Most cited papers in Sustainable Development and Environmental Policy
What are the most cited papers in Sustainable Development and Environmental Policy?
The most cited paper in Sustainable Development and Environmental Policy is "The value of the world's ecosystem services and natural capital" (Robert Costanza, Ralph C. d’Arge, R.S. de Groot et al., 1997), with 22,491 citations. Next come "A Contribution to the Empirics of Economic Growth" (15,301) and "Toward a New Conception of the Environment-Competitiveness Relationship" (13,204).
Showing 50 of 99 papers. Every paper with more than 830 citations is listed.
| # | Paper | ||
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | The value of the world's ecosystem services and natural capital Robert Costanza, Ralph C. d’Arge, R.S. de Groot et al. · Nature | May 1997 | 22,491 |
| 2 | A Contribution to the Empirics of Economic Growth N. Gregory Mankiw, Daniel Römer, David Nathan Weil · The Quarterly Journal of Economics | May 1992 | 15,301 |
| 3 | Toward a New Conception of the Environment-Competitiveness Relationship Michael E. Porter, Claas van der Linde · The Journal of Economic Perspectives | Nov 1995 | 13,204 |
| 4 | Planetary boundaries: Guiding human development on a changing planet Will Steffen, Katherine Anne Koren Richardson, Johan Rockström et al. · Science | 15 Jan 2015 | 12,569 |
| 5 | Human Development Report James A. Church · Journal of Government Information | May 2001 | 9,192 |
| 6 | Decisions with Multiple Objectives: Preferences and Value Tradeoffs. Alexis Tsoukias, Ralph L. Keeney, Howard Raiffa · Journal of the Operational Research Society | Sep 1994 | 8,433 |
| 7 | A Model of Growth Through Creative Destruction Philippe Aghion, Peter W. Howitt · Econometrica | Mar 1992 | 7,561 |
| 8 | Magnitude and complex based diffusion signal reconstruction Marco Pizzolato, Ashis Ghosh, Timothé Boutelier et al. · HAL (Le Centre pour la Communication Scientifique Directe) | 18 Sep 2014 | 6,753 |
| 9 | The ecology of human development: Experiments by nature and design James Garbarino · Children and Youth Services Review | 1980 | 5,623 |
| 10 | Time Discounting and Time Preference: A Critical Review Shane William Frederick, George F. Loewenstein, Ted O’Donoghue · Journal of Economic Literature | Jun 2002 | 4,101 |
| 11 | Understanding the Complexity of Economic, Ecological, and Social Systems Crawford S. Holling · Ecosystems | Aug 2001 | 4,100 |
| 12 | Environmental Kuznets Curve Hypothesis: A Survey Soumyananda Dinda · Ecological Economics | 16 Jul 2004 | 4,041 |
| 13 | The Rise and Fall of the Environmental Kuznets Curve David I. Stern · World Development | 21 Jul 2004 | 3,967 |
| 14 | On the Report by the Commission on the Measurement of Economic Performance and Social Progress (2009) André Vanoli · SSRN Electronic Journal | 2010 | 3,313 |
| 15 | Three pillars of sustainability: in search of conceptual origins Ben Purvis, Yong Jian Mao, Darren Robinson · Sustainability Science | 3 Sep 2018 | 3,248 |
| 16 | The Capability Approach: a theoretical survey Ingrid Robeyns · Journal of Human Development | Mar 2005 | 3,021 |
| 17 | Resilience and Sustainable Development: Building Adaptive Capacity in a World of Transformations Carl Folke, Steve R. Carpenter, Thomas Elmqvist et al. · AMBIO | Aug 2002 | 2,936 |
| 18 | Sustainable development goals for people and planet David Griggs, Mark Stafford‐Smith, Owen Gaffney et al. · Nature | 19 Mar 2013 | 2,828 |
| 19 | Global estimates of the value of ecosystems and their services in monetary units R.S. de Groot, Luke Brander, Sander van der Ploeg et al. · Ecosystem Services | Jul 2012 | 2,596 |
| 20 | Sustainability Science Robert W. Kates et al. · Science | 27 Apr 2001 | 2,556 |
| 21 | Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed N. Bukeavich · ISLE Interdisciplinary Studies in Literature and Environment | 2006 | 2,554 |
| 22 | Proactive corporate environmental strategy and the development of competitively valuable organizational capabilities Sanjay Sharma, Harrie Vredenburg · Strategic Management Journal | Aug 1998 | 2,430 |
| 23 | Ecological footprints and appropriated carrying capacity: what urban economics leaves out William E. Rees · Environment and Urbanization | Oct 1992 | 2,414 |
| 24 | Population, Technology, and Growth: From Malthusian Stagnation to the Demographic Transition and Beyond Oded Galor, David Nathan Weil · American Economic Review | Sep 2000 | 2,362 |
