Part 2: Valuing Biodiversity

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Part 2 Valuing Biodiversity
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Part 2 Valuing Biodiversity

• Chapter 4 Ecological Economics Direct
  Economic Values
• Chapter 5 Indirect Economic Values
• Chapter 6 Ethical Values

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Ecological Economics Direct Economic Values

• Chapter 4

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Why Economic Valuation is Needed

• Natural Resources undervalued
• Costs of environmental damaged ignored
• Depletion of resources disregarded
• Ecological economics
• Emerging discipline
• Integrates economic valuations of biological
  diversity with ecology, environmental science,
  sociology, and public policy
• Externalities
• Hidden costs or benefits
• environmental damage
• Loss of resources

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Box 5 Industry, Ecology, Ecotourism in
Yellowstone Park

• Industries
• Extraction of timber, oil, and other natural
  resources
• Lower potential for future extraction by damaging
  soil and water resources needed to regenerate
  timber
• Lower the regions potential for tourism,
  retirement communities, and new businesses
• Create hidden costs by lowering water quality for
  residents of area
• Must pay more for clean drinking water
• Ecotourism
• Noise, pollution
• Soil erosion, fire threat
• Does not actively destroy natural resources
• May pollute

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Assigning Economic Value to Biological Diversity

• Common Property Resources
• Owned by society at large
• often not assigned monetary value
• Tragedy of the Commons
• Garrett Hardin (1968)
• Need green accounting
• National Resource Accounting
• Costs of depleting and damaging resources
  included as internal cost of doing business
• Value of maintaining natural resources greater
  than short-term benefit realized through resource
  extraction
• Assign monetary value to species
• Fish kills

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Evaluation Development Projects

• Environmental Impact Assesssments
• Understand causes of destruction
• put value on transaction
• outside benefits and costs externalities
• market failure misallocation of resources
• help understanding of all costs of transactions
• Integrates economics, environmental science, and
  public policy and includes valuations of
  biological diversity in economic analyses
• externalities
• cost-benefit analysis

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Cost-Benefit Analysis

• Values gained
• Costs of project
• Mitigation
• Is project needed?
• What is the true environmental impact???

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Natural Resource Loss Wealth of Societies

• Include natural resource LOSS in GDP !
• Estimate of national productivity
• Measures econmic activity in country without
  accounting for all costs of nonsustainable
  activities
• Overfishing
• Strip-mining
• Hidden costs associated with superficial economic
  gains
• Exxon Valdex oil spill

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One Approach to Assigning Economic Value

• Direct Use Values
• Private goods
• Products harvested by people
• Timber, seafood, medicinal plants from the wild
• Indirect use Values
• Public goods
• Water quality
• Pollution control
• Soil protection
• Option Value
• Potential to provide for future economic benefits
• Existence Value
• Protection of biological diversity
• Charismatic megafauna
• Pandas, wolves
• Biological communities

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Direct Use Values

• Consumptive Use
• Consumed locally
• Fish
• Meat
• Fuelwood
• Timber and other building materials
• Medicinal plants
• Animal fodder
• Productive Use
• Products sold

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Consumptive use Value

• Consumptive use value
• Resources consumed locally
• Do not appear in national/international
  marketplace
• 80 world uses traditional medicines from
  plants/animals
• Protein crucial requirement
• Calculate value by consider cost of equivalent
  product when current one no longer available
• Fuelwood

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Productive Use Value

• Productive use value
• Direct value assigned to products sold in
  commercial markets at national/international
  level
• Timber one of most significant products
• ability to provide founder stock for
  industry/agriculture
• Biocontrol agents
• Ecosystem productivity
• photosynthetic capacity
• Protection of water and soil resources
• Buffering ecosystems against extremes
• Protection against flooding
• Water supplies
• Regulation of climate
• Moderate climate conditions
• Carbon sink
• Waste disposal and nutrient retention

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• Species relationships
• interrelationships
• Recreation and ecotourism
• Educational and scientific value
• Environmental monitors
• Sensitive species provide early warning system
• Types of species present indicates overall health
  of area

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Box 6 How Much Is a Species Worth

• Debate the value of this species on page 98.

