Most recently a vivid conversation has been triggered by the proposal of Baumgärtner and Quaas (2010a) to build a new tent of “sustainability economics”. Their contribution towards a redirection of the field under the new label “sustainability economics” has triggered a debate
in the literature. Thus far there has been no review of the debate, its contributions and arguments. This article fills this gap and seeks to better understand the differences between ecological and sustainability economics based on the underlying theory and content behind the
labels. The different conceptions of sustainability economics are not consistent with one another. Sustainability economics currently has more of a fuzzy and declamatory character. Here, I take a look behind the veil of fuzziness, which blurs the lines between ecological, sustainability, and environmental and resource economics. Furthermore, it is not clear how the solutions for science and policy proposed by sustainability economics would differ from those proposed by ecological economics.Sustainability economics is promising in many domains and
could serve to strengthen the social science contributions (Palsson et al., 2013), but specifications of concepts are currently lacking. The intention of this article is to examine what theoretical field, such as ecological and sustainability economics, can contribute best to achieve sustainable development