| 25 | A review of the global climate change impacts, adaptation, and sustainable mitigation measures Kashif Abbass, Muhammad Qasim, Huaming Song et al. · Environmental Science and Pollution Research | 4 Apr 2022 | 2,342 |
| 26 | Sustainable development: mapping different approaches Bill Hopwood, Mary Mellor, Geoff O’Brien · Sustainable Development | 2005 | 2,309 |
| 27 | Sustainable development: A critical review Sharachchandra Madhukar Lele · World Development | Jun 1991 | 2,212 |
| 28 | Policy: Map the interactions between Sustainable Development Goals Måns Nilsson, David Griggs, Martin H. Visbeck · Nature | 14 Jun 2016 | 2,108 |
| 29 | An overview of sustainability assessment methodologies Rajesh Kumar Singh, H.R. Murty, Saurabh Kumar Gupta et al. · Ecological Indicators | 28 Jul 2008 | 2,075 |
| 30 | Intergenerational Equity and Exhaustible Resources R. M. Solow · The Review of Economic Studies | 1974 | 2,068 |
| 31 | Sustainable development: Meaning, history, principles, pillars, and implications for human action: Literature review Justice Mensah · Cogent Social Sciences | 2019 | 1,857 |
| 32 | A Systematic Study of Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) Interactions Prajal Pradhan, Luís Costa, Diego Rybski et al. · Earth s Future | Nov 2017 | 1,760 |
| 33 | Galton's Fallacy and Tests of the Convergence Hypothesis Danny T. Quah · Scandinavian Journal of Economics | Dec 1993 | 1,758 |
| 34 | Tightening Environmental Standards: The Benefit-Cost or the No-Cost Paradigm? Karen Palmer, Wallace E. Oates, Paul R. Portney · The Journal of Economic Perspectives | Nov 1995 | 1,748 |
| 35 | Social Benefit versus Technological Risk Chauncey Starr · Science | 19 Sep 1969 | 1,747 |
| 36 | Transition Management for Sustainable Development: A Prescriptive, Complexity‐Based Governance Framework Derk A. Loorbach · Governance | 23 Dec 2009 | 1,744 |
| 37 | Economic growth and environmental degradation: The environmental Kuznets curve and sustainable development David I. Stern, Michael Common, Edward B. Barbier · World Development | Jul 1996 | 1,731 |
| 38 | A good life for all within planetary boundaries Daniel W. O’Neill, Andrew L. Fanning, William F. Lamb et al. · Nature Sustainability | 5 Feb 2018 | 1,720 |
| 39 | Sustainable Development Goals: A need for relevant indicators Tomáš Hák, Svatava Janoušková, Bedřich Moldan · Ecological Indicators | 21 Aug 2015 | 1,673 |
| 40 | Unraveling the resource‐based tangle Margaret A. Peteraf, Jay Bryan Barney · Managerial and Decision Economics | Jun 2003 | 1,659 |
| 41 | Natural Capital and Sustainable Development Robert Costanza, Herman Edward Daly · Conservation Biology | Mar 1992 | 1,645 |
| 42 | Population Growth and Technological Change: One Million B.C. to 1990 Michael R. Kremer · The Quarterly Journal of Economics | Aug 1993 | 1,629 |
| 43 | Leverage points for sustainability transformation David J. Abson, Joern Fischer, Julia Leventon et al. · AMBIO | 25 Jun 2016 | 1,565 |
| 44 | Environment, economy and society: fitting them together into sustainable development Bob Giddings, Bill Hopwood, Geoff O’Brien · Sustainable Development | 30 Oct 2002 | 1,488 |
| 45 | Economic Reasons for Conserving Wild Nature Andrew P. Balmford, Aaron Bruner, Phillip J. Cooper et al. · Science | 9 Aug 2002 | 1,465 |
| 46 | Squaring the circle? Some thoughts on the idea of sustainable development John B. L. Robinson · Ecological Economics | Apr 2004 | 1,433 |
| 47 | The End of Poverty: Economic Possibilities for Our Time Richard C. Peet · Annals of the Association of American Geographers | 30 May 2006 | 1,416 |
| 48 | Categorising tools for sustainability assessment Barry Ness, Evelin Urbel-Piirsalu, Stefan Anderberg et al. · Ecological Economics | 19 Sep 2006 | 1,403 |
| 49 | Natural resource and environmental economics Roger Perman | 1999 | 1,365 |
| 50 | Toward some operational principles of sustainable development Herman Edward Daly · Ecological Economics | Apr 1990 | 1,365 |
Citations are OpenAlex's own counts, from its 2026-09-23 snapshot, so the ranking can differ from Google Scholar or Web of Science. A paper is listed for a field when OpenAlex files it under one of the field's topics; retracted papers and papers whose citation count cannot be traced to citing works are left out, and a preprint and the article it became are shown once. Release dates are OpenAlex's: where a source gave only a month or a year, that is what is shown. How the lists are chosen.