2017 Volume 10 Issue 2 Pages 4-17
In this paper, we employ a unified framework of sustainability assessment by capital stocks to review Professor Kazuhiro Ueta’s work and relevant fields. Socio-metallic study, proposed around 1980, focused on the disconnect between the use and disuse of metal stocks, and was aimed at their reconnection. This concept spawned three relevant fields in modern environmental economics: industrial ecology, economics of waste and recycling, and theory of sustainable development. Also, attempts were made to integrate socio-metallic study and economics, by accounting for material flow and material balance in economic models. More recently, an aggregate index of various capital assets―inclusive wealth―is increasingly used as an indicator of sustainable development; we also review its promises and pitfalls.
