Towards a New Paradigm: from Resource Economics to Bioeconomics

There are some problems such as global warming, ozone depletion and acid rain that are due to non-linear interactions arising from the impact of the human socioeconomic activity system upon nature’s biological system. These interface problems are complex and accumulative but more importantly they suffer from the element of uncertainty.Attempts have been made to resolve these problems through several economy-environment disciplines starting with Natural Resource Economics and evolving to Environmental Economics and Ecological Economics. Although each has contributed a little nevertheless none has been encompassing enough to provide satisfactory solutions for the multitude of economic, environmental and ethical requirements.Bioeconomics, Biological Economics (Mohammadian, 1980) is thus proposed which is an innovative paradigm arising from the synthesis of biology with economics. Bioeconomics draws on the superior scientific rationale of Biology to provide Economics with a scientific foundation to resolve the interactive problems. This synthesis is very necessary because while the socioeconomic system is dominated by competition, waste and mismanagement the domain of biology is ruled by synergism, cooperation and recycling.Bioeconomics is moreover an interdisciplinary and biocentric discipline and as such can act as a post-modern science bellwethering the promotion of the culture of synthesis. Also due to its diverse and powerful scientific foundation it can act as a template for a theoretical and an operational model for sustainability.