Weak and strong sustainability indicators, and regional environmental resources

Weak and Strong Sustainability Indicators, and Regional Environmental Resources

4 Strong Sustainability Indicators for Regional Water Resources in Austria

On the basis of the discussion of the weak sustainability rule and its foundations, the ground
for approaching the concept of a strong sustainability rule is prepared. To sum up, the main
problems of the weak sustainability rule are the missing substitutability between natural and
man-made capital, and major flaws of the individualistic monetary valuation of natural goods
in general. It can be concluded that the weak sustainability rule has in principle a different
world view regarding the „embeddedness“ of the economy in a social and ecological context.
While standard environmental economics assumes economy to be an black box where inputs
and outputs are measurable and no physical limits to growth exist, ecological economics deals
with the physical limits (especially thermodynamics) and the dynamic development of eco-
logical systems. A simple but obvious graphic has recently been drawn by Gowdy and
O'Hara (1997) showing the context in which economic activities take place (Figure 1).

Figure 1: Hierarchies of sustainability

Source: Gowdy and O'Hara, 1997, p. 241.

Because the economy is only a part of the „whole system“, the physical limits of sustainabil-
ity are obvious. Besides problems with valuing natural goods in the „cash economy“ (lexico-
graphic preferences, uncertainties, missing information) it is this embeddedness which brings
the most significant problem with the weak sustainability criteria. Thus, a number of strong
sustainability criteria have been developed (e. g. save-minimum standards, the precautionary
principle for environmental policies).

10

<<   7   8   9   10   11   12   13   >>

More intriguing information