In the recent debate about sustainability economics, references to earlier contributions mentioning the term “sustainability economics” are present in some of the current discussion in this journal, but they are not complete. Munasinghe (2002), for example, has proposed
the term “sustainomics” as a trans-disciplinary meta-framework for sustainable development. The literature review yielded as earliest result for the term sustainability economics an article by Walter (2002) in an article about ecology-based communities: “Sustainability economics is
the study of the use of resources for the achievement of an ongoing high quality of life, individual and social, within a context of costewardship of natural and human communities” (p. 84). He argues for the evolution of ecological economics, with the paradigm shift focusing more on stewardship and community capacities. Walter (2002) exposes a systemic understanding of sustainable development: “sustainability economics is the adaptability of human and natural communities in the face of environmental change, including the value of learning by doing, the importance of monitoring and assessment, and the need for stewardship and capacity enhancement” (pp. 86–87). This systemic view of co-evolutionary development, social learning and normative underpinning merits more consideration in the debate about sustainability economics.