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The Dasgupta Review deconstructed: an exposé of biodiversity economics
Abstract
The Dasgupta Review is the latest attempt at justifying financialisation of Nature, but also much more. It represents a high point in applying concepts of capital and wealth accumulation comprehensively to all aspects of human and non-human existence. Unravelling the flaws in the arguments, contradictions and underlying motives requires both understand of and cutting through the specialist language, neoclassical economic models, mathematics and rhetoric. We offer a critical guide to and deconstruction of Dasgupta's biodiversity economics and reveal its real aim. Framing critical biodiversity loss as an issue of asset management and population size is a blind to avoid questioning economic growth, which remains unchallenged and depoliticized despite apparently recognizing natural limits. Dasgupta ignores long-standing problems with capital theory and social cost-benefit analysis. Rather than a scientific review of biodiversity economics he offers impossible to achieve valuation, based on old flawed theories and methods, embedded in an unsavoury political economy.
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/14747731.2021.1929007
... First, utilitarianism commodifies nature, which expresses ethically inappropriate attitudes towards nature (e.g., dominance and exploitation) rather than more respectful human-nature relationships (Spash, 2015;Spash and Aslaksen, 2015). Second, utilitarianism converts entire generations into utility-maximising single agents (Spash, 1993;Spash and Hache, 2021), which severely restricts intergenerational justice, as controversy about discount rates reveals (Spash, 1993(Spash, , 1999. 2 As an example, Spash cites empirical evidence that many people endorse deontological ethics towards nature, even in the context of studies that use economics framing (O'Neill and Spash, 2000;Spash et al., 2009). He points out that the utilitarianism that underlies mainstream economics fails to include deontological considerations, especially that some actions are morally unacceptable in themselves even if performing them would produce greater net utility for society (O'Neill and Spash, 2000;Spash et al., 2009). ...
... Critique 2. The aggregation of substitutable preferences over-simplifies diverse values of nature In mainstream economics, non-human nature is conceived as capital, goods or services that can be substituted (Spash and Hache, 2021). This approach derives nature's value from the aggregation of individual consumer preferences (revealed by markets or contingent valuation methods) for these substitutable goods and services (Spash, 2015). ...
... This approach derives nature's value from the aggregation of individual consumer preferences (revealed by markets or contingent valuation methods) for these substitutable goods and services (Spash, 2015). Such commodified conceptions of nature undergird cost-benefit analysis, the natural capital approach (Spash, 1994(Spash, , 2007Spash and Hache, 2021) and instruments such as biodiversity offsets (Spash, 2015). ...
Scholars have critiqued mainstream economic approaches to environmental valuation for decades. These critiques have intensified with the increased prominence of environmental valuation in decision-making. This paper has three goals. First, we summarise prominent critiques of monetary valuation, drawing mostly on the work of Clive Spash, who worked extensively on cost–benefit analysis early in his career and then became one of monetary valuation's most thorough and ardent critics. Second, we, as a group of scholars who study relational values, describe how relational values research engages with and addresses many of the critiques of monetary valuation. Third, we offer suggestions for relational values research that continues and deepens its ability to respond to critiques of monetary valuation and contributes to transformative change towards sustainability.
... The article starts from the assumption that there is no objective and context-independent way of defining the desirability and legitimacy of subsidies (Spash and Hache 2021). Underlying notions, such as the need for subsidies to avoid or correct 'market distortions' or 'market failures' are instead ultimately subject to processes of deliberation and negotiation. ...
... Beyond the question of the direct and indirect impacts of subsidies, one can ask whether a nuclear energy megaproject dependent on state subsidies can ever be sustainable, if indeed the project cannot sustain itself without that support. However, this article aligns with the line of thinking advocated by institutional economics, which considers the question of state intervention as misguided, since truly free markets do not exist as markets and economies are always shaped by government action (Hodgson 1999;Spash and Hache 2021). ...
... The mainstream welfare economics definition of subsidies briefly introduced above entails an inherent tension between two views, one holding subsidies as necessary for correcting the imperfections of the economy, and the other concerned that 'market distorting' subsidies tend to become permanent and hence socially harmful (Spash and Hache 2021). Echoing these concerns, Sovacool (2017, 151) has argued that many of the current energy subsidies 'serve almost no discernible public goodand in some ways, can do considerable bad' by aggravating government deficits, increasing waste and undermining efficiency, leading to energy shortages and increasing poverty, and contributing to negative externalities (such as emissions from the use of subsidised fossil fuels). ...
The state has always in multiple ways supported the implementation of nuclear-sector megaprojects. The desirability, legitimacy and sustainability of such support cannot be judged objectively and out of context. Notions used to justify support, such as ‘market distortions’ and ‘market failures’, are ultimately subject to deliberation and negotiation in the historically shaped context of the country in question. Drawing on illustrative case studies of media debates in France and the UK in 1990-2020, and stakeholder interviews conducted in Finland in 2016, this article explores the ways in which country-specific histories and traditions have shaped the discourses on state support for nuclear energy megaprojects since the 1990s, with particular attention to economic subsidies. The malleability of the notions of state support and subsidies has allowed political actors in the three countries to opportunistically adapt their argumentation. Where the nuclear proponents used to rely on economic arguments, today opponents highlight the economic unviability of nuclear, while supporters call for broadening the criteria to the wider benefits of nuclear megaprojects in fostering sustainable development. The analysis shows the solidity and power of the respective country-specific nuclear regimes in reproducing and shaping discourses according to their own needs and agendas. In the UK, successive governments undertook substantial efforts, particularly since 2008, to redefine the long-standing principle that nuclear new-build should not be subsidised. In France, nuclear proponents reproduced an image juxtaposing affordable nuclear with subsidised renewables within a specific French public-sector electricity-sector model of a ‘monopoly that works’. The dominant Finnish discourse portrayed nuclear as an electricity source that needs no subsidies, and supplies cheap and reliable low-carbon baseload electricity necessary for the country’s vital export industry. This article argues that the extensive controversies over nuclear subsidies – such as those in the UK – can attend to the procedural requirements of sustainable development, by improving the social robustness and sustainability of policies, and helping to even out the multiple types of asymmetries of power between nuclear-sector actors.
... In the past, denial of ecological limits was common in neoclassical economics (Nadeau 2009;Keen 2020;Spash and Hache 2021). However, such a denial of reality is not just a thing of the past in academia. ...
... accessed on 17 October 2021) states that: 'there is still remarkably little evidence that human population and economic expansion will outstrip the capacity to grow food or procure critical material resources in the foreseeable future'. The recent Dasgupta (2021) review 'The Economics of Biodiversity' in the United Kingdom also continues the neoclassical denial of reality (Spash and Hache 2021). ...
... However, another source of this denial is ideological, where the reality of the environmental crisis is denied owing to neoliberal hatred of any regulations that could restrict the activities of business (Oreskes and Conway 2010). The result of such a denial is that, as a society, we continue to act as if there is no environmental crisis, no matter what the science says (Washington 2018(Washington , 2020aSpash and Hache 2021). This raises a key question we need to ask: 'Can ongoing economic growth be sustainable in the long-term?'. ...
This article questions the assumptions, sustainability and ethics of endless economic growth on the basis of environmental science, ecological economics and ecological ethics. It considers the impossibility and unsustainability of endless physical growth on a finite planet. It considers the indicators of environmental degradation (all increasing) and argues that society’s addiction to endless growth is irresponsible. It discusses the key problem of denial, and how this blocks us from finding workable solutions. It discusses how in theory GDP could continue to grow modestly in the future if we adopted a steady-state economy where growth was not caused by an expanding population or resource use. However, this model is currently unpopular, with many advocating the green and circular economies that are partial solutions, and which justify ongoing growth through a fantasy of absolute decoupling. I discuss the need for society to change its anthropocentric worldview to one of ecocentrism. I then question whether the UN Sustainable Development Goals are actually ecologically sustainable. I discuss how, when we ignore the problems of an endlessly growing economy, we create significant risk to society. Rather than a focus only on ‘sustainable economic growth’, I suggest it is time to focus centrally on an ecologically sustainable economy and future.
