Re-establishing an ecological discourse in the policy debate over how to value ecosystems and biodiversity.

In this paper we explore the discourses of ecology, environmental economics, new environmental pragmatism and social ecological economics as they relate to the value of ecosystems and biodiversity. Conceptualizing biodiversity and ecosystems as goods and services that can be represented by monetary values in policy processes is an economic discourse being increasingly championed by ecologists and conservation biologists. The latter promote a new environmental pragmatism internationally as hardwiring biodiversity and ecosystems services into finance. The approach adopts a narrow instrumentalism, denies value pluralism and incommensurability, and downplays the role of scientific knowledge. Re-establishing an ecological discourse in biodiversity policy implies a crucial role for biophysical indicators as independent policy targets, exemplified in this paper by the Nature Index for Norway. Yet, there is a recognisable need to go beyond a traditional ecological approach to one recognising the interconnections of social, ecological and economic problems. This requires reviving and relating to a range of alternative ecologically informed discourses, including an ecofeminist perspective, in order to transform the increasingly dominant and destructive relationship of humans separated from and domineering over Nature.

[1]  Mark Sagoff,et al.  Should Preferences Count , 1994 .

[2]  J. Knetsch.  Environmental Valuation: Some Problems of Wrong Questions and Misleading Answers1 , 1994, Environmental Values.

[3]  Ariel Salleh,et al.  Staying Alive: Women, Ecology and Development. By Vandana Shiva. London: Zed Books, 1989. , 1991, Hypatia.

[4]  R. McLellan,et al.  Living Planet Report 2014: Species and spaces, people and places , 2014 .

[5]  R. O'Neill,et al.  The value of the world's ecosystem services and natural capital , 1997, Nature.

[6]  C. Spash.  The New Environmental Pragmatists, Pluralism and Sustainability , 2009 .

[7]  D. Knowles.  Ecology, Policy and Politics: Human Well-being and the Natural World , 1995 .

[8]  C. Spash.  Ethical Motives and Charitable Contributions in Contingent Valuation: Empirical Evidence from Social Psychology and Economics , 2000 .

[9]  Pål Kvaløy,et al.  The Nature Index: A General Framework for Synthesizing Knowledge on the State of Biodiversity , 2011, PloS one.

[10]  Jakub Kronenberg.  What can the current debate on ecosystem services learn from the past? Lessons from economic ornithology , 2014 .

[11]  Clive L. Spash,et al.  Multiple Value Expression in Contingent Valuation: Economics and Ethics† , 2000 .

[12]  K. Warren.  Feminism and Ecology: Making Connections , 1987 .

[13]  Clive L. Spash,et al.  Bulldozing Biodiversity: The Economics ofOptimal Extinction , 2015 .

[14]  A. Vatn,et al.  Choices without Prices without Apologies , 1994 .

[15]  E. Gómez‐Baggethun,et al.  Economic valuation and the commodification of ecosystem services , 2011 .

[16]  O. Skarpaas,et al.  Knowledge gathering and communication on biodiversity: Developing the Norwegian Nature Index , 2012 .

[17]  O. Skarpaas,et al.  The Norwegian Nature Index – conceptual framework and methodology , 2012 .

[18]  K. Redford,et al.  Payment for Ecosystem Services and the Challenge of Saving Nature , 2009, Conservation biology : the journal of the Society for Conservation Biology.

[19]  R. Norgaard.  Ecosystem services: From eye-opening metaphor to complexity blinder , 2010 .

[20]  S. Funtowicz,et al.  Combining Quantitative and Qualitative Measures of Uncertainty in Model‐Based Environmental Assessment: The NUSAP System , 2005, Risk analysis : an official publication of the Society for Risk Analysis.

[21]  V. Plumwood.  Tasteless: Towards a Food-Based Approach to Death , 2008 .

[22]  Lawrence Jones-Walters,et al.  Valuing nature: The economics of biodiversity , 2009 .

[23]  Clive L. Spash,et al.  Ecosystems, contingent valuation and ethics: the case of wetland re-creation , 2000 .

[24]  P. Grandjean,et al.  Late lessons from early warnings: science, precaution, innovation , 2013 .

[25]  J. Settele,et al.  Economic valuation of the vulnerability of world agriculture confronted with pollinator decline , 2009 .

[26]  S. Sullivan.  Banking Nature? The Spectacular Financialisation of Environmental Conservation , 2013 .

[27]  S. Carpenter,et al.  Millennium Ecosystem Assessment: Research Needs , 2006, Science.

[28]  C. Spash,et al.  Motives behind willingness to pay for improving biodiversity in a water ecosystem: Economics, ethics and social psychology , 2009 .

[29]  David McKie,et al.  The Death of Nature , 1997 .

[30]  J. Nelson.  Gender, Metaphor, and the Definition of Economics , 1992, Economics and Philosophy.

[31]  Philip Mirowski,et al.  More Heat Than Light. Economics as Social Physics: Physics as Nature's Economics. , 1991 .

[32]  A. Vatn,et al.  Transferring environmental value estimates: Issues and alternatives , 2006 .

[33]  T. Bowyer-Bower,et al.  Staying Alive: Women, Ecology and Development , 1989 .

