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Abstract In the late 1990s, China initiated the Conversion of Croplands to Forest Program (CCFP) and the Ecological Welfare Forest Program (EWFP) based on the Payments for Ecosystem Services (PES) principle. Positive socioeconomic outcomes of the programs are essential for the long-term success of eco-environment conservation. However, there is lack of understanding of their longer-term (over 10 years) impacts on rural livelihoods. In this paper, we examine income distribution and inequality of rural households under CCFP and EWFP in rural Anhui, China after 12 years of program implementation. Results show that CCFP-participating households have higher income inequality than non-participants, while the EWFP does not have a significant effect. Local off-farm work and out-migration with remittances are the two principal income sources and both add to inequality. A regression-based decomposition of inequality shows that the CCFP indirectly alters livelihoods by increasing out-migration with remittances, but it also adds to inequality from shifting livelihoods to non-agricultural activities. Meanwhile, EWFP payments positively affect agricultural incomes and contribute 16% to agricultural income inequality. Finally, human capital, natural capital and physical capital all play important roles in generating income and inequality, but the factors affecting inequality from agricultural and non-agricultural activities are different. Highlights • We examine rural household income distribution under two concurrent PES programs. • CCFP positively affects non-farm income via out-migration followed by remittances. • EWFP positively affects agricultural income and adds slightly to inequality. • Factors affecting agricultural and non-agricultural income distributions differ. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract Various environmental footprint concepts have already been developed and applied in sustainability research. However, these analyses tend to remain restricted to historical observation samples. At least in comparison with related research activities in other environmental policy domains (like, e.g., climate policy), it seems that applications of integrated assessment tools represent rather seldom exceptions within the resource policy domain. Our paper is, therefore, intended to strengthen the related evidence base. We present recent projections from the dynamic Multi-Region Input-Output (MRIO) simulation model GINFORS (Global Inter-Industry Forecasting System), which provide an outlook on global development trends until the year 2050. Our detailed material footprint and climate policy assessment indicates that a global agreement on a policy mix will allow a clear turnaround towards climate protection and a sustainable use of natural resources without deteriorating economic performance. If the EU decides unilaterally to lead the way, then this turnaround could also be achieved for the EU while the EU would also benefit economically from this pioneering role. A third pathway towards a resource efficient and low-carbon Europe quantifies the environmental and economic impacts of a strong transitional change induced by European citizens' commitments to far-reaching sufficiency objectives. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Rural areas around the world are increasingly exposed to natural disasters. To guide management intervention for sustainable development after natural disasters, scientists and policymakers need a better understanding of the linkages between livelihood changes after natural disasters and recovery outcomes. Despite the growing body of disaster research, systematic evaluation of the relationship between post-disaster changes in rural livelihoods and recovery outcomes is rare, largely due to the lack of relevant data. By taking advantage of the long-term data collection and research conducted in China's Wolong Nature Reserve (Wolong), we empirically evaluated livelihood changes after the catastrophic 2008 Wenchuan Earthquake and how those changes are linked to the recovery of human well-being. Our results show that households' livelihood portfolios in Wolong conspicuously changed after the earthquake and that human well-being had been recovering. However, we found most of these livelihood changes negatively affected, instead of facilitated, human well-being recovery. The enriched understanding of the linkages between post-disaster livelihood changes and recovery outcomes has important management implications for achieving Sustainable Development Goals amid natural disasters in Wolong and beyond. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Understanding what influences the value of nature is crucial for informing environmental policy. From a sustainability perspective, economic valuation should not only seek to determine a society's willingness to pay for environmental goods to devise an efficient allocation of scarce resources, but should also account for distributional effects to ensure justice. Yet, how economic inequality affects the value of non-market environmental goods remains understudied. Combining recently developed theoretical results with empirical evidence, this Commentary shows that more equal societies have a higher valuation for environmental public goods and that non-market benefits of environmental policy accrue over-proportionally to poorer households. On this ground, we discuss implications for environmental valuation, management and policy-making and identify a number of fruitful areas for future research. We conclude that environmental valuation should explicitly account for economic inequality, and that encompassing assessments of the distributional effects of environmental policies must consider the distribution of non-market environmental benefits. