Urban and regional development decisions have long-term, often irreversible impacts on the natural and built environment. These changes impact society’s wellbeing, yet rarely occur in the context of well understood economic costs and benefits. The cumulative effects of these individually small land use decisions are also very large. Ecological economics provides several frameworks that could inform more sustainable development patterns and practices, including ecosystem service valuation (ESV) and the Genuine Progress Indicator (GPI). This dissertation consists of a series of articles addressing urban and regional development from an ecological economic perspective, using GPI, ESV, and evaluation of tax and subsidy programs. The GPI has been well developed at the national level but is of growing interest to stakeholders and citizens interested in better measuring social welfare at local and regional scales. By integrating measures of built, human, social, and natural capital, GPI provides a more comprehensive assessment of social welfare than consumption-based macroeconomic indicators. GPI’s monetary basis allows these diverse metrics to be integrated, and can also facilitate intra- and inter-regional comparisons of social welfare. Ecosystem services are also increasingly recognized as important contributors to human well-being, particularly in areas where they are becoming scarce due to rapid land conversion. Despite recent advances in measuring and valuing ecosystem services, they are often not considered in decision making because of both scientific uncertainty and the difficulty in weighing these values in tradeoffs. Techniques to speed the valuation process while maintaining accuracy are thus in high demand. As public recognition of the value of ecosystem services grows, ESV can serve as the basis for a variety of policy tools, from inclusion in traditional permitting or conservation easement programs to new programs such as payments for ecosystem services. Ideally planners, citizens, and decision makers would better weigh the diverse costs and benefits of land use decisions as part of development and conservation planning. By quantifying changes in: 1) contributors to social welfare and 2) the value of ecosystem services across the urban-rural gradient, the GPI and ESV frameworks developed as part of this dissertation can thus be used to better inform local and regional policy and planning.

The importance and contribution of healthy ecosystems to human well-being and poverty reduction have gained increasing awareness and attention in recent years. Despite this wide-scale acknowledgement, the majority of the benefits yielded by ecosystem services are currently exogenous to the economic system, so their value is not equally weighted in decisions that directly impact their functioning and welfare. Public understanding of the importance of these contributions and the necessity of healthy ecosystems and sound management is vital for their conservation. However, thorough understanding of what ecosystems are, how they function, and how to manage them on a systems-based level for sustainability, known as ecological literacy (ecoliteracy), is lacking in various publics. In fact, at the nexus of the complex environmental problems facing the world today is the lack of understanding of the impact of individual and aggregate actions, particularly on ecosystems. The emerging field of ecological economics seeks to reconcile the roots for this disconnect. By developing new methods of ecosystem management that simultaneously address complex economic, social and environmental needs, ecological economics seeks to develop a comprehensive, systems-based approach to engender global sustainability. Ecolitercy is a critical component to developing new methods in development and management. This dissertation research examines and applies several ecological economic tools – rapid assessment valuation, payments for ecosystem services and service-learning education – to determine how to best promote ecoliteracy and ecosystem management on individual and collective levels. There are several findings that highlight the importance of and areas of improvement for integrating such tools in a comprehensive sustainable development approach. (1) Ecosystem services valuation, which assigns economic values to the benefits humans derive from natural environments, is a framework that can provide vital insight into the ecological costs of large-scale development projects. It can also be used as a way to incorporate local/traditional knowledge into decision-making. (2) Payments for ecosystem services programs, while effective in conserving and regenerating forests in developing countries, still have significant areas of improvement to be considered for similar future projects. Particularly, it has not been demonstrated that they are effective mechanisms for poverty alleviation, as it has been suggested in the literature. In fact, if not meaningfully supported, poor participants may face serious trade-offs and their involvement in such programs may negatively affect social capital in the community. (3) Service-learning, or working with communities to address real world-problems through a rigorous academic framework, is more effective at developing critical, ecological and civic literacy in students and develop more knowledgeable agents to solve the world‘s complex problems. Overall, these new and other tools must be developed to specifically address the ecological illiteracy that so often guides development decisions and be integrated into a comprehensive, inclusive framework for sustainable development.

