Environment and Natural Resources Economics: Overview

This chapter provides a comprehensive overview of the background of natural resource and environmental economics and its connotation, and analyzes the inseparable relationship between human economic development and environmental protection. With the development of human society, resource and environmental crises emerge at times. For this reason, China actively promotes the construction of ecological civilization, and seeks to achieve the synergistic development of social economy and ecological environment (Sect. 1.1). Studies have shown that demographic, economic and technological changes in history have had a certain impact on the natural environment and have persisted for a long time. The unique asset attributes of the environment and natural resources closely link the economy and the environment. From an economics perspective, theories such as Resource Scarcity, the Homo Economicus Hypothesis, and the Environmental Kuznets Curve provide the basis for this complex relationship (Sect. 1.2). On the basis of defining the various concepts of natural resource and environmental economics clearly (Sect. 1.3), the chapter goes on to explain the issue of benefits in economics. Governments and markets play an important role in resource allocation, and the rational use of resources can in turn improve economic efficiency and thus play a positive role in socio-economic development (Sect. 1.4).