5.3) Limits To Growth: World 3

The World 3 Model that underpins the Limits to Growth report has the following features:

• It keeps track of stocks such as population, industrial capital, persistent pollution, and cultivated land.
• Stocks change through flows such as births and deaths, investment and depreciation, pollution generation and pollution assimilation, land erosion, land development, and land removed for urban and industrial uses.
• It accounts for positive and negative feedback loops, which makes the model dynamically complex.

As shown in this figure, the model includes many feedback loops between stocks.

(Source: Meadows, D., Randers, J., Meadows, D., "Synopsis of the limits to growth: the 30-year update", 2005.)