Weak and strong sustainability indicators, and regional environmental resources

Weak and Strong Sustainability Indicators, and Regional Environmental Resources

dangers to a sustainable development. The latter values may only be captured by „strong sus-
tainability“ criteria especially due to their incommensurability.

3.3 Time, Information and the Precautionary Principle

A final point before discussing in more detail sustainability for a regional natural resources
should be made regarding the informational constraints facing individual perceptions of natural
values and future events. Theory concedes that - ultimately - in every market decision risk and
uncertainty is captured because fully informed agents incorporated the future in today’s be-
havior. There are many problems with this assumption, e. g. it cannot be presupposed that
economic agents value future events by an adequate discount rate. „Adequate“ in this context
means that there should be made a distinction between discount rates for trading off present
versus future consumption and valuing the welfare of future generations. Furthermore, these
discount rates may significantly differ from the rates at which ecological systems regenerate,
not to speak of geological time scales.

Strong sustainability indicators, only directly based on individual perceptions of future events,
try to focus on longer time scales than weak indicators. Besides this time scale problem, in-
formational constraints of individuals as well as risk neutral or risk loving individual behavior
contrary to risk averse social behavior should lead to more stringent strong sustainability
frameworks. As Gowdy and Olson (1994) making the connection between individual valua-
tions and the knowledge science has accumulated have put it: „Contingent valuations, even in
theory, are no better than the information available to the most knowledgeable people. Knowl-
edge of the intrinacies of the rain forest environment [...] is almost nonexistent even among
biologists specializing in that area“ (p. 169). And concluding: „What sense does it make to set
environmental policy on the basis of opinion surveys of an uninformed public?“ (p. 170). It
cannot be assumed that economic agents in their individual market environment behave as if
they follow the precautionary principle of environmental policy.

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