Deconstructing The Dasgupta Review and Biodiversity Economics
In collaboration with Green Finance Observatory I conducted a critical assessment of the UK Treasury sponsored review on biodiversity economics by Sir Partha Dasgupta, that appeared February 2021. In May we were able to respond with both a peer reviewed journal article and a policy brief. 

Doughnut Economics, Sustainable Development and Apologists for Growth
At the beginning of the year I had a brief public encounter at the UN SDG Conference (online) with Kate Raworth on her ‘Doughnut’ and the failings of this approach to help understanding of actual economies or the structure of capitalism.  The criticisms I posed are available on two short videos available via the Talks&Lectures/On Camera section. I have also criticised this approach elsewhere and devoted a short section of my Apologists for Growth article to the topic.

New Book! Out now in Spanish
In 2020 I completed the manuscript of Foundations for Social Ecological Economics.  This is already published in Spanish Fundamentos para una economía ecológica y social ISBN: 978-84-1352-124-4 Madrid: FUHEM Ecosocial & Catarata (2020) 252 pages. A related interview in Spanish is available here. The English edition is held-up due to the fact that Routledge, who had accepted to publish, demanded all language rights after having told me they would not do so.  So the Spanish speaking world will have the advantage for some time, while I pursue other language editions and an alternative English language publisher. Unfortunately English/American publishers contracts, terms and conditions are increasingly about profiteering, author unfriendly and show little concern for quality and content of books in the new ‘slice and dice’ electronic world where selling bits and pieces of information as many times as possible has become the game.

Forthcoming and Recent

I have two articles in the special issues of Globalizations on ‘Economics and Climate Emergency’ that will appear in hard copy 2021 but has been online since 2020. The first is a research article relating the Coronavirus (COVID-19) to the ecological and economic crisis. The second addresses the failure of economists (both orthodox and heterodox) to follow through on their claims of crises in capitalism and ecology while exposing the social and political structure of dominant growth economies and how different economists act as apologists for growth.  A piece was published in The Ecological Citizen explaining how corporate capitalism and financialisation have captured the environmental movement in a passive revolution.

The journal Ecological Economics had a ‘special issue’ on 30 years of existence and looking forward to the next 30 years. Due to the mess which is Elsevier’s ever more commercial journal production process the papers do not actually appear in a single issue! My paper addresses the paradigmatic struggles in the field and specifically the failure to recognise the market paradigm as distinct from the growth paradigm and that the heart of the field is in a third, the social ecological economics paradigm. A tale of three paradigms: Realising the revolutionary potential of ecological economics.

An interview with Russian wikinews was published in April 2020 covering the Coronavirus (PDF copies here in Russian and English). In December I did a 30 min radio interview for Global Research Radio which appears in the second part of an hour long programme; I cover economic growth, Green New Deal, the industrial-military complex ENGO co-option by corporations and a few other things.

Forthcoming: A short reply on a critical comment on my work defining the field of ecological economics will appear in the journal Ecological Economics (PDF, free to download until 16 December 2020, external link). A short article will appear in Portuguese in the magazine Manifesto.  A paper on cost-shifting that explains why externality theory is a deliberately erroneous interpretation of pollution, and much else, will appear in Spring 2021 in the journal Cahiers d’Économie Politique/Papers in Political Economy.

Discussion Papers

Clive L. Spash (2019) Time for a Paradigm Shift: From Economic Growth and Price-Making Markets to Social Ecological Economics (PDF external link, free to download)

Clive L. Spash Making Pollution into a Market Failure Rather Than a Cost-Shifting Success: The Suppression of Revolutionary Change in Economics. (PDF external link, free to download)

Clive L. Spash (2019) Substantive Economics and Avoiding False Dichotomies in Advancing Social Ecological Economics (PDF external link, free to download)

José A. Tapia Granados and Clive L. Spash (2019) Policies to Reduce CO₂ emissions: Fallacies and Evidence from the United States and California. (PDF external link, free to download)

Clive L. Spash and Tone Smith (2019) Of Ecosystems and Economies. (PDF external link, free to download)

My recent working/discussion papers are now generally posted on  Research Papers in Economics (external link, free to download).  For a complete chronological listing, including all such papers, past and present, see Discussion/Working Papers.

