







































Ecology, Economy, and Society–the INSEE Journal 7(1): 157-160, January 2024 

BOOK REVIEW 

Reconciling Ecological Sustainability and Economic 
Development in Developing Countries 

Nandan Nawn 

Achiransu Acharyya, ed. 2023. Environmental Economics in Developing Countries: 
Issues and Challenges. First South Asia edition, Abingdon, Oxon, and New 
York, NY: Routledge.  

The volume titled Environmental 
Economics in Developing Countries: 
Issues and Challenges in honour 
of Rabindranath Bhattacharya, 
edited by Achiransu Acharyya, 
is an expansive and 
comprehensive collection of 
theoretical and applied works 
on the subject. Besides a 
foreword by Partha Dasgupta, 
it carries 15 essays by 32 
authors as well as an 
introduction and an overview 
by the editor. The diverse 
geographical backgrounds of 
the authors—Bhutan, Canada, 
France, India, Kenya, Nepal, 
Pakistan, Spain, the UK, and 
the USA—serve as recognition 
of the contributions of the 
honouree. RNB, or Rabin-da 
as he was popularly known, 
started teaching natural 

 
 Professor, Department of Economics, Jamia Millia Islamia, New Delhi 110025, India. 
nnletter@gmail.com  

Copyright © Nawn 2024. Released under Creative Commons Attribution © 

NonCommercial 4.0 International licence (CC BY-NC 4.0) by the author.  

Published by Indian Society for Ecological Economics (INSEE), c/o Institute of Economic 
Growth, University Enclave, North Campus, Delhi 110007.  

ISSN: 2581–6152 (print); 2581–6101 (web).  

DOI: https://doi.org/10.37773/ees.v7i1.1195  

mailto:nnletter@gmail.com
https://doi.org/10.37773/ees.v7i1.1195


 Ecology, Economy and Society–the INSEE Journal [158] 

 

resource economics in 1987 at North Bengal University, which is located at 
the foothills of the eastern Himalayas in West Bengal, India. 

The collection covers multiple aspects of the theory–practice–policy 
continuum of both environmental and natural resource economics, with a 
focus on a few developing countries. It is well-known that the intertwining 
of people and nature in these spaces poses additional challenges in finding 
pathways for economic development that are least pollution intensive as 
well as ecologically most benign. Since most people depend on natural 
resources for their livelihoods in these nations, these countries must partake 
in certain trade-offs involving ecological sustainability and economic 
development, which are amply covered in the Foreword and the 
Introduction. 

One of this book’s positive attributes is its inclusivity; it has something for 
everyone interested in the subject, across various levels of knowledge and 
skills. Young researchers may learn how to write a literature survey from 
“Electrification and Development: Empirical Evidence on the Effect of 
Electricity Provision on Household Welfare” (Ch. 4) or “Regional Climate 
Vulnerabilities in South Asia: A Development Perspective” (Ch. 9). 
Experienced researchers may gain insights on the use of sophisticated 
econometric techniques from “Incentives for Rural Households to 
Establish Tree Cover on Agricultural Land in Andhra Pradesh, India” (Ch. 
7) or “Minimizing Ecological Damage from Road Improvement in Tropical 
Forests” (Ch. 8). Similarly, early-career authors can gain insights on how to 
write a case study from “Household Waste Management and the Role of 
Gender in Nepal” (Ch. 13) and “Fabricated Electric Fencing: A Promising 
Strategy for Reducing Crop Damages from Wildlife in Bhutan” (Ch. 14). 
Additionally, teachers of natural resource economics will likely find it useful 
to include “Forests, Carbon Sequestration, and Ecosystem Services” 
(Chapter 6) in their reading lists as it extends Faustmann’s classic “rotation 
model” by considering the trade-off between carbon sequestration during 
growing periods and other ecosystem services provided by forests once they 
are fully grown. “Three Theories of Growth, Environment and Poverty 
Nexus” (Ch. 1) expands our frontiers of knowledge by questioning the 
applicability of theories predicting a vicious cycle or downward spiral of 
environmental degradation and an increase in poverty. It questions the 
commonly cited trade-off between environmental improvement and 
income growth due to the “presence of institutions and policies securing 
environmental endowments and entitlements to the poor” (p. 47) in 
developing countries. This theoretical approach, which is based on effective 
institutional structures and processes, is complemented using a practice-
oriented lens in “Incentive-based Approaches to Nature Conservation” 



