Principles to avoid policy paralysis

Global environmental change challenges are to their nature complex, and complexity seems to be somewhat of a buzzword in contemporary sustainability science. But too much focus on complex interactions can create a hurdle for appropriate policy decisions and even cause an uncertainty paralysis, signified by a failure to act even in the face of looming threats. Fret not, however, in a new article in the…

The water and diamond paradox and green NNP as a welfare indicator

A classical structure that is used to analyze the water and diamond paradox provides an intuitive underpinning to the modern theory of welfare measurement in a growth context. John Law’s and Adam Smith’s concepts of value-in-use and value-in-exchange have modern aggregated counterparts. Complemented with Dupuit’s extension in terms of a utility function with a declining marginal utility, they are close to enough to provide the…

Sustainable Trade: A New Paradigm for World Welfare

Paradise Lost? The Ecological Economics of Biodiversity

Ecological Economics: Paradigm or Perspective

The Emergence of an Ecological Economics Paradigm: Examples from Fisheries and Aquaculture

Social Sciences in an Era of Rapid Global Change

Global collaboration between scientists has become increasingly important as the world seems to become increasingly polarized, and planetary change accelerates. Strong global research networks and professional associations are key to help society make sense of our changing world and possible futures. What insights do decades of research within the international research community in the Earth System Governance Project offer us about navigating between science, science advice, and policy?  This seminar…

Implementing Environmental Policies in Central and Eastern Europe

Corridors of Clarity: Four Principles to Overcome Uncertainty Paralysis in the Anthropocene

Global environmental change challenges humanity because of its broad scale, long-lasting, and potentially irreversible consequences. Key to an effective response is to use an appropriate scientific lens to peer through the mist of uncertainty that threatens timely and appropriate decisions surrounding these complex issues. Identifying such corridors of clarity could help understanding critical phenomena or causal pathways sufficiently well to justify taking policy action. To…

The black paradox

We model competition between an oil monopolist and competitive suppliers of coal and renewable energy in a dynamic general equilibrium framework. We show that market power— which disrupts the order of extraction—may lead to higher long-run emissions by encouraging early extraction of dirty fuels such as coal which would otherwise remain in the ground permanently; simply banning coal burning may be better than Pigovian taxation….