Making ‘Soft’ Economics a ‘Hard Science’: Planning Governance for Sustainable Development Through a Sustainability Compass

Earlier research presented the need for a critical re-evaluation of economics in reference to its original definition of οἰκονομία (oikonomia) or ‘household management’, referring to the effective management and allocation of resources for meeting human needs. This is an attempt to reframe the concept of ‘hard economics’, into one which is holonic and rejects closed, oversimplified and anthropocentric valuation of goods and services according to individual utility and preference. Economics cannot be isolated from other natural systems but must incorporate hard evidence about them, integrating human and natural systems into a unique understanding. The approach aims at addressing the on-going conflict between human development and sustainability, and strives to develop social learning processes about systems’ sustainability and to generate criteria to support evidence-based decision-making. The emergence of empirical evidence is facilitated by multi-disciplinary social learning that integrates qualitative and quantitative information and knowledge from different fields of science.