In order to better manage progress toward improved human welfare, governments and organizations around the world have begun to report on more comprehensive indicators of environmental, social, and economic conditions. The Genuine Progress Indicator (GPI) has proven useful as a measure of economic welfare by incorporating changes in environmental conditions, resource stocks, social capital, income distribution, and other non-marketed economic activity. Studies at the local scale have also found the GPI to be an effective tool for informing debate and stimulating questions about the nature of the economic development process. In this study, the GPI methodology is applied to Baltimore City, Baltimore County, and Maryland in order to explore how sustainable economic welfare in the Baltimore region has changed from 1950-2005. A comparison among per capita GPI trends in four US cities shows Baltimore to have the highest average annual growth rate over the study period. Comparisons are made between per capita GPI and Gross Domestic Product (GDP), the most widely recognized measure of national economic performance. Analysis of the trends at all three scales show that GDP growth does not correlate well with changes in welfare as measure by GPI. This implies that Baltimore City, Baltimore County, and Maryland could be in a period of uneconomic growth, when the social and environmental costs of further economic growth outweigh the benefits of such growth. However, the underlying methods used in sub-national applications of the GPI inevitably lead toward certain results, giving rise to an indicator framework that favors particular policy and development outcomes. This situation is defined as indicator bias. Since indicator bias can inadvertently lead society toward undesirable conditions, key assumptions that contribute to indicator bias in the GPI are tested for how they influence the final GPI results. The costs of crime, long-term environmental damage, and depletion of non-renewable natural resources categories are explored in more depth. GPI is found to be an imperfect measure of true progress, but it is believed to be an improvement over GDP for guiding modern society towards a more sustainable and desirable future. More work is needed to incorporate uncertainty, fine-tune the underlying GPI methodology, and build broad consensus about how to measure economic performance and social progress. By providing information about social, ecological, and economic conditions of the region, though, the Baltimore GPI does inform citizens and decision-makers about a wide range of impacts resulting from the modern ‘GDP growth’ paradigm

Coastline communities have experienced a marked increase in human populations over the last few decades. This increase in population places disproportionate pressure on coastal ecosystems to provide economic services to support local economies. At the same time, overuse of these services can aid in the destruction of the ecosystems responsible for them. Seagrass ecosystems are mainly found near coastlines, and are typically a chief provider of some of these economic goods and services. Many previous studies have documented the ecological functions of this seagrasses. Unfortunately, our increasing knowledge of seagrass structure and function has not been fully incorporated into economic models estimating their value. In this dissertation, I focus on the seagrass ecosystem in southern Biscayne Bay, and simultaneously study the ecological dynamics of the seagrass beds, and estimate its economic value. This value is based on recent ecological models in the literature as well as data I collected from the system. I focused on Biscayne Bay due to, 1) the relevance that this question had to the relationship between Biscayne Bay and the Miami metropolis, and 2) the lack of existing reliable models that explore this relationship in this area. More specifically, I became very interested in this question while working for Biscayne National Park, where such a model would have improved seagrass restoration work taking place there. I found that southern Biscayne Bay is dominated by Thalassia testudinum, with other seagrasses following a spatial pattern primarily determined by salinity and water column nutrient distribution. Syringodium filiforme was mostly found east of the islands, Halodule wrightii was mostly found near the shoreline, and Halophila engelmenii was spotted at only two of the 190 sites visited. T. testudinum distribution was largely unaffected by nutrient enrichment at all sites, but it appeared to induce severe herbivory further from the coastline. For the calendar year 2004, we deduced using a Total Ecosystems Valuation (TEV) model that seagrass ecosystems potentially contributed over $198 million US dollars to the local economy. We argue that a simultaneous understanding and use of both ecological and economic models is important for future conservation efforts of seagrass ecosystems.

Da chegada do colonizador aos dias atuais, o processo de destruição da Amazônia foi cada vez mais acelerado, processo este que não existia no período pré-colonial. Segundo nossa análise, tal destruição da região está diretamente vinculada a entrada e avanço do Sistema de Mercado (como conceituado por Karl Polanyi) na região. Assim, apresentamos e discutimos a história econômica da região, destacando os papéis do poder público e do poder econômico nas transformações ocorridas. Para o último século, analisamos dados, principalmente dos censos, para evidenciar as transformações ocorridas na região. Concluímos que o poder político ao longo do tempo, cooptado pelo poder econômico, favoreceu a aceleração do processo de degradação da região com políticas de cunho desenvolvimentista que favoreceram mais à grupos de fora da Amazônia do que aos amazônidas. Mesmo existindo crescimento econômico marcante em alguns períodos, não se identifica um processo de desenvolvimento na história da região, muito menos de desenvolvimento sustentável. O Sistema de Mercado se manifesta na região principalmente em forma de latifúndios, o que indica que a solução da crise regional passará por um processo de distribuição de terras. No final, apresentamos um exemplo de empreendimento econômico sustentável do Acre (Projeto RECA) para discutirmos as propostas de desenvolvimento da perspectiva neoliberal localista e as possibilidades de disseminação das atividades econômicas sustentáveis na região. / From the arrival of the colonizers to the present day, the process of destruction of the Amazônia was increasingly accelerated, a process that did not existed in the pre-colonial period. According to our analysis, such destruction in the region is directly linked to the advance of the Market System (as conceptualized by Karl Polanyi) in the region. Thus, we present and discuss the economic history of the region, highlighting the roles of the governments and of the economic power in the transformations occurred. For the last century, we analyze data, especially the census, to highlight the changes occurring in the region. We conclude that the political system over time, coopted by the economic power, favored the acceleration of the process of degradation of the region focusing on development policies that favored more external groups than the Amazonians. While there are remarkable economic growth in some periods, a process of development was not identified in the history of the region. The Market System manifests itself in the region mainly in the great land concentration, which indicates that the solution for the regional crisis can be constructed through a land distribution process. We finalize the work, presenting an example of sustainable economic enterprise in the Acre state (RECA Project) to discuss the development proposals of the neoliberal localist perspective and the possibility of dissemination of sustainable economic activities in the Amazônia.

