New Dimensions in Ecological Economics: Integrated Approaches to People and Nature

Drawing on the biophysical sciences, public policy, geography, economics, exploratory research and the behavioural sciences, this volume offers reviews and prescriptions for the future of ecological economics, placing particular emphasis on complex sustainability problems. The book is divided into three broad parts: challenges and reviews, reorientations and openings, and frameworks and applications. To begin, the authors illustrate the limitations of ecological economics by highlighting the lack of theory and method, the need for greater interdisciplinary co-operation and the domination by economists from developed nations. They move on to present strategies to address these shortcomings by focusing on interdisciplinary methods and their theoretical basis, discussing the future prospects for ecological economics, and addressing a host of ecological economic issues from a variety of natural and social science perspectives. They aim to challenge the notion of ecological economics by addressing "what it is", and asking "what it could be". The book expands current thinking on ecological economics by exploring existing avenues for integrative and interdisciplinary research and discovering new overlaps with a range of other disciplines. It should appeal to ecological and environmental economists, and academics and researchers of the social sciences, particularly environmental science and geography.