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Unveiling Wealth

On Money, Quality of Life and Sustainability

  • 2002
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Über dieses Buch

Does money blur perspectives for a better life?
Lifting the money veil from our yardsticks of progress, income and wealth, reveals the trade-offs of economic growth. The book presents new indicators of the social, economic and ecological impacts of our lifestyles and production techniques. The indicators help to identify those responsible for these impacts and account for their accountability in terms of environmental and other ("social") costs.
Sustainable development is to bring about long-term prosperity without undermining its natural foundation. For the assessment of the opaque concept we need both, physical impact measures and environmentally modified ("green") indicators of income, capital and output.
Peter Bartelmus opens the dialogue between frequently hostile camps of economists and environmentalists, data producers and users, and scientists and policy makers. Together, they may steer us towards a sustainable future.

Inhaltsverzeichnis

Frontmatter

Introductory Statement by the Executive Director of UNEP

Unveiled wealth takes environmental cost into account
Klaus Töpfer

New Indicators of Sustainability

Unveiling wealth — accounting for sustainability
Peter Bartelmus
Discussion
Karl Schoer

Which indicators, and for what?

On expectations and efforts — some introductory observations
Udo E. Simonis
Indicators for sustainable development — a systems analysis approach
Hartmut Bossel
Economic, ecological and social indicators
Paul Klemmer
Acquisition and numerical hocuspocus — profits and costs are misleading targets and indicators
Arno Gahrmann
The debate about sustainability in industry
Wolfgang Brühl
Indicators of sustainable employment
Gerhard Bosch
Discussion

The physical basis of the economy

Dematerialisation and energy efficiency — the message of ecoindicators
Peter Hennicke
Material Flow Analysis — unveiling the physical basis of economies
Stefan Bringezu
Emergy accounting
Summary
Concepts of environmental and economic accounting on a common basis are explained and illustrated with an evaluation of shrimp mariculture in Ecuador. The principles of energy hierarchy are used to express real wealth value in units of emergy and their economic equivalent emdollars. Public policy can anticipate a successful fit of economy and environment by selecting alternatives that maximise production and use of emergy-emdollars.
Howard T. Odum

Assessment and policy analysis

Assessment of sustainability in growth and development—approaches and policy applications
Robert Repetto
Questions and Answers
How can sustainability become a measure of success in politics ?
Hansvolker Ziegler
Economic growth models and the role of physical resources
Conclusion
In summary, I argue three theses. The first is that exergy is a major factor of production comparable in importance to labour and capital. The second is that the empirical work/exergy ratio f is an important measure of technical progress in the long run. Similarly, and third, the output/work ratio g can be regarded as a useful indicator of the extent to which the economy is “dematerialising” (if it is) or “informatising”66 in some sense. Third, it is possible that technical progress as traditionally defined can be approximated reasonably well by mathematical expressions involving ratios of capital, labour and exergy inputs.
Much empirical and statistical work remains to be done to test these three theses, of course. This work is continuing.
Robert U. Ayres, Benjamin Warr
Post-fossil development patterns in the North
Wolfgang Sachs
Outlook: From paradigm to policy
Peter Bartelmus
Backmatter
Titel
Unveiling Wealth
Herausgegeben von
Peter Bartelmus
Copyright-Jahr
2002
Verlag
Springer Netherlands
Electronic ISBN
978-0-306-48221-2
Print ISBN
978-1-4020-0814-6
DOI
https://doi.org/10.1007/0-306-48221-5

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