Innovation For Sustainability: African and European Perspectives

Chapter 10 - The Ecological Economics Synthesis for Sustainability

169 CHAPTER 10 Ecology shares with economics the etymology of ‘eco’, which means house in the Greek language. But both ecology and economics have evolved by living in different houses, their ‘eco’ may sound the same, but the eco of ecology, and the eco of economics connote different realities with the same name and with entirely different meanings. This makes it difficult and complex to reconcile a shared sense by bringing out from their separate modes of existence and functioning a common sustainable outcome and logic. Through out history the ecosystem has been a source for extracting energy, material and food supply and dumping of waste and pollution. This extraction from and dumping to the ecosystem continues, to this day despite the growing environmental awareness in the world. The current economic growth goes through an ecologically extractive and dumping logic and all the sustainable discussions have not changed substantially into bringing about a new reality of an ecologically viable way of economic growth. The reason why systems of innovation theory is needed is to provide how ecology and economy can be blended into a system in order to bring outcomes that will sustain economic development at the same time with the sustainability of the environment. A new economics that is grounded in ecology and a new ecology that is grounded in economics and both are grounded in social and geographical reality is much needed to create a new paradigm of sustainable economic development. A system approach makes the relationships among the social, the ecological, the geographical and economic to be bonded. These systemic relationships are not external or extrovert, they are internal, interlinked and self-referential. At the moment the ecology, the social, the spatial and the economic exists in nonsystemic in the sense they are not casually united or networked to blend the qualities that enhance overall environmental and social well being. For a systemic relation among these variables to take place, there must be internal rules for interconnection among them. The internal bonds make the The Ecological Economics Synthesis for Sustainability PostScriptumConclusion 170 interconnections and exchanges to prioritise collaboration and cooperation rather than disruptive competition. A system is not contingent or a field; its main properties are the actors, the activities and the policies internally interact with a logic that can be described and deciphered. The old model is linear with outcomes and consequences that do not bring the sustainability of economy, ecology, space and social wellbeing... The new model must be co-evolutionary with the goal of fulfilling economic growth with the sustainability of ecology, space and social wellbeing. The old model has systems of innovation for competitive economic growth, to achieve high GDP growth by pursuing singularly national and sate interest. The higher the GDP and the fiercer the competition, the more the outcome becomes at the expense of ecology, social inequality and spatial unevenness. The new model reverses this high competitive and exclusively economic growth path with a new system of innovation that bond, interlink, network and embed with each other the economy within ecology and not, as it is taking place now, continue at the expense of ecology, social inclusiveness and regional and spatial disparities. We have two different models of how the innovation systems approach may be utilised to construct and help design an economic growth strategy that comes at the cost of the ecological, spatial and social relations. This is the current dominant model. Attempts to include ecological concerns in this Figure 1 Rethinking innovation system approach for ecologically / socially sustainable development and growth Outcomes High growth at the expense of ecology social inequality and spatial uneveness Outcomes Growth with sustainable ecology social inclusiveness and spatial justice NSI for competitive economic growth NSI for achieving high GDP growth Reframing NSI for ecolically sustainable economic growth NSI for socially inclusive economic growth Co-evolutionary Linear Old model New model CHAPTER 10 171 THE ECOLOGICAL ECONOMICS SYNTHESIS FOR SUSTAINABILITY logic hardly change the primary and original economic logic. The attempt has been to include ecology within economics into something like economical ecology. The new model needs to change economics with a new logic that embeds the economic with ecology, space and social wellbeing at the same time. This poses a major challenge for innovation systems approach. Research that explores this systematically in Africa is needed. The different chapters in this volume try to address in part the spectrum of issues...