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A Sketch of Environmental Macroeconomics

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Economics for Environmental Studies

Part of the book series: Springer Texts in Business and Economics ((STBE))

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Abstract

The neoclassical assumption of unlimited growth possibilities has been questioned by, among others, the Club of Rome, by hinting at the exhaustability of natural productive stocks. The neoclassical rejection of the assumption of natural limits to growth rests on the possibility to substitute for declining natural productive stocks by investing in man-made capital in order to ensure intergenerational justice. The latter is interpreted as constant consumption of goods over time. The idea of intergenerational justice forms the base for the concept of sustainable development, which is, controversially, discussed. Both the flow indices and the stock indices of the SNA have been criticized for neglecting important contributions of the natural environment. As a response to this critique, the United Nations’ System of Integrated Environmental and Economic Accounting (SEEA) is presented. Both the SEEA and various other approaches of integrating the natural environment into national accounting are assessed with regard to their ability to measure progress toward sustainable development.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    The “doomsday” vision of the Club of Rome’s report has frequently been linked to Thomas R. Malthus’ thesis that the chance of human progress is limited because “the power of population is indefinitely greater than the power in the earth to produce subsistence for man” (Malthus 1999, p. 13), which he published anonymously in 1798.

  2. 2.

    See, for example, Tisdell (2010), Endres (2011), Hackett (2011).

  3. 3.

    See http://www.un.org/esa/dsd/agenda21/res_agenda21_00.shtml?utm_source=OldRedirect &utm_ medium=redirect&utm_content=dsd&utm_campaign=OldRedirect. Accessed 29 March 2012.

  4. 4.

    See http://www.un.org/News/Press/docs/2011/envdev1201.doc.htm. Accessed 29 March 2012.

  5. 5.

    http://www.uncsd2012.org/rio20/objectiveandthemes.html. Accessed 29 March 2012.

  6. 6.

    See, e.g., Daly and Farley (2011).

  7. 7.

    A first part of the latest revision of the SEEA was published in May 2012, after the work on the present textbook had been already published. See https: unstats.un.org/unsd/envaccounting/seearev/. Accessed 26 July 2012.

  8. 8.

    “At least” means that it is not intended, in what follows, to account for the maximum sustainable level of consumption per capita.

  9. 9.

    John Richard Hicks (1904–1989) studied at Oxford and was Professor first at Manchester University and later on at Oxford. His seminal contributions to the development of economic theory cover both microeconomic and macroeconomic issues. Two of his best-known works are “Mr. Keynes and the classics”, already cited in Chap. 9 above (one of the most influential interpretations of Keynes’ General Theory, published in Econometrica in 1937), and “Value and capital”, from which the citation given in the text above is taken. He was knighted in 1964 and awarded the Nobel Prize in Economics in 1972 (see Bliss C, 2008, Hicks, John Richard (1904–1989), in: Durlauf SN, Blume LE, eds., The New Palgrave Dictionary of Economics, Vol. 2, Palgrave Macmillan).

  10. 10.

    The traces of Hicks’ income conception in the sustainability context can also be found in Mäler (2007).

  11. 11.

    See, e.g., Welfens et al. (2011), p. 22.

  12. 12.

    See Atkinson/Hamilton (2007), p. 45.

  13. 13.

    Gross National Income (GNI) “is equal to GDP less taxes (less subsidies) on production and imports, compensation of employees and property income payable to the rest of the world plus the corresponding items receivable from the rest of the world” (UN et al. 2009, p. 34).

  14. 14.

    See WWF (2006), p. 37 for details.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. University of Hagen, Hagen, Germany

    Alfred Endres

  2. Baden-Wuerttemberg Cooperative, State University Ravensburg, Ravensburg, Germany

    Volker Radke

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Endres, A., Radke, V. (2012). A Sketch of Environmental Macroeconomics. In: Economics for Environmental Studies. Springer Texts in Business and Economics. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-31193-2_10

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-31193-2_10

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