Sustainable development indicators: Exploring the objective function

While students of Ecological Economics discuss at length the social and environmental dysfunction associated with the standard economic model (why things go wrong?) and provide generous counsel on how to make things right, there has been singular lack of formalism in the concept of “right” and “wrong”. This paper explores the ontology of sustainable development (SD) indicators within a general context of economic theory and conservation principles, (Mirowski, 1989). These principles are then married to entailment properties of general systems structure, (Rosen, 1991).