The initiators of the new reputational organisation
of ecological economics shared this basic perspective
on the embeddedness of the economy in nature, the
importance of considering nature as a life-support
system, and the need for understanding ecological and
economic systems and their interactions in terms of
flows of energy and matter. The field was born out of
a frustration with the lack of ability of the established
disciplines to take in this perspective. In addition to
the basic perspective, a number of other related ideas
or core beliefs can be said to characterize ecological
economics at the time of the establishment of the new
reputational organization: