the pre-colonial, colonial, communist, and post- communist institutions and technologies of land
use. Understanding of present day vulnerability and adaptation to environmental change requires
historical analysis of the land use and social or- ganisation of the agrarian economy.
A second theme of this paper is that of the role of climate as an environmental resource within an
evolutionary framework. In debates on environ- ment and society interactions, climate has vari-
ously been portrayed as one constraint on the ability of regions and societies to undertake eco-
nomic development Sachs, 1997, or as a key factor in agricultural development, in particular in
pre-industrial societies de Vries, 1980. This pa- per by contrast argues that climate acts as one
element in the portfolio of risk inherent in utilis- ing natural resources, and that coevolution occurs
such that land use alters in response to risks from extreme events rather than coevolving directly
with the climate system. This theme is illustrated with reference to the Vietnamese lowland societies
of the past millennium.
The paper proceeds by outlining the theoretical foundations of coevolutionary analysis from the
perspective of institutional economics. It demon- strates that economics has had a long history of
examining economic systems in an evolutionary context, concentrating on how institutions them-
selves evolve and determine the structure of economies in terms of organisation, markets and
scale. Bringing the physical resource base into the calculus leads to the observation that not only
does the economic system evolve but that it has a direct relationship with the natural system on
which it depends. Treating climate as a distinct resource endowment leads to the examination of
the evolution of climate risk with economic sys- tems following Schneider and Londer, 1984; for
example. It is argued in this paper that the important interactions between land use, institu-
tions and climate are essentially manifest in adap- tation to climate variability, and to extreme
climate events in particular. In other words, the economic and climate systems interact with each
other in the evolution of social and environmental risks.
This is not to deny the role of climate charac- teristics as one environmental constraint and
parameter of land use and cultural evolution. In the context of the wet-rice growing areas of Asia,
Bray 1986 demonstrates that the present land allocation, technology and social relations are not
‘matters of chance.’ Rather the development of irrigation and of the social organisation for
labour intensive cultivation are key to the eco- nomic structure of these societies. This paper em-
phasises the variability and the impact of climate extremes as central issues in this evolution. Insti-
tutional strategies and technologies of adaptation, such as investment in irrigation, alter the risk
profile from climatic hazards. The feedbacks to climatic risk come about through smoothing the
impact of climate variability, for example through irrigation in agriculture, and through protective
measures to minimise the impacts of extreme cli- mate events. Thus, in this analytical approach, it
is the set of climate risks and their perceptions which coevolve with social forces.
2. The environment in evolutionary economics
2
.
1
. Technological and en6ironmental change The perspective that economic systems share
characteristics of evolutionary biological systems is in large part held by a body of institutional
economists.
1
This perspective broadly rejects the exclusive focus of neo-classical economic analysis
on markets as the sole explanatory variable in the allocation of resources. Institutional economists
provide alternative analysis of technologies, insti- tutions, norms and cultures, and power relation-
ships to explain the structure and operation of markets. The essential features of institutional
economics are:
the focus on social and economic evolution, hence taking an activist orientation towards
social institutions;
1
Reviews of these approaches can be found in Norgaard 1994, Nelson and Winter 1982, England 1994, Dosi et al.
1988. Norgaard, for example, uses the analogies of evolution to explore social and economic phenomena and their interac-
tion with the natural world.
the importance of markets as systems of social control and the importance of collective action
and policy intervention in markets;
the importance of technology as a major force in the transformation of economic systems;
institutions as the ultimate determinants of mar- ket structure and allocation of resources; and
the belief that values are ensconced in institu- tions, rather than being solely artifacts of mar-
kets or individual preferences Samuels, 1995.
Only part of the wide-ranging agenda of institu- tional economics focuses on the evolutionary anal-
ogy. The study of technological change is the focus of evolutionary theories, though not all institu-
tional economics encapsulates these notions. In the words of Samuels, ‘‘it is human activity mediated
through technology that determines what is a resource, its relative scarcity and its efficiency’’
Samuels, 1995, p. 573. Thus the evolutionary concept in economics is principally focused on
technological change as the mechanism by which markets, institutions and economies evolve.
