valuing nature

I would like to thank all contributors who took the time to comment on this discussion paper. They have contributed to a public debate about the assumptions and interests behind the new economy with "nature" and its valuation techniques.

Jutta Kill provides an excellent summary of why market-based or market-like valuation of ‘nature’ does not work as a tool for reducing climate change and biodiversity loss but rather is likely to worsen both trends.

We should not completely abandon economic arguments; but instead of hectically following and reinforcing the trend, we should lessen the prominence of these arguments by strongly fostering alternative ones, especially those which relate to the very intuitions and reasons why people protect nature.

The new economy of nature tends to produce a similar right to decide what lives and what does not in the /natural world/ according to its economic value for capital, whether that world lies in the hands of corporations or of states.