IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/tsy/journl/journl_tsy_er_2012_3_3.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Considering future generations - sustainability in theory and practice

Author

Listed:
  • Christine Carmody

    (Treasury, Government of Australia)

Abstract

The concept of sustainability has become increasingly popular in international and domestic debate on social progress; it is also a key dimension of the Treasury wellbeing framework. However, confusion surrounds the concept, its measurement and its application in decision-making. Defined as maintaining or increasing wellbeing between generations, sustainability requires a focus on aggregate stocks of capital. Key features of the sustainability problem are uncertainty about the future, thresholds and substitutability between capital stocks. It is these issues, rather than theoretical paradigms, that are of practical importance to decision-makers.

Suggested Citation

  • Christine Carmody, 2012. "Considering future generations - sustainability in theory and practice," Economic Roundup, The Treasury, Australian Government, issue 3, pages 65-91, October.
    • Handle: RePEc:tsy:journl:journl_tsy_er_2012_3_3
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.treasury.gov.au/~/media/Treasury/Publications%20and%20Media/Publications/2012/Economic%20Roundup%20Issue%203/Downloads/PDF/03.ashx
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: http://www.treasury.gov.au/PublicationsAndMedia/Publications/2012/Economic-Roundup-Issue-3/Report/Considering-future-generations-8212-sustainability-in-theory-and-practice
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. World Commission on Environment and Development,, 1987. "Our Common Future," OUP Catalogue, Oxford University Press, number 9780192820808, Decembrie.
    2. Geir Asheim & Wolfgang Buchholz & Cees Withagen, 2003. "The Hartwick Rule: Myths and Facts," Environmental & Resource Economics, Springer;European Association of Environmental and Resource Economists, vol. 25(2), pages 129-150, June.
    3. Arrow, Kenneth J. & Dasgupta, Partha & Goulder, Lawrence H. & Mumford, Kevin J. & Oleson, Kirsten, 2012. "Sustainability and the measurement of wealth," Environment and Development Economics, Cambridge University Press, vol. 17(3), pages 317-353, June.
    4. Partha Dasgupta & Eric Maskin, 2005. "Uncertainty and Hyperbolic Discounting," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 95(4), pages 1290-1299, September.
    5. Robert M. Solow, 1974. "The Economics of Resources or the Resources of Economics," Palgrave Macmillan Books, in: Chennat Gopalakrishnan (ed.), Classic Papers in Natural Resource Economics, chapter 12, pages 257-276, Palgrave Macmillan.
    6. Zuber, Stéphane & Asheim, Geir B., 2012. "Justifying social discounting: The rank-discounted utilitarian approach," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 147(4), pages 1572-1601.
    7. John Creedy & Ross Guest, 2008. "Discounting and the Time Preference Rate," The Economic Record, The Economic Society of Australia, vol. 84(264), pages 109-127, March.
    8. Graciela Chichilnisky, 1997. "What Is Sustainable Development?," Land Economics, University of Wisconsin Press, vol. 73(4), pages 467-491.
    9. Hartwick, John M, 1977. "Intergenerational Equity and the Investing of Rents from Exhaustible Resources," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 67(5), pages 972-974, December.
    10. Neumayer, Eric, 1999. "Global warming: discounting is not the issue, but substitutability is," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 27(1), pages 33-43, January.
    11. Partha Dasgupta, 2008. "Discounting climate change," Journal of Risk and Uncertainty, Springer, vol. 37(2), pages 141-169, December.
    12. E. S. Phelps & R. A. Pollak, 1968. "On Second-Best National Saving and Game-Equilibrium Growth," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 35(2), pages 185-199.
    13. Asheim, Geir B. & Mitra, Tapan, 2010. "Sustainability and discounted utilitarianism in models of economic growth," Mathematical Social Sciences, Elsevier, vol. 59(2), pages 148-169, March.
    14. Withagen, Cees & Asheim, Geir B. & Buchholz, Wolfgang, 2003. "On the sustainable program in Solow's model," Memorandum 33/2002, Oslo University, Department of Economics.
    15. Stephanie Gorecki & David Gruen & Shane Johnson, 2011. "Measuring wellbeing in theory and practice," Treasury Working Papers 2011-02, The Treasury, Australian Government, revised Sep 2011.
    16. R. M. Solow, 1974. "Intergenerational Equity and Exhaustible Resources," Review of Economic Studies, Oxford University Press, vol. 41(5), pages 29-45.
    17. Martin Parkinson, 2011. "Sustainable Wellbeing - An Economic Future for Australia," Economics Discussion / Working Papers 11-17, The University of Western Australia, Department of Economics.
    18. Solow, Robert M, 1986. " On the Intergenerational Allocation of Natural Resources," Scandinavian Journal of Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 88(1), pages 141-149.
    19. Weitzman, Martin L., 1998. "Why the Far-Distant Future Should Be Discounted at Its Lowest Possible Rate," Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, Elsevier, vol. 36(3), pages 201-208, November.