2
Un- der an institutional economics approach, technical
change, as one of the major driving forces of the economic system, creates its own demand rather
than being a passive adjustment towards a new equilibrium, responding to exogenous environmen-
tal or other factors. A compromise between neo- classical
and institutionalist
positions would
postulate that the evolutionary process can be seen as the dynamic component of the economy, where
neo-classical equilibria best explain the present static
situation: ‘‘it
has been
argued [by
economists] albeit never demonstrated that evo- lutionary processes of adaptation and selection
lead precisely to those equilibria analysed by neo- classical economists’’ Clark and Juma, 1988, p.
209.
The institutional approach to technical change, rejects the exclusive focus of neo-classical econom-
ics on prices and markets. Some of these same limits to neo-classical economics are also part of
the agenda of ecological economics. The ecological economic approach points to the biophysical limits
of resource use; the high levels of uncertainty concerning the use of biotic ‘natural capital’; and
the natural system feedbacks into the economic system see, e.g. Daly, 1992. Thus the role of
biological resources, and implicitly their resilience, within economic systems demonstrates the reso-
nance of parts of the ecological economics paradigm with the study of the evolution of
economies.
The role of biological evolution in its coevolu- tion with social and economic systems is demon-
strated most
strikingly with
reference to
agriculture, the single most significant intervention in the terrestrial environment. Humans fundamen-
tally alter the natural selection processes in species utilised for agriculture, and indeed the whole of
agricultural development can be conceptualised as the responses and feedbacks of the biotic world to
human intervention. But the evolutionary pro- cesses are equally as relevant to the social sphere.
The distribution of land holdings in agricultural societies, for example, is determined by a number
of factors. These include the past mean size as an historical legacy, farm profitability, the prior adap-
tation of new technologies, and the physical parameters of climate, soil and topography Allan-
son et al., 1995. The reproductive activities of individual farms and farm level decision-making
within the economic and physical environment therefore determine evolving farm structure and
hence the distribution of wealth within a rural economy. Further, technological adoption and its
diffusion within the sector is a key element which also evolves with individual decisions deterring or
facilitating the spread of these technologies Nel- son and Winter, 1982; Nelson, 1994. Bray 1986
demonstrates the diversity of institutions and fac- tors which constitute ‘paths of technical develop-
ment’ in agriculture. These range from state clearing or provision of land, through to labour
saving technology development in times of labour scarcity; and increased production to feed rapidly
expanding population. Bray 1986 argues that the paths of technological development taken are
‘‘closely related to the conditions of production specific to the region’’ p. 198 contrasting Asia and
Europe in this context.
2
The popularity of evolutionary metaphors for markets and institutions has waxed and waned within the discipline of
economics ever since Darwin see Hodgson, 1994; Clark and Juma, 1988.
2
.
2
. Climate and social e6olution How then does the climate system, and its role
in the evolution of economic activity and institu- tions, constitute a condition of production in the
evolutionary context? Climate and weather vari- ability are both constraining factors in human
interventions with the biotic world. There is a long history of analysis of the adaptation of hu-
man societies to different climates and to changes in climates Lamb, 1995, for example. At the
global scale, an analogy of global warming as a coevolutionary process has been set out by
Schneider and Londer 1984 and Alexander et al. 1997. They argue that the whole of human
society is coevolving with the global climate sys- tem by altering the composition of the atmo-
sphere and hence the global climate. The impacts of change in the global climate system result in
human society being forced to adapt and to be- come increasingly active in management of re-
sources under such changes. The climate system is therefore argued to be coevolving with the global
human system in a manner which has potentially significant impacts on risk of irreversible change
on the whole planetary system. But the interaction of climate risk can also be observed at smaller
scale such that land use systems and institutions have feedbacks with risk and climatic hazards.
