestern United States, as well as 2,400 m (7,900 ft; 1.5 mi) beneath the seabed off Japan. Culturable thermophilic microbes have been extracted from cores drilled more than 5,000 m (16,000 ft; 3.1 mi) into the Earth's crust in Sweden, from rocks between 65–75 °C (149–167 °F). Temperature increases with increasing depth into the Earth's crust. The rate at which the temperature increases depends on many factors, including the type of crust (continental vs. oceanic), rock type, geographic location, etc. The greatest known temperature at which microbial life can exist is 122 °C (252 °F) (Methanopyrus kandleri Strain 116). It is likely that the limit of life in the "deep biosphere" is defined by temperature rather than absolute depth. On 20 August 2014, scientists confirmed the existence of microorganisms living 800 m (2,600 ft; 0.50 mi) below the ice of Antarctica.

Earth's biosphere is divided into several biomes, inhabited by fairly similar flora and fauna. On land, biomes are separated primarily by latitude. Terrestrial biomes lying within the Arctic and Antarctic Circles are relatively barren of plant and animal life. In contrast, most of the more populous biomes lie near the equator.

Annual variation

Artificial biospheres

Biosphere 2 in Arizona

Experimental biospheres, also called closed ecological systems, have been created to study ecosystems and the potential for supporting life outside the Earth. These include spacecraft and the following terrestrial laboratories:

• Biosphere 2 in Arizona, United States, 3.15 acres (13,000 m²).
• BIOS-1, BIOS-2 and BIOS-3 at the Institute of Biophysics in Krasnoyarsk, Siberia, in what was then the Soviet Union.
• Biosphere J (CEEF, Closed Ecology Experiment Facilities), an experiment in Japan.
• Micro-Ecological Life Support System Alternative (MELiSSA) at Autonomous University of Barcelona

Extraterrestrial biospheres

No biospheres have been detected beyond the Earth; therefore, the existence of extraterrestrial biospheres remains hypothetical. The rare Earth hypothesis suggests they should be very rare, save ones composed of microbial life only. On the other hand, Earth analogs may be quite numerous, at least in the Milky Way galaxy, given the large number of planets. Three of the planets discovered orbiting TRAPPIST-1 could possibly contain biospheres. Given limited understanding of abiogenesis, it is currently unknown what percentage of these planets actually develop biospheres.

Based on observations by the Kepler Space Telescope team, it has been calculated that provided the probability of abiogenesis is higher than 1 to 1000, the closest alien biosphere should be within 100 light-years from the Earth.

It is also possible that artificial biospheres will be created in the future, for example with the terraforming of Mars.

Emergence

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emergence

The formation of complex symmetrical and fractal patterns in snowflakes exemplifies emergence in a physical system.

A termite "cathedral" mound produced by a termite colony offers a classic example of emergence in nature.

In philosophy, systems theory, science, and art, emergence occurs when a complex entity has properties or behaviors that its parts do not have on their own, and emerge only when they interact in a wider whole.

Emergence plays a central role in theories of integrative levels and of complex systems. For instance, the phenomenon of life as studied in biology is an emergent property of chemistry and physics.

In philosophy, theories that emphasize emergent properties have been called emergentism.

In philosophy

Main article: Emergentism

Philosophers often understand emergence as a claim about the etiology of a system's properties. An emergent property of a system, in this context, is one that is not a property of any component of that system, but is still a feature of the system as a whole. Nicolai Hartmann (1882–1950), one of the first modern philosophers to write on emergence, termed this a categorial novum (new category).

Definitions

This concept of emergence dates from at least the time of Aristotle. In Heideggerian thought, the notion of emergence is derived from the Greek word poiein, meaning "to make", and refers to a bringing-forth that encompasses not just a process of crafting (techne) but also the broader sense of something coming into being or revealing itself. Heidegger used emerging blossoms and butterflies as examples to illustrate poiêsis as a threshold event where something moves from one state to another. Many scientists and philosophers have written on the concept, including John Stuart Mill (Composition of Causes, 1843) and Julian Huxley (1887–1975).

The philosopher G. H. Lewes coined the term "emergent" in 1875, distinguishing it from the merely "resultant":

Every resultant is either a sum or a difference of the co-operant forces; their sum, when their directions are the same – their difference, when their directions are contrary. Further, every resultant is clearly traceable in its components, because these are homogeneous and commensurable. It is otherwise with emergents, when, instead of adding measurable motion to measurable motion, or things of one kind to other individuals of their kind, there is a co-operation of things of unlike kinds. The emergent is unlike its components insofar as these are incommensurable, and it cannot be reduced to their sum or their difference.

