"Economics, Ecology and Sustainable Development: Are They Compatible?"
Anthony M. Friend on Ecological Economics—a new synthesis in which the traditional virtue of thrift is justified using modern ideas from systems theory and thermodynamics.
Anthony M. Friend on Ecological Economics—a new synthesis in which the traditional virtue of thrift is justified using modern ideas from systems theory and thermodynamics.
This paper addresses problems related to transferring market concepts to non-market domains.
This essay explores three case studies that illustrate the exemplary use of economic analysis in environmental decision-making.
In his article, Edmundo Claro argues that in-kind compensation is more acceptable than monetary payments or no compensation because people tend to understand siting conflicts more as matters of justice rather than as matters of freedom or care.
This paper reports a Contingent Valuation application to estimate the non-market costs and benefits of hydro scheme developments in an Icelandic wilderness area.
The paper argues that ecological services are either too “lumpy” to price in incremental units (for example, climatic systems), priced competitively, or too cheap to meter. The paper considers counter-examples and objections.
This article aims to disclose the nature and underlying causes of the recent food crises focusing on both conjunctural and structural factors; to analyze the socio-economic and geopolitical impacts of food price increases; to identify the possible strategies to minimize the trade-off between the increase of agricultural production and the sustainable use of natural resources.
Using the Central Coast of California as a case study, this article argues that a nexus of ambitious growers and a growing state agricultural bureaucracy worked to create a “brand name” and teach cultivation approaches with increased production and expanded markets. But these same actors also made efforts to keep the long-term health of the industry and the community in mind.
Matthew MacLellan argues that Garrett Hardin’s primary object of critique in his influential “The Tragedy of the Commons” is not the commons or shared property at all—as is almost universally assumed by Hardin’s critics—but is rather Adam Smith’s theory of markets and its viability for protecting scarce resources.
In this Special Section on the Green Economy in the South, Brett Sylvester Matulis considers Costa Rica’s national “payments for ecosystems services” (PES) programme. He explores World Bank / Costa Rica relations and market-oriented interventions to the financing of ecosystem service payments and explains that (despite inherent contradictions inhibiting market formation) neoliberal actors within the state can still implement mechanisms designed to approximate markets.