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Is the concept of sustainability strongly founded on solid
scientific bases? And can this elusive concept be introduced in the
economic framework and embodied in people's behavior as well as
public and private institutions' decision making? This book
presents a view of sustainability that starts from the
acknowledgment of physical conditions and limits that humans can no
longer neglect. It also includes some epistemological foundations
of the concept of sustainability and historical backgrounds. The
view is optimistic to the extent that economics, the compass of our
industrial society, is open to inputs and suggestions coming from
outside orthodox schemes. Transdisciplinary science is one key
element of such a change, and this book is a transdisciplinary
project.In the field of the criticism to GDP as an
omni-comprehensive instrument, the book also describes the
methodology of the Index of Sustainable Economic Welfare (ISEW),
proposed by H. Daly and John Cobb in 1989. They proposed some
revisions to the System of National Accounts and GDP in order to
add information for policy makers towards sustainability.Starting
with consumption, some adjustments are proposed to allow for
inequality of income distribution, environmental problems (such as
pollution costs, long term environmental damage, depletion of
non-renewable resources) and social issues (such as commuting
costs, urbanization costs, public expenditure for health and
education). Computations for different nations have shown that ISEW
increases together with increasing GDP up to a point, beyond which
it stagnates or even decreases, due to the environmental and social
pressure of economic growth. The ISEW is a feasible calculation and
some experiments at the local level in Italy are presented.
Advances in integrating different sustainability indicators (both
economic-based and physical-based) are also presented as well as
their use under a sustainability viewpoint.
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