Weak and strong sustainability

Last updated

Weak and strong sustainability are terms that have emerged from the field of environmental economics and describe opposing approaches to sustainability, specifically in relation to natural resource management and economic development. One of the first pieces of work to discuss these ideas was "Blueprint for a Green Economy" by Pearce, Markandya, and Barbier, published in 1989. [1] This work laid the foundations for further discussion on the substitutability of natural capital (e.g. forests, water, and clean air) and human-made capital (e.g. buildings, machinery, and technology) and the implications for long-term ecological and economic health. Weak sustainability argues that natural and human capital are interchangeable, meaning that the use or loss of natural capital can be considered sustainable if the human capital meets or exceeds the value of the natural capital. It assumes that different types of value can be measured and given value in the same way. For example, replacing a natural forest with a park or agricultural land can be considered sustainable if the recreational or economic value equal the value of the biodiversity lost and further environmental impact caused. Strong sustainability on the other hand, argues that natural capital should be maintained or enhanced independently of human-made capital. It considers that certain natural assets are incommensurable and have critical ecological functions that cannot be substituted by human-made alternatives. For example, cutting down trees in a natural forest and planting new trees elsewhere cannot be considered sustainable as the value of biodiversity lost and wider ecological implications cannot truly be measured or replaced.

Contents

Origins and theory

Capital approach to sustainability and intergenerational equity

To understand the concept of weak sustainability, it is first necessary to explore the capital approach to sustainability. This is key to the idea of intergenerational equity. This implies that a fair distribution of resources and assets between generations exists. Decision makers, both in theory and practice, need a concept that enables assessment in order to decide if intergenerational equity is achieved. The capital approach lends itself to this task. In this context we must distinguish between the different types of capital. Human capital (e.g. skills, knowledge) and natural capital (e.g. minerals, water) tend to be the most frequently cited examples. Within the concept it is believed that the amount of capital a generation has at its disposal is decisive for its development. A development is then called sustainable when it leaves the capital stock at least unchanged. [2] [3]

Sustainable development

Although related, sustainable development and sustainability are two different concepts. Weak sustainability is an idea based upon the work of Nobel laureate Robert Solow, [4] [5] [6] and John Hartwick. [7] [8] [9] which states that 'human capital' can substitute 'natural capital'. The weak sustainability paradigm stems from the 1970s. It began as an extension of the neoclassical theory of economic growth, accounting for non-renewable natural resources as a factor of production. [4] [7] However, it only really came into the mainstream in the 1990s as the idea received more political attention as sustainable development discussions evolved in the late 1980s and early 1990s. A key landmark was the Rio Summit in 1992 where the vast majority of nation-states committed themselves to sustainable development. This commitment was demonstrated by the signing of Agenda 21, a global action plan on sustainable development. At its inception, sustainability was interpreted as a requirement to preserve, intact, the environment as we find it today in all its forms. The Brundtland Report, for example, stated that ‘The loss of plant and animal species can greatly limit the options of future generations. The result is that sustainable development requires the conservation of plant and animal species’.

Development of theory

Wilfred Beckerman [10] posits that the absolutist concept of sustainable development given above is morally repugnant. The largest part of the world's population live in acute poverty. Taking that as well as the acute degradation into account, one could justify using up vast resources in an attempt to preserve certain species from extinction. These species providing no real benefit for society other than a possible value for the knowledge of their continued existence. He argues that such a task would involve using resources that could have instead been devoted to more pressing world concerns. Examples include increasing access to clean drinking water or sanitation in the Third World.

Many environmentalists shifted their attention to the idea of ‘weak’ sustainability. [10] This allows for some natural resources to decrease as long as sufficient compensation is provided by increases in other resources. The result usually was an increase in human capital. This compensation is in the form of sustained human welfare. This is illustrated in a well-regarded definition by David Pearce, [11] the author of numerous works on sustainability. He defines sustainability as implying something about maintaining the level of human welfare (or well-being) so that it may improve, but never declines (or, not more than temporarily). This implies sustainable development will not decrease over time.

