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Ecological economics, bioeconomics, ecolonomy, eco-economics, or ecol-econ is both a transdisciplinary and an interdisciplinary field of academic research addressing the interdependence and coevolution of human economies and natural ecosystems, both intertemporally and spatially. By treating the economy as a subsystem of Earth's larger ecosystem, and by emphasizing the preservation of natural capital, the field of ecological economics is differentiated from environmental economics, which is the mainstream economic analysis of the environment. One survey of German economists found that ecological and environmental economics are different schools of economic thought, with ecological economists emphasizing strong sustainability and rejecting the proposition that physical (human-made) capital can substitute for natural capital.
The ecological footprint measures human demand on natural capital, i.e. the quantity of nature it takes to support people and their economies. It tracks human demand on nature through an ecological accounting system. The accounts contrast the biologically productive area people use to satisfy their consumption to the biologically productive area available within a region, nation, or the world (biocapacity). Biocapacity is the productive area that can regenerate what people demand from nature. Therefore, the metric is a measure of human impact on the environment. As Ecological Footprint accounts measure to what extent human activities operate within the means of our planet, they are a central metric for sustainability.
Ecosystem valuation is an economic process which assigns a value to an ecosystem and/or its ecosystem services. By quantifying, for example, the human welfare benefits of a forest to reduce flooding and erosion while sequestering carbon, providing habitat for endangered species, and absorbing harmful chemicals, such monetization ideally provides a tool for policy-makers and conservationists to evaluate management impacts and compare a cost-benefit analysis of potential policies. However, such valuations are estimates, and involve the inherent quantitative uncertainty and philosophical debate of evaluating a range non-market costs and benefits.
Environmental resource management or environmental management is the management of the interaction and impact of human societies on the environment. It is not, as the phrase might suggest, the management of the environment itself. Environmental resources management aims to ensure that ecosystem services are protected and maintained for future human generations, and also maintain ecosystem integrity through considering ethical, economic, and scientific (ecological) variables. Environmental resource management tries to identify factors affecteconflicts thatd bconflicts thaty conflictthattheorists thaariset arise between meeting needs and protecting resources. It is thus linked to environmental protection, resource management, sustainability, integrated landscape management, natural resource management, fisheries management, forest management, wildlife management, environmental management systems, and others.
Sustainable forest management (SFM) is the management of forests according to the principles of sustainable development. Sustainable forest management must keep a balance between the three main pillars: ecological, economic and socio-cultural. The goal of sustainable forestry is to allow for a balance to be found between making use of trees while maintaining natural patterns of disturbance and regeneration. The forestry industry mitigates climate change by boosting carbon storage in growing trees and soils and improving the sustainable supply of renewable raw materials via sustainable forest management.
Environmental indicators are simple measures that tell us what is happening in the environment. Since the environment is very complex, indicators provide a more practical and economical way to track the state of the environment than if we attempted to record every possible variable in the environment. For example, concentrations of ozone depleting substances (ODS) in the atmosphere, tracked over time, is a good indicator with respect to the environmental issue of stratospheric ozone depletion.
Biological integrity is associated with how "pristine" an environment is and its function relative to the potential or original state of an ecosystem before human alterations were imposed. Biological integrity is built on the assumption that a decline in the values of an ecosystem's functions are primarily caused by human activity or alterations. The more an environment and its original processes are altered, the less biological integrity it holds for the community as a whole. If these processes were to change over time naturally, without human influence, the integrity of the ecosystem would remain intact. The integrity of the ecosystem relies heavily on the processes that occur within it because those determine what organisms can inhabit an area and the complexities of their interactions. Most of the applications of the notion of biological integrity have addressed aquatic environments, but there have been efforts to apply the concept to terrestrial environments. Determining the pristine condition of the ecosystem is in theory scientifically derived, but deciding which of the many possible states or conditions of an ecosystem is the appropriate or desirable goal is a political or policy decision and is typically the focus of policy and political disagreements. Ecosystem health is a related concept but differs from biological integrity in that the "desired condition" of the ecosystem or environment is explicitly based on the values or priorities of society.
Natural resource management (NRM) is the management of natural resources such as land, water, soil, plants and animals, with a particular focus on how management affects the quality of life for both present and future generations (stewardship).