Strong and weak emergence

Further information: Emergent materialism and Reductive materialism

Usage of the notion "emergence" may generally be subdivided into two perspectives, that of "weak emergence" and "strong emergence". One paper discussing this division is Weak Emergence, by philosopher Mark Bedau. In terms of physical systems, weak emergence is a type of emergence in which the emergent property is amenable to computer simulation or similar forms of after-the-fact analysis (for example, the formation of a traffic jam, the structure of a flock of starlings in flight or a school of fish, or the formation of galaxies). Crucial in these simulations is that the interacting members retain their independence. If not, a new entity is formed with new, emergent properties: this is called strong emergence, which it is argued cannot be simulated, analysed or reduced.

David Chalmers writes that emergence often causes confusion in philosophy and science due to a failure to demarcate strong and weak emergence, which are "quite different concepts".

Some common points between the two notions are that emergence concerns new properties produced as the system grows, which is to say ones which are not shared with its components or prior states. Also, it is assumed that the properties are supervenient rather than metaphysically primitive.

Weak emergence describes new properties arising in systems as a result of the interactions at a fundamental level. However, Bedau stipulates that the properties can be determined only by observing or simulating the system, and not by any process of a reductionist analysis. As a consequence the emerging properties are scale dependent: they are only observable if the system is large enough to exhibit the phenomenon. Chaotic, unpredictable behaviour can be seen as an emergent phenomenon, while at a microscopic scale the behaviour of the constituent parts can be fully deterministic.

Bedau notes that weak emergence is not a universal metaphysical solvent, as the hypothesis that consciousness is weakly emergent would not resolve the traditional philosophical questions about the physicality of consciousness. However, Bedau concludes that adopting this view would provide a precise notion that emergence is involved in consciousness, and second, the notion of weak emergence is metaphysically benign.

Strong emergence describes the direct causal action of a high-level system on its components; qualities produced this way are irreducible to the system's constituent parts. The whole is other than the sum of its parts. It is argued then that no simulation of the system can exist, for such a simulation would itself constitute a reduction of the system to its constituent parts. Physics lacks well-established examples of strong emergence, unless it is interpreted as the impossibility in practice to explain the whole in terms of the parts. Practical impossibility may be a more useful distinction than one in principle, since it is easier to determine and quantify, and does not imply the use of mysterious forces, but simply reflects the limits of our capability.

Viability of strong emergence

One of the reasons for the importance of distinguishing these two concepts with respect to their difference concerns the relationship of purported emergent properties to science. Some thinkers question the plausibility of strong emergence as contravening our usual understanding of physics. Mark A. Bedau observes:

Although strong emergence is logically possible, it is uncomfortably like magic. How does an irreducible but supervenient downward causal power arise, since by definition it cannot be due to the aggregation of the micro-level potentialities? Such causal powers would be quite unlike anything within our scientific ken. This not only indicates how they will discomfort reasonable forms of materialism. Their mysteriousness will only heighten the traditional worry that emergence entails illegitimately getting something from nothing.

The concern that strong emergence does so entail is that such a consequence must be incompatible with metaphysical principles such as the principle of sufficient reason or the Latin dictum ex nihilo nihil fit, often translated as "nothing comes from nothing".

Strong emergence can be criticized for leading to causal overdetermination. The canonical example concerns emergent mental states (M and M∗) that supervene on physical states (P and P∗) respectively. Let M and M∗ be emergent properties. Let M∗ supervene on base property P∗. What happens when M causes M∗? Jaegwon Kim says:

In our schematic example above, we concluded that M causes M∗ by causing P∗. So M causes P∗. Now, M, as an emergent, must itself have an emergence base property, say P. Now we face a critical question: if an emergent, M, emerges from basal condition P, why cannot P displace M as a cause of any putative effect of M? Why cannot P do all the work in explaining why any alleged effect of M occurred? If causation is understood as nomological (law-based) sufficiency, P, as M's emergence base, is nomologically sufficient for it, and M, as P∗'s cause, is nomologically sufficient for P∗. It follows that P is nomologically sufficient for P∗ and hence qualifies as its cause...If M is somehow retained as a cause, we are faced with the highly implausible consequence that every case of downward causation involves overdetermination (since P remains a cause of P∗ as well). Moreover, this goes against the spirit of emergentism in any case: emergents are supposed to make distinctive and novel causal contributions.

If M is the cause of M∗, then M∗ is overdetermined because M∗ can also be thought of as being determined by P. One escape-route that a strong emergentist could take would be to deny downward causation. However, this would remove the proposed reason that emergent mental states must supervene on physical states, which in turn would call physicalism into question, and thus be unpalatable for some philosophers and physicists.

