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Journal of Environmental Accounting and Management
António Mendes Lopes (editor), Jiazhong Zhang(editor)
António Mendes Lopes (editor)

University of Porto, Portugal

Email: aml@fe.up.pt

Jiazhong Zhang (editor)

School of Energy and Power Engineering, Xi'an Jiaotong University, Xi'an, Shaanxi Province 710049, China

Fax: +86 29 82668723 Email: jzzhang@mail.xjtu.edu.cn


Reconsidering Some of the Earth’s Biophysical Limits to the Long Term Sustainable Development of Humanity

Journal of Environmental Accounting and Management 1(3) (2013) 283--293 | DOI:10.5890/JEAM.2013.08.006

Pëllumb R. Harizaj

Agricultural University of Tirana, Faculty of Agriculture and Environment, Kodër-Kamëz, Tirana, Albania

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Abstract

Humans’ existence as living organisms depends on some essential natural resources and ecosystem services. On the other side, nature has a certain speed of regenerating its resources required by hu- mans. Therefore, the consumption rate of natural resources by soci- ety should be equal to or slower than the nature’s speed of resource recovery in order to avoid overexploitation or degradation. This requires the quantitative definition of the Earth’s bio-physical limits that are crucial for the existence of human life, and monitoring of these limits by identifying the proper indicators of the Earth’s per- formance. A new economic theory designed according to the knowledge offered by pure and applied science might play a key role in achieving the long term sustainability goals of humanity.

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