In ecology, resilience is the capacity of an ecosystem to respond to a perturbation or disturbance by resisting damage and subsequently recovering. Such perturbations and disturbances can include stochastic events such as fires, flooding, windstorms, insect population explosions, and human activities such as deforestation, fracking of the ground for oil extraction, pesticide sprayed in soil, and the introduction of exotic plant or animal species. Disturbances of sufficient magnitude or duration can profoundly affect an ecosystem and may force an ecosystem to reach a threshold beyond which a different regime of processes and structures predominates. When such thresholds are associated with a critical or bifurcation point, these regime shifts may also be referred to as critical transitions.
DPSIR is a causal framework used to describe the interactions between society and the environment. It seeks to analyze and assess environmental problems by bringing together various scientific disciplines, environmental managers, and stakeholders, and solve them by incorporating sustainable development. First, the indicators are categorized into "drivers" which put "pressures" in the "state" of the system, which in turn results in certain "impacts" that will lead to various "responses" to maintain or recover the system under consideration. It is followed by the organization of available data, and suggestion of procedures to collect missing data for future analysis. Since its formulation in the late 1990s, it has been widely adopted by international organizations for ecosystem-based study in various fields like biodiversity, soil erosion, and groundwater depletion and contamination. In recent times, the framework has been used in combination with other analytical methods and models, to compensate for its shortcomings. It is employed to evaluate environmental changes in ecosystems, identify the social and economic pressures on a system, predict potential challenges and improve management practices. The flexibility and general applicability of the framework make it a resilient tool that can be applied in social, economic, and institutional domains as well.
Sustainability metrics and indices are measures of sustainability, and attempt to quantify beyond the generic concept. Though there are disagreements among those from different disciplines, these disciplines and international organizations have each offered measures or indicators of how to measure the concept.
Ecosystem-based management is an environmental management approach that recognizes the full array of interactions within an ecosystem, including humans, rather than considering single issues, species, or ecosystem services in isolation. It can be applied to studies in the terrestrial and aquatic environments with challenges being attributed to both. In the marine realm, they are highly challenging to quantify due to highly migratory species as well as rapidly changing environmental and anthropogenic factors that can alter the habitat rather quickly. To be able to manage fisheries efficiently and effectively it has become increasingly more pertinent to understand not only the biological aspects of the species being studied, but also the environmental variables they are experiencing. Population abundance and structure, life history traits, competition with other species, where the stock is in the local food web, tidal fluctuations, salinity patterns and anthropogenic influences are among the variables that must be taken into account to fully understand the implementation of a "ecosystem-based management" approach. Interest in ecosystem-based management in the marine realm has developed more recently, in response to increasing recognition of the declining state of fisheries and ocean ecosystems. However, due to a lack of a clear definition and the diversity involved with the environment, the implementation has been lagging. In freshwater lake ecosystems, it has been shown that ecosystem-based habitat management is more effective for enhancing fish populations than management alternatives.
Ecopath with Ecosim (EwE) is a free and open source ecosystem modelling software suite, initially started at NOAA by Jeffrey Polovina, but has since primarily been developed at the formerly UBC Fisheries Centre of the University of British Columbia. In 2007, it was named as one of the ten biggest scientific breakthroughs in NOAA's 200-year history. The NOAA citation states that Ecopath "revolutionized scientists' ability worldwide to understand complex marine ecosystems". Behind this lie more than three decades of development work in association with a thriving network of fisheries scientists such as Villy Christensen, Carl Walters and Daniel Pauly, and software engineers around the world. EwE is funded through projects, user contributions, user support, training courses and co-development collaborations. Per November 2021 there are an estimated 8000+ users across academia, non-government organizations, industry and governments in 150+ countries.
Sustainability measurement is a set of frameworks or indicators to measure how sustainable something is. This includes processes, products, services and businesses. Sustainability is difficult to quantify. It may even be impossible to measure. To measure sustainability, the indicators consider environmental, social and economic domains. The metrics are still evolving. They include indicators, benchmarks and audits. They include sustainability standards and certification systems like Fairtrade and Organic. They also involve indices and accounting. And they can include assessment, appraisal and other reporting systems. These metrics are used over a wide range of spatial and temporal scales. Sustainability measures include corporate sustainability reporting, Triple Bottom Line accounting. They include estimates of the quality of sustainability governance for individual countries. These use the Environmental Sustainability Index and Environmental Performance Index. Some methods let us track sustainable development. These include the UN Human Development Index and ecological footprints.
