Seminar Four
Beyond monetary valuation: interdisciplinary perspectives on evaluating services
University of Birmingham, Thursday, January 15th 2009 - Programme and Attendees (pdf)
Summary
Environmental economics has played the leading role in shaping debates about the importance of ecosystem services by demonstrating that the monetary value of their preservation to humankind is often much higher than their current resource/extractive value. But there is growing recognition that to enhance the utility of ecosystem services as a policy concept, greater reflection is now needed on how the potential economic value of these services is derived, the use and appropriateness of the valuation techniques deployed, how notions of ‘value’ are mobilised (in particular difficulties in dealing with non instrumental values), and how these ‘values’ intersect with stakeholder interests. Such questions need to be addressed if ecosystem services are to be made more tractable in a policy sense. Indeed Opschoor (2003) has commented that “we will be unable to offer sensible answers in the foreseeable future to those who ask for 'the value of (global) biodiversity’” until these issues have been resolved.
While some of these questions fall within the ambit of ecological economics, others demand a more interdisciplinary response. Building on themes in the preceding workshops, the aim of this fourth FRESH seminar was to explore the limits of economic valuation as currently practiced, and to assess the role that wider social and environmental values might have in decision making and in informing and facilitating stakeholder engagement in policies which impact on ecosystem services.
The day was started off by Mike Christie, who arrived ‘fresh’ from a TEEB (The Economics of Ecosystems & Biodiversity) workshop in Germany. He provided a synthesis of the latest work by environmental economists on the valuation of ecosystem services, covering not only methods but also the political, moral and methodological problems which may manifest themselves when such studies are being used (Christie presentation).
Emily Brady gave the second talk of the day, starting from a very different point of point of departure by exploring environmental ethics and aesthetics. She highlighted differences in culture and context behind ‘subjective’ (i.e. divergent) values and explored the role of science and education in (in)forming aesthetic values (Brady presentation). Whereas Mike’s talk raised questions about the limitations of applying economic methods to inform policy, Emily’s presentation gave rise to a debate about how ethics and aesthetics are currently underrepresented in policy, and how these more qualitative insights and debates can be better accommodated in the policy process.
Sigrid Stagl, the third speaker of the day, completed the triangle of perspectives on valuing the environment by focussing on deliberative approaches, to inform decisions, to weight policy options and (if needed) to assign monetary values (Stagl Presentation). Informed by complexity theory, post-normal science and institutional economics, she stressed the widespread occurrence of incommensurability, both social (the existence of a multiplicity of legitimate perspectives in society) and technical (the representation of multiple identities in descriptive models, acknowledging uncertainty, ambiguity and ignorance) when dealing with environmental issues.
John Thornes completed the formal presentations for the day with a highly original case study which linked back to both Mike and Emily’s talks. His light-hearted effort to map the values atmospheric services was thought provoking in several ways (Thornes Presentation). By extrapolating the market values of atmospheric gasses, he produced the same kind of mind-numbing monetary figures we have seen in Costanza et al. (1997). This stimulated questions about framing and boundaries for whole ecosystem valuation studies, including the limits of benefit transfer and the risks of double counting. John also drew attention to the role of art and aesthetics in providing information, scientific as well as economic, about atmospheric services in specific historic and spatial contexts. These very different valuation approaches, including the science itself, created a multi-faceted and rather convincing narrative that we are very severely underestimating the value of the atmosphere for human wellbeing.
Most participants made significant contributions to the seminar, through extensive discussions, shorter presentations and feedback from the breakout sessions; unfortunately it is not possible to do justice to the richness of the debate in the space of this summary. A recurrent and consistent message which emerged from the day was that in order to make sense of the ‘ecosystems approach’, it needs to be translated by and for different publics, experts and stakeholder groups. The process of (widespread engagement with) translation is not less important than the resulting message, because even within groups that from the outside appear to be homogeneous, there is confusion and disagreement about the meaning of ecosystem services. As with natural languages (which add an extra level of complexity to the international effort of the MA), the languages of natural science, cost/benefit, morality, aesthetics, democratic legitimacy etc. are alive. They partially overlap and often complement each other when spoken side-by-side. They can also occasionally contradict each other if spoken in isolation. No language should be silenced or ignored, and multi-lingual (i.e. transdisciplinary) approaches should be encouraged so that we can communicatively and incrementally develop a new but common language and understanding of the relationship between ecosystem services and human wellbeing. It is hard to see how an ecosystems approach can be effectively implemented without the emergence of such a common language.
Also check Mark Everard Presentation
