088R_The costs ad benefits of environmental sustainability (research summary)

Are you interested in sustainable solutions but unsure about their economic benefits? 

Summary of the article titled The costs ad benefits of environmental sustainability from 2021 by Paul Ekins and Dimitri Zenghelis, published in the Sustainability Science journal. 

Since we are investigating the future of cities, I thought it would be interesting to see how the sustainable solutions compare to their financial investments. This article presents that no conventional cost-benefit analysis is appropriate in this case because it can understate the longterm benefits of sustainable solutions.

As the most important things, I would like to highlight 3 aspects:

Starting early by credibly steering expectations, inducing innovation and directing investment is in all cases better than delay because ‘grow now and clean up later’ is the second highest cost option, only the existential costs of never cleaning up are higher.
There are three broad environmental strategies to deliver sustainable economies: decarbonisation to reduce the level of global warming, detoxification to reduce the emissions or impacts of other pollutants, and dematerialisation to reduce the environmental impacts associated with resource extraction, conversion, and processing.
A cost-effective low-carbon, resource-efficient transition can generate a cleaner, quieter, more secure, innovative, and productive economy for all countries at all stages of development.

You can find the article through this link.

You can find the transcript through this link.

What wast the most interesting part for you? What questions did arise for you? Let me know on Twitter @WTF4Cities or on the wtf4cities.com website where the shownotes are also available.

I hope this was an interesting episode for you and thanks for tuning in.

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