A Pandemonium: Sustainability Under Uncertainty from a Perspective of Environmental Economics

Hazel Kizilgun, Tolga Aksoy

Abstract: Despite of its globally recognized importance, as it is accepted more widely, the concept of sustainability has continuously suffered from ambiguity. This ambiguity probably arises because of the wide-ranging meaning of sustainability itself as it encloses a process rather than an event which already occurred or will or expected to be happened in a specific point in time. Not only has its long-run structure led to a struggle with the problem of uncertainty, obscurities on sustainability also comprise its expansive usage on various fields of work including environmental sciences, economics and business operations. Adding to its complexity arise by its very nature, not only studies that has been made on sustainability appreciably range among the different fields but also studies of the same fields are mostly self-contradictory. This paper thus attempts to dissipate clouds even albeit a bit by discussing sustainability as it only focuses on economics as a specific field. (JEL Classification: Q20, D60, D90, Q56)

Keywords: sustainability, uncertainty, environmental economics, sustainable development