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Advancing urban sustainability requires an implementation of various measures such as environmental policy, behavioral change, and technological developments, which have to be taken at various spatial scales. However, choosing the right measures demands considering their potential contribution in reducing the environmental impact and advancing urban sustainability. In recent years, some attempts to assess the contribution of implementing various measures have been advanced by various researchers focusing on different components of urban environmental interactions. While these studies make a significant contribution towards the understanding of the impact of various measures taken for a specific environmental issue, they mostly ignore the diversity and complexity of the urban interface with the environment at different spatial scales, as well as the ecological economics perspective, which approaches the city as a system. This paper uses the UBSI index published recently in this journal, to evaluate the urban biophysical sustainability of the city of Tel Aviv-Jaffa (Israel) in 2014. Based on this data, future scenarios are developed, which examine the potential contribution of various policy measures and different technological processes to the city's sustainability. This examination is conducted while considering population growth and changes of consumption patterns as they are expected to occur until 2030. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

China's crop production sector faces severe water scarcity issues. Previous research has shown that effective water conservation policies exert strongly negative impacts on agricultural production and farmers' income, which make them politically unfeasible under Chinese conditions. To highlight ways out of this dilemma, the present study tests three alternative water policies complemented by supportive agricultural policies to reduce the trade-offs between water conservation and rural development policy goals. Using the case of the extremely arid Aksu-Tarim Region in northwest China, a regional supply model is developed which serves as the analysis framework. Applied as stand-alone water policies, irrigated area tax, water quota and water pricing differ clearly in effectiveness and efficiency. Combined with agricultural policies (subsidies) into multiple policy instruments, the price-based and quota-based instruments mitigate the negative impacts on rural development goals. Targeting a water conservation rate of 20%, the tested multiple policies perform alike on the level of the entire study region; cotton production decreases by 15%, cereals production remains stable, and regional income decreases by 13%. However, at the sub-regional level, the impacts on water conservation, production and income differ significantly between the alternative policy instruments and sub-regions, constituting a crucial challenge for practical water policy implementation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Quantifying and mapping ecosystem services is increasingly employed to guide policies in their search for environmental sustainability. In this study, we present a method for mapping aesthetic values as an ecosystem service, combining insights from landscape research and ecosystem service mapping practices. We review or method through a comparison to existing aesthetic value mapping approaches and verify the results through a comparison to a revealed landscape preferences indicator. Disagreement between the methods arises from many factors, including the type of ecological/landscape features that are assumed to contribute to the provision of aesthetic values, the use of context-specific or generic aesthetic value estimates, the scale of landscape evaluation and the level of integration of the landscape preference analysis. We argue that the approach presented here is a suitable generically applicable methodology for context-sensitive mapping of aesthetic landscape values for a number of reasons: (i) a careful and transparent selection process of landscape attributes, (ii) the use of primary preference data, (iii) an integrated evaluation of landscape attributes introducing trade-offs between specific features in the agricultural landscape and (iv) application of visual landscape scale manipulated photographs for the elicitation of preferences as a surrogate for a real landscape experience. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Evidence of continued environmental degradation has led to a questioning of the traditional vision of unlimited economic growth in favour of sustainable development. Although several explicit environmental strategies were designed at the supranational level, the pursuit of environmental sustainability remains an aim driven by political concerns at the country level. This study aims to investigate the role of both “internal” (cognitive and motivational factors) and “external” (social forces and macro-economic conditions) contexts in influencing the propensity of political leaders regarding environmental matters. The findings indicate that cognitive and motivational factors tend to shape the environmental intentions of political leaders, whereas the “external” context does not have a significant impact. Our results suggest that the political leaders' propensity for addressing environmental matters is largely affected by the desire of leaders to establish or confirm an individual status (through political processes) or to conform to group norms. However, younger political leaders demonstrate a higher environmental propensity than do older leaders. