La economía ecológica (EE) tiene un enfoque distinto al racionalismo (útil hasta cierto punto) y analítico enfoque de la economía convencional (la economía separada de la biología, separadas de la física...), pues considera a la economía como un subconjunto de la sociedad y ésta de la biosfera. Este cambio de visión tiene profundas implicaciones. Así la EE incorpora conocimientos de diferentes ciencias incluyendo la ecología ya que estudia los flujos de materia y energía de la vida sobre la Tierra, y la economía está incluida en este sistema. Se estudia la economía como un objeto natural y social. Una descripción extensa de las diferencias según Aguilera Klink, aquí:[1].

A la cabeza de las críticas a la actual teoría económica por los economistas ecológicos se encuentra su aproximación a las interacciones entre la naturaleza y la sociedad. La sustituibilidad de los recursos agotables: Los análisis desde el punto de vista de la economía convencional minusvaloran el capital natural, en el sentido de que es tratado como un factor de producción intercambiable o sustituible por trabajo y tecnología (capital humano).

Desde la economía ecológica se argumenta que el capital humano y el capital manufacturado son complementarios al capital natural, y no intercambiables, ya que el capital humano y el capital fabricado derivan inevitablemente del capital natural de una u otra forma. La economía ecológica estudia de qué manera el crecimiento económico está relacionado con el aumento en la explotación de insumos materiales y energéticos.

Los economistas ecológicos afirman que una gran parte de lo importante en el bienestar humano no es analizable desde un punto de vista estrictamente económico, sugiriendo la transdisciplinariedad de las ciencias sociales y naturales como un medio para abordar el estudio del bienestar económico y su dependencia de los servicios que proporciona la naturaleza.

En la EE se discute sobre indicadores de sostenibilidad, la validez de la curva ambiental de Kuznets"), la paradoja de Jevons, el efecto rebote de las estrategias de suficiencia, la hipótesis de la desmaterialización de la economía, huella ecológica, inputs directos y ocultos de materiales [2], tamaño de la economía y límites al crecimiento económico [3], la medida del bienestar, estado estacionario, ecologismo de los pobres (activismo de personas amenazadas por la destrucción de recursos y servicios ambientales que necesitan para vivir), ecología política[4], los trabajos no remunerados, distribución justa de la renta (la distribución precede a la producción), sostenibilidad fuerte") frente a sostenibilidad débil, deuda ecológica, coevolución de sistemas ecológicos y económicos, biodiversidad, limitaciones de la tasa de descuento, relación de los derechos de propiedad y la gestión de recursos naturales, instrumentos de política ambiental, la justicia ambiental, y el metabolismo social entre otros temas. La economía ecológica critica también la contabilidad macroeconómica, proponiendo en cambio un conjunto de indicadores físicos y sociales, además de los monetarios.

Preocupación por su modularidad disciplinaria: Un aspecto relacionado con la relativa debilidad política e institucional de la EE es el riesgo de subordinación a la economía ambiental y de los recursos naturales, como propuso abiertamente David Pearce en la conferencia inaugural de la ESEE en 1996 y que fue muy criticado. .

Differences between ecological economics and environmental economics and the economics of natural resources.

Environmental Economics and Natural Resource Economics are subdisciplines of economics focused on the optimal allocation of resources and pollution. But, according to the EE, they ignore issues such as the functioning of ecosystems and the environmental burdens on society.

Environmental economics refers to the way in which waste is disposed and the resulting quality of the atmosphere, hydrosphere, biosphere and pedosphere as waste receptors. Furthermore, environmental economics (EA) is related to environmental pollution and conservation of ecosystems and biodiversity.

Natural resource economics (NRE), on the other hand, is defined as the study of the way in which society allocates scarce natural resources, in monetary terms with respect to purposes also measured in money (prices), such as fish reserves, tree plantations, fresh water and oil, which according to conventional economics are inexhaustible or substitutable.

Thus, the EE research program differs in that its concept of ecological sustainability is different from that of the EA-ERN's economic sustainability. Includes system dynamics and the threshold effect versus equilibrium fixation in neoclassical economics. The ERN focuses on a resource in isolation from its ecosystem. And market prices do not indicate whether a system is pushing the limits of its ability to recover. Surprisingly, in the ISEE magazine there are more articles from the perspective of the EA-ERN than from the EE.[10]​.

On the other hand, in EE the functioning of economies and the management of resources and waste are analyzed directly through concepts and methods taken from Physics (thermodynamics would explain why we cannot use the same piece of coal over and over again to light a fire or the heat of the sea to propel ships),[25]​[26]​ biology (knowledge of the ecosystems that provide us with vital sustenance, resources or receive waste), geology (mineral deposits are rarities of the Earth's crust, which are generated and destroyed over and over again),[27]​ anthropology and sociology (analysis of energy balances and other societies and institutions), Industrial Ecology")[28]​ (ecology as a framework and model for industry) and also, in a subsidiary and limited way, in monetary terms.[29]​ Examples: , [7].

The sharp difference between EE, EA and ERN is mainly conceptual; in practice the authors and theories overlap and interrelate[29]​ as can be seen by some articles published in the journal Ecological Economics. For example, the February 2008 issue, in which you can find articles related to the EA (), with the ERN () and more specific to the EE ().[30]​.

Monetary Valuation Versus Value Incommensurability

However, for the EA-ERN, in the case of the introduction of taxes on pollution (the Coasian negotiation is discussed below), the key lies in the possibility of obtaining in monetary terms (economic valuation) the external marginal cost function through techniques such as contingent valuation. [8], travel cost method and others. Monetary valuation is considered a reflection of individual preferences, "what people want" is what they are willing to pay. And market prices are the guide. Formally, the marginal benefit must be equal to the marginal cost of providing that benefit.[31]​ For this, calculus is used, so the problem must be reduced to mathematical optimization, be it maximization or minimization.

What is foreign, according to the EE, to the complexity of the majority of the problems that it seeks to address in which there are no prices, markets, property, those affected may not yet exist, may be unaware of it, or may be very numerous; the effects are unknown or complex, for example the crisis of animal migrations [9] Furthermore, what a person is willing to pay depends on their income (the poor suffer greater environmental damage than the rich) and the neoclassical theory fails because it states that the predisposition to pay (equivalent variation in income) to avoid damage (for example incineration of waste near your home) must be similar to the willingness to accept compensation (compensatory variation in income). But in reality this does not happen.[29]​.

In any case, the optimum obtained does not have to be assimilated by the ecosystems or accepted by society; it could only be approximated, with serious uncertainties and enormous complexity in most cases, using earth sciences. What is the cost curve in the case of nuclear waste? Or Chernobyl? On cost benefit analysis (CBA) [10]Archived on July 28, 2013 at the Wayback Machine.

These are, according to the EE, debatable approaches: In 1991, the chief economist of the World Bank was the center of a controversy when an internal memorandum on the export of waste to Third World countries was leaked (Let them eat pollution, The economist). tenth of that of a Westerner, a difference that increased in a later review [11]. It is an example of environmental distributive conflicts"), one of the topics covered by political ecology that relates it to EE since the type of use of environmental resources and sinks depends on power relations and income distribution.