[34]  James H. Brown,et al.  The Report of the Ecological Society of America Committee on the Scientific Basis for Ecosystem Management , 1996 .

[35]  Edmundo Claro.  Exchange Relationships and the Environment: The Acceptability of Compensation in the Siting of Waste Disposal Facilities , 2007, Environmental Values.

[36]  C. Spash.  Investigating Individual Motives for Environmental Action: Lexicographic Preferences, Beliefs and Attitudes , 1998 .

[37]  C. Spash.  The Shallow or the Deep Ecological Economics Movement , 2013 .

[38]  Kevin J. Boyle,et al.  Valuing ecosystem services: toward better environmental decision-making , 2005 .

[39]  G. Daily,et al.  The Nature and Value of Ecosystem Services: An Overview Highlighting Hydrologic Services , 2007 .

[40]  Val Plumwood,et al.  Feminism and the Mastery of Nature , 2019, Ideals and Ideologies.

[41]  O. Skarpaas,et al.  The Norwegian Nature Index – state and trends of biodiversity in Norway , 2012 .

[42]  C. Spash.  Contingent Valuation Design and Data Treatment: If You Can't Shoot the Messenger, Change the Message , 2008 .

[43]  J. Spangenberg,et al.  Precisely incorrect? Monetising the value of ecosystem services § , 2010 .

[44]  J. Martínez-Alier,et al.  Weak Comparability of Values as a Foundation for Ecological Economics , 1998 .

[45]  A. Holland.  Are choices trade-offs? , 2008 .

[46]  S. Sullivan.  Financialisation, biodiversity conservation and equity: some currents and concerns , 2012 .

[47]  Clive L. Spash,et al.  Bulldozing biodiversity: The economics of offsets and trading-in Nature , 2015 .

[48]  Arne Naess,et al.  The shallow and the deep, long‐range ecology movement. A summary∗ , 1973 .

[49]  Mark Sagoff,et al.  Price, Principle, and the Environment , 2004 .

[50]  C. Spash.  How Much is that Ecosystem in the Window? The One with the Bio-diverse Trail , 2008 .

[51]  S. Funtowicz,et al.  The worth of a songbird: ecological economics as a post-normal science , 1994 .

[52]  D. Noonan,et al.  Ecology and Valuation: Big Changes Needed , 2007 .

[53]  C. Spash,et al.  ʻAppendix: Policy Research Brief, Conceptions of Value in Environmental Decision-Makingʼ , 2000 .

[54]  Robert Costanza,et al.  Economic Reasons for Conserving Wild Nature , 2002, Science.

[55]  P. Thonart,et al.  Placenta-Like Structure of the Aphid Endoparasitic Wasp Aphidius ervi: A Strategy of Optimal Resources Acquisition , 2011, PloS one.

[56]  Richard A. Easterlin,et al.  Explaining happiness , 2003, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America.

[57]  C. Spash.  Terrible Economics, Ecosystems and Banking , 2011 .

[58]  K. Kapp.  Social costs of business enterprise , 1978 .

[59]  G. Mace,et al.  Biodiversity and ecosystem services: a multilayered relationship. , 2012, Trends in ecology & evolution.

[60]  Leslie A. Real,et al.  The Sustainable Biosphere Initiative: An Ecological Research Agenda: A Report from the Ecological Society of America , 1991 .

[61]  Robert Costanza,et al.  Nature: ecosystems without commodifying them , 2006, Nature.

[62]  A. Vatn.  An institutional analysis of payments for environmental services , 2010 .

[63]  T. Swanson.  The International Regulation of Extinction , 1994 .

[64]  Harvey Alexander.  Nature's services: Societal dependence on natural ecosystems: Edited by Gretchen C. Daily Island Press, 1997, $24.95, 392 pages , 1999 .

[65]  B. Büscher,et al.  Nature™ Inc.: Changes and Continuities in Neoliberal Conservation and Market‐based Environmental Policy , 2012 .

[66]  Arild Vatn,et al.  Institutions And The Environment , 2005 .

[67]  K. Soma.  Natura economica in Environmental Valuation , 2006, Environmental Values.

[68]  Holmes Rolston.  Value in Nature and the Nature of Value , 1994 .

[69]  Shierry Weber Nicholsen.  The Love of Nature and the End of the World: The Unspoken Dimensions of Environmental Concern , 1998 .

[70]  Juan Martínez Alier,et al.  The environmentalism of the poor : a study of ecological conflicts and valuation , 2002 .

[71]  K. G. Willis,et al.  Environmental Valuation: New Perspectives , 1995 .

[72]  M. Mellor.  Ecofeminist political economy , 2006 .

[73]  David Abram,et al.  The Spell of the Sensuous: Perception and Language in a More-Than-Human World , 1996 .

[74]  D. Budlender.  If women counted : a new feminist economics , 1993 .

[75]  P. Ehrlich,et al.  Conservation Biology for All , 2010 .

[76]  A. Gasparatos.  Biofuels in Africa Impacts on Ecosystem Services, Biodiversity and Human Well-being , 2012 .

[77]  Teeb.  The Economics of Ecosystems and Biodiversity: mainstreaming the economics of nature: a synthesis of the approach, conclusions and recommendations of TEEB , 2017 .