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IDR Team Summary 6
Develop appropriate methods to accurately
value natural capital and ecosystem services.
CHALLENGE SUMMARY
Ecosystems provide a wide array of goods and services of value to
people (“ecosystem services”). Some ecosystem services lead to the provi-
sion of marketed commodities (e.g., fish, timber) but most ecosystem ser-
vices do not flow through markets (e.g., provision of clean water, habitat
for species). There is little direct signal of the importance of these non-
marketed ecosystem services and little incentive to manage ecosystems
to maintain natural capital necessary for the sustained provision of eco-
system services. One way to give incentives for sustained provision is to
assess the value of ecosystem services in a common monetary metric and
provide payments for provision. Valuing ecosystem services requires both
the ability to quantify the amount of a service produced and methods of
nonmarket valuation. Economists have developed a range of methods
of nonmarket valuation that can be applied to value ecosystem services.
Critics of the economic approach raise questions about the incompat-
ibility with the economic approach to value services that are centered on
human well-being and the intrinsic value of nature. Critics also question
whether the aesthetic beauty of a landscape or the continued existence of a
species can or should be measured in monetary terms. These debates raise
fundamental questions about our understanding of the contribution of
ecosystem processes to human well-being and whether we can accurately
gauge, in either a quantitative or qualitative manner, the relative impor-
tance of various ecosystem services.
55
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56 ECOSYSTEM SERVICES
Key Questions
• Should we attempt to express ecosystem processes in terms of ecosys-
tem services? Can we accurately assess the provision of ecosystem services?
• At the global and regional level how can ecosystem service delivery
be assessed through time utilizing remote sensing technology?
• Should we attempt to estimate monetary values for ecosystem ser-
vices and natural capital? Can or should all values of nature be measured in
monetary terms? Is it possible to accurately measure such values as aesthetic
beauty and the existence of species in monetary terms that can be compared
to the value of crop or timber production?
• What is the relationship between the value of natural capital and the
value of ecosystem services?
• What are the main difficulties involved in estimating monetary
values for ecosystem services and natural capital?
• What are the main methods used by economists to value ecosystem
services and natural capital? What are the strengths and limitations of these
methods?
• What are the main methods used by other social scientists besides
economists to value ecosystem services and natural capital? Are the meth-
odological approaches of economists and other social scientists consistent,
conflicting, or nonoverlapping?
• Because of the difficulty of valuing some ecosystem services, the
U.S. Office of Management and Budget recommends quantifying benefits
that can be quantified, monetizing benefits that can be monetized, and
giving a qualitative description of benefits than can be neither monetized
nor quantified. Do you think that doing so will mean that ecosystem ser-
vices that are only qualitatively described will be taken less seriously than
those that are given monetary or quantitative values? In other words, is there
a bias against evidence that is not based on “hard” numbers?
• How should we weight benefits from ecosystem services to different
groups? If harm from loss of services accrues to poor or disadvantages groups
should that be weighed differently than loss of services to wealthy groups?
• How can we design a reporting system for natural capital that is
equivalent to measures of manufactured capital and other forms of assets
to derive a measure of inclusive wealth? How can we design a reporting
system for ecosystem services and incorporate these values into national
income accounting? Can these reports be updated annually and reported at
the country, state, and national levels, analogous to and supportive of the
FAOstat on agricultural commodities.
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IDR TEAM SUMMARY 6
• Can markets for regulating services (erosion control, local climate
control, disease control, etc.) be developed?
Reading
Balmford A, Bruner A, Cooper P, Costanza R, Farber S, Green RE, Jenkins M, Jefferiss P,
Jessamy V, Madden J, Munro K, Myers N, Naeem S, Paavola J, Rayment M, Rosendo S,
Roughgarden J, Trumper K, Turner RK. Economic reasons for conserving wild nature.
Science 2002;297:950-953.
Goulder LH and Kennedy D. Daily GC, ed. Valuing ecosystem services: philosophical
bases and empirical methods. In Nature’s Services: Societal Dependence on Natural
Ecosystems, pp. 23-47. Island Press: Washington, DC, 1997. [For purchase.]
