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Value lost in translation: Integrating ecological principles into environmental valuations

Value lost in translation: Integrating ecological principles into environmental valuations. Tania Briceno PhD Thesis, HEC MONTREAL Supervisors: Bernard Sinclair Desgagne Jean Pierre Reveret. Environmental Valuations.

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Value lost in translation: Integrating ecological principles into environmental valuations

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  1. Value lost in translation: Integrating ecological principles into environmental valuations Tania Briceno PhD Thesis, HEC MONTREAL Supervisors: Bernard Sinclair Desgagne Jean Pierre Reveret

  2. Environmental Valuations • Increased popularity: eg. Stern report (2006), MEA (2005), TEEB Report (2010) • Need for greater interdisciplinarity (Vedeld 1994, Norton and Noonan 2007, Sagoff, 2010, Norgaard 2010) • Complex systems oversimplified • The ecological economics proposes alternative frameworks

  3. Research Question • Are key ecological principles, necessary for ensuring ecological resilience, being overlooked in valuation practices? • And if so, what are the factors, underlying mechanisms and circumstances contributing to their oversight?

  4. Ecology and Economics: Theoretical underpinnings • Definition of environmental value • Goals of each discipline (Polasky and Segerson (2009) • Economics: Human welfare • Ecology: Resilience • Frameworks of study • Ecology: Descriptive, non-linear, functional • Economics: Normative, linear, output-oriented

  5. Ecological Principles • Ecosystems are context dependent and place-specific • Ecosystems’ interconnected components and hierarchical levels • Ecological functions and processes describe dynamics of ecosystems • (Functional) biodiversity is necessary for ecosystem resilience • Multiple equilibria and ecosystem thresholds determine functionality

  6. The valuation process

  7. The empirical analysis • Randomly selected 200 valuation studies from the EVRI database • Principles and methodological parameters turned into variables • Meta-analyses through a correspondence analysis • Frequency and extent of association is tested

  8. Results

  9. Proportion of valuation methods

  10. Type of ecosystem service

  11. Frequency of Ecological Principle Consideration

  12. Summary table for general correspondence analysis

  13. Row profile table for Ecological Principles

  14. Variance explained by methodological parameters

  15. Conclusions and contributions • Ecological characteristics like the existence of thresholds and emergent properties not actively included in valuation studies. • Common focus on direct-use value, demand-based approaches, consumer preferences, and an almost exclusive use of monetary indicators. • Improvements in the sophistication of demand models not matched with developments of the ecological production model. • Potential for concepts like Fromm’s contributory value to include resilience.

  16. Future research • Explore more deterministic cause-and-effect relationships between the variables with more explanatory models. • Case studies to look at processes and decision making frameworks. • Weighting of the relative importance of the principles for resilience. • Testing with relationship with other welfare considerations (social).

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