Ecological Economics for Sustainable Development
Kirit Parikh, C H Hanumantha Rao et al
Academic Foundation
255 pages/Rs 495
Environmental economics becomes an issue to the economists because there is a dominant perception that environmental degradation is a result of intensive economic development. An acknowledgement of these issues has led to the notion of sustainable development in the West in the 1970s and 1980s. The concept is based on the perception that environmental degradation is an outcome of faulty management of growth and development.
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In India, growing awareness of the stress on environment in the 1980s and 1990s led to a flurry of activities, mainly by academicians and policy makers. However, scientific studies were carried out in a piecemeal fashion. The need to bring co-ordination in the efforts of individuals and disciplines is the prime mover in the formation of Indian Society of Ecological Economics (INSEE).
This book comprises the proceedings of the first biennial conference of the INSEE. It attempts to capture the meaning and significance of sustainable development for a densely populated country like India, eager to get on with development. Surprisingly, sustainable development has not been defined. Hanumantha Rao makes use of the definition given by the Brundtland Commission (1987).
The presidential address by Kanchan Chopra advocates incorporation of thermo-dynamic principles to study production processes and evolution of institutions, other than markets, in the management of environment. However, she does not dwell upon gender issues and access to resources for the weaker sections of society.
The keynote address, delivered by Perrings, considers the value of interdisciplinary approach by bringing out the relevance of ecological models to study economic systems and its linkages with natural processes that support it.
However, one gets the feeling that in the name of interdisciplinary approach, interaction between economics, ecology and some other pure sciences is envisioned at the expense of exclusion of subjects like sociology, anthropology, geography, etc. Perrings