| Chapter 1: | Ecological Economics as a Transdisciplinary Approach to Sustainability |
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ecological whole. Ecological economics is concerned with the conditions of sustainable development, whereas neoclassical economics and environmental economics analyse the conditions for achieving welfare optima (Faber et al., 2002). Sahu and Nayak (1994) described environmental economics and ecological economics as occupying niches that are in some respects complementary and in others competitive. Needless to say, the replacement of today's standard economics with ecological economics would require major changes in many current widely accepted philosophies and practices.
From Normal to Postnormal Science: A Paradigm Shift
The dominance of neoclassical economics has overshadowed the development and growth of alternative approaches to economics. However, various alternative starting points for the development of a new economics are suggested in the literature—for example, spaceship earth (Boulding, 1966a), ecological development (Sachs, 1984), ecological imperatives for governmental policies (Söderbaum, 1980), economic activities kept within the limits of the ecological utilisation space (Opschoor & Vos, 1989), and sustainable development (WCED, 1987). Although neoclassical and environmental economics have failed to provide a theoretical framework for thinking about ecological economic problems, they have been an inherent element in the evolutionary history of ecological economics. The critique of an anthropocentric neoclassical economics framework has paved the way for the outline of a more ecocentric ecological economics framework with which to address social and ecological problems.
The growing demand for sustainable development has made an epistemological and political reconciliation of the ecology and the economy imperative. Coordination of the environment and development may be achieved by applying the theories and methods of the emerging field of ecological economics, which is an interdisciplinary science of the relationship between ecology and economics (Costanza, 1991). However, the challenge is that the economic framework itself cannot possibly