Different valuation languages

Development of multi-criteria evaluation methods") developed by G Munda (1970)[12] that admit a weak comparability of values"), different from the strong comparability of the cost-benefit analysis, based on a participatory process of all the agents involved in a problem or investment project, as tools to contribute to decision-making in accordance with the so-called deliberative democracy in a context of multiple values or criteria.

The monetary (pecuniary) values ​​that economists assign to negative externalities or environmental services are the fruit of political decisions, the distribution of property, money and power.[33]​.

The EE does not abandon the use of monetary elements, but relativizes them: they lose their position of privilege and exclusivity within a new vision, since there are many types of markets according to the institutional rules that regulate them.[32]​.

Ecological economists participate in the discussion of the relevance of procedures to attribute monetary values ​​to environmental services and damages and the correctness of macroeconomic accounting, but their main axis is the development of physical indices of (un)sustainability. The most frequently used environmental impact indices are the ecological footprint index (Wachernagel and Rees, 1996), human appropriation of net primary production (Vitousek, 1986), material input per unit of service (Wuppertal Institute), material flow indicators (Wuppertal Institute and Faculty for Interdisciplinary Studies), agricultural water footprint and virtual water (UNESCO-Institute for water education), energy balances of economic activities and integrated analysis multiscalar aspect of social metabolism (Giampietro 2003).

Early precursors

The intellectual precursors of ecological economics can be traced largely to authors who were not economists but physicists, biologists or chemists such as Sadi Carnot, Rudolf Clausius, Leopold Pfaundler"), Patrick Geddes, Sergei A. Podolinsky, Popper-Lynkeus"), Frederick Soddy. His theories were not taken into consideration by conventional economics that deals with the allocation and management of scarce resources, according to the definition of economist Lionel Robbins.

Within economic science, in the century the physiocrats (physiocracy means government of nature) such as François Quesnay proposed that civil societies should be a mirror of the natural order, as a movement of naturalism "Naturalism (philosophy)"), however a bad government or influential groups could disrupt the relationship.[34] But to support their theories, which contained other important elements that passed into classical economics, the necessary knowledge had not yet been developed, such as those related with thermodynamics or biology.[32][35]​.

Precursors

The origin of ecological economics as a specific field per se is attributed to economists such as Nicholas Georgescu-Roegen, Kenneth Boulding, Karl William Kapp), Robert Ayres. They were influenced by the works of biologists such as Alfred J. Lotka (who introduced the important distinction between endosomatic and exosomatic use of energy), Holling, Eugene and Howard T. Odum.[36]​[37]​.

Kapp") dealt with the issue of social costs") which includes the negative consequences and damages that result from productive activities and that fall on other people or society but for which entrepreneurs do not consider themselves responsible. Appropriating in this way a larger part of the national product than their share and thus reducing the price for consumers.[38]​.

In 1966, Boulding published an article entitled The economics of the coming spaceship earth that popularized the metaphor, applied to all of humanity but deeply inspired by North America, of the transition from a world without limits typical of the pioneer of the West (cowboy economy) to one limited like a spaceship (spaceship economy), reflecting the necessary transition to be made towards a balanced, non-expansive economy.

Georgescu-Roegen, who made important contributions to mainstream economics before becoming a dissident economist, characterizes the economic process, from a physical point of view, as the inevitable transformation of low entropy (thermodynamics) or natural resources, into high entropy or waste.

Hence the recourse to Georgescu-Roegen thermodynamics. There are two sources of low entropy: the limited stocks (which includes among the flows) of materials (minerals) of the Earth's crust and the, inexhaustible on a human scale, flow of solar energy.[40]​.

Against the mechanical analogy of conventional economics Georgescu-Roegen describes the economic process as interrelated and subject to qualitative change. Time is introduced into the production process through its concept of background. Another aspect of his work is the prosecution of energy dogmas since he affirmed the impossibility of perpetual recycling and rejected a theory of value based on energy according to which the prices of goods correspond to their energy content.

Modern ecological economy

Graciela Chichilnisky develops in her essay "An axiomatic approach to sustainable development" (2002) two axioms of sustainable development, that is, for any rule of social choice that seeks to be sustainable, showing with the following axioms:

● Axiom of "Non-dictatorship" of the present generation (Theorem of present non-tyranny)

● Axiom of the "non-dictatorship" of the future (Theorem of future non-tyranny)

Chichilnisky with the constitution of these axioms of sustainable development, under expected conditions (social preference for a better generational state [weak Pareto efficiency condition] and a social welfare behavior without sudden jumps), demonstrates that no social welfare function under these axioms can be a conventional discounted sum, but must satisfy his Separation Axiom (Distant Future Independence Theorem) by including an individual component term of intergenerational justice (i.e., a term that captures the well-being of future generations), this forms its only formal solution, demonstrated in the Chichilnisky Theorem.[85]​.

Paul Milgrom developed "Kenneth Arrow's Last Theorem", naming it in honor of Kenneth Arrow who had proposed it as the last theorem he would like to develop before dying, one on Arrow's Impossibility Theorem that applies especially to the social choice of environmental policies.[86]​.

In 1987, a meeting of economists, biologists and physicists, both European and North American, was held at the UAB in Barcelona [13], organized by Joan Martínez Alier (researcher who has studied and disseminated the incommensurability of values, the environmentalism of the poor, ecological distribution conflicts such as the destruction of the mangrove forest for shrimp production [14] and the history of EE), which is considered by many to be key in the decision to publish a journal on EE (currently Ecological Economics. The transdisciplinary journal of the international society for ecological economics) with the Elsevier publishing house, thanks to the efforts of Herman Daly, Ann Mari Jansson and Robert Costanza. The publisher recommended that a society be created to support it, which was founded in 1988, giving birth to the International Society for Ecological Economics (ISEE). Its first president was Robert Costanza and the first issue of Ecological Economics was published in February 1989.[10]​.

In Spanish there is the Ibero-American Journal of Ecological Economy (REVIBEC) and Political Ecology, as well as the Spanish Ecological Economy Network [15]. The best-known ecological economists in Spain and Latin America are Manfred Max-Neef, Joan Martínez Alier and José Manuel Naredo.

Related associations:

Configuration of the conventional notion of an economic system: the environment is born

The scarcity that was formerly common sense since there was nothing infinite, came to denote insufficient money to buy all the baskets of goods and the corresponding need to choose, the needy man, according to authors such as Wolgang Sachs and Marshall Sahlins. Scarcity is determined by the asymmetry of means and ends.[87][88]​.

Sahlins argues that, paradoxically, the primitive economy is one of abundance because needs are few and the means to satisfy them are within everyone's reach, less time is dedicated to work than today and there is no desire to accumulate wealth. Societies with the State increased and extended the desire for accumulation according to Pierre Clastres. What we call work today did not appear as a concrete aspect of society and lacked the painful connotations of today, in a certain sense they did not work. In addition, an increase in productivity translated into greater creative leisure time.[89]​.

