Ecological Economics (8 posts)

Topic tags: ecological economics
  • Profile picture of David Ing David Ing said 1 year, 11 months ago:

    I was thinking about social ecology (in the Emery and Trist context) this morning. Through some web surfing, I ended up at the Ecological Economics page on Wikipedia . That page says “Ecological economics was founded in the works of Kenneth E. Boulding, Nicholas Georgescu-Roegen, Herman Daly, Robert Costanza, and others”. David Hawk has told me stories about both Boulding and Georgescu-Roegen, so I was intrigued to figure out if this is still a vital field. (The discussion page on Wikipedia gives me the impression that that Ecological Economics has many of the same diversity/identity issues as the systems sciences).

    I found the web pages of the International Society for Ecological Economics, with links to their annual conference in Germany in August.

    Since I wasn’t planning on travelling to Europe this summer, I also found an interesting special issue of Ecological Economics on Coevolutionary Ecological Economics: Theory and Applications, volume 69, issue 4, edited by Giorgos Kallis and Richard B. Norgaard . I also found another name that I recognized in that issue, Geoffrey Hodgson .

    I’ve put the articles on the list of things to read … and would welcome anyone who was interested in similarly entering this body of thinking.

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  • Profile picture of David Ing David Ing said 1 year, 11 months ago:

    I found the 1997 Introduction to Ecological Economics by Costanza, Cumberland, Daly, Goodland and Norgaard available as an ebook on the Encyclopedia of Earth.

    In Chapter 2, I found the section on The Reintegration of Ecology and Economics to be interesting, with the first subsection on General Systems Theory.

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  • Profile picture of Kent Myers Kent Myers said 1 year, 11 months ago:

    When David mentioned Georgescu-Roegen recently, I was very pleased to know of his interest, because I was very moved by that work when I read it in 1976, and it really stayed with me, though I never had anybody to talk to about it. I would really like to resume the discussion. Also I am an even bigger fan of Daly and Cobb’s book and discussed that in my own book, but I still have more work to do on it. Daly and Cobb have special interest for me because they work in a spiritual dimension that is missing elsewhere, except when you go all over into spiritual, and then it is no longer integrated. Cobb’s journey in that regard, realizing that his theological training had blinded him to ecology, but also make it possible for him to see it with greater force. I heartily encourage us to work on this part of systems. It is what the world needs now. I was just reading Stern’s review of McKibben’s book, in the New York Review of Books, and I’m worried and feel that we have something to contribute and need to get serious. Taking care of our families and careers is necessary, but I’d like to be able to say, in the end, that I recognized the big problem and did what I could to deal with it. I think that’s what my training was for, and why society invested in me.

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  • Profile picture of David Ing David Ing said 1 year, 11 months ago:

    There’s a course on Ecological Economics at http://metacourses.org/index.php/ecoecocourse/, offered in partnership by the Gund Institute and the University of Vermont. The course is offered under a Creative Commons license, and is available as independent study, or for credit.

    I should follow through on this for two reasons: (1) they have content structured into a real course, with modules and resources, and (2) it’s associated with a university, but approachable for lifelong learners.

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  • Profile picture of David Ing David Ing said 1 year, 11 months ago:

    @davidhawk @myersk Based on David’s comment questioning the label of Economics, maybe we need to draw together two bodies of work: the ecological economics from Roegen and Boulding, with the social ecology work of Emery and Trist.

    Does this make a new label of socio-economic ecology? I notice that in Wikipedia, social ecology is classified as Green Politics, dominated by Murray Bookchin’s influence rather than Emery and Trist.

    I like the eco root of both ecology and economics, from the Greek for house. I can see ecology as the house that nature keeps, and economics as the house than humans keep.

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  • Profile picture of David Ing David Ing said 1 year, 10 months ago:

    @davidhawk @myersk @gmetcalf As I was writing and trying to stay clean on my definitions around “business ecosystems”, a web search took me over to the Wikipedia entry on ecosystems that makes a distinction between natural ecosystems and artificial (man-made) ecosystems.

    I think that there’s an irony that the Wikipedia writing suggests that coral reefs are a marine ecosystem that is natural, but human beings building houses is somehow not natural. They don’t say that, but making the distinction between natural and manmade is problematic (as much as it can be helpful).

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  • Profile picture of David Ing David Ing said 1 year, 9 months ago:

    I’m looking at Ecological Complexity, v7, n3 (September 2010) which is a special issue on “Ecosystem Services – Bridging Ecology, Economy and Social Sciences”. The URL for the introductory article by Burkhard, Petrosillo and Costanza should get you into the ballpark to find this.

    I notice a reference to “The Economics of Ecosystems and Biodiversity Interim Report”, which is described at ec.europa.eu, with publications at teebweb.org.

    I’m working on a reference list for a course, so there’s lots to dig into … which I’ll have to defer for when I have more time.

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  • Profile picture of David Ing David Ing said 1 year, 9 months ago:

    After spending too much time these last few days on the computer, I biked cross town to the university library, and spent a few hours in the stacks. I pulled down all of the books by Robert Costanza, and then all of the books by Herman Daly. Since I’ve had my head into Gunderson and Holling’s Panarchy and Waltner-Toews and Kay’s Ecosystem Approach, the older body of work was an interesting shift in perspectives.

    I now have an appreciation for the reference by @davidhawk about the “stable state” or “stationary state” by Daly. Since I’m trained in economics, I’ve puzzled with the issue of continuing growth, and appreciate that Daly is working on breaking that mindset. My reading of 1998 article by Daly on “Georgescu-Roegen versus Solow/Stiglitz” is that the usual idea of production doesn’t take resources constraints into account. When @myersk said that he found Daly pessimistic, I could also see that side, because I didn’t see a lot of selling of upside of a stable state.

    I didn’t read closely enough to appreciate who Georgescu-Roegen might have said about a stable state. The idea of an adaptive cycle from Gunderson and Holling’s Panarchy is dynamic and potentially sustainable, which I don’t read as stable, but a pattern of growth and depletion that recurs over time and space.

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