ABSTRACT
Market systems have adversely affected the environment by: a) failing to deal with negative environmental externalities and b) undervaluing natural resources, leading to their overexploitation and depletion. Governments have sought to deal with the problem through a mix of command-and-control and market-based instruments, with limited success. One of the most potent alternatives for dealing with such market failures is ecopreneurship, which refers to a process by which entrepreneurs introduce eco-friendly (or relatively more eco-friendly) products and process into the marketplace. In this chapter a theoretical framework to assess the emergence of ecopreneurship in a given society or industry is presented. The framework identifies both internal forces (sustainability values, competitive advantage of eco-friendly products/processes) and external forces (powers of the discerning consumer, the discerning investor, enabling policies, regulatory agencies and civil society). A discussion of the Indian case serves to demonstrate the utility of such a framework. The study shows how revitalization of strong cultural values for nature, coupled with a proactive judiciary and incentives under international protocols such as carbon trading, are all converging to facilitate the emergence of ecopreneurship in the country.