Carroll and Parola propose a taxonomy that classifies emergent phenomena by how the macro-description relates to the underlying micro-dynamics.

Type‑0 (Featureless) Emergence

A coarse-graining map Φ from a micro state space A to a macro state space B that commutes with time evolution, without requiring any further decomposition into subsystems.

Type‑1 (Local) Emergence

Emergence where the macro theory is defined in terms of localized collections of micro-subsystems. This category is subdivided into:

Type‑1a (Direct) Emergence: When the emergence map Φ is algorithmically simple (i.e. compressible), so that the macro behavior is easily deduced from the micro-states.

Type‑1b (Incompressible) Emergence: When Φ is algorithmically complex (i.e. incompressible), making the macro behavior appear more novel despite being determined by the micro-dynamics.

Type‑2 (Nonlocal) Emergence

Cases in which both the micro and macro theories admit subsystem decompositions, yet the macro entities are defined nonlocally with respect to the micro-structure, meaning that macro behavior depends on widely distributed micro information.

Type‑3 (Augmented) Emergence

A form of strong emergence in which the macro theory introduces additional ontological variables that do not supervene on the micro-states, thereby positing genuinely novel macro-level entities.

Objective or subjective quality

Crutchfield regards the properties of complexity and organization of any system as subjective qualities determined by the observer.

Defining structure and detecting the emergence of complexity in nature are inherently subjective, though essential, scientific activities. Despite the difficulties, these problems can be analysed in terms of how model-building observers infer from measurements the computational capabilities embedded in non-linear processes. An observer's notion of what is ordered, what is random, and what is complex in its environment depends directly on its computational resources: the amount of raw measurement data, of memory, and of time available for estimation and inference. The discovery of structure in an environment depends more critically and subtly, though, on how those resources are organized. The descriptive power of the observer's chosen (or implicit) computational model class, for example, can be an overwhelming determinant in finding regularity in data.

The low entropy of an ordered system can be viewed as an example of subjective emergence: the observer sees an ordered system by ignoring the underlying microstructure (i.e. movement of molecules or elementary particles) and concludes that the system has a low entropy. On the other hand, chaotic, unpredictable behaviour can also be seen as subjective emergent, while at a microscopic scale the movement of the constituent parts can be fully deterministic.

In science

In physics, weak emergence is used to describe a property, law, or phenomenon which occurs at macroscopic scales (in space or time) but not at microscopic scales, despite the fact that a macroscopic system can be viewed as a very large ensemble of microscopic systems.

An emergent behavior of a physical system is a qualitative property that can only occur in the limit that the number of microscopic constituents tends to infinity.

According to Robert Laughlin, for many-particle systems, nothing can be calculated exactly from the microscopic equations, and macroscopic systems are characterised by broken symmetry: the symmetry present in the microscopic equations is not present in the macroscopic system, due to phase transitions. As a result, these macroscopic systems are described in their own terminology, and have properties that do not depend on many microscopic details.

Novelist Arthur Koestler used the metaphor of Janus (a symbol of the unity underlying complements like open/shut, peace/war) to illustrate how the two perspectives (strong vs. weak or holistic vs. reductionistic) should be treated as non-exclusive, and should work together to address the issues of emergence. Theoretical physicist Philip W. Anderson states it this way:

The ability to reduce everything to simple fundamental laws does not imply the ability to start from those laws and reconstruct the universe. The constructionist hypothesis breaks down when confronted with the twin difficulties of scale and complexity. At each level of complexity entirely new properties appear. Psychology is not applied biology, nor is biology applied chemistry. We can now see that the whole becomes not merely more, but very different from the sum of its parts.

Meanwhile, others have worked towards developing analytical evidence of strong emergence. Renormalization methods in theoretical physics enable physicists to study critical phenomena that are not tractable as the combination of their parts. In 2009, Gu et al. presented a class of infinite physical systems that exhibits non-computable macroscopic properties.^. More precisely, if one could compute certain macroscopic properties of these systems from the microscopic description of these systems, then one would be able to solve computational problems known to be undecidable in computer science. These results concern infinite systems, finite systems being considered computable. However, macroscopic concepts which only apply in the limit of infinite systems, such as phase transitions and the renormalization group, are important for understanding and modeling real, finite physical systems. Gu et al. concluded that

Although macroscopic concepts are essential for understanding our world, much of fundamental physics has been devoted to the search for a 'theory of everything', a set of equations that perfectly describe the behavior of all fundamental particles. The view that this is the goal of science rests in part on the rationale that such a theory would allow us to derive the behavior of all macroscopic concepts, at least in principle. The evidence we have presented suggests that this view may be overly optimistic. A 'theory of everything' is one of many components necessary for complete understanding of the universe, but is not necessarily the only one. The development of macroscopic laws from first principles may involve more than just systematic logic, and could require conjectures suggested by experiments, simulations or insight.