Ecological Economics has emerged across disciplines, and has begun to disentangle, not only the relationship between biophysical earth systems and economic activity, but also, fundamental relationships between objectivity, power, value, ethics, perspective and purpose. In part, this thesis represents an effort to illustrate basic transdisciplinary concepts necessary for understanding the project of Ecological Economics. At present, Ecological Economics is challenged by a seemingly infinite number of available considerations, with a relatively narrow repertoire of impactful mechanisms of control. Given this, it is apparent that the application of Cybernetics to Ecological Economics might provide insights. Cybernetics can help to lend concise language to manners for implementing control and also help to navigate the paradoxes which arise for self- regulating systems. While Cybernetics played an early role in the formulation of the relationship between the economy and an environment with available energy, second- order cybernetics can help to formulate the autonomy of Ecological Economics as a self-regulating system and shed light on the epistemology and ethics of circularity. The first article of this thesis identifies occasions when Ecological Economics has confronted circularity, and explores options moving forward. Ultimately, confronting paradox and circularity provide the means for the substantiation of Ecological Economics. The food system is prominent within Ecological Economics discourse. It serves as a good example of the ‘emergence’ of coordinated activity. In Cybernetics jargon, we can think of the ‘Food System’ as a symbol for the redundancy found in linked characteristics of particular Ecological-Economic inquiry. For instance, when we consider the food system we can be sure that we are dealing with resources that are essential, both rival and non-rival, excludable and non-excludable, and also highly sensitive to boundaries in scope, and scale, and thus highly sensitive to political and social change. In this sense, the food system acts as a symbol for the coordination of activity, and produces an output which is an input to the Ecological Economic ‘boundary’ between the Economy and the Ecosystem. The second article of this thesis provides an analysis of GHG emissions within the Chittenden County Foodshed. We conclude that urban agriculture, dietary change and agro-ecological production in concert, provide emission reductions which are not achieved when these options are considered separately. Given these conditions, we see mitigation beyond 90% of current emissions.

The main aim of this paper is to reveal if development and current state of the Turkish Economy are sustainable. Instead of the research tools offered in environmental economics, the holistic approach of ecological economics is used to answer this question. Within that context, the Turkish Economy is assessed within the concept of steady-state economics. Having assessed the data related to the three institutional changes suggested within the concept, this study shows the obstacles and advantages of the Turkish Economy to move towards the steady-state, in other words, sustainability.

The purpose of this study is to show the importance of the geography of demand in ecological economics and to provide guidance for future research efforts to incorporate it. The analysis examines gaps in the literature that deal with the spatial variability of potential beneficiaries to ecosystem services and demonstrates the quantitative importance of defining the geography of demand. Since ecosystem service value is anthropocentric, incorporating those who receive benefits into the economic accounting method is a necessary requirement. As the total benefits received from ecosystem functioning declines over space, so too does its economic value. There are two study areas in Illinois used in the analysis. The first is the Des Plaines River wetlands in the Chicago metropolitan area and the other is the Cache River wetlands in rural southern Illinois. This study finds large ranges of value for ecosystem services when the decay of value over space is incorporated. Also, these findings suggest a minimum spatial requirement depending on the scale of aggregation. For a county level scale, a minimum economic jurisdiction of 1,000 km is suggested. Finally, the presence of large numbers of beneficiaries near an ecosystem has the greatest influence on value when the economic jurisdiction is spatially limited. From the steepest distance decay function to the shallowest the Des Plaines wetlands returned a range of values from approximately $971,000 to $2.3 billion and the Cache wetlands values ranged from $0 to $2.5 billion. This paper is not intended to be a case study for the economic valuation of a specific area but rather a demonstration of the necessity for a spatial economic framework that accounts for the delivery and receipt of ecosystem services over space.

