An 800 lb (million dollar) Gorilla

The Boston Globe published and opinion piece over the weekend that broadly summarizes the concept of ecosystem services (unrelated: the Globe needs to get their internet act together.  This isn't the 90s anymore, come join the NYT and the WSJ in the 21st century).  I’ve been meaning to write something about this for a while so I suppose now is as good of time as any to do that.  I’ll start by saying that I thought that the piece was both fair and well informed.  It didn’t do the details of the issue justice, but as an introduction it was fine.  I’d dispute the tagline though – ‘ecosystem services’ is neither a new idea nor a particularly bold one.

As the article notes, it has been around since the mid-1970s, and in many ways the foundations of the idea have been around far longer than that.  At its heart, the principle of ecosystem services is nothing more than a recognition that humans are dependent upon services that are offered by the natural environment.  When we do not manage our activities to be in harmony with the surrounding environment we have a tendency to destroy these services.  As a result, a successful society is one that lives in harmony with the earth and recognizes that it is a system, of which we are only a part.  Sound familiar?  Granted, the introduction of money into the system is a new twist, but I can’t be the only one who sees more than a little irony in the fact that the West, and America in particular, is just now coming to this view.

Ironic or not, our gradual awakening to the fact that primitive societies might not have been as primitive as they seemed is very important and not without controversy.  As Tuhus-Dubrow and numerous others have noted, there is significant pushback against the idea of ecosystem services from some environmentalists.  Arguing that nature is much more than any dollar value we could assign it, they argue that our time should not go towards assigning dollar values but advocating for the protection of nature because of it’s priceless value to humanity.  While I tend to agree that there are many more reasons to protect the environment than the services it provides for humans, I reject the argument that we should not be assigning dollar values.  If we argue that nature should be protected because it is priceless there is a very real danger that it will not be protected precisely because it is price less. 

Not everyone sees nature as a priceless asset.  Unless a dollar value is assigned to at least some of it, then it will be given a zero value.  I see the problem as more severe than the justification, given in the article, that nature is given a value of zero by default.  That presumes people haven’t thought about the value of nature but, if they did, would give it more than a zero value.  I don’t believe that.  A large part of society will, and does, actively assign a value of zero to the environment – and in some cases assigns it a negative value in that they view the taming of the wild as progress.  This view cannot be countered by the argument that nature is valuable because we can’t value it.  It must be countered with specific and quantifiable data. 

However, the usefulness of ‘ecosystem service’ valuation is not limitless, nor are those who oppose its use entirely wrong.  They correctly point out the danger, in assigning dollar values, that the objects to which the dollar values are assigned become nothing more than those values.  When it becomes economical to replace them, based on the estimates of their value, they are replaced with no consideration for intrinsic value. 

While correct, this is not a reason to avoid ‘ecosystem services.’  Rather, it is the reason why ‘ecosystem services’ must be stressed as the minimum possible value that these things have, and that decisions to eliminate them must encompass many more variables.  The U.S. Department of Transportation has reduced human life to a numeric value – in the low millions – and uses this to assess whether certain policies should be enacted.  No one would argue that human life has hence been reduced to a numeric value.  Nor, I would suggest, that this statistical value of a human life is the only consideration in policies that may cost human life.  Nature can, and must, be dealt with in the same way.  Assigning values is only one part of the process but it is a vital one.  Without quantifiable data environmentalists are fighting an uphill battle against those who speak in dollars and cents. 

Finally, because I think that there is an important caveat to the discussion that is often glossed over – and certainly was in the article – I’ll leave you with the idea that there are two categories of environmental goods.  There are those that have a clear value in our current economic system but are not accurately priced, and those that currently have no clear value (and, obviously, are not accurately priced).  The first category includes things like mountain views (of which I am particularly fond) and carbon emissions.  These are goods that can, with some ingenuity, be accurately priced and included in our markets.  That they are not represents a significant market failure that should be addressed (especially with regard to carbon emissions).  The second category includes things like wildlife, wilderness, and a pristine environment.  These things can be valued – an African mountain gorilla was recently valued at USD 4 million based on tourism revenue – but the fact that they are not does not necessarily represent market failures.  I believe that having a value in these cases is still useful but one must be much more careful about the terms of the discussion.  A gorilla should be protected for its own sake, not just because it brings in 4 million from tourists.