Abstract
The two most widely discussed subjects concerning the economics of the environment are sustainable development and climate change. The frequently cited definition of the first (“Sustainable development is development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs… [It] must not endanger the natural systems that support life on Earth…”, WCED 1987: 42, 44–45) explicitly stresses the needs of future generations and acknowledges that the decisions we take today may have effects far into the future. The second involves processes that may have very long delays between action (cause) and effect and where the ecological and economic effects may be large. In both cases, valuation of benefits, costs, and effects at different points in time is of primary importance for decision-making. It is therefore surprising that the approaches to intertemporal valuation used in these areas are crude and undifferentiated.
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Månsson, B.Å. (1999). Stakeholder approaches to intertemporal valuation. In: Ring, I., Klauer, B., Wätzold, F., Månsson, B.Å. (eds) Regional Sustainability. Contributions to Economics. Physica, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-58683-5_3
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-58683-5_3
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