A History of Ecological Economics as Political Thought, 1980–2000
What should a sustainable relationship between society, the economy, and nature look like? Climate change has spurred renewed interest in political questions on the environment, and their history. But ideas about how the environment should be managed—ideas that are political in character—are often found outside of the political movements or works of political philosophy on which historians of political thought tend to focus. This project explores a key part of this kind of covert history: a significant but understudied body of thought that was developed within the academic field of ecological economics (EE) between 1980 and 2000. At this time, the politics of the environment in national and international institutions increasingly came to rely on market solutions and economic instruments. EE developed concepts which, while ostensibly focused on economics, were deeply political in the sense that they incorporated conflicting views on human nature, what a good life means, what an economy fundamentally is, and what goals society should strive towards. This project studies ideas developed in EE as part of the history of political thought by teasing out such underlying views and relating them to broader historical contexts. This will be done by historical analysis of debates around four vividly debated and influential concepts in EE that have had impacts beyond the academic realm: ecosystem services, natural capital, steady state economy, and coevolutionary development.
Final report
Concepts and frameworks from economics play a central role both in the governance of the environment, most notably climate change, and in environmental movements. The political influence of the economics of the environment is pervasive as it structures the government of the fundamental ecological conditions of existence for our societies. The project A History of Ecological Economics as Political Thought, 1980-2000 has examined the relation between economics as a discipline and mode of governance and the environment. The project has done so focused on a time period when this relation was both consolidated in the sense that economics became a key disciplinary expertise in political administration especially in the environmental arena, and was vividly debated. The project has examined discussions about the relation between economics as a form of knowledge and the environment, with a focus on the recurring question of whether and, if so, how the value of nature can be sufficiently well expressed in economic terms.
The original plan was modified in the course of the project in the sense that the initial plan to focus on four key concepts in ecological economics (ecosystem services, natural capital, steady state economy och coevolutionary development) was adjusted to instead center on the multi-faceted question of the potential limits of nature’s “economization”. This historical debate turned out to better capture the issues and developments that they project aimed to historicize. The project has also examined the history of the competing explanations of what aspects of nature defy economic description and why.
The most important results from the project have been yielded by an historical examination of the debate within and around ecological economics from the 1970s until the early 2000s about how well and under what circumstances economic language can be relied on to govern the environment. This discussion has usually been interpreted by historians as a conflict between political pragmatism on the one hand and a morally grounded critique and value system on the other. This project has instead resulted in a different interpretation.
The first principal result of the study is that the debate about the environment of economics identified specific aspects of global nature that were “uneconomizable” in the sense that they were structurally impossible to capture and measure in economic terms. Importantly, this argument was not a moral one, but was grounded in the idea that there were inherent hurdles within economics to express the complexity and largely unknown workings of the biosphere on a global level. This is a different argument from the points that nature has an inherent value or that (arguments that were also present in these debates). It was instead an argument about nature’s life-supporting functions on a planetary scale as impossible to calculate or even express in economic terms. My historical study of this debate further demonstrates that the notion of the uneconomizeable aspect of nature was gradually marginalized within the environmental economic academic discussions. I have been able to show this through applying conceptual historical perspectives on the developments of the concepts ecosystem services and biodiversity in the 1970s and through the 90s.
The second principal result is that the argument about the uneconomizeable aspects of nature have lacked a consistent terminology, and have often been conveyed through metaphors and anecdotes. The first two results are demonstrated and discussed in article (1). In contemporary environmental historical debate, these aspects of nature have been pinpointed and named, and are now referred to as arguments about planetary habitability. This aspect of the global environment has therefore existed in environmental and economic debates for a long time, but they have not been identified as a clear position and discernable tradition in political environmental thought. The "missing terminology", that in conceptual history would be called a concept without a term, has contributed to this unclarity in environmental intellectual history.
The project’s third principal result is to show that the economic discussions of the uneconomizeable aspect of nature constitute an important contribution to the contemporary debate on planetarity in intellectual history, and the history of concepts of planetary habitability. The project has in this way yielded new questions about how uneconomizeable planetary aspect of nature have been conceptualized in the past. This result has consequences for the discussions within the so-called planetary turn about how to articulate as a political issue the global biosphere as a creator of favorable life-conditions on a global scale. I have discussed these consequences in articles (1) and (2), and in a longer review essay (3).
The project’s results have been communicated principally through two scholarly articles published in high-raking international journals (1) and (2), and a longer review essay (3), also published in a high-ranking international journal. I have also discussed more fundamental issues in the study of economic and environmental ideas in an edited volume published in Swedish (4). Furthermore, I have communicated my results at a number of international workshops and conferences, for example at the University of Bologna, University of Venice, University of Nottingham, Ecoles des Mines in Paris, the museum of natural history in Brussels, University of Oslo, University of Bern, and University of Oxford. I have also presented a still unpublished paper with some further results on the role of ecological economics at the environmental department of the World Bank in the late 1980s and 90s at a European environmental history conference in Uppsala in August 2025 (European Society for Environmental History conference). During the project, I have developed and consolidated cooperation with researchers at the Saxo Institute and the Center for Applied Ecological Thinking (CApE), both at the University of Copenhagen. I have spent shorter research visits at both institutions, and have more activities planned with scholars there in the coming year.
