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Journal of Ecology and Environmental Sciences
ISSN: 0976-9900 & E-ISSN: 0976-9919, Volume 4, Issue 1, 2013, pp.-87-90.
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SOCIO-ECOLOGICAL ISSUES- ECO-ECONOMIC AND SUSTAINABILITY STATUS
MATHUR A.* AND VYAS D.K.
Lachoo Memorial College of Science and Technology (Autonomous), Sector-A, Shastri Nagar, Jodhpur- 342003, Rajasthan, India.
*Corresponding Author: Email- [email protected]
Received: March 01, 2013; Accepted: March 11, 2013
Abstract- The eco-economics and sustainability provide the conceptual framework upon which studies of environmental sciences are based.
The main aim of modern conservation biology is to maintain species diversity and abundance, keeping in view, by planting wild crops, the
fossil fuels can be replaced by biomass fuel as a renewable energy source. Scientists and people related to urban planning must follow the
correct application of principles of population ecology and applied human ecology. Sustainable development has long term impacts on human
welfare but, with some limitations and the need for new approaches is required due to continuous global changes. The ultimate level of ecological organization is the ecosystem that involves the interacting organisms in an area and their interactions with their abiotic environment.
Our emphasis is on eco- economic growth, in which use of natural resources channeled within social sectors should attain sustainability. The
eco-economics is estimated presently with current population data for different countries and its projected population in 2050 based on US
Census Bureau’s International data base.
Keywords- Neoclassical economics, Weak & Strong sustainability, Ecological footprint, Exergy
Citation: Mathur A. and Vyas D.K. (2013) Socio-Ecological Issues- Eco-Economic and Sustainability Status. Journal of Ecology and Environmental Sciences, ISSN: 0976-9900 & E-ISSN: 0976-9919, Volume 4, Issue 1, pp.-87-90.
Copyright: Copyright©2013 Mathur A. and Vyas D.K. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
Introduction
The ecological economics is a trans-disciplinary field of academic
research that aims to address the interdependence and coevolution of human economies and natural ecosystems over time
and space. It is differentiated from environmental economics which
is the main stream economic analysis of the environment by its
treatment of the economy as a sub system of ecosystem and its
emphasis upon preserving natural capital [58]. The ecological economics is distinguishable from neoclassical economics primarily by
its concept that the economy is indulged within an environmental
system. The resource and neoclassical economics focuses primarily upon the efficient distribution and allocation of resources and
lesser on two other fundamental economic problems which are
central to ecological economics, i.e. equitability and the scale of the
economy related to the ecosystem upon which it depends [17]. The
human ‘well-being’ is differentiated from ‘welfare’ in mainstream
economics and accordingly the ‘new welfare economics’ from the
‘resource and environmental economics’ of 1930s.This provides the
utilitarian conception of value of goods of the nature as it is important to our economies and people will pay for its services such
as clean air, clean water, facing wilderness etc.
The sustainability interfaces with economics through the social and
ecological consequences of economical activity, that has three
broad criteria, viz., renewable resources should provide
a sustainable yield i.e., the rate of harvest should not exceed the
rate of regeneration; for non-renewable resources there should be
equivalent development of renewable substitutes, and waste generation in biological processes should not exceed the assimilative
capacity of the environment [15]. In this respect, sustainability economics represents a broad interpretation of ecological economics
where environmental as well as ecological variables and issues are
basic but part of a multidirectional perspective. The social, cultural,
health related and financial aspects also have to be integrated into
the analysis [52] The social issues of intergenerational equity, irreversible environmental changes, uncertainty of long term results
and sustainable development guide the ecological economic analysis and valuation [20]. In fact it is the study of metabolism of society
in terms of flows of energy and material that enter and exit the ecoeconomic system.
Natural Resource Service Price and Ecosystem Valuation
The price of the resource services provided by the environment was
determined by Costanza, et al [12]. They obtained the averaging
values from a range of studies conducted in a very specific context
and then transferred these without regard to that context. The capital was averaged to a per hectare number for different types of ecosystems like wetlands, oceans etc. A total was then produced which
came out as 33 trillion US $ (1997) more than twice the total GDP
of the world at the time of study. However the study was criticized
by pre-ecological and environmental economists for being inconsistent with assumptions of financial capital valuation and with an
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Socio-Ecological Issues- Eco-Economic and Sustainability Status
ecological economic focus on biological and physical indicators
[44]. The commoditization of other ecological relations such as carbon credit and direct payments to farmers to protect ecosystem
services and preserve biodiversity has involved private funding
agencies and the only option left for sustainability of any natural
resource is the payment of price of that resource for its continuous
supply to meet human needs.