Inter-generational equity assumes each following generation has at least as much capital at its disposal as the preceding generation. The idea of leaving capital stock at least unchanged is widely accepted. The question arises, whether or not one form of capital may be substituted by another. [12] This is the focus of the debate between ‘weak’ and ‘strong’ sustainability, and how intergenerational equity is to be achieved.

Strong sustainability argument

Strong sustainability does not share the notion of inter-changeability; it assumes that economic and environmental capital are complementary but not interchangeable. Since the nineties, there has been an ardent debate on the substitutability between natural and human-made capital. While "Weak Sustainability" supporters mainly believe that these are substitutable, "Strong Sustainability" followers generally contest the possibility of inter-changeability. [13] Strong sustainability accepts there are certain functions that the environment performs that cannot be duplicated by humans or human made capital. The ozone layer is one example of an ecosystem service that is crucial for human existence, forms part of natural capital, but is difficult for humans to duplicate. [14]

Unlike weak sustainability, strong sustainability puts the emphasis on ecological scale over economic gains. This implies that nature has a right to exist and that it has been borrowed and should be passed on from one generation to the next still intact in its original form.

One version of strong sustainability is in defining and respecting hard boundaries and limits in relation to planetary boundaries. This attempts to give incommensurable value to certain environmental changes or actions. [15] [16] [17]

Weak sustainability in practice

Weak sustainability has been defined using concepts like human capital and natural capital. [18] Human (or produced) capital incorporates resources such as infrastructure, labour and knowledge. Natural capital covers the stock of environmental assets such as fossil fuels, biodiversity and other ecosystem structures and functions relevant for ecosystem services. In very weak sustainability, the overall stock of man-made capital and natural capital remains constant over time. It is important to note that, unconditional substitution between the various kinds of capital is allowed within weak sustainability. This means that natural resources may decline as long as human capital is increased. Examples include the degradation of the ozone layer, tropical forests and coral reefs if accompanied by benefits to human capital. An example of the benefit to human capital could include increased financial profits. [19] If capital is left constant over time intergenerational equity, and thus Sustainable Development, is achieved. [12] An example of weak sustainability could be mining coal and using it for production of electricity. The natural resource coal, is replaced by a manufactured good which is electricity. The electricity is then in turn used to improve domestic life quality (e.g. cooking, lighting, heating, refrigeration and operating boreholes to supply water in some villages) and for industrial purposes (growing the economy by producing other resources using machines that are electricity operated.)

Case studies of weak sustainability in practice have had both positive and negative results. The concept of weak sustainability still attracts a lot of criticism. Some even suggest that the concept of sustainability is redundant. Other approaches are advocated, including ‘social bequests’, which focus the attention away from neoclassical theory altogether.

A prime example of a weak sustainability is the Government Pension Fund of Norway. Statoil ASA, a state-owned Norwegian oil company invested its surplus profits from petroleum into a pension portfolio to date worth over $1 trillion. The oil, a type of natural capital, was exported in vast quantities by Norway. The resultant fund allows for long-lasting income for the population in exchange for a finite resource, actually increasing the total capital available for Norway above the original levels. This example shows how weak sustainability and substitution can be cleverly applied on a national scale, although it is recognised that its applications are very restricted on a global scale. In this application, Hartwick's rule would state that the pension fund was sufficient capital to offset the depletion of the oil resources.

A less positive case is that of the small Pacific nation of Nauru. A substantial phosphate deposit was found on the island in 1900, and now approximately 80% of the island has been rendered uninhabitable after over 100 years of mining. [20] Concurrent with this extraction, Nauru's inhabitants, over the last few decades of the twentieth century, have enjoyed a high per capita income. Money from the mining of phosphate enabled the establishment of a trust fund, which was estimated to be as much as $1 billion. However, chiefly as a result of the Asian financial crisis, the trust fund was almost entirely wiped out. This ‘development’ of Nauru followed the logic of weak sustainability, and almost led to complete environmental destruction. [21] This case presents a telling argument against weak sustainability, suggesting that a substitution of natural for man-made capital may not be reversible in the long-term.

