Creating Sustainable Rural Development through Stimulating the Eco-economy: Beyond the Eco-economic Paradox?

The article explores the potential of rural areas to contribute to sustainability by recasting their relationships with the increasingly contested carbon-based economy. By deriving concepts from a variety of theoretical strands, it is argued that it is appropriate to consider rural areas as distinguishable arenas for fostering the eco-economy. The article explores these pathways by first examining three theoretical bases of the eco-economy: ecological economics, eco-system services and ecological modernisation. These begin to provide a conceptual basis for an integrative model of rural development. Using a series of empirical case studies from rural Wales we construct and operationalise a framework for analysing the eco-economy and explore how the concept of the eco-economy can be taken forward. In conclusion, we assess how the eco-economy can contribute to the wider emerging rural development paradigm.