0.14 Related issues in sustainable development and the environment  (Page 3/7)

It is helpful to understand that Western-style economics is in fact, fundamentally based on the value judgment that individual preferences should count in the allocation of society’s scarce resources. Many economists recognize that this moral judgment lies at the heart of their discipline. Many such as the author are quite comfortable in having it there. But to ignore the ethical foundations of economists’ normative prescriptions is to increase the serious risk that only economic rhetoric will be used in debates over questions when much more than economics is needed to resolve them.

Certainly, economics as a disciple cannot by itself be expected to provide answers to ethical dilemmas. A central ethical issue in controversies over natural resources use and the environment the issue of intergenerational equity: to what extent should current decisions affecting exhaustible resources and the environment reflect the interests of generations to follow? An answer to these questions cannot be provided merely by economics, but only by some ethical system. And even given an ethical system, the question is not easily resolved. Implications of some ethical systems may surprise the reader. For example, an egalitarian set of ethical criteria such as those proposed by now deceased Harvard philosopher John Rawls, may indicate that the current generation should consume either more or less resources than the next, depending both upon future rates of technical progress, population change and the current size of the stock of exhaustible resources.

Whatever the ethical criteria used, an economist can no more specify an optimal rate of say, deforestation across generations than they can specify an optimal rate of national savings. Economic analysis, however, is in fact very useful in sensibly framing the questions to be asked in problems involving the interests of several generations.

The ethical foundations as well as the limitations of economic analysis are in any case not at all difficult to demonstrate. But what of the nexus between the older word, “economics” and “ecology”. Ecology is a modern word that first appeared in the 1870s. The Oxford Dictionary defines ecology as the science of the economy of animals and plants. The etymology of the two words also suggests that the two were once more tightly bound than at present. The first two syllables of each are formed on the Greek oiko(s), meaning “house” or alternatively, “place.” But the connection between economics and ecology surely extends beyond etymology: good economics is not only good ecology, but indeed is required for good ecology. The dichotomy that many perceive to have arisen between economics and ecology is false, and has persisted primarily because of narrowly focused on not-so good economics.

Consider the economist’s approach to problems in the distribution of income between rich and poor, a matter that can be settled only by resort to ethical as well as economic norms. The economist’s approach does turn out to be helpful in dealing with questions at the intersection of ecology and economics. Not only have ecological catastrophes been almost always economic disasters (and though the reverse is generally true), ecological calamities have had catastrophic implications for income distribution. And, the reverse is often true: maldistribution of income has often been a prime cause of ecological calamities. This happens when the landless poor have no options but to cut down the rain forest for fuelwood or shifting cultivation activities to survive.