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper expands the BOP-constraint growth model and Kaldorian regimes (productivity and demand regimes) in order to include some of the concerns raised by ecological economics in post-Keynesian models for open economies. The demand regime is modified by taking into account Porter's hypothesis, which suggests that environmental innovations, spurred by environmental policies, can foster competitiveness. As a result, the equilibrium BOP-constrained rate of growth increases, leading to a different version of Thirlwall's Law, which opens room for analyzing the impact of environmental innovations on convergence between developing and developed economies. The productivity regime in turn considers the growth and employment implications of innovations in labor productivity (standard innovations) and environmental efficiency (environmental innovations). It is argued that the fiscal policy and composition of public expenditure matter for long run growth, employment and sustainability. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An ecological economics perspective on urban sustainability embraces a biophysical view which emphasizes the dependence of cities on vast quantities of natural capital from various sources and spatial scales, and the generation of urban wastes which impact the local, regional and global systems. In recent years, several sets of urban sustainability indicators and indices have been developed. However, only a few consider the complex multi-scale interactions between the urban activities and the environment. Furthermore, most existing indices use a relative evaluation approach instead of an absolute approach that is needed when dealing with ecological thresholds. The paper introduces a new urban biophysical sustainability index whose framework includes: the city environmental quality, use of natural resources, and GHG emissions. Each contains topics for assessment related to local, regional and global scales and associated indicators. Standard and optimum values were determined for each indicator and a formula is provided for grading each indicator measurement. The integration of those grades allows for generation of a compound score of each topic, category, spatial scale and the entire urban biophysical sustainability performance. It then demonstrates the index in three major Israeli cities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Sustainability assessment (SA) is a complex appraisal method. It is conducted for supporting decision-making and policy in a broad environmental, economic and social context, and transcends a purely technical/scientific evaluation. This paper focusses on the systematisation of knowledge on technical/scientific sustainability evaluation, by addressing critical decision-making elements focussed on by domain experts. We make a distinction between integrated assessment and SA. Our systemic approach outlines how to move from integrated assessment to SA. The fundamental differences involved concern three levels: ontological, methodological and epistemological. We present a novel methodological framework for SA, based on a literature meta-review of multi-scale and multi-purpose appraisal methodologies, models and indicators. SA is essentially a structured procedure encompassing different field-specific analytical methods and models, for specific applications and decision contexts. External inputs to the methodology are “values” considered in the analysis and boundaries defined, including the relevant sustainability framework. Internal methodological elements comprise approach to be adopted (e.g. “what-if” vs. “what-to”), scenario design and analytical models and measurable indicators for an operational analysis. Methods to quantify uncertainty are key ingredients of the assessment framework. The paper highlights the relevance of and policy challenges for SA development, with due attention for applicability in real-world decision contexts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In today's economies those who sustain the burden of resource use, those using resources and those providing resources are not necessarily identical. With this separation come three fundamental but interrelated decision-making perspectives on the sustainability assessment of resource use. These three perspectives correspond to the three assessment questions if, how, and where resources should be used. Most sustainability assessment approaches do not make their underlying assessment perspectives explicit. The goal of this paper is to provide structure and organisation to existing approaches. This structuring suggests that any discussion on the appropriateness and validity of different assessment approaches and their results must take into account the underlying assessment perspective. The three questions if, how, and where resources should be used correspond to the requirements of a sustainable resource use. While existing assessments do address the three questions in isolation, it is all the more important that the limitations and implications of focusing on a single perspective are spelled out. As the main contribution, the paper distinguishes the rationale of each assessment perspective and develops on their interlinkages and thus provides the context and structure for a more informed and fruitful debate on the assessment of sustainable resource use. