Guest Lecture: Steve speaks at AUP sustainable finance course

Photo Credit: Pascal Weiland via Unsplash.

On Thursday, April 24th, 2025, Arketa Institute’s Steve Rocco presented at The American University of Paris as a guest lecturer in Professor Suzanne Bodevin's sustainable finance course.

He explained the differences between "weak" and "strong" sustainability and clarified the importance of this distinction for those interested in investing sustainably. Many key points from his presentation are summarized in our most recent paper: By Disaster or Design.

More from Steve:

“The lecture began with the science at the base of sustainability and with the distinction between weak and strong sustainability. Strong sustainability is the view of Ecological Economics while weak sustainability is the view of Neoclassical Economics. It is this difference that leads to very different views on how and what we should do to put our economy on a sustainable pathway.

This idea eventually leads to ecological economists' conclusion that some form of degrowth will be necessary since green growth (decoupling CO2 emissions from economic activity) is happening but at such a slow pace that is ineffective as a strategy.

The lecture ended with a discussion of a post-growth economy where some sectors would decrease in size due to their ecological footprint while some sectors would grow as the economy becomes more ecologically balanced.”