Wealth, which included all priceless goods such as sunlight and the fertility of the land, came to mean money. And the term produce, which was formerly understood as synonymous with create matter, after a complex process in which the 1st law of thermodynamics was taken into account but the 2nd was ignored, was finally reduced to reselling at a profit.

Coal, for example, is produced, that is, it is an existence that is extracted and sold by subtracting the costs of extracting it from the result of its sale. The natural process of concentration or its abundance in the Earth's crust is not taken into account since it is assumed that when a exploitation is exhausted, the amortization (of the extraction equipment, the concession and the work) will automatically allow more coal to be extracted in a new mine. Overall, it is not considered whether these new mines physically exist. The debate on the oil ceiling is framed along these lines.

A similar example but with a renewable resource is the case of fishing, the excess extractive capacity of large deep-sea fleets is transferred from one area to another after their collapse. The sea is largely a free access good (except for the continental shelf) that should not be confused with common goods, so it is rational for each company to obtain the highest possible return before the competition does, leading to the depletion of the resource and the unemployment of thousands of people. As happened in Newfoundland, currently awaiting an eventual recovery of cod stocks. This does not prevent its management from leading to serious problems in continental waters: In 1945, the president of Peru and neighboring governments supported the creation of the exclusive economic zone to prevent overexploitation of fishing by foreigners, but it was local businessmen who caused it at the end of the 1960s.[33]​.

On the other hand, EE reflects on: the institutional environment that favors correct and fair management of resources, the free contribution of nature through concepts such as physical replacement cost to better guide the management of mineral resources, the knowledge of physical and biological sciences to improve the management of water, forests, fisheries, etc.[32]​[90]​ For example, the solar energy absorbed by the Earth in one year is equivalent to 20 times the energy stored in all reserves of fossil fuels in the world and ten thousand times higher than current consumption.[91]​.

Economic growth and natural decrease

This contributed in a formidable way to magnifying the achievements of Capitalism, and later of State Socialism (which proved to be less effective in promoting economic growth), by ignoring the use and occasional depletion and destruction of resources that are at their source, and the waste that it necessarily produces with the corresponding pollution problems. And even more by hiding that the onerous goods and services offered by the productivist economic system came from, or poorly substituted, the free goods and services of nature, whose fundamental contribution to the economic process was minimized or eliminated, in favor of work and capital (capital and work are also built with resources such as steel or food).[32]​.

Likewise, Georgescu-Roegen indicated that a brief examination of the production function, which conventional economists currently use as a representation of the functioning of the economic system, shows a useless recipe of ingredients that is seriously incomplete since, according to Georgescu-Roegen, it implies that the economy can function with minimal natural resources given sufficient capital or labor (perfect substitutability of factors), since solving for natural resources (added in the Stiglitz-Solow variant, normally not are represented) can be made as small as you want, although not zero.[92]​.

Herman Daly criticized the "growth mania" or attitude of conventional theory, which based on the assumption that human needs are infinite establishes that the obligation of the system is to continually produce more in an endless world and that proposes economic growth as a solution to the problems of poverty, unemployment, inflation, imbalances in the balance of payments, depletion of resources and pollution and even war.[93] Problems created largely by growth itself.

Finally, Capital (certain ecological economists[29]​ are contrary to the idea of ​​Natural Capital since Nature and Capital have different characteristics: non-renewable resources do not reproduce like Capital) is the factor that finally nullified the others in the conventional economy, in this way, having sufficient capital, natural resources and labor did not matter. There are many prominent economists who explicitly denied any importance to natural resources, and almost all of them did so implicitly by accepting and working within the limits of the conventional notion of an economic system.

Examples: For S. Jevons, Principles of Economics 1871, natural resources may have potential utility, but this does not fall within the science of economics. Solow, Nobel Prize winner in 1987, at the beginning of the 70s of the century said that the world could continue perfectly without natural resources, indicating on several occasions that natural resources, which he did not include in his model, would be replaced by other things or factors (capital).[32]​.

Nowadays these past statements are ignored and similar statements are rare, as they can attract criticism from the EE such as that which Beckerman (World Bank advisor, Oxford professor) received a few years ago from H. Daly[94]​ for denying that a decline in agricultural production in the United States due to climate change was important given the low contribution, in monetary and percentage terms (3%) of the primary sector to the GDP. Daly said that the primary sector is the foundation on which the entire edifice of the economy is built, indicating that Beckerman expressed the consequences according to the conventional way of thinking. Such ideas are derived directly from the system of thought and operation of conventional economics, as represented in the usual manuals.

Classical economists of the century such as Malthus, Ricardo and Mill expressed concern about the existence of limits to growth that would progressively be abandoned. Jevons's work on coal would remain outside his own considerations of neoclassical economics. Works on limits to growth published in the 1970s were widely rejected by conventional economics, which assumed that technical progress and capital would solve the problem.

Marxism, which shares with classical economics the ideas of progress, technological optimism and mastery of nature, is also considered part of conventional economics by various EE authors, since Karl Marx accepted the reformulated categories focused on the exchange values ​​of the classics; these concepts were not affected by the criticisms he made of classical economics. Marx pointed out that nature is related to use value and centered his theoretical system around exchange value, marginalizing the physical and biological aspects of the economy despite the reiteration of confusing terms such as material production, or the few quotes that in defense of nature can be culled from his vast work. Engels, for his part, explicitly rejected Podolinsky's work.[32][35]​.

Ante las crisis energéticas, la destrucción de recursos, los problemas causados por los residuos, la presión social, la crítica interna de pioneros como Georgescu-Roegen y la evidencia de otras ciencias en estas cuestiones, los economistas convencionales se vieron obligados a desarrollar medios para tratar estos asuntos que la formalización en el siglo de la naciente economía había dejado fuera de sus análisis.

Así a principios del siglo se incluyeron cuestiones de contaminación puntual en la noción de externalidad: daños o beneficios en la utilidad o producción que ocasiona un agente económico a otro, fuera del mercado y sin compensación económica. Un cajón de sastre teórico de multitud de aspectos positivos o negativos de diversa importancia clasificados como fallos de mercado ajenos al sistema económico tal y como lo formula habitualmente la economía convencional por no cumplir las condiciones sistematizadas por Walras.

La economía ambiental nacerá de la economía del bienestar de Pigou que trató entre otros temas, la diferencia entre el producto neto marginal social y el producto neto marginal privado debido a costes que no son tenidos en cuenta, con el ya clásico ejemplo del daño no compensado que se causa a un bosque por las chispas de una locomotora de vapor.

A la economía del bienestar se le añadió posteriormente en 1960 el problema del coste social de Coase. Hay que notar que en ocasiones se representa a Pigou y a Coase como defensores contrapuestos de la intervención del estado y del mercado capitalista respectivamente, sin embargo presentan más acuerdos que divergencias.[36]​.