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Two core concerns of ecological economists have for decades been to consider the economy as embedded in broader social–ecological systems (SESs) and to include multiple perspectives in knowledge production. To address these concerns, I argue, ecological economists need to return to the ontological question of what constitutes the SES and the epistemological question of how to obtain knowledge about it. The article shows that autopoiesis complemented with the theory of embodied cognition addresses (1) the ontological challenge by articulating socio-cultural artifacts and ecological artifacts as a single entity, and (2) the epistemological challenge with universally shared schemas that describe goal-oriented activity. The power of autopoiesis is illustrated by outlining an embodied SES model of reindeer management as an alternative framing to the predominant information-processing SES model. An environmental policy measure that from the information-processing perspective looks like an adjustment of a control variable may from the embodied perspective disrupt an interconnected structure of social–ecological interaction. The article proposes a way to integrate the information-processing and embodied models. The results pose significant challenges for future research and policy efforts by ecological economists. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: Energy security has in recent years grown as a salient policy and political issue. To better understand energy security and sustainability concerns, this study''s main objective is to present an energy security index which measures national performance on energy security over time. Based on three years of research involving interviews, surveys, and an international workshop, this study conceptualizes energy security as consisting of the interconnected factors of availability, affordability, efficiency, sustainability, and governance. It then matches these factors with 20 metrics comprising an energy security index, measuring international performance across 18 countries from 1990 to 2010. It offers three case studies of Japan (top performer), Laos (middle performer), and Myanmar (w]orst performer) to provide context to the index''s results. It then presents four conclusions. First, a majority of countries analyzed have regressed in terms of their energy security. Second, despite the near total deterioration of energy security, a great disparity exists between countries, with some clear leaders such as Japan. Third, tradeoffs exist within different components of energy security. Fourth, creating energy security is as much a matter of domestic policy from within as it is from foreign policy without. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

In an important contribution in Ecological Economics, van de Bergh (2010) correctly concludes that sustainability does not imply zero externalities. However, he continues with the Delphic statement "(Delphic statements were uttered by the renowned oracle of ancient Greece at Delphi. They were phrased in such a way as to be self-fulfilling because alternative interpretations covered every possibility.)" "Without externalities the problem of sustainability vanishes". If this statement refers to an impossible economic process that produces no externalities then he is right. However, it might be interpreted as stating that whenever environmental policy internalizes environmental externalities then sustainability will be ensured. In this note, I assert that in the real world where externalities prevail, their internalization or neutralization in the traditional way cannot lead to sustainability. Only if internalization takes a very specific form that results in the inviolable preservation of environmental rights of future generations in pure biological terms can sustainability be ensured. After revised the original commentary I resubmit it. The issues raised by the editor have been carefully considered. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Although many of today's ecological, climatic and socio-economic problems seem unprecedented, similar events have occurred in the past. As such, historic periods of climatic and economic volatility can be used as a way of developing frameworks for analyzing today's predicament. Western Europe's “middle ages” (circa 11–14th century) may be one such case. By the 12th century, medieval Europe had shifted from the subsistence agrarian economy that emerged following the collapse of the Roman Empire to one where spatially dispersed trade in agricultural commodities helped support a complex society that devoted considerable resources to cultural works. This shift was facilitated by new institutional arrangements centred on monastic orders that provided access to both new agricultural and food processing technologies as well as trade routes. These institutional arrangements contributed to population growth and land clearing. All of these factors increased the wealth of society but also concentrated this wealth in a small number of communities that were dependent on an ever-increasing and exploited hinterland for resources. Ultimately, this created a tightly coupled continent-wide subsistence system that was vulnerable to the weather, economic and disease shocks of the 14th century when Europe's population declined by perhaps 50%. In exploring this history, the goal of this paper is to draw on a diverse theoretical body of literature (that includes resiliency theory, landscape ecology, political science and ecological economics) to develop a series of hypotheses about how large-scale complex civilizations can become vulnerable to climate change. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

