On Wilfred Beckerman's Critique of Sustainable Development

Abstract

The 'Discussion' section of this issue contains the following responses to Wilfred Beckerman's article 'Sustainable Development: Is it a Useful Concept?' <cite>Environmental Values</cite> 3,3 (1994): 191-209. Herman Daly, 'On Wilfred Beckerman's Critique of Sustainable Development'; Michael Jacobs, 'Sustainable Development, Capital Substitution and Humility: A Response to Beckerman'; and Henryk Skolimowski, 'In Defence of Sustainable Development' . These criticisms are answered by Beckerman in <cite>Environmental Values</cite> 4,2.

Exploring the Role of the Economy in Young Adults’ Understanding of Sustainable Development

“…Environmental economists regard weak sustainability to be the way towards the operationalization of SD [11]. Weak sustainability is based on the view that human-made capital can substitute for or replace natural capital [4,24]. Ecological economists acknowledge the existence of incommensurability between environmental and economic aspects, and strong sustainability is applied at least to some extent, viewing some kinds of natural capital as not directly substitutable by human-made forms of capital (see discussion on complementarity by Daly [24]).…”

Sustainable Value Added – Ein neues Maß des Nachhaltigkeitsbeitrags von Unternehmen am Beispiel der Henkel KGaA

“…Der Grund hierfür ist die Erkenntnis, dass manche Kapitalarten in einem komplementären Verhältnis zueinander stehen (Daly 1990, Costanza et al 1992, Prugh et al 1999. Um nichtreversible Schäden zu vermeiden, postuliert starke Nachhaltigkeit daher kritische Schwellenwerte (Randall et al 1996, Farmer et al 1998) für das gesamte natürliche Kapital (Costanza et al 1992, Arrow et al 1995, Daly 1995 -oder zumindest für Teile des natürlichen Kapitals (Victor 1991, Toman 1994, Endres et al 1998. Der ursprünglich als makroökonomisches Konzept entwickelte Ansatz der nachhaltigen Entwicklung wurde in der Zwischenzeit auch verstärkt auf die einzelwirtschaftliche Ebene von Unternehmen übertragen (Huizing et al 1992 Gladwin et al 1995, Hart 1997, Roome 1998, Callens et al 1999, Atkinson 2000.…”

Genuine Savings as an Indicator for “Weak” Sustainability: Critical Survey and Possible Ways forward in Practical Measuring

“…These earlier analyses concentrate on assumption problems within the GS model and measurement problems in the actual GS calculation. I proceed in the same way, excluding the fundamental debate on substitutability (this debate has already been carried out by others such as, Beckerman [59,60], Jacobs [61] and Daly [62], or Neumayer [63], and Simpson et al [64]). …”