Role of governance and policy recommendations

The implementation of weak sustainability in governance can be viewed theoretically and practically through Hartwick's rule. [7] In resource economics, Hartwick's rule defines the amount of investment in human capital that is needed to offset declining stocks of non-renewable resources. Solow [4] showed that, given a degree of substitutability between human capital and natural capital, one way to design a sustainable consumption program for an economy is to accumulate man-made capital. When this accumulation is sufficiently rapid the effect from the shrinking exhaustible resource stock is countered by the services from the increased human capital stock. Hartwick's rule, is often referred to as "invest resource rents", where ‘rent’ is payment to a factor of production (in this case capital) in excess of that needed to keep it in its present use. This requires that a nation invest all rent earned from exhaustible resources currently extracted.

Later, Pearce and Atkinson [22] and Hamilton [23] added to Hartwick's rule, by setting out a theoretical and empirical measure of net investment in human and natural capital (and later human capital) that became known as genuine savings. Genuine savings measures net changes in produced, natural and human capital stocks, valued in monetary terms.

The aim of governance therefore should be to keep genuine savings above or equal to zero. In this sense it is similar to green accounting, which attempts to factor environmental costs into the financial results of operations. A key example of this is the World Bank, who now regularly publishes a comparative and comprehensive set of genuine savings estimates for over 150 countries which is called ‘adjusted savings’. [24]

Criticisms of the strong vs. weak sustainability model

Martinez-Allier's address [25] concerns over the implications of measuring weak sustainability, after results of work conducted by Pearce & Atkinson in the early 1990s. [22] By their measure, most of the Northern, industrialised countries are deemed sustainable, as is the world economy as a whole. This point of view can be considered to be flawed since the world would (arguably) not be sustainable if all countries have the resource intensity rate and pollution rate of many industrialised countries. Industrialization does not necessarily equate to sustainability.

According to Pearce and Atkinson's calculations, the Japanese economy is one of the most sustainable economies in the world. The reason for this is that its saving rate is so high. This trend still remains today and therefore exceeds depreciation on both natural and man-made capital. Thus, they suggest that it is the gross negligence of factors other than savings in measuring sustainability that makes weak sustainability an inappropriate concept.

The integrative sustainability model has the economy completely located within society and society completely located within the environment. In other words, the economy is a subset of society and society is completely dependent upon the environment. This interdependence means that any sustainability-related issue must be considered holistically.

A diagram indicating the relationship between the three pillars of sustainability, suggesting that both economy and society are constrained by environmental limits Nested sustainability-v2.svg
A diagram indicating the relationship between the three pillars of sustainability, suggesting that both economy and society are constrained by environmental limits

Other inadequacies of the paradigm include the difficulties in measuring savings rates and the inherent problems in quantifying the many different attributes and functions of the biophysical world in monetary terms. [27] By including all human and biophysical resources under the same heading of ‘capital’, the depleting of fossil fuels, reduction of biodiversity and so forth, are potentially compatible with sustainability. As Gowdy & O'Hara [28] so aptly put it, "As long as the criterion of weak sustainability is met, with savings outstripping capital depletion, there is no conflict between the destruction of species and ecosystems or the depletion of fossil fuels, and the goal of sustainability."

