A critique of the practice of valuing nature

1. Pricing Nature or Valuing the Earth A critique of the practice of valuing nature Molly Scott Cato Professor of Strategy and Sustainability Roehampton Business School

2. Four aspects of the critique Problems with theory • Substitution of capitals • Discounting and cost-benefit analysis Problems in practice • The Clean Development Mechanism • The EU Emissions Trading System Problems of values rather than valuation

3. Substitution and the Five Capitals

4. Robert Solow—theorist of growth • ‘If it is very easy to substitute other factors for natural resources, then there is, in principle ‘no problem’. The world can, in effect, get along without natural resources. Exhaustion is an event not a catastrophe’. . . • ‘If, on the other hand, output per unit of resources is effectively bounded – cannot exceed some upper limit of productivity which is, in turn, not too far from where we are now – then catastrophe is unavoidable . . . Fortunately, what little evidence there is suggests that there is quite a lot of substitutability between exhaustible resources and renewable or reproducible resources’ (Solow [1993- p.74], quoted in Gowdy and Hubacek 2000).3

5. The value of nature is different. . . • In different countries: ‘'I think the economic logic behind dumping a load of toxic waste in the lowest wage country is impeccable and we should face up to that.'

6. And in different times • Discounting to turn all values into Net Present Values

7. ‘Ecosystem services’ and the Clean Development Mechanism • First we value ecosystems, then people sell ecosystems. But who decides who owns them? • What does ownership mean? • What is the product? Who controls the ‘shadow market’? • Lohman found that local ‘entrepreneurs’ have profited whereas self-provisioning communities have lost out

8. Selling the global commons

9. The Worth of a Songbird • ‘spiritually offensive’ • Are ‘intrinsic values’ enough? • Can we link this to other failings of ethics in the global economy?

10. ‘Indigenous people believe that if they cause harm to nature, then they will themselves come to harm, whether it is speaking without respect of certain animals, or whether it is overfishing a lake or hunting out a certain type of animal. This is something that we in the industrialized world have lost, and perhaps need to remember.’

11. Find out more www.greeneconomist.org gaianeconomics.blogspot.com Green Economics: An Introduction to Theory, Policy and Practice (Earthscan, 2009) Environment and Economy (Routledge, 2011)