Wonderland is an integrated mathematical model used for studying phenomena in sustainable development.
First introduced by economist (Waren C. Sanderson 1994) of Stony Brook University, there are now several related versions of the model in use.
Wonderland allows economists, policy analysts and environmentalist to study the interactions between the economic, demographic and anthropogenic sectors of an idealized world, thereby enabling them to obtain insights transferable to the real world.
For this reason it is often used as an initial testing ground for new techniques in the area of policy analysis (Lempert, et al., 2003).
, then the state variables evolve in discrete time, according to the following recurrence relations (Sanderson, 1994).
Using the Scenario analysis technique, Sanderson (1994) studied two possible futures for the idealized world described by Wonderland.
One future entitled Dream, held out the possibility of unending sustainable growth, while the other termed Horror, ended in environmental collapse and eventual extinction of the population.
Subsequent work (Kohring, 2006) showed that the parameters of the model can be bisected into two sets, one which always produces sustainable futures and one which always ends in collapse and extinction.
Additionally, the equations of Wonderland exhibit chaotic behavior (Gröller, et al., 1996, Wegenkittl, et al., 1997, Leeves and Herbert, 1998).
Abating the effects of pollution draws funds from other sources to pay for cleaning up the environment (Sanderson, 1994).
is unaffected because those goods and services needed for pollution abatement must also be considered part of the overall output.
: These changes introduce three new parameters into the model: By adjusting the policy levers, it is possible to clean up a polluted environment and recover from the collapse seen in the Horror scenario.
Abating pollution does not alter the fundamental division of the parameters into the two sets of sustainable and unsustainable futures (Kohring, 2006).
in order to avoid collapse thereby enabling unending sustainable growth (Kohring, 2006).