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Environmental Economics and Ecological Economics: the Contribution of Interdisciplinarity to Understanding, Influence and Effectiveness

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Environmental Economics and Ecological Economics: the Contribution of Interdisciplinarity to Understanding, Influence and Effectiveness University of Wollongong Research Online Faculty of Arts - Papers (Archive) Faculty of Arts, Social Sciences & Humanities January 2011 Environmental economics and ecological economics: the contribution of interdisciplinarity to understanding, influence and effectiveness Sharon Beder University of Wollongong, [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://ro.uow.edu.au/artspapers Part of the Arts and Humanities Commons, and the Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons Recommended Citation Beder, Sharon, Environmental economics and ecological economics: the contribution of interdisciplinarity to understanding, influence and effectiveness 2011, 140-150. https://ro.uow.edu.au/artspapers/613 Research Online is the open access institutional repository for the University of Wollongong. For further information contact the UOW Library: [email protected] Environmental Conservation 38 (2): 140–150 C Foundation for Environmental Conservation 2011 doi:10.1017/S037689291100021X Environmental economics and ecological economics: the THEMATIC SECTION Interdisciplinary Progress contribution of interdisciplinarity to understanding, in Environmental influence and effectiveness Science & Management SHARON BEDER∗ SSMAC, Faculty of Arts, University of Wollongong, Northfields Avenue, Wollongong, NSW 2522, Australia Date submitted: 16 December 2010; Date accepted: 19 March 2011 SUMMARY it cannot overcome political and social barriers to translating that understanding into the widespread This paper reviews developments in both implementation of effective environmental measures. environmental economics and ecological economics with respect to their progress towards environmental Keywords: ecological economics, environmental economics, interdisciplinarity and towards providing solutions environmental solutions, interdisciplinary progress, neoclas- to environmental problems. The concepts, methods, sical economics, political influence theories and assumptions of each field of knowledge are reviewed and the extent to which they depart from the dominant neoclassical paradigm of economics INTRODUCTION is assessed. The contribution that interdisciplinarity Environmental and resource economics were established as has made to the success of each field is analysed in sub-disciplines of economics after the second world war, terms of understanding, influence and effectiveness particularly in North American universities. They adopted and the constraints that it has imposed upon that rather than critiqued the dominant neoclassical paradigm success. Environmental economics has adopted the of economics (Spash 1999, p. 414). Neoclassical economists dominant economic neoclassical paradigm, including argue that the free-market system can attain the best possible the power of the market to allocate environmental allocation of resources through individuals acting in their own resources efficiently and in a socially optimal way. The best interests and without government regulation. solution to environmental problems is thus seen as a Mainstream economic theory has tended to assume matter of ensuring that the environment is properly that economic systems were independent of environmental priced to reflect the relative scarcity of natural restraints and therefore these could be ignored. At best resources and assets and to ensure that environmental environmental pollution was treated as an externality that values are incorporated into the market. This occurs when production or consumption by a firm or specialized view of environmental problems is now consumer directly affects the welfare of another firm or reflected in government policy around the world consumer and those causing the damage are not financially including the use of extended cost benefit analyses, accountable for it. Externalities, whilst examples of market contingent valuations, environmental charges and failure, were not considered to be significant flaws in emissions trading. Nevertheless, environmental the market system, although Arthur Pigou had advocated problems continue to grow in severity and the government intervention in the form of taxes and subsidies solutions provided by environmental economists have to discourage externalities (Pearce 2002). proven ineffective. Thus lack of interdisciplinarity In the 1950s, a group of economists started to take the does not prevent a field of knowledge from gaining environment more seriously. Resource economists sought to influence and dominance, however its effectiveness develop models of how industries that relied on environmental in terms of understanding environmental problems resources, such as fisheries, forestry and agriculture, could use and solving them is impeded. Ecological economics them in an efficient and optimal way (Spash 1999). Resources seeks to incorporate the research of economists, for the Future (RFF) was established in 1952 following the ecologists, philosophers and social scientists, however publication in the USA of the Paley Report about the potential its influence seems to be have been limited to exhaustibility of resource (Pearce 2002). areas in which it retains the standard economics Environmental economics emerged in the 1960s as public framework, and this limits its effectiveness in terms concerns with environmental pollution grew. Limits to of environmental solutions. Thus interdisciplinarity markets due to the constraints of nature were recognized, may increase understanding of the real world but in particular the indivisibility of nature that inhibited the allocation of property rights to many environmental benefits. ∗Correspondence: Dr Sharon Beder, University of Wollongong, Economic modelling expanded to cover resource depletion NSW 2522, Australia e-mail: [email protected] and pollution. The Journal of Environmental Economics Environmental economics and ecological economics 141 and Management (JEEM) was established in 1974 and the disciplinary views have affected the success of environmental Association of Environmental and Resource Economists economics in terms of its understanding of real world (AERE) was established in the USA in 1979, with close environmental problems, its political influence and its associations to RFF. For many years JEEM was the primary environmental effectiveness. It will then consider efforts by academic outlet for environmental and resource economists as ecological economists to make the field more interdisciplinary, mainstream economic journals rarely published their research. the extent to which they have been successful in these The European Association of Environmental and Resource efforts, and the impact this has had on their influence and Economists (EAERE) was not established until after the environmental effectiveness. second wave of environmentalism in 1991, and its journal Environmental and Resource Economics (ERE) followed shortly afterwards (Spash 1999). ENVIRONMENTAL ECONOMICS The recognition of market limitations began to fade in Modified cost-benefit analysis the 1980s. Today environmental economists believe in the power of the market to allocate environmental resources Environmental economists sought to incorporate environ- efficiently and in a socially optimal way, just as it does with mental factors into project appraisals by modifying cost economic products. To achieve this, environmental goods, benefit analysis (CBA) to include environmental costs and services and amenities need to be given a price so that they benefits. RFF was an early advocate of the inclusion of can be incorporated into the market. If people and firms are environmental costs and benefits in CBA (Spash 1999; Pearce charged real prices for using the environment, environmental 2002). According to Pearce (2002), ‘Two of the triumphs considerations will be incorporated into market decisions. The of environmental economics have been to emphasize the solution to environmental problems is therefore to ensure incompleteness of appraisals that omit environmental change that the environment is properly priced to reflect the relative and to develop the means of incorporating environmental scarcity of natural resources and assets. values into appraisal’. The standard view taken by environmental economists was CBA involves comparing aggregate benefits with aggregate outlined early on (Schelling 1983; Seneca & Taussig 1984; costs. It has been argued that CBA should be applied Baumol & Oates 1988; Tietenberg 1988, 1990; Pearce et al. to all private and public projects, because they all have 1989; Stavins & Whitehead 1992). It was argued that economic effects that are not priced in the market place, i.e. environmental degradation has resulted from the failure of ‘externalities’. For environmental externalities to be included the market system to put any value on the environment, even in a CBA they have to be converted into monetary measures. though the environment does serve economic functions and CBA, like the notion of weak sustainability (see below), provides economic and other benefits. Not all economists take assumes that environmental ‘goods’ and human-made goods this view, but the neoclassical approach which embodies this are interchangeable and substitutable and what matters is the philosophy dominates research and teaching in environmental aggregate. economics (Rosewarne 1993). By confining decisions to a comparison of costs and benefits, Resource and environmental economists attempted to not only are broader policy and political issues ignored, include the environment into models of economic systems, but there is also an underlying
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