Justifying, Characterizing And Indicating Sustainability

During the last two decades, I have subjected the concept of sustainable development to economic analysis. To a great extent this work has been done in co-operation with my co-authors Wolfgang Buchholz, Bertil Tungodden, Martin Weitzman and Cees Withagen, and it has lead to a series of journal articles. This book presents the results of this research program. The original articles are reproduced. However, I have updated information about references and corrected a few mistakes (mostly typographical). STRUCTURE OF THE BOOK This book consists of 19 chapters. Chapter 1 is new, written as a guide to the book and its content. It also gives an up-to-date survey of relevant literature and its relation to the later chapters. Chapters 2–19 are reproductions of published articles. The articles are organized into three parts. Part I, which comprises Chaps.2–7, is concerned with the normative question of how to justify sustainability. Part II, consisting of Chaps.8–13, considers how sustainable development can be characterized. Finally, in Part III, Chaps.14–19 are devoted to the problem of indicating sustainability. Within each part, the initial chapter – i.e., Chap.2 for Part I, Chap.8 for Part II and Chap.14 for Part III – is an overview article that functions as a survey for the later chapters in the corresponding part.

In 1987 the report of the World Commission on Environment and Development (WCED) introduced the concept of sustainable development into the political agenda. The notion of sustainability and the need to understand its full implications have sparked much interest and considerable research in various disciplines, including economics.

This volume brings together 18 articles published during the last 20 years, devoted to understanding the concept of sustainable development.

These articles provide economic analysis of this notion from three different perspectives:

• Justifying Sustainability (why care about whether development is sustainable)
• Characterizing Sustainability (what does sustainable development look like)
• Indicating Sustainability (how to tell whether development is sustainable)

The first part (Justifying Sustainability) analyzes from a normative point of view why it is desirable for our generation to contribute to the implementation of sustainable development.

The second part (Characterizing Sustainability) describes how manmade capital (both real and human) must be accumulated in order to make up for decreased availability of natural capital.

The third part (Indicating Sustainability) examines rules and methods for attaining sustainable development for current and future generations.

Each part begins with an article which functions as a survey. An up to date introduction serves to tie the three parts of the volume together.