Sustainable Entrepreneurship

CHAPTER 3

Ecopreneurship

Introduction

Interest in sustainable development began with concerns about the impact that economic growth would have on the Earth’s finite natural resources and some of the parties involved in that debate argued that while overuse was an issue it would eventually be addressed through market forces. According the York and Venkataraman, there are several different ways that environmental degradation can be addressed1:

• Government regulation and control, the so-called “visible hand”; however, while the government has promulgated an expansive portfolio of regulations over the last several decades environmental degradation has continued to occur;
• Stakeholder activism, such as lobbying action by nongovernmental organizations ...