Opposing weak sustainability, strong sustainability supporters contend that we need "a more small-scale decentralized way of life based upon greater self-reliance, so as to create a social and economic system less destructive towards nature." Strong sustainability does not make allowances for the substitution of human, and human made capital for Earth's land, water, and their biodiversity. The products created by mankind cannot replace the natural capital found in ecosystems. [29]

Another critical weakness of the concept is related to environmental resilience. According to Van Den Bergh, [30] resilience can be considered as a global, structural stability concept, based on the idea that multiple, locally stable ecosystems can exist. Sustainability can thus be directly related to resilience. With this in mind, weak sustainability can cause extreme sensitivity to either natural disturbances (such as diseases in agriculture with little crop diversity) or economic disturbances (as outlined in the case study of Nauru above). This high level of sensitivity within regional systems in the face of external factors brings to attention an important inadequacy of weak sustainability. [30]

Rejection of both weak and strong models

Some critics dismiss the entire concept of sustainability. Beckerman's influential work concludes that weak sustainability is “redundant and illogical”. [10] He holds that sustainability only makes sense in its 'strong' form, but that "requires subscribing to a morally repugnant and totally impracticable objective." [10] He also says that he regrets that so much time has been wasted on the entire concept of sustainable development.

Others[ who? ] have suggested that a better approach to sustainability would be that of social bequests.[ clarification needed ] This approach is intended to "free us from a 'zero-sum' game in which our gain is an automatic loss for future generations". [31] The social bequest approach reframes the problem to focus on what we leave to future generations rather than how much; the argument is that when the problem is phrased as ‘how much,' this implies that some amount of a resource should be used, and some amount should be left.[ clarification needed ] Daniel Bromley [31] uses the example of rainforests to illustrate his argument: If we decide to use 25% of a rainforest and leave the rest, but then the next time we make a decision we start all over again and use 25% of what's left, and so on, eventually there will be no rainforest left. By focusing on bequests of specific rights and opportunities for future generations, we can remove ourselves from the "straightjacket of substitution and marginal tradeoffs of neoclassical theory". [21]

Related Research Articles

Sustainable development is an approach to growth and human development that aims to meet the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs. The aim is to have a society where living conditions and resources meet human needs without undermining planetary integrity. Sustainable development aims to balance the needs of the economy, environment, and social well-being. The Brundtland Report in 1987 helped to make the concept of sustainable development better known.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Natural capital</span> Worlds stock of natural resources

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.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Environmental economics</span> Sub-field of economics

Environmental economics is a sub-field of economics concerned with environmental issues. It has become a widely studied subject due to growing environmental concerns in the twenty-first century. Environmental economics "undertakes theoretical or empirical studies of the economic effects of national or local environmental policies around the world. ... Particular issues include the costs and benefits of alternative environmental policies to deal with air pollution, water quality, toxic substances, solid waste, and global warming."

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Ecological economics</span> Interdependence of human economies and natural ecosystems

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 green gross domestic product is an index of economic growth with the environmental consequences of that growth factored into a country's conventional GDP. Green GDP monetizes the loss of biodiversity, and accounts for costs caused by climate change. Some environmental experts prefer physical indicators, which may be aggregated to indices such as the "Sustainable Development Index".

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Genuine progress indicator</span> Enhances Economic / Well-Being indicators

Genuine progress indicator (GPI) is a metric that has been suggested to replace, or supplement, gross domestic product (GDP). The GPI is designed to take fuller account of the well-being of a nation, only a part of which pertains to the size of the nation's economy, by incorporating environmental and social factors which are not measured by GDP. For instance, some models of GPI decrease in value when the poverty rate increases. The GPI separates the concept of societal progress from economic growth.

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.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Herman Daly</span> American economist (1938–2022)

Herman Edward Daly was an American ecological and Georgist economist and professor at the School of Public Policy of University of Maryland, College Park in the United States, best known for his time as a senior economist at the World Bank from 1988 to 1994. In 1996, he was awarded the Right Livelihood Award for "defining a path of ecological economics that integrates the key elements of ethics, quality of life, environment and community."

