Socio-ecological approaches to sustainability: economics, ecology, evolution and human pro-environmental behavior

Abstract

Current approaches and developments regarding the concept and policies of sustainability management have been based, to a large extent, on general principles and models derived from economic theory, rather than on the theoretical and conceptual frameworks of biology, ecology and evolutionary theory. To verify this situation and proposed trend, a review is made of the conceptions and contributions of current approaches regarding sustainability management in public policies and economic and business strategies, together with an approximation, through the application of a survey, to the discourses in related professionals and in the general population. As a contribution to the proposal of a model of greater scope and breadth in addressing the complexity and multidimensionality of sustainability, an approach is proposed with a greater integration of levels and frameworks of analysis and interpretation of human behavior in its relationship with the environment, based on the analytical and conceptual instruments of socioecology, environmental psychology, ecological economics, evolutionary ecology, systems ecology and the various approaches to human ecology