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ROADS MAY SKEW TURTLE SEX RATIOS
A juvenile snapping turtle attempting to cross a
heavy duty highway while migrating between ponds
in the central Adirondack region of New York, USA
Females are disproportionately impacted by
roads.

• Painted and snapping turtles almost all male near
  major roads
• research suggests cars pick off the females near
  roads in New York.
• adults migrate to find mates and nest sites
• painted turtles were 73 male,
• snapping turtles were 95 male
• more females are killed on roads,
• during their spring-summer nesting migrations
• Fewer female turtles mean fewer baby turtles for
  the populations.
• installing culverts and short fences to keep them
  from crossing roads.
• in the spring or summer, there's a good chance
  it is a female full of eggs
• http//www.conbio.org/scb/Services/tips/2004-8-A
  ug.cfmA1

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Indirect Economic Values

• Chapter 5

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Nonconsumptive Use Value

• Nonconsumptive Use
• Type of indirect use value
• Services not consumed
• 33 trillion/year
• Greater global gross national product of 18
  trillion
• Human societies totally dependent on natural
  ecosystems
• Cannot persist if permanently degraded or
  destroyed

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Ecosystem Productivity

• Photosynthetic capacity
• Suns energy captured and stored in plants
• Harvested by humans
• Firewood
• Fuel
• Food
• Human needs dominate 40 productivity of
  terrestrial environment
• Some areas (estuaries) starting point for food
  chains
• How do loss of species from biological
  communities impact ecosystem productivity?
• Figure 5.1
• More prairie species greater productivity
• Species diversity is being reduced in major
  ecosystems

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Protection of Water Soil Resources

• Protecting watersheds
• Buffer against flood and drought
• Maintain water quality
• Increased water holding capacity
• Plant foliage
• Decomposing plant material
• Human activities disrupt this
• Soil erosion
• Limits ability of plant life to recover from
  disturbance
• Increased sediment loads in waterways
• Catastrophic floods
• Associated with extensive logging in watershed
  areas

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Climate Regulation

• Plant communities moderate climate conditions
• Trees provide shade
• Transpire water
• Reduces local temperature in hot weather
• Cooling effect Reduces need for air conditioners
• Increases comfort level and Work efficiency
• Act as windbreaks and Reduce heat loss in cool
  weather
• Transpiration recycles rainwater into atmosphere
• Returns as rain
• Loss of vegetation from large forested areas
  means reduction in average annual rainfall
• Plant growth tied into carbon cycle
• Reduced uptake of carbon dioxide

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Waste Treatment Nutrient Retention

• Aquatic communities break down and immobilize
  toxic pollutants
• Fungi and bacteria particularly important
• Aquatic biological communities play role in
  processing and storing nutrients entering
  ecosystem
• Absorbed by photosynthetic organisms
• 15 trillion per year

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Species Relationships

• Species harvested depend on other species for
  continued existence
• Game species need plants and insects
• Crop plants need pollinators
• Honeybees
• Soil organisms
• Decomposers
• Nitrogen fixers

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Environmental Monitors

• Indicator species
• Early warning indicators
• Predict health of environment
• Particularly sensitive to chemical toxins
• Macroinvertebrates
• Rock lichens
• Aquatic filter feeders
• Mollusks

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Recreation Ecotourism

• Nonconsumptive enjoyment
• Hiking
• Photography
• bird-watching
• Amenity value
• Monetary value
• 350 million visitors to National Parks/year
• 4 billion/year
• Lodging, food, fees
• Ecotourism
• Special category of recreation
• Involves people visiting places and spending
  money just to experience unusual biological
  communities
• Whale watching
• Coral reefs
• Galapagos islands
• Safari trips

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Wildlife Economics

• Consumptive
• Commercial hunting
• Sport hunting
• Subsistence hunting
• Trapping
• Eradication programs
• Depredation programs

• Low-Consumptive
• Zoos
• Aquariums
• Scientific research

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Box 8 Page 119 Decline of Fungi in the Forest

