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Ecosystems Sustainable Economies Committee Charge
SUSTAINABLE ECONOMIES
NACEPT Ecosystems Sustainable Economies Committee"Sustainable
economies" have certain characteristics which allow the current
generation's needs to be met without reducing the stock and value
of the environmental capital needed for future generations. The
Ecosystems Sustainable Economies Committee (ESEC) was assembled
to broadly examine the defining elements of sustainable economies,
and the opportunities for harmonizing environmental policy, economic
activity, and ecosystem management.
The Committee
identified several issues that it felt were essential to successful
integration of economic activity and ecosystem protection. Many
of the issues that the Committee identified are not the primary
responsibility of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. Nevertheless,
the Committee has concluded that EPA must exercise a leadership
role to help bring consensus to these areas, and to integrate
sustainability into the conscious decision making processes of
all stakeholders.
The Committee organized specific issues into three broad categories -- Consensus Building, Measurement and Expanding the Knowledge Base, and Incentive Structure -- but felt that two issues were over-arching -- Scale and Population. All of the issues in the three broad categories occur at different levels of organization -- local, regional, national, and global -- and many environmental problems occur because of incompatible incentives across different scales. As ecosystems are multi-scale, a multi-scale approach to place-based environmental management must be developed that integrates, rather than isolates, these differing scales. A growing world population will stress ecosystems beyond their carrying capacity unless more sustainable economic systems are developed.