The shallow or the deep ecological economics movement?

Abstract

Ecological economics and its policy recommendations have become overwhelmed by economic valuation, shadow pricing, sustainability measures, and squeezing Nature into the commodity boxes of goods, services and capital in order to make it part of mainstream economic, financial and banking discourses. There are deeper concerns which touch upon the understanding of humanity in its various social, psychological, political and ethical facets.The relationship with Nature proposed by the ecological economics movement has the potential to be far reaching. However, this is not the picture portrayed by surveying the amassed body of articles from this journal or by many of those claiming affiliation. A shallow movement, allied to a business as usual politics and economy, has become dominant and imposes its preoccupation with mainstream economic concepts and values. If, instead, ecological economists choose a path deep into the world of interdisciplinary endeavour they will need to be prepared to transform themselves and society. The implications go far beyond the pragmatic use of magic numbers to convince politicians and the public that ecology still has something relevant to say in the 21 st Century.

Assessing the degrowth discourse: A review and analysis of academic degrowth policy proposals

“…In the context of environmental policy, the pursuit of efficient allocation, and even fair distribution, is being translated into the commodification of nature in new ways, in order to reflect dominant political and economic views (Gómez-Baggethun and Ruiz-Pérez, 2011). In this article, the three ecological economics policy objectives are used to understand how some degrowth proposals are capturing or proposing a deeper socio-ecological understanding (Spash, 2013).…”

Re-establishing an ecological discourse in the policy debate over how to value ecosystems and biodiversity

“…They have traditionally opposed economic exploitation via excluding land from human use and seeking legal, planning and regulatory restrictions to protect species, habitat and ecosystems. The move to engage in an economic policy discourse represents a strategic and political decision that can then be regarded as being based upon a form of simple pragmatism (Spash, 2008b(Spash, , 2009(Spash, , 2013. That is, believing that environmental concerns lack a voice at the political table and that modernity is obsessed with economics is meant to justify changing to the language of money and finance as a necessary evil; a key to political power that ecologist think they can grasp.…”

Paris COP 21: Power that Speaks the Truth?

“…It treats ecological-environmental problems as if they were just one more problem, rather than a basic or fundamental conditioning context. It has promoted a situation in which environmental (and then the more critical ecological) economics has become a sub-discipline of economics, as though problems can be delegated to some small proportion of the field of economics, rather than its insights become basic to the very way an economy is defined and understood (see Spash, 2013;Nadeau, 2015;Morgan, 2015). This in turn has affected the way problems are reconciled within theory and policy, and this too has a political economy context.…”