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Economic History and the Environment: New Questions, Approaches and Methodologies

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The Basic Environmental History

Part of the book series: Environmental History ((ENVHIS,volume 4))

Abstract

Ecological economics is enabling economic and environmental historians to enhance their understanding of economic growth, by placing it in a broader perspective of biophysical interactions between nature and society. In this chapter, several ongoing researches and historical debates are examined from this standpoint such as the missing role of energy carriers in GDP growth, the socio-metabolic profiles of past and present societies, the pre-industrial ‘Smithian’ responses to ‘Malthusian’ traps, the role of efficient land-use in breeding livestock to increase agricultural yields, the reasons why the Industrial Revolution began in a high wage and cheap energy economy, the first globalization as a socio-metabolic watershed, and the question of whether there was a general crisis of biomass energies at the coming of fossil fuels era. Research discussing long-term socio-metabolic transitions may contribute to our understanding of how economic growth actually occurred, and which ecological impacts affected the Earth’s life-support systems. Equally, these projects leave room for the institutional settings or ruling actors needed to explain why growth has happened and by whom. Far from naturalising history, the use of ecology in the explanation of human history historialises ecology.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Debier et al. (1986), Worster (1988), McNeill (2000a), Krech III et al. (2004), Hornborg et al. (2007) and Sing et al. (2013).

  2. 2.

    Pasinetti (1981).

  3. 3.

    Hodgson (2007).

  4. 4.

    Ayres and Warr (2005).

  5. 5.

    Ayres (2001).

  6. 6.

    Lucas (2002).

  7. 7.

    van Zanden (2009).

  8. 8.

    Lindert (2004), Acemoglu (2004, 2009), Acemoglu and Robinson (2006) and Aghion and Williamson (1998).

  9. 9.

    Aston and Philpin (1985), Hoppenbrouwers and van Zanden (2001) and Milanovic (2005).

  10. 10.

    Sen (1993, 1999).

  11. 11.

    Easterly (2002) and Helpman (2004).

  12. 12.

    Ayres and Warr (2005).

  13. 13.

    Allen (2009).

  14. 14.

    Georgescu-Roegen (1976).

  15. 15.

    Ayres and Warr (2005).

  16. 16.

    Fischer-Kowalski et al. (2007).

  17. 17.

    Martinez-Alier (2011) and Krausmann et al. (2012).

  18. 18.

    Krausmann et al. (2008), pp. 187–188.

  19. 19.

    Krausmann et al. (2008), p. 199.

  20. 20.

    Brázdil et al. (2005) and Costanza et al. (2007a).

  21. 21.

    Cronon (1983, 1991), Crosby (1986), Cuff and Goudie (2009) and Hornborg and Crumley (2007).

  22. 22.

    Costanzaet al. (2007b), pp. 522–527.

  23. 23.

    Kates et al. (2001) and Haberl et al. (2006).

  24. 24.

    Kander (2002).

  25. 25.

    Bloch (1955–1956), Slicher van Bath (1963), Campbell and Overton (1991), Overton (1996) and Allen (2008).

  26. 26.

    Thompson (1991) and Scott (1998).

  27. 27.

    Landes (1969) and Landes (1998).

  28. 28.

    Postan (1973), Abel (1980) and Grigg (1982).

  29. 29.

    Wrigley (2010).

  30. 30.

    Wrigley (2004). See also Kander et al. (2013).

  31. 31.

    Kander (2008), Warde (2007) and Gales et al. (2007).

  32. 32.

    Sieferle (2001).

  33. 33.

    Martínez Alier (1990) and Fisher-Kowalski (1998).

  34. 34.

    Sacristán (1992) and Foster (2000).

  35. 35.

    De Vries (2001).

  36. 36.

    De Vries (2008a) and Sugihara (2003).

  37. 37.

    Kjaergaard (1994) and Krausmann et al. (2008).

  38. 38.

    Sieferle (2001).

  39. 39.

    Van Zanden (1991).

  40. 40.

    Koning (1994).

  41. 41.

    Leach (1976) and Naredo ( 2004).

  42. 42.

    Pomeranz. (2000) and Allen et al. (2005).

  43. 43.

    Allen (1992, 2009).

  44. 44.

    De Vries (1984) and Wrigley (1987).

  45. 45.

    McKendrick et al. (1983) and De Vries (2008).

  46. 46.

    Wrigley (1987).

  47. 47.

    Warde (2007).

  48. 48.

    Allen (2009).

  49. 49.

    Hobsbawm (1964) and Thompson (1968).

  50. 50.

    Williamson (1997), Horrell and Humphries (1995), Crafts. (1997), Feinstein (1998) and Komlos (1998).

  51. 51.

    Crafts and Harley (1992).

  52. 52.

    Krausmann et al. (2008).

  53. 53.

    Omrod (2003).

  54. 54.

    Hornborg et al. (2007).

  55. 55.

    Goody (2004) and Emmer et al. (2006).

  56. 56.

    Van Zanden (2009).

  57. 57.

    Williamson (2006).

  58. 58.

    Mc Neill (1982).

  59. 59.

    Gadgil (2000) and Gadgil and Guha (1993).

  60. 60.

    Guha and Martínez Alier (1997).

  61. 61.

    Warde (2009).

  62. 62.

    Tello et al. (2006) and Marull et al. (2010).

  63. 63.

    Agnoletti (2006).

  64. 64.

    Smil (1999, 2001).

  65. 65.

    Krausmann (2013).

  66. 66.

    Billen et al. (2009).

  67. 67.

    Parker and Jones (1975) and De Vries (2001).

  68. 68.

    Grigg (1982).

  69. 69.

    Pamuk and Williamson (2000), Pinilla and Ayuda (2007) and Badia and Tello (2014).

