ECOLOGY AND ECONOMY - EMERGY SYNTHESIS AND PUBLIC-POLICY IN TAIWAN

The "willingness-to-pay" based approach has been practiced by the neoclassical-oriented environmental economists to shadow price the value of natural environment, which has also been criticized by ecologists as a subjective approach and for lack of the biophysical value basis. This paper presents the methodology of emergy (spelled with an m) synthesis which emphasizes the use of energy as evaluating criteria for threading together antural systems and human economy into a common framework. The national ecological-economic system of Taiwain is used to illustrate the concept of emergy synthesis and the subsequent policy implications. The data of 1960, 1970, 1980 and 1987 were used for the analysis in order to examine the consequential evolving pattern of the rapid economic development during the past decades. In addition, the calculated emergy indices were also compared with several countries to understand further Taiwan's international status in terms of its ecological-economic system. © 1991 Academic Press Limited.