... Diamond and Hausman, 1994;Spash, 1997;Hausman, 2012) stated preference methods (SPs), which rely on surveys to elicit people's hypothetical willingness to pay (WTP) money for environmental gains, are still some of the most common methods suggested by economist for measuring non-marketed values of nature (Hanley and Czajkowski, 2019). The demand for monetising nature's value with methods like SP has even grown in recent years (Hanley and Czajkowski, 2019;UN, 2020) and can be expected to continue to do so with the roll-out of the concept of nature-based solutions (Van Zanten et al., 2023) and the recent 'Dasgupta Review' on 'the economics of biodiversity' (Dasgupta, 2021), which must be seen as serious promotion of scaled-up use of monetary valuation of nature, including with SPs (Isacs, 2021;Spash, 2021;Spash and Hache, 2021). 1 A frequently repeated argument for the usefulness of SPs in environmental valuation is that they are the only methods capable of capturing the so-called 'total economic value' (TEV) of an environmental change, meaning that apart from use values they include hard-to-monetise non-use (or passive use) values and use values for which observable (revealed) preference data are not available (e.g. Kling et al., 2012;Johnston et al., 2017). ...
... For reasons of appropriateness the typical reference to WTP as a measure of the 'total' economic value should therefore be avoided, because it is misleading. It could also aid self-reflection on part of SP economists regarding the truly ambiguous nature of WTP and help them shift the focal question in SP researchfrom what Clive Spash rightly has called a naïve search for the right method to produce fictional welfare estimates (Spash and Hache, 2021), towards studies of the actual reasons for people's willingness to pay (and not) for environmental policy-making. People need to 'deliberate values' rather than being expected to express all sorts of values through money. ...
A frequent justification in the literature for using stated preference methods (SP) is that they are the only methods that can capture the so-called total economic value (TEV) of environmental changes to society. Based on follow-up interviews with SP survey respondents, this paper addresses the implications of that argument by shedding light on the construction of TEV, through respondents’ perspective. It illuminates the deficiencies of willingness to pay (WTP) as a measure of value presented as three aggregated themes considering respondents’ unintentionality, their retraction once they understood that their WTP could be decisive in cost-benefit analysis and the inherent incompleteness of WTP. We discuss why the TEV discourse persists, how it conceals rather than reveals broader notions of value and in what ways our results support the development of alternative approaches that truly endorse plurality in environmental valuation and decision-making.
... In England, the influential DasGupta (2021) Review on Biodiversity commissioned through the UK Treasury provides a useful albeit controversial example of this approach to mainstreaming. However, Spash and Hache (2022) argue that the current predilection for valuing and pricing nature to optimise resource management serves only to prioritise wealth accumulation and maintain business-as-usual, rather than improve outcomes for nature. Indeed, Mercado et al. (2024:80) see anthropogenic narratives ''imbued with significant ontological and epistemological assumptions which may constrain rather than enable wider processes of change''. ...
... This reflects a post-political neoliberalist turn with a shift away from direct government intervention and service provision towards more market-based interventions, driven by the imperative to deregulate, liberalise trade and investment, marketise, and privatise natural resources, ultimately leading to fragmented governance (Olesen 2014). Here, the concepts of ecosystem services, natural capital and nature-based solutions have now become established in policy but attract significant concern from those who challenge the anthropogenic assumptions built into them urging a shift towards more radical conceptualisations of nature with people as opposed to for people (Spash and Hache 2022;Mercado et al. 2024). ...
This paper assesses how strategic planning for nature can be improved for England’s built and natural environment using mainstreaming and landscape-scale concepts. Whilst both concepts feature in academic literature, there has been limited attention on their role as catalytic agents for strategic planning. Addressing this gap, evidence is used from two stakeholder workshops involving 62 senior policy experts managing a range of operational and hypothetical strategic spatial planning challenges. The results reveal a significantly weakened strategic planning arena characterised by policy disintegration, short termism and uncertainty. Key findings highlight the fallacy of pursuing strategic planning for nature in isolation from wider policy integration fusing environmental, economic and social components from the outset. Current barriers to progress include institutional inertia, technocratic vocabularies and neoliberalist priorities exacerbated by a weak underlying theory. Conversely opportunities for mainstreaming processes may help knowledge generation and exchange within transdisciplinary partnerships, whilst landscape scale thinking can improve understanding of issues using natures inherent geometry transforming processes and outcomes. The paper recommends the adoption of strategic planning pathways using mainstreaming and landscape-scale approaches working in tandem. Whilst focused on the English context, our findings are transferable to other planning systems in the Global North, especially those championing neoliberal market led policies.
... Land and green grabbing literatures clarify that bioeconomy is used to provide legitimacy in managing a "shift in capital accumulation toward a new extractive food/fuel/biomass regime enclosing the world's remaining land and water" (McMichael, 2012:688). Bioeconomy viewed through a critical lens appears as a political project that has acquired great ambitions and ended up having 'life itself' as "a key site of capital accumulation" (Goven and Pavone, 2015:308; see also Spash and Hache, 2022). Green grabbing refers to this more general process, expanding from the initial focus on land grabbing (Sauer and Borras, 2016). ...
... Attracting international capital to exploit Amazonian biodiversity would entail massive new infrastructure for research and business facilities within the Amazonian forests, as well as new property rights and institutional settings. The selling point of the project, clearly directed at powerful decision makers within the so-called natural capitalism trend (see Spash and Hache, 2022), is that if biodiversity is deemed valuable, it should be used to create exchange value. We caution that overly optimistic views in which everybody only wins are not realistic. ...
... -Holmes Rolston III, (2020) Humanity is now indisputably faced with the twin existential crises of climate change and the accelerating annihilation of Earth's biological and cultural diversity (Ceballos et al., 2015(Ceballos et al., , 2017Rozzi et al., 2018). Although anthropogenic extinctions have been occurring for millennia (Diamond, 2013a;Sandom et al., 2014), in recent generations these crises have been driven foremost by colonial, industrialized societies focused on economic growth (Spash and Hache, 2021), and their concomitant and voracious appetite for what are traditionally termed "natural resources" (Diamond, 2013b). It its' current form, globalized neoliberal capitalist culture, along with an ever-burgeoning human population , now unequivocally threaten humans and nonhumans alike with a "ghastly future" (Bradshaw et al., 2021). ...
... Despite the ES framework having received plenty of critique (e.g. Vira and Adams, 2009;Kopnina, 2017), it remains the by far the dominant means of assessing natural value (IPBES, 2019), particularly through "natural capital" approaches (e.g., Dasgupta, 2021) that are closely aligned with the neoliberal economic approaches that many believe are among the root causes of biodiversity loss (Spash and Hache, 2021). ES have remained strongly anthropocentric and utilitarian (Washington, 2020;Muradian and Gomez-Baggethun, 2021). ...
The Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) has become influential in biodiversity conservation. Its research is published widely and has been adopted by the United Nations and the Convention for Biological Diversity. This platform includes discussion about how values relate to biodiversity conservation. The IPBES emphasizes “relational values”, connecting these with living a “good life,” and “nature's contributions to people” (NCP); building upon ecosystem services (ES), which have dominated nature valuation for 15+ years. Although the IPBES acknowledges instrumental and intrinsic natural values, they purport that by adopting relational values, conservation will become more socially- and culturally- inclusive, moving beyond the “unhelpful dichotomy” between instrumental and intrinsic values. We wholeheartedly agree that conservation should become more inclusive – it should, in fact, morally include nonhuman nature. We argue that far from being half of an unhelpful dichotomy, intrinsic natural values are incontrovertible elements of any honest effort to sustain Earth's biodiversity. We find NCP to be mainly anthropocentric, and relational values to be largely instrumental. The “good life” they support is a good life for humans, and not for nonhuman beings or collectives. While passingly acknowledging intrinsic natural values, the current IPBES platform gives little attention to these, and to corresponding ecocentric worldviews. In this paper we demonstrate the important practical implications of operationalizing intrinsic values for conservation, such as ecological justice, i.e., “peoples' obligations to nature”. We urge the IPBES platform, in their future values work, to become much more inclusive of intrinsic values and ecocentrism.
... The mechanistic thought of the Renaissance/Reformation [43,[46][47][48]; • Neoclassical economics [49][50][51][52] and neoliberalism [10]; • Modernism and postmodernism [53][54][55][56]. ...
... Spash and Hache [52] note that in 'biodiversity economics' all concepts of Nature are reduced to capital, and natural capital upholds a purely anthropocentric and utilitarian view of Nature. A recent term developed by some neoMarxist writers in regard to economic unsustainability is the 'Capitalocene' [63]. ...
