Valuing Nature

Here you will find recommendations and links to the most important articles, publications, databases and videos related to our dossier "New Economy of Nature".

Do figures on natural capital actually deliver the information that we need for the necessary changes in industry and society?

Does economic valuation make nature more visible and hence lead to better decisions for nature conservation?

Does economic valuation not inevitably pave the way for the commodification of nature?

The United Nations play a key role in establishing the idea of nature as natural capital. However the practical implementation lags behind the noble goals stated in their documents and decisions.

You want to know more about the key terms mentioned in this dossier? Hereby we are delivering the explanations for the terminology of the "New Economy of Nature".

We don’t need any “reconciliation of the economy and ecology”. Instead, we should be saying no to destructive and exploitative projects and policies - and yes to a repoliticisation of environmental debate.

Trade with compensation credits is a prime example of how abstractions influence environmental policy. The astonