Escaping Rural Poverty Traps through Dynamical Systems Thinking

This project stands at the intersection of dynamical systems modeling, sustainability science, resilience thinking, and agricultural systems research, with a particular focus on small-scale agriculture and aquaculture systems. It explores how the structure of coupled social-ecological systems gives rise to persistent patterns such as low-yield traps, as well as possibilities for transformation.
Using mathematical models based on nonlinear differential equations, the project captures simplified but essential interactions among biophysical, ecological, economic, and social processes, including human decision making. These abstractions are not intended to mirror the full complexity of real-world systems, but to reveal critical feedbacks and structural features that help explain why some systems remain trapped in undesirable states, such as persistent poverty, while others shift toward more productive and sustainable regimes.

Through bifurcation and stability analysis, or exploration of long transients, the project investigates how initial conditions, feedbacks and interactions, sudden shocks and external interventions shape the system trajectory. The focus is on understanding the possibility space: what patterns are structurally possible, what makes traps resilient, and where leverage points for change may lie.

Rather than working directly with stakeholders, the project engages with empirical researchers to ground model assumptions and validate conceptual relevance. The ultimate aim is not prediction, but insight: to develop theoretical and methodological tools that support better reasoning about change, intervention, and resilience in small-scale food production systems operating under uncertainty and constraint.

Contributors:

Alexandros Gasparatos, Institute of Future Initiatives, Tokyo University, Tokyo, Japan

Jie Su, Institute of Future Initiatives, Tokyo University, Tokyo, Japan

Quanli Wang, , Institute of Future Initiatives, Tokyo University, Tokyo, Japan

Maja Schlüter, Stockholm Resilience Centre, Stockholm University, Sweden

Photo below: Bifurcation diagram with environmental damage as the control parameter. In the bistable region, both well-being and poverty attractors coexist, and escape from poverty remains possible. As environmental damage crosses a critical threshold, a regime shift occurs leading the system into a state of persistent poverty with no recovery pathway under current conditions.