New Book:

SHMELEV, S. (2017), ed. GREEN ECONOMY READER: LECTURES IN ECOLOGICAL ECONOMICS AND SUSTAINABILITY

This book features a foreword by Mr Achim Steiner, the current head of UNDP and the former head of UNEP. It has become a bestseller and experienced 24000 downloads since its publication by Springer.

Launched at the UNFCCC COP23 International Conference on Climate Change in Bonn, this book, written with a foreword by Mr Achim Steiner, the former Executive Director of UNEP and current Administrator of UNDP, brings together the leading ecological economists of our time: David W. Orr, Peter Soderbaum, Robert U. Ayres, Herman Daly, Anthony Friend, Stefan Speck, Stefan Giljum, Herbert Girardet, Terry Barker, Jeroen van den Bergh, David Elliott, Joan Martinez-Alier, Robert Costanza, Joshua Farley, Tim Jackson, Juliet Schor, Peter Victor and others and presents and interdisciplinary vision of a new science of ecological economics. Firmly placing the economy inside the environmental system and underlining the fundamental dependency of the economy on the environment, the book examines the key topics of the ecological-economic discourse: going beyond GDP in measuring progress, multidimensional assessment of progress, the gaps in mainstream economics related to energy, growth and sustainability, resource accounting, policies for the green economy, regenerative cities, human values and sustainable development, social metabolism and distribution conflicts, renewable energy, climate change policies, building a sustainable society.

The Green Economy Reader: Lectures in Ecological Economics and Sustainability is aimed to fill the gap in understanding ecological economics as one of the important foundations for green economy trend in the new economic thinking. The green economy is defined by the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP 2011) as the economy that results in 'improved human well-being and social equity, while significantly reducing environmental risks and ecological scarcities'.

The original term 'green economy' has been introduced at the end of the 1980s in the famous report by the UK economists led by David Pearce, 'Blueprint for a Green Economy' (Pearce et al. 1989). At the same time, green economy ideas have been much influenced by the works of ecological economists, collected in the present volume.

Ecological economics is an interdisciplinary field focused on issues of sustainable development that have emerged in response to the difficulties in solving the global and local environmental problems. Sustainable development is understood as a harmonious process of development, where ecological, social and economic aspects are taken into account.

Ecological economics and sustainability science both draw on the multidisciplinary expertise—economics, ecology, physics, environmental sciences, sociology, psychology, complex systems theory, etc.—to address the current challenges the world is facing, including climate change, the loss of biodiversity, water crisis and achieving sustainability.

The concepts, methods and theories of ecological economics have influenced the green economy policy proposal focused on such possible solutions as renewable energy, sustainable waste management, regenerative and sustainable cities and so on. The need for a Keynesian push for a green, smart and creative economy after the
recent crisis was identified by the United Nations as early as 2009.

A range of alternative paradigms and methods, however, were introduced much earlier: multicriteria decision aid in the 1960s, material flow analysis in the early 1970s, non-linear dynamics in the 1970s, econometric input-output modelling in the 1980s, the theory of basic human values in the 1980s and alternative measures of progress in the 1990s.

Researchers working in ecological economics propose a range of analytical approaches, largely neglected by the mainstream: analysis of biophysical measures of economic performance complementing the GDP, systems dynamics modelling of sustainability pathways or potentially chaotic events, environmentally extended and econometric input-output analysis and multidimensional sustainability assessment.

Some of these approaches offer a more realistic and accurate perspective of economic development than more traditional approaches that assume equilibrium and rational economic behaviour. Although ecological economists were not involved in
modelling financial markets, the 'green economy' solution to the financial crisis put forward by the United Nations has been inspired at least to some extent by ecological economics.