The ecosystem valuation is no different than other bodies economically except that they are less replaceable than typical labor or commodities. The whole idea of treating ecosystem and environment as
goods and services to be valued in monetary terms remains controversial to many ecological economists. The main interpretation of
eco-economics is to sell everything that comes under the category
of ecosystem goods and services according to demand but, with the
concern that it will not lead to the depletion of resources to alarming
levels. However in monetary terms it remains worthless under the
assumption of any branch of economics.
Human Impact on Eco-Integrity
The ecological dominance of man comes at great loss to other species. When people invade a previously ‘stable’ ecosystem they
produce significant changes in established energy and material
cycling. There is a continuous reallocation of resources among
resident species to the benefit of some and the loss of others. It
means that if human exploitation of available energy and materials
increase indefinitely, it will cause biodiversity losses and other irreversible changes in ecosystem structure and function. In this respect careful resource management can be applied at varied levels,
from economic fields like agriculture, fisheries, industries, work
organizations etc., to the consumption patterns of households together with individuals and their demands of goods and services
[5,7]. Recently, awareness for the use of technologies to live in
closer harmony with environment and prevention of depletion of its
resources has become important issues of policy makers and ecoeconomists.
Ecological Footprints and Social Dimensions
The total environmental impact of a community or of mankind as a
whole depends both on population and impact per person, which in
turn depend in very complicated ways on the types of resources
used, whether or not they are renewable. It also depends on the
scale of the human activity related to the carrying capacity/
sustainability of the ecosystem involved. The ecological footprint
analysis measures the human ‘load’ on the earth in terms of the
area of productive ecosystems required to support the consumptive
demands of any defined human population at any material standard
at the time of the assessment [59]. The per capita eco-footprint are
positively correlated with income, it can also serve as an alternative
to GDP as a measure of economic scale. The inhabitants of United
States, Canada, many W. European and other high income countries, each requires 5 to 10 or 12 hectares (12 to 30 acres) of productive land/water to support their consumer lifestyles. Whereas,
the residents of world’s poorest countries have average ecofootprints of less than one hectare [60,62]. The Convention on Biodiversity (CBD) has proposed ecological footprint as an indicator for
monitoring progress in the implementation of plans for sustainable
production and consumption as well as monitored the impacts of
use of natural resources within the safe ecological limits.
The ecological footprint data for primary biomass producing terrestrial and aquatic areas of around 150 countries were collected by
National Footprint Account (NFA). It was based on the spreadsheet
list of countries with their global hectare per capita ecological footprint data of the Global Footprint Network (GFN). It analyzed 6000
data points per year for each country and results were displayed in
NFA 2010 edition. Wherein, the primary products from various ecosystems were estimated and the total area required to support a
particular context have been calculated. Similarly biocapacity was
deduced by calculating the total terrestrial and aquatic part of biologically productive area that provides the ecological goods and
services to a population. To assess the impacts of environmental
production and consumption, efforts are made to develop a holistic
foot print approach in which the monitoring of human pressure on
planet, under different angles was given a new concept of footprint
family, as a suite of indicators [23]. The entire project was executed
under the 7th frame work program in the European commission
(EC) funded One Planet Economy Network: European Union
(OPEN: EU). The whole study has helped us in finding out the
amount of combined human pressure on ecosystem and biodiversity used by the Biodiversity Indicator Partnership (BIP) [Fig.1].
Fig. 1- The radar summarizes the range of applicability and the
depth of the assessment for each of the footprint indicators as well
as the whole footprint Family. For any given policy, the radar highlights whether the indicator is able to address policy fully(100), sufficiently(75), partially(50), marginally(25) or not at all (0).Acronyms
for policies are as follows: SDS-EU Sustainable Development Strategy;6EAP-EU Sixth Environmental Action Programme; TS–
Thematic Strategies; CAP–Common Agriculture Policy; CFP= Common Fishery Policy; DWD=Drinking Water Directive; WFD= Water
Framework Directive CBD= Convention on Biological Diversity;
IPSRM= International Panel for Sustainable Resource Management ; MDGs= UN Millennium Development Goals [23].
Sustainability Measurement Scale and Context
There is a continuum of views among economists between the
strongly “neoclassical positions” of Robert Solow Martin Weitzman
at one extreme and “entropy pessimists” like Nicolas GeorgescuRoegen and Herman Daly, on the other [1]. The neo-classical economists tend to emphasize that man-made capital can in principle
replace all types of natural capital. This is known as weak sustainability view i.e. every technology can be improved upon or replaced
by innovation and there is a substitute for any and all scarce materials. Whereas the other extreme i.e. the strong sustainability view
states that the stock of natural resources and ecological functions
are irreplaceable and that the sustainable development must take a
different approach for valuing natural resource and ecological functions.
