Ecosystems as Models for Restoring our Economies, 2nd Edition : To a Sustainable State

Winner, International Impact Book Award 2026 Emerging from the fields of ecological restoration and economics, this interdisciplinary book delivers a clear path to restoring our economies in a way that speaks well to industry groups and business owners, students and the general public, and to policy makers. There are proven relationships between ecology and economics. Giordanengo employs those relationships in an intriguing way and integrates them with global case studies to argue that redesigning economic systems according to ecological principles is necessary to balancing critical social, environmental, and economic goals. For example, he reveals how more obscure ecological principles and theories—succession, evolution, diversity-productivity curves, and so on—can inform the restructuring of economic systems that are resilient, productive, and regenerative. A variety of students and practitioners have read the first edition, or attended John’s seminars, only to remark “Why haven’t we learned this in our traditional coursework?” or “This book brings so much clarity to the fields of sustainability and environmental sciences.” Traditional approaches to sustainability focus on the social, environmental, and economic pillars of an economy, while paying little attention to the foundation those pillars rest upon. A comprehensive focus on our economy’s foundational components has been ignored for good reason; we have lacked an understanding of what they are or how they interact with one another. Cross-cutting research between ecological and economic systems reveals three foundational components (i.e., drivers) common to both systems. The effective management of these components is perhaps the most important obstacle to resolving current tensions between society, nature and the global market economy. The scale at which diversity, energy and trade must be managed is also justified by self-regulating ecosystems such as jungles, prairies, and pine forests. That scale is not g