Exergy-economic accounting for sea-coastal systems: a novel approach

Sustainable development requires an integrated evaluation of both economic and environmental dimensions. The ensuing debate on the topic, however, was focused on its environmental aspects, as if they were fully independent from the social and economic conditions of sustainability. In this paper, we intend to present a primal approach to develop an exergy-economic accounting allowing to overcome the limits of each analytic discipline through its integration in a sound economic scheme such as environmental accounting; this scheme will be adapted to sea-coastal systems. In order to complete the approach mentioned a specific indicator will be proposed aimed to evaluate the relationship between ecosystem quality and economic added value stemming from the anthropic use of the system. © 2005 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.