Anthropocentrism in Western (modern industrial) society is dominant, goes back hundreds of years, and can rightly be called 'hubris'. It removes almost all moral standing from the nonhuman world, seeing it purely as a resource. Here, we discuss the troubling components of an-thropocentrism: worldview and ethics; dualisms, valuation and values; a psychology of fear and denial; and the idea of philosophical 'ownership'. We also question whether it is a truly practical (or ethical) approach. We then discuss three troubling examples of anthropocentrism in conservation: 'new' conservation; ecosystem services; and the IPBES values assessment. We conclude that anthropocentrism is fuelling the environmental crisis and accelerating extinction, and urge aca-demia to speak out instead for ecocentrism.
... Conservation science should be careful not to forget its longstanding commitment to the more-than-human world (Wilson, 2016). Economic values are non-commensurable with many social and ecological values, and we start down a slippery slope when we attempt to monetize biodiversity (Gómez-Baggethun and Ruiz-Pérez, 2011;Spash, 2015;Spash and Hache, 2022). ...
We highlight the need for ecological justice and ecological ethics to go hand in hand with social justice in conservation science. We focus on the importance of ecocentric (non-anthropocentric) worldviews for advancing both social and ecological justice. While acknowledging the need to “decolonize” conservation, we question whether conservation a whole may be justifiably termed “colonial”; noting that colonialism in the name of profit and political power has long been a main driver of both human rights abuses and biodiversity loss. Moreover, modern conservation science explicitly strives for social justice and equity while protecting biological diversity and thus ought not to be conflated with colonialism's long and unjust history. We suggest that efforts to portray modern conservation science as patriarchal, racist, and colonial are shortsighted, disregarding longstanding efforts by conservationists to reconcile social and ecological values. Such critiques may adopt a patronizing approach to Indigenous and local peoples, portraying them as idealized guardians. Such views may obscure the complex socio-economic conditions that leave indigenous and local communities vulnerable to resource exploitation; these factors must be understood if these groups are to fulfil their vital role as conservation allies. We conclude that the conservation community should shift focus toward targeting the main political actors and economic structures that oppress both humans and non-humans alike. A more nuanced appreciation of the shared history of colonialism and conservation may illuminate how social and ecological values converge in the mission of sustaining the ecological life support system on which every human and non-human being depends.
... Time was now ripe for the work on an economic approach to biodiversity conservation, as testified by landmark publications such as the OECD 'handbook' of biodiversity valuation (OECD 2002), in support of the implementation of the UN Biodiversity Convention (Barde 2007). Biodiversity valuation has continued as one of the most controversial topics in debates and disputes between environmental and ecological economists (see e.g., Spash and Hache 2021). The OECD adopted concepts from the ecological economics discourse, such as the 'safe minimum standard' of natural assets in the spirit of a 'strong sustainability' paradigm, but on the other hand advocated the need for the decisions concerning such standards to be informed by cost-benefit analysis (Barde 2007). ...
This chapter provides a brief historical overview of the evolution of OECDs environment work, with a focus on the enduring debates concerning the relationships between economy and the environment, between economics and environmentalism, and between growth optimism and Malthusianism. The need for such debate and arbitration is unlikely to diminish, despite the rising geopolitical concerns of the early 2020s, as global environmental challenges grow increasingly acute. Environmental policy work is therefore likely to become increasingly central for the organisation’s identity. Despite significant changes in international policy environment, many of the early challenges faced by the OECD in this area remain: seeking reconciliation between economic growth and environmental protection, in a context of enduring growth needs of the Global South, the seemingly ever-greener industrialised world, and the rise of countries such as China and India as major powers and sources of global environmental pressures.
... The eras of the financial meltdown (2007( -2009( ) and Covid-19 (2020 have shown that the market economy does not function without a continuous presence of international expert organisations and national governments, and especially the global financial institutions and their collaborative efforts in sustaining global and national market institutions (Mirowski, 2014;Spash and Hache, 2021). These conditions speak to the global condition and era of the Capitalocene (Moore, 2015). ...
Global capitalism has changed the Earth system to the extent that the current epoch is called the Anthropocene. According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), land use change has played a crucial role in this profound functional shift in the Earth system. The Convention on Biodiversity (CBD) and its follow-up processes have insisted the same regarding the persisting decline in biodiversity. To shed light on the institutional aspects of land use change and the transformation towards the bioeconomy, we focus on three countries-Chile, Finland, and Laos, showing (i) how these historically very different societies have designed their land use institutions in recent decades, and (ii) what kind of bioeconomy and biosociety these institutional changes seem to presuppose. Our study's timespan is about fifty years, and the analysis is based on our ongoing research in the countries and the content analysis of legal and policy documents in them. These countries obviously differ regarding their basic constitutional and institutional structure and purposes in land use policy processes. We illuminate similarities and differences in authoritative and authorised transactions and discuss, from the perspective of classical institutional theory, how the state and property are entangled in power, how nature is not understood as a common good and public property, and how the negative liberty and economic conception of democracy is prevalent.
... Within the scientific community [4][5][6] and public discourse [7], terms such as "sustainability" and "low-carbon transition" are gaining increasing prominence. However, despite scientists highlighting the importance of valuing and protecting nature for its intrinsic value [8], capitalist systems primarily rely on a neoclassical approach [9,10] that disregards scientific knowledge and citizens' mobilisations against this approach. In the European Union's (EU) rural context, the environmental degradation caused by intensive agriculture and the limited ecological ambition of the recently approved Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) reflect the reticence to change the traditional paradigm [11,12]. ...
In agricultural landscape management, the conventional top-down approaches that primarily focus on market-led responses struggle to preserve the landscape elements essential for environmental sustainability. To address this deficiency, land use and land cover change (LUCC) scenarios promote an integrated understanding of landscape dynamics and highlight the inconsistency between the compartmentalisation of the public sector (“siloisation”) and the necessity for management that reflects the interdependencies of socio-ecological systems. This study investigates the extent to which the creation and dissemination of LUCC scenarios lead to modifications in the values, attitudes, and behaviours of local actors engaged in land management, giving particular emphasis to the role of these scenarios in encouraging integrated management. To accomplish this objective, we interviewed local actors who actively participated in the co-construction of the scenario narratives or learned about the scenarios during dissemination workshops. We then analysed the data via a thematic and lexicometric analysis. The findings highlighted the dual function of these scenarios as a catalyst for pre-existing political will to promote integrated management and as a tool for raising awareness about major environmental challenges. At the group level, the outcomes encompassed aspects such as basing political decisions on the results of scenarios and fostering collaboration between institutions. These outcomes were observed among the actors involved in co-constructing scenarios or those with pre-existing motivations to pursue integrated management initiatives. Additional personal outcomes included an increased awareness of environmental challenges and the consolidation of non-formalised knowledge. We argue that combining co-construction and dissemination enhances the outcomes of scenarios considerably.
... The capitals approach must confront challenges regarding valuation of the different types of capital [83]. Valuation techniques developed in the wider social sciences can be used to value capital stocks and flows associated with tourism industry. ...
Tourism research must recognise recent advances in sustainability theory if it is to progress conceptually and in the policy domain. By applying the method of critical review, this paper demonstrates the relevance of the capitals approach to sustainable tourism development, with human well-being identified as the ultimate objective of the process. Distinguishing between weak and strong sustainability, a policy framework is developed to merge the capitals approach with well-being outcomes to determine the direct and indirect benefits of tourism developments to stakeholders and destination residents. Several challenges must be addressed if sustainability principles and practices are to be embedded in tourism policymaking.
... It includes a scope for transformative change. While the review is certainly not without its detractors [76] and may not adequately address all the queries raised by scholars (e.g., [70][71][72][73]), it has certainly sparked debate and raised the profile of nature's current plight. Critically, regarding the multifunctional 'scape approach for intact ecosystems, the review does emphasize the need to increase protected areas and that it is most cost-effective to conserve nature rather than to restore it. ...
Nature is declining globally at unprecedented rates with adverse consequences for both ecological and human systems. This paper argues that only transformative change—a fundamental, system-wide reorganization—will be sufficient to arrest and reverse this loss and to meet globally agreed development goals, including the post-2020 Global Biodiversity Framework. In search for a credible platform to help facilitate such transformative change, this paper explores the potential of multifunctional ‘scape approaches to improve sustainable management outcomes at scale. Beyond a current international focus on nature restoration, this paper emphasizes the urgency and criticality of confirming approaches for sustainably preserving large ‘intact’ natural areas. Through a semi-systematic review of contemporary academic and gray literature and derivation of a theory of change, the authors consider tropical peatland systems—which can interconnect multiple ecosystem types and be of global biodiversity and carbon sequestration significance—to help derive potentially broader sustainable ecosystem management lessons. Beyond identifying key considerations for implementing multifunctional ‘scape approaches, the paper recommends further work to deepen understanding of the multidimensional ‘value’ of nature; strengthen governance frameworks; empower indigenous peoples and their knowledge sharing and community management; align nature-positive and climate-positive goals; andmobilize commensurate business and financial support.
