Ecological Economy

    This is a term that is currently making the rounds and that is the fruit of a considerable history. You will remember that, for quite some time now, the term “sustainable development” has been much in vogue among governments and industry. It is a term coined by the Brundtland Commission back in the 1980s in order to respond to the need for more sensitivity to increasing environmental degradation by industry.  The problem with the term is that is contains a contradiction.  “Development” is inextricably bound up with an economy of growth and we have learned to our dismay that growth is, by its very nature, unsustainable on a limited planet.  The development pursued in policies of “sustainable development” has shown itself to be unsustainable.

     There is a further problem with the term “development” that was already well known at the time of the Brundtland Commission.  The opposite of “developed” (referring to industrialized countries) was, and often still is in my minds, “underdeveloped,” or “less-developed.”  However, as Gustavo Gutierrez already pointed out in the early 1970s, the countries of the so-called “Third World” were and are not so much “less-developed” or “underdeveloped” as they are oppressed by economic forces that make an equitable distribution of wealth practically impossible. There was and is, from the perspective of oppression, a call to redirect our thinking about economy as such. Some of the reflections reproduced in this blog reflect that effort. “Economy,” as it turns out, is the way we manage our “home,” that is to say the Planet Earth, so that the needs of all its creatures might be satisfied in such a way that the Planet and life on the planet remains healthy.  Granted, this is a fairly recent insight and one that has certainly not gained ascendency in the world at large, even though support is growing.

     Also during these same years, since the 70s, there has been a growing concern about the “environment,” as it was first termed. The problem with the term “environment” is that it is entirely human-centred. The water, air, land are seen as something that “surrounds” humans and that we needed to manage so that it serves our needs. More recently the term “ecology” has gained respect among thinkers and the general public.. “Ecology” is a term that points much more directly to the Planet Earth as such and to the complex ways in which the various elements that constitute it work to maintain a healthy interdependence.

     So we come to an “ecological economy.”  The term has a very large frame of reference: the Planet Earth.  It is particularly concerned with those 60 or so kilometres between the depths of the ocean and the stratosphere, where the majority of life forms find their habitat. As an economy it looks to the ways in which these life forms interact in such a way as to maintain a healthy balance. It also recognizes that the human species has, over the centuries, carved out such an enormous place for itself that the management of the health of that ecological balance lies more and more in human hands. In this respect “ecological economy” challenges our received theories about who we are as human beings and also our relationship with other creatures and the Planet Earth itself.  It leads us to recognize that we have a responsibility to assure that the health of the Planet, upon which depends our own health as a species, is cared for.