Abstract:

As announced in our previous works, this paper is part of a larger research that deals with sustainable development and environmental protection in extractive industry. In this respect, the aim of this paper is to show how ecologists think about sustainability in view of irreversibility processes. In this respect, this paper identifies other ways of conceptualizing the sustainability problem and looks at ecological approach to sustainability. Hence, efficiency here is necessary but not sufficient for the fairness that is embodied in the concept of sustainability as constant consumption. The pursuit of sustainability can also be helped by encouraging firms to adopt what are sometimes called ‘green design principles’, which would build on better information, as this paragraph attempts to draw, at a general level, some environmental policy lessons. And, finally, the central objective of the last paragraph, then, is to consider how recognition of imperfect knowledge about the future and irreversibility affects resource and environmental economics.