In recent debates on environmental problems and policies, the strategy of “degrowth” has appeared as an alternative to the paradigm of economic growth. This new notion is critically evaluated by considering five common interpretations of it. One conclusion is that these multiple interpretations make it an ambiguous and rather confusing concept. Another is that degrowth may not be an effective, let alone an efficient strategy to reduce environmental pressure. It is subsequently argued that “a-growth,” i.e. being indifferent about growth, is a more logical social aim to substitute for the current goal of economic growth, given that GDP (per capita) is a very imperfect indicator of social welfare. In addition, focusing ex ante on public policy is considered to be a strategy which ultimately is more likely to obtain the necessary democratic–political support than an ex ante, explicit degrowth strategy. In line with this, a policy package is proposed which consists of six elements, some of which relate to concerns raised by degrowth supporters. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

This article defends the proposal of sustainable degrowth. A starting premise is that resource and CO2 limits render further growth of the economy unsustainable. If degrowth is inevitable, the question is how it can become socially sustainable, i.e. a prosperous and stable, rather than a catastrophic, descent. Pricing mechanisms alone are unlikely to secure smooth adaptation; a full ensemble of environmental and redistributive policies is required, including – among others – policies for a basic income, reduction of working hours, environmental and consumption taxes and controls on advertising. Policies like these, that threaten to “harm” the economy, are less and less likely to be implemented within existing market economies, whose basic institutions (financial, property, political, and redistributive) depend on and mandate continuous economic growth. An intertwined cultural and political change is needed that will embrace degrowth as a positive social development and reform those institutions that make growth an imperative. Sustainable degrowth is therefore not just a structuring concept; it is a radical political project that offers a new story and a rallying slogan for a social coalition built around the aspiration to construct a society that lives better with less. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Integrating spatial analysis with the supply and demand of biocapacity is critical for the sustainable development of regional eco-economic systems. Previous studies have focused on the temporal analysis of biocapacity at broad geographical scales, but lacked the systematic spatial realization at fine scales. An improvement is proposed of this conventional methodology of the ecological footprint by incorporating land-use data derived from high-resolution remote-sensing images into the calculation of biocapacity supply at regional, provincial and county levels in Northwestern China in 2000. The spatial heterogeneity and its effect on the biocapacity supply were systematically revealed for this region. First, the biocapacity supply declined from the east (the Guanzhong Basin and the Loess Plateau) to the middle (the Qaidam Basin and the Turpan Basin), and turned to rise from the middle to the west (the northwest of the Xinjiang Uygur Autonomy). Second, although the gap between biocapacity supply and demand resulted in a small ecological deficit at the regional level, a large ecological deficit was observed at the provincial and county levels, highlighting an unsustainable situation for some of the sub-regions. Importantly, a power law relationship was unveiled between the biocapacity supply and population density, suggesting that (i) the biocapacity supply as a critical indicator could reflect the intensity of human exploitation on local biophysical resources and (ii) humans tend to have a preference to inhabit those areas with high biological productivity. These results provide opportunities to enhance policy development by central and local governments as part of the long-term Great Western Development Strategy of China. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

For several decades, significant changes in farmland biodiversity have been reported in Europe. Agriculture is a major driver of these modifications. Taking into account these environmental impacts, agriculture nowadays aims at a more sustainable way of producing which would reconcile its economic and ecological functions. The objective of this paper is to give insights into the impact of public policies on both conservation of biodiversity and farming production. We develop a macro-regional model combining community dynamics of 34 bird species impacted by agricultural land-uses and an economic decision model. The ecological dynamic model is calibrated with the STOC (French Breeding Bird Survey) and AGRESTE (French land-uses) databases while the economic model relies on the gross margins of the FADN (Farm Accountancy Data Network). We investigate the scenario based on subsidies and taxes. We show that simple economic instruments could be used to establish scenarios promoting economic performances and bird populations. It is pointed out how the sustainability of the policies is sensitive to the ecological and economic indicators used by the planner. The bio-economical analysis shows several solutions for the ecology-economy trade-off. These results suggest that many possibilities are available to develop multi-functional sustainable agriculture. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

