Title: Green Economics: setting the scene. Aims, context, and philosophical underpinning of the distinctive new solutions offered by Green Economics

Authors: Miriam Kennet, Volker Heinemann

Addresses: Green Economics Institute, 6 Strachey Close, Tidmarsh, Reading, RG8 8EP, UK. ' 166 Divinity Road, Oxford, OX4 1LR, UK

Abstract: Green Economics positions economics within a very long-term, earth-wide, holistic context of reality as a part of nature. It also incorporates and celebrates |difference|, diversity, equity and inclusiveness within its concepts of society and community. Its philosophy is to manage economics for nature as usual, rather than to manage the environment for business as usual. The paper introduces the new Green Economics discipline and reviews its shape and philosophical underpinnings. By combining economics with knowledge from the natural sciences, we argue that Green Economics can incorporate a much wider, more practical, multidisciplinary range of knowledge than other schools of economics. The paper suggests how Green Economics can offer unique insights into four of the key areas (|eco|, intellectual, political and moral) of today|s significant and mounting problems and highlights how its novel insights provide new solutions. The development of this new branch of Economics is justified in this text by reviewing the main contradictions, deficiencies, assumptions, conventions, and inherent normative concepts to be found in dominant neo-classical economic thinking, which have accumulated over the past two centuries.

Keywords: green economics; ecological economics; environmental economics; environment; sustainability; social justice; environmental justice; holistic; methodology; long-term; specificity; philosophy; sustainable development.

DOI: 10.1504/IJGE.2006.009338

International Journal of Green Economics, 2006 Vol.1 No.1/2, pp.68 - 102

Published online: 22 Mar 2006 *