Sus trabajos condujeron posteriormente a la economía de los recursos naturales para la gestión óptima de los recursos que usa el sistema económico (consumo o destrucción en términos monetarios atribuidos artificialmente al no existir mercados pues la Naturaleza no es un agente económico) y la economía ambiental para la gestión de la contaminación óptima,[31]​ también con precios arbitrarios (obtenidos mediante cuestionarios por ejemplo) a fin de obtener una función de coste marginal en unidades monetarias que se igualaría a los beneficios, función de beneficio privado marginal neto en unidades monetarias, para obtener analíticamente un óptimo matemático reversible.

En ambos casos con poca o nula referencia a las ciencias que pueden aportar información para su directa gestión como la biología, física... En contraste, la EE usa esos conocimientos para realizar, entre otros, el estudio de balances energéticos y análisis de flujos de energía y materiales consumidos por las economías. Por otro lado, la EE considera que los recursos y residuos están directamente relacionados. Sin el uso de los primeros no habría contaminación por lo que necesariamente ha de abarcar ambos.[25]​[29]​[32]​.

Growth as sustainable development

According to certain EE authors, the perception of the failure of the idea of ​​growth derived from the social and environmental crisis caused the proliferation of labels that pretend to confront it while concealing usual practices. This is the case of the term sustainable development criticized as vague (multiple meanings), hypocritical (used to promote unsustainable activities) and contradictory (ignores the social and biophysical limits to growth or focuses on erroneous issues).[4]​.

Historically, growth and development have been considered synonymous. Therefore (utilitarianism) it was enough to mass produce goods to directly increase human well-being. The optimal distribution would be automatic thanks to the invisible hand. The current conviction that growth is not qualitative development (social, environmental improvement) derives from the perception of failure, paradoxically the result of its productivist success, of conventional economics.[95]​.

Many authors usually present the idea of ​​development as qualitative change, the problem arises when redefining development in isolation. Well, according to José Manuel Naredo, On the origin, use and content of the term sustainable,[96]​ the notion of sustainable development is synonymous with growth because modifying the meaning of a concept does not reform the entire complex network of definitions, indicators and practices of the conventional economic system to which it belongs. In this way, the manuals are structured in a coherent way (concepts such as wealth, market, indicators such as GDP, etc.) around the idea of ​​growth.[32]​.

However, for Herman Daly, there can be development without growth, which leads him to retain that term but with another meaning within his notion of a steady state. That is, it introduces it into a different economic system, since if a transition to a stationary economy were to occur, profound changes would occur: The human population would have to be numerically constant and so would the stock of physical capital, both of which would be maintained in the long term by reducing the energy and materials necessary to replenish the population and capital to the minimum possible.

Ecological economy response

It is about patching up the analytical network that once left out these aspects (resources, waste, society) by reincorporating these phenomena into conventional economics in a distorted way (through the invention of property rights, prices and markets) but without discussing why they were left out in the first place, which would reveal their insurmountable contradiction with the basic postulates of conventional economics.[32]​ For example, an explicit recognition within conventional economics of the limited substitutability of factors. it would break the coherence of the neoclassical approach.[97][98]​.

Economic inequality is analyzed in biophysical terms between central and peripheral countries that, due to the international division of labor, are producers of raw materials, without taking into account that they sell stocks created by nature for a lower price, which leads to long-term impoverishment for those societies that do not simultaneously develop a renewable substitute (related notions: sowing oil, unequal ecological exchange and asymmetry between physical cost and monetary valuation called rule of notary).[29]​[90]​.

Criticism of macroeconomic accounting because it considers income which is actually depletion of resources and therefore impoverishment, for counting as an increase in GDP the defensive expenditures that are made to protect themselves from the effects of growth or, directly, because the assessment of the state of the economy cannot be reduced to a quantitative indicator (See the section Limitations of the use of GDP). However, the adoption of corrected indicators such as green GDP has been proposed that will try to correct some of these failures.

This means that, according to EE, the economics of natural resources and the environment are of no practical use beyond cases that are very localized in space and time, in which monetary exchanges can be created in fictitious markets. That is, cases such as the rancher who contaminates a farmer's water (assuming that there is no one or nothing else harmed in the present or future except them, that there are defined property rights, products damaged to the farmer with a market price, a competitive market where cheap transactions can be carried out) is the so-called Coasian negotiation. Whose significance is reduced to recreating the key characteristics of economic goods already systematized by Walras.

Stigler elevated Coase's proposal to the rank of "Theorem" and the usual formulation is that in a conflict like the one mentioned and in the absence of transaction costs it does not matter which of the two parties has the right to pollute, its clear definition is sufficient. Although for those involved it has different effects depending on who must be compensated, for the economy as a whole it would not matter.[29]​.

Limits to growth and decline

It is estimated that 45% of the world's active population works with agricultural and forestry biomass, although it only generates 5% of the world's GDP. Biomass flows are closely linked to the cycles of carbon, nitrogen, phosphorus and other substances and to the flow of trophic energy in ecosystems. The extraction and production of biomass is related to the degradation of ecosystems. Only one fifth of the global surface has little or no human interference while certain authors such as Giampetro and Pimentel recommend the preservation of 33% of ecosystems to ensure their stability. The part of Net Primary Production (NPP, that which exceeds the growth and maintenance needs of primary producers and constitutes the source for animals and humans) appropriated by humanity ranges from 16% of terrestrial production (year 2000, only terrestrial extraction without fishing and without taking into account the loss of NPP due to urbanization or soil depletion) to more than 40% (13% terrestrial biomass production) according to the results of several studies. Which in turn raises the problem of maximum scale of the economy.[90]​[99]​[100]​ Website, English, about the HANPP [16] According to the United Nations Environment Program Regional Office for Latin America and the Caribbean, an investment of 2% of GDP in the green economy would have a greater long-term return compared to the brown economy.[101]​.

On the basis of maintaining the existence of limits to growth, there are also many authors who openly support degrowth (a more pessimistic position), such as Georgescu Roegen himself who stated early on that developed countries must drastically reduce their consumption (also in favor of underdeveloped ones) in the use of materials and energy and waste generated. On the other hand, consumption after exceeding a certain threshold,[102]​ does not lead to happiness, nor does it respond in many cases to real needs but to desires stimulated or created by the economy itself, which must be covered by paid goods or services and permanently unsatisfied,[32]​[103]​ to continue functioning. Max-Neef differentiates between needs and satisfiers.[104]​.

Fields that contribute to ecological integration.

The ecological economy aims to close a long period of separation between the economy, nature and society whose results in terms of environmental destruction and social injustice are understood to be evident.

Marxist ecological economics

In the dialogue between ecology and Marxist economics, James O'Connor"),[105]​ and his theory of the second contradiction of capitalism;[106]​ Elmar Altvater"), who studied the phenomenon of globalization[107]​ and the climate and ecological crisis derived from the capitalist model;[108]​ and John Bellamy Foster,[109]​ among others, stand out.

In this line of analysis, Jason W. Moore proposed the term capitalocene to replace the concept of anthropocene, since he points out that human beings are not entirely responsible for climate change, but that it derives from the capitalist model as a system of capital accumulation.[110]​.

