The Economics of Biodiversity - 1 views
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Micah Leinbach on 01 Nov 10No light read, at 39 pages, but a good source for anyone doing research on the value of ecosystems from an economic perspective. My scant review of it indicates that it brings together a lot of different studies on the benefits people get from natural systems, and how much it would cost us to replace those with artificial systems. From the preface: "Applying economic thinking to the use of biodiversity and ecosystem services can help clarify two critical points: why prosperity and poverty reduction depend on maintaining the flow of benefits from ecosystems; and why successful environmental protection needs to be grounded in sound economics, including explicit recognition, efficient allocation, and fair distribution of the costs and benefits of conservation and sustainable use of natural resources." This report has been cited a lot lately in efforts to create some sort of system that would remove externalities from the pricing of all sorts of goods, and account for the costs of natural capital (i.e. the environment) in producing more or less everything. That would be a major environmental achievement, and social achievement in general.
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Micah Leinbach on 01 Nov 10A better read: http://www.csmonitor.com/Environment/Bright-Green/2009/1116/the-economics-of-ecosystems Summarizes the report well, and also puts out the big question: can we put a price on everything? I personally am frustrated by how often debates turn into a cost-benefit analysis about the "practicality" of an idea - and I say that as a fan of the field of economics. Should we be resorting to that to defend environmental things that we value, or are there larger ideas and principles at play? Do we weaken the strength of a principles-based argument with a practicality/economically based one?
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Jim Proctor on 01 Nov 10We'll be discussing several issues connected to this in ENVS 160 come spring, not only related to the technical and political drawbacks of pricing ecosystem services, but also the naive notions of "natural" vs. "artificial" that it often presupposes. The whole exercise reveals about the very best mainstream environmental thought can deliver…which is not good enough, in many recent scholars' opinions.