Capital Accumulation and Technical Conditions along Sustainable Growth Paths

The objective of our paper is to identify the conditions of capital accumulation that can guarantee a sustainable pollution level and, consequently, a growing carrying capacity of the ecosphere for humankind. We follow a typical approach of ecological economics, utilising laws and models derived from the ecological sciences to model some aspects of economic systems and their interaction with “other” ecological systems. The main aim pursued is to demonstrate that, under particular conditions, the earth’s carrying capacity for humankind can grow over time as the economic output does. A positive population growth rate can be the effect of a continuous shifting of the carrying capacity upwards, produced by capital accumulation and technological progress. The analysis is made utilising simplified economic models, linking some simplified ecological assumptions to multisectoral growth model, with production of goods, “bads”, and abatment services. In particular, we connect a multisectoral model with depollution activities elaborated by Leontief in the seventies with the analysis by vertical integrated sectors conceived by Pasinetti.