Academic work
Career highlights:
- Fellow National Academy, IAS, AAAS, AAEA, Rockefeller, Guggenheim
- 1952 classic text "Resource Conservation"
- Testified and shaped state and federal conservation policy
- International work on marine resources and other areas
- Studies of Tule Elk, California Condor, Marine Mammals
As early as 1938 he addressed the idea of "permanency of destructive exploitation" in his article "Economic Aspects of Land Conservation." In his main work, Resource Conservation, Economics and Policies (1952), he introduced the idea that natural resources should not be allowed to decline below a "safe minimum standard of conservation" beyond which their availability would become economically irreversible. This idea was later expanded on by others, including Richard C. Bishop. Wantrup's idea of a safe minimum standard or base level for each flow resource provides an economic rationale for biodiversity conservation which can be applied internationally. [6] [3]
Of particular interest is Wantrup's notion of three decision levels: At the highest level is basic law (e.g., the constitution), which affects the second-level decisions on how to form institutions (e.g., water organizations). These institutions—in turn—affect third-level decisions of how to allocate water (e.g., among crops or within an urban sector). Wantrup points out that economists who critique decisions at the third level are perhaps missing the importance of constraints or influence coming from the second level. His critique, which dates from the 1960s, is still relevant—economists still spend most of their time on optimal decisions without taking institutions into account. In taking his institutional approach, Wantrup discussed and integrated common property, the impacts of tenure rights on conservation, the Precautionary Principle, conservation land use planning, and the importance of endangered species and biodiversity. [7] [8]
James Tobin was an American economist who served on the Council of Economic Advisers and consulted with the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System, and taught at Harvard and Yale Universities. He contributed to the development of key ideas in the Keynesian economics of his generation and advocated government intervention in particular to stabilize output and avoid recessions. His academic work included pioneering contributions to the study of investment, monetary and fiscal policy and financial markets. He also proposed an econometric model for censored dependent variables, the well-known tobit model.
Natural resources are resources that are drawn from nature and used with few modifications. This includes the sources of valued characteristics such as commercial and industrial use, aesthetic value, scientific interest, and cultural value. On Earth, it includes sunlight, atmosphere, water, land, all minerals along with all vegetation, and wildlife.
Natural capital is the world's stock of natural resources, which includes geology, soils, air, water and all living organisms. Some natural capital assets provide people with free goods and services, often called ecosystem services. All of these underpin our economy and society, and thus make human life possible.
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.
Energy economics is a broad scientific subject area which includes topics related to supply and use of energy in societies. Considering the cost of energy services and associated value gives economic meaning to the efficiency at which energy can be produced. Energy services can be defined as functions that generate and provide energy to the “desired end services or states”. The efficiency of energy services is dependent on the engineered technology used to produce and supply energy. The goal is to minimise energy input required to produce the energy service, such as lighting (lumens), heating (temperature) and fuel. The main sectors considered in energy economics are transportation and building, although it is relevant to a broad scale of human activities, including households and businesses at a microeconomic level and resource management and environmental impacts at a macroeconomic level.
Agricultural economics is an applied field of economics concerned with the application of economic theory in optimizing the production and distribution of food and fiber products. Agricultural economics began as a branch of economics that specifically dealt with land usage. It focused on maximizing the crop yield while maintaining a good soil ecosystem. Throughout the 20th century the discipline expanded and the current scope of the discipline is much broader. Agricultural economics today includes a variety of applied areas, having considerable overlap with conventional economics. Agricultural economists have made substantial contributions to research in economics, econometrics, development economics, and environmental economics. Agricultural economics influences food policy, agricultural policy, and environmental policy.
The Property and Environment Research Center (PERC), previously known as the Political Economy Research Center, is a free market environmental think tank based in Bozeman, Montana, United States. Established in 1980, PERC is dedicated to original research on market approaches to resolving environmental problems.
Environmental resource 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 affected by conflicts that rise between meeting needs and protecting resources. It is thus linked to environmental protection, sustainability, integrated landscape management, natural resource management, fisheries management, forest management, and wildlife management, and others.
The resource curse, also known as the paradox of plenty or the poverty paradox, is the phenomenon of countries with an abundance of natural resources having less economic growth, less democracy, or worse development outcomes than countries with fewer natural resources. There are many theories and much academic debate about the reasons for and exceptions to the adverse outcomes. Most experts believe the resource curse is not universal or inevitable but affects certain types of countries or regions under certain conditions.
In economics, a common-pool resource (CPR) is a type of good consisting of a natural or human-made resource system, whose size or characteristics makes it costly, but not impossible, to exclude potential beneficiaries from obtaining benefits from its use. Unlike pure public goods, common pool resources face problems of congestion or overuse, because they are subtractable. A common-pool resource typically consists of a core resource, which defines the stock variable, while providing a limited quantity of extractable fringe units, which defines the flow variable. While the core resource is to be protected or nurtured in order to allow for its continuous exploitation, the fringe units can be harvested or consumed.