The project has generated new research questions about how different ideas of the uneconomizeable aspect of nature have been articulated within and around economics during the age of the environment, i.e. the time since 1960. I have spent the last months of the project writing a book proposal and a first chapter of a book that builds on and develops this new question resulting from the project. I am currently in dialogue with a US-based high-ranking academic press that has expressed strong interest in publishing this book. I plan to submit an application for a sabbatical grant from RJ to complete this book project.
The original plan was modified in the course of the project in the sense that the initial plan to focus on four key concepts in ecological economics (ecosystem services, natural capital, steady state economy och coevolutionary development) was adjusted to instead center on the multi-faceted question of the potential limits of nature’s “economization”. This historical debate turned out to better capture the issues and developments that they project aimed to historicize. The project has also examined the history of the competing explanations of what aspects of nature defy economic description and why.
The most important results from the project have been yielded by an historical examination of the debate within and around ecological economics from the 1970s until the early 2000s about how well and under what circumstances economic language can be relied on to govern the environment. This discussion has usually been interpreted by historians as a conflict between political pragmatism on the one hand and a morally grounded critique and value system on the other. This project has instead resulted in a different interpretation.
The first principal result of the study is that the debate about the environment of economics identified specific aspects of global nature that were “uneconomizable” in the sense that they were structurally impossible to capture and measure in economic terms. Importantly, this argument was not a moral one, but was grounded in the idea that there were inherent hurdles within economics to express the complexity and largely unknown workings of the biosphere on a global level. This is a different argument from the points that nature has an inherent value or that (arguments that were also present in these debates). It was instead an argument about nature’s life-supporting functions on a planetary scale as impossible to calculate or even express in economic terms. My historical study of this debate further demonstrates that the notion of the uneconomizeable aspect of nature was gradually marginalized within the environmental economic academic discussions. I have been able to show this through applying conceptual historical perspectives on the developments of the concepts ecosystem services and biodiversity in the 1970s and through the 90s.
The second principal result is that the argument about the uneconomizeable aspects of nature have lacked a consistent terminology, and have often been conveyed through metaphors and anecdotes. The first two results are demonstrated and discussed in article (1). In contemporary environmental historical debate, these aspects of nature have been pinpointed and named, and are now referred to as arguments about planetary habitability. This aspect of the global environment has therefore existed in environmental and economic debates for a long time, but they have not been identified as a clear position and discernable tradition in political environmental thought. The "missing terminology", that in conceptual history would be called a concept without a term, has contributed to this unclarity in environmental intellectual history.
The project’s third principal result is to show that the economic discussions of the uneconomizeable aspect of nature constitute an important contribution to the contemporary debate on planetarity in intellectual history, and the history of concepts of planetary habitability. The project has in this way yielded new questions about how uneconomizeable planetary aspect of nature have been conceptualized in the past. This result has consequences for the discussions within the so-called planetary turn about how to articulate as a political issue the global biosphere as a creator of favorable life-conditions on a global scale. I have discussed these consequences in articles (1) and (2), and in a longer review essay (3).
The project’s results have been communicated principally through two scholarly articles published in high-raking international journals (1) and (2), and a longer review essay (3), also published in a high-ranking international journal. I have also discussed more fundamental issues in the study of economic and environmental ideas in an edited volume published in Swedish (4). Furthermore, I have communicated my results at a number of international workshops and conferences, for example at the University of Bologna, University of Venice, University of Nottingham, Ecoles des Mines in Paris, the museum of natural history in Brussels, University of Oslo, University of Bern, and University of Oxford. I have also presented a still unpublished paper with some further results on the role of ecological economics at the environmental department of the World Bank in the late 1980s and 90s at a European environmental history conference in Uppsala in August 2025 (European Society for Environmental History conference). During the project, I have developed and consolidated cooperation with researchers at the Saxo Institute and the Center for Applied Ecological Thinking (CApE), both at the University of Copenhagen. I have spent shorter research visits at both institutions, and have more activities planned with scholars there in the coming year.
The project has generated new research questions about how different ideas of the uneconomizeable aspect of nature have been articulated within and around economics during the age of the environment, i.e. the time since 1960. I have spent the last months of the project writing a book proposal and a first chapter of a book that builds on and develops this new question resulting from the project. I am currently in dialogue with a US-based high-ranking academic press that has expressed strong interest in publishing this book. I plan to submit an application for a sabbatical grant from RJ to complete this book project.