Da chegada do colonizador aos dias atuais, o processo de destruição da Amazônia foi cada vez mais acelerado, processo este que não existia no período pré-colonial. Segundo nossa análise, tal destruição da região está diretamente vinculada a entrada e avanço do Sistema de Mercado (como conceituado por Karl Polanyi) na região. Assim, apresentamos e discutimos a história econômica da região, destacando os papéis do poder público e do poder econômico nas transformações ocorridas. Para o último século, analisamos dados, principalmente dos censos, para evidenciar as transformações ocorridas na região. Concluímos que o poder político ao longo do tempo, cooptado pelo poder econômico, favoreceu a aceleração do processo de degradação da região com políticas de cunho desenvolvimentista que favoreceram mais à grupos de fora da Amazônia do que aos amazônidas. Mesmo existindo crescimento econômico marcante em alguns períodos, não se identifica um processo de desenvolvimento na história da região, muito menos de desenvolvimento sustentável. O Sistema de Mercado se manifesta na região principalmente em forma de latifúndios, o que indica que a solução da crise regional passará por um processo de distribuição de terras. No final, apresentamos um exemplo de empreendimento econômico sustentável do Acre (Projeto RECA) para discutirmos as propostas de desenvolvimento da perspectiva neoliberal localista e as possibilidades de disseminação das atividades econômicas sustentáveis na região. / From the arrival of the colonizers to the present day, the process of destruction of the Amazônia was increasingly accelerated, a process that did not existed in the pre-colonial period. According to our analysis, such destruction in the region is directly linked to the advance of the Market System (as conceptualized by Karl Polanyi) in the region. Thus, we present and discuss the economic history of the region, highlighting the roles of the governments and of the economic power in the transformations occurred. For the last century, we analyze data, especially the census, to highlight the changes occurring in the region. We conclude that the political system over time, coopted by the economic power, favored the acceleration of the process of degradation of the region focusing on development policies that favored more external groups than the Amazonians. While there are remarkable economic growth in some periods, a process of development was not identified in the history of the region. The Market System manifests itself in the region mainly in the great land concentration, which indicates that the solution for the regional crisis can be constructed through a land distribution process. We finalize the work, presenting an example of sustainable economic enterprise in the Acre state (RECA Project) to discuss the development proposals of the neoliberal localist perspective and the possibility of dissemination of sustainable economic activities in the Amazônia.

Le travail de Sraffa avait pour but decritiquer le paradigme néoclassique marginaliste,en prouvant qu'une théorie économique basée surdes données objectives concernant la productionet la répartition du surplus pouvait expliquer lesvaleurs d'échange. L'économie écologique avaitégalement initialement pour but de proposer unecritique de l'économie de l'environnementnéoclassique, en mettant en avant que lesdécisions en matière d'environnement nepouvaient seulement se baser sur des analyseséconomiques. Ma thèse étudie les relations entreces deux écoles de pensée.Ma conclusion principale est que l'analyse deSraffa ne rejette pas l'évaluation monétaire de lanature parce que la nature n'a pas d'importancepour la production économique (de ce point devue-là, la nature a au contraire une importanceinfinie) mais parce que le discours économiquen'est pas capable d'exprimer la valeur de lanature. La théorie de Sraffa aide à définir ce quepeut dire le discours économique et sur quelsobjets ontologiques il peut porter. Sur cette base,une économie écologique Sraffienne peut êtreconstruite et peut servir d'alternative àl'économie de l'environnement néoclassique. / Sraffa's original work was intendedto be a decisive criticism of the neoclassicalmarginalist paradigm, trying to reveal that aneconomic theory based on objective data aboutproduction and distribution of the surplus canexplain exchange values. Ecological economicswere also intended as a criticism of theneoclassical environment economics, trying toexpress the fact that decisions about theenvironment cannot be taken according toeconomic analyses alone. My thesis investigateshow both schools interrelate.The main point of my conclusion is that Sraffa'sanalysis rejects natural resources in hisexplanation of exchange value, not becausenature is not important for the economic process(the contribution of nature is infinite in thisrespect), but because the economic discourse isnot able to express its value. The theory of Sraffahelps to define what the economic discourse cansay and what are the ontological objects of theeconomic analysis. From there, a Sraffianecological economics can be built on Sraffa'sbasis, and it would help to construct a classicalalternative to the neoclassical environmentaleconomics.