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50 TAMÁS Kocsis
more practical and
harder and larger-scale
business as usual with
treatment plant;
energy efficiency and
waste recycling
protection of endangered
species
iii | focus immediate problems — short- | problems —
term perspective long-term perspective
decoupling for growth; decoupling for welfare;
stress on risk management; stress on uncertainty
impact assessment in management, ecological
monetary terms; cost-assessment through
energy flow analysis;
. monetary reductionism; energy reductionism;
iv | strategy
ecological engineering
renewable energy recycling
consideration of interspecies
rights
v | methods of (e)valuation
willingness to pay (WTP),
willingness to accept (WTA)
in cost-benefit analysis
(CBA), total economic value
(TEV) comprising direct and
indirect use values, optional
value and existence value
highly aggregated and
ethically closed approach
environmental impact
statements/profiles,
effects of perturbation on
interspecies dependencies,
ecologic-economic models,
positional analysis, system
analysis, social trap analysis,
contributory value analysis
and carrying capacity
assessment
highly disaggregated and
ethically open-ended
approach
RANGE
OF INTEGRATION
economic ecology
ecologic economy
i | basic problem of study
relating technology, political
economy and ethics
relating physics, technology,
political economy, ethics and
theology
ii | dominant theme
anthropocentric
anthropocentric with
attempts to be open towards
biocentric and ecocentric
considerations
NEO claims that resource scarcity is mostly relative, from which it logically follows
— although it is rarely made explicit — that the natural environment (biosphere)
forms part of the economic sphere (weak sustainability). This approach suggests
considerable optimism about the future, claiming that clean (green) economic
growth can be realized in the long term. Its idea of equilibrium echoes Pareto
efficiency.’ ECO denies that nature is part of the economy and declares that the
relationship is the other way round (strong sustainability). Consequently, the
phenomenon of resource scarcity is absolute and inevitable (the biosphere is a
closed and finite system) — this fact alone suffices as a warning that constant
»Pareto efficiency is defined by economists as a situation where no one can be made better off
without making someone else worse off” (International Encyclopedia of the Social & Behavioral
Sciences, 2001).