The greening of technological progress: An evolutionary perspective

This article provides insight into technology-economy-ecology linkages which may help to define and accomplish environmentally sustainable development. An evolutionary perspective is adopted in which economic growth and technological change are viewed as a complex, non-linear, path-dependent process, driven by short-term benefits instead of longer- term optimality. The article discusses the externality issues of technological change and the need for institutional adaptation, and talks about the relationship between economic growth and particular trajectories of technological change. It is stated that some of the present technological trajectories have reached their environmental limits and need to be replaced by environment-friendlier trajectories. However, such transitions are hindered by technical, economic and institutional barriers since the new trajectories have not yet benefited from ‘dynamic scale and learning effects’ and because the ‘selection environment’ is adapted to the old regime. The determinants of the decision processes to generate and adopt cleaner technologies are identified and analysed, and some policy issues of stimulating environment-friendlier technologies are discussed.