Sustainability under Balanced Natural Capital Uses at the Industry Level: A Theoretical Approach

Informações

Código: GCT2525
Divisão: GCT - Gestão de Ciência, Tecnologia e Inovação
Tema de Interesse: GCT-D - Agregação de Valor e Agronegócios

Autores

Augusto Marcos Carvalho de Sena

Resumo

The fact that today’s activities are imposing a heavy burden on the earth's capacity has led toan increasing interest in environmental issues. It is emphasized that rapid industrialproduction growth has exhausted natural resources and polluted the environment. Also,people in society seem not to base their ‘pro-green’ hysteria in accordance to pragmaticstandards, condemning activities that reduce environment quality and disregarding anyattempt to eventually consider application of some compensation criterion. The objective ofthis article is twofold: offer a definition of natural capital and connect it with the concept ofsustainability; and present two models of environmentally sounded industrial productiongrowth, where formal analysis shows that imposing controls over the uses of depletableresources and generation of pollution led to an unambiguously slowdown in industrialproduction. The main contribution relates to mixing the two models in one to reach a feasibleoutcome that is both in ‘fine-tune’ with sustainability and industry production growth. Weconclude that it is possible, both in theory and practice, to manage depletion of nonrenewablenatural resources in such a way that total stock of natural capital can even increase, e.g., viarenovating renewable natural resources as a compensation device.

Abrir PDF