Sustainability or collapse? : an integrated history and future of people on earth / edited by Robert Costanza, Lisa J. Graumlich, and Will Steffen ; Program Advisory Committee, R. Costanza [and others].

Cambridge, Mass. : MIT Press in cooperation with Dahlem University Press, [2007], ©2007.

xxii, 495 pages : illustrations ; 23 cm.

"Report of the 96th Dahlem Workshop on Integrated History and Future of People on Earth (IHOPE) Berlin, June 12-17, 2005."

Foreword / Hans Joachim Schellnhuber -- Pt. 1. Introduction -- Sustainability or collapse: lessons from integrating the history of humans and the rest of nature / Robert Costanza, Lisa J. Graumlich and Will Steffen -- Human-environment interactions: learning from the past / John A. Dearing -- Assessing and communicating data quality: toward a system of data quality grading / Robert Costanza -- Pt. 2. The millennial timescale: up to 10,000 years ago -- The rise and fall of the ancient Maya: a case study in political ecology / Vernon L. Scarborough -- Climate, complexity, and problem solving in the Roman empire / Joseph A. Tainter and Carole L. Crumley -- Integration of climatic, archaeological, and historical data: a case study of the Khabur River Basin, northeastern Syria / Frank Hole -- The trajectory of human evolution in Australia: 10,000 B.P. to the present / Timothy F. Flannery -- Toward a comparative study of hegemonic deline in global systems: the complexity of crisis and the paradoxes of differentiated experience / Jonathan Friedman -- Group report: millennial perspectives on the dynamic interaction of climate, people, and resources / Charles L. Redman ... [et al.] -- Pt. 3. The centennial timescale: up to 1000 years ago -- Revolutionary weather: the climatic and economic crisis of 1788-1795 and the discovery of El Niño / Richard H. Grove -- The lie of history: nation-states and the contradictions of complex societies / Fekri A. Hassan -- Little ice age-type impacts and the mitigation of social vulnerability to climate in the Swiss Canton of Bern prior to 1800 / Christian Pfister -- Information processing and its role in the rise of the European world system / Sander E. van der Leeuw -- Group report: integrating socioenvironmental interactions over centennial timescales - needs and issues / John A. Dearing ... [et al.] -- Pt. 4. The decadal timescale: up to 100 years ago -- A decadal chronology of 20th-century changes in earth's natural systems / Nathan J. Mantua -- Social, economic, and political forces in environmental change: decadal scale (1900 to 2000) / John R. McNeill -- Integrated human-environment approaches of land degradation in drylands / Eric F. Lambin ... [et al.] -- Group report: decadal-scale interactions of humans and the environment / Kathy A. Hibbard ... [et al.] -- Pt. 5. The future -- Scenarios: guidance for an uncertain and complex world? / Bert J. M. de Vries -- Evaluating past forecasts: reflections on one critique of the limits to growth / Dennis L. Meadows -- Integrated global models / Robert Costanza ... [et al.] -- Group report: future scenarios of human-environment systems / Marianne N. Young.

Includes bibliographical references and indexes.