... The Dasgupta Review (Dasgupta, 2021) turned out to be an overarching publication that goes well beyond the subfield of biodiversity. The Review has been both welcomed (Groom and Turk, 2021;Priyadarshini et al., 2022) and critically reviewed (Spash and Hache, 2022). 4 There are several recurring punchlines, one of which is what the Review calls (global) impact inequality. ...
... Concerning sharp decline in biodiversity and ecosystems, the policy makers at COP26 submit urges for the combine global cooperation and awareness to protect ocean and land biodiversity. There are 11 references in major decisions for protection, conservation, and restoration of nature and ecosystem mostly through focusing on climate change adaptation and mitigation (UK Government, 2021 (Dasgupta, 2021;Fletcher, 2021;Spash & Hache, 2021). These ecosystem services are a very important source of value to human society and contribute more than 50% to the World's GDP (Swiss Re Institute, 2020). ...
Globally, biodiversity and ecosystem services (BES) are rapidly declining due to continuous human intervention. The most important factor behind this rapid decline in BES has been attributed to the different land use changes such as agricultural expansion, urbanization, and deforestation practices. Therefore, the present study intends to understand the impacts of land use changes along with the effects of egalitarian democracy, human capital and globalization on BES taking a sample of 20 countries where ecosystem services and biodiversity are most fragile during 1990–2019 period. The study employs robust econometric models that can tackle the problem of cross‐sectional dependence within the data. The finding demonstrates that agricultural expansion and urbanization both negatively and significantly affect the BES whereas forest area is positively associated with BES. The impacts of egalitarian democracy, human capital development as well as that of globalization are found to be decreasing the BES loss. Finally, some policy recommendations are provided to offset the loss of BES which can serve as the benchmark for developing policy interventions across the countries.
... Additional concerns span the limited evidence of the use of market or financial mechanisms to achieve promised ecological outcomes ( Chiapello & Engels 2021; Sullivan 2017a ) or address the structural causes of socio-ecological crises ( Spash & Hache 2021 ). The framing of 'capital' risks limiting rich and diverse understandings of social and natural worlds ( Sullivan 2017b ). ...
https://wevaluenature.eu/article/guarding-against-perverse-outcomes-natural-capital-thinking
... Second, in considering people as a component of ecosystem assets, the association of the term 'assets' with owned property or resources of economic value needs to be considered. Transferring the definition of an economic asset to people risks subjecting individuals or communities to the notion that they can be owned, used, or valued monetarily for the sake of economic comparison (Spash and Hache, 2021). This has moral and ethical implications, and it is recommended that local people should not necessarily be viewed as merely another ecosystem asset, but Society contributes services to ecosystems (e.g., enhancing, restoring, protecting services (Comberti et al., 2015)), and these services may be provided via the economy (e.g., through labour), but also outside the formal economy. ...
Ecosystem accounting has been advocated as a potential ‘game changer’ for managing the environment and economy and was recently standardised by the United Nations (UN) in the System of Environmental-Economic Accounting Ecosystem Accounting (SEEA-EA). However, Indigenous Peoples, their lands, values, and knowledge have not been explicitly included in the SEEA-EA. With more than 40% of global land under some form of Indigenous management or tenure, this omission must be addressed if Indigenous Peoples are to use the SEEA-EA; and if the values and aspirations of Indigenous Peoples are to be reflected in broader environmental and economic management and policy. We outline how Indigenous perspectives differ from those currently recognised in SEEA-EA. A key difference is that Indigenous Peoples view themselves as part of ecosystems rather than distinct from them, and this relationship is two-way, not one-way, as presented in the SEEA-EA. Reconciling these perspectives is possible but will require collaborative engagement with Indigenous Peoples guided by the principles of free, prior, and informed consent. To achieve a reconciliation, we call for two actions: (1) including recognition of Indigenous values as a new item on the SEEA-EA research agenda, and; (2) that Indigenous Peoples be part of the UN processes governing the development of the SEEA-EA
... Using natural capital; the stocks of renewable and nonrenewable natural assets that benefit people both directly and indirectly, and the flow of ecosystem services these provide, as a method of understanding how the environment sustains society has been a well-established concept within academic literature for almost 30 years (Bateman & Mace, 2020;Constanza & Daly, 1992) with a significant debate on the application and use of the concepts (Chan & Satterfield, 2020;Spash & Hache, 2021). In addition, the concept of 'Nature's Contribution to People' has been a more recent addition to reflect wider understandings and definitions from non-Western and capitalist societies (IPBES, 2019). ...
The rights all people have for involvement in environmental decision making has long been established yet collaborative resource management has had mixed success. Natural capital; the renewable and non‐renewable natural assets that benefit societies, and the flow of ecosystem services these assets provide, are increasingly promoted as approaches that ensure consideration of the environment in decision making.
Natural capital and ecosystem services concepts can facilitate participation in decision making by explicitly describing the role of the environment in sustaining society. Increased promotion of these approaches requires consideration on how best to involve stakeholders, those involved and affected by a decision, in the process.
We conducted a systematic search to identify where stakeholders have participated in natural capital, ecosystem services and nature’s contributions to people decision making, creating a systematic map of 56 case studies. While many papers discussing stakeholders and these concepts were found, few actively engaged stakeholders in a decision‐making process that used the concepts and therefore were included in the map. Where stakeholders were involved, engagement methods included focus group discussion, stakeholder negotiation and scenario development, as well as ecosystem service ranking and mapping.
Ranking for prioritisation of ecosystem services was common, with a bias towards using services with a direct tangible economic benefit; food production and tourism, are both prominent examples. A limited number of case studies performed robust participatory methods evaluations, offering little indication of how best to use natural capital or ecosystem services in participatory approaches.
Therefore, the work highlights need for greater evaluation of participatory processes involving natural capital to ensure stakeholder engagement is efficient, productive and useful to all involved.
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... Such efforts represent a key example of interventions as cobeneficial social tipping points . However, this does not amount to reducing food choices or advocating for "realigning beliefs" in society (pointed out in Spash and Hache, 2021). Dietary programmes in accordance with planetary health stress local food culture and food sovereignty (Willett et al., 2019;Wittman, 2011) instead of prescribing a totalitarian healthy diet for all. ...
As COVID-19 emerged as a phenomenon of the total environment, and despite the intertwined and complex relationships that make humanity an organic part of the Bio- and Geospheres, the majority of our responses to it have been corrective in character, with few or no consideration for unintended consequences which bring about further vulnerability to unanticipated global events. Tackling COVID-19 entails a systemic and precautionary approach to human-nature relations, which we frame as regaining diversity in the Geo-, Bio-, and Anthropospheres. Its implementation requires nothing short of an overhaul in the way we interact with and build knowledge from natural and social environments. Hence, we discuss the urgency of shifting from current to precautionary approaches to COVID-19 and look, through the lens of diversity, at the anticipated benefits in four systems crucially affecting and affected by the pandemic: health, land, knowledge and innovation. Our reflections offer a glimpse of the sort of changes needed, from pursuing planetary health and creating more harmonious forms of land use to providing a multi-level platform for other ways of knowing/understanding and turning innovation into a source of global public goods. These exemplary initiatives introduce and solidify systemic thinking in policymaking and move priorities from reaction-based strategies to precautionary frameworks.
... For practical purposes, however, how to weight indicators expressing different kinds of values remains an open question. In economics, this issue is typically avoided by commensuration through the money metric or by the use of utility, whereby wants and needs are expressed as undifferentiated and grossly substitutable magnitudes (Gomez-Baggethun and Martin-Lopez, 2015;Kant, 2003;Spash and Hache, 2021). In ecosystem services, debates about how best to weight differentiated and largely un-substitutable objectives remain unresolved, and range from bureaucratic additive metrics like the Environmental Benefit Index of the US Conservation Reserve Program (Everard, 2018;USDA, 2021), to Pareto frontier methods that attempt to offload the weighting problem to stakeholders (Marques et al., 2020), to soliciting weights using various expert consultation frameworks (Fanghua and Guanchun, 2010;Marto et al., 2018;Vacik et al., 2007). ...
