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Global Environmental Challenges > Ecological Economics > Flashcards

Ecological Economics Flashcards

1
Q

What is the purpose of Ecological Economics?

A
  • It accepts the profound inter-connectedness of cause-effect relations that apply to most environmental problems and challenges
  • It also proposes that narrow analyses won’t effectively solve problems and bring the best outcomes
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2
Q

What is Ecological Economics based on?

A
  • Is based on recognising the need to link many different fields of science, to analyse these problems properly and find solutions with the best long-term well-being outcomes
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3
Q

What is the first general role and/or use of Ecological Economics (EE)?

A

Forum:
- EE provides a shared scientific and policy platform for different disciplines to address sustainability for communication, analysis, planning & action

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4
Q

What is the second general role and/or use of Ecological Economics (EE)?

A

Inform People for Sustainability:

  • EE logic and knowledge can help inform people fully
  • EE’s main focus is on Sustainability in all areas
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5
Q

What is the third general role and/or use of Ecological Economics (EE)?

A

Link and Comprehensively Solve:

- EE can join together the new wave of green production and consumption approaches

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6
Q

EE has the potential to achieve something greater than its general roles, what is it?

A
  • Has the potential for simultaneously attaining better quality of life and reducing pressure on the natural resource flows
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7
Q

What is Ecological Economics?

A

Ecological economics (EE) is a growing trans-disciplinary field that aims to improve and expand economic theory to integrate:

  • Earth’s natural systems
  • Human values
  • Human health and well-being.
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8
Q

What is Ecological Economics the study of?

A
  • The study of the sources and nature of interactions between ecological and economic systems with the aim of:
  • Promoting “joint sustainability” in these systems
  • Socially-acceptable welfare and distributional outcomes
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9
Q

Why is EE important?

A 
EE has many valuable parts:
- Value judgements
- Ethics
- Desired end-states
- Socio-cultural aspects
A new way of thinking about economy-ecology relations:
- Holistic
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10
Q

What is the aim of Ecological Economics?

A
  • To create conditions which can provide permanent “prosperity”, within the biophysical constraints of the real world, in an equitable and fair way to all humanity, other species and future generations.
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11
Q

What is the first key assumption of ecological economics?

A
  • The economy is part of society which is part of nature, therefore, the economy is embedded in nature
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12
Q

Draw and label a diagram of the sustainability egg.

A

https://docs.google.com/document/d/16FjJCOFWz5ynvXAK-XpESXD05IefA35BJCL75vT4HVc/edit?usp=sharing

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13
Q

What is the second key assumption of ecological economics?

A
  • The human economy is seen as highly dependent on nature as a major source of its welfare (satisfying wants and needs)
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14
Q

What is the third key assumption of ecological economics?

A
  • The stock of natural assets and related services is finite
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15
Q

What is the fourth key assumption of ecological economics?

A
  • The scale of the human realm and activity on the Earth’s surface is damaging nature
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16
Q

EE has two unique approaches to achieve sustainability, what are they?

A
  • Trans-Disciplinary

- Problem Solving

17
Q

What is the Trans-Disciplinary approach of Ecological Economics?

A
  • Transdisciplinarity is a research strategy that crosses many disciplinary boundaries to create a holistic approach. It applies to research efforts focused on problems that cross the boundaries of two or more disciplines.
18
Q

Why is the Trans-Disciplinary approach important for EE?

A
  • EE involves a fusing of theories, methods and expertise across disciplinary boundaries. Each discipline merges with the others in the formation of a whole that is greater than the sum of its parts
19
Q

What makes the Trans-Disciplinary approach different to other sustainability approaches?

A
  • It integrates different sciences
  • It tries to develop a common perspective and set of concepts and analytical tools
  • Is Issue Oriented with the shared goal of sustainability.
20
Q

Why is the Trans-Disciplinary approach not popular among scientists?

A
  • It is very ambitious but environmental problems are multi-faceted and complex
  • E.g. Climate Change
21
Q

What is the second unique approach of Ecological Economics?

A
  • Problem solving approach and preferred solutions
22
Q

Why is the Problem Solving and Preferred Solutions approach needed?

A
  • Because of the complexity and inter-connectedness involved in all global environmental challenges. Effective solutions need to be comprehensive and holistic
  • Need the bigger picture (more comprehensive analysis and strategies)
23
Q

How would the Problem Solving and Preferred Solutions approach work?

A
  • EE’s solutions are often more extensive and radical. Just “fixing” the market’s failures isn’t enough.
  • Environmental economics and its “internalizing” of external costs and benefits into market transactions (eg. carbon pricing), is only one part of effective solutions
24
Q

In EE, to get sustainability, what are the requirements for the solutions or strategies?

A
  • They assess the full well being consequences of economic activity
  • They accept the need to inform and sway people’s values, choices and behaviour associated with consumption, lifestyles, production patterns and technologies
25
Q

What is the purpose of the Problem Solving and Preferred Solutions approach?

A
  • To find an answer or solution that is not just in changing external incentives, and system rules, but in the mindsets of the main human actors (change values and preferred choices; better path to well-being)
26
Q

What does society need to be able to create a more sustainable lifestyle?

A
  • The human population needs dynamic, society-wide changes to guide production, consumption and technology to ensure society’s throughput or metabolism is maintained within the biophysical limits of nature
27
Q

What is the ends-means spectrum?

A
  • A spectrum that describes the full range of human goals and behaviours related to natural sources
28
Q

Draw and label a diagram of the “Ends-Means Spectrum”

A

https://docs.google.com/document/d/16FjJCOFWz5ynvXAK-XpESXD05IefA35BJCL75vT4HVc/edit?usp=sharing

29
Q

What are the first three key points about EE?

A
  • It favours comprehensive strategic change versus piecemeal market fixes
  • It acknowledges the limits of a positive, “value-free” science
  • There is a need to steer people’s wants and choices beyond market signals
30
Q

What are the last two key points about EE?

A
  • It’s interest in “ends” sets the context for focus upon well being and envisioning outcomes for society
  • In EE, a major requirement for decision-making and policy is to understand and measure the full welfare “chain” effects of specific economic activity and technologies across their life-cycle and input-output relations (and deeper welfare impacts)
31
Q

When and where did EE start?

A
  • Summer of 1970 = researchers at Massachusetts Institute of Technology began study of the implications of continued worldwide growth.
32
Q

What did the study of the implications of continued worldwide growth examine?

A
  • Researchers examined the five basic factors that determine and, in their interactions, limit growth on Earth, they included:
  • Population increase
  • Agriculture production
  • Non-renewable resource depletion
  • Industrial output
  • Pollution generation
33
Q

What did the researchers for the study of the implications of continued worldwide growth do with the five factors data?

A
  • The MIT team fed data on the five factors into a global computer model and then tested the behaviour of the model under several sets of assumptions to determine alternative patterns for mankind’s future
34
Q

What were the results for the MIT study for EE?

A
  • If the present growth trends of the five factors continue as they are, the limits to growth on this planet will be reached sometime within the next one hundred years. The most probable result will be a rather sudden and uncontrollable decline in both population and industrial capacity.

Global Environmental Challenges (7 decks)

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