eLearning

Lowell Pritchard Jr.,
Carl Folke,
and Lance Gunderson

INTRODUCTION
As long as we are forced to make choices, we are
doing valuation. But different approaches to valua-
tion are based on qualitatively different assump-
tions. For example, the economics approach to
valuation is based on the ethical principle of con-
sumer sovereignty, and it privileges the kinds of
decisions individuals make in the marketplace. We
accept the economics approach as a useful partial
approach to decision making in relation to ecosys-
temservices if one is interested in what people think
about and want from services; if one believes that
human preferences are the basis for the value of
services; if one accepts the assumption that adding
individual preferences reflects humanity’s collective
valuation of ecosystemservices and life support; and
if one assumes that marginal changes will only
cause marginal consequences.
The thesis of this article is that currently used
modes of valuing ecosystem services do not take
into account the inherent complexities and result-
ing uncertainties associated with dynamics of these
coupled systems of people and nature. Ecosystem
services are not a smooth, controllable function of
human controls; rather, the nonlinearities and shift-
ing relationships of these systems create changes
that are inherently unpredictable. Human values
and preferences are not static and pre-existent;
rather, they are formed in interaction with nature
and with society. Those types of uncertainties are
difficult to capture with current modes of valuation.
We end with some modest suggestions of institu-
tional solutions to deal with those uncertainties.We

begin with a weak typology of various goals of
ecosystem valuation.

WHAT IS VALUATION ‘‘FOR’’?
Economic valuation of natural systems and their
services is undertaken for at least three reasons.
First, a study may attempt to show that natural
systems are indisputably linked to human welfare,
even when they are priced at zero. This is the sense
in which we understand recent efforts to value the
whole earth (for example, Costanza and others
1997)—the lesson learned is that the significance of
natural systems for economic well-being is real and
large and that it therefore must be taken into
account. The focus is not on a single number that
describes the worth of an ecosystem but on the
myriad ways in which human systems and natural
systems influence and undergird one another. The
goal is to make sure that ‘‘nature’’ is represented in
decision-making processes and to note that its role
in the economy is not merely aesthetic.
Second, economic valuation may be undertaken
to describe the relative importance of various ecosys-
tem types. For example, the special significance of
wetlands for the economy has been amajor result of
ecological and economic valuation studies (for ex-
ample, Odum 1984; Farber and Costanza 1987;
Turner and others 1995). The lesson that wetlands
are especially valuable has been embedded in legal
and institutional systems, leading to their relative
protection from development and agricultural im-
pacts and direct modifications. In this case, eco-
nomic valuation results were adduced as evidence
supporting an already well-established ecological
intuition about the importance of wetland function
for society.