Ecological Economics Lecture 03 25th March 2010 Tiago Domingos Assistant Professor Environment and Energy Section Department of Mechanical Engineering Collaboration: Rui Mota

What is Sustainable Development? Brundtland report (1987) – “Development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own need.” Intra- and inter-generational equity Anthropocentric Sustainability of what? non-declining aggregate output or consumption, non-declining utility, non-declining aggregate resources (productive base), non-increasing pollution, … Weak vs. Strong Sustainability We choose non-declining utility as the criterion for sustainable development some call this Weak Sustainability, but we don’t agree  this still misses the intra-generational component