McCauley, D. Selling out on nature. Nature 2006;443:27-28.
National Research Council. Valuing ecosystem services: toward better environmental
decision-making,chapter 4. The National Academies Press: Washington, DC, 2005.
Nelson E,Mendoza G, Regetz J, Polasky S,Tallis H, Cameron DR, Chan KMA, Daily GC,
Goldstein J, Kareiva PM, Lonsdorf E, Naidoo R, Ricketts TH, and Shaw MR. Modeling
multiple ecosystem services, biodiversity conservation, commodity production, and
tradeoffs at landscape scales. Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment 2009;7(1):4–11.
Because of the popularity of this topic, three groups
explored this subject. Please be sure to review each
write-up, which immediately follow this one.
IDR TEAM MEMBERS—GROUP 6A
• Clyde F. Casey, United States Geographical Survey
• Judy J. Gunderson, The Dow Chemical Company
• Hillary B. Huffer, ECU and NOAA
• Sarah Jane Keller, University of California, Santa Cruz
• Kevin J. Krizek, University of Colorado
• Yiqi Luo, University of Oklahoma
• David A. Mortensen, The Pennsylvania State University
• Richard Ready, The Pennsylvania State University
• Jessica A. Sanderson, USG Corporation
• Sabina L. Shaikh, University of Chicago
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58 ECOSYSTEM SERVICES
IDR TEAM SUMMARY—GROUP 6A
Sarah Jane Keller, NAKFI Science Writing Scholar
University of California, Santa Cruz
IDR Team 6A was asked to develop appropriate methods to accurately
value natural capital and ecosystem services. Human population growth and
the expanding material appetites of many societies are straining the world’s
natural resources and ecosystems. Taking a full account of the services we
derive from those systems could help reveal nature’s unappreciated benefits
to humanity and inform choices that will secure the long-term viability of
ecosystems.
While many ecosystems provide us with tangible benefits, such as
timber and seafood, the pricing of these benefits—or ecosystem services—
may not reflect the total value of the ecosystems that produced them. Other
ecosystem services, such as seed dispersal, nutrient cycling, and water puri-
fication are typically not reflected in markets at all.
The team faced well-trod ground. There have been many attempts to
incorporate the qualitative or quantitative values of ecosystem services into
decision-making. Additionally, debates about whether or not it is appropri-
ate to assign dollar values to ecosystem services have been waged for decades.
With economists, ecologists, an urban planner, and two industry rep-
resentatives in the group, IDR Team 6A was well-equipped to address the
problem of valuing ecosystem services. Then the question became, with so
many existing frameworks for valuing ecosystem services, what could IDR
Team 6A contribute?
The Ecosystem of Valuation Methods
The team developed a thought exercise that exposed the diversity and
specificity of possible pathways to arrive at the “how” of valuing ecosystem
services.
What is the structure and function of systems being valued?
The team agreed that this is the foundation for valuing ecosystem ser-
vices. Gaps in spatial and temporal understanding of a system could begin as
small uncertainties, but become magnified as ecosystem data are combined
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IDR TEAM SUMMARY 6
with uncertainties in valuations. Also, ecological studies are generally not
tailored to meet the needs of the valuation methods that economists use.
An important ecosystem consideration is that some ecosystem services
are derived from disturbance of ecosystems by human activities, and that
sometimes the most altered and exploited ecosystems provide a great deal of
service in the short term. An example is pastoral land compared to pristine
forest. How can we compare the carbon sequestration and erosion control
benefits of the forest with the food production and aesthetic benefits that
people receive from mixed woodland and agricultural areas?
Why they are being valued?
Is a business trying to weigh tradeoffs in locations for building a new
plant, is the government trying to determine how wetlands should be
remediated, or is a nonprofit trying to calculate a global value of a service to
make a statement? The purpose of the valuation will help determine which
methods to apply.
Who is interested in the information?
