The services of ecological systems and the natural capital stocks that produce them are critical to the functioning of the Earth's life-support system. They contribute to human welfare, both directly and indirectly, and therefore represent part of the total economic value of the planet. We have estimated the current economic value of 17 ecosystem services for 16 biomes, based on published studies and a few original calculations. For the entire biosphere, the value (most of which is outside the market) is estimated to be in the range of US$16-54 trillion (10^(12)) per year, with an average of US$33 trillion per year. Because of the nature of the uncertainties, this must be considered a minimum estimate. Global gross national product total is around US$18 trillion per year.

https://www.esd.ornl.gov/benefits_conference/nature_paper.pdf

The value of the world's ecosystem services and natural capital

As GDP is a measure of market capacity and not economic well-being, this report has been commissioned to more accurately understand the social progress indicators of any given state. Gross domestic product (GDP) is the most widely used measure of economic activity. There are international standards for its calculation, and much thought has gone into its statistical and conceptual bases. But GDP mainly measures market production, though it has often been treated as if it were a measure of economic well-being. Conflating the two can lead to misleading indications about how well-off people are and entail the wrong policy decisions. One reason why money measures of economic performance and living standards have come to play such an important role in our societies is that the monetary valuation of goods and services makes it easy to add up quantities of a very different nature. When we know the prices of apple juice and DVD players, we can add up their values and make statements about production and consumption in a single figure. But market prices are more than an accounting device. Economic theory tells us that when markets are functioning properly, the ratio of one market price to another is reflective of the relative appreciation of the two products by those who purchase them. Moreover, GDP captures all final goods in the economy, whether they are consumed by households, firms or government. Valuing them with their prices would thus seem to be a good way of capturing, in a single number, how well-off society is at a particular moment. Furthermore, keeping prices unchanged while observing how quantities of goods and services that enter GDP move over time would seem like a reasonable way of making a statement about how society’s living standards are evolving in real terms. As it turns out, things are more complicated. First, prices may not exist for some goods and services (if for instance government provides free health insurance or if households are engaged in child care), raising the question of how these services should be valued. Second, even where there are market prices, they may deviate from society’s underlying valuation. In particular, when the consumption or production of particular products affects society as a whole, the price that individuals pay for those products will differ from their value to society at large. Environmental damage caused by production or consumption activities that is not reflected in market prices is a well-known example.

https://andrewoswald.com/docs/stiglitz20report_commission20final20200920sept.pdf

Report by the commission on the measurement of economic performance and social progress

An overview of sustainability assessment methodologies

Modern management theory is constricted by a fractured epistemology. which separates humanity from nature and truth from morality. Reintegration is necessary if organizational science is to support ecologically and socially sustainable development. This article posits requisites of such development and rejects the paradigms of conventional technocentrism and antithetical ecocentrism on grounds of incongruence. A more fruitful integrative paradigm of “sustaincentrism” is then articulated, and implications for organizational science are generated as if sustainability, extended community, and our Academy mattered.

http://ingenieroambiental.com/inf/elparagigmadeldesarrollosustentable.PDF

Shifting Paradigms for Sustainable Development: Implications for Management Theory and Research

Sustainable development, although a widely used phrase and idea, has many different meanings and therefore provokes many different responses. In broad terms, the concept of sustainable development is an attempt to combine growing concerns about a range of environmental issues with socio-economic issues. To aid understanding of these different policies this paper presents a classification and mapping of different trends of thought on sustainable development, their political and policy frameworks and their attitudes towards change and means of change. Sustainable development has the potential to address fundamental challenges for humanity, now and into the future. However, to do this, it needs more clarity of meaning, concentrating on sustainable livelihoods and well-being rather than well-having, and long term environmental sustainability, which requires a strong basis in principles that link the social and environmental to human equity. Copyright © 2005 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment.

/pdf/sustainable-development-mapping-different-approaches-5m4xt0q8dg.pdf

Sustainable development: mapping different approaches

The scale of human activity in the biosphere has grown too large. The perspective is that change is needed in the approach to economic activity: "correction and expansion a more empirical and historical attitude less pretense on being science and willingness to subordinate the market to purposes that it is not geared to determine." The economic proposal is concerned with the extent to which the economy supports healthy communities; it is related to the 19th-century Roman Catholic economic theory of Pesch. It is critical of contemporary economics and reflects the concerns of an economist and a theologian. The 4 parts to the books differentiate between the present state of economics as a deductive science and the consequences for the market measures of success homoeconomicus and the land in Part I and an alternative approach in Part II. The alternative is not to shape economics to science but to the realities of the world with the idea that better abstractions will evolve. Part III addresses policies in the US and their implications. Part IV pertains to the attainment of the objectives in an alternative economy. The vision is participatory and sustainable. The appendix provides an index of sustainable welfare between 1950-86 annually which includes net capital growth foreign versus domestic capital and environmental damage; there are 24 separate measures to show how to improve welfare. The caveats and limitations are also discussed. Also included for 1950-86 annually is an index of income inequality the value of services and highways public expenditures on health and education counted as personal consumption defensive private expenditures on health and education the cost of commuting the cost of urbanization the cost of air pollution the loss of agricultural land energy consumption as a measure of longterm environmental damage and net capital growth. The results show that the true health of the economy is discouraging. The generalized income measure/capita increased .84%/year between 1951-60 increased 2.01% between 1960-70 or .50% slower than the gross national product growth for the same period declined .14% between 1970-80 and declined 1.26% during the 1980s. This pattern is stable even with the exclusion of resource depletion and environmental damage.

For The Common Good: Redirecting The Economy Towards Community, The Environment And A Sustainable Future

Many critics of mainstream economics have been calling for a new compass to guide national economic policies because the existing one, the GNP, is broken. They propose a 'green national product' which would address the long-term health of the planet and its inhabitants, and focus on sustainability. Toward this end, they propose an Index of Sustainable Economic Welfare (ISEW), which takes into account such elements as adjustments for income distribution, environmental damage, the value of housework, and resource depletion. Experts in the field of economic development present comments and criticisms regarding the creation of the ISEW and its outcome. The book concludes with the authors' direct response to those critical suggestions, culminating with a revised Index of Sustainable Economic Welfare. Contributors: Robert Eisner, Alan H. Young, Carol S. Carson, Robert R. Gottfried, Thomas Michael Power, E.J. Mishan, Jan Tinbergen, Richard D. Lamm, and Hans Diefenbacher. Co-published with the Human Economy Center.

Clifford Cobb

Papers

For The Common Good: Redirecting The Economy Towards Community, The Environment And A Sustainable Future

The green national product: a proposed index of sustainable economic welfare

The Genuine Progress Indicator 2006

The Green National Product

Why bigger isn't better: the genuine progress indicator— 1999 update