A Look at the Economics of Resource Valuation

The development of holistic processes for making decisions about the environment will be of great importance as we grow in our understanding of the role of humans in the environment. For two centuries, decision-making in the U.S. has been solely based on economic profits on a small scale, irrespective of large-scale costs and benefits. Movement toward the inclusion of societal costs and benefits is much more equitable on the whole, but raises problems as addressed in the "Science, values, and biodiversity" article. How we go about pricing these elements of a very complex system and weighting the roles of these elements in the system is a matter of great contention. This process is particularly biased when very few people partake in its development. Further, with an issue such as biodiversity, it is often very hard for the public as a whole to understand the issue sufficiently so as to make a decision about it. Nonetheless, if the issue is ignored it could cause catastrophic events in the future.

I find the prospect of including more stakeholders in the decision-making process about biodiversity and other "environmental" issues very comforting. However, EPA and other groups have often found it difficult to do so. The exception to this is where the group of stakeholders had a feeling of immediate threat, such as was the case with the Great Lakes National Program (a program often referred to in certain circles for bringing diverse stakeholders together to resolve a problem). Issues such as biodiversity are intangible for the majority of society (outside of panda bear pictures) and the "science" is unclear as the value of biodiversity or the consequences of reducing it. Or as we sometimes find, the science does nothing to help average people understand the issue (perhaps the scarab beetle article exemplifies this).

In order to make science more accessible and more functional in its role for guiding public decisions, I think we need to work at making it simpler. Theories such as Ockham's Razor in the 14th century ("It is vain to do with more what can be done with fewer") and the new book "Consilience" propose the world as a much simpler place. Yet, science and teaching in the "Western" world is moving farther in farther away from it. Working towards ecosystem approaches and other holistic methods of thinking about the interrelation of nature and society, perhaps science and society may prove useful for decision-making regarding the environment.