La valoración de servicios ambientales se está convirtiendo en el campo de batalla entre las dos aproximaciones a la “economía de la naturaleza”: la economía ambiental (en sentido estricto) y la economía ecológica. Mientras la primera defiende una sostenibilidad débil en la que la tecnología puede sustituir al capital natural y se fundamenta en la racionalidad y objetividad del análisis económico, la segunda se posiciona en una sostenibilidad fuerte (que se basa en la irreplazabilidad del capital natural) y utiliza las herramientas de la ciencia económica como un medio para defender sus posturas, sin aceptar necesariamente la racionalidad de sus argumentos.
Diferentes blogs han tratado este debate y pueden ser la forma más amena e instructiva de conocer “la naturaleza” del enfrentamiento:
1.
Worldchanging. Ecosystem Goods and Services: Series Introduction. Post introductorio a una serie sobre este tema.
Here's a sample of open issues that we hope to tackle:
- There have been a number of attempts to put a monetary value on global ecosystem services, ranging from $250 billion for boreal forest services to the now-famous $33 trillion global ecoservice valuation by Costanza et al. Given the magnitude of these figures in comparison to global GDP, and that what a dollar can buy or motivate itself changes over time, what meaning do such figures have? Are there alternate valuation metrics that would be more meaningful?
- Future wealth is usually discounted to the present day, so that a given financial or natural resource 50 years from now counts for far less in today's decision-making. Does this really make sense? If not, what alternate frameworks allow reasonable planning?
- When we talk about costs and benefits, how are they spatially and temporally distributed? Who are the winners and losers?
- Money doesn't translate directly into human well-being or happiness - $1000 for a subsistence farmer goes much further than the same amount for a well-off professional. Should "value" therefore be rescaled into a more direct human benefit calculation? If so, how?
- To tackle tough problems, it can be helpful to solve simpler cases first. At what scale can we accurately value resources - a forest, a wetland, a rare species of bird? Can valuation of ecosystem components be decomposed in this way? What about resources like oil or metals?
- For pollutants, valuing sinks is important - e.g. the atmosphere, biosphere, and oceans for absorbing carbon. Can sinks be valued in the same way as resources or services?
- In ecosystem service valuation, how can we value the cost-benefit of uncertain yet high-impact events? (e.g. worst-case climate change scenarios)
- In the best case, what tools could we imagine investors or policymakers using in 20 years? What opportunities and benefits might arise?
- What different strategies are available to implement market-based approaches for ecosystem goods and services valuation in developing countries? Developed countries?
2.
Environmental Economics. Críticas a los métodos de valoración económica de la economía ecológica y especialmente al estudio inicial de Constanza et al.
2.1. Willingness to pay and ecological economics.
Willingness (and ability) to pay is the foundation of the economic theory of value. The idea is, if something is worth having, then it is worth paying for. The idea extends to environmental resources like water quality and natural resources like trees. The key assumption is that environmental values are anthropogenic. Whatever people think the environment is worth is what it is worth. Economic methods can be used to attach estimates of willingness to pay to changes in the level of environmental quality and natural resource use.
…
The key concern among environmental economists is that the annual value of the environment is estimated to be about twice that of annual income. In other words, the value of the environment is priceless. [update: underlined words]
Neoclassical economists had a conniption. How in the world is the world's value greater than income? The study's methodology failed to consider substitution possibilities, etc, etc.
2.2. Asking the wrong question (more on ecological economics).
The primary purpose of environmental valuation methods is to provide a benefit measure to compare against costs for benefit-cost analysis of environmental policy. The types of questions typically considered by benefit-cost analyses are marginal decisions (even climate change). In order words, what are the benefits and costs of an incremental improvement in environmental quality? The "what is the value of god?"-type questions don't make sense, at least not to me.
…
It seems that there are two sorts of ecological economists. The first sort is the environmental economist who grew frustrated with some of the constraints of neoclassical economics but did not reject economics. I think of these types as "economic ecological economists." The work they do is environmental economics with greater integration of ecology and maybe a bit more fire and brimstone. These can all be good things.
The second sort is the ecologist who grew frustrated with economics and rejects neoclassical economics. In fact, this type is happy to stand up at a conference and tell everyone what is wrong with economics and economists. I think of these types as "ecological ecological economists." The work they do is ecology with some economics (and a lot of fire and brimstone) thrown in, and a lot of times the economics isn't always exactly right.
3.
Daily Grist. Can't See the Forest for the Bling (comentado en Environmental Economics, Northern forests are probably not worth up to $250 billion per year).
