Human Well-Being and the Natural Environment
Editorial Reviews
From Scientific American
Current measures of the quality of life are, by and large, insensitive to our dependence on the natural environment. Dasgupta, a distinguished professor of economics at the University of Cambridge, aims to remedy that. In a style that is both engaging and rational, he argues that the most valid measure of human well-being encompasses not only manufactured assets but also human capital (skills), knowledge (ideas) and the natural environment, which includes "minerals and fossil fuels, soils, fisheries, sources of water, forests and woodlands, watersheds, the oceans, places of beauty and tranquility, and the atmosphere." The sobering picture that emerges from this important book contrasts sharply with the one portrayed in most literature on economic development. Human Well-Being is intended both for scholars and for "the general citizen interested in what are among the deepest and most urgent social problems we face today.
Editors of Scientific American
--This text refers to the
Hardcover
edition.
Book Description
In Human Well-Being and the Natural Environment, Partha Dasgupta explores ways to measure the quality of life. In developing quality of life indices, he pays particular attention to the natuaral environment, illustrating how it can be incorporated, more generally, into economic reasoning in a
seamless manner. Such familiar terms as "sustainable development," "social discount rates," and Earth's "carrying capacity" are given a firm theoretical underpinning. The author shows that, whether we are interested in valuing the state of affairs in a country or in evaluating economic policy there.
The index that should be used is the economy's wealth, which is the social worth of its capital assets.
Dasgupta puts the theory he develops to use in extended commentaries on the economics of population, poverty traps, global warming, structural adjustment programs, and free trade, particularly in relation to poor countries. The result is a treatise that goes beyond quality-of-life measures and
offers a comprehensive account of the newly emergent subject of ecological economics.
With the publication of this new paperback edition, Dasgupta has taken the opportunity to update and revise his text in a number of ways, including developments to facilitate its current use on a number of graduate courses in environmental and resource economics. The treatment of the welfare
economics of imperfect economies has been developed using new findings, and the appendix has been expanded to include applications of the theory to a number of institutions and to develop approximate formulae for estimating the value of environmental natural resources.
Human Well-Being and the Natural Environment,Partha Dasgupta,Oxford University Press, USA,0199267197,Business & Economics,Business / Economics / Finance,Business/Economics,Development - Economic Development,Economics - General,Business & Economics / Economic Development,Development economics,Economics | Environmental,Environmentalist thought & ideology,Social theory
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