OCR Output

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).