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Monetizing ecology: UK govt agency puts price tag on nature
photo by Feffef (Flickr CC)
The second installment of Adam Curtis’ new documentary series “All Watched Over by Machines of Loving Grace” (recently on the BBC) focuses on how ecologists once reasoned that nature was made up of mechanistic, computer-like systems, consisting of many factors working in harmony in order to maintain balance.
This view of ecosystems, which does not fully account for the chaos caused by the inherent flux of nature, has fallen out of fashion among many contemporary ecologists. They claim previous ecological theories were inspired by man-made machinery and not nature itself.
Yet despite the fact that nature may be chaotic, unpredictable and impossible to control, we as humans generally acknowledge that we have some role to play in its stewardship, as well as its destruction. We may be part of nature, but we try, as indeed other animals do, to bend it to our will and use its different aspects to our advantage. We then make efforts – inadequate as they are – at damage control by trying to clean up our spills, institute limits and fail-safes, while harping on about “saving the planet” when what we really mean is saving our own skins.
The latest attempt at saving the Earth/us is a paradigm shift in which human civilization would treat nature not as a free grab bag we may rightfully exploit as much as possible, but rather as something of inherent value as it is: a network of unstable ecosystems that sustains us all.
The solution, it seems, is somewhat market-based.
The National Ecosystem Assessment (NEA) is the first report of its kind to attach an actual monetary value to ecosystems and other previously uncommodified natural resources.
The NEA report, by the UK’s Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) attempts to put a price on “ecosystem services” that humans benefit from for health and wellbeing, economically, etc.
Damian Carrington writes in the Guardian:
In short it says what we all know when we stop to think: wellbeing is really worth something. And it’s fascinating. The health benefits of living with a view of a green space are worth up to £300 per person per year, the researchers calculate. Bees and other pollinators provide a service worth £430m a year to British farmers. Overall, nature’s gifts are worth hundreds of billions a year in the UK alone.
Seems commonsensical enough. Why did we not see it before?
Yet in an opinion piece for The Ecologist, philosopher Kate Rawles warns against this type of commodification:
Assigning economic and other instrumental values to ‘ecosystem services’ seems critical in our economics-dominated ‘real’ world. But equally, this reduction of life to a set of sinks and services for people perpetuates a dangerously distorted myth of our own place in the bigger scheme of things. For all our technological brilliance we are still utterly earthbound, animals in habitats. And other life-forms are not only to be valued insofar as humans need or want them. This is the values-equivalence of the claim that the sun revolves around the earth. It calls for a Copernican revolution in our value system; one that dislodges homo-sapiens from the centre of the universe.
Rawles is using practical philosophy to contribute the debate, some of it even bordering on antispeciesism. She may sound idealist (she is a philosopher after all) but she is on to something that may ring bells with those who don’t believe that the solution to everything in the world is market-based.
Perhaps the fall of the Berlin Wall didn’t automatically mean that no one cares about anything which can’t be bought or sold. Maybe the End of History was just a blip rather than the confirmation that capitalism is the only game in town – forever.
Projects like the UN’s TEEB may have a positive impact on the environment by considering the economic value of conservation and sustainability and by shifting away from consumption and growth-dependent models. Perhaps in this age, where capitalism rules almost unchallenged, money metaphors are the only language we understand.
We know we don’t actually have to put a dollar sign on a drink of water, a breath of fresh air or a sunny day in order to know it has value. Yet millions are made every day on bottled spring water and package beach holidays just the same.
“Natural Capital” – the concept of valuing the preservation of ecosystems and highlighting biodiversity loss as an economic, natural and human loss – could help us change our concept of what has true value, regardless of market value. The practical results of this are not untested, as much of the world’s poor lives this way and so have most people since the dawn of human history.
Whether you are cynical or utopian or (like me) bounce back and forth between the two, it is all thought-provoking stuff.
Read more on the story in the Independent:
What price nature? Report puts financial value on UK’s ecology
Tags: Adam Curtis, All Watched Over by Machines of Loving Grace, biodiversity, capitalism, commodification, Conservation, Defra, ecology, ecosystems, natural capital, NEA, TEEB
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Monetizing ecology: UK govt agency puts price tag on nature
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I second the motion this is indeed an impeccable article. As for me ,my stand here is neither cynical or utopian. I regard those people’s idea on how we could be able to preserve this non cornucopia natural resources may it be fauna or flora. To some perhaps out of desperation to find a way, made them think out of the box or out of the ordinary to find a solution………In my point of view no organism ,creature ,species will stand out more valuable than the others, these are all co related to one another, that’s why destroying one will affect all….Everything was created with its significant purpose, no more no less………
[...] The film is titled “The Use and Abuse of Vegetational Concepts”. Curtis wrote his own text precis of its argument and Wikipedians offer another. There are blog posts here, here and (most interesting but mainly because it takes off in a different direction) here. [...]
Thanks for your comment, Murielle.
I had a small discussion with a friend on facebook after I posted the article there on my page. He thinks the project is a good idea and didn’t agree with Rawles. Personally, I see where Rawles is coming from, but on the other hand, what I get out of the report is that it is simply calculating a monetary value that exists no matter if we acknowledge it or not (clean air reduces health costs, etc). Rawles seems to be against speciesism and she’s correct – we are not the only species with rights.
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But she also might be making an argument that is beyond most people. For now, anything that gets us to conserve and value biodiversity and nature more than we currently do is a step in the right direction.
Hi Graham,
Thanks for this nice article. Maybe putting a price on nature is the only way to get people to care, as money seems the only universal language today. Apart from that positive thought, I agree with Rawles that reducing nature to it’s intrinsic monetary value FOR US is far from paying nature the respect it deserves. Considered that way, putting a price on nature is very dangerous and could eventually lead to even more destruction. If you can pinpoint nature’s added value to us, surely there will be money losses on the other end. Maybe mice or birds or plants of some sort will have a negative value, what will we do then?
For me nature has but one price: an invaluable one. And let’s not kid ourselves, even today, now, this instant, somebody is already paying for clean water and fresh air. The question is, what will happen to those who are not fortunate enough to make ends meet?