Roldan Muradian

Ecological thresholds: a survey

Abstract The existence of ecological discontinuities and thresholds has been recognised by ecological economics as a key feature to take into account in the study of environment–economy interactions. This paper reviews some theoretical developments and empirical studies dealing with ecological phenomena involving non-linear dynamics. The literature about this issue reveals that there is abundant evidence of discontinuities and threshold effects as the consequence of human perturbations on ecological systems. However, due to the complexities involved, the predictive capacity of ecology is limited and large uncertainties still remain.

Trade and the environment: from a ‘Southern’ perspective

The relationship between free trade and the environment is one of the main issues of contention between environmental and ecological economics. Environmental economics assumes a positive relationship between free trade, economic growth and environmental policies. Environmental externalities may cause important damage. However, trade is not to be blamed for this. Instead, the fault lies with policy inadequacies at the national level. On the other hand, some ecological economists criticise the assumptions of environmental economics, especially the immobility of production factors and the positive correlation between income and environmental quality. They plead for measures to prevent deterioration of ‘Northern’ environmental standards in a ‘race to the bottom’ due to ‘ecological dumping’’ from the South. In this paper, we argue that neither environmental economics nor ‘Northern’ ecological economics take into account the structural conditions determining the international trade system. Based on some new empirical evidence on material flows, we stress the notion of environmental cost-shifting. If physical and political ecology perspectives are adopted, a ‘Southern’ approach to the trade-and-environment issue may arise.

Embodied Pollution in Trade: Estimating the 'Environmental Load Displacement' of Industrialised Countries

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Multidimensional Poverty and Identification of Poor Households: A Case from Kerala, India

Abstract In this paper we compare and contrast the view on poverty of lay people, who are affected by the policies, with that of academics and policy‐makers. Drawing from fieldwork in a village in Kerala, India, and applying the ‘participatory numbers’ approach, we devise a ‘local method’ to identify poor households, based on the villagers’ poverty criteria. The local method is then compared with the official methods used by the national and the state governments. Based on the results, we argue for the need to take into account local dimensions of poverty, in addition to objective/universal dimensions, in the design of poverty reduction programmes. Our findings also suggest that effective risk‐mitigation strategies must be devised to help poor households cope with shocks and stresses as well as to prevent the vulnerable non‐poor from falling into poverty.

Handbook of ecological economics.

is Handbook provides an overview of major current debates, trends and perspectives in ecological economics. It covers a wide range of issues, such as the foundations of ecological economics, deliberative methods, the de-growth movement, ecological macroeconomics, social metabolism, environmental governance, consumer studies, knowledge systems and new experimental approaches. Written by leading authors in their respective areas of specialisation, the contributions systematize the ‘state of the art’ in the selected topics, and draw insights about new knowledge frontiers.John O’Neill and Thomas Uebel Analytical philosophy has had a long but little noted influence on the development of ecological economics. The work of the left Vienna Circle, in particular of Otto Neurath, defended two central claims of ecological economics: first, economics needs to address the various ways in which economic institutions and relations are embedded within the physical world and have ecological preconditions that are a condition of their sustainability; second, reasonable economic and social choices cannot be founded on purely monetary valuations. Both of these claims were developed in two distinct but related debates that Otto Neurath engaged in. The first was the socialist calculation debate. The arguments of the Austrian critics of the possibility of socialism there, in particular Ludwig Mises and Friedrich Hayek, were aimed not only at socialism but at these two central claims of ecological economics. The second was the little known debate between the left Vienna Circle and the Frankfurt School in the 1930s. In this debate one can discern the origins of two distinct traditions of political ecology that still remain in tension in subsequent debates: a science-based approach that is concerned with the material and ecological conditions for human well-being and social relationships; and a science-sceptical approach that takes the environmental crisis to be founded in a technocratic commitment to the domination of humans and nature that is built into the constitution of scientific reason. In this chapter we explore these different debates and show the continuing significance of the analytical tradition to a defensible ecological economics. As shall be evident, running through the debates is a common theme about the nature and limits of scientific and practical reason, a theme that retains its importance for understanding the relationship between ecology, democracy and political economy.This Handbook provides an overview of major current debates, trends and perspectives in ecological economics. It covers a wide range of issues, such as the foundations of ecological economics, deliberative methods, the de-growth movement, ecological macroeconomics, social metabolism, environmental governance, consumer studies, knowledge systems and new experimental approaches. Written by leading authors in their respective areas of specialisation, the contributions systematize the “state of the art” in the selected topics, and draw insights about new knowledge frontiers.

Resilient and Resourceful?: A Case Study on How the Poor Cope in Kerala, India

In the backdrop of the popularization of social capital, it has become fashionable in development circles to highlight the resilience of the poor in the midst of stresses and shocks as well as their resourcefulness. Expressing scepticism, this article argues that social capital is a ‘conditional’ resource for the poor, availability of which is dependent on the presence of a ‘critical mass’ of other resources. The State plays a pivotal role in creating this ‘critical mass’. Household level case studies from a village in Kerala, India, on how the poor cope with vulnerable situations, are used to illustrate this point.In the backdrop of the popularization of social capital, it has become fashionable in development circles to highlight the resilience of the poor in the midst of stresses and shocks as well as their resourcefulness. Expressing scepticism, this article argues that social capital is a ‘conditional’ resource for the poor, availability of which is dependent on the presence of a ‘critical mass’ of other resources. The State plays a pivotal role in creating this ‘critical mass’. Household level case studies from a village in Kerala, India, on how the poor cope with vulnerable situations, are used to illustrate this point.

