Sustainable development: paradigm or paranoia?

International Journal of Sustainable Development

Volumn 3, Issue 4, 2000, Pages 358-369

  Bartelmus, Peter ^a  

^a Institute for Ecological Economy Research   (Germany)

Author keywords

capital maintenance; dematerialization; environmental accounting; normative framework; resource productivity; social compact

Indexed keywords

EID: 0344925945     PISSN: 09601406     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1504/IJSD.2000.001537     Document Type: Article

References (32)

1. Brown, L. (1993) ‘A new era unfolds’, in Brown, L. et al. (Editors) State of the World 1993, Norton, London and New York, p. 4.
2. Uno, K. and Bartelmus, P. (Editors) (1998) Environmental Accounting in Theory and Practice, Kluwer Academic Publishers, Dordrecht, Boston and London.
3. Daly, H.E. (1991) ‘Sustainable growth: a bad oxymoron’, Grassroots Development, Vol. 15/3, and Boutros-Ghali, B. Agenda for Development, United Nations, New York.
4. This is indeed an over-simplified categorization of approaches that range from ‘deep’ ecological proclamations of the equality of all living beings to laissez-faire market solutions for environmental concerns. However, the distinction serves at least to expose a prevailing rift between ecological economists, focusing on biophysical assessments of sustainable development, and environmental economists, favouring monetary analysis (costing) of the sustainability of economic growth. Cf. e.g. the recent discussion of biophysical assessments in a special section of Ecological Economics, Vol. 29, No. 1, of April 1999; for a more detailed discussion of the following brief review of this dichotomy, Bartelmus, P. (1997) ‘Whither economics? From optimality to sustainability?’, Environment and Development Economics, Vol. 2, pp. 323–345.
5. Daily, G.C. (1997) Nature’s Services – Societal Dependence on Natural Ecosystems, Island Press, Washington, D.C.
6. Covelo, CA, describes the use of cost-benefit analyses to value a large array of nature’s services. Valuation methods applied in environmental (national) accounting can be found in Uno and Bartelmus (1998).
7. van Dieren, W. (Editor) (1995) Taking Nature Into Account, Springer, New York, p. 7.
8. Spangenberg, J.H. et al. (1999) Material Flow-based Indicators in Environmental Reporting, EEA, Copenhagen, pp. 31/32. Again, the distinction between environmental and ecological economists can be fuzzy, as can be seen from the range of views presented in the latters’ flagship Ecological Economics.
9. The Wuppertal Institute’s MIPS (Material Intensity Per Service unit) (Schmidt-Bleek, F. et al. (1998) MAIA – Einführung in die Material-Intensitäts-Analyse nach dem MIPS-Konzept, Birkhäuser, Berlin, Basel and Boston) concept of measuring the resource use for products or production processes has thereforebeen particularly successful when applied at the microeconomic, corporate level.
10. As to the HDI, see United Nations Development Programme (annual) Human Development Report, Oxford University Press, New York and Oxford.
11. Daly, H. (1996, Beyond Growth, Beacon Press, Boston) seems to favour the immediate transition from growth to qualitative development while, more realistically, the ecological economists of the Wuppertal Institute advocate a 30-50 years transition period: see Hinterberger, F. and Schepelmann, P. (in prep.) ‘Ecoefficiency and Resource Productivity’, Wuppertal Paper, Wuppertal Institute, Wuppertal Germany. ‘Ecoefficiency’ in production and ‘sufficiency’ in consumption are the catchwords for a combined approach that is expected to halve material flows world-wide in about 50 years, see Schmidt-Bleek, F. (1994) Wieviel Umwelt braucht der Mensch?, Birkhäuser, Berlin, Basel and Boston, pp. 167 et seq.
12. The World Bank estimate of natural wealth is derived from data presented in World Bank (1997) Expanding the Measure of Wealth, The World Bank, Washington, D.C.