In humanity

See also: Spontaneous order and Self-organization

Human beings are the basic elements of social systems, which perpetually interact and create, maintain, or untangle mutual social bonds. Social bonds in social systems are perpetually changing in the sense of the ongoing reconfiguration of their structure. An early argument (1904–05) for the emergence of social formations can be found in Max Weber's most famous work, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism. Recently, the emergence of a new social system is linked with the emergence of order from nonlinear relationships among multiple interacting units, where multiple interacting units are individual thoughts, consciousness, and actions. In the case of the global economic system, under capitalism, growth, accumulation and innovation can be considered emergent processes where not only does technological processes sustain growth, but growth becomes the source of further innovations in a recursive, self-expanding spiral. In this sense, the exponential trend of the growth curve reveals the presence of a long-term positive feedback among growth, accumulation, and innovation; and the emergence of new structures and institutions connected to the multi-scale process of growth. This is reflected in the work of Karl Polanyi, who traces the process by which labor and nature are converted into commodities in the passage from an economic system based on agriculture to one based on industry. This shift, along with the idea of the self-regulating market, set the stage not only for another economy but also for another society. The principle of emergence is also brought forth when thinking about alternatives to the current economic system based on growth facing social and ecological limits. Both degrowth and social ecological economics have argued in favor of a co-evolutionary perspective for theorizing about transformations that overcome the dependence of human wellbeing on economic growth.

Economic trends and patterns which emerge are studied intensively by economists. Within the field of group facilitation and organization development, there have been a number of new group processes that are designed to maximize emergence and self-organization, by offering a minimal set of effective initial conditions. Examples of these processes include SEED-SCALE, appreciative inquiry, Future Search, the world cafe or knowledge cafe, Open Space Technology, and others (Holman, 2010). In international development, concepts of emergence have been used within a theory of social change termed SEED-SCALE to show how standard principles interact to bring forward socio-economic development fitted to cultural values, community economics, and natural environment (local solutions emerging from the larger socio-econo-biosphere). These principles can be implemented utilizing a sequence of standardized tasks that self-assemble in individually specific ways utilizing recursive evaluative criteria.

Looking at emergence in the context of social and systems change, invites us to reframe our thinking on parts and wholes and their interrelation. Unlike machines, living systems at all levels of recursion - be it a sentient body, a tree, a family, an organisation, the education system, the economy, the health system, the political system etc - are continuously creating themselves. They are continually growing and changing along with their surrounding elements, and therefore are more than the sum of their parts. As Peter Senge and co-authors put forward in the book Presence: Exploring profound change in People, Organizations and Society, "as long as our thinking is governed by habit - notably industrial, "machine age" concepts such as control, predictability, standardization, and "faster is better" - we will continue to recreate institutions as they have been, despite their disharmony with the larger world, and the need for all living systems to evolve." While change is predictably constant, it is unpredictable in direction and often occurs at second and nth orders of systemic relationality. Understanding emergence and what creates the conditions for different forms of emergence to occur, either insidious or nourishing vitality, is essential in the search for deep transformations.

The works of Nora Bateson and her colleagues at the International Bateson Institute delve into this. Since 2012, they have been researching questions such as what makes a living system ready to change? Can unforeseen ready-ness for change be nourished? Here being ready is not thought of as being prepared, but rather as nourishing the flexibility we do not yet know will be needed. These inquiries challenge the common view that a theory of change is produced from an identified preferred goal or outcome. As explained in their paper An essay on ready-ing: Tending the prelude to change: "While linear managing or controlling of the direction of change may appear desirable, tending to how the system becomes ready allows for pathways of possibility previously unimagined." This brings a new lens to the field of emergence in social and systems change as it looks to tending the pre-emergent process. Warm Data Labs are the fruit of their praxis, they are spaces for transcontextual mutual learning in which aphanipoetic phenomena unfold. Having hosted hundreds of Warm Data processes with thousands of participants, they have found that these spaces of shared poly-learning across contexts lead to a realm of potential change, a necessarily obscured zone of wild interaction of unseen, unsaid, unknown flexibility. It is such flexibility that nourishes the ready-ing living systems require to respond to complex situations in new ways and change. In other words, this readying process preludes what will emerge. When exploring questions of social change, it is important to ask ourselves, what is submerging in the current social imaginary and perhaps, rather than focus all our resources and energy on driving direct order responses, to nourish flexibility with ourselves, and the systems we are a part of.

