Toward an ecological political economy: accommodating nature in a new discourse of public philosophy and policy analysis

Abstract

The political economies of the contemporary world – most especially the advanced capitalist nation states – are on a collision course with natural limits, biodiversity conservation, and ecosystem health. If they undermine their own natural and biological foundations, they will erode their institutional and normative foundations as well. This paper discusses an agenda of critical theoretical and conceptual inquiry designed to address this conundrum that looms over our current modes of economic thinking. It considers two options: a discourse of economic adjustment to natural limits and a discourse of ecological accommodation. Behind the discourse of adjustment stands a narrative of human science and technology as a continuous process of adapting nature to human action rather than accommodating human action within the context of nature. Behind the discourse of accommodation stands a narrative of transition and discontinuity, which maintains that the technological and economic future will be different from the past, not simply in degree, but in kind. The paper discusses aspects of economics and democratic governance that require reconceptualization in the light of ecological limits, including the notions of fungibility of system functions, discounting, intergenerational equity, and external costs. It also discusses the question of the continuing viability of democratic governance systems to meet the requirements of ecological accommodation. Overall, the paper defends the thesis that by continuing to ignore fundamental aspects of the natural world upon which human economic activity draws, the management and governance of contemporary political economies will gradually erode the capacities to perform these functions and to fulfill these goals, and they will lose their social and ethical legitimacy.

Keywords:

• ecology
• political economy
• economics
• governance
• ethics

Notes

1.Many of the questions and perspectives outlined here are currently being studied in The Project on an Ecological Political Economy, which I co-direct with Peter Brown and David Smith. This is a collaborative project of the Center for Humans and Nature, the New School for Social Research Graduate Philosophy Faculty, and the Yale University Interdisciplinary Bioethics Center. This project also interfaces with a parallel project on ‘A Normative Foundation for Ecological Economics and Tools for its Assessment’ currently underway at McGill University and York University. The Ecological Political Economy project focuses on the relationship between economic theory and democratic governance from an ecological standpoint. It undertakes a critical re-examination and reconstruction of conceptual frameworks in the field of economics in light of contemporary scientific perspectives on ecology, biodiversity, and energy systems. It also examines the democratic governance process and asks whether that governance can bring about the behavioral and institutional changes necessary if society is to achieve ecologically sustainable social and economic practices.

2. Personal correspondence.