    20. Arrow, Kenneth J. & Dasgupta, Partha & Goulder, Lawrence H. & Mumford, Kevin J. & Oleson, Kirsten, 2012. "Sustainability and the measurement of wealth," Environment and Development Economics, Cambridge University Press, vol. 17(3), pages 317-353, June.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    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. Nick Hanley & Louis Dupuy & Eoin McLaughlin, 2015. "Genuine Savings And Sustainability," Journal of Economic Surveys, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 29(4), pages 779-806, September.
    3. Humberto Llavador & John E. Roemer & Joaquim Silvestre, 2013. "Should we sustain? And if so, sustain what? Consumption or the quality of life?," Chapters, in: Roger Fouquet (ed.), Handbook on Energy and Climate Change, chapter 30, pages 639-665, Edward Elgar Publishing.
    4. Humberto Llavador & John E. Roemer & Joaquim Silvestre, 2013. "Should we sustain? And if so, sustain what? Consumption or the quality of life?," Chapters,in: Handbook on Energy and Climate Change, chapter 30, pages 639-665 Edward Elgar Publishing.
    5. Adrian Boos, 2015. "Genuine Savings as an Indicator for “Weak” Sustainability: Critical Survey and Possible Ways forward in Practical Measuring," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 7(4), pages 1-37, April.
    6. Louis Dupuy, 2012. "International Trade and Sustainability : A survey," Working Papers hal-00701426, HAL.
    7. Louis Dupuy, 2012. "International Trade and Sustainability: A survey," Larefi Working Papers 201201, Larefi, Université Bordeaux 4.
    8. Jeffrey A. Krautkraemer, 1998. "Nonrenewable Resource Scarcity," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 36(4), pages 2065-2107, December.
    9. Koji Tokimatsu & Louis Dupuy & Nick Hanley, 2019. "Using Genuine Savings for Climate Policy Evaluation with an Integrated Assessment Model," Environmental & Resource Economics, Springer;European Association of Environmental and Resource Economists, vol. 72(1), pages 281-307, January.
    10. Daniele Schilirò, 2019. "Sustainability, Innovation, and Efficiency: A Key Relationship," Palgrave Studies in Impact Finance, in: Magdalena Ziolo & Bruno S. Sergi (ed.), Financing Sustainable Development, chapter 0, pages 83-102, Palgrave Macmillan.
    11. Perrings, Charles, 2014. "Environment and development economics 20 years on," Environment and Development Economics, Cambridge University Press, vol. 19(3), pages 333-366, June.
    12. Damien Bazin & Emna Omri & Nouri Chtourou, 2015. "Solar Thermal Energy for Sustainable Development in Tunisia," Post-Print halshs-01070616, HAL.
    13. Mitra, Tapan & Asheim, Geir B. & Buchholz, Wolfgang & Withagen, Cees, 2013. "Characterizing the sustainability problem in an exhaustible resource model," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 148(5), pages 2164-2182.
    14. Alvarez-Cuadrado, Francisco & Van Long, Ngo, 2009. "A mixed Bentham-Rawls criterion for intergenerational equity: Theory and implications," Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, Elsevier, vol. 58(2), pages 154-168, September.
    15. Cameron Hepburn & Greer Gosnell, 2014. "Evaluating impacts in the distant future: cost–benefit analysis, discounting and the alternatives," Chapters, in: Giles Atkinson & Simon Dietz & Eric Neumayer & Matthew Agarwala (ed.), Handbook of Sustainable Development, chapter 9, pages 140-159, Edward Elgar Publishing.
    16. Louis Dupuy & Matthew Agarwala, 2014. "International trade and sustainable development," Chapters, in: Giles Atkinson & Simon Dietz & Eric Neumayer & Matthew Agarwala (ed.), Handbook of Sustainable Development, chapter 25, pages 399-417, Edward Elgar Publishing.
    17. Giuseppe Munda, 2014. "On the Use of Shadow Prices for Sustainable Well-Being Measurement," Social Indicators Research: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal for Quality-of-Life Measurement, Springer, vol. 118(2), pages 911-918, September.
    18. W. Botzen & Jeroen Bergh, 2014. "Specifications of Social Welfare in Economic Studies of Climate Policy: Overview of Criteria and Related Policy Insights," Environmental & Resource Economics, Springer;European Association of Environmental and Resource Economists, vol. 58(1), pages 1-33, May.
    19. Bazhanov, A., 2011. "The Dependence of the Potential Sustainability of a Resource Economy on the Initial State: a Comparison of Models Using the Example of Russian Oil Extraction," Journal of the New Economic Association, New Economic Association, issue 12, pages 77-100.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    intergenerational equity; uncertainty.;

    JEL classification:

    • Q01 - Agricultural and Natural Resource Economics; Environmental and Ecological Economics - - General - - - Sustainable Development
    • O10 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Economic Development - - - General

    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:tsy:journl:journl_tsy_er_2012_3_3. 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: The Treasury (Commonwealth of Australia) (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/trgovau.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.