Another approach that engages with the concept of emergence for social change is Theory U, where "deep emergence" is the result of self-transcending knowledge after a successful journey along the U through layers of awareness. This practice nourishes transformation at the inner-being level, which enables new ways of being, seeing and relating to emerge. The concept of emergence has also been employed in the field of facilitation. In Emergent Strategy, adrienne maree brown defines emergent strategies as "ways for humans to practice complexity and grow the future through relatively simple interactions".

In linguistics, the concept of emergence has been applied in the domain of stylometry to explain the interrelation between the syntactical structures of the text and the author style (Slautina, Marusenko, 2014). It has also been argued that the structure and regularity of language grammar, or at least language change, is an emergent phenomenon. While each speaker merely tries to reach their own communicative goals, they use language in a particular way. If enough speakers behave in that way, language is changed. In a wider sense, the norms of a language, i.e. the linguistic conventions of its speech society, can be seen as a system emerging from long-time participation in communicative problem-solving in various social circumstances.

In technology

The bulk conductive response of binary (RC) electrical networks with random arrangements, known as the universal dielectric response (UDR), can be seen as emergent properties of such physical systems. Such arrangements can be used as simple physical prototypes for deriving mathematical formulae for the emergent responses of complex systems. Internet traffic can also exhibit some seemingly emergent properties. In the congestion control mechanism, TCP flows can become globally synchronized at bottlenecks, simultaneously increasing and then decreasing throughput in coordination. Congestion, widely regarded as a nuisance, is possibly an emergent property of the spreading of bottlenecks across a network in high traffic flows which can be considered as a phase transition. Some artificially intelligent (AI) computer applications simulate emergent behavior. One example is Boids, which mimics the swarming behavior of birds.

In religion and art

In religion, emergence grounds expressions of religious naturalism and syntheism in which a sense of the sacred is perceived in the workings of entirely naturalistic processes by which more complex forms arise or evolve from simpler forms. Examples are detailed in The Sacred Emergence of Nature by Ursula Goodenough & Terrence Deacon and Beyond Reductionism: Reinventing the Sacred by Stuart Kauffman, both from 2006, as well as Syntheism – Creating God in The Internet Age by Alexander Bard & Jan Söderqvist from 2014 and Emergentism: A Religion of Complexity for the Metamodern World by Brendan Graham Dempsey (2022).

Michael J. Pearce has used emergence to describe the experience of works of art in relation to contemporary neuroscience. Practicing artist Leonel Moura, in turn, attributes to his "artbots" a real, if nonetheless rudimentary, creativity based on emergent principles.

In daily life and nature

Objects consist of components with properties differing from the object itself. We call these properties emergent because they did not exist at the component level. The same applies to artifacts (structures, devices, tools, and even works of art). They are created for a specific purpose and are therefore subjectively emergent: someone who doesn't understand the purpose can't use it.

The artifact is the result of an invention: through a clever combination of components, something new is created with emergent properties and functionalities. This invention is often difficult to predict and therefore usually based on a chance discovery. An invention based on discovery is often improved through a feedback loop, making it more applicable. This is an example of downward causation.

Example 1: A hammer is a combination of a head and a handle, each with different properties. By cleverly connecting them, the hammer becomes an artifact with new, emergent functionalities. Through downward causation, you can improve the head and handle components in such a way that the hammer's functionality increases. Example 2: A mixture of tin and copper produces the alloy bronze, with new, emergent properties (hardness, lower melting temperature). Finding the correct ratio of tin to copper is an example of downward causation. Example 3: Finding the right combination of chemicals to create a superconductor at high temperatures (i.e room temperature) is a great challenge for many scientists, where chance plays a significant role. Conversely, however, the properties of all these invented artifacts can be readily explained reductionistically.

Something similar occurs in nature: random mutations in genes rarely create a creature with new, emergent properties, increasing its chances of survival in a changing ecosystem. This is how evolution works. Here too, through downward causation, new creatures can sometimes manipulate their ecosystem in such a way that their chances of survival are further increased.

In both artifacts and living beings, certain components can be crucial to the emergent end result: the end result supervenes on these components. Examples include: a construction error, a bug in a software program, an error in the genetic code, or the absence of a particular gene.

Both aspects: supervenience and the unpredictability of the emergent result are characteristic of strong emergence (see above). (This definition, however, differs significantly from the definition in philosophical literature).

