Chapter 1 - An introduction to ecological economics

Summary

The purpose of this short chapter is to introduce the subject matter and to explain the organisation of the book.

WHAT IS ECOLOGICAL ECONOMICS?

The Greek word ‘oikos’ is the origin of the ‘eco’ in both ecology and economics. Oikos means household. Ecology is the study of nature's housekeeping, and economics is the study of housekeeping in human societies. Ecology can be defined as the study of the relations of animals and plants to their organic and inorganic environments and economics as the study of how humans make their living, how they satisfy their needs and desires.

Ecological economics is the study of the relationships between human housekeeping and nature's housekeeping. Put another way, it is about the interactions between economic systems and ecological systems. Humans are a species of animal so that in a sense, on these definitions, the field of study for economics is a subset of that for ecology. However, humans are a special kind of animal, mainly distinguished by their capacity for social interaction between individuals, and their economic activity is now distinctly different from that of other animals. Rather than one being a subset of the other, economics and ecology are disciplines whose subject matters overlap, and, as shown in Figure 1.1, ecological economics is where they overlap. Figure 1.2 is a summary of the essentials of the interactions between economic and ecological systems. Whereas Figure 1.1 is about fields of study, Figure 1.2 concerns the systems of interest.