Discounting is standard in economics to consider time preferences of people and account for future market changes. However, so far discounting has mainly been applied to monetary flows and ignored for many ecosystem services. In multi-objective optimization, selectively disregarding time preference for some nonmonetary
services create bias. Here we study how discounting a range of ecosystem service indicators influences a public planner’s optimal land allocation. We used a robust multi-objective optimization approach to model a mixed forestry-avocado farm portfolio in South Africa. The objectives for optimization were the provisioning
of various ecosystem services and disservices represented by four indicators: net present value, payback period, carbon sequestration, and fertilizer use. To account for time preferences concerning indicator flows, we applied specific discount rates to each ecosystem service indicator, depending on its character (non-monetary or
monetary indicators). We demonstrate that discounting reduces the standard deviations of the discounted sum of the indicators, which leads to less diversified land-use portfolios. To account for discount rate uncertainty, we introduced three indicator sets simultaneously, each using a different discount rate, which was off setting the effect of decreasing diversification.
... Such a utilitarian approach and the value system that underscores it have drawn substantive criticism towards the "ecosystem services" framing [28], and this is one issue the NCPs framework tries to transcend [15,23,25,52,90]. As well as ignoring the cultural importance of having ontological and epistemological diversity, the commodification of nature, detached from discussions on culture and ethics, often occludes societal choices and political decisions [9,[91][92][93]. Usually, that has been to the detriment of local populations, various non-Western cultures, and their worldviews [90,92]. ...
Bioeconomy has become fundamental for a post-fossil-resources society, in line with climate change mitigation ambitions. Although it does not have a single, consensual definition, the bioeconomy encompasses various bio-based value chains and economic activities relying on biodiversity. How these burgeoning developments may affect biodiversity, however, still needs further examination. This article explores the bioeconomy–biodiversity nexus through the lens of nature’s contributions to people (NCPs). Drawing from the bioeconomy literature and Amazonian experiences, we argue that the bioeconomy may: (i) help conserve or restore habitats, (ii) improve knowledge on biodiversity, (iii) valorize livelihoods and increase social participation, and (iv) aid in moving beyond the commodification of nature. However, none of these achievements can be taken for granted. To date, the bioeconomy has focused mainly on extracting goods from nature (e.g., food, energy, or biochemicals), often at the expense of NCPs that require integral ecosystems and are decisive for a sustainable society in the longer run. Moreover, we assert that it is critical to discern the beneficiaries of various contributions, as “people”, in reality, are composed of distinct groups that relate differently to nature and have different preferences regarding trade-offs. The NCPs framework can help broaden synergies in the bioeconomy–biodiversity nexus, but inclusive governance remains critical.
... To conclude, the many essays in this special issue and the many others published in Globalizations (e.g. Spash & Hache, 2021), including the recent special issue titled 'It's About Time: Climate Change, Global Capital and Radical Existence' (e.g. Jasanoff, 2021), and the work of a growing community of scholars and activists (e.g. ...
In this editorial postscript, we return to a primary theme of this special issue on Economics and Climate Emergency. We elaborate on some aspects of, and reasons why we need, urgent and radical transformative change. We briefly update the trends affecting climate change and ecological breakdown, assess the need for an end to the ‘war on nature’, which resists a dichotomy between our species and nature and make some comments on the COP process and ways forward which resist ‘trasformismo’, while embracing the need for just transitions, degrowth and practices rooted in such concepts as ‘transversalism’.
In this commentary we argue that, to transform the bioeconomy sectors towards ecologically less harmful and socially fairer outcomes, the bioeconomy policy project must be questioned, re-politicised and fundamentally reframed and reinvented. To that end, we firstly identify some of the main root causes for continuity of extractivism and injustices in the bioeconomy policy and, more broadly, in the green transition (section 2). Secondly, we outline so far largely neglected ideas and concerns emerging from feminist, decolonial and ‘Global South’ (i.e. the ‘majority of the World’) perspectives, as well as affective, emotional and relational ecologies and ontologies (section 3). Finally, based on these perspectives, we compile a list of 11 actions and 43 recommendations for decisionmakers and researchers alike, to explore and consider alternative imaginaries associated with the bioeconomy project.
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L’espressione “capitale naturale” rientra nell’alveo della tradizionale teoria econo-mia, quella neoclassica, che sottende l’estensione agli ecosistemi della “capitalizzazione” del-la natura cui assistiamo sul piano della realtà materiale. La natura è entrata nel discorso del-la teoria economica, ma viene rappresentata come un qualsiasi altro fattore di produzione.La questione della sostenibilità viene pertanto ridotta al tema della sostituibilità tra fattori.L’approccio proposto dall’economia ecologica critica la scarsa aderenza alla realtà biofisicadi una simile impostazione e ci avverte che è analiticamente sbagliato, nonché illusorio,definire la distruzione della natura come sostenibile se compensata da aumenti di capitaleartificiale. Pur nelle diverse sfumature di questa critica, la scarsa sostituibilità tra natura ecapitale ha profonde implicazioni sia sul piano della misurazione sia su quello delle politichepubbliche.
(PDF) https://quadernidelladecrescita.it/2023/08/21/il-capitale-naturale-e-il-dibattito-sulla-sostenibilita-nella-teoria-economica/. Available from: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/374380827_httpsquadernidelladecrescitait20230821il-capitale-naturale-e-il-dibattito-sulla-sostenibilita-nella-teoria-economica [accessed Oct 02 2023].
Este documento surge de la inquietud ante el enorme reto que supone descarbonizar la economía actual (cerca del 83% de la demanda total mundial de energía aún depende de combustibles fósiles), por ello intentamos comprender de qué forma se han articulado las estructuras de poder y la construcción de las políticas que guían el proceso de transición energética, y cuáles serán las implicaciones socioecológicas, en distintas geografías y para distintos grupos humanos y no humanos, de la descarbonización y el combate a la crisis climática.
In recent times arguments for conservation allying with corporations have been prominent and not least in the advocacy of ‘new conservation’. This has set up a false dichotomy between traditional conservation and concern for humanity. The supposed intrinsic/instrumental, human/non-human conflict in conservation appears as a diversion from the actual problem which is the modern organisation of society as a capital accumulating machine based on competition and shifting costs on to others. This is particularly evident in the corporate and financial forms of capitalism which have been taking over conservation, and more broadly environmental policy debates. Pragmatism in the form of ‘new conservation’ is argued to involve contradictions going back to Pinchot and encapsulated in modern ideas of sustainable development. This has accelerated environmental destruction and social inequity, exploitation and injustice. The loss of biodiversity will accelerate with the financialisation of Nature via a range of new instruments (e.g. biodiversity banking, trading, offsetting, green/blue bonds, species credits, extinction futures markets and climate catastrophe bonds) that are being promoted by major conservation NGOs (e.g. WWF, TNC). Preserving, empowering and developing alternative social-ecological forms of running economies is then seen as the central issue for protecting both humans and non-humans alike. Divisions in conservation are argued to be real conflicts over the form and function of economic systems and the currently dominant role of capitalism in its corporate and financial forms.
The main research question of the study is this: Is the firm embedded into ecology, society, and governance (ESG), or vice versa? Using the resource‐based view as a theoretical lens, and stakeholder capitalism as a paradigm anchored in the Dashgupat Review, we demonstrate in a panel data over 26 years that at the firm level, the relationship between sustained competitive advantage and the ESG footprint is concave shaped, and the impact inequality multiple gaps of the ESG footprint are 4.75 times the providing capacity of the natural and business environment. To solve the common method variance, endogeneity, and unobserved heterogeneity, system GMM is used as a method in a dataset of US manufacturing firms from 1992 to 2019. At the end, we argue that extant attributes of a resource base for sustained competitive advantage have an inherent flaw anchored in the resource‐based view, as they ignore the “environmental, social, and governance (ESG) friendliness” attribute of a resource. Managers need to rethink the objective of their firms if they want to survive in the new ESG‐friendly economy with stakeholder supremacy.
Everybody knows what “impact” means; the meaning is so obvious that very few if any of the numerous handbooks, methodologies or guidelines in how to prepare an environmental and/or social impact assessment gives an explanation of what an impact is.
The Dasgupta Review is an independent, global review on the Economics of Biodiversity led by Professor Sir Partha Dasgupta (Frank Ramsey Professor Emeritus, University of Cambridge). The Review was commissioned in 2019 by HM Treasury and has been supported by an Advisory Panel drawn from public policy, science, economics, finance and business.
