Rethinking Ecological Economics: Towards a Coherent Discipline for a Sustainable Future

By Arild Vatn

Ecological economics has emerged as the most important critical response to mainstream economics and its limited understanding of the role of nature in economic processes. It has opened new research frontiers, inspired innovative teaching programs, and challenged economists and policymakers alike to take biophysical limits, sustainability, and justice seriously. Yet for all its achievements, ecological economics remains a heterogeneous field. Its philosophical foundations, theoretical assumptions, and conceptions of human action often pull in different – and at times contradictory – directions.

Rethinking Ecological Economics is a response to this situation. The book’s ambition is straightforward but demanding: to help develop ecological economics into a coherent discipline that provides a strong and credible platform for analyzing sustainability challenges and for exploring pathways toward a sustainable future.

Why rethink ecological economics?

Early proponents of ecological economics criticized neoclassical economics for failing to acknowledge biophysical limits to economic activity and for treating environmental degrada­tion as a marginal concern. Interdisciplinarity therefore became a defining feature of the field, drawing on insights from ecology, physics, ethics, and the social sciences. Pluralism was openly endorsed.

The emphasis on pluralism also generated problems. Ecological economics came to encompass positions ranging from lightly modified neoclassical models to fundamentally different institutional and socio-political perspectives on the economy. While pluralism and debate are essential to intellectual progress, the absence of a shared core has limited the capacity of ecological economics to advance in a cumulative and self-critical way. Without some agreement on foundational assumptions, it becomes difficult to assess progress, identify weaknesses, and sharpen analytical tools.

This book argues that ecological economics needs to focus on greater coherence. This does not mean enforcing a new orthodoxy, but rather clarifying what defines the discipline: its subject matter, philosophical foundations, understanding of economic processes, and norma­tive commitments.

What the book covers

At the heart of Rethinking Ecological Economics lies a reformulation of what economics itself is about. Rather than defining economics as the study of choice under scarcity or as the mechanics of markets, the book advances a provisioning-oriented definition. Economics, it argues, is concerned with how human societies organize systems of provisioning to meet human needs within a finite biophysical world and within specific social and political contexts.

Economic systems are human constructions, and the values advanced in production and consumption depend on how they are structured. Present institutional arrangements tend to privilege powerful short-term individual interests that endanger the Earth’s life-support systems. The book lays the groundwork for analyzing how long-term common interests can be given priority and discusses how respect for Earth system boundaries can be ensured through changes in political and economic institutions. The position is developed in several steps.

First, the book emphasizes that ecological economics is inherently committed to long-term sustainability, precaution, and justice. The field cannot plausibly claim to be value-neutral. Moreover, the book rejects strong anthropocentrism and insists that the integrity of the biophysical environment must be treated as a fundamental concern of economic analysis.

Second, it stresses that the world is stratified. Economic processes are embedded in, and dependent upon, physical, biological, social, and political strata. Each level exhibits emergent properties that cannot be reduced to those below it, yet all are interdependent. Understanding sustainability therefore requires attention not only to thermodynamics and ecosystem func­tioning, but also to institutions, power relations, and political decision-making.

Third, the book introduces critical realism as a philosophical foundation for ecological economics. A realist ontology, combined with epistemological humility and a structured methodological pluralism, offers a way to address complexity, emergence, and causality without collapsing analysis into either positivism or relativism. This stance supports a shift in emphasis – from merely observing empirical regularities to identifying the underlying mechan­isms.

Fourth, Rethinking Ecological Economics challenges the mainstream economic model of human action. Rather than treating individuals as context-free utility maximizers, the book advocates an institutional understanding of action, informed by sociology and classical institutional economics. Human behavior is shaped by institutions (conventions, norms, formal rules) and values that vary across settings – e.g., acting as citizens, political or economic agents. People are capable of acting according to multiple forms of rationality, ranging from individual to social. Institutional contexts define which forms of rationality are expected, encouraged, and legitimized.

Finally, the book emphasizes that creating institutional contexts favoring social rationality lies at the center of building a sustainable society. Economic arenas are not ‘natural’; they are created and shaped through political struggles over values, property rights, regulations, and collective priorities. Sustainability, therefore, cannot be achieved through technical fixes alone. It requires engagement with value conflicts, distributional concerns, and questions of legi­timacy. Basically, it is about advancing deep structural changes that make sustainable action both possible and meaningful.

How the argument unfolds

The book begins by outlining the historical context of ecological economics and advancing a philosophical foundation for the discipline. The biophysical, social, and institutional elements central to ecological economics are presented across a sequence of chapters and integrated into a coherent analytical framework. The book introduces legitimacy – rather than efficiency – as a central criterion for evaluating economic arrangements. Different economies and institutional arrangements are analyzed to illustrate historical variation in politically constructed systems of provisioning, with particular emphasis on the distinctiveness of their underlying logics and mechanisms. Finally, the various elements of the book are brought together in a discussion of what deep structural change toward sustainability may entail.

Throughout, the emphasis is on coherence, analytical usefulness, and the best available understanding of the key mechanisms involved. The aim is not to offer a simple blueprint for sustainability, but to provide conceptual tools that make it possible to think more clearly about feasible and legitimate pathways forward.

Who the book is for

Rethinking Ecological Economics is written for scholars, advanced students, and practitioners engaged with sustainability, environmental policy, and political economy. It will be of particular interest to ecological economists, heterodox economists, and social scientists seeking a more integrated understanding of the economy-environment relationship. The book is also intended as a teaching resource, helping to clarify what it means to approach economics from an ecological and institutional perspective.

An invitation to carry the project further

The challenges humanity faces today are profound. Notably, the analytical tools we use when analyzing them matter. This book is an invitation to take ecological economics forward – to strengthen it as a basis for analyzing pathways toward a sustainable future in which social justice, political realities, and the complexities of natural processes and human action are fully accounted for. Readers are invited to engage critically with the arguments developed and, ideally, to carry the project further. Developing a coherent ecological economics is not the task of a single book or author, but it is a task worth pursuing together.

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Dr. Arild Vatn is the Professor Emeritus of Environmental Sciences, Department of International Environment and Development Studies, Norwegian University of Life Sciences, Ås, Norway