Journal Articles and Editorials

Stoddard I, Anderson K, Capstick S, Carton W, Depledge J, Facer K, Gough C, Hache F, Hoolohan C, Hultman M, Hällström N, Kartha S, Klinsky S, Kuchler M, Lövbrand E, Nasiritousi N, Newell P, Peters GP, Sokona Y, Stirling A, Stilwell M, Spash C, Williams M (2021) Three decades of climate mitigation: Why haven’t we bent the global emissions curve? (external link) Annual Review of Environment and Resources, 46 forthcoming.

Clive L. Spash, and Frédéric Hache (2021) The Dasgupta Review deconstructed: An exposé of biodiversity economics. (PDF, free to download, external link) Globalizations (available online from 27th May).

Clive L. Spash (2021) Apologists for growth: Passive revolutionaries in a passive revolution. (PDF, free to download, external link) Globalizations 18 no.7: 1-26.

Clive L. Spash (2021) ‘The economy’ as if people mattered: Revisiting critiques of growth in a time of crisis. (PDF, free to download, external link) Globalizations 18 no.7: 1-18.

Clive L. Spash (2021) A reply to Levrel and Martinet. Ecological Economics 179 January: 1-2. (PDF, free to download until 16 December 2020, external link).

Clive L. Spash (2020) The capitalist passive environmental revolution. (PDF, free to download, external link) Ecological Citizen 4 October: 63-71.

Clive L. Spash (2020) Days of decision. (PDF, free to download, external link) Environmental Values 29 no.4: 387-396.

Clive L. Spash (2020) A tale of three paradigms: Realising the revolutionary potential of ecological economics. (external link) Ecological Economics 169 March: 1-14.

Clive L. Spash (2020) The revolution will not be corporatised! (PDF, free to download, external link) Environmental Values 29 no.2: 121–130.

Clive L. Spash (2019) SEE Beyond Substantive Economics: Avoiding False Dichotomies. (external link) Ecological Economics 165 November: 1-6.

Clive L. Spash (2019) Social ecological transformation, whether you like it or not! (PDF, free to download, external link) Environmental Values 28 no.3: 263-273.

José A. Tapia Granados and Clive L. Spash (2019) Policies to reduce CO₂ emissions: Fallacies and evidence from the United States and California. (external link) Environmental Science and Policy 94 April: 262-266.

Clive L. Spash, and Tone Smith (2019) Of ecosystems and economies: Re-connecting economics with reality. (PDF, free to download, external link) Real World Economics Review 87 March: 212-229.

Major Edited Volume in Paperback as of 2019

Clive L. Spash, editor (2017) Routledge Handbook of Ecological Economics: Nature and Society. (external link). This book brings together 50 new articles, commissioned by the editor from 63 international authors. The Handbook is the most comprehensive single source of original work on Ecological Economics to date. It addresses the meaning and content of Ecological Economics as a field of knowledge covering both critical social and natural science perspectives. A special emphasis is placed upon the importance of social ecological economics.  It dispels the myth of there being no alternatives to mainstream economics and orthodox thinking, analysis and tools.

Book Chapters

Clive L. Spash and Hendrik Theine (2018) Voluntary Individual Carbon Trading: Friend or Foe? In The Cambridge Handbook of Psychology and Economic Behaviour. Edited by Alan Lewis. Cambridge: University Press, pp.595-624.

Clive L. Spash, (2017). Social Ecological Economics. (PDF) In Routledge Handbook of Ecological Economics: Nature and Society. Edited by Clive L. Spash. Abingdon and New York: Routledge, pp.3-16.

Clive L. Spash and Karin Dobernig (2017). Theories of (Un)sutainable Consumption. In Routledge Handbook of Ecological Economics: Nature and Society. Edited by Clive L. Spash. Abingdon and New York: Routledge, pp.203-213.

Clive L. Spash and Clemens Gattringer (2017) The Ethical Failures of Climate Economics. In Adrian Walsh, Sade Hormio and Duncan Purves (eds.) The Ethical Underpinnings of Climate Economics. Abingdon: Routledge pp.162-182

Review Articles

The Future Post-Growth Society. Review of Rob Dietz and Dan O’Neill Enough is Enough: Building a Sustainable Economy in a World of Finite Resources. London: Earthscan. x +240 pp. Development and Change 46 no.1, (2015): 366-380.

On the Radio

BBC Radio 4, Shared Planet “Beaver Business” hosted by Monty Don. Debate with Tony Juniper and Clive L. Spash on Valuing and Pricing Nature. Producer: Mary Colwell. Programme webpage Downloadable MP3  (Debate starts about 10 minutes in.)