I recently participated in a panel put together by Boise State’s Hazard and Climate Resilience Institute as part of their Resource Nexus for Sustainability Grand Challenge. Together with 3 other economists (including the moderator), we met virtually to talk about the role of economics as a discipline for advancing the social goal of sustainability put in the context of the climate crisis. The name of the event was “Can economics help save the world?” (I’ll add the link to the video when it’s available.)
The discussion was pleasant, I think. Although to be honest, I can’t say I truly remember what went on. It was very dynamic and “real-time” in the sense that we tried addressing participant’s questions as they appeared in the chat–thus serving for a kind of authentically and beautifully chaotic episode of collective consciousness.
In preparation for the event, a few questions were distributed for panelists to organize their ideas around central topics chosen by the moderator. These questions were not easy and my answers to them kept evolving through the couple of weeks we had to prepare for the event.
So much of what I wanted to say may not have come across the way I wanted to or may not have been said simply by the very non-curated nature of live events. I want to post my evolving thoughts around these questions because the process of discovering those answers was truly edifying and spurred what felt like a moment of self-actualization. I’ll post them one at a time to keep things tractable, but I’ll add links to other reflections at the bottom of each commentary.
Without further ado, please join me in the discovery of some quite provocative questions put together for us by someone who genuinely was seeking to find new ideas and host a fun but illuminating discussion.
Q7: Can we really assign a dollar value to the services provided from our ecosystems?
Can we? Can we do it right? Do we need to? Should we?
Quantification exercises are interesting in that they help us visualize trade-offs–granted that we can quantify things in a comparable manner. But it is very slippery slope as this is one step away from making the planet a commodity: Mother Earth = producer of raw materials and people = means of production.
Professionally, I’ve learned that many times numbers are not really what people are after and they can actually be misleading or lead to complacency*. So, even if we can measure natural components in $ terms, these numbers are kind of meaningless.
After speaking with clients over and over and over, and presenting results over and over and over, I keep confronting the situation in which many if not most of them are totally not impressed and almost disappointed when they see the numbers. They are like well, can you translate this to “improved quality of life?” can you translate this to improved quality of experience? Can you turn this to stronger sense of stewardship or connection with nature?
They hire us to give them numbers. We have a lot of fun at it and we get to be super creative and give ourselves pads on the back saying thanks to us, the number nature is receiving is not zero. The clients are super excited because they haven’t seen the numbers yet. They understand very well the benefits of what they are proposing but they really want to see just how big the number is. Then, they see the number and they’re like, well it doesn’t mean anything to me. Kind of like the Deep Thought, the super incredibly powerful computer in the hitchhikers guide to galaxy, when asked the answer to the ultimate question of life, the universe and everything. And the answer is 42. Totally useless.
From a personal standpoint, I believe we cannot assign dollar values to the services provided by ecosystems, and that’s because if we do, we imply nature is replaceable. That there’s a substitute. The cost of losing the bees is the wages I need to pay for people to pollinate the flowers. That’s wrong. I believe nature is irreplaceable and therefore priceless.
*In the past, I’ve been frustrated because someone with decision-making power told me we didn’t need to set up a benefit-cost analysis or an ecosystem valuation. I thought they said that because they didn’t know how to set these up. They’d say things like it’s 10% economics and 90% political economy. If there’s a case for something to happen, no number is going to make a difference.
After many years working in the field, I’m not convinced that decision-makers are all that blind and narrow-sighted. I am not convinced they give nature a default value of zero. I honestly think we should expand our arsenal of terms and values, from benefits to people and services to concepts like “quality of life”. I think we need to work with engineers that are often the ones asking for the Benefit Cost Ratio of things and bring them along that discussion of really evaluating nature in a holistic manner. And the key word here is holistic, not integrated. We are not forcing things together. We are weaving, there’s co-creation involved.
laura villegas ortiz 