The valuation may be dependent on the stakeholder group. A beach-
front landowner will value the services from his or her property differently
than the rest of the community will value the property’s flood protection
services.
These considerations create context for how ecosystems services should
be valued and demonstrate that IDR Team 6A’s challenge went beyond
methodological concerns. To eliminate some of the dizzying array of op-
tions, the team focused on quantitative valuation of ecosystem services and
elected not to tackle qualitative valuation problems.
Within the world of quantitative valuation, there are still a number
of methods to consider, including the market price method, productiv-
ity method, hedonic pricing method, travel cost method, substitute cost
method, contingent value method, contingent choice method, and benefit
transfer method.
Improving Benefit Transfer
IDR Team 6A elected to focus on benefit transfer based on the method’s
familiarity to the group and its ongoing application by government. Given
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60 ECOSYSTEM SERVICES
the specificity and diversity of ecosystem services and applications, it would
be ideal to quantify and value services for each situation, but this is not
practical. So, benefit transfer is used to generalize valuation estimates and
apply them across locations and time. For example, agencies such as the U.S.
Environmental Protection Agency use it to assess the benefits and costs of
federal environmental regulation when time and money limit site-specific
measurements.
The team then identified ways in which benefits transfer could be
improved. According to team members, benefits transfer is subject to large
inaccuracies and validity concerns. The economists in the room also noted
that effort going into valuation studies has been declining over time and new
technologies and models should be considered to improve value transfers.
An Alliance Between Social Science and Natural Science
The team set out to answer the question: “How can natural scientists
and social scientists improve the validity and accuracy of benefits transfer?”
Specifically, they wanted to address the following challenges to the accuracy
of benefit transfers:
• Ecosystem knowledge is incomplete.
• Temporal and spatial scales vary.
• Valuation of ecosystem services is context dependent.
• Source studies establishing ecosystem services values may be inadequate.
• What matters to the affected population is site specific.
• There is a vast number and variety of ecosystem services.
The group considered the possibility of standardized methods for valu-
ing ecosystem services but decided that would be intractable. They settled
on a framework that centers on ecosystem service indicators to improve
benefits transfers. Indicators would translate what ecologists know is impor-
tant for ecosystem services into what stakeholders care about. For example,
the public may not care about lake sediment levels, but they may value the
ability to see their feet when they walk into the lake to swim. They may
be willing to drive farther to use a lake where they can see their feet, versus
one where they cannot.
The team identified a number of approaches to address the problem
of valuing ecosystem services and decided that the approaches should be
implemented simultaneously to produce more reliable ecosystem valua-
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IDR TEAM SUMMARY 6
tions. First, primary valuation estimates at the source should continue,
because they are integral to improving benefit transfers. Ecological models
should continue to be integrated into economic valuations. Nonmonetary
measures of value such as tradeoffs and thresholds should also be considered
as options when monetary valuation is not appropriate for the decision-
making context.
Developing and Applying Ecosystem Service Indicators
IDR Team 6A’s final product was a conceptual, iterative framework for
developing ecosystem service indicators that could be used for more reliable
benefit transfers between sites (Figure 1). The general framework relies on
the natural sciences to apply ecological models that ingest site-specific data
to generate indicators of ecosystem services. Those indicators will act as
proxies to inform economic valuations of ecosystem services which account
for the values and specificity of interests of the affected populations.
The team used ecosystem services in a generalized forest to think
through the application of an ecosystem service indictor derived from one
system (Figure 2). Forests provide services of carbon sequestration, water
quality regulation, aesthetics, cultural value, temperature regulation, recre-
FIGURE 1
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62 ECOSYSTEM SERVICES
FIGURE 2
ational value, and habitat, among others. There are many ways to measure
these services but it is generally not practical when performing a benefit
transfer. Therefore, could one measure represent many ecosystem services?
The group selected the indicator “trout stream miles” as a known
forest indicator that could be applied in ecosystems that are relevant as
trout habitat. Trout habitat requirements could become a proxy for other
ecosystem services. Trout depend on the temperature regulation afforded
by forest cover over streams; they depend on aquatic invertebrates, which
are intolerant of polluted water and they depend on clear water that is not
contaminated with sediment from runoff. If you buy the ecosystem service
indicator of trout stream miles, you get at least three or four more indica-
tors free.
