Integrating Ecology and Economics via Regional Modeling

Abstract

This paper identifies two possible meanings for the notion of integration of disciplines: (1) strong, in which the old disciplines are, in effect, merged, and a new discipline emerges using some combination of the insights of the old ones; and (2) weak, in which each discipline continues to use and refine its own paradigm, appropriate to the system it studies, but in which they together create combined models of the interactions between the two systems. I then argue that strong integration will never be possible for ecology and economics but that weak integration is possible, useful in the world of environmental policy development, and intellectually challenging. The meaning and challenges of weak integration are explored further by reference to a multidisciplinary regional environmental modeling exercise of 20 yr ago–the Delaware Estuary Region air and water pollution control model constructed at Resources for the Future. Finally, the problem setting assumed for the Delaware (short‐term, steady‐state, conventional pollutants) is contrasted with the new problems that cry out for integrated modeling (long‐term, stochastic, exotic pollutants with poorly understood chronic effects).