Ecosystem Services and Environmental Governance: Some Concluding Remarks

This conclusive chapter of the book entitled “Governing the Provision of Ecosystem Services” attempts to summarize the main overall issues addressed by the different contributions that compose this volume. The insights gained through the broad range of case studies and conceptual chapters in the book are in line with the proposition that rules and rule-making autonomy and participation, how rules are designed and enforced and how they evolve over time, matter more than the property regime or the generic type of coordination between transacting parties in the management of natural resources. We argue that the contemporary overemphasis on market-based instruments for the management of natural ecosystems is misleading. It is true that these tools may, under specific circumstances, contribute to improving the governance regimes of natural ecosystems, but we must nevertheless put the necessary attention to their particular fit within specific socio-economic contexts and their capacity to modify rule-making structures. At the end of the day, we will always come back to the old concern for the suitability of rules, including by whom and for whom they are made.

Ecosystem services, social interdependencies, and collective action: a conceptual framework

The governance of ecosystem services (ES) has been predominantly thought of in terms of market or state-based instruments. Comparatively, collective action mechanisms have rarely been considered. This paper addresses this gap by proposing a conceptual framework that brings together ES, social interdependencies, and collective action thinking. We use an ES conceptual lens to highlight social interdependencies among people so as to reflect on existing or potential collective actions among them. This framework can also contribute to increasing people’s awareness of their mutual interdependencies and thereby fostering, framing, or enriching collective action, in ways that take into account the diversity and complexity of ecological processes underlying human activities. Our approach can contribute in particular to agroecological transitions that require landscape level innovations and coordination mechanisms among land users and managers. The framework distinguishes three types of social interdependencies: (i) between ES beneficiaries and ES providers, (ii) among beneficiaries, and (iii) among providers. These social interdependencies are in turn analyzed according to four main dimensions that are critical for collective action: (i) cognitive framing of interdependencies, (ii) levels of organization, (iii) formal and informal institutions, and (iv) power relations. Finally, we propose a strategy to turn this framework into action in contexts of participatory action research, a strategy grounded on a number of methodological principles and tools that convey complexity and increase people’s awareness of interdependencies in agrarian social-ecological systems.

Introduction: Governing the Provision of Ecosystem Services

This chapter is an introduction to the book ‘Governing the Provision of Ecosystem Services’. It aims to create a common analytical framework to the different contributions that compose the book. The call to value nature when making development decisions and to treat the world’s ecosystems as capital assets in order to prevent their continued degradation and depletion is at the origin of current concern with ‘greening’ the economy. The associated rise in the policy agenda of market-based mechanisms for environmental governance has shifted the emphasis from getting the right governmental regulation for conservation to getting the right price for ecosystem services. Our book, however, calls for moving away from this false dichotomy and to pay attention to getting the right set of rules and instruments, along multiple governance layers. Nested (polycentric) institutions have had a role to play in all the complex environmental governance systems discussed in this book, and central governments have been shown to be increasingly called upon to engage with other social actors to ensure the provision of ecosystem services.

Taking stock: the keystones of ecological economics

After some decades of existence, ecological economics is a thriving field of knowledge. Our purpose here is not to engage in the normative debate about what it should be, but rather to introduce the Handbook we have edited, while also trying to provide some insight into what constitutes the ontological foundations of ecological economics. In the concluding chapter we shall elaborate on the most salient current concerns of the field, as well as on its future. This compilation of chapters aims, on the one hand, to present and stimulate the debate on the scope and methods of the multifaceted transdisciplinary field that was baptized as ecological economics in the late 1980s and, on the other, to comprehensively review the ‘state of the art’ in several exciting, relevant and rather new subjects dealing with the fluid interface between economic and ecological systems. The Handbook covers a wide range of appealing topics but it would be too ambitious to attempt to review the vast history and current production of ecological economics in a single volume. Moreover, this compendium is the result of combining the tastes of the editors with the generous availability of the invited authors. Therefore, we do not pretend to have made a full overview of all major trends and issues of ecological economics. Our goal is more modest. We have invited some of the leading authors in the field to reflect on the most important developments in the subjects in which they are experts, and in doing so to contribute to disseminate within the ecological economics and other communities what they consider to be the most significant achievements and challenges in specific areas of knowledge. The outcome is stimulating and we hope enjoyable both for junior and experienced readers. The rest of section 1 contains a historical account of ecological economics, while also describing what we consider to be its foundations. The review is not done in a chronological order, but along main foundational propositions. It is meant to be particularly useful for readers not yet familiar with the field. Section 2 briefly summarizes major organizational