IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/wly/sustdv/v12y2004i3p150-160.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Sustainable development: a problem of environmental disruption now instead of intertemporal ethics

Author

Listed:
  • Yew-Kwang Ng

    (Monash University, Australia)

Abstract

Most people regard sustainable development as essentially a matter of intertemporal ethics. This paper argues that the crux is excessive environmental disruption due to an inadequate account for the external costs on other people now, rather than due to inadequate concern for our grandchildren. Even with full concern, the excessive disruption will be virtually unchanged. This paper also argues that intertemporal impartial welfare maximization is the appropriate objective to pursue. This involves treating the welfare of future generations on a par with that of our own but with all welfare values appropriately weighted by the probability of their realization. Since the probability of non-survival is cumulative, this acts like a discount rate, though justified on completely different grounds. This solves the paradoxes of non-existence of a solution or incomplete rankings associated with choices involving an infinite time horizon without discounting. Sustainable development has been a hot topic for decades now. Most people regard it as essentially a matter of intertemporal ethics. This paper argues that the crux of the matter is excessive environmental disruption. With the proper control of environmental disruption, sustainable development will not be a problem in practice. Moreover, with or without proper control, impartial welfare maximization is sufficient to answer problems of sustainable development and intertemporal ethics at least at the conceptual level. Copyright © 2004 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment.

