Chapter Summary

Sustainable futures depend on how we use and conserve our resources and our environment. Our definitions of resources shape the ways we identify and use them, as well as the ways we theorize their future use. Ecological economics brings the insights of ecology into more traditional economic analysis. It calls for consideration of the role of natural capital and ecological services in planning and accounting. A resource is anything with potential use for creating wealth or giving satisfaction. Minerals and fossil fuels are examples of nonrenewable resources. Biological organisms and ecological processes are renewable and self-reproducing, but can be exhausted by overuse.

Questions about the scarcity of resources and their effects on economic development are important in determining what kind of society we have. Open-access systems encourage narrow self-interests and resource exploitation. In communal property resource systems, self-governing, locally based community management has successfully sustained natural resources for centuries in many cases.

Cost-benefit analysis can be a useful tool in environmental management. Ultimately, our aim should be to internalize costs that are now treated as externalities. GNP is used as a measure of economic progress, but new measures for human well-being and environmental health, such as the Human Development Index, are needed.

Green business and green design are efforts to reduce the environmental and social costs of the things we buy and use. These efforts are important contributors to sustainability, and they have proven profitable for businesses that use them.

Cities are where almost half of us live and where many of our resources are used. Cities are growing worldwide, especially in developing countries. Only Africa and South Asia remain predominantly rural, and cities are growing rapidly there as well. A variety of push-and-pull factors contribute to this urban growth. The consequences of urbanization in many developing areas include overstressed infrastructure, pollution, and crowding. Among the worst problems faced in these cities are traffic congestion, air pollution, inadequate or nonexistent sewers and waste disposal systems, water pollution, and housing shortages. Millions of people live in appalling slums and shantytowns, yet these people raise families, educate their children, learn new jobs and new ways of living, and have hope for the future.

In wealthier countries, problems of cities include urban decay and sprawl, and inefficiency and pollution associated with our reliance on cars and on low-density suburban development patterns. Planners propose a variety of strategies that may help make cities in both the developed and the developing world healthier, safer, and more environmentally sound and sustainable environments.