File:Dimensions of environmental management create an attractor landscape for long-term human evolution.jpg

English: "Environmental sustainability challenges (curved frontiers) require a minimum level of cooperation in a society of a certain minimum spatial size. Alternative potential paths move humanity toward different long-term evolutionary outcomes. In path B, competition between societies over common environmental resources creates cultural selection between groups for increasingly direct competition and conflict. Path A, growing cooperation between societies facilitates the emergence of global cultural traits to preserve shared environmental benefits." "Any domain of environmental management can be characterized according to two variables: the spatial scale over which the environmental resource must be sustained, and the level of cooperation necessary to benefit from the resource in a durable manner. Sustainability challenges require a minimum level of cooperation in a society of a certain minimum spatial size. For example, to solve local lake pollution, the level of cooperation needed is only that which is sufficient to stop pollution among the lakeshore residents, while to solve groundwater management, cooperation is needed among groundwater users of a watershed [103]. If these users are farmers who depend on groundwater irrigation for their livelihoods, the required level of cooperation is very high as cooperation might entail major economic loss. In this way, each environmental resource can be visualized as a sustainability frontier (figure 2). "