The Greening of Industrial Ecosystems (1994) / Chapter Skim
Currently Skimming:
Economics and Sustainable Development
Economics and Sustainable Development
Pages 90-97
The Chapter Skim interface presents what we've algorithmically identified as the most significant single chunk of text within every page in the chapter.
Select key terms on the right to highlight them within pages of the chapter.
From page 90... ...
labeled sustainable development in its 1987 report Our Common Future as "development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs." Thus, sustainability involves concern for the interests of future generations. A second common feature in discussion of sustainability is the question of substitutability between natural resources (including the environment)
|
From page 91... ...
The standard approach to intergenerational trade-offs in economics involves assigning benefits and costs according to some representative set of individual preferences, and discounting costs and benefits accruing to future generations just as future receipts and burdens experienced by members of the current generation are discounted. The justifications for discounting over time are first, that people prefer current benefits over future benefits (and weigh current costs more heavily than future costs)
|
From page 92... ...
One view, to which many economists are inclined, is that all resources the natural endowment, physical capital, human knowledge, and abilities-are relatively fungible sources of wellbeing. Thus large-scale damages to ecosystems through drainage of wetlands, loss of species diversity, widespread deforestation, global warming, and so on are not intrinsically unacceptable from this point of view; the question is whether compensatory investments in other forms of capital are possible and are undertaken to protect the welfare of future generations.
|
From page 93... ...
refers to the ability of human-made resources, including knowledge embedded in people, to substitute for natural resources, thus compensating for damages imposed on the natural system by human action. Social costs in Figure 1 have two key characteristics: (1' They include all losses, currently and into the indefinite future, of goods and services that people in the present and all future generations do, and will, value.
|
From page 94... ...
The critical area in Figure 1, the area in which potentially difficult choices have to be made about how to manage resources to assure sustainability, is an illdefined space running from southeast to northwest. Resources which fall in the southeastern part of Figure 1 have many substitutes and low social costs of exploitation.
|
From page 95... ...
In effect, a social decision has been made to shift the exploitation of the forest habitat of the spotted owl out of the southeastern part of Figure 1 into the northwestern part. Another possible example of social decisions to relocate resource management from southeast to northwest in Figure 1 is constraints put on the previously unfettered rights of farmers and land developers to destroy plant and animal habitat by draining wetlands through a mandate for "no net loss" of wetlands.
|
From page 96... ...
The difference between the SMS boundaries in Figure 1 reflects different judgments by "economists" and "ecologists" about both the technical possibilities for substitution among resources and the social values that should be attached to resource losses. Most Americans probably would agree that the scenic grandeur of the Grand Canyon has few if any substitutes and that the social costs of fundamentally altering it, say by building a major dam between Lake Powell and Lake Mead, would far exceed any likely benefits.
|
From page 97... ...
This line of argument suggests that if we are to succeed in shaping policies to ensure sustainable management of natural and ecological resources, we badly need more information about the possibilities for substitution of human-made resources for those represented by the natural system and about the processes by which human values are shaped over time. There is a challenge here for joint work among economists and other social scientists, ecologists, and philosophers.
|
Key Terms
This material may be derived from roughly machine-read images, and so is provided only to facilitate research.
More
information on Chapter Skim is available.