• Mycorrhizal fungi
• Enhance growth and health of other organisms

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Educational Scientific Value

• Nature themed
• Books
• Television programs
• Movies
• Television channels
• Billions of dollars per year
• Nonconsumptive use

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Other Ways of Valuing Biodiversity

• Option Value
• Potential for economic benefit in future
• Existence Value
• Amount people are willing to pay to prevent it
  from going extinct

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Option Value

• Economic potential
• Genetics against disease
• Cure for cancer
• Biological control agents
• Each potentially worth billions of dollars

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Existence Value

• Amount willing to pay to keep from extinction
• Charismatic megafauna
• Wolves
• Pandas
• Whales
• Lions
• Elephants
• Bison
• Manatees
• Birds
• Elict strong responses in people
• Bald eagle
• 19/year
• 5 billion
• Now expanded to biological communities

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Is Economic Valuation Enough?

• Ecology economics may not go far enough
• Unnecessary overconsumption of resources by a
  minority of worlds citizens
• Extinction of species
• Major structural changes needed to economic
  system
• Alternative approach
• Lower consumption of resources in developed world
• Reduce need to exploit natural resources
• Increase value placed on natural environment
• And biological diversity
• Subsidy for landowners maintaining habitat/switch
  to vegetarianism

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Summary

• Indirect use values
• Nonconsumptive use values
• Ecosystem productivity
• Protection of water resources and soils
• Regulation of climate
• Waste treatment and nutrient retention
• Enhancement of commercial crops by wild species
• Recreation
• Biological diversity and ecotourism
• Biological diversity and option value
• Future benefits
• Medicine
• Biological control
• New crops
• Contributions toward Existence
• Species
• Communities
• Landscapes

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Ethical Values

• Chapter 6

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Ethical Values of Biological Diversity

• Traditional cultures
• Societal ethics
• Personal responsibility
• U.S. Endangered Species Act
• Aesthetic, ecological, educational, historical,
  recreational, and scientific value of species
• Ethical grounds
• Morally right
• Environmental ethics
• New discipline within philosophy
• Current Western culture of anything goes prompted
  this

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Ethical Arguments for Preserving Biological
Diversity

• Each species has a right to exist.
• Intrinsic value
• All species are interdependent.
• People have a responsibility to act as stewards
  of the Earth
• People have a duty to their neighbors (NEW)
• Duty as humans to live within sustainable limits
• People have a responsibility for future
  generations
• Respect for human life and concern for human
  interests are compatible with a respect for
  biological diversity

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Enlightened Self-Interest Biodiversity Human
Development

• Economic argument
• Preserving biodiversity is in our material
  self-interest
• Ethical argument
• Intrinsic value of nature
• Altruistic argument
• Regardless of our material self-interest
• Protecting our life support and economy
• Aesthetic Recreational enjoyment
• Artistic literary expression
• Scientific knowledge
• Historical understanding
• Religious inspiration

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Deep Ecology

• Deep ecology
• species have value in and of themselves
• humans have no right to reduce this richness
• Title Contesting Earth's Future Radical
  Ecology and Postmodernity
• Author Zimmerman, Michael E.
• Publication Berkeley, Calif. University of
  California Press, 1997.
• Product ID 4642
• eBook ISBN 0585033978ISBN 0520209079
• Subject Environmentalism.Deep ecology.Social
  ecology.Ecofeminism.Language English

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Deep Ecology Table 6.1 page 152

• Humans live in harmony with nature
• All nature has intrinsic worth, regardless of
  human needs
• A stable human population living simply
• Earths resources are limited and must be used
  carefully
• Appropriate technology must be sued with respect
  for the Earth
• Emphasizes spiritual and ethical progress
• Local control, organized according to ecosystems
  or bioregions

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Summary

• Protect biological diversity on ethical
  economic grounds
• Ethical argument to protect species intrinsic
  value
• Species target for conservation efforts
• Species interact in complex ways
• People must live within ecological constraints of
  planet
• Protect nature in our selfinterest
• Deep ecology advocates major changes in society
  functions

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Test Unit 2Chapters 4, 5, 6