Methodological and Ideological Options Flows, funds and the complexity of deprivation: Using concepts from ecological economics for the study of poverty Arnim Scheidel ⁎ Institute of Environmental Science and Technology (ICTA), Universitat Autónoma de Barcelona (UAB), 08193 Bellaterra, Barcelona, Spain abstract article info Article history: Received 22 April 2011 Received in revised form 20 October 2012 Accepted 23 October 2012 Available online xxxx JEL classification: I 32 R11 R14 Q18 Keywords: Multidimensional poverty Complexity Incommensurability Flow-fund framework Capability approach Poverty has been increasingly conceptualized as being multidimensional, involving deprivation in many dimen- sions of life. This paper discusses issues and implications of multidimensional poverty by adopting concepts com- monly used in ecological economics. In particular, poverty is approached as an irreducible, complex phenomenon for which many legitimate, but non-equivalent descriptions exist. Issues of social and technical incommensurabil- ity are illustrated for different meanings and measurement types of poverty. Georgescu-Roegen's flow/fund framework is interpreted, informed by the capability approach of Amartya Sen. The paper argues that a predominant focus on flows as a proxy to analyze poverty represents rather a short-term perspective on access to satisfiers to fulfill particular needs. Contrary to that, focusing on valued funds may provide useful information for the analysis of capabilities that persons and societies might pursue in the long term. Furthermore, it is argued that strong poverty alleviation needs to adopt analytical tools that can deal with non-trade-off cases: improve- ments in one poverty dimension cannot always compensate for the deterioration of other poverties. This implies to rethink the usefulness of aggregate multidimensional poverty indices, as well as the predominant use of in- come measures. © 2012 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved. 1. Introduction During the last century, the understanding of poverty has experi- enced profound changes. While decades ago, poverty was mainly con- ceptualized from a conventional economics perspective, based on income measures such as dollars-a-day, currently a variety of different approaches to poverty exist (Laderchi et al., 2003) as well as multidimensional poverty concepts, such as offered by the capability approach of Amartya Sen (1999b). Multidimensional poverty concepts acknowledge that poverty does not only involve deprivation in the eco- nomic dimension, but rather that poverty consists of deprivations in a variety of dimensions, such as health, education, living a meaningful live and others. This shift in the conceptualization of poverty has been related with a subsequent involvement of a variety of scientific disci- plines for the study of poverty. 1 Within ecological economics, poverty has been mainly studied in rela- tion to the environmental dimension and resource use issues (e.g., Goodland and Daly, 1993; Martinez-Alier, 2002; Moseley, 2001; Narain et al., 2008), but some contributions also explicitly address the multidimensional aspects of poverty. Examples are Cohen and Sullivan's (2010) toolkit for the evaluation of the multiple dimension of poverty in relation to water use, or Max-Neef et al. (1989) theory of fundamental human needs, which underlines the necessity to deal with different ‘pov- erties’, rather than just with poverty. In this paper, I aim to further integrate on a conceptual level the no- tion of multidimensional poverty – as largely discussed within develop- ment studies – into an ecological economics framework. To do so, I particularly aim to bridge different concepts from both development studies and ecological economics in order to connect both fields of study as well as to address further implications for research and policy. To do so, the paper discusses some poverty concepts from development studies with the following four theoretical frameworks commonly used in ecological economics: First, the paper uses a complexity perspective (Giampietro, 2003) to approach the notion of multidimensionality. Poverty is conceptual- ized as complex phenomenon for which various legitimate but non- equivalent descriptions are possible. Such an approach shifts the em- phasis from the need to find a universally agreed definition of poverty to rather finding an adequate definition regarding a certain social group and context. Second, the paper addresses issues of incommensurability (Martinez-Alier et al., 1998) of different poverty concepts. Incommen- surability means that there is no common measure. The paper argues Ecological Economics 86 (2013) 28–36 ⁎ Tel.: +34 93 586 81 02. E-mail addresses: arnim.scheidel@gmail.com, arnim.scheidel@uab.es. 1 It is necessary to mention that while the shift from a one-dimensional monetary poverty concept to a multidimensional approach has been successfully made in theory and the study of poverty; monetary income measures still dominate development practice. See Sumner (2007) for a discussion on this issue. 0921-8009/$ – see front matter © 2012 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.ecolecon.2012.10.019 Contents lists available at SciVerse ScienceDirect Ecological Economics journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/ecolecon