The primary factor limiting the analysis of cli- mate and its coevolution with social and eco-
nomic systems are the definition of causality and feedbacks Anderson, 1981. The most important
aspects of the causal relationship are the scale of analysis and the directness or remoteness of the
links between climate and human connected activ- ities. In terms of temporal scale, Ingram et al.
1981 argue that the inevitable concentration on acute periods of crisis and climate hazards may be
misleading. Short-term influences of climate, at the annual or intra-annual scale, do not necessar-
ily imply any long-term causal relationship be- tween climate and human history. Where causal
direct relationships cannot be inferred from quan- titative data, historical human climate interactions
can only be developed through descriptive and conceptual analysis relying on case studies and
incorporation of other influences. This paper argues that the various elements of
the social and natural systems resource endow- ments, land use technologies, and institutions as-
sociated with land use interact with each other in complex ways Ruttan, 1988. Some of the inter-
actions between institutional change, resource use and climate risks are manifested in physical
changes, which are monitorable and quantifiable. Others are, by contrast, more difficult to quantify
and rely on interpretation and processes such as social learning. Technological improvements can,
for example, be quantified in terms of input-out- put ratios, yield increases or returns to invest-
ment. Institutional changes are more difficult to quantify, though some institutional researchers
have derived indices or proxies, most applicable to formal institutions e.g. O’Riordan and Jordan,
1999.
Different theoretical perspectives on society-en- vironment interactions usually privileges either
the social institution or physical environment, in explaining evolutionary change. For example,
Marxist scholars have argued that irrigation tech- nology used in wet rice cultivation in East Asia
determines political organisation. Such a conclu- sion thereby de-emphasises the role of population
change or land suitability on income and popula- tion growth within agricultural economies. Alter-
native
institutional approaches
examine the
transactions costs associated with decision-mak- ing under different property rights regimes. Trans-
actions cost approaches quantify some of the institutional linkages through the relative costs of
maintaining institutions and the changing relative factor input costs resulting from changes in prop-
erty rights. In examining environmental risks, evolutionary approaches attempt to avoid this
dichotomy by emphasising the feedbacks between the systems rather than assigning predominance
to any single factor.
A model developed by Ruttan 1988 argues, however, that even a focus on endowments, insti-
tutions and technologies misses the importance of the cultural elements of agricultural development.
Ruttan argues that underlying ideologies and cul- tural context, as manifest for example through
religious beliefs, impact on the effectiveness of institutions and legal systems. As an example, he
indicates that the shared communist ideology of peasant farmers in China ‘‘inspired the mobilisa-
tion of communal resources to build irrigation systems and other forms of capital’’ Ruttan, 1988,
p. 250. Thus, it is argued, cultural endowments can reduce the costs of institutional change where these
encourage common purpose or collective action.
It seems clear that cultural influences are impor- tant in explaining the interactions between institu-
tions, land use and technologies. However, analysis of cultural influences requires case-specific analy-
ses, not easily lending themselves to disentangle- ment from the institutional and political factors. As
Adams 1986 has commented:
‘‘The flexibilities and potentials inherent in the conjunction of individual action and a cul-
tural setting are immense. They become almost overwhelmingly so when epidemic changes are
introduced from external sources, as was the case in South and Southeast Asia in colonial
times. Extensive cultural intrusions in combina- tion with political domination augment prob-
lems of survival just as they may sometimes provide opportunities for economic, political
and social advancement’’ Adams, 1986; p. 279.
Extending an approach to examining institu- tions, culture and land use such that it incorporates
feedbacks from natural systems into this set of interactions, adds further complexity. Climatic
risks influence both institutional and cultural set- tings, and the appropriate technologies and pro-
ductivity
of the
resource endowments
in agriculture. Some of the relationships between
climate and other factors are amenable to quantifi- cation and analysis, particularly those associated
with the land resources and with technologies.
3. Applying evolutionary analysis: history, institutions and culture in Vietnam
