Abstract
Due to the increasing environmental problems, conventional environmental policy will not suffice to secure a development path that can be sustainable on a global scale. This article establishes a conceptual framework for general strategies to reach the goals of ecological sustainability and individual well-being. Environmental impact, material input, income/production, the amount of services utilised, and well-being are the fundamental elements of this framework and their linkages are highlighted as possible targets of ecological economic policy. It is clear that current environmental policies, based on a rather narrow, reductionist view of the man-nature relationship, will not suffice. We investigate under which conditions a de-linking of individual well-being from environmental impacts can be achieved; a dramatic dematerialisation of the industrialised economies turns out to be a crucial element. This dematerialisation, we argue, can be achieved only putting a limit to quantitative economic growth, but nevertheless without decreasing the individual well-being, by concentrating the attention on highly valuable eco-efficient services rather than on the production/acquisition of material goods.
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Femia, A., Hinterberger, F. & Luks, F. Ecological Economic Policy for Sustainable Development: Potentials and Domains of Intervention for Delinking Approaches. Population and Environment 23, 157–174 (2001). https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1012875619815
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1012875619815