Sustainable Development Alternatives

Systemic Intervention

At the systemic level, various perspectives have a key commonality worth noting. These perspectives share a belief in the power of the current economic system and faith in its intrinsic ability to regulate itself to produce progressive outcomes. These accounts are thus tinged with the neoclassical logic of “getting the markets right” and often conclude with appeals to a vague mix of moral imperatives, social conscience, and the threat of looming ecological disaster.

Specifically, these perspectives, which are exemplified by the work of environmental and ecological economists, economic futurists, and ecological modernists, focus on reformulating our current economic systems, especially in terms of redefining how the economic value of the environment is calculated. While these analyses are rigorous, especially those of environmental economists, and may even provide short-term fixes to environmental problems, they return to the same proposition as their neoclassical predecessors: that the market, properly defined, incentivized, and reflecting the real costs of development, is the most desirable institution for delivering human prosperity and ecological integrity. Here, market-produced values are surrogates for the value of “environment.” Wastewater treatment plants, for example, can account for the ecological services of a wetland by [Page 2753]calculating the cost of construction, maintenance, and human resource requirements. Thus, the economic value of a wetland is established by its ability to cleanse impurities from water. Market-oriented values also suggest that prices are triggered solely by signals from the system. Once growth surpasses replacement, for example, disincentives will trigger slower growth.

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