A conceptual and analytical approach is presented to reconcile weak and strong sustainability. It involves a reconsideration of the conception of total capital from an ecological‐economic system perspective. In particular, natural capital is classified into non‐renewable resources, renewable resources that are harvested, and those that are not used in production. Strong sustainability is defined in terms of constant environmental quality. Weak sustainability is characterised by non‐decreasing value of aggregate income and environmental quality, and formalised in terms of a “preference‐based social value function”. Ecosystem resilience and basic human needs are introduced as minimum sustainability requirements, and a “sustainability‐based social value function” is proposed, which is sensitive to potentially irreversible changes at the boundaries of the restricted opportunity space. It implies higher values associated to the trade‐offs between income and the environment than the preference‐based function, and the fact that sustainable development is only feasible if both minimum criteria are fulfilled.

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The impact of climate change on Swiss maize production is assessed using an approach that integrates a biophysical and an economic model. Simple adaptation options such as shifts in sowing dates and adjustments of production intensity are considered. In addition, irrigation is evaluated as an adaptation strategy. It shows that the impact of climate change on yield levels is small but yield variability increases in rainfed production. Even though the adoption of irrigation leads to higher and less variable maize yields in the future, economic benefits of this adoption decision are expected to be rather small. Thus, no shift from the currently used rainfed system to irrigated production is expected in the future. Moreover, we find that changes in institutional and market conditions rather than changes in climatic conditions will influence the development of the Swiss maize production and the adoption of irrigation in the future.

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ABSTRACT. To investigate the role of explicit and implicit assumptions in different models of weak and strong sustain‐ability, the Solow/Hartwick model of intergenerational equity with nonrenewable resources is gradually extended to include renewable resources, endogenous technical progress, and stock pollution. This reveals the fundamental role of endogenous technical progress for sustainable development, the inconsistency of implicit sustainability assumptions in various models, as well as the existence of a Hartwick rule for Daly's steady‐state economy. Moreover, it shows that the concepts of Solow sustainability and strong sustainability coincide as a special case of weak sustainability. The latter integrates economic and environmental concerns and aims at maintaining the welfare potential of an economy over time. It does not rule out economic growth by assumption. Rather, the analysis shows that environmental conservation and economic growth can be compatible with each other, without jeopardizing social welfare. Finally, the analysis shows that the discussion of sustain‐ability models cannot be restricted to the explicit differences that are usually pointed out by their authors and commentators. Rather, implicit assumptions must be made explicit.