  70. 70.

    Tello et al. (2012).

  71. 71.

    Pyne (1997).

  72. 72.

    Grove and Rackham (2001).

  73. 73.

    Cussó et al. (2006a).

  74. 74.

    Martínez Alier (1990).

  75. 75.

    Cussó et al. (2006b).

  76. 76.

    Goodman and Redclift (1991).

  77. 77.

    Fischer-Kowalski and Amann (2001).

  78. 78.

    Shiva and Gitanjali (2002).

  79. 79.

    Aoki and Hayami (2001) and Chang (2002).

  80. 80.

    Fischer-Kowalski et al. (2004).

  81. 81.

    Warde (2006a), p. 284.

  82. 82.

    Warde (2006a), p. 19.

  83. 83.

    McNeill (2000).

  84. 84.

    Shiel (1991).

  85. 85.

    Shiel (2006).

  86. 86.

    Boserup (1965).

  87. 87.

    Lee ( 1986).

  88. 88.

    Campbell and Overton (1991).

  89. 89.

    Bevilacqua (2001) and Garrabou (2005).

  90. 90.

    Allen (2008).

  91. 91.

    Elvin (2009).

  92. 92.

    Cunfer (2005) and Cunfer and Krausmann (2009).

  93. 93.

    Cunfer (2004).

  94. 94.

    Galloway et al. (2004).

  95. 95.

    Tisdale and Nelson (1956).

  96. 96.

    Marull et al. (2008).

  97. 97.

    McNeill (2000).

  98. 98.

    Sieferle (2001).

  99. 99.

    Kovář (1999) and Agnoletti (2006).

  100. 100.

    Krausmann ( 2001).

  101. 101.

    Musel (2008).

  102. 102.

    Haberl et al. (2001).

  103. 103.

    Sieferle (2001).

  104. 104.

    Allen (2009).

  105. 105.

    Bravo (1993).

  106. 106.

    Malanima (2001).

  107. 107.

    Clément (2008).

  108. 108.

    Grove and Rackham (2001).

  109. 109.

    Sieferle (2001).

  110. 110.

    Grove and Rackham (2001).

  111. 111.

    Williams (2003).

  112. 112.

    Malanima (2006), pp. 101–121.

  113. 113.

    Malanima (2006), pp. 116–118.

  114. 114.

    Warde (2006b), pp. 38–39.

  115. 115.

    Guha (1991).

  116. 116.

    Warde (2006b), p. 52.

  117. 117.

    European Environment Agency (2006).

  118. 118.

    Warde (2007).

  119. 119.

    Myllyntaus and Mattila (2002) and Iriarte-Goñi and Ayuda (2008).

  120. 120.

    Williams (2003).

  121. 121.

    Stanhill (1984), Schmid Neset (2005) and Billen et al. (2009).

  122. 122.

    North (1999).

  123. 123.

    Teich et al. (1997) and Sörlin and Warde (2009).

  124. 124.

    Martínez Alier (1998).

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Acknowledgments

This essay has been written in the framework of the linked research projects on Sustainable farm systems: long-term socioecological metabolism in western agriculture funded by The Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, and the Spanish one HAR2012-38920-C02-02 directed by Enric Tello at the University of Barcelona. We thank Leah Temper for her careful revision of the English version.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Facultat d’Economia i Empresa, Universitat de Barcelona, Barcelona, Spain

    Enric Tello-Aragay

  2. Departament d’Economia, Universitat de Girona, Girona, Spain

    Gabriel Jover-Avellà

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  1. Enric Tello-Aragay
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Correspondence to Enric Tello-Aragay .

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  1. DEISTAF, University of Florence, Florence, Italy

    Mauro Agnoletti

  2. Political and International Sciences, University of Siena, Siena, Italy

    Simone Neri Serneri

Glossary

EROI

Energy returns on energy inputs

MEFA

Material and Energy Flow Analysis

HANPP

Human Appropriation of the ecological Net Primary Production

EUROSTAT

The Statistical Office of the European Communities located in Luxembourg. Its main responsibilities are to provide statistical information to the institutions of the European Union (EU) and to promote the harmonisation of statistical methods across its member states

Production function

It is a function that relates the output to the inputs or factors of production used in a production process. The Cobb-Douglass is the most standard in which the output (Y) is produced with two factors, labour (L) and capital (K), and the remaining growth share not explained by the variation of both is explained with the Total Factor Productivity (A). That is, \( Y = A L^{\beta } K^{ \propto } \) where \( \beta + \propto = 1 \) and account for the output elasticities of capital and labour, respectively

TFP

The Total Factor Productivity measures the fraction of economic growth that cannot be explained by the contribution assigned to the increases in capital, labour and land. As it is commonly considered that it grasps the efficiency gains obtained through the combination of factors that participate in a production process taken together, and it is taken as a measure of an economy’s long-term technological change

Exergy

The useful work actually performed by all energy converters which empower human labour and capital goods at its disposal

IPCC

The World Meteorological Organization (WMO) and the United Nations Organization (UNO) created the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) in 1988. The IPCC summarizes the technical, biophysical, socio-economical information to understanding and measure the risk of climate change

LUCC

Land-Use Land-Cover Change programme (http://www.geo.ucl.be/LUCC/lucc.html) examines the transformations undergone by Earth’s vegetal cover over the centuries, in order to identify the main driving forces behind global socio-environmental change, and also to assess its socio-ecological impact

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Tello-Aragay, E., Jover-Avellà, G. (2014). Economic History and the Environment: New Questions, Approaches and Methodologies. In: Agnoletti, M., Neri Serneri, S. (eds) The Basic Environmental History. Environmental History, vol 4. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-09180-8_2

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