La economía ecológica (EE) tiene un enfoque distinto al racionalismo (útil hasta cierto punto) y analítico enfoque de la economía convencional (la economía separada de la biología, separadas de la física...), pues considera a la economía como un subconjunto de la sociedad y ésta de la biosfera. Este cambio de visión tiene profundas implicaciones. Así la EE incorpora conocimientos de diferentes ciencias incluyendo la ecología ya que estudia los flujos de materia y energía de la vida sobre la Tierra, y la economía está incluida en este sistema. Se estudia la economía como un objeto natural y social. Una descripción extensa de las diferencias según Aguilera Klink, aquí:[1].

A la cabeza de las críticas a la actual teoría económica por los economistas ecológicos se encuentra su aproximación a las interacciones entre la naturaleza y la sociedad. La sustituibilidad de los recursos agotables: Los análisis desde el punto de vista de la economía convencional minusvaloran el capital natural, en el sentido de que es tratado como un factor de producción intercambiable o sustituible por trabajo y tecnología (capital humano).

Desde la economía ecológica se argumenta que el capital humano y el capital manufacturado son complementarios al capital natural, y no intercambiables, ya que el capital humano y el capital fabricado derivan inevitablemente del capital natural de una u otra forma. La economía ecológica estudia de qué manera el crecimiento económico está relacionado con el aumento en la explotación de insumos materiales y energéticos.

Los economistas ecológicos afirman que una gran parte de lo importante en el bienestar humano no es analizable desde un punto de vista estrictamente económico, sugiriendo la transdisciplinariedad de las ciencias sociales y naturales como un medio para abordar el estudio del bienestar económico y su dependencia de los servicios que proporciona la naturaleza.

En la EE se discute sobre indicadores de sostenibilidad, la validez de la curva ambiental de Kuznets"), la paradoja de Jevons, el efecto rebote de las estrategias de suficiencia, la hipótesis de la desmaterialización de la economía, huella ecológica, inputs directos y ocultos de materiales [2], tamaño de la economía y límites al crecimiento económico [3], la medida del bienestar, estado estacionario, ecologismo de los pobres (activismo de personas amenazadas por la destrucción de recursos y servicios ambientales que necesitan para vivir), ecología política[4], los trabajos no remunerados, distribución justa de la renta (la distribución precede a la producción), sostenibilidad fuerte") frente a sostenibilidad débil, deuda ecológica, coevolución de sistemas ecológicos y económicos, biodiversidad, limitaciones de la tasa de descuento, relación de los derechos de propiedad y la gestión de recursos naturales, instrumentos de política ambiental, la justicia ambiental, y el metabolismo social entre otros temas. La economía ecológica critica también la contabilidad macroeconómica, proponiendo en cambio un conjunto de indicadores físicos y sociales, además de los monetarios.

Preocupación por su modularidad disciplinaria: Un aspecto relacionado con la relativa debilidad política e institucional de la EE es el riesgo de subordinación a la economía ambiental y de los recursos naturales, como propuso abiertamente David Pearce en la conferencia inaugural de la ESEE en 1996 y que fue muy criticado. .

Differences between ecological economics and environmental economics and the economics of natural resources.

Environmental Economics and Natural Resource Economics are subdisciplines of economics focused on the optimal allocation of resources and pollution. But, according to the EE, they ignore issues such as the functioning of ecosystems and the environmental burdens on society.

Environmental economics refers to the way in which waste is disposed and the resulting quality of the atmosphere, hydrosphere, biosphere and pedosphere as waste receptors. Furthermore, environmental economics (EA) is related to environmental pollution and conservation of ecosystems and biodiversity.

Natural resource economics (NRE), on the other hand, is defined as the study of the way in which society allocates scarce natural resources, in monetary terms with respect to purposes also measured in money (prices), such as fish reserves, tree plantations, fresh water and oil, which according to conventional economics are inexhaustible or substitutable.

Thus, the EE research program differs in that its concept of ecological sustainability is different from that of the EA-ERN's economic sustainability. Includes system dynamics and the threshold effect versus equilibrium fixation in neoclassical economics. The ERN focuses on a resource in isolation from its ecosystem. And market prices do not indicate whether a system is pushing the limits of its ability to recover. Surprisingly, in the ISEE magazine there are more articles from the perspective of the EA-ERN than from the EE.[10]​.

On the other hand, in EE the functioning of economies and the management of resources and waste are analyzed directly through concepts and methods taken from Physics (thermodynamics would explain why we cannot use the same piece of coal over and over again to light a fire or the heat of the sea to propel ships),[25]​[26]​ biology (knowledge of the ecosystems that provide us with vital sustenance, resources or receive waste), geology (mineral deposits are rarities of the Earth's crust, which are generated and destroyed over and over again),[27]​ anthropology and sociology (analysis of energy balances and other societies and institutions), Industrial Ecology")[28]​ (ecology as a framework and model for industry) and also, in a subsidiary and limited way, in monetary terms.[29]​ Examples: , [7].

The sharp difference between EE, EA and ERN is mainly conceptual; in practice the authors and theories overlap and interrelate[29]​ as can be seen by some articles published in the journal Ecological Economics. For example, the February 2008 issue, in which you can find articles related to the EA (), with the ERN () and more specific to the EE ().[30]​.

Monetary Valuation Versus Value Incommensurability

However, for the EA-ERN, in the case of the introduction of taxes on pollution (the Coasian negotiation is discussed below), the key lies in the possibility of obtaining in monetary terms (economic valuation) the external marginal cost function through techniques such as contingent valuation. [8], travel cost method and others. Monetary valuation is considered a reflection of individual preferences, "what people want" is what they are willing to pay. And market prices are the guide. Formally, the marginal benefit must be equal to the marginal cost of providing that benefit.[31]​ For this, calculus is used, so the problem must be reduced to mathematical optimization, be it maximization or minimization.

What is foreign, according to the EE, to the complexity of the majority of the problems that it seeks to address in which there are no prices, markets, property, those affected may not yet exist, may be unaware of it, or may be very numerous; the effects are unknown or complex, for example the crisis of animal migrations [9] Furthermore, what a person is willing to pay depends on their income (the poor suffer greater environmental damage than the rich) and the neoclassical theory fails because it states that the predisposition to pay (equivalent variation in income) to avoid damage (for example incineration of waste near your home) must be similar to the willingness to accept compensation (compensatory variation in income). But in reality this does not happen.[29]​.

In any case, the optimum obtained does not have to be assimilated by the ecosystems or accepted by society; it could only be approximated, with serious uncertainties and enormous complexity in most cases, using earth sciences. What is the cost curve in the case of nuclear waste? Or Chernobyl? On cost benefit analysis (CBA) [10]Archived on July 28, 2013 at the Wayback Machine.

These are, according to the EE, debatable approaches: In 1991, the chief economist of the World Bank was the center of a controversy when an internal memorandum on the export of waste to Third World countries was leaked (Let them eat pollution, The economist). tenth of that of a Westerner, a difference that increased in a later review [11]. It is an example of environmental distributive conflicts"), one of the topics covered by political ecology that relates it to EE since the type of use of environmental resources and sinks depends on power relations and income distribution.