The group concluded with two main science questions that need to be
answered to implement their framework. First, how will we know if indica-
tors are working in different contexts such as varied scales of space and time
or at different levels of governance? For example, could indicators developed
in one country be applied in another? The team’s discussion ended with the
open question of how natural and physical scientists can develop ecosystem
service indicators that will be transferrable, accurate and useful.
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IDR TEAM SUMMARY 6
IDR TEAM MEMBERS—GROUP 6B
• Julia K. Baum, University of Victoria
• Robin L. Chazdon, University of Connecticut
• Francie Diep, New York University
• Anantha K. Duraiappah, United Nations University
• Jimena Forero, University of Puerto Rico
• Andrea Ghermandi, Cà Foscari University of Venice, Italy
• Gary W. Johnson, Gund Institute for Ecological Economics
• Eduard T. Niesten, Conservation International
• Darius J. Semmens, U.S. Geological Survey
• Ariana E. Sutton-Grier, National Oceanic and Atmospheric
Administration
IDR TEAM SUMMARY—GROUP 6B
Francie Diep, NAKFI Science Writing Scholar
New York University
IDR Team 6B was asked to create a quantitative valuation system for
ecosystem services. The team framed its challenge as a way of arriving at a
larger, more consumer-oriented goal: Correcting the prices shoppers see in
the grocery store.
The cheapest shrimp shoppers can find in the seafood section may well
extract a high cost on the environment where it was harvested. If trees were
cleared from a mangrove swamp to make way for the farm where the shrimp
were grown, then people living near the mangroves would have lost an
important tool for fighting erosion—hence, lost the mangroves as a source
of ecosystem services. If the shrimp farm put antibiotics or high-nutrient
feed into its water, then local populations would suffer a reduction in water
quality. Yet those costs, which are real but difficult to quantify in dollars,
do not show up in the final store price of the shrimp that most consumers
see. At the 2011 National Academies Keck Futures Initiative Conference
on Ecosystem Services, IDR Team 6B was especially interested in putting
quantitative values on ecosystem services such as erosion protection and
water quality, in the hope that such values might translate into fuller, truer
prices on shrimp or any other consumable item.
The team was composed of ecologists, economists, and a computer
scientist. The group reviewed what is being done now to give values to
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64 ECOSYSTEM SERVICES
ecosystem services, then discussed what additional components ecolo -
gists wished valuations could include, such as the value of biodiversity or
the social cost of environmental degradation to the people who live near
exploited ecosystems. Ultimately, it outlined what is needed for a next-
generation mathematical model that would put quantitative values on eco-
system services. Because of the state of current research, such a model is not
yet possible, but IDR Team 6B’s outline points to what research is needed.
If IDR Team 6B’s model were implemented, one of its greatest benefits
would be to inform everyday shoppers. More accurate ecosystem values might
get incorporated into the global market. Therefore, more environmentally
damaging goods would cost more, while more environmentally friendly goods
would cost less. Right now, people often choose to buy less expensive, more
environmentally damaging goods but have no idea that they are doing so.
Only if goods are consistently priced to reflect full environmental costs, will
the public know the connection between price and its relation to ecosystems.
How Ecosystems Are Valued Now
One way that economists put price tags on ecosystems now is by
conducting primary surveys, in which a large sample of people are asked
how much they would pay for the protection of ecosystem services such as
water filtration through a forest or storm protection from wetlands. The
researchers estimate the value of each service through the aggregated answers
from everyone they survey.
These valuations have several weaknesses. Most people are not exactly
practiced at trying to buy anything as large and valuable as an ecosystem
service. Also, people’s decisions about their money don’t always follow
rational economic models, and valuing ecosystem services is no exception.
