BAR: Brazilian Administration Review (Jul 2009)
A Theoretical Essay on Sustainability and Environmentally Balanced Output Growth: Natural Capital, Constrained Depletion of Resources and Pollution Generation
Abstract
The fact that today’s activities are imposing a heavy burden on the earth's capacity has led to an increasing interest in environmental issues. It is emphasized that rapid production growth has exhausted natural resources and polluted the environment. The objective of this essay is to offer a clear definition of natural capital, connect it to a qualitative concept of sustainability and, supported by two analytical models and a set of studies on related environmental literature, to show that sustainability can be attained via imposition of controls over production processes that use depletable natural resources and generate pollution. The methodology used contemplates an integrative approach combining a qualitative (seeking definitions)-analytical (appraising models) apparatus to reach a new conceptual perspective to conceive sustainability. As the main essay’s contribution, it is showed that sustainability can be reached if compensation is allowed for, i.e., stocks of renewable being augmented as production depletes the stocks of nonrenewable natural resources. Moreover, that result is possible even considering nondecreasing output production, an important finding to contrast with the current environmentally based output growth literature, which asserts that slowing down output production is the only way to obtain sustainability.
