Achieving the goal of sustainability requires understanding and management of unprecedented and interconnected challenges. A transdisciplinary approach is a key component of sustainability science. However, there are considerable barriers to implementing transdisciplinary projects. We undertake...

It is shown that the thermodynamic law of conservation of mass, the so-called Materials-Balance-Principle, implies that the marginal product as well as the average product of a material resource input are bounded from above. This means that the Inada conditions, one of the standard assumptions...

The two notions of temporal and thermodynamic irreversibility are distinguished. It is shown that the irreversibility concept of Arrow-Debreu, while establishing temporal irreversibility, does not encompass thermodynamic irreversibility. This means, the standard irreversibility concept of...

Biodiversity provides insurance against the uncertain provision of ecosystem services which are being used by risk-averse economic agents. I present a conceptual ecological-economic model that combines (i) current results from ecology about the relationships between biodiversity, ecosystem...