Legacy of Ecological Economics

Introduction: the Scope of Ecological Economics

How can the global economy be harnessed to serve sustainability? This daunting question haunts this effort to unravel the inner code of how economics intersects with sustainability, Economic Strategies for Sustainability 2.0. This page wraps ecological economics, especially its legacy brand provided by Herman Daly, within a history of economic thought. Some of this is provisional and is still being worked out.

Ecological economics is an important theoretical advance within the history of economic thought and essential to thinking through sustainability. The inexorable tendency for academic work in this field, however, narrows its scope to manageable boundaries, especially for the rewards within the profession and the academy --- see what Daly calls Discipinolatry (Daly and Cobb 123-132 and Daly 1996, 10-12). Practical discussions typically presume the limits proscribed by the institution supporting the research --- see Daly's comments on the World Bank (1996, 5-10). This discussion of legacy off economic thought attempts to widen the paradigm from ecological economics to a critical exposition of its host, global capitalism. How and why will be revealed within the discussion.

My premises to this project are these:

Economic globalization, especially under the doctrine of neo-liberalism, cannot be reconciled with sustainability: there exists no middle ground. The principles underlying each and the dynamics they drive are thoroughly incompatible. If neo-liberalism triumphs, sustainability cannot be achieved, with drastic implications for future generations of humans and for the hospitality of the Earth for life. The stakes are high and the prospects grim.
The prevailing regime of economic globalization has built into its formidable processes contradictions that, as they work themselves out, might transform that process into another form, one considerably closer to the imperatives within the biosphere and world cultures that might support sustainability on a global basis. This may seem far fetched as I write in March, 2011 (in the midst of the nuclear crisis in earthquake- and tsunami-ravaged Japan, while Libya experiences civil war after historic change in the Arab world, and as the financial crisis of 2008 sputters along into a weak recovery). How this might occur is the mission of what I optimistically dub strategic sustainability.

Criticisms leveled against ecological economics and Daly in particular make the second point above, but then conclude that the proper response to resolve the contradiction is obviously socialism, reviving the anachronistic ideological debate that now seems so stale. The contention here is that the answer lies right under our noses, in the form of a shrewd and highly constructive inversion of the dynamics of economic globalization through cosmopolitan localization (Schroyer).

The Lineage of Thought of Ecological Economics

Summary: This section attempts to ground the origins and expand the scope of ecological economics but is preliminary and speculative, in need of more research. The thrust, however, is worth exposition.

The roots of ecological economics are worth exploring. Here is the lineage that I see:

Its main contemporary proponent, Robert Costanza, has been part of the formation of the academic discipline of ecological economics. A main contribution is the Hicksian notion of natural capital, environmental services.
Robert Costanza was the foremost student of the founder and seminal thinker of ecological economics, Herman Daly.
Herman Daly was a student of Georgescu-Roegen, whose pioneering work on entropy appears to have been largely forgotten.
Georgescu-Roegen was a student of Joseph Schumpeter, not known as an ecological economist but as one of the most profound economic thinkers ever in the USA. This debt to Schumpeter opens up a new area for ecological economics that counters its absorption into professional economics and the restrictions of scope that Daly, above, laments.
Joseph Schumpeter's contribution to what the popular Tom Friedman calls the "business plan for global capitalism," creative destruction, deserves scrutiny. I contend here that since, as all know, Schumpeter was a close student (but not a proponent) of Karl Marx, the original and classical statement on creative destruction can be found in, of all places, The Communist Manifesto. (The germ of a connection to a strategy of sustainability may be a turn to the local and away from export generation per se. This is not socialism but a different form of capitalism, a very adaptable system.)

If this speculation on the lineage of thought of ecological economics has validity, the thrust of a strategic sustainability is to fully examine the (rather casual and cursory) doctrine of creative destruction. Schumpeter, in his classic Capitalism, Socialism, and Democracy, claimed that pulsating, dynamic capitalism will undermine itself, with a successor as some sort of mild socialism. By the time that the lineage got to Robert Costanza, whose Ph.D, is in systems ecology, the robust historical critique found in Schumpeter had been lost. It must be recovered.

A compelling component of Schumpeter's prognosis is that the dynamism of capitalism is not the market mechanism, which Schumpeter trivialized, but in the promotion of entrepreneurship and innovation. This shifts the discussion away from the micro (markets and externalities) towards a comprehensive grasp of growth beyond the normal framework of macro-economic management. (I will contend that a not-statist version of World Sustainability provides ample innovation, entrepreneurship, and dynamism.) The seminal writings on the development of capitalism by Fernand Braudel and Karl Polanyi deepen and expand this exegisis.

The Legacy of Ecological Economics

ESS Home | ESS Build | EE Build

Introduction: the Scope of Ecological Economics

The Lineage of Thought of Ecological Economics

Hicksian Income and Natural Capital