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Environmental resource management</span> Type of resource management

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 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.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Nicholas Georgescu-Roegen</span> Romanian mathematician, statistician and economist (1906–1994)

Nicholas Georgescu-Roegen was a Romanian mathematician, statistician and economist. He is best known today for his 1971 magnum opus The Entropy Law and the Economic Process, in which he argued that all natural resources are irreversibly degraded when put to use in economic activity. A progenitor and a paradigm founder in economics, Georgescu-Roegen's work was decisive for the establishing of ecological economics as an independent academic sub-discipline in economics.

In resource economics, Hartwick's rule defines the amount of investment in produced capital that is needed to exactly offset declining stocks of non-renewable resources. This investment is undertaken so that the standard of living does not fall as society moves into the indefinite future. Solow (1974) shows that, given a degree of substitutability between produced capital and natural resources, one way to design a sustainable consumption program for an economy is to accumulate produced capital sufficiently rapidly so that the pinch from the shrinking exhaustible resource stock is precisely countered by the services from the enlarged produced capital stock. Hartwick's rule – often abbreviated as "invest resource rents" – requires that a nation invest all rent earned from exhaustible resources currently extracted, where "rent" is defined along paths that maximize returns to owners of the resource stock. The rule extends to the case of many types of capital goods, including a vector of stocks of natural capital.

Clement Allan Tisdell was an Australian economist and Emeritus Professor at the University of Queensland. He was best known for his work in environmental and ecological economics.

Resource refers to all the materials available in our environment which are technologically accessible, economically feasible and culturally sustainable and help us to satisfy our needs and wants. Resources can broadly be classified according to their availability as renewable or national and international resources. An item may become a resource with technology. The benefits of resource utilization may include increased wealth, proper functioning of a system, or enhanced well. From a human perspective, a regular resource is anything to satisfy human needs and wants.

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.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Sustainability</span> Societal goal and normative concept

Sustainability is a social goal for people to co-exist on Earth over a long period of time. Definitions of this term are disputed and have varied with literature, context, and time. Sustainability usually has three dimensions : environmental, economic, and social. Many definitions emphasize the environmental dimension. This can include addressing key environmental problems, including climate change and biodiversity loss. The idea of sustainability can guide decisions at the global, national, organizational, and individual levels. A related concept is that of sustainable development, and the terms are often used to mean the same thing. UNESCO distinguishes the two like this: "Sustainability is often thought of as a long-term goal, while sustainable development refers to the many processes and pathways to achieve it."

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Natural resource economics</span> Supply, demand and allocation of the Earths natural resources

Natural resource economics deals with the supply, demand, and allocation of the Earth's natural resources. One main objective of natural resource economics is to better understand the role of natural resources in the economy in order to develop more sustainable methods of managing those resources to ensure their availability for future generations. Resource economists study interactions between economic and natural systems, with the goal of developing a sustainable and efficient economy.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">History of environmental pollution</span>

The history of environmental pollution traces human-dominated ecological systems from the earliest civilizations to the present day. This history is characterized by the increased regional success of a particular society, followed by crises that were either resolved, producing sustainability, or not, leading to decline. In early human history, the use of fire and desire for specific foods may have altered the natural composition of plant and animal communities. Between 8,000 and 12,000 years ago, agrarian communities emerged which depended largely on their environment and the creation of a "structure of permanence."

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Clive Spash</span> Ecological economist

Clive L. Spash is an ecological economist. He currently holds the Chair of Public Policy and Governance at Vienna University of Economics and Business, appointed in 2010. He is also Editor-in-Chief of the academic journal Environmental Values.