Planetary health

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planetary_health 

Planetary Health is a multi- and transdisciplinary research paradigm, a science for exceptional action, and a global movement. Planetary health refers to "the health of human civilization and the state of the natural systems on which it depends." In 2015, the Rockefeller Foundation–Lancet Commission on Planetary Health launched the concept which is  currently being developed towards a new health science with over 25 areas of expertise.

Background and milestones

There are a number of ideas, concepts that can be understood as precursors to the concept of planetary health. According to Susan Prescott, the term "planetary health" emerged from the environmental and holistic health movements of the 1970-80s. In 1980, Friends of the Earth expanded the World Health Organization's definition of health, stating, "health is a state of complete physical, mental, social and ecological well-being and not merely the absence of disease - personal health involves planetary health." James Lovelock created the term "Planetary Medicine" in 1986. In 1993 the Norwegian physician Per Fugelli wrote: "The patient Earth is sick. Global environmental disruptions can have serious consequences for human health. It's time for doctors to give a world diagnosis and advise on treatment." In the 1990s, a model curriculum Terra Medicine (Planetary Medicine) was developed at the Catholic University of Eichstätt-Ingolstadt as part of the Altmühltal Agenda 21 project. In 2000, James Lovelock published his book Gaia: The Practical Science of Planetary Medicine.

Milestones

Fourteen years later, a commentary in the March 2014 issue of the medical journal The Lancet called to create a movement for planetary health to transform the field of public health, which has traditionally focused on the health of human populations without necessarily considering the surrounding natural ecosystems. The proposal recognized the emerging threats to natural and human-made systems that support humanity.

In 2015, the Rockefeller Foundation and The Lancet launched the concept with the Rockefeller Foundation–Lancet Commission on Planetary Health. The Planetary Health Alliance was founded in December 2015, by Harvard University, together with the Wildlife Conservation Society and other partner organizations. The Rockefeller Foundation Economic Council on Planetary Health at the Oxford Martin School was established on 1 June 2017 to further define the new discipline of planetary health. The open-access journal "Lancet Planetary Health" published its inaugural issue in April 2017.

The Planetary Health Education Framework, developed in 2021 by the Planetary Health Alliance, aims to guide the education of global citizens, practitioners, and professionals able and willing to address complex Planetary Health challenges. The framework also seeks to inspire all peoples across the globe to create, restore, steward, and conserve healthy ecosystems for a thriving human civilization. The framework considers five foundational domains that form the essence of Planetary Health knowledge, values, and practice: (1) interconnection with nature, (2) the Anthropocene and health, (3) equity and social justice, (4) movement building and systems change, and (5) systems thinking and complexity.

The São Paulo Declaration on Planetary Health is a multi-stakeholder call to action co-created by the global Planetary Health community at the 2021 Planetary Health Annual Meeting in São Paulo, Brazil. The declaration calls on governments, the private sector, civil society, and the general public to commit to the Great Transition to safeguard a healthy and equitable future for humanity and protect all life on Earth.

In 2022, on the occasion of the 50th anniversary of the first UN environmental conference "United Nations Conference on the Human Environment" in Stockholm 1972, the UN published the report: 'UN Conference Stockholm+50: A Healthy Planet for the Prosperity of All - Our Responsibility, Our Opportunity'.

In 2023 the Association of Faculties of Medicine of Canada published the "Academic Health Institutions' Declaration on Planetary Health," which calls on all academic health institutions throughout the world to take immediate action to halt both the negative impact of their activities on the planet's natural systems, and to institute adaptive and regenerative measures, including through advocacy. More than 40 academic health institutions have signed the declaration. These include medical schools, faculties of medicine, schools of nursing, schools of public health, and other health-related academic institutions from various countries including Canada, India, Finland, Dominican Republic, South Africa, Germany, Portugal, Indonesia, and others.

The Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences published a comprehensive report in June 2023 on the state of planetary health research and the future research agenda, which has relevance not only for the Netherlands but also internationally (Planetary Health Advisory Report).

In April 2024, the Global Planetary Health Roadmap and Action Plan, a map to guide a path forward for Planetary Health was created by over 100 members of a worldwide community, building on the principles and call to action of the 2021 São Paulo Declaration on Planetary Health. The roadmap encompasses key domains, such as governance, education, business, and communications, providing a strategic framework to nurture this growing movement and safeguard the health and well-being of all life on Earth.

Research paradigms and agenda

Drawing from the definition of health – "a state of complete physical, mental and social wellbeing and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity" – as well as principles articulated in the preamble of the constitution of the World Health Organization, The Lancet Commission report elaborated that planetary health refers to the "achievement of the highest attainable standard of health, wellbeing, and equity worldwide through judicious attention to the human systems – political, economic, and social – that shape the future of humanity and the Earth's natural systems that define the safe environmental limits within which humanity can flourish."

