Sustainability

This volume provides a rigorous and analytical perspective on the pressing issue of making economic progress consistent with environmental conservation. It proposes formal definitions of sustainability, embeds them in dynamic models and models of uncertainty, and explores the concepts and their implications. It presents a wide-ranging approach to formalizing sustainability and bringing it within the realm of economic theory. Environmental sustainability of growth depends on the interactions between the biosphere and the process of economic growth. The analysis of the dynamics of such a complex system requires the use of sophisticated dynamic methods in order to take account of the most relevant implications for social welfare, such as the relationship between economics and ethics, intergenerational distribution of resources, and the impact of economic policy on environmental conservation. The complexity of the object of the analysis involves a high degree of uncertainty coupled with a serious risk of irreversibility of the consequences of present decisions. Therefore, environmental risks are often very difficult to analyze and control. These problems may be faced and solved only by developing new ideas and approaches, some of which are explored in this book.