[159] Nawn 

(Ch. 5). The institutional question is addressed at a broader level in 
“Environmental Policy in India: Retrospect and Recent Developments” 
(Ch. 12). “Climate-Smart Agriculture in Developing Economies: An 
Analysis of Strategies and Policies” (Ch. 10) covers matters connected with 
agriculture in developing economies as such but with a focus on South and 
Southeast Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa 

As expected, COVID-19 appears in multiple chapters. The 
interconnectedness between economic development, COVID-19, and the 
depletion of natural capital including biodiversity is thoroughly covered by 
two complementary chapters, “Natural Capital, Pandemic and 
Development: Exploration of Nexus and Solutions” (Ch. 2) and “COVID-
19: A Neo-Malthusian Event—Ecological Links, Challenges, and 
Opportunities” (Ch. 3). The former has a wider range, covering many 
developing countries, while the latter is focused on India. “Pandemic, 
Climate Change, and Sustainable Development” (Ch. 11) addresses the 
same interconnectedness but in a reflective style. 

“Revisiting the Regional Environmental Economics Networks” (Ch. 15) is 
unique to the volume. It offers rarely known insights on processes at the 
level of funding agencies to analyse “the effectiveness of the capacity-
building model used by [Regional Environmental Economics] [...] networks 
in creating locally relevant [...] knowledge and their capacity for fostering 
knowledge dissemination and intake by policymakers for change” [p. 334]. 
The six lessons (pp. 350–53) “learned and challenges that have been faced” 
in the process are a must read for anyone interested in building regional 
networks as such, and not just in environmental economics. It may be 
pertinent to highlight that the authors of this volume were or are connected 
with either the Indian Society for Ecological Economics (INSEE) or the 
South Asian Network for Development and Environmental Economics 
(SANDEE) or both. The honouree was associated with both.1 

 
1 RNB served as a resource person in “Research and Training Workshops” organised by 

SANDEE for many years. The author of this review attended one such workshop in 2010 at 
the Asian Institute of Technology, Thailand. RNB was a member of the sub-committee set 
up by the executive committee (EC) of INSEE in its 29th Meeting (November 30, 2012; 
GIDR, Ahmedabad, Gujrat)—comprising four EC members and chaired by Kanchan 
Chopra—to assess the viability of an “INSEE Journal”. EC in its subsequent meetings 
reflected on the report of the sub-committee and placed it before the general body (GB). In 
its annual meeting (December 5, 2013; Tezpur University Auditorium, Tezpur, Assam) the 
GB “in principle resolved to approve the proposal of the EC to start a journal” and 
“empowered the EC to work out the modalities and start the journal at the earliest” (Source: 
Various minutes of EC and GB meetings). 



 Ecology, Economy and Society–the INSEE Journal [160] 

 

There is some scope for improvement in both copy-editing and typesetting. 
A few illustrations of the same follow: (a) Ch. 9 used both in-text citations 
as well as citations in footnotes—unusual for any citation style; (b) p. 226 
refers to (Toi 2009), which should have been (Tol 2009); (c) Ch. 6 includes 
an in-text citation (The Economics of Biodiversity: The Dasgupta Review 
2021. Dasgupta 2021) on p. 90 with a corresponding entry in the 
bibliography (p. 107)—both are incorrectly typed; (d) a third-level section 
heading is missing on p. 289. All of these could have been avoided with a 
little more care. 

Ordinarily, a Festschrift covers works of the honouree—even if only a 
bird’s eye view—as a part of the introduction. This would have connected 
the honouree with more “students”, something he cherished throughout his 
life, inside the classroom as well as outside. But apart from the omissions 
and commissions mentioned in this and the previous paragraph, this book 
is an appropriate homage to one of the pioneering teachers of economics of 
nature in India. 

Conflict of Interest Statement: There is no conflict of interest, besides 
the ones mentioned in footnote in the previous page. 