The goal of this paper is to improve our understanding of the role of institutional arrangements and ecological factors that facilitate the emergence and sustainability of successful collective action in small-scale fishing social–ecological systems. Using a modified logistic growth function, we simulate how ecological factors (i.e. carrying capacity) affect small-scale fishing communities with varying degrees of institutional development (i.e. timeliness to adopt new institutions and the degree to which harvesting effort is reduced), in their ability to avoid overexploitation. Our results show that strong and timely institutions are necessary but not sufficient to maintain sustainable harvests over time. The sooner communities adopt institutions, and the stronger the institutions they adopt, the more likely they are to sustain the resource stock. Exactly how timely the institutions must be adopted, and by what amount harvesting effort must be diminished, depends on the ecological carrying capacity of the species at the particular location. Small differences in the carrying capacity between fishing sites, even under scenarios of similar institutional development, greatly affects the likelihood of effective collective action. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Sustainability and welfare assessment is a contemporary theme of major scientific and policy relevance, requiring the consideration of multiple dimensions and diverse perspectives. The economic approach to sustainability and welfare assessment has frequently relied on alternatives, or adjustments, to GDP, widely used as an indicator of macroeconomic performance. Several authors have proposed alternative indicators, such as the ISEW, which intend to measure sustainability and economic welfare in a way that avoids the limitations of GDP; namely accounting for the value of externalities, the distribution of income and natural resources depletion. Since Daly and Cobb (1989) there have been proposed improvements to the ISEW, however, its aptitude to represent a sound alternative to GDP is still the subject of scientific debate. This paper presents a new approach to the ISEW (named Modified ISEW), including new components and methodological changes for the estimation of the index. These have the purpose of avoiding some of the index shortcomings and allow for a direct comparison with the GDP, which are advantages over previous studies. An application is developed for the US case, taking advantage of wide data availability and the possibility of comparing the results with previous works. The results obtained provide a clearer picture of the success or failure of environmental and social policies, namely by avoiding the tampering effect resulting from the cumulative accounting of environmental externalities. This work also emphasizes the inadequacy of GDP as a welfare indicator, as well as the need to develop and adopt alternative indicators. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

The purpose of this paper is to contribute towards moving the predominant situation of weak sustainable development (WSD) in the direction of strong sustainable development (SSD). More people – academics, politicians, bureaucrats and laymen alike – need to recognize SSD as an alternative to WSD. A joint discourse of WSD and SSD is suggested, called reflexive sustainable development. Here, advocates of WSD and SSD must argue for each specific case why their solution is better. This will expose, amongst other things, the ethical foundations which form part of resulting policy advice. Reflexive sustainable development is to be framed in discourse ethics, thereby remedying the power imbalance and allowing for substantial discussion. Reflexive sustainable development builds on a common theoretical base but will not lead to consensus in all matters. A family metaphor is introduced to inspire a discourse of both consensus and compromise. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

This paper reviews definitions and uses of the Driving Forces–Pressures–State–Impacts–Responses (DPSIR) framework and argues that it is a relevant tool for structuring communication between scientists and end-users of environmental information, while it is inappropriate as an analytical tool. An apparently deterministic ‘causal’ description of environmental issues inevitably downplays the uncertainty and multiple dimensions of causality inherent in complex environmental and socio-economic systems. Consequently, the paper complements and reframes ‘DPSIR’ using a complex system methodology based on the distinction between four ‘spheres’ of sustainability (environmental, economic, social and political) and the analysis of their functioning and relationships. The pair-wise interface aspects are characterised through investigation of the ‘demands’ and ‘supply’ of each sphere relative to the others. Within the resulting conceptual framework, each of the five D, P, S, I and R concepts are specified, for application in integrative analysis of relationships between policy, society, economy and biodiversity in one of the world's largest European integrated research projects on biodiversity (ALARM). [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Different from the three classical and popular models of central authority, privatization, and self-governance, which have been widely researched and applied in social-ecological policy-making in recent years, we propose an alternative model for collective action to resolve the problem of the tragedy of the commons. Our study is based on a series of game theoretic analyses and a field study of combating desertification in seven counties in Northwest China. The results show that scholars who have comparative advantages in knowledge and information over other social actors (such as herders and governments) can help game players resolve their collective action dilemma in social¿ecological systems under certain conditions. This positive outcome can be achieved mainly through the participation of scholars as information providers, governmental agents, scholar-entrepreneurs, and pure game players. