ABSTRACT
This chapter looks at a challenge to standard economic growth, relating to the impacts of economic growth on the environment and the extent to which finite planetary limits might make unlimited gross domestic product (GDP) growth infeasible. It considers the implications of current environmental issues for economic growth and development. The chapter explores the relationship between economic growth and environmental quality and discusses policies to promote ecologically sustainable development. The social and environmental challenges that have been outlined in the chapter suggest the need for large investment expenditures, many of which are not directly related to increasing material consumption. Employment, price stability, and GDP growth will continue to be issues of great importance-not as ends in themselves, however, but as the means to the broader goals of human development and sustainability. The issues of "human development" discussed in involve a combination of traditional economic growth and new approaches more oriented toward dealing with problems of poverty, inequality, and ecological sustainability.
