Sustainability and Economics: The Environmental Valuation Controversy

On sustainable development, a fundamental controversy is a value assigned to environmental goods and services. Economics approaches it from two perspectives: the traditional neoclassical approach (environmental economics) and another, more comprehensive one, where different sciences converge (ecological economics). This work offers a critical review of conventional economic theory associated with sustainable development, also highlights the need to assign values to environmental services for better decision-making, in which individual and social preferences are considered, thereby it would advance towards the central goals of sustainable development: economic efficiency, social justice, and ecological sustainability. This paper’s main contribution and novelty are to frame a discussion about the controversy between the various disciplines involved in the commensurability of nature. This link is a necessity of today’s world and must be considered an important issue to enhance sustainable development.