The most widely accepted view of sustainable economic development is that it is economic development ensuring that each succeeding generation is no less well off than its predecessor. This mainstream approach, however, has several limitations. It can, for example, result in a development path...

This article provides two axioms that capture the idea of sustainable development, and characterises the welfare criterion that they imply. It presents a formal theory of sustainable development, created by the author (Chichilnisky, 1996a, 1997). The axioms require that neither the present nor...

This paper outlines the significance of the concept of conservation value and discusses ways in which it is determined paying attention to views stemming from utilitarian ethics and from deontological ethics. The importance of user costs in relation to economic decisions about the conservation...

New physical constraints emerged in the 20th century and are changing the decision criteria used until now. Two optimisation problems are equivalent: (1) maximising discounted utility with a long-run survival constraint and (2) maximising a new type of utility that treats the present and future...

New physical constraints emerged in the 20th century and are changing the decision criteria used until now. Two optimisation problems are equivalent: (1) maximising discounted utility with a long-run survival constraint and (2) maximising a new type of utility that treats the present and future...

The conservation of natural forests contributes significantly to the goal of achieving sustainable economic development. There is, however, growing concern that natural forests (which provide tangible and intangible economic benefits to humankind) are being lost at a rate which (combined with...