The Review calls for changes in how we think, act and measure economic success to protect and enhance our prosperity and the natural world. Grounded in a deep understanding of ecosystem processes and how they are affected by economic activity, the new framework presented by the Review sets out how we should account for Nature in economics and decision-making.
The final Review comprises the Full Report, an Abridged Version and the Headline Messages.
Popular authors and international organizations recommend transformation to a ‘new economy’. However, this is misleadingly interpreted as radical or revolutionary. Two problematic positions are revealed: being pro-growth while seeking to change the current form of capitalism (e.g. Ha-Joon Chang), and being anti-growth on environmental grounds but promoting growth for poverty alleviation and due to agnosticism about growth (e.g. Tim Jackson and Kate Raworth). Both positions involve contradictions and an evident failure to address, or perhaps even a denial of, the actual operations of capital accumulating economies. Thus, economists ostensibly critical of capitalism turn out to be apologists for growth who conform to the requirements of a top-down passive revolution, that leaves power relations undisturbed and the economic structure fundamentally unchanged. The growth economy is shown to include technocracy, productivism associated with eugenics, inequity disguised as meritocracy, competition concealing militarism and imperialism, imposition of development as progress, and financialization and commodification of Nature.
Forthcoming in Globalizations.
This century has not been kind to mainstream economics. It has failed to notice the planet is afire. Anti-ecological, it ignores natural limits. Its ‘peak prometheanism’ arrived in the 1980s, but how far back does the rot go? Some ecological economists locate the wrong turn in the nineteenth century. Before that was physiocracy (meaning ‘rule of nature’). The physiocrats were the first to call themselves ‘economists,’ and to formalise political economy as an objective science tasked to anatomise general economic laws. Were they the pioneers of a genuinely ‘ecological’ tradition of economics? In this essay I subject physiocracy to critical analysis, focussing on agrarian capitalism and laissez-faire economics, as well as class, colonialism, environmentalism and the growth paradigm. I ask whether physiocracy was science masquerading as mysticism or the reverse. Finally, I reflect on the ideology of economics and the limits of ‘image-focused’ alternatives such as Kate Raworth’s ‘doughnut economics.’
There is a significant deficit of ‘ecological integrity’ in contemporary climate change governance, defined as explicit recognition of the mismatch between rhetoric, intentions and actions. This deficit is not unique to climate governance: we live in an age of bullshit (indifference to the truth). Philosopher Harry Frankfurt (On bullshit, 2005, Princeton University Press) identifies this as ‘one of the most salient features of our culture’. In this article, I argue that the concept captures the inconsistencies we observe in global climate governance. I begin by conceptualizing it and identifying the various forms it can take. I then provide an overview of the past three decades of global climate governance, before analysing illustrative examples of bullshit. I conclude by proposing reforms to the climate regime’s accountability arrangements to enhance the integrity and limit the harmful effects of bullshit in global climate governance.
Coronavirus (COVID-19) policy shut down the world economy with a range of government actions unprecedented outside of wartime. In this paper, economic systems dominated by a capital accumulating growth imperative are shown to have had their structural weaknesses exposed, revealing numerous problems including unstable supply chains, unjust social provisioning of essentials, profiteering, precarious employment, inequities and pollution. Such phenomena must be understood in the context of long standing critiques relating to the limits of economic systems, their consumerist values and divorce from biophysical reality. Critical reflection on the Coronavirus pandemic is combined with a review of how economists have defended economic growth as sustainable, Green and inclusive regardless of systemic limits and multiple crises – climate emergency, economic crash and pandemic. Instead of rebuilding the old flawed political economy again, what the world needs now is a more robust, just, ethical and equitable social-ecological economy.
Recent calls to action to address critical loss of biodiversity are both long overdue and very welcome, but a parallel debate on the ‘how’ is missing. Yet the ‘how’ is arguably as important as the headline objective.
The ‘how’ is also in the process of changing drastically with the promotion of new financial markets on environmental destruction, and the mainstreaming of a new kind of sustainable finance.
Offset markets on biodiversity and other ecosystem services have been shown to suffer from intractable conceptual issues, including measurement issues, incalculable additionality, highly uncertain valuations and an inexistent price signal. As a result, they will never be able to achieve their environmental and social objectives.
Empirical evidence also suggests an appalling social and environmental track record for some existing markets. As importantly, the selective pricing of only some ecosystem services and the ignorance of ecosystem interdependencies mean that the resulting values cannot claim to represent biodiversity.
Traditional environmental regulation would be far more effective, simpler and cheaper to address the critical loss of natural resources. They would not require the unrealistic assumptions and oversimplifications needed to create markets on biodiversity, and would accommodate infinitely better the high scientific uncertainty and our incomplete scientific knowledge.
While putting a price on nature to save it is a catchy formula, it would therefore seem that regulating nature’s destruction would be a far superior alternative. Sustainable finance should not foster the creation of such markets if it is to be truly sustainable.
The Common International Classification of Ecosystem Services (CICES) is widely used for mapping, ecosystem assessment, and natural capital ecosystem accounting. On the basis of the experience gained in using it since the first version was published in 2013, it has been updated for version 5.1. This policy brief summarises what has been done and how the classification can be used.
As long as social organization runs in its ruts, no individual economic motives need come into play; no shirking of personal effort need be feared; division of labor will automati- cally be ensured; economic obligations will be duly discharged; and, above all, the mate- rial means for an exuberant display of abundance at all public festivals will be provided. In such a community the idea of profit is barred; higgling and haggling is decried; giving freely is acclaimed as a virtue; the supposed propensity to barter, truck, and exchange does not appear. The economic system is, in effect, a mere function of social organization.
Published in 1989, Blueprint for a Green Economy presented, for the first time, practical policy measures for 'greening' modern economies and putting them on a path to sustainable development. This new book, written by two of the Blueprint for a Green Economy authors, revisits and updates its main messages by asking, first, what has been achieved in the past twenty years, and second, what more needs to be done to generate a truly 'green economy' in the twenty-first century?
In this paper I offer a fairly complete account of the idea of social discount rates as applied to public policy analysis. I show that those rates are neither ethical primitives nor observables as market rates of return on investment, but that they ought instead to be derived from economic forecasts and society's conception of distributive justice concerning the allocation of goods and services across personal identities, time, and events. However, I also show that if future uncertainties are large, the formulation of intergenerational well-being we economists have grown used to could lead to ethical paradoxes even if the uncertainties are thin-tailed. Various modelling avenues that offer a way out of the dilemma are discussed. None is entirely satisfactory.
We argue that the Cambridge capital theory controversies of the 1950s to 1970s were the latest in a series of still-unresolved controversies over three deep issues: explaining and justifying the return to capital; Joan Robinson's complaint that, due to path dependence, equilibrium is not an outcome of an economic process and therefore an inadequate tool for analyzing accumulation and growth; and the role of ideology and vision in fuelling controversy when results of simple models are not robust. We predict these important and relevant issues, latent in endogenous growth and real business cycle theories, will erupt in future controversy.
The concept of capital has a number of different meanings. It is useful to differentiate between five kinds of capital: financial, natural, produced, human, and social. All are stocks that have the capacity to produce flows of economically desirable outputs. The maintenance of all five kinds of capital is essential for the sustainability of economic development.
Ecological economics has ontological foundations that inform it as a paradigm both biophysically and socially. It stands in strong opposition to mainstream thought on the operations of the economy and society. The core arguments deconstruct and oppose both growth and price-making market paradigms. However, in contradiction of these theoretical foundations, ecological economists can be found who call upon neoclassical economic theory as insightful, price-making and capitalist markets as socially justified means of allocation and economic growth as achieving progress and development. The more radical steady-state and post-growth/degrowth movements are shown to include confused and conflicted stances in relation to the mainstream hegemonic paradigms. Ecological economics personally challenges those trained in mainstream theory to move beyond their orthodox education and leave behind the flawed theories and concepts that contribute to supporting systems that create social, ecological and economic crises. This paper makes explicit the paradigmatic struggle of the past thirty years and the need to wipe away mainstream apologetics, pragmatic conformity and ill-conceived postmodern pluralism. It details the core paradigmatic conflict and specifies the alternative social ecological economic paradigm along with a new research agenda.
This Special Editorial on the Climate Emergency makes the case that although we are living in the time of Global Climate Emergency we are not yet acting as if we are in an imminent crisis. The authors review key aspects of the institutional response and climate science over the past several decades and the role of the economic system in perpetuating inertia on reduction of greenhouse gas emissions. Humanity is now the primary influence on the planet, and events in and around COP24 are the latest reminder that we live in a pathological system. A political economy has rendered the UNFCCC process as yet a successful failure. Fundamental change is urgently required. The conclusions contain recommendations and a call to action now.