You thought they were just standing there, but forests in Russia, Canada, and other northern nations provide services worth up to $250 billion a year, say Canadian researchers. Water filtration, erosion control, habitat provision, greenhouse-gas absorption, and tourist attraction are highly lucrative pursuits that should be valued by governments, says lead researcher Mark Anielski. The ecological economist calculates that the benefits provided by forests in Canada -- home to one-quarter of the world's forests -- would amount to about $83 billion, roughly 9 percent of the nation's annual gross domestic product. While logging, mining, and other industrial activities lead to short-term economic growth, the long-term risks and problems they pose often go unaccounted for. Anielski, who presented at the just-concluded National Forest Congress in Quebec, hopes his findings will "change the way decisions are made." Ah, everybody loves a dreamer.
4.
Nancy E. Bockstaelet al. (2000). On Measuring Economic Values for Nature. Environ. Sci. Technol., 34(8), 1384-1389.Abstract. Este artículo es una respuesta a los estudios de Constanza y otros similares sobre evaluación económica de servicios ambientales:
Costanza et al. (9) and Pimentel et al. (11) calculate "total values" by scaling up a variety of estimates of values taken from other studies of ecosystem services and functions. The original studies valued small changes in specific and localized components of individual ecosystems, with each study implicitly holding constant other features of the global ecosystem and the economy. It is incorrect to extrapolate the value estimates obtained in any of these studies to a much larger scale, let alone to suppose that the extrapolated estimates could then be added together and applied to the whole planet.
/.../
... at least one aspect of the errors of scaling up values can be easily illustrated. Whatever the private good involved in consumption choices, be it ball point pens or pairs of socks, we can expect that it will be subject to diminishing value as more of the good is purchased (and consumed) within a given (conveniently defined) period of time. In applications, this property implicitly reflects the fact that even though not all pairs of socks are the same, in most cases an individual's willingness to pay for another pair is likely to diminish the more he already has. In this example, the individual has plenty of close substitutes for this potential new purchase. Likewise, an individual's willingness to pay for another pen will be conditioned on how many others he already has. Take away those previously purchased socks or pens, and the willingness to pay for a new one is very different.
Thus, simple multiplication of a physical quantity by "unit value" (derived from a case study that estimated the economic value for a specific resource) is a serious error. Small changes in an ecosystem's services do not adequately characterize, with simple multipliers, the loss of a global ecosystem. Values estimated at one scale cannot be expanded by a convenient physical index of area, such as hectares, to another scale; nor can two separate value estimates, derived under different contexts, simply be added together. When we estimate a compensation measure for one element of an ecosystem, we assume that other aspects of the world that influence human well-being are unchanged. For example, we might compute a compensation measure for the elimination of a specific wetland, holding others constant. In another analysis, a compensation measure for the elimination of a different wetland might have been estimated, holding the first at its initial level. But the two compensation measures cannot be added together to obtain the correct compensation in the event that both wetlands are eliminated.
/.../
Clearly, extrapolating from small-scale studies cannot help us to estimate the economic value for the world's ecosystems, but is there any reasonable answer to this question? We know that Costanza et al.'s estimate of an annual economic value of 33 trillion U.S. dollars is a logically inconsistent measure of what individuals would be willing to pay to avoid the loss, if only because this estimate exceeds their total ability to pay. Simply put, if, as Costanza et al. (9) estimate, the world's GNP is 18 trillion dollars, the world's population does not have 33 trillion dollars to spend annually.
/.../
Suppose instead that one asks what compensation the people of the world would require in order to voluntarily give up the world's ecosystems. This willingness-to-accept form of the economic valuation question uses the alternative baseline and highlights the need to define clearly the alternative state that applies when the compensation is paid. This is required to measure the compensation necessary to equate each individual's well-being, given the current level of the world's ecosystems, with that in an alternative state. But what is this alternative state: a different, newly emerging set of ecosystems or a complete void?
/.../
If the alternative state is "nothingness", then the answer to the willingness to accept question is trivial. There is no finite compensation that individuals would accept to agree to the loss of the world's ecosystems, and they would pay everything they had to avoid it. To an economist, this is the definition of an essential good, a good for which there is no finite compensation for its complete elimination. In this sense, ecosystems are essential.
5.
Ecological Economics. Ecosystem Values: A first step in comparing Ecol Econ to Env Econ. Rebaten los argumentos de los posts de Environmental Economics.
