Abstract

National and international economic policy has usually ignored the environment. In areas where the environment is beginning to impinge on policy, as in the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) and the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), it remains a tangential concern, and the presumption is often made that economic growth and economic liberalization (including the liberalization of international trade) are, in some sense, good for the environment. This notion has meant that economy-wide policy reforms designed to promote growth and liberalization have been encouraged with little regard to their environmental consequences, presumably on the assumption that these consequences would either take care of themselves or could be dealt with separately. In this article, we discuss the relation between economic growth and environmental quality, and the link between economic activity and the carrying capacity and resilience of the environment.

Keywords

Carrying capacityNatural resource economicsEnvironmental scienceBusinessEconomicsBiologyEcology

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Publication Info

Year
1995
Type
article
Volume
268
Issue
5210
Pages
520-521
Citations
1826
Access
Closed

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Cite This

Kenneth J. Arrow, Bert Bolin, Robert Costanza et al. (1995). Economic Growth, Carrying Capacity, and the Environment. Science , 268 (5210) , 520-521. https://doi.org/10.1126/science.268.5210.520

Identifiers

DOI
10.1126/science.268.5210.520