The foundation of this proposed sustainability economics is the normative idea of sustainability, with efficiency as a secondary goal. The authors argue that the efficient use of scarce resources requires a normative justification. They identify as such a normative goal “the
satisfaction of the needs and wants of individual humans” in the long and uncertain run (Baumgärtner and Quaas, 2010a, p. 447). In addition, dimensions of justice — within and between generations but also towards nature — are included. However, a further specification of
these criteria is missing. Baumgärtner and Quaas (2010a) also provide an ontology (“What is the Human Being? What is Nature? What is the Economy?”) and specify research areas for sustainability economics in the last part of their paper.