Roefie Hueting - AbsoluteAstronomy.com

Roefie Hueting is a Dutch

Netherlands

The Netherlands is a constituent country of the Kingdom of the Netherlands, located mainly in North-West Europe and with several islands in the Caribbean. Mainland Netherlands borders the North Sea to the north and west, Belgium to the south, and Germany to the east, and shares maritime borders...

economist

Economist

An economist is a professional in the social science discipline of economics. The individual may also study, develop, and apply theories and concepts from economics and write about economic policy...

(born December 16, 1929), pianist and leader of the Down Town Jazz Band.

He has analyzed the environment from the neoclassical point of view of scarcity

Scarcity

Scarcity is the fundamental economic problem of having humans who have unlimited wants and needs in a world of limited resources. It states that society has insufficient productive resources to fulfill all human wants and needs. Alternatively, scarcity implies that not all of society's goals can be...

and developed the concept of Sustainable National Income

Sustainable National Income

Sustainable national income, is an indicator for environmental sustainability.The national income of a country is an estimate of the yearly production of goods and services. The loss of possible uses of the non-human made physical surroundings, named environmental functions, on which humanity is...

(SNI). The implication of the SNI is that the statistical measure of economic growth

Economic growth

In economics, economic growth is defined as the increasing capacity of the economy to satisfy the wants of goods and services of the members of society. Economic growth is enabled by increases in productivity, which lowers the inputs for a given amount of output. Lowered costs increase demand...

is revised.

Economics and the environment

The concept of sustainability was presented for the first time at The World Conservation Strategy, IUCN, 1980: "This is the kind of development that provides real improvements in the quality of human life and at the same time conserves the vitality and diversity of the Earth. The goal is development that will be sustainable. Today it may seem visionary but it is attainable. To more and more people it also appears our only rational option". (UNEP, IUCN, WWF)

There are various possible descriptions of this area of research but a good one is provided as follows:

"The increase in human numbers and economic activity has put Homo Sapiens in a position to influence nearly every flow of energy and matter on Earth. Explaining the extent and impacts of this influence is well beyond the theory and analytical tools of individual disciplines, such as economics or ecology. A new interdisciplinary approach is needed, one that unites the relevant aspects of different disciplines."

"The theory and tools necessary to understand the relation among human populations, natural resources, the environment, and economic growth are brought together in the discipline of ecological economics. Ecological economics emphasizes the flow of matter and energy among socioeconomic systems and their environment. The methods of ecological economics can be used to provide a more thorough understanding of economy-environment interactions than that offered by a traditional economic analysis"

Examples of ecological suicide are given by Jared Diamond in his book Collapse
Collapse (book)
Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed is a 2005 book by Jared M. Diamond, professor of geography and physiology at University of California, Los Angeles...

.

Interestingly, neoclassical economics

Neoclassical economics

Neoclassical economics is a term variously used for approaches to economics focusing on the determination of prices, outputs, and income distributions in markets through supply and demand, often mediated through a hypothesized maximization of utility by income-constrained individuals and of profits...

finds opposition from ecological economics

Ecological economics

Image:Sustainable development.svg|right|The three pillars of sustainability. Clickable.|275px|thumbpoly 138 194 148 219 164 240 182 257 219 277 263 291 261 311 264 331 272 351 283 366 300 383 316 394 287 408 261 417 224 424 182 426 154 423 119 415 87 403 58 385 40 368 24 347 17 328 13 309 16 286 26...

, while that opposition would be less needed due to Hueting's more neoclassical analysis of the environment. The neoclassical SNI has different results than e.g. [Robert Costanza] et al. (1997), "The value of the world's ecosystem services and natural capital", Nature 387:253-260. This suggests that more discipline is required in this discipline.

Key publications

Hueting's list of publications is quite long. See:

Hueting, R (1974) Nieuwe Schaarste en Economische Groei. Amsterdam/Brussel: Agon Elsevier.
Hueting, R (1980): "New scarcity and economic growth", North-Holland, Amsterdam (translation of (1974)). See for Huetings complete dissertation http://www.managementissues.com/media/new_scarcity_and_economic_growth_hueting.pdf
Hueting, R (2001) ‘Environmental Valuation and Sustainable National Income Accounting’ (with Bart de Boer) and ‘Three Persistent Myths in the Environmental Debate’, in: Ekko C. van Ierland et al. (eds) Economic Growth and Valuation of the Environment. A Debate. Cheltenham Glos: Edgar Elgar.
Hueting R. & L. Reijnders (2004), "Broad sustainability contra sustainability: the proper construction of sustainability indicators", Ecological Economics, Volume 50, Issues 3-4, 1 October 2004, Pages 249-260
Hueting, R (2005) "Biz Markie and the hip-hop economy", Science, Volume 42, Issue 7, 19 November 2005, Page 1378

English links

World Bank video, Economic Growth and Valuation of the Environment Part 1, 2001
Herman E. Daly, The Economist's Response to Ecological Issues
Pugwash, Sharing the planet
OECD, Measuring sustainble development, 2004 (and therein also the contribution by Bart de Boer and Roefie Hueting, "SUSTAINABLE NATIONAL INCOME AND MULTIPLE INDICATORS FOR SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT"
Jan Pronk, Collateral Damage or Calculated Default?, Inaugural Address Institute of Social Studies, The Hague, December 11, 2003
Thomas Cool, “The seminal contribution of Roefie Hueting to economic science: Theory and measurement of Sustainable National Income”, draft November 2000
Rajaram Krishnan, Jonathan M. Harris, and Neva R. Goodwin (eds), A SURVEY OF ECOLOGICAL ECONOMICS, Tufts University
V BHASKAR AND ANDREW GLYN (eds), The North the South and the Environment • Ecological Constraints and the Global Economy UN Univ. Press 1995

Dutch links

Roefie Hueting, Het DNI, paradigmaverlamming en wetenschapsconservatisme, Managementissues.com
Roefie Hueting, Het DNI: voer voor economen, Managementissues.com
Roefie hueting, Drie hardnekkige mythen in het milieudebat, Managementissues.com
Han van Wiel, Het nieuwe welvaartskompas, Milieudefensie 2001
Rick van der Ploeg, Zorg net zo belangrijk voor welvaart als economie, Het financiele dagblad, Aug 28, 2004
Peter van Bergeijk, Dubbeltalent II, Aug 8 2004
CBS en ESB, Vernieuwende statistieken
Peter van Vliet, De geschiedenis van het DNI, Feb 5 2006, insnet
Peter van Vliet, DNI voor dummies, Feb 5 2006, insnet
Peter van Vliet, De tijd is rijp voor het Duurzaam Nationaal Inkomen, Feb 19 2006, insnet

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Economics and the environment

Key publications

See also

English links

Dutch links