ABSTRACT
Indicators of the interaction of environment and economy need to be combined for measuring the sustainability of the natural environment and the economy. Different schools of thought gave rise, however, to a persisting polarization between economists and environmentalists. The former seek to evaluate economic performance by monetizing environmental effects as costs and benefits, whereas the latter use norms and standards for physical indicators to measure success or failure in their strategies. This chapter describes an operational framework that might help overcome this polarization. The framework confronts concepts of ecological, economic and developmental sustainability with their physical, monetary and hybrid measures. It suggests assessing and ultimately integrating the assessments of the sustainability of economic growth, environmental quality and broadly defined development. The framework serves also as the basic structure of this book.