The Lange model is a neoclassical economic model for a hypothetical socialist economy based on public ownership of the means of production and a trial-and-error approach to determining output targets and achieving economic equilibrium and Pareto efficiency. In this model, the state owns non-labor factors of production, and markets allocate final goods and consumer goods. The Lange model states that if all production is performed by a public body such as the state, and there is a functioning price mechanism, this economy will be Pareto-efficient, like a hypothetical market economy under perfect competition. Unlike models of capitalism, the Lange model is based on direct allocation, by directing enterprise managers to set price equal to marginal cost in order to achieve Pareto efficiency. By contrast, in a capitalist economy, private owners seek to maximize profits, while competitive pressures are relied on to indirectly lower the price, this discourages production with high marginal cost and encourages economies of scale.
Elinor Claire "Lin" Ostrom was an American political scientist and political economist whose work was associated with New Institutional Economics and the resurgence of political economy. In 2009, she was awarded the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences for her "analysis of economic governance, especially the commons", which she shared with Oliver E. Williamson. She was the first woman to win the Nobel Prize in Economics.
Ecologically sustainable development is the environmental component of sustainable development. It can be achieved partially through the use of the precautionary principle; if there are threats of serious or irreversible environmental damage, lack of full scientific certainty should not be used as a reason for postponing measures to prevent environmental degradation. Also important is the principle of intergenerational equity; the present generation should ensure that the health, diversity and productivity of the environment is maintained or enhanced for the benefit of future generations. In order for this movement to flourish, environmental factors should be more heavily weighed in the valuation of assets and services to provide more incentive for the conservation of biological diversity and ecological integrity.
Paul Davidson is an American macroeconomist who has been one of the leading spokesmen of the American branch of the post-Keynesian school in economics. He is a prolific writer and has actively intervened in important debates on economic policy from a position critical of mainstream economics.
Green accounting is a type of accounting that attempts to factor environmental costs into the financial results of operations. It has been argued that gross domestic product ignores the environment and therefore policymakers need a revised model that incorporates green accounting. The major purpose of green accounting is to help businesses understand and manage the potential quid pro quo between traditional economics goals and environmental goals. It also increases the important information available for analyzing policy issues, especially when those vital pieces of information are often overlooked. Green accounting is said to only ensure weak sustainability, which should be considered as a step toward ultimately a strong sustainability.
Ecosystem management is an approach to natural resource management that aims to ensure the long-term sustainability and persistence of an ecosystem's function and services while meeting socioeconomic, political, and cultural needs. Although indigenous communities have employed sustainable ecosystem management approaches implicitly for millennia, ecosystem management emerged explicitly as a formal concept in the 1990s from a growing appreciation of the complexity of ecosystems and of humans' reliance and influence on natural systems.
Although related, sustainable development and sustainability are two different concepts. Weak sustainability is an idea within environmental economics which states that 'human capital' can substitute 'natural capital'. It is based upon the work of Nobel laureate Robert Solow, and John Hartwick. Contrary to weak sustainability, strong sustainability assumes that 'human capital' and 'natural capital' are complementary, but not interchangeable.
The International Fishery Congress was a series of conferences before World War I at which representatives of countries involved in the fishing industry exchanged views.
Stephen Oliver Andersen is the Director of Research at the Institute for Governance & Sustainable Development (IGSD) and former co-chair (1989–2012) of the Montreal Protocol Technology and Economic Assessment Panel (TEAP) where he also chaired and co-chaired Technical Options Committees, Task Forces and Special Reports. He is one of the founders and leading figures in the success of the Montreal Protocol on Substances that Deplete the Ozone Layer that has phased out the chemicals that deplete the stratospheric ozone that protects the Earth against the harmful effects of ultraviolet radiation that causes skin cancer, cataracts, and suppression of the human immune system, destroys agricultural crops and natural ecosystems and deteriorates the built environment. Because ozone-depleting chemicals are also powerful greenhouse gases the Montreal Protocol also protected climate. Dr. Andersen was instrumental in the 2016 Kigali Amendment that will phase down hydrofluorocarbons once necessary to phase out chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) fast enough to avoid ozone tipping points, but no longer necessary now that environmentally superior replacements are available or soon to be available. For his ambitious campaign saving the ozone layer, Dr. Andersen earned the 2021 Future of Life Award along with Joe Farman and Susan Solomon.
Robert Stephen Pindyck is an American economist, Bank of Tokyo-Mitsubishi Professor of Economics and Finance at Sloan School of Management at Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He is also a research associate with the National Bureau of Economic Research and a Fellow of the Econometric Society. He has also been a Visiting Professor at Tel-Aviv University, Harvard University, and Columbia University.
