In Defence of Weak Sustainability: A Response to Beckerman
Author(s)
El Serafy, Salah
Abstract
Beckerman had been attacking the concepts of weak and strong sustainability as being fuzzy and unhelpful, claiming that the former concept is but a fall-back position adopted by environmentalists unable to defend strong sustainability. Without dismissing strong sustainability, this article argues that weak sustainability is in fact the earlier concept; it is almost value-free, and belongs to the positive, not the normative, side of economics. It is embedded in ‘keeping capital intact’, a principle initiated by accountants in the Middle Ages and later endorsed by economists and is indispensable for the estimation of income–provided that natural resources are counted in capital. [Note: This article is a response to a paper by Wilfred Beckerman, also in the SSL.]