The United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) was established in July 1970 when the White House and the United States Congress came together due to the public's demand for cleaner natural resources. The purpose of the EPA is to repair the damage done to the environment and to set up new criteria to allow Americans to make a clean environment a reality. The ultimate goal of the EPA is to protect human health and the environment.
Ecological assessment (EA) implies the monitoring of ecological resources, to discover the current and changing conditions. EAs are required components of most hazardous waste site investigations. Such assessments, in conjunction with contamination and human health risk assessments, help to evaluate the environmental hazards posed by contaminated sites and to determine remediation requirements.
Ecosystem health is a metaphor used to describe the condition of an ecosystem. Ecosystem condition can vary as a result of fire, flooding, drought, extinctions, invasive species, climate change, mining, fishing, farming or logging, chemical spills, and a host of other reasons. There is no universally accepted benchmark for a healthy ecosystem, rather the apparent health status of an ecosystem can vary depending upon which health metrics are employed in judging it and which societal aspirations are driving the assessment. Advocates of the health metaphor argue for its simplicity as a communication tool. "Policy-makers and the public need simple, understandable concepts like health." Some critics worry that ecosystem health, a "value-laden construct", can be "passed off as science to unsuspecting policy makers and the public." However, this term is often used in portraying the state of ecosystems worldwide and in conservation and management. For example, scientific journals and the UN often use the terms planetary and ecosystem health, such as the recent journal The Lancet Planetary Health.
Climate resilience is a concept to describe how well people or ecosystems are prepared to bounce back from certain climate hazard events. The formal definition of the term is the "capacity of social, economic and ecosystems to cope with a hazardous event or trend or disturbance". For example, climate resilience can be the ability to recover from climate-related shocks such as floods and droughts. Methods of coping include suitable responses to maintain relevant functions of societies and ecosystems. To increase climate resilience means one has to reduce the climate vulnerability of people and countries. Efforts to increase climate resilience include a range of social, economic, technological, and political strategies. They have to be implemented at all scales of society, from local community action all the way to global treaties.
Cumulative effects, also referred to as cumulative environmental effects and cumulative impacts, can be defined as changes to the environment caused by the combined impact of past, present and future human activities and natural processes. Cumulative effects to the environment are the result of multiple activities whose individual direct impacts may be relatively minor but in combination with others result are significant environmental effects. The multiple impacts of different activities may have an additive, synergistic or antagonistic effect on one another and with natural processes. Cumulative effects can be difficult to predict and manage due to inadequate environmental baseline data, complex ecological processes, and the large scale at which human development occurs.
MuSIASEM or Multi-Scale Integrated Analysis of Societal and Ecosystem Metabolism, is a method of accounting used to analyse socio-ecosystems and to simulate possible patterns of development. It is based on maintaining coherence across scales and different dimensions of quantitative assessments generated using different metrics.
References
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{{cite journal}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link) - ^ Kurtz, J.C., Jackson, L.E. & Fisher, W.S.. (2001). "Strategies for evaluating indicators based on guidelines from the Environmental Protection Agency's Office of Research and Development". Ecological Indicators. 1: 49–60. CiteSeerX 10.1.1.522.9568 . doi:10.1016/S1470-160X(01)00004-8.
{{cite journal}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link) - ^ Niemeijer, D. (2002). "Developing indicators for environmental policy: data-driven and theory-driven approaches examined by example". Environmental Science and Policy. 5 (2): 91–103. doi:10.1016/S1462-9011(02)00026-6.
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Specific
- ↑ Shaker, R. R. (2018). A mega-index for the Americas and its underlying sustainable development correlations. Ecological Indicators, 89, 466-479. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ecolind.2018.01.050
- 1 2 3 4 Fu, Caihong; Xu, Yi; Bundy, Alida; Grüss, Arnaud; Coll, Marta; Heymans, Johanna J.; Fulton, Elizabeth A.; Shannon, Lynne; Halouani, Ghassen; Velez, Laure; Akoglu, Ekin; Lynam, Christopher P.; Shin, Yunne-Jai (October 2019). "Making ecological indicators management ready: Assessing the specificity, sensitivity, and threshold response of ecological indicators". Ecological Indicators. 105: 16–28. doi:10.1016/j.ecolind.2019.05.055. hdl: 10261/192472 .
- 1 2 Liu, Hongxun; Lin, Boqiang (August 2016). "Ecological indicators for green building construction". Ecological Indicators. 67: 68–77. doi:10.1016/j.ecolind.2016.02.024.
