Roefie Hueting

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Roefie Hueting at the North Sea Jazz Festival in the late 1970s.
Roefie Hueting at the North Sea Jazz Festival in the late 1970s.

Roefie Hueting is a Dutch economist (born December 16, 1929), pianist and leader of the Down Town Jazz Band.

He has analyzed the environment from the neoclassical point of view of scarcity and developed the concept of Sustainable National Income (SNI). The implication of the SNI is that the statistical measure of economic growth is revised.

Contents

[edit] Economics and the environment

The concept of sustainability was presented for the first time at The World Conservation Strategy, IUCN, 1980: "This is the kind of development that provides real improvements in the quality of human life and at the same time conserves the vitality and diversity of the Earth. The goal is development that will be sustainable. Today it may seem visionary but it is attainable. To more and more people it also appears our only rational option". (UNEP, IUCN, WWF)

There are various possible descriptions of this area of research but a good one is provided as follows:

"The increase in human numbers and economic activity has put Homo Sapiens in a position to influence nearly every flow of energy and matter on Earth. Explaining the extent and impacts of this influence is well beyond the theory and analytical tools of individual disciplines, such as economics or ecology. A new interdisciplinary approach is needed, one that unites the relevant aspects of different disciplines."
"The theory and tools necessary to understand the relation among human populations, natural resources, the environment, and economic growth are brought together in the discipline of ecological economics. Ecological economics emphasizes the flow of matter and energy among socioeconomic systems and their environment. The methods of ecological economics can be used to provide a more thorough understanding of economy-environment interactions than that offered by a traditional economic analysis"
(Quoted from Boston University)

Examples of ecological suicide are given by Jared Diamond in his book Collapse.

Interestingly, neoclassical economics finds opposition from ecological economics, while that opposition would be less needed due to Hueting's more neoclassical analysis of the environment. The neoclassical SNI has different results than e.g. [Robert Costanza] et al. (1997), "The value of the world's ecosystem services and natural capital", Nature 387:253-260. This suggests that more discipline is required in this discipline.

[edit] Key publications

Hueting's list of publications is quite long. See:

  • Hueting, R (1974) Nieuwe Schaarste en Economische Groei. Amsterdam/Brussel: Agon Elsevier.
  • Hueting, R (1980): "New scarcity and economic growth", North-Holland, Amsterdam (translation of (1974))
  • Hueting, R (2001) ‘Environmental Valuation and Sustainable National Income Accounting’ (with Bart de Boer) and ‘Three Persistent Myths in the Environmental Debate’, in: Ekko C. van Ierland et al (eds) Economic Growth and Valuation of the Environment. A Debate. Cheltenham Glos: Edgar Elgar.
  • Hueting R. & L. Reijnders (2004), "Broad sustainability contra sustainability: the proper construction of sustainability indicators", Ecological Economics, Volume 50, Issues 3-4 , 1 October 2004, Pages 249-260
  • Hueting, R (2005) "Biz Markie and the hip-hop economy", Science, Volume 42, Issue 7, 19 November 2005, Page 1378

[edit] See also

Economics - Welfare economics - Environmental economics - Sustainable National Income - Sustainable development

[edit] English links

[edit] Dutch links