Different valuation languages

Development of multi-criteria evaluation methods") developed by G Munda (1970)[12] that admit a weak comparability of values"), different from the strong comparability of the cost-benefit analysis, based on a participatory process of all the agents involved in a problem or investment project, as tools to contribute to decision-making in accordance with the so-called deliberative democracy in a context of multiple values or criteria.

The monetary (pecuniary) values ​​that economists assign to negative externalities or environmental services are the fruit of political decisions, the distribution of property, money and power.[33]​.

The EE does not abandon the use of monetary elements, but relativizes them: they lose their position of privilege and exclusivity within a new vision, since there are many types of markets according to the institutional rules that regulate them.[32]​.

Ecological economists participate in the discussion of the relevance of procedures to attribute monetary values ​​to environmental services and damages and the correctness of macroeconomic accounting, but their main axis is the development of physical indices of (un)sustainability. The most frequently used environmental impact indices are the ecological footprint index (Wachernagel and Rees, 1996), human appropriation of net primary production (Vitousek, 1986), material input per unit of service (Wuppertal Institute), material flow indicators (Wuppertal Institute and Faculty for Interdisciplinary Studies), agricultural water footprint and virtual water (UNESCO-Institute for water education), energy balances of economic activities and integrated analysis multiscalar aspect of social metabolism (Giampietro 2003).

Early precursors

The intellectual precursors of ecological economics can be traced largely to authors who were not economists but physicists, biologists or chemists such as Sadi Carnot, Rudolf Clausius, Leopold Pfaundler"), Patrick Geddes, Sergei A. Podolinsky, Popper-Lynkeus"), Frederick Soddy. His theories were not taken into consideration by conventional economics that deals with the allocation and management of scarce resources, according to the definition of economist Lionel Robbins.

Within economic science, in the century the physiocrats (physiocracy means government of nature) such as François Quesnay proposed that civil societies should be a mirror of the natural order, as a movement of naturalism "Naturalism (philosophy)"), however a bad government or influential groups could disrupt the relationship.[34] But to support their theories, which contained other important elements that passed into classical economics, the necessary knowledge had not yet been developed, such as those related with thermodynamics or biology.[32][35]​.

Precursors

The origin of ecological economics as a specific field per se is attributed to economists such as Nicholas Georgescu-Roegen, Kenneth Boulding, Karl William Kapp), Robert Ayres. They were influenced by the works of biologists such as Alfred J. Lotka (who introduced the important distinction between endosomatic and exosomatic use of energy), Holling, Eugene and Howard T. Odum.[36]​[37]​.

Kapp") dealt with the issue of social costs") which includes the negative consequences and damages that result from productive activities and that fall on other people or society but for which entrepreneurs do not consider themselves responsible. Appropriating in this way a larger part of the national product than their share and thus reducing the price for consumers.[38]​.

In 1966, Boulding published an article entitled The economics of the coming spaceship earth that popularized the metaphor, applied to all of humanity but deeply inspired by North America, of the transition from a world without limits typical of the pioneer of the West (cowboy economy) to one limited like a spaceship (spaceship economy), reflecting the necessary transition to be made towards a balanced, non-expansive economy.

Georgescu-Roegen, who made important contributions to mainstream economics before becoming a dissident economist, characterizes the economic process, from a physical point of view, as the inevitable transformation of low entropy (thermodynamics) or natural resources, into high entropy or waste.

Hence the recourse to Georgescu-Roegen thermodynamics. There are two sources of low entropy: the limited stocks (which includes among the flows) of materials (minerals) of the Earth's crust and the, inexhaustible on a human scale, flow of solar energy.[40]​.

Against the mechanical analogy of conventional economics Georgescu-Roegen describes the economic process as interrelated and subject to qualitative change. Time is introduced into the production process through its concept of background. Another aspect of his work is the prosecution of energy dogmas since he affirmed the impossibility of perpetual recycling and rejected a theory of value based on energy according to which the prices of goods correspond to their energy content.

Modern ecological economy

Graciela Chichilnisky develops in her essay "An axiomatic approach to sustainable development" (2002) two axioms of sustainable development, that is, for any rule of social choice that seeks to be sustainable, showing with the following axioms:

● Axiom of "Non-dictatorship" of the present generation (Theorem of present non-tyranny)

● Axiom of the "non-dictatorship" of the future (Theorem of future non-tyranny)

Chichilnisky with the constitution of these axioms of sustainable development, under expected conditions (social preference for a better generational state [weak Pareto efficiency condition] and a social welfare behavior without sudden jumps), demonstrates that no social welfare function under these axioms can be a conventional discounted sum, but must satisfy his Separation Axiom (Distant Future Independence Theorem) by including an individual component term of intergenerational justice (i.e., a term that captures the well-being of future generations), this forms its only formal solution, demonstrated in the Chichilnisky Theorem.[85]​.

Paul Milgrom developed "Kenneth Arrow's Last Theorem", naming it in honor of Kenneth Arrow who had proposed it as the last theorem he would like to develop before dying, one on Arrow's Impossibility Theorem that applies especially to the social choice of environmental policies.[86]​.

In 1987, a meeting of economists, biologists and physicists, both European and North American, was held at the UAB in Barcelona [13], organized by Joan Martínez Alier (researcher who has studied and disseminated the incommensurability of values, the environmentalism of the poor, ecological distribution conflicts such as the destruction of the mangrove forest for shrimp production [14] and the history of EE), which is considered by many to be key in the decision to publish a journal on EE (currently Ecological Economics. The transdisciplinary journal of the international society for ecological economics) with the Elsevier publishing house, thanks to the efforts of Herman Daly, Ann Mari Jansson and Robert Costanza. The publisher recommended that a society be created to support it, which was founded in 1988, giving birth to the International Society for Ecological Economics (ISEE). Its first president was Robert Costanza and the first issue of Ecological Economics was published in February 1989.[10]​.

In Spanish there is the Ibero-American Journal of Ecological Economy (REVIBEC) and Political Ecology, as well as the Spanish Ecological Economy Network [15]. The best-known ecological economists in Spain and Latin America are Manfred Max-Neef, Joan Martínez Alier and José Manuel Naredo.

Related associations:

Configuration of the conventional notion of an economic system: the environment is born

The scarcity that was formerly common sense since there was nothing infinite, came to denote insufficient money to buy all the baskets of goods and the corresponding need to choose, the needy man, according to authors such as Wolgang Sachs and Marshall Sahlins. Scarcity is determined by the asymmetry of means and ends.[87][88]​.

Sahlins argues that, paradoxically, the primitive economy is one of abundance because needs are few and the means to satisfy them are within everyone's reach, less time is dedicated to work than today and there is no desire to accumulate wealth. Societies with the State increased and extended the desire for accumulation according to Pierre Clastres. What we call work today did not appear as a concrete aspect of society and lacked the painful connotations of today, in a certain sense they did not work. In addition, an increase in productivity translated into greater creative leisure time.[89]​.

