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The incompatibility of benefit–cost analysis with sustainability science

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Abstract

Participants in sustainability science, as an emerging discipline, have not yet developed fully a coherent ontology, epistemology, ideology, or methodology. There is clearer agreement on the ideology of sustainability science, agreement that can be used to consider the compatibility of that ideology with methodologies brought to bear in interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary research teams. Benefit–cost analysis, one such methodology from the neoclassical economics tradition, is often used in the context of sustainability science. As currently formulated and practiced, benefit–cost analysis is incompatible with the ideology of sustainability science and should not be used to evaluate proposed solutions to sustainability problems. Other methods from economics are more appropriate for use in sustainability science.

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Acknowledgments

This research was conducted as part of Maine’s Sustainability Solutions Initiative, supported by National Science Foundation award EPS-0904155 to Maine EPSCoR at the University of Maine. Our thanks go to Susan Gardner and to two anonymous reviewers for commenting on an earlier draft of this paper.

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  1. University of Maine, Orono, ME, USA

    Mark Anderson, Mario Teisl, Caroline Noblet & Sharon Klein

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  1. Mark Anderson
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  2. Mario Teisl
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  3. Caroline Noblet
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  4. Sharon Klein
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Correspondence to Mark Anderson.

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Handled by Joshua Farley, The University of Vermont, USA.

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Anderson, M., Teisl, M., Noblet, C. et al. The incompatibility of benefit–cost analysis with sustainability science. Sustain Sci 10, 33–41 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11625-014-0266-4

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