The report laid down the overarching principles guiding the idea of planetary health. One is that human health depends on "flourishing natural systems and the wise stewardship of those natural systems". Human activities, such as energy generation and food production, have led to substantial global effects on the Earth's systems, prompting scientists to refer to the modern times as the Anthropocene.

A group of Earth system and environmental scientists led by Johan Rockström from the Stockholm Resilience Centre proposed the concept of nine planetary boundaries within which humanity can continue to develop and thrive for generations to come. According to a 2024 update, six of the planetary boundaries – climate change, biosphere integrity, biogeochemical flows, land-system change, freshwater use, and novel entities-had already been exceeded. A seventh boundary, ocean acidification is approaching its threshold.

The Rockefeller Foundation–Lancet Commission on Planetary Health report concluded that urgent and transformative actions are needed to protect present and future generations. One important area which required immediate attention was the system of governance and organization of human knowledge, which was deemed inadequate to address the threats to planetary health.

The report made several overarching recommendations. One was to improve governance to aid the integration of social, economic, and environmental policies and for the creation, synthesis, and application of interdisciplinary knowledge. The authors called for solutions based on the redefinition of prosperity to focus on the enhancement of quality of life and delivery of improved health for all, together with respect for the integrity of natural systems.

International research agenda for planetary health

In June 2023, the Royal Netherlands Academy of Sciences presented their planetary health report  Planetary Health, An emerging field to be developed based on a two-year consultative process. Many knowledge gaps were identified in the field of planetary health. A review of the literature and subsequent consultation with experts resulted in a longlist of more than one hundred specific knowledge gaps. Knowledge for the health impacts of global environmental change on human health are incomplete, pathways are poorly understood, the effectiveness of mitigation and adaptation measures are still unclear, how timely policy and behaviour change can be realised. The Academy concluded that: "Filling all Planetary Health knowledge gaps requires an international collaborative effort in research funding". The Academy will cooperate with international partner and 'umbrella academies' (such as EASAC, FEAM and ALLEA) how to take this agenda forward."

In 2025 the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) report GEO-7 found that investing in planetary health can deliver trillions in additional global GDP, avoid millions of deaths and reduce poverty and hunger.

Issues

Nutrition and diet are important contributors to and indicators of planetary health. Diets, agriculture, and technology must adjust to sustain population projections upwards of 9 billion while reducing harmful consequences on the environment through food waste and carbon-intensive diets. A focus of planetary health research is nutritional solutions that are sustainable for the human species and the environment, and the generation of scientific research and political will to create and implement desired solutions. In January 2019, an international commission created the planetary health diet.

Planetary health aims to seek out further solutions to global human and environmental sustainability through collaboration and research across all sectors, including the economy, energy, agriculture, water, and health. Biodiversity loss, exposure to pollutants, climate change, and fuel consumption are all issues that threaten human and health, and are, as such, foci of the field. A number of researchers think that it is actually humanity's destruction of biodiversity and the invasion of wild landscapes that creates the conditions for malaria, and new diseases such as COVID-19. Some propose incorporating concern for the impact of digital technology in planetary health and health promotion, including the impact of generative AI on climate, biodiversity, and pollution.

Planetary Health Alliance

The Planetary Health Alliance is an informal global consortium of over 470 universities, non-governmental organizations, government entities, and research institutes with over 20,000 newsletter subscribers.

Several PHA regional hubs function as locally rooted communities that bring PHA members together in geographic clusters to collaboratively advance planetary health research, education, policy, and outreach relevant to specific local contexts.

The alliance's mission is "to promote, mobilize, and lead an inclusive, transdisciplinary field of Planetary Health and its diverse science, stories, solutions, and communities to achieve a comprehensive shift in how human beings interact with each other and Nature, in order to secure a livable future for humanity and the rest of life on Earth." Since November 2023, the secretariat of PHA is based at Johns Hopkins University alongside the Johns Hopkins Institute for Planetary Health.

Regional Hubs

There are eight established Planetary Health Regional Hubs that function as locally rooted communities which bring PHA members together in geographic clusters to collaboratively advance planetary health research, education, policy, and outreach relevant to specific local contexts

While additional hubs are under development, the eight established Planetary Health Regional Hubs are:

• Caribbean
• East Africa
• Europe
• Japan
• Latin America
• Oceania
• South & Southeast Asia
• West Africa

In 2022, the inaugural Planetary Health Europe Regional Hub meeting was held in Amsterdam, with 72 institutions represented. The inaugural meeting was organized by the Planetary Health Alliance, the European Environment and Sustainable Development Advisory Councils Network (EEAC Network), and Natura Artis Magistra (ARTIS). The PHA Europe Secretariat has been located in the Netherlands. It is jointly coordinated by Maastricht University and the University Medical Center Utrecht (UMC Utrecht).

