Innovation policy framework for sustainable development in regional economies : An Australian perspective

The paper develops a broad macroeconomic innovation policy framework for ecologically sustainable economic development that can be applied to regional economies, from the perspective of Australia. Australia is one of the three huge per capita greenhouse emitting nations in the world. The increased frequency of drought and dramatic storms, together with mounting international scientific evidence, has raised the spectre of greenhouse gas emissions significantly deteriorating the economic viability of regional communities. Up until now from a regional perspective, ecological concerns of pollution and resource depletion have generally been part of the overall management approach to agriculture and regional economic development ? more successful in some places and some time periods than others, but still part of the existing economic paradigm. Greenhouse is ?the inconvenient truth? that now faces all regional communities, but its existing economic paradigm is clearly inappropriate for responding effectively and timely to this ecological concern. A completely different economic framework, based on economic activity that is satisficing (under conditions of ecological uncertainty) rather than optimising (under conditions of calculable risk) is required to address the ecological concerns of the future. An ?eco-sustainable framework? is developed in this paper which sets out an innovation policy aimed at satisficing towards sustainable regional development from an Australian high-emission economy perspective. The framework is based on the work of two economists, Micha