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Mathur A. and Vyas D.K.
The measurement of sustainability on quantitative basis is connected with data of different fields that range from the total carrying
capacity at global level to the economic sectors, ecosystems, countries, municipalities, gardens, life styles, goods and services, occupations, behavior patterns etc. In this way, it is the whole compass
of biological and human activities or any part of it and a landscape
that is always changing over many scales of time and space [2,4,
30]. Similarly, to measure it on social and economic levels, the indicators, indexes, accounting, assessment, audits, etc. are studied
[13]. The potential for substitution of man-made capital for natural
capital is always controversial and ecological economics of sustainability can be determined by efficiency analysis of resources used.
Eco-Economics of Energy
The eco-economics generally rejects the view of energy economics
that growth in the energy supply is related directly to well-fare, aiming rather on biodiversity and conventional energy sources, course
of action or natural capital and individual capital. Its concept was
developed by J. Willard Gibbs [26], according to which the flow of
available energy and material consumed by people are irreversibly
unavailable for other species that decline even to extinction. In this
context, for free energy, the term exergy was coined by Zoran Rant
in 1956 [46], and exergy analysis is performed in the field of industrial ecology to use energy more efficiently. Recently utilization of
exergy concept is spreading from the fields of industrial ecology to
the ecological economics, system ecology and energetics. Also, an
energy balance account can be used to track energy through a
system, which is a very useful tool for determining resource use and
environmental impact based on laws of thermodynamics. The energy accounting system also keeps track of energy intake, energy
expelled, non-utilized energy versus work done, and its transformation within the system.
The main energy source in all types of ecosystems comes from
sun’s radiations. It is stored by plants during photosynthesis and its
transformation into various types of energy also requires energy.
The key concept of eco-economics of energy is net energy gain.
This net energy gain from coal, oil and gas is related directly to wellbeing of biodiversity where, the fossil fuel is a major driver of technology and the source of both economic and political power. However the net energy gain from products of fossil fuel has declined
over time and its sources have been depleted [31]. The close relationship between energy cycling of ecosphere and the economy is a
typical complex dynamic self producing system. It displays biophysical systems as Self-Organizing Holarctic Open (SOHO) systems
[34]. These systems exist in a web of interlinked hierarchies where,
each component system is contained by the next level up and itself
comprising a chain of linked subsystems at lower levels; such as
ecosphere as a subsystem of the solar system; individual ecosystem and the economy as the subsystems of the ecosphere, individual organisms and people as subsystems of their ecosystems and
economies, organ system as subsystem of individual etc. and so
on. The SOHO subsystems function as dissipative structures that
require continuous supplies of various forms of available energy,
material and information along with available forms of exergy, which
they use to maintain their adaptive self-organizational capacities.
SOHO systems also generate a continuous stream of degraded
energy and waste (entropy) that is rejected back into the environment e.g.-low intensity IR-Radiations, low-grade heat, water vapor
and CO2 back into the ecosphere through various cycles.
The existing economic policies rely heavily on the simple mechan-
ics of free and open markets to ensure sustainability. Moreover the
capacity of technology to enhance the important functions of nature
is doubtful as for improvement of depleted natural capital requires
investments that could otherwise be used to create additional productive capital or consumption. Reducing green house emission is
being tackled at all the scales ranging from tracking the passage of
carbon through the carbon cycle [56] to the commercialization of
renewable energy, developing less carbon-using technology and
transport systems. Similarly, the attempts by individuals to lead
carbon neutral lifestyles by controlling the fossil fuel use are being
incorporated in the mission [28].
Conclusion
To ensure ecological balance without much disturbance to environment, it is better to undertake promising measures for prediction of
changes. The thought must be highlighted for appropriate cost and
course of action based on information available, where its effects
must be well defined. The predictions need to be objective and
must lead to the qualitative and quantitative improvement in ecoeconomic settlements. The functional eco-economics accounts for a
sustainable environment and it depends on advancement of technology for the benefit of human population. Continuous growth of
population and its impact on availability of resources is a task of
greater concern. The natural environment is clean and full of resources that can sustain life very well. But with increasing urbanization, natural environment is depleting at an alarming rate, and efforts are failed to keep it sustainable up to the requisite of mankind.
Therefore, a powerful mobilization of sustainable products along
with conservation and management of natural resources is much
required.
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