The idea of sustainable development

In this lecture, I demonstrate how very different macroeconomic history begins to look if Nature is included as a capital asset in production activities. The tentative conclusions I draw from the evidence are: (1) high population growth in the world’s poorest regions (South Asia and sub-Saharan Africa) has been an obstacle to the achievement of sustainable economic development there; relatedly, (2) when population growth is taken into account, the accumulation of manufactured capital, knowledge, and human capital (health and education) has not compensated for the degradation of natural capital in South Asia and sub-Saharan Africa and, in all probability, even in the UK and the US; (3) China is possibly an exception to (1) and (2). This article is based on the Keynote Lecture delivered at the international symposium on “Sustainability in an Unequal World”, held in Tokyo on November 24, 2006. The exposition relies on my book, Economics: A Very Short Introduction, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2007. The author is the Frank Ramsey Professor of Economics at the University of Cambridge and a Fellow of St. John’s College, Cambridge.