Wealth, which included all priceless goods such as sunlight and the fertility of the land, came to mean money. And the term produce, which was formerly understood as synonymous with create matter, after a complex process in which the 1st law of thermodynamics was taken into account but the 2nd was ignored, was finally reduced to reselling at a profit.

Coal, for example, is produced, that is, it is an existence that is extracted and sold by subtracting the costs of extracting it from the result of its sale. The natural process of concentration or its abundance in the Earth's crust is not taken into account since it is assumed that when a exploitation is exhausted, the amortization (of the extraction equipment, the concession and the work) will automatically allow more coal to be extracted in a new mine. Overall, it is not considered whether these new mines physically exist. The debate on the oil ceiling is framed along these lines.

A similar example but with a renewable resource is the case of fishing, the excess extractive capacity of large deep-sea fleets is transferred from one area to another after their collapse. The sea is largely a free access good (except for the continental shelf) that should not be confused with common goods, so it is rational for each company to obtain the highest possible return before the competition does, leading to the depletion of the resource and the unemployment of thousands of people. As happened in Newfoundland, currently awaiting an eventual recovery of cod stocks. This does not prevent its management from leading to serious problems in continental waters: In 1945, the president of Peru and neighboring governments supported the creation of the exclusive economic zone to prevent overexploitation of fishing by foreigners, but it was local businessmen who caused it at the end of the 1960s.[33]​.

On the other hand, EE reflects on: the institutional environment that favors correct and fair management of resources, the free contribution of nature through concepts such as physical replacement cost to better guide the management of mineral resources, the knowledge of physical and biological sciences to improve the management of water, forests, fisheries, etc.[32]​[90]​ For example, the solar energy absorbed by the Earth in one year is equivalent to 20 times the energy stored in all reserves of fossil fuels in the world and ten thousand times higher than current consumption.[91]​.

Economic growth and natural decrease

This contributed in a formidable way to magnifying the achievements of Capitalism, and later of State Socialism (which proved to be less effective in promoting economic growth), by ignoring the use and occasional depletion and destruction of resources that are at their source, and the waste that it necessarily produces with the corresponding pollution problems. And even more by hiding that the onerous goods and services offered by the productivist economic system came from, or poorly substituted, the free goods and services of nature, whose fundamental contribution to the economic process was minimized or eliminated, in favor of work and capital (capital and work are also built with resources such as steel or food).[32]​.

Likewise, Georgescu-Roegen indicated that a brief examination of the production function, which conventional economists currently use as a representation of the functioning of the economic system, shows a useless recipe of ingredients that is seriously incomplete since, according to Georgescu-Roegen, it implies that the economy can function with minimal natural resources given sufficient capital or labor (perfect substitutability of factors), since solving for natural resources (added in the Stiglitz-Solow variant, normally not are represented) can be made as small as you want, although not zero.[92]​.

Herman Daly criticized the "growth mania" or attitude of conventional theory, which based on the assumption that human needs are infinite establishes that the obligation of the system is to continually produce more in an endless world and that proposes economic growth as a solution to the problems of poverty, unemployment, inflation, imbalances in the balance of payments, depletion of resources and pollution and even war.[93] Problems created largely by growth itself.

Finally, Capital (certain ecological economists[29]​ are contrary to the idea of ​​Natural Capital since Nature and Capital have different characteristics: non-renewable resources do not reproduce like Capital) is the factor that finally nullified the others in the conventional economy, in this way, having sufficient capital, natural resources and labor did not matter. There are many prominent economists who explicitly denied any importance to natural resources, and almost all of them did so implicitly by accepting and working within the limits of the conventional notion of an economic system.

Examples: For S. Jevons, Principles of Economics 1871, natural resources may have potential utility, but this does not fall within the science of economics. Solow, Nobel Prize winner in 1987, at the beginning of the 70s of the century said that the world could continue perfectly without natural resources, indicating on several occasions that natural resources, which he did not include in his model, would be replaced by other things or factors (capital).[32]​.

Nowadays these past statements are ignored and similar statements are rare, as they can attract criticism from the EE such as that which Beckerman (World Bank advisor, Oxford professor) received a few years ago from H. Daly[94]​ for denying that a decline in agricultural production in the United States due to climate change was important given the low contribution, in monetary and percentage terms (3%) of the primary sector to the GDP. Daly said that the primary sector is the foundation on which the entire edifice of the economy is built, indicating that Beckerman expressed the consequences according to the conventional way of thinking. Such ideas are derived directly from the system of thought and operation of conventional economics, as represented in the usual manuals.

Classical economists of the century such as Malthus, Ricardo and Mill expressed concern about the existence of limits to growth that would progressively be abandoned. Jevons's work on coal would remain outside his own considerations of neoclassical economics. Works on limits to growth published in the 1970s were widely rejected by conventional economics, which assumed that technical progress and capital would solve the problem.

Marxism, which shares with classical economics the ideas of progress, technological optimism and mastery of nature, is also considered part of conventional economics by various EE authors, since Karl Marx accepted the reformulated categories focused on the exchange values ​​of the classics; these concepts were not affected by the criticisms he made of classical economics. Marx pointed out that nature is related to use value and centered his theoretical system around exchange value, marginalizing the physical and biological aspects of the economy despite the reiteration of confusing terms such as material production, or the few quotes that in defense of nature can be culled from his vast work. Engels, for his part, explicitly rejected Podolinsky's work.[32][35]​.

Ante las crisis energéticas, la destrucción de recursos, los problemas causados por los residuos, la presión social, la crítica interna de pioneros como Georgescu-Roegen y la evidencia de otras ciencias en estas cuestiones, los economistas convencionales se vieron obligados a desarrollar medios para tratar estos asuntos que la formalización en el siglo de la naciente economía había dejado fuera de sus análisis.

Así a principios del siglo se incluyeron cuestiones de contaminación puntual en la noción de externalidad: daños o beneficios en la utilidad o producción que ocasiona un agente económico a otro, fuera del mercado y sin compensación económica. Un cajón de sastre teórico de multitud de aspectos positivos o negativos de diversa importancia clasificados como fallos de mercado ajenos al sistema económico tal y como lo formula habitualmente la economía convencional por no cumplir las condiciones sistematizadas por Walras.

La economía ambiental nacerá de la economía del bienestar de Pigou que trató entre otros temas, la diferencia entre el producto neto marginal social y el producto neto marginal privado debido a costes que no son tenidos en cuenta, con el ya clásico ejemplo del daño no compensado que se causa a un bosque por las chispas de una locomotora de vapor.

A la economía del bienestar se le añadió posteriormente en 1960 el problema del coste social de Coase. Hay que notar que en ocasiones se representa a Pigou y a Coase como defensores contrapuestos de la intervención del estado y del mercado capitalista respectivamente, sin embargo presentan más acuerdos que divergencias.[36]​.

