Discounting the Future - A Need for A Fresh Look

Abstract

The past models of the development process have tended to assume that the 'future will look after itself, whereas, the sustainable development approach acknowledges that the ability of the future to do this can be seriously impaired by actions taken now. It is because of this, the practice of discounting the future, a standard feature of the economic approach to inter-temporal decision-making, is discussed critically in this paper. The paper argues that in the sustainability context we need a systems' thinking approach when discounting the future.