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: Over the last few years, environmental issues have entered into policy design, particularly development and growth policies. Natural resources are considered necessary production inputs and environmental quality is considered a welfare determinant. The integration of environmental issues into economic growth and development theories and empirics is currently widely analyzed in the literature. The effects of natural resources endowment on economic growth are mainly analyzed through the so-called Resource Curse Hypothesis (RCH) whereas the effects of economic growth on environmental quality are part of the Environmental Kuznets Curve (EKC). Furthermore, recent contributions on RCH and EKC have shown the important role of institutions and human development dimensions in building a sustainable development path. In this paper, we attempt to analyze the causal relationships between economic growth, human development and sustainability combining the RCH and EKC models and adopting a human development perspective. Results confirm the importance of high institutional quality and investments for human capital accumulation in order to build a sustainable development path. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: The standard metaphor of market failure is an impediment to the crafting of environmental policy that can escape policy lock in. Sustainability requires a policy process that can avoid this lock in. Sustainability concerns the creation of dynamic human processes that can respond to—indeed anticipate—unanticipated feedback from biological processes. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: This paper examines the concept of sustainability and its implications for environmental policy analysis. It builds on the premise that present society holds a moral obligation to pass on a world of undiminished life opportunities to members of future generations. Maintaining life opportunities, in turn, can be achieved by maintaining or improving a diverse set of resources and capabilities that support a person''s freedom to define and pursue her own conception of the good life. On an operational level, this framework points to the following guideline for environmental policy: Protecting the rights of future generations requires either the conservation of environmental resources or compensatory measures (including the provision of substitute technologies) that ensure the fair and proportionate sharing of net benefits over intergenerational time scales. In this framework, resource depletion is permissible only if (with reasonable certainty) it would generate a Pareto improvement relative to a baseline scenario involving strict resource conservation. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: The goal of sustainability is to have levels of resource use and waste assimilation sufficient to maintain a good quality of life for citizens, yet be within environmental carrying capacities. In countries with ageing populations, consumption is constrained by the lower incomes of retired people, and therefore, prospects exist for reductions in resource use and pollutant outputs. The extent of this effect is investigated in this study. This paper uses a new approach to quantify, by age cohort, patterns of resource use and residual generation in New Zealand. These use patterns are then projected to 2051 to see what happens as the population ages. Results indicate that resource use and waste production decline as more people enter the 65+ age group. Gains, however, are diminished by the smaller percentage of young people who have the lowest per capita requirements. Projected growth in population numbers swamp any reductions from ageing effects, even when allowances have been made for future technical change. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Increasing sustainable productivity growth in the food and agriculture sector is a common goal of all OECD and G20 countries. At the same time, an important policy question for many governments is how the current set of agricultural policies affects both productivity growth and environmental performance of the sector. Despite the high relevance of this issue, empirical evidence on the effects of specific types of agricultural support policies on productivity and environmental sustainability is relatively scarce. The present paper seeks to reduce this gap by analyzing the impact of agricultural support policies on sustainable productivity. Drawing on observational data and configurational methods of analysis, our results show that countries achieve high sustainable productivity if livestock density is low and agricultural support payments are either not coupled to production or if such payments have environmental constraints attached. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In a recent article published in this journal, Guarini and Porcile (2016) expanded the Balance-of-Payments Constraint (BoPC) growth model suggesting a way to make it possible to address some of the challenges posed by greenhouse gas emissions. Building on their set up, we formalise into the model a mechanism that explains how people with different environmental attitudes or sentiments influence each other and contribute to the design of environmental policies. We detail the concept of transition probabilities for the agent's switching from pro- to anti-environmental positions and vice-versa and discuss the macroeconomic results that follow. Numerical simulations allow us to investigate in more detail the implications of the validity of Porter's hypothesis as well as to discuss the feasibility of decoupling conditions. A policy implication of our analysis is that we should encourage the dissemination of pro-environmental attitudes among the public because this could lead to a more desirable equilibrium. As important as enhancing public knowledge of climate change is to keep alive the debate at the collective level so as to influence the probability of switching sides. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]