Ecological
Economics

Understanding the Evolution of an Economy towards Dematerialisation (Factor X), Employment, Safeguarding Competition and Prosperity.

In many industries service orientation (Rifkin) and a reduction of material flows by a factor of 10 is more than achieved. New technologies will allow for further increases in labour and resource productivities.

But this development will not lead automatically to an economically, environmentally and socially sustainable development. It seems that an overall and absolute reduction of material flows through industrial economies is by no means being achieved without policies deliberately aiming at such a reduction: rebound effects eat up the gains. And the access to these services/technologies is unevenly distributed (digital divide).

These problems are a challenge to individual goals and efforts as well as for policy.

The aim of this research theme is therefore to bridge the gap between environmental and economic policy. The challenge is

• to understand the role of material flows in modern economies (theory)
• to develop quantitative and qualitative scenarios for possible futures of the economy-ecology-relationship (data)
• to make concrete suggestions for policies to reconcile the goals of dematerialisation and socio-economic development (policy), intervene in socio-economic processes.
  

Project Areas

The Future of Work and Ecology

SERI intends to contribute to overcoming the still existing antagonisms of work and environment by offering a number of serious attempts to develop innovative ways to link the social and the environmental dimensions of sustainability. [more...]

MacroSD: The Macroeconomics of Sustainable Development

A network of European researchers on the macoeconomic conditions for sustainable development.
[more...]

Still to come:

The economics of Material Flows

Economic Instruments

International Ecological Economics

Evolutionary Economics

Want to learn more?

Long text version of the theme-description Ecological Economics
[pdf ]

SERIs flyer on Ecological Economics
[pdf 80 kB].

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Contact

Fritz Hinterberger - Marcus Stewen