Sus trabajos condujeron posteriormente a la economía de los recursos naturales para la gestión óptima de los recursos que usa el sistema económico (consumo o destrucción en términos monetarios atribuidos artificialmente al no existir mercados pues la Naturaleza no es un agente económico) y la economía ambiental para la gestión de la contaminación óptima,[31]​ también con precios arbitrarios (obtenidos mediante cuestionarios por ejemplo) a fin de obtener una función de coste marginal en unidades monetarias que se igualaría a los beneficios, función de beneficio privado marginal neto en unidades monetarias, para obtener analíticamente un óptimo matemático reversible.

En ambos casos con poca o nula referencia a las ciencias que pueden aportar información para su directa gestión como la biología, física... En contraste, la EE usa esos conocimientos para realizar, entre otros, el estudio de balances energéticos y análisis de flujos de energía y materiales consumidos por las economías. Por otro lado, la EE considera que los recursos y residuos están directamente relacionados. Sin el uso de los primeros no habría contaminación por lo que necesariamente ha de abarcar ambos.[25]​[29]​[32]​.

Growth as sustainable development

According to certain EE authors, the perception of the failure of the idea of ​​growth derived from the social and environmental crisis caused the proliferation of labels that pretend to confront it while concealing usual practices. This is the case of the term sustainable development criticized as vague (multiple meanings), hypocritical (used to promote unsustainable activities) and contradictory (ignores the social and biophysical limits to growth or focuses on erroneous issues).[4]​.

Historically, growth and development have been considered synonymous. Therefore (utilitarianism) it was enough to mass produce goods to directly increase human well-being. The optimal distribution would be automatic thanks to the invisible hand. The current conviction that growth is not qualitative development (social, environmental improvement) derives from the perception of failure, paradoxically the result of its productivist success, of conventional economics.[95]​.

Many authors usually present the idea of ​​development as qualitative change, the problem arises when redefining development in isolation. Well, according to José Manuel Naredo, On the origin, use and content of the term sustainable,[96]​ the notion of sustainable development is synonymous with growth because modifying the meaning of a concept does not reform the entire complex network of definitions, indicators and practices of the conventional economic system to which it belongs. In this way, the manuals are structured in a coherent way (concepts such as wealth, market, indicators such as GDP, etc.) around the idea of ​​growth.[32]​.

However, for Herman Daly, there can be development without growth, which leads him to retain that term but with another meaning within his notion of a steady state. That is, it introduces it into a different economic system, since if a transition to a stationary economy were to occur, profound changes would occur: The human population would have to be numerically constant and so would the stock of physical capital, both of which would be maintained in the long term by reducing the energy and materials necessary to replenish the population and capital to the minimum possible.

Ecological economy response

It is about patching up the analytical network that once left out these aspects (resources, waste, society) by reincorporating these phenomena into conventional economics in a distorted way (through the invention of property rights, prices and markets) but without discussing why they were left out in the first place, which would reveal their insurmountable contradiction with the basic postulates of conventional economics.[32]​ For example, an explicit recognition within conventional economics of the limited substitutability of factors. it would break the coherence of the neoclassical approach.[97][98]​.

Economic inequality is analyzed in biophysical terms between central and peripheral countries that, due to the international division of labor, are producers of raw materials, without taking into account that they sell stocks created by nature for a lower price, which leads to long-term impoverishment for those societies that do not simultaneously develop a renewable substitute (related notions: sowing oil, unequal ecological exchange and asymmetry between physical cost and monetary valuation called rule of notary).[29]​[90]​.

Criticism of macroeconomic accounting because it considers income which is actually depletion of resources and therefore impoverishment, for counting as an increase in GDP the defensive expenditures that are made to protect themselves from the effects of growth or, directly, because the assessment of the state of the economy cannot be reduced to a quantitative indicator (See the section Limitations of the use of GDP). However, the adoption of corrected indicators such as green GDP has been proposed that will try to correct some of these failures.

This means that, according to EE, the economics of natural resources and the environment are of no practical use beyond cases that are very localized in space and time, in which monetary exchanges can be created in fictitious markets. That is, cases such as the rancher who contaminates a farmer's water (assuming that there is no one or nothing else harmed in the present or future except them, that there are defined property rights, products damaged to the farmer with a market price, a competitive market where cheap transactions can be carried out) is the so-called Coasian negotiation. Whose significance is reduced to recreating the key characteristics of economic goods already systematized by Walras.

Stigler elevated Coase's proposal to the rank of "Theorem" and the usual formulation is that in a conflict like the one mentioned and in the absence of transaction costs it does not matter which of the two parties has the right to pollute, its clear definition is sufficient. Although for those involved it has different effects depending on who must be compensated, for the economy as a whole it would not matter.[29]​.

Limits to growth and decline

It is estimated that 45% of the world's active population works with agricultural and forestry biomass, although it only generates 5% of the world's GDP. Biomass flows are closely linked to the cycles of carbon, nitrogen, phosphorus and other substances and to the flow of trophic energy in ecosystems. The extraction and production of biomass is related to the degradation of ecosystems. Only one fifth of the global surface has little or no human interference while certain authors such as Giampetro and Pimentel recommend the preservation of 33% of ecosystems to ensure their stability. The part of Net Primary Production (NPP, that which exceeds the growth and maintenance needs of primary producers and constitutes the source for animals and humans) appropriated by humanity ranges from 16% of terrestrial production (year 2000, only terrestrial extraction without fishing and without taking into account the loss of NPP due to urbanization or soil depletion) to more than 40% (13% terrestrial biomass production) according to the results of several studies. Which in turn raises the problem of maximum scale of the economy.[90]​[99]​[100]​ Website, English, about the HANPP [16] According to the United Nations Environment Program Regional Office for Latin America and the Caribbean, an investment of 2% of GDP in the green economy would have a greater long-term return compared to the brown economy.[101]​.

On the basis of maintaining the existence of limits to growth, there are also many authors who openly support degrowth (a more pessimistic position), such as Georgescu Roegen himself who stated early on that developed countries must drastically reduce their consumption (also in favor of underdeveloped ones) in the use of materials and energy and waste generated. On the other hand, consumption after exceeding a certain threshold,[102]​ does not lead to happiness, nor does it respond in many cases to real needs but to desires stimulated or created by the economy itself, which must be covered by paid goods or services and permanently unsatisfied,[32]​[103]​ to continue functioning. Max-Neef differentiates between needs and satisfiers.[104]​.

Fields that contribute to ecological integration.

The ecological economy aims to close a long period of separation between the economy, nature and society whose results in terms of environmental destruction and social injustice are understood to be evident.

Marxist ecological economics

In the dialogue between ecology and Marxist economics, James O'Connor"),[105]​ and his theory of the second contradiction of capitalism;[106]​ Elmar Altvater"), who studied the phenomenon of globalization[107]​ and the climate and ecological crisis derived from the capitalist model;[108]​ and John Bellamy Foster,[109]​ among others, stand out.

In this line of analysis, Jason W. Moore proposed the term capitalocene to replace the concept of anthropocene, since he points out that human beings are not entirely responsible for climate change, but that it derives from the capitalist model as a system of capital accumulation.[110]​.