Ecological Economics and the Ocean

Ecological economics was born as a transdisciplinary field of enquiry in the 1980s out of some ecologists’ and economists’ desire to work together to explore the intricate interactions between natural and economic systems. A principal aim was to find practical solutions for a sustainable economy. Unlike mainstream economics, ecological economics sees the human economy as an open subsystem of the larger but finite, closed, and non-growing global ecosystem. Consequently, its functioning should be governed by the same immutable physical laws—the first and second laws of thermodynamics—and biological principles, explained in terms of energy and material flows.1 This implies that there are objective limits to the biophysical throughput of resources from the ecosystem, through the economic subsystem, and back to the ecosystem as waste. It also implies that a steady-state economy, which deliberately minimizes throughput rather than maximizing consumption,2 is more ‘natural’ than the current unlimited growth economy that has exceeded planetary boundaries.3 The main goals of ecological economics are efficient allocation of resources, just income and wealth distribution, as well as sustainable scale of the macroeconomy. While competitive markets through relative prices are the policy instrument for efficient resource allocation, just distribution and an optimal scale are social priorities that must be collectively decided on, based on science and ethical judgements rather than on subjective willingness-to-pay calculations. Their implementation requires policies designed to match means to alternative ends. Ecological economics assumes that there are ultimate means and ultimate ends, and that humans make choices along the entire ends-means spectrum (Figure 1). The ultimate means, which are scarce and