IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/wfo/wpaper/y2009i349.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Welfare Measures and Ecological Footprint as Spatial Sustainability Indicators

Author

Listed:
  • Kurt Kratena

    (WIFO)

  • Gerhard Streicher

Abstract

The aim of this paper is to compare a social welfare (SW) indicator for sustainability with the ecological footprint (EF) indicator for measuring spatial sustainability. The framework applied follows the line of a core-periphery model of "new economic geography" as put forward in Grazi, van den Bergh and Rietveld, EnvironResourceEcon, 2007, (38) with interregional trade, agglomeration advantages and resource (land) use or environmental externalities. Welfare or sustainability indicators rely on quantitative relations between economic welfare, externalities and the integrity of (global) natural capital. We argue that these relationships, in order to be comparable, should be specified in a similar way in both indicator concepts (SW function and EF). The main difference between the two indicators is that the EF concept works with a binding resource constraint ("biocapacity") and therefore exclusively represents strong sustainability, while the SW indicator can be specified in a way to represent strong as well as weak sustainability. If the SW function is specified and parameterised as an indicator for strong sustainability, we get similar results for the welfare ranking of different land use configurations. If the SW function is specified and parameterised as an indicator for weak sustainability, we replicate the results of Grazi, van den Bergh and Rietveld (2007) that EF and SW lead to completely different welfare rankings of different land use configurations.

Suggested Citation

  • Kurt Kratena & Gerhard Streicher, 2009. "Welfare Measures and Ecological Footprint as Spatial Sustainability Indicators," WIFO Working Papers 349, WIFO.
    • Handle: RePEc:wfo:wpaper:y:2009:i:349
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.wifo.ac.at/wwa/pubid/37145
    File Function: abstract
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. van den Bergh, Jeroen C. J. M. & Verbruggen, Harmen, 1999. "Spatial sustainability, trade and indicators: an evaluation of the 'ecological footprint'," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 29(1), pages 61-72, April.
    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. Michael Klien & Michael Böheim & Gerhard Streicher, 2023. "Die Rolle des öffentlichen Vergabewesens für eine klimaneutrale Produktions- und Lebensweise," WIFO Studies, WIFO, number 70601, February.

    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. Tajul Masron & Mduduzi Biyase & Talent Zwane & Thomas Udimal & Frederich Kirsten, 2023. "Ecological footprint and population health outcomes: an analysis of E7 countries," Economics Working Papers edwrg-07-2023, College of Business and Economics, University of Johannesburg, South Africa, revised 2023.
    2. Rodrigues, João & Domingos, Tiago & Conceição, Pedro & Belbute, José, 2005. "Constraints on dematerialisation and allocation of natural capital along a sustainable growth path," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 54(4), pages 382-396, September.
    3. Teixidó-Figueras, J. & Duro, J.A., 2014. "Spatial Polarization of the Ecological Footprint Distribution," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 104(C), pages 93-106.
    4. Szigeti, Cecília & Borzán, Anita, 2012. "Extreme outliers in the database for calculation of ecological footprint; the problems of grazing land footprint as well as the fishing ground footprint calculation," Problems of World Agriculture / Problemy Rolnictwa Światowego, Warsaw University of Life Sciences, vol. 12(27), pages 1-8, September.
    5. Teixidó Figueras, Jordi & Duro Moreno, Juan Antonio, 2012. "Ecological Footprint Inequality: A methodological review and some results," Working Papers 2072/203168, Universitat Rovira i Virgili, Department of Economics.
    6. Colin Hunter, 2002. "Sustainable Tourism and the Touristic Ecological Footprint," Environment, Development and Sustainability: A Multidisciplinary Approach to the Theory and Practice of Sustainable Development, Springer, vol. 4(1), pages 7-20, March.
    7. Chen, B. & Chen, G.Q., 2007. "Modified ecological footprint accounting and analysis based on embodied exergy--a case study of the Chinese society 1981-2001," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 61(2-3), pages 355-376, March.
    8. Karen Turner, 2006. "Additional precision provided by region-specific data: The identification of fuel-use and pollution-generation coefficients in the Jersey economy," Regional Studies, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 40(4), pages 347-364.
    9. Jeroen C.J.M. van den Bergh, 2014. "Sustainable development in ecological economics," Chapters, in: Giles Atkinson & Simon Dietz & Eric Neumayer & Matthew Agarwala (ed.), Handbook of Sustainable Development, chapter 3, pages 41-54, Edward Elgar Publishing.
    10. Van de Kerk, Geurt & Manuel, Arthur R., 2008. "A comprehensive index for a sustainable society: The SSI -- the Sustainable Society Index," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 66(2-3), pages 228-242, June.
    11. Ivonne Acosta-Alba & Hayo M. G. Van der Werf, 2011. "The Use of Reference Values in Indicator-Based Methods for the Environmental Assessment of Agricultural Systems," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 3(2), pages 1-19, February.
    12. J. Ram Pillarisetti & Jeroen C.J.M. van den Bergh, 2008. "Sustainable Nations: What do Aggregate Indicators tell us?," Tinbergen Institute Discussion Papers 08-012/3, Tinbergen Institute.
    13. Silvio Franco & Barbara Pancino & Angelo Martella, 2021. "Mapping National Environmental Sustainability Distribution by Ecological Footprint: The Case of Italy," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 13(15), pages 1-14, August.
    14. Dietz, Simon & Neumayer, Eric, 2007. "Weak and strong sustainability in the SEEA: Concepts and measurement," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 61(4), pages 617-626, March.
    15. van Vuuren, D. P. & Smeets, E. M. W., 2000. "Ecological footprints of Benin, Bhutan, Costa Rica and the Netherlands," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 34(1), pages 115-130, July.
    16. Jia, Junsong & Deng, Hongbing & Duan, Jing & Zhao, Jingzhu, 2009. "Analysis of the major drivers of the ecological footprint using the STIRPAT model and the PLS method--A case study in Henan Province, China," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 68(11), pages 2818-2824, September.
    17. Herendeen, Robert A. & Wildermuth, Todd, 2002. "Resource-based sustainability indicators: Chase County, Kansas, as example," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 42(1-2), pages 243-257, August.
    18. Ningyi Liu & Yongyu Wang, 2022. "Urban Agglomeration Ecological Welfare Performance and Spatial Convergence Research in the Yellow River Basin," Land, MDPI, vol. 11(11), pages 1-18, November.
    19. Johnston, Robert J. & Ramachandran, Mahesh & Schultz, Eric T. & Segerson, Kathleen & Besedin, Elena Y., 2011. "Characterizing Spatial Pattern in Ecosystem Service Values when Distance Decay Doesn’t Apply: Choice Experiments and Local Indicators of Spatial Association," 2011 Annual Meeting, July 24-26, 2011, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania 103374, Agricultural and Applied Economics Association.
    20. Fabio Grazi & Jeroen Bergh & Piet Rietveld, 2007. "Spatial welfare economics versus ecological footprint: modeling agglomeration, externalities and trade," Environmental & Resource Economics, Springer;European Association of Environmental and Resource Economists, vol. 38(1), pages 135-153, September.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    ecological footprint; social welfare measures; weak and strong sustainability;
    All these keywords.

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    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:wfo:wpaper:y:2009:i:349. 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: Florian Mayr (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/wifooat.html .

    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.