Suggested Citation

  • Yew-Kwang Ng, 2004. "Sustainable development: a problem of environmental disruption now instead of intertemporal ethics," Sustainable Development, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 12(3), pages 150-160.
    • Handle: RePEc:wly:sustdv:v:12:y:2004:i:3:p:150-160
    DOI: 10.1002/sd.232
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1002/sd.232
    File Function: Link to full text; subscription required
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1002/sd.232?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Kemp, Murray C & Long, Ngo Van, 1979. "The Under- Exploitation of Natural Resources: A Model with Overlapping Generations," The Economic Record, The Economic Society of Australia, vol. 55(150), pages 214-221, September.
    2. Harold Hotelling, 1931. "The Economics of Exhaustible Resources," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 39, pages 137-137.
    3. World Commission on Environment and Development,, 1987. "Our Common Future," OUP Catalogue, Oxford University Press, number 9780192820808, Decembrie.
    4. Graciela Chichilnisky, 1996. "An axiomatic approach to sustainable development," Social Choice and Welfare, Springer;The Society for Social Choice and Welfare, vol. 13(2), pages 231-257, April.
    5. Ng, Yew-Kwang, 1989. "What Should We Do About Future Generations?," Economics and Philosophy, Cambridge University Press, vol. 5(2), pages 235-253, October.
    6. Murray C. Kemp & Ngo Van Long, 1979. "The Under‐Exploitation of Natural Resources: A Model with Overlapping Generations," The Economic Record, The Economic Society of Australia, vol. 55(3), pages 214-221, September.
    7. Goldin,Ian & Winters,L. Alan (ed.), 1995. "The Economics of Sustainable Development," Cambridge Books, Cambridge University Press, number 9780521469579.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Klara Helene Stumpf & Stefan Baumgärtner & Christian U. Becker & Stefanie Sievers-Glotzbach, 2015. "The Justice Dimension of Sustainability: A Systematic and General Conceptual Framework," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 7(6), pages 1-35, June.
    2. Anseeuw, Ward & Mathebula, Ntombifuthi, 2008. "Land Reform and Development: Evaluating South Africa’s Restitution and Redistribution Programmes," Reports 108281, University of Pretoria, Department of Agricultural Economics, Extension and Rural Development.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Toman, Michael & Pezzey, John C., 2002. "The Economics of Sustainability: A Review of Journal Articles," RFF Working Paper Series dp-02-03, Resources for the Future.
    2. Lee H. Endress & James A. Roumasset & Christopher A. Wada, 2020. "Do Natural Disasters Make Sustainable Growth Impossible?," Economics of Disasters and Climate Change, Springer, vol. 4(2), pages 319-345, July.
    3. V.Martinet & L. Doyen, 2003. "Sustainable management of an exhaustible resource:a viable control model," THEMA Working Papers 2003-36, THEMA (THéorie Economique, Modélisation et Applications), Université de Cergy-Pontoise.
    4. Chichilnisky, Graciela, 2009. "Avoiding extinction: equal treatment of the present and the future," Economics - The Open-Access, Open-Assessment E-Journal (2007-2020), Kiel Institute for the World Economy (IfW Kiel), vol. 3, pages 1-25.
    5. Vincent Martinet, 2007. "Maximizing minimal rights for sustainability: a viability approach," Working Papers hal-04139217, HAL.
    6. Wojciech Rybicki, 2012. "Discounting and ideas of intergenerational equity and sustainability," Operations Research and Decisions, Wroclaw University of Science and Technology, Faculty of Management, vol. 22(1), pages 63-84.
    7. Jeffrey A. Krautkraemer, 1998. "Nonrenewable Resource Scarcity," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 36(4), pages 2065-2107, December.
    8. Markku Ollikainen, 1998. "Sustainable Forestry: Timber Bequests, Future Generations and Optimal Tax Policy," Environmental & Resource Economics, Springer;European Association of Environmental and Resource Economists, vol. 12(3), pages 255-273, October.
    9. Mardones, Cristian & del Rio, Ricardo, 2019. "Correction of Chilean GDP for natural capital depreciation and environmental degradation caused by copper mining," Resources Policy, Elsevier, vol. 60(C), pages 143-152.
    10. Sorin-George Toma & Paul Marinescu & Catalin Gradinaru, 2016. "The Age Of Sustainable Business Models," Management Strategies Journal, Constantin Brancoveanu University, vol. 34(4), pages 128-132.
    11. Benjamin Jones & Michael Keen & Jon Strand, 2013. "Fiscal implications of climate change," International Tax and Public Finance, Springer;International Institute of Public Finance, vol. 20(1), pages 29-70, February.
    12. Alcott, Blake, 2008. "The sufficiency strategy: Would rich-world frugality lower environmental impact," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 64(4), pages 770-786, February.
    13. Schilling, Markus & Chiang, Lichun, 2011. "The effect of natural resources on a sustainable development policy: The approach of non-sustainable externalities," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 39(2), pages 990-998, February.
    14. Ngo Long & Vincent Martinet, 2018. "Combining rights and welfarism: a new approach to intertemporal evaluation of social alternatives," Social Choice and Welfare, Springer;The Society for Social Choice and Welfare, vol. 50(1), pages 35-64, January.
    15. Asheim, Geir B. & Buchholz, Wolfgang & Tungodden, Bertil, 2001. "Justifying Sustainability," Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, Elsevier, vol. 41(3), pages 252-268, May.
    16. Karshenas M., 1993. "Environment, employment and sustainable development," ILO Working Papers 992920663402676, International Labour Organization.
    17. Manel Kamoun & Ines Abdelkafi & Abdelfetah Ghorbel, 2019. "The Impact of Renewable Energy on Sustainable Growth: Evidence from a Panel of OECD Countries," Journal of the Knowledge Economy, Springer;Portland International Center for Management of Engineering and Technology (PICMET), vol. 10(1), pages 221-237, March.
    18. Robert L. Oxley & Larry W. Mays & Alan Murray, 2016. "Optimization Model for the Sustainable Water Resource Management of River Basins," Water Resources Management: An International Journal, Published for the European Water Resources Association (EWRA), Springer;European Water Resources Association (EWRA), vol. 30(9), pages 3247-3264, July.
    19. Martinet, Vincent & Rotillon, Gilles, 2007. "Invariance in growth theory and sustainable development," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 31(8), pages 2827-2846, August.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:wly:sustdv:v:12:y:2004:i:3:p:150-160. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Wiley Content Delivery (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/journal/10.1002/(ISSN)1099-1719 .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.