Sustainable Development Managing for a healthy economy and healthy ecosystems

UAU 101 Seminar 1

Sustainable Development

“Sustainable development is development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs"

Brundtland Commission “Our common future” 1987

Three Dimensions of SD Established

Social

Economic

Environmental

The challenge: Balancing economic development with social and environmental objectives

Agenda 21 - from words to action, CSR

A huge dilemma

Tradeoffs

Owls vs. jobs

Hydropower vs. landscape/nature

Science? Ethics?

Role of science?

Role of ethics, fairness?

How to resolve this?Clear Objective - Indicators

Economic growth? Ecosystem health? Weak or strong SD? How to measure progress?

Methodology to choose between options - when to allow development - when to regulate

LCA, CBA, Risk analysis, CEA, Decision analysis

Multicriteria analysis – always!

Policy tool-box towards SD

Command and control, market based, voluntary

Weak or strong SD

Capital: produces a stream of goods and services into the future

Financial capital

Manufactured capital

Human capital

Natural capital

Social capital

Weak or strong SD

Weak sustainability; man made and natural capital substitutable. Sum must be non-declining

Strong sustainability; man made and natural capital with limited substitutability, each stock must be non-declining separately

Weak or strong SDInput from the

environment

• Resources• Life support services• Amenities• Waste-sink

Value of Ecosystem Services

Natural Capital

Renewable; fish stock

Nonrenewable; oil reserve

Ecosystem Goods and Services

Goods; harvest

Services; carbon sequestration

How important is nature?

Costanza (1997)

Defined the value of selected ecosystem services to be as how much economic value renewable nature´s goods and services provide annually

Conclusion was 16-54 trillion USD, with an average value of $33 trillion dollars per year.

GWP was this year 25 trillion USD

What does this mean?

How important is nature?

Catskills watershed

New York City derives its water from a watershed in the Catskills mountains

Degradation of the Catskills watershed as a result of sewage, fertilizers and pesticides had reduced the efficiency of the water filtration process to the point that it was unable to provide the city with sufficiently clean water.

Choices:

Build a water filtration plant?

Restore the ecosystem?

The Economy and the Environment

Cowboy Economy

• Romantic, Reckless

• Exciting

• Living on the edge - live for today

• Not realistic

• Not sustainable

Boulding (1964)

Spaceship economy

• Earth is a spaceship (Boulding 1964)

• Limited reservoir of natural capital at each time

• Necessary to maintain for continued prosperity

Aiming for a holistic perspective