Swanson's book provides a good framework for understanding the extinction process in deeper socio-economic terms, and for evaluating some of the suggestions that have been made to arrest the decline. I am sure it will be of great interest to environmental economists working in this area.' - A. Markandya, Harvard Institute for International Development 'Tim Swanson's International Regulation of Extinction is the most important work on biodiversity to appear for many years. It should cause all concerned, environmentalists, economists, governments, regulators, international agencies to think again. They have misunderstood the causes of extinction, and have misdirected many of their policies as a result. Tim Swanson's work will spawn a whole new era of research. Most importantly, it can help save the world's biodiversity.' - Professor David Pearce, Director, CSERGE, University College London The book presents an economic analysis of the forces contributing to the global decline of biological diversity, and the policies available to control extinctions. The first part of the volume sets forth a revised economic theory of extinction, incorporating the terrestrial and institutional constraints on maintaining existing diversity. It analyses the existing conflicts between human development and biological diversity, entailing an application of the economic theory of learning-by-doing and global nonconvexities. The second half of the volume demonstrates the inefficiency of decentralised (multinational) regulation of biological diversity, and develops the range of approaches available in a global (international) approach to the resource. The policies analysed include transferable development rights, wildlife trade regimes, and intellectual property rights. The book concludes with a proposed agenda for the specification of the framework convention on biological diversity adopted at UNCED in Rio de Janeiro.
This book was originally published by Macmillan in 1936. It was voted the top Academic Book that Shaped Modern Britain by Academic Book Week (UK) in 2017, and in 2011 was placed on Time Magazine's top 100 non-fiction books written in English since 1923. Reissued with a fresh Introduction by the Nobel-prize winner Paul Krugman and a new Afterword by Keynes’ biographer Robert Skidelsky, this important work is made available to a new generation.
The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money transformed economics and changed the face of modern macroeconomics. Keynes’ argument is based on the idea that the level of employment is not determined by the price of labour, but by the spending of money. It gave way to an entirely new approach where employment, inflation and the market economy are concerned.
Highly provocative at its time of publication, this book and Keynes’ theories continue to remain the subject of much support and praise, criticism and debate. Economists at any stage in their career will enjoy revisiting this treatise and observing the relevance of Keynes’ work in today’s contemporary climate.
Central to the United Nations’ post-2015 development agenda grounded in the
Sustainable Development Goals is the notion of ‘decoupling’: the need to divorce economic
growth from its ecological impact. For proponents, decoupling entails increasing the
efficiency with which value is derived from natural resources in order to reconcile indefinite
economic growth with environmental sustainability. However, even advocates admit that
the idea of decoupling remains poorly conceptualized and subject to scant empirical
investigation. This persistent commitment to a highly questionable idea suggests the
possibility of a deeper psychological dynamic at work here. Drawing on Lacanian
psychoanalytic theory, in this article we therefore analyze decoupling as a ‘fantasy’ that
functions to obfuscate fundamental tensions among the goals of poverty alleviation,
environmental sustainability, and profitable enterprise that it is intended to reconcile. In this
way, decoupling serves to sustain faith in the possibility of attaining sustainable development
within the context of a neoliberal capitalist economy that necessitates continual growth to
confront inherent contradictions.
When making decisions about the allocation of scarce social resources, how should we weigh the benefits (or disbenefits) of changes in the health or safety of members of the population? The conventional (economic) wisdom is that the preferences of the affected population should be elicited — in the form of their willingness to trade off wealth for health/safety — and should then be incorporated into some overall cost-benefit analysis.
However, attempts to undertake such elicitations have run into a number of theoretical and practical problems. The purpose of this paper is to consider some of these issues and stimulate further thought and discussion about what they may signify and how they might be further explored.
Many conservationists have become enamoured with mainstream economic concepts and approaches, described as pragmatic replacements for appeals to ethics and direct regulation. Trading biodiversity using offsets is rapidly becoming part of the resulting push for market governance that is promoted as a more efficient means of Nature conservation. In critically evaluating this position I argue that offsets, along with biodiversity and ecosystem valuation, use economic logic to legitimise, rather than prevent, ongoing habitat destruction. Biodiversity offsets provide a means of commodifying habitat for exchange. They operationalise trade-offs that are in the best interests of developers and make false claims to adding productive new economic activity. Contrary to the argument that economic logic frees conservation from ethics, I expose the ethical premises required for economists to justify public policy support for offsets. Finally, various issues in offset design are raised and placed in the context of a political struggle over the meaning of Nature. The overall message is that, if conservationists continue down the path of conceptualising the world as in mainstream economics they will be forced from one compromise to another, ultimately losing their ability to conserve or protect anything. They will also be abandoning the rich and meaningful human relationships with Nature that have been their raison d'être.
Sumario: The welfare foundations of CBA -- Valuing environmental goods: 1. The contingent valuation method. 2. The hedonic pricing method. 3. The travel cost method. 4. Production function approaches -- How good are our valuation methods? -- Discounting and the environment -- Irreversibility, ecosystem complexity, institutional capture and sustainability -- Tropospheric ozone damage to agricultural crops -- Costs and benefits of controlling nitrate pollution -- Valuing habitat protection -- Cost-benefit analysis and the greenhouse effect -- Environmental limits to CBA?
Abstract The first half of the Review focuses on the impacts and risks arising from uncontrolled climate change, and on the costs and opportunities associated with action to tackle it. A sound understanding of the economics of risk is critical here. The Review ...
In this paper we explore the discourses of ecology, environmental economics, new environmental pragmatism and social ecological economics as they relate to the value of ecosystems and biodiversity. Conceptualizing biodiversity and ecosystems as goods and services that can be represented by monetary values in policy processes is an economic discourse being increasingly championed by ecologists and conservation biologists. The latter promote a new environmental pragmatism internationally as hardwiring biodiversity and ecosystems services into finance. The approach adopts a narrow instrumentalism, denies value pluralism and incommensurability, and downplays the role of scientific knowledge. Re-establishing an ecological discourse in biodiversity policy implies a crucial role for biophysical indicators as independent policy targets, exemplified in this paper by the Nature Index for Norway. Yet, there is a recognisable need to go beyond a traditional ecological approach to one recognising the interconnections of social, ecological and economic problems. This requires reviving and relating to a range of alternative ecologically informed discourses, including an ecofeminist perspective, in order to transform the increasingly dominant and destructive relationship of humans separated from and domineering over Nature.
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This paper presents new summary estimates of the economic impacts of climate change. It provides impacts for thirteen major regions and seven different sectors. The major findings are that the impacts of a baseline (2½ ºC) warming are likely to vary dramatically across different regions; that the market impacts are likely to be relatively small; and that the major concerns are the potentially catastrophic impacts. The summary impacts of the baseline climate change range from a net benefit of 0.7 percent of output for Russia to a net damage of almost 5 percent of output for India. The globally average impact is estimated to be 1.5 percent of global output for a 2½ ºC warming.
Contingent valuation method (CVM) surveys have become a popular way of placing a monetary value on various aspects of the environment with the aim of determining whether the benefits of a proposed project outweighs the costs. Litigation over natural resource damages has used CVM results as evidence of the size of compensation required. However, despite attempts to set down definitive rules, survey redesign and data manipulation fail to address some key issues raised by CVM studies. Among these is evidence that modified lexicographic preferences, where the substitutability of environmental quality with other commodities is rejected, can be common. Human value formation with respect to the environment combines ethical and economic aspects in a more complex way than most economists have assumed. This paper reports new evidence confirming the influence of ethical beliefs about rights for endangered species in determining willingness to pay (WTP) responses to a CVM survey. One subsample of those holding rights are found to protest against payment, while others bid positively and have a significant impact on WTP. Less than half the total sample held ethical motives in accord with economic theory. Policies and instruments based upon the application of neoclassical utility theory will then be neither optimal nor provide the socially desired outcome.
The level and depth of information provision required for making informed judgements over environmental options has remained troublesome in various contexts from individual choice through to international policy. In the valuation literature concern has been expressed for ‘information bias’ leading to distorted estimates of the worth of environmental entities (e.g. wildlife, ecosystems) because peoples intentions are formed during the valuation process by the information provided. Contending psychological models on the role of information and its relationship to ethical concerns are reviewed with respect to public decision processes over environmental entities. The robustness of pre-existing environmental preferences is then linked to ethical positions but their role is unclear. Empirical evidence is reported from a contingent valuation method study of coral reef biodiversity on the strong connections between informing and forming preferences and specific ethical beliefs regarding environmental entities.
