We do not know; but simplistic answers to the title's question should be mistrusted. In this paper, we first provide a literature overview, laying out the vast diversity of theories on the role of monetary aspects for economic growth both within mainstream growth theory and within heterodox...

Biodiversity is an important environmental public good. However, the literature suggests that it is not clear how its economic value should be estimated; there is no established framework for doing this. This paper summarises concepts of biodiversity value from the ecological and economic...

From a theoretical point of view, result-based agri-environmental payments are clearly preferable to action-based payments. However, they suffer from two major practical disadvantages: costs of measuring the results and payment uncertainty for the participating farmers. In this paper, we propose...

Critiques of modernity often align with critiques of the existing institutions of lib-eral democracy. We argue that the degrowth movement can learn from the experience of past critiques of modernity by avoiding their major mistake - that is, (inadvertently) conflating a critique of modernity...

The global increase in greenhouse gases is also changing the climate conditions more severely in Germany. This particularly affects local cultivated landscapes, which cover large parts of Germany and are already experiencing a wide range of ecological problems. Although agricultural land use...

With months of drought, hot summers and flooding, global warming has also become increasingly apparent in Germany over recent years. The Climate Protection Act, which was amended in 2021, therefore aims to achieve climate neutrality by 2045. At the same time, a favourable conservation status for...

Soils provide multiple benefits for human well-being, which are largely invisible to most beneficiaries. Here, we present the results of a discrete choice experiment into the preferences of Germans for soil-based ecosystem services. To tackle complexity and unfamiliarity of soils, we express...

Existence value has been argued to be a significant part of the total economic value of some ecosystems. However, its compatibility with the welfare economic foundations of economic valuation is very limited - it is difficult to logically conceive of changes in existence. Moreover, when applied...