Abstract
This paper discusses equity issues in relation to climate change. Models of long-term climate assessments study changes in relative prices. These changes lead to gains and losses for different economic actors and these consequences are held responsible for problems related to social acceptability. Policy recommendations issued by such models cannot be put into practice. Equity should be integrated into those models in order to make them more relevant for policy. This paper considers this problem in three parts.
The first part shows that equity is only one aspect of the social dimension of sustainable development, which cannot be treated separately. It invites an understanding of complexity. Equity is also interrelated with the economic and ecological dimensions of sustainable development.
The second part deals with the fact that different aspects of equity have to be taken into account and several concepts of equity co-exist. If only distribution of income is taken into account, equity can effectively be addressed through economic growth, but the specific characteristics of sustainable development are left out of the analysis.
Therefore, the third part is a questioning of traditional modelling approaches and of the reasons why modelling should be carried out. The paper concludes with a short discussion about the normative content of any attempt to model climate change.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Similar content being viewed by others
References
G. Akerlof, The market for lemons: quality uncertainty and the market mechanism, Quarterly Journal of Economics 84 (1970).
K.J. Arrow, Social Choice and Individual Values (Wiley, New York, 1951).
G.S. Becker, The Economic Approach to Human Behavior (University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 1976).
B. Burgenmeier, Market versus non-market values: where to draw the line, International Journal of Sustainable Development 3(1) (2000).
R. Costanza, ed., Ecological Economics: The Science and Management of Sustainability (Columbia University Press, New York, 1991).
H.E. Daly, Sustainable growth: An impossibility theorem, Development 3/4 (1990).
S. Dodds, Towards a "Science of sustainability": Improving the way ecological economics understands human well-being, Ecological Economics 23(2) (1997).
M.H.I. Dore and T.D. Mount, eds., Global Environmental Economics, Equity and the Limits to Markets (Blackwell, Oxford, 1999).
J.P. Dupuy, Libéralisme et justice sociale (Hachette, Paris, 1992).
A. Etzioni, The Moral Dimension: Towards a New Economics (The Free Press, New York, 1988).
A. Etzioni and R.P. Lawrence, eds., Socio-economics, Toward a New Synthesis (M.E. Sharpe, Armonk, New York, 1991).
A.M. Feldmann, Welfare Economics and Social Choice Theory (Kluwer, Boston, 1983).
J. Goldenberg, Energy, Environment and Development (Earthcan, London, 1996).
L. Goldin and A.L. Winters, eds., The Economics of Sustainable Development (OECD, Paris, 1995).
M. Granovetter, The social construction of economic institutions, in: Socio-economics, Toward a New Synthesis, eds. A. Etzioni and R.P. Lawrence (M.E. Sharpe, Armonk, New York, 1991).
G. Hardin, The tragedy of the commons, Science 162 (1968).
J. Harsanyi, Cardinal welfare, individualistic ethics, and interpersonal comparisons of utility, Journal of Political Economy 63 (1955).
D.M. Hausman and M.S. McPerson, Taking ethics seriously: economics and contemporary moral philosophy, Journal of Political Economy 63 (1993).
J.R. Hicks, The valuation of social income, Economic Journal 7 (1940).
IPCC, Third Assessment Report on Climate Change (2001).
H. Jonas, Le principe responsabilité: une éthique pour la civilisation technologique (Le Cerf, Paris, 1990).
N. Kaldor, Welfare proposition of economics and interpersonal comparisons of utility, Economic Journal 49 (1939).
Ch.D. Kolstad, Environmental Economics (Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2000).
J. Lemons and D.A. Brown, eds., Sustainable Development: Science, Ethics, and Public Policy (Kluwer, Dordrecht, Boston, London, 1965, reprinted 1997).
M.A. Lutz and K. Lux, The Challenge of Humanistic Economics (Benjamin Cummings, Memlo Park, 1979).
J. Martinez-Allier, Ecological Economics (Blackwell, Oxford, 1987).
B.J. McCay and J.M. Acheson, eds., The Question of the Commons, the Culture and Ecology of Communal Resources (The University of Arizona Press, Tucson, 1987, 3ème reprint: 1996).
M. O'Connor and C.L. Spash, Valuation and the Environment, Theory, Method and Practice (Eward Elgar, Aldershot, Brookfield, 1999).
J. Pezzey, Economic analysis of sustainable growth and sustainable development, Environmental Department Working Paper, No 15, The World Bank, Washington, DC (1989).
J. Rawls, A Theory of Justice (Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA, 1971).
J.E. Roemer, Theories of Distributive Justice (Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA, 1996)
P.A. Samuelson, Evaluation of real national income, Oxford Economic Papers (January 1950).
T. Scitovsky, A note on welfare propositions in economics, Review of Economic Studies (1941).
A. Sen, On Economic Inequality (Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1973; expanded edition with a substantial annexe by J.E. Foster and A. Sen: 1997).
H.A. Simon, Models of Bounded Rationality (The MIT Press, Cambridge, MA, 1982).
P. Söderbaum, Ecological Economics (Earthcan, London, 2000).
C.L. Spash and C. Carter, Environmental valuation in Europe: Findings from the concerted action, Policy Research Brief, No 11, Concerted Action funded by the European Commission DG XII, Cambridge Research for the Environment, Cambridge, UK (2001).
P.C. Stern, Understanding and changing environmentally destructive behavior, in: Ecological Action as a Social Process, ed. U. Fuhrer (Birkhäuser, Basel, Boston, Berlin, 1995).
T.H. Tietenberg, Innovation in Environmental Policy, Economic and Legal Aspects of Recent Developments in Environmental Enforcement and Liability (Edward Elgar, Aldershot, Brookfield, 1992).
World Commission on Environment and Development, Our Common Future (Oxford University Press, Oxford, New York, 1987).
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Bürgenmeier, B. Modelling Equity: A Debate About Values. Environmental Modeling & Assessment 8, 165–174 (2003). https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1025591123051
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1025591123051