SOURCE: The Encyclopedia of Earth
Lead Author: Robert Costanza (other articles)
Article Topic: Ecological economics
This article has been reviewed and approved by the following Topic Editor: Joshua Farley (other articles)
Last Updated: July 10, 2009
Abstract. This chapter is the story of my 30 year collaboration and friendship with Herman Daly, from our early days together at LSU, the formation of the International Society for Ecological Economics (ISEE) and the journal Ecological Economics, our time together in Maryland while he was at he World Bank and I was at the University of Maryland, and subsequently while we were together at the University of Maryland, and up to the present. The story describes our joint quest to create a more sustainable and desirable society by understanding and managing our world as an integrated whole and acknowledging humans’ role as a part of the ecological systems that support them. Understanding the complex linkages between ecological and economic systems and reinventing economics as a life science are topics that we both pursued, separately and together. We coined the term “natural capital” to capture the important contributions of ecological systems to human well-being. The world may finally be ready to listen to these ideas and use them to create a more sustainable and desirable future.