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Abstract
Within the field of environmental economics, it is now widely recognized that the goal of sustainable development is principally an-equity, rather than an efficiency issue (Howarth and Norgaard, 1993). This is not to say that economic efficiency is irrelevant to sustainable development, as reducing the quantity of natural resources used up per unit of human satisfaction will clearly help reduce demands on the environment. Achieving Sustainable Development involves achieving equity both within generations (intra-generational equity) and across generations (inter-generational equity). Sustainable development is a requirement to our generation to manage the resource base such that the average quality of life we ensure ourselves can potentially be shared by all future generations (Asheim, 1991).Early workin neoclassical growth theory which incorporated natural resource constraints on economic activity (Solow, 1974; Hartwick, 1977) implicitly modeled SD as non-declining consumption over time, and was concerned with inter-generational efficiency rather than equity. Individuals derive utility directly from the environment, and not just from the consumption goods that are produced partly with natural resources, non-declining consumption has been replaced by non-declining utility as a goal of policy in economic models (Pezzey).