Primary surveys are a static snapshot of an ecosystem service’s worth at
a moment in time. Such surveys are poor at predicting what would happen
to a service’s value if its ecosystem were to suffer further degradation or to
improve under protection or restoration efforts. This approach also has a
hard time accounting for how changes in one ecosystem service affect other
ecosystem services, an important facet in an ecosystem’s overall functioning.
Beyond primary surveys, different research groups and consulting com-
panies have created different computer programs and surveying methods
to put quantitative values on ecosystem services. Each group’s program
may give a different value for the same ecosystem service, however, which
industry groups and policymakers find frustrating.
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IDR TEAM SUMMARY 6
Benefit transfer approaches involve taking valuation estimates derived
for one ecosystem and extrapolating to apply those estimates to another
area. For instance, if a valuation study finds that a forest in Washington
State is worth $100 per acre for carbon sequestration, watershed, and habi-
tat services, then valuing a similar forest in Oregon using benefit transfer
methodology would use the same parameter of $100 per acre. This saves
time and money since primary research is not necessary, but a potential
weakness is that the ecosystem to be valued using benefit transfer methods
is not similar enough to any ecosystems for which we already have values.
A Better Model
IDR Team 6B’s imagined model would amend many of primary
surveys’ weaknesses. It would be easy to tweak the model whenever condi-
tions in the ecosystem changed. The model would include equations to
represent the relationships between people and environmental services, and
the relationships between environmental services.
Team members decided to use shrimp farming in mangrove habitats
to demonstrate their idea. If someone wanted to clear some mangroves to
make a shrimp farm now, the price of doing so would just be the price of
the land, equipment, and labor required to build the farm. The farmer
would not pay for the native fish habitat, storm protection, water filtering,
and carbon sequestering abilities that would vanish with the cleared trees.
A better model of the price of the shrimp farm would allow the modeler
to set constraints. The constraints would be ecosystem services that local
residents want to maintain at a certain level: A certain native fish population
dynamic, for example, or certain degree of storm protection. Within those
constraints, the model would maximize the shrimp harvest for the farmer.
As another example, a tourist company could use the model to maximize
the number and hours of tours they gave, while keeping within constraints
set by local residents to protect ecosystems.
The idea of creating a fuller, truer price for goods, including the eco-
system damage their production causes, is not new. What IDR Team 6B’s
model adds, team members say, is the inclusion of constraints. Team mem-
bers also hope to apply their model to ecosystems all over the world and
hope the outputs from the model would be in the same units, so that people
could compare what is happening in different ecosystems.
Right now, it is not possible to create the model IDR Team 6B envi-
sions because there is not enough research to write all the equations needed.
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Team members identified research questions in various fields that would
fill the gaps. Researchers need more ecological data to better characterize
how individual constraints affect the overall system and how ecosystem
services affect one another. Researchers who work on valuing services in
similar ecosystems, such as mangroves in Central America, Asia, and Africa,
should share their results. More computer scientists are needed to work on
ecosystem services, to create new, better models.
Better Pricing from a Better Model
Even if researchers did create a better model for valuing ecosystems,
there is still a leap between accurate modeling and seeing prices in stores that
reflect ecosystem damage or protection. Prices from the ideal model could
inform regulators who could require companies, such as a shrimp farming
business or a tourism outfit, to absorb more of the price of the environ-
mental damage they cause. “Correct” or more accurate prices could go into
the Environmental Impact Assessments that construction companies need
to file before they build. Risk rating agencies and insurance companies
could look at a database of more accurate pricing and levy higher premiums
on environmentally pricier projects.
If these adjustments still don’t bring prices in stores close enough to the
theoretical model price, stores could still post model price information, so
consumers know the true price of what they’re shopping for. That informa-
tion may help some shoppers change their habits, though more behavioral
studies are needed to find how people will really react to seeing valuations
of ecosystem services.
Beyond Valuation
Valuation is one of many ways of encouraging the protection of eco-
system services, and all ways are useful in different situations because dif-
ferent people respond to different strategies.