13. nature’s services are estimated by Costanza, R. et al. (1997) ‘The value of the world’s ecosystem services and natural capital’, Nature, Vol. 387, pp. 253–260.
14. As to the GPI, see Cobb, C., Halstead, T. and Rowe, J. (1995) ‘If the GDP is up, why is America down?’, The Atlantic Monthly, October.
15. Rodenburg, E., Tunstall, D. and van Bolhuis, F. (1995) ‘Environmental indicators for global cooperation’, The Global Environment Facility Working Paper No. 1, Washington, D.C.
16. Assumptions about minimal or desirable standards of living for people to be sustained in a particular territory and possibilities of importing and exporting sustainability through trade across territorial boundaries make the carrying capacity concept an ambiguous measure of long-term sustainable development.
17. World Resources Institute et al. (1997) Resource Flows: the Material Basis of Industrial Economies, World Resources Institute, Washington, D.C., pp. 15/16.
18. The SEEA (United Nations, 1993 Integrated Environmental and Economic Accounting, United Nations Sales No. E.93.XVII.12) is designed as a satellite system of the world-wide adopted System of National Accounts (SNA) (United Nations Sales No. E.94.XVII.4) with which it maintains greatest compatibilityBartelmus, P. (1999) ‘Greening the National Accounts: Approach and Policy Use’, DESA Discussion Paper No. 3, United Nations, New York.
19. Environmental space is defined as ‘the quantity of energy, the non-renewable resources, the water, the wood and the farming lands that we can use in a sustainable fashion’.Buitenkamp, M., Venner, H. and Wams, T. (Editors) (1993) Action Plan Sustainable Netherlands, Friends of the Earth Netherlands, Amsterdam.
20. von Weizsäcker, E.U., Lovins, A. and Lovins, H. (1997) Factor Four: Doubling Wealth – Halving Resource Use, Earthscan, London.
21. The assumption is that an equal environmental space should be reached by all countries in about 50 years while permitting a limited increase of material use in developing countriesSchmidt-Bleek, F. (1994), MAIA – Einführung in die Material-Intensitäts-Analyse nach dem MIPS-Konzept, Birkhäuser, Berlin, Basel and Boston, p. 168.
22. Hinterberger, F. and Wegner, G. (1997) ‘Limited knowledge and the precautionary principle: on the feasibility of environmental politics’, in van der Bergh, J. and van der Straaten, J. (Editors) Economy and Ecosystems in Change, Edward Elgar, Cheltenham and Lyme.
23. Sachs, W. (1995, ‘From efficiency to sufficiency’, Resurgence No. 171, p. 6) even pleads for a ‘sufficiency revolution’ since ‘nothing is as irrational as rushing with maximum efficiency in the wrong direction’.
24. Samuelson, P.A. and Nordhaus, W.D. (1992) Economics, 14th edn., McGraw-Hill, New York, p. 295.
25. As coined in reference to GDP by the Dutch environmentalist R. Hueting at the Special Conference of the International Association for Research in Income and Wealth (IARIW) on Environmental Accounting (Baden, Austria, May 1991).
26. Examples of recent criticism of the narrow focus of economics on formalistic models of market behaviour, at the expense of real-world visionKuttner, R. (1997) Everything for Sale, Knopf, New York
27. Foster, J. (Editor) (1997) Valuing Nature? Ethics, Economics and the Environment, Routledge, London and New York
28. Heilbroner, R. and Milberg, W. (1995) The Crisis of Vision in Modern Economic Thought, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, MA.
29. Frey, B.S. (1992) ‘Pricing and regulation affect environmental ethics’, Environmental and Resource Economics, Vol. 2, pp. 399–414.
30. ‘Third Force’ (besides government and corporations) by Henderson, H. ‘Macht beide Seiten zu Gewinnern! Oder Leben jenseits des globalen ökonomischen Krieges’, in von Weizsäcker, E.U. (1997) Grenzen-los?, Birkhäuser, Berlin, Basel and Boston.
31. ‘Schröders Denkfabrik’ (Schröder’s think tank) in Der Spiegel 19/1999, p. 30
32. based on an article in the same issue by members of this think tankStreek, W. and Heinze, R. ‘An Arbeit fehlt es nicht’, pp. 38–45.