Sustainable options: Development lessons from applied environmental economics

This well-researched, important text argues a case for the use of environmental resource economics (ERE) as an analytic framework for the conceptualisation and design of sustainable policy options. Sustainable options integrates economic theories and concepts on the one hand with social and environmental challenges on the other.

Applying ERE in a developing context, like that of South Africa, is critical given the country’s dependence on natural and environmental assets. The sustainability of the economy and the welfare of the country’s people are at stake.

Environmental management is, therefore, an economic concern. This is illustrated clearly in the first section of the book, which examines a broad range of welfare indicators, thus providing an overview of the macroeconomic performance of the South African economy.

Sustainable options is not only for academics and students from the economic, political and biophysical sciences. The book’s hands-on approach and explicit linkages to the real world of economic development makes it invaluable for policy-makers and environmental practitioners faced with the dauting task of making trade-offs between developmental and environmental concerns.