Ecologically or ecological unequal exchange is a concept from ecological economics that builds from the notion of unequal exchange. It considers the inequities hidden in the monetary value of trade flows not only in terms of wages, and quantities of labor but also regarding materials, energy and environmental degradation. As labor is also a form of energy, unequal exchange of embodied labor can even be considered a subset of the wider phenomenon of ecologically unequal exchange. There is an uneven utilization of the environment at the global level not only due to the uneven distribution of resources, but also to shift the environmental burden. The consumption and capital accumulation of core countries are based on environmental degradation and extraction in periphery countries. Sustainability analysis and solutions with a production-based perspective in core countries may thus keep increase unsustainability at the global level. The current configuration of global production networks that leads to this asymmetric trade patterns has evolved historically with colonialism. Whereas ecological unequal exchange is a concept developed in academia, the concept of ecological debt is used in an activism context of environmental justice. The latter defines the accumulation of this unequal exchange through history.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Environmental conflict</span> Social conflict caused by environmental factors

Environmental conflicts, socio-environmental conflict or ecological distribution conflicts (EDCs) are social conflicts caused by environmental degradation or by unequal distribution of environmental resources. The Environmental Justice Atlas documented 3,100 environmental conflicts worldwide as of April 2020 and emphasised that many more conflicts remained undocumented.

