Modelling sustainable development as a problem in earth science

Sustainable development requires the construction of interdisciplinary models for evaluating and quantifying the effects of ongoing economic policies on the delicate interplay between living populations (notably human), natural resources, environment, and economic development. This paper examines how, conceivably, one could try to expand geophysical and biogeochemical models, now being actively developed, to include, in a "common" language, enough of the cogent indicators of long-term economic policies to generate such models. (C) 1998 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.