Are economists indifferent to or even responsible for the ecological crisis we are facing? This question often arises in public debate. The growth model based on resource accumulation, the use of natural capital and resources as inputs without considering their finiteness, or the portrayal of the homo œconomicus as indifferent to the negative externalities he produces are among the many grievances against economics. However, it would be a mistake to forget that the discipline has historically structured itself around the management of scarce resources and soils under climatic and geographical constraints, by studying the production of crop and livestock systems. For several decades now, economic research has been directing its efforts towards taking better into account the finiteness of natural resources, the negative externalities associated with production and consumption, and the importance of public goods for a more sustainable development, and learning how to integrate them into its models for making recommendations for private decisions and public policies. However, economists sometimes need help to make their voice heard in the public debate, while the transition from research to public policy recommendation can be perilous. The Economic Analysis Council, in its famous note on “Economists in the City” (Benassy-Quéré et al., 2017), had particularly marked the public debate on the role of the economists in societal questions.
Today, economic research has fully embraced environmental and resource management issues, addressing them with a variety of theoretical frameworks, but also with empirical methods to validate (or not) their hypotheses…