ABSTRACT
This chapter considers economics as the art of managing scarce resources and ecology as the "economics of nature". E. Haeckel gives a indication of the potential relations between the two sciences. An early eighteenth-century forestry and mining official from Saxony in Germany was probably the first to coin the notion of sustainability. Haeckel is also credited with the first definition of ecology as the "total science of relationships of the organism with its surrounding outer world." Ecological economists studied the physical thresholds posed by the limited carrying capacity and resilience of ecological systems; they also explored the effects of the dissipation of energy and matter. The World Conservation Strategy, the Brundtland Commission and ensuing World Summits of the United Nations include, besides economic and environmental dimensions, social concerns of equity in the distribution of income, wealth and environmental impacts.