If IDR Team 6B’s model successfully made the leap to actually influ-
ence prices in stores, it would target consumers looking for the best bargains
they can find. If not, having accurately modeled valuations would be useful
with business people and some policymakers, who might respond best to
monetary values.
With other people, appealing to their emotions or environmental inter-
ests might play a role. Cultural changes that make environmentally friendly
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IDR TEAM SUMMARY 6
decisions, such as buying local produce or fair trade products, socially valu-
able would be necessary.
IDR TEAM MEMBERS—GROUP 6C
• David L. Bael, University of Minnesota
• Robert Costanza, Portland State University
• Rose Eveleth, New York University
• Miroslav Honzak, Conservation International
• Bonnie L. Keeler, University of Minnesota
• Carolyn Kousky, Resources for the Future
• Helene Morlon, CNRS/ Ecole Polytechnique, France
• Maria Pellegrini, W.M. Keck Foundation
• Austin R. Troy, University of Vermont
• Lisa A. Wainger, University of Maryland Center for Environmental
Science
• Stephen L. Young, University of Nebraska-Lincoln
IDR TEAM SUMMARY—GROUP 6C
Rose Eveleth, NAKFI Science Writing Scholar
New York University
The problem IDR Team 6C set out to solve was creating a functional
and accurate valuation system for ecosystem services. The team focused
most of its discussion around one reason that valuation can be hard: some
services are easier to quantify than others.
For example, there is a park in Northern Ontario that hardly anybody
visits. It’s remote, beautiful, and isolated. But, is it valuable?
Valuing the ecosystems services of that park in Northern Ontario is
hard. The park keeps a watershed clean, but since no one lives nearby the
immediate economic value is minimal. The global service it provides—
carbon sequestration—is small in comparison with the planet, and yet it
does have some value. The ecosystem services that the park really confers
are, as group 6C put it, somewhat squishy. They are cultural and aesthetic.
People value simply knowing that there are pristine ecosystems out there in
the world, even if they never visit them. People have spiritual connections
to land that are hard to quantify.
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This divide between the easily quantifiable components of ecosystem
services, and those that are more qualitative—or squishier—is the problem
that group 6C debated. How do economists and ecologists construct a sys-
tem of ecosystem valuation that takes into account and properly weights,
both easily quantifiable variables like food output or carbon sequestration
and the more qualitative variables like the value of leaving some places on
Earth uncompromised by human use?
Here’s another example that caught Team 6C’s attention: Recently, a
photograph of a Brazilian chief crying whipped through a number of on-
line news outlets and blogs. The caption on the picture explains that Chief
Raoni was crying because the Brazilian government had just approved a
dam that would flood 400,000 hectares of land and displace 40,000 indig-
enous people. It has since come out that Chief Raoni was not actually crying
over the dam, but rather crying over seeing someone he had not seen in a
very long time, as is custom for his tribe. (He did say, however, that he was
extremely angry and distraught about the dam).
The Problem
The tradeoffs that the Brazilian government considered to make the
decision to build the dam are a perfect example of the challenge of integrat-
ing quantitative and qualitative ecosystem services. On the one hand, the
government can calculate how much power the dam would produce, and
how much it would cost. It can measure the amount of land lost, and the
amount of food that would not be produced. It has a much harder time
measuring the value of something like Chief Raoni’s tribe, or the value to
someone of just knowing that the there are pristine ecosystems in the world.
The basic distinction between squishy and non-squishy variables
seemed to be Quantification. The absence of quantification leaves a set
of characteristics that affect the ways economists characterize services that
ecosystems provide, how they might make decisions about them, how easily
those services are traded, and so on. The squishier a service gets, the more
necessary it is to have stakeholder participation and good communication
in order to give it a value.
Take, for example, two very different cases of flood plain management:
The Charles River in Boston and Napa Valley in California. In the case of
the Charles River, the Army Corps of Engineers, looking for a way to man-
age flooding did a very straightforward cost-benefit analysis, and figured out
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IDR TEAM SUMMARY 6
that restoring the flood plain and river system was the most cost effective
way to go. From their expert knowledge and valuation they went ahead
and restored the area. In Napa Valley, the restoration of floodplains came
about from a grassroots movement that dealt more with regional pride and
aesthetics. The community organized to restore the flood plain. While the
benefits certainly included flood protection, that was not the primary driv-
ing force for the project’s approval.
