By now, you should be well aware of the relevance of macroeconomic targets (like full employment, price stability, and trade balances) for any issue related to environmental quality.

Perhaps the most important realisation, however, is the need to question the widespread assumption that environmental quality can only achieved at a loss in terms of these macroeconomic indicators. There is growing evidence of a positive relationship between environmental improvement policy and economic performance (for example, between the application of environmental technology and trade balances, and sustainable resource management and employment).

Hence, macroeconomics is relevant to environmental managers because we need to understand and be able to monitor economic factors like employment, inflation, and trade, so we can see how they are likely to be affected by environmental policy and related policy changes. Unemployment, inflation and trade competitiveness are major aspects of the general argument against much environmental policy. Sound decisions require this knowledge.

So, macroeconomics is important, but it can be argued that it is not the ideal level of focus for coming up with industry-environment policies for sustainable development. We actually need a finer level of detail using information at the "sectoral" level. A sector is a branch of the economy that has common characteristics enabling it to be separated from other parts of the economy for analytical or policy purposes. While this is a bit hazy, sectoral studies are usually focused on "industries" (like automobiles, chemicals, information technology, forestry and so forth) or broad types of economic or social activities (for example, transport, nutrition, cleaning). The "entire economy" focus of macroeconomics is too lumpy or aggregated to gain enough understanding for policy strategies. We need specific production, technology, competitiveness, consumer demand and material and energy flow movements and trends for individual sectors within the economy.

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