Next Generation Network

The Planetary Health Next Generation Network is composed of students and next-generation leaders worldwide who are dedicated to advancing the emerging field of Planetary Health through local community efforts, educational events, and research projects. This open-access network brings together the Planetary Health Campus Ambassadors (PHCAs), Planetary Health student club leaders and members, former and current Travel Scholars to Planetary Health Annual Meetings, and any youths who would like to engage with the Planetary Health community. The Planetary Health Alliance staff team and Impact Fellows work to support these diverse efforts by providing introductory resources, workshop materials, mentorship opportunities, and community-building platforms.

Campus Ambassador program

The Planetary Health Campus Ambassador program formally recognizes next-generation leaders in planetary health on academic campuses and within the international planetary health community at-large. During the program, ambassadors build their planetary health network and gain leadership and organizational skills with the support of their program cohort, staff, fellows, and alliance members. Ambassadors are empowered to take leadership on their campus and beyond, to educate their community, and to facilitate collaborations between existing disciplines and initiatives within the scope of human health and environmental change. They also become part of the program's broader Next Generation Network, composed of individuals from a variety of academic and cultural backgrounds, career stages, and interests. They also have access to leadership opportunities within other initiatives, such as the global Planetary Health Annual Meeting, Planetary Health Regional Hubs, Clinicians for Planetary Health, and various education projects.

Annual meeting

The Planetary Health Annual Meeting, convened by the Planetary Health Alliance, is an international conference series established in 2017, serving as a global forum for advancing the field of Planetary Health. First launched at Harvard University, these meetings have evolved into comprehensive gatherings connecting diverse stakeholders including scientists, policymakers, healthcare professionals, educators, students, and community leaders from over 130 countries. The meetings rotate globally, having been hosted in the United States (Harvard University 2017, 2022; Stanford University 2019), Scotland (University of Edinburgh 2018), Brazil (University of São Paulo 2021, virtual), and Malaysia (Sunway University 2024), reflecting a commitment to geographic and cultural diversity in addressing planetary health challenges. A meeting is planned for October 2025 in the Netherlands (Erasmus University).

The meetings consistently focus on planetary health themes, including climate change, biodiversity loss, food systems transformation, health equity, and education. Each meeting has produced significant outcomes that have shaped the field: from establishing foundational frameworks in the early meetings to the São Paulo Declaration on Planetary Health (2021) and the Kuala Lumpur Call to Action (2024), accompanied by the launch of the global Planetary Health Roadmap and Action Plan. Through plenary sessions, research presentations, workshops, and community engagement activities, these meetings have been instrumental in building capacity, fostering collaboration, and driving actionable solutions for planetary health challenges.

Comparison with other fields

Planetary health is considered a response to existing fields and paradigms such as public health environmental health, ecohealth, One Health and international health.

While there may be competing definitions of global health, it is loosely defined as the health of populations in a global context, a response to the cross-border movement of health drivers as well as risks, and an improvement over the older concept of international health with its new emphasis on achieving equity in health among all people. Some scholars hold that advocacy of planetary health amounts to an over-expansion and totalization of health.

The editor in chief of The Lancet, Richard Horton, wrote in a 2014 special issue of The Economist on planetary health, that global health was no longer able to truly meet the demands which societies face, as it was still too narrow to explain and illuminate some pressing challenges."Global health does not fully take into account the natural foundation on which humans live – the planet itself. Nor does it factor in the force and fragility of human civilizations."

In 2015, Judith Rodin, president of the Rockefeller Foundation, declared planetary health as a new discipline in global health.

In 2023, the US Bureau of Labor Statistics updated the definition of environmental engineering as using, "engineering disciplines in developing solutions to problems of planetary health."

In September 2024, the Consortium of Universities for Global Health (CUGH) put forth a set of planetary health learning objectives, noting "the knowledge of planetary health science, interventions, and communication that is essential for future global health professionals." CUGH included planetary health in the updated edition of their Global Health Competencies Toolkit.

In 2026, Daniel Oerther proposed that the profession of engineering modify the paramountcy clause to, "hold paramount the health, safety, and welfare of the public and the planet,” in recognition of the interconnectedness of all life.