This paper addresses a current issue in environmental valuation, namely, the extent to which environmental preferences depart from the usual economic paradigm to incorporate some lexicographic elements. After a theoretical discussion the paper reviews attempts to explore this question empirically by supplementing contingent valuation analyses with an exploration of the motives behind willingness-to-pay responses, including zero bids and refusals to answer. This is followed by the presentation of new evidence investigating respondents willingness to pay for the creation of a wetland taken from 713 personal interviews of the British public.
This paper explores and contrasts the different social processes of valuation now appearing as economic means of valuing the environment. Monetary valuation via stated preference approaches has been criticised for assuming well formed and informed preferences and excluding a range of sustainability concerns such as rights, fairness and equity. Deliberative monetary valuation (DMV) in small groups is a novel hybrid of economic and political approaches which raises the prospect of a transformative and moralising experience. Critics of standard contingent valuation approaches have advocated this as offering a way forward. However there has been a lack of clarity as to the means of obtaining values, the expected outcomes and their role. Moving to group settings of deliberation raises concepts of social willingness to pay and accept which are distinct from an aggregate of individual value, although this does not seem to have been widely recognised. A new classification of values is presented appropriate to the literature trying to merge economic and political processes. Values associated with the individual may be exchange values, charitable contributions or fair prices, while social values can be speculative, expressive or arbitrated. The use of DMV is shown to result in different values due to variations in the institutional setting and process of valuation.
The Stern report conducts an estimation of Greenhouse Gas control costs weighed against the benefits of avoiding damages at the global scale. As I show, Stern and colleagues are aware of the limits to CBA, although they chose to ignore the considerable literature on the subject, the many contributions by ecological economists, and especially work specific to the enhanced Greenhouse Effect. Various problems are raised or mentioned in the report including: strong uncertainty, incommensurability, plural values, non-utilitarian ethics, rights, distributional inequity, poverty, and treatment of future generations. How then can this report, acknowledging so many of those aspects of climate change that render CBA an unsuitable tool for generating policy recommendations, go ahead to conduct a global CBA and make policy recommendations? I explain how issues are suppressed and sidelined in a careful and methodical manner, with the pretence they have been addressed by ‘state of the art’ solutions. Meanwhile, the authors maintain allegiance to an economic orthodoxy which perpetuates the dominant political myth that traditional economic growth can be both sustained and answer all our problems. Besides perpetuating myths, this diverts attention away from alternative approaches, away from ethical debates over harming the innocent, the poor and future generations, and away from the fundamental changes needed to tackle the very real and serious problems current economic systems pose for environmental systems.
This paper considers the nature of preferences for the preservation of biodiversity, and the extent to which individuals are well-informed about biodiversity. We present evidence that the elicitation of monetary bids to pay for biodiversity preservation, as required for cost-benefit analysis, fails as a measure of welfare changes due to the prevalence of preferences which neoclassical economics defines as lexicographic. That is, a significant proportion of individuals refuse to make trade-offs which require the substitution of biodiversity for other goods. In addition, we show that understanding of the biodiversity concept is extremely limited, raising concerns over a reliance on stated preferences, as revealed in contingent valuation studies, for decision-making on this issue. Results from two samples (students and the general public) are described.
Economists concerned with validity are combining stated-preference methods with participatory deliberation to address on-going criticism. Deliberative monetary valuation (DMV) uses formal methods of deliberation to express values for environmental change in monetary terms. However, the results have begun to define different realms of value, reflecting pluralism in public concern over environmental change. Reviewing empirical DMV studies evidences a range of issues regarded as external to economics and the validity of its methods, issues which are typically kept at arms length by most environmental economists namely, multiple values, incommensurability and lexicographic preferences, social justice, fairness, and non-human values.
This paper reports on a national CVM survey administered in combination with a psychometric scale on pro-social environmental attitudes to test for non-economic motivations for WTP. The multi-item scale measures biospheric, altruistic, and egoistic motives, and analyzes their association with rights-based (deontological) and consequential (utilitarian) ethics. I test hypotheses concerning the existence of distinct value orientations, and the relationships between attitudes, ethics, protest bids, and WTP. Contrary to some recent claims based upon convenience samples, environmental attitudes are found to be significant in explaining intended WTP; this is associated with an egoistic motive and rights-based, rather than consequential, beliefs.
This paper reports on empirical work extending the standard economic approach to valuation by including psychological and philosophical factors. More specifically a contingent valuation method survey was applied to biodiversity improvement while simultaneously assessing rights based beliefs, consequentialism and the theory of planned behaviour. The latter was assessed using measures of attitudes, subjective norms and perceptions of control over willingness to pay. The results show that standard socio-economic explanatory variables are far inferior to those of social psychology and philosophy, and that these factors offer a better understanding of the motives behind responses to contingent valuation. The implication is that alternative means of measuring an individual's pluralistic values should be taken into account in order to assess the validity and meaning of willingness to pay.
The contingent valuation method has become an established and major part of the toolbox used to produce monetary values for evaluating environmental changes. It has been used to inform everything from the value of ecosystem services to cultural heritage to loss of life. The method has been highly controversial at various stages but despite this, or perhaps due to the publicity, it has grown in scope and scale. Numerous occurrences of ‘bias’ and ‘anomalies’ in results have been addressed by improved design, so providing guidance on perfected approaches to making sure respondents reveal preferences in accord with theoretical expectations. That respondents may not wish to and often fail to conform is seen as a challenge for the design team to be more ingenious with their incentive mechanisms which get respondents to act ‘rationally’. Failing this, data can be classified and treated to derive ‘conservative’ results. I document in this paper how whole areas of evidence from contingent valuation have been removed from consideration by design, with respondents expected to conform to an idealised rational agent model or to suffer branding and exclusion as having the ‘wrong motives’. While the method is then susceptible to manipulation (eg to meet sponsors’ requirements), if used more scientifically it also holds the potential to reveal fundamental flaws in economic theory and ways to advance that same theory.
Contingent valuation of the environment has proven popular amongst environmental economists in recent years and has increased the role of monetary valuation in public policy. However, the underlying economic model of human psychology fails to explain why certain types of stated behaviour are observed. Thus, good scope exists for interdisciplinary research in the area of economics and psychology with regard to environmental valuation. A critical review is presented here of some recent research by social psychologists in the US attempting to explain stated behaviour in contingent valuation. Attitudinal scales have been used to analyse the role of ecocentric, biocentric and altruistic motives for giving. However, the research is shown to draw some potentially misleading conclusions and be unrepresentative of contingent valuation. Two recent economic studies using contingent valuation are then reported and shown to have identified non-economic motives for WTP. The complexity of value formation and expression is found to go far beyond that generally accepted by economic models. Greater consideration of the role played by attitudes and ethical considerations then becomes relevant to the interpretation of results being used in standard cost-benefit analysis and environmental policy.
Contingent valuation of people's willingness to pay has rapidly become the method of choice to value all manner of environmental damages. The correct measure is, however, the sum people require to compensate them for such losses, an amount which will normally be far larger than their willingness to pay. And on present evidence, responses to contingent valuation questions are not likely to represent any measure of economic values. The results of these valuation practices will, therefore, bias environmental policies and distort incentives.
Ecosystems are increasingly characterised as goods and services to allow their valuation in monetary terms. This follows an orthodox economic approach to environmental values, but is also being undertaken by ecologists and conservation biologists. There then appears a lack of clarity and debate as to the model of human behaviour, specific values and decision process being adopted. Arguments for ecosystems service valuation are critically appraised and the case for a model leading to value pluralism is presented. The outcome is to identify the need for value articulating processes which involve open deliberative judgment rather than instantaneously stated preferences, concealed expert opinion and global cost-benefit analysis.
Like most economic analyses, environmental loss assessments and policy prescriptions are based on the assumption that, income effects aside, willingness-to-pay and compensation-demanded valuations will be equivalent. The accumulating evidence from controlled tests indicates, however, that the compensation measure is commonly far larger than the payment measure. Consequently, it is likely that, among other implications, losses are understated, standards are set at inappropriate levels, policy selections are biased, too many environmentally degrading activities are encouraged, and too few mitigation efforts are undertaken.