There are far more than "two sorts of ecological economists." {For the record, some of us in the ecological economics world were not happy with the Costanza paper when it came out and are not happy that the legacy continues. We are also not happy with a whole lot of other stuff that appears under the banner "economics." But we don't let that stop us from trying to improve the workings of our discipline.}
Ecological economics is a big tent that allows for cross-disciplanary discussion between economists of various stripes, ecologists, and others. For those interested in better understanding what ecological economics is about, and in cotrasting it to traditional environmental and resource economics, I recommend Jeroen C.J.M. van den Bergh's Ecological Economics: Themes, Approaches, and Differences with Environmental Economics [PDF]. Here's a sampler:
Van den Bergh's paper begins with a distinction between Ecological Economics and Environmental (and resource) economics:
EE [ecological economics] integrates elements of economics, thermodynamics, ethics, and a range of other natural and social sciences to provide an integrated and biophysical perspective on environment-economy interactions, aimed at contributing to structural solutions to environmental problems. The core of EE can be associated with the goal of sustainable development, interpreted as both intra- and intergenerational equity; the view that the economy is a subsystem of a larger local and global ecosystem that sets limits to the physical growth of the economy; and, a methodological approach based on the use of physical (material, energy, chemical, and biological) indicators and comprehensive systems analysis.
EE provides a forum for multidisciplinary environmental research as well as an alternative view and approach to traditional environmental (and resource) economics (ERE). … On the one hand, ecological economics offers criticism of the ERE approach, and on the other, it tries to develop and apply alternative methods and approaches. …
The core of ERE is the theory of negative externalities or external costs. This considers environmental degradation and the use of unpriced natural resources as a negative effect outside the market by one economics agent or another, without any form of compensation taking place. This implies that the environmental problem is cast in terms of an interaction between people (economic agents), that is, nature is only implicitly described. EE is instead more interested in an explicitly modeling of people-environment or economic-ecological relations, by mapping out cause-effect relationships and dynamic processes within the environment (hydrological, chemical, physical and ecological). …
Another important opposition is between scale and allocation. ERE is aimed at optimal allocation and thus efficiency of use of scarce means (including resources). Environmental problems are translated through the concept "externality" (or external effect: or "external cost"). …
EE has chosen sustainable development as its central concept. This is subsequently approached both qualitatively and empirically, with particular attention for spatial scales (ranging from global to local). Within ERE, sustainable development is usually regarded as being identical to sustainable growth, which is studied with general and abstract models that avoid any reference to historical and spatial aspects, as well as specific characteristics of countries. ERE does not seem to take absolute physical limits to growth as seriously as EE, and regards the problem of a "maximum scale" of the economy as irrelevant. … EE generally assumes a longer time horizon that ERE…. EE is closer in spirit to evolutionary then to neoclassical economics… [EE is] characterized by concepts like path dependence, historical accidents, and irreversibility of changes. … Therefore, EE considers systems, including markets, as adaptive and coincidental rather than optimal.
The main goals and criteria for evaluating developments, policies and projects differ between EE and ERE. The dominant criterion of ERE is "efficiency" (or sometimes a more limited version, such as cost-effectiveness). … [ERE] presumes "more is always better." …[W]hereas in ERE distribution and equity are secondary criteria, EE emphasizes (basic) needs, North-South differences, and the complex link between poverty and environment. In addition EE is best characterised by the "precautionary principle", linked to environmental stability, with much attention to "small-probability-large-impact" combinations. …[P]recautionary principle is closely related to a concern for instability of ecosystems, loss of biodiversity,and environmental ethical considerations…. "Efficiency" is of secondary concern in EE. "Distribution is often considered as a more important criterion for evaluation policies and changes than efficiency. In addition, some argue that it is impossible to analyse distribution and efficiency separately. This would mean that the main tool of ERE: namely, equilibrium analysis, which assumes that efficiency can be assessed independently of distribution, is inaccurate at best.
ERE focuses on value dimensions: namely, utility and welfare in theory, and costs and benefits in practice. Unlike neoclassical economics, EE does not regard a total valuation of changes in ecosystems as the sum of private values. …
Next EE criticizes social objectives such as [ERE's] utilitarian approach to intergenerational welfare. … In addition, EE seems to discard consumer sovereignty when giving priority to the interest of systems above the freedom of choice of individuals, as in environmental movements like "deep ecology".
6.
Para una visión divertida, y profundamente crítica, de la economía ecológica, conviene no perderse este post de Marcelino Fuentes: Colorful ecological economics. Imprescindible acudir al post original para apreciar el significado de la crítica “colorful”, la única forma de hacer amena una disciplina tan aburrida …
Últimos comentarios