Pardee Center Hosts Co-Author of “Beyond GDP” Paper

Professor Robert Costanza, co-author of Beyond GDP: The Need for New Measures of Progress, which is paper No. 4 in The Padee Papers series, was the guest at a lunch with a group of Boston University faculty at Pardee House on April 8. Costanza, Gund Professor of Ecological Economics and Director of the Gund Institute for Ecological Economics at the University of Vermont, was on campus to deliver a seminar titled "The Global Recession as an Opportunity to Improve Sustainability" for the Department of Geography and Environment.

Pardee House lunch particpants included Geography and Environment Deparment faculty members Cutler Cleveland, Robert Kaufmann and Department Chair Mark Freidl; Tom Kunz and Les Kaufman of the Biology Department; and Pardee Center Director Adil Najam and staff member Cynthia Barakatt. Ida Kubiszewski, a doctoral candidate at the Gund Institute, also participated. The group discussed sustainability issues and the need for universities to increase interdisciplinary collaboration in research and teaching.

Costanza described a project he is co-leading called "Integrated History and Future of People on Earth" (IHOPE), a highly interdisciplinary and collaborative project researching the multiple social-ecological factors the led to conditions in which past socieities have collapsed. He also talked about a new online journal he is co-editing called Solutions that will be launched later this year.

You can download the "Beyond GDP" paper from the publications section of this web site.