Conservation biology is a multidisciplinary field. It's tied to other fields, one of them is economics. I personally had always thought that all economics fields related to environment or nature are merely the same. Environmental economics and resource economics, for example. Hearing the word "ecological economics", what was crossing my mind is that the material wouldn't be distinctive to both fields. But hey, I was wrong. Mr. Sonny Mumbunan, an ecological economist, told me that ecological economics is way different from environmental economics or even resource economics. As a matter of fact, ecological economics was born as a result of criticisms of environmental and resource economics. There is a paradigm blowing today that environment is just a part of economics. This is what is applied in environmental economics, resource economics, or by the World Bank. On the contrary, there is another paradigm, according to which, economics is part of the environment instead. This paradigm is used in ecological economics and is used by a few traditional tribes in Indonesia, such as Rimba, Dayak Jalai, and Marind-Anim, with their local wisdoms. The latter paradigm, he said, is the more ideal paradigm. The aim is, of course, to achieve sustainable development.