In these two cases we see a similar outcome—the restoration of a
floodplain—but with very different histories. The Charles River case was
very quantitative, expert driven and top down. The situation in Napa Valley
was based on local consensus, and came from the ground up. One was, as
the chart says, less squishy, and the other was more squishy. That’s the kind
of valuation that IDR Team 6C really focused on.
Challenges to Participation
So how does a government or agency measure those squishy values
when making decisions about ecosystems? There are some traditional
economic tools—like surveying people and asking them a set of questions
about what they think is important and what is less so. And with more sub-
jective things like cultural value and spiritual importance—the importance
that an indigenous community places on the ecosystem as part of the local
belief system—getting stakeholders involved is often the only way to get a
real sense for that value.
But getting large-scale stakeholder participation isn’t easy. Identifying
which stakeholders should participate can take time, as can designing a valid
questionnaire. On the other side, the cost of participation by stakeholders
can be higher than they might be willing to incur—while it might seem
easy to get people to take a simple questionnaire, the response rates for
many surveys is very low. And to get valuable information, you often have
to take more than a few minutes of people’s time, and ask them to think
about several situations they have never encountered before. And often
those stakeholders aren’t given a process for conferring with one another
about their decisions.
Therein lies the true problem that IDR Team 6C tackled: to achieve
a valuation based on more qualitative ecosystem services requires more
citizen participation and that participation can be difficult to effectively
and efficiently facilitate.
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Gaming for the Greater Good
What the IDR Team settled on was a gaming approach. The basic
premise was to harness the power of interactive games to learn more about
what people really think about ecosystem services, and what value they place
on services that cannot be readily quantified.
Within the gaming structure, IDR Team 6C saw several advantages.
First, researchers could present gamers with multiple scenarios that are easy
to understand. Unlike standard surveys, in which people are asked to imag-
ine a scenario they’ve never encountered, the game could actually present
players with various scenarios in a way they could move around in and ex-
plore. This would make their responses to those scenarios far more accurate.
This use of game-playing would also allow economists to perform conjoint
analysis on the various aspects of those ecosystem services tradeoffs to figure
out which individual characteristics are most valuable to people playing the
game. The approach lends itself to valuation of ecosystem services using
both monetary and nonmonetary metrics. Monetary values for services
might be associated with ecosystem goods and services by requiring players
to make tradeoffs among alternative outcomes that have monetary conse-
quences in terms of taxes, job opportunities, or economic outputs. Further,
the gaming could shortcut the process of identifying ways to characterize
ecosystem services that are meaningful to people to improve results from
contingent valuation surveys that are used to monetize squishy outcomes.
Second, one could design the game that would require players to com-
municate with one another to come to a decision about the ecosystem they
are interested in protecting or changing. Those interactions could be useful
for economists to mine information about the way people think things
should be, and how they justify their choices. When players have to discuss
their decisions, economists no longer have to guess why players are acting
in one way or another.
Third, games can greatly reduce the cost of participation. Often, the
most vocal citizens on a subject are those who can afford the time and
money to attend meetings and calling into their representatives. Sometimes,
entire segments of the community are completely overlooked because they
don’t have access or don’t know how to participate in the conversation about
their ecosystems. Games could allow these overlooked stakeholders to par-
ticipate more than they normally might. Rather than having to come to a
town hall meeting, or call up a representative, stakeholders could play from
their homes. Parents could put their children to bed and log on. People who
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IDR TEAM SUMMARY 6
don’t have the time, or don’t feel strongly enough to attend public meetings
could suddenly be provided a voice in the decision making process.
Of course, gaming has its own issues, both logistic and conceptual.
However, it is clear from present day experience that there are already a
number of online games that can be used to obtain data about human
behavior and values, so it is a reasonable approach to explore.
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