The subject of green economics, a particular and more modern view on an already well established academic discipline, is growing in popularity and importance. There is a great number of people who believe that the existing mainstream economic thinking is increasingly loosing relevance when current social, technical, environmental and economic issues are debated.
A long history of different streams of thought and critique has helped to develop the science or art of economics further over many decades, green economics is currently the strongest such alternative development.
At the same time there does not appear to be an independent body in existence that could give the work in this area a reliable structure. There are already a great number of people working on subjects that are relevant for the development of a different approach in economics. Most of these publications and activities remain however uncoordinated and take place in publications that have a different general theme and hence remain unnoticed for people who regard this new development as most relevant.
The existing economic discipline has furthermore, a particular set of normative concepts that do not allow a significant influence of green economic thinking to make any impact on it. In fact, it does not accept any input, if this input is not in line with currently accepted contemporary conventions. These founding concepts limit the debate to an outdated assessment of reality.
Green economic logic needs to be developed independently from existing structures to a convincing level so as to make a challenging contribution to the development of economic knowledge generally. This process is currently suppressed as every small attempt to take a different view of economic problems is instantly responded to with a slight modification of argument or formation of modified assumptions from the conventional economic mainstream, so that the benefit of a significant change to the point of view can not be achieved.
The new institute will entirely focus on the development of an alternative view to economic questions and problems.
Economics having a much wider definition within the Institute, incorporating social, cultural and environmental values on an equal level with conventional questions of material values for human consumption.
A particular problem is that due to the lack of structure in which the subject is addressed, there is a great variety of different perspectives and definitions that are hindering the integration of the knowledge gained into a coherent approach.
In addition a greater deal of discipline and academic rigour needs to be applied to the subject to develop concepts of a high academic standard of research and teaching. Currently people are teaching in colleges or discuss the subject, who have not a principal qualification in economics as their ideas have fallen outside the accepted norms of the subject. There is then no gidance or control over the level of quality and how they teach it to others. These people do have some strong affinity to the subject and have read some publications, often quite alone. For them such an Institute could provide the resources and guidance they need to provide themselves and their students with confidence that they are in touch with others and in contact with the best of current thinking on the subject. However the situation at the moment is that there are many well intended but poorly researched ideas floating around, confusing the subject and making it virtually impossible to concentrate the ideas into a well argued concept.
An academic Institute which is setting standards for members, facilitates debate and research and publishes a regular academic journal would provide the guidelines for high quality progress in the subject and at the same time would set standards for work and results that will be a better basis for the people involved or interested in the subject.
The idea is to set up an independent institute so that continuity can be guaranteed over a long period of time. The institute is not for profit, the aim is to use any proceeds generated to help to achieve its objectives.