References

  1. ↑ Pearce, David W.; Markandya, Anil; Barbier, Edward (1989). Blueprint for a green economy. Great Britain. London: Earthscan. ISBN   978-1-85383-066-2.
  2. ↑ Pearce, D.W.; Barbier, E.B.; Markandya, A. (1990). sustainable development: economics and environment in the third world. Hants: Edward Elgar.
  3. ↑ Stern, D.I. (1997). "the capital theory approach to sustainability: a critical appraisal" (PDF). Journal of Economic Issues. 31 (1): 145–73. doi:10.1080/00213624.1997.11505895.
  4. 1 2 3 Solow, R.M. (1974). "Intergenerational equity and exhaustible resources". Review of Economic Studies. 41: 29–46. doi:10.2307/2296370. hdl: 1721.1/63764 . JSTOR   2296370.
  5. ↑ Solow, R.M. (1986). "On the intergenerational allocation of natural resources". Scandinavian Journal of Economics. 88 (1): 141–9. doi:10.2307/3440280. JSTOR   3440280.
  6. ↑ Solow, R.M. (1993). "An almost practical step towards sustainability". Resources Policy. 16 (3): 162–72. Bibcode:1993RePol..19..162S. doi:10.1016/0301-4207(93)90001-4.
  7. 1 2 3 Hartwick, J.M. (1977). "Intergenerational equity and the investing of rents from exhaustible resources". The American Economic Review. 67 (5): 972–4.
  8. ↑ Hartwick, J.M. (1978a). "Investing returns from depleting renewable resource stocks and intergenerational equity". Economics Letters. 1 (1): 85–8. doi:10.1016/0165-1765(78)90102-7.
  9. ↑ Hartwick, J.M. (1978b). "Substitution among exhaustible resources and intergenerational equity". The Review of Economic Studies. 45 (2): 347–54. doi:10.2307/2297349. JSTOR   2297349.
  10. 1 2 3 4 Beckerman, Wilfred (1994). "Sustainable development: is it a useful concept?". Environmental Values. 3 (3): 191–209. doi:10.3197/096327194776679700.
  11. ↑ David Pearce, ed. (1992). Macmillan Dictionary of Modern Economics (4th ed.). London: Macmillan.
  12. 1 2 Figge, F. (2005). "Capital Substitutability and Weak Sustainability Revisited: The Conditions for Capital Substitution in the Presence of Risk". Environmental Values. 14 (2): 185–201. doi: 10.3197/0963271054084966 .
  13. ↑ "Division of Bioeconomics - KU Leuven".
  14. ↑ "Sustainability continued". Archived from the original on August 26, 2012. Retrieved May 20, 2013.
  15. ↑ Steffen, Will; Richardson, Katherine; Rockström, Johan; Cornell, Sarah E.; Fetzer, Ingo; Bennett, Elena M.; Biggs, Reinette; Carpenter, Stephen R.; de Vries, Wim; de Wit, Cynthia A.; Folke, Carl; Gerten, Dieter; Heinke, Jens; Mace, Georgina M.; Persson, Linn M. (2015-02-13). "Planetary boundaries: Guiding human development on a changing planet". Science. 347 (6223). doi:10.1126/science.1259855. hdl: 1885/13126 . ISSN   0036-8075.
  16. ↑ Rockström, Johan; Steffen, Will; Noone, Kevin; Persson, Åsa; Chapin, F. Stuart III; Lambin, Eric; Lenton, Timothy M.; Scheffer, Marten; Folke, Carl; Schellnhuber, Hans Joachim; Nykvist, Björn; de Wit, Cynthia A.; Hughes, Terry; van der Leeuw, Sander; Rodhe, Henning (2009). "Planetary Boundaries: Exploring the Safe Operating Space for Humanity". Ecology and Society. 14 (2). doi:10.5751/ES-03180-140232. hdl: 10535/5421 . ISSN   1708-3087.
  17. ↑ Ross, Florian (2019-12-15). "Kate Raworth - Doughnut Economics: Seven Ways to Think Like a 21st Century Economist (2017)" (PDF). Regional and Business Studies. 11 (2). doi:10.33568/rbs.2409. ISSN   2061-2311.
  18. ↑ Cabeza-Gutes, M. (1996). "The concept of weak sustainability". Ecological Economics. 17 (3): 147–56. doi:10.1016/s0921-8009(96)80003-6.
  19. ↑ Cart, N. (2001). The Politics of the Environment. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
  20. ↑ Gowdy, J.M.; McDaniel, C. (1999). "The physical destruction of Nauru: An example of weak sustainability". Land Economics. 75 (2): 33–8. doi:10.2307/3147015. JSTOR   3147015.
  21. 1 2 Ayres, R.; Van den Bergh, J.; Gowdy, J. (1998). "Viewpoint: weak versus strong sustainability" (PDF). tinbergen.nl.
  22. 1 2 Pearce, D.W.; Atkinson, G.D. (1993). "Capital theory and the measurement of sustainable development: an indicator of weak sustainability". Ecological Economics. 8 (2): 103–108. doi:10.1016/0921-8009(93)90039-9.
  23. ↑ Hamilton, K (1994). "Green adjustments to GDP". Resources Policy. 20 (3): 125–68. Bibcode:1994RePol..20..155H. doi:10.1016/0301-4207(94)90048-5.
  24. ↑ Dietz, S. & Neumayer, E. Economics and the governance of sustainable development. In Governing sustainability. by Adger, N & Jordan, A. 2009. Cambridge: Cambridge university press.
  25. ↑ Martinez-Alier, J. (1995). "The environment as a luxury or "too poor to be green"?". Ecological Economics. 13: 1–10. doi:10.1016/0921-8009(94)00062-z.
  26. ↑ Scott Cato, M. (2009). Green Economics. London: Earthscan, pp. 36–37. ISBN   978-1-84407-571-3.
  27. ↑ Vatn, A. & Bromley, D. (1994). "Choices without prices without apologies". Journal of Environmental Economics and Management. 26 (2): 125–48. doi:10.1006/jeem.1994.1008.
  28. ↑ Gowdy, J.; O' Hara, S. (1997). "Weak sustainability and viable technologies". Ecological Economics. 22 (3): 239–47. doi:10.1016/s0921-8009(97)00093-1.
  29. ↑ "2ndgreenrevolution".
  30. 1 2 Van den Bergh, J. (2007). Handbook of Sustainable Development (Atkinson, G., Dietz, S. & Neumayer, E.). Cheltenham: Edward Elgar.
  31. 1 2 Bromley, D. (1998). "Searching for sustainability: the poverty of spontaneous order". Ecological Economics. 24 (2–3): 231–40. doi:10.1016/s0921-8009(97)00145-6.

Further reading

Ecological economists writing on the topic of sustainable development:

Different ways of defining sustainable development:

Informative work on the concept of strong sustainability:

This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.