From no whinge policy to viability tree

Avoiding whinges from various and potentially conflicting stakeholders is a major challenge for sustainable development and for the identification of sustainability policy or scenarios for biodiversity and ecosystem services. It turns out that complying with whinge thresholds and constraints independently is not sufficient because dynamic ecological-economic interactions and uncertainties occur. Thus more demanding whinge boundaries are needed. In this paper, we first argue that these new boundaries can be endogenously exhibited with the mathematical concepts of viability kernel and viable controls. Second, it is shown how these no whinge kernels have components, such as harvesting of resources, that should remain within a safe corridor while some other components, in particular biodiversity, are only bounded from below. Thus, using radar charts, we show how this no whinge kernels can take the shape of a tree that we name viability tree. These trees of viability capture the idea that the unbounded renewal potential of biodiversity combined with a bounded use of the different ecosystem services are pivotal elements for the sustainability of socio-ecosystems and the design of no whinge policies reconciling the different stakeholders involved.