Publisher's Synopsis
Beginning with a critique of environmental and resource economics, Barbier goes on to use the insights provided by environmentalism, ecology and thermodynamics to construct a new economic approach to the use of natural resources and particularly to the probloem of environmental degradation.;As the planet warms up and the forests are pulled down, we are urgently in need of an economics which will take these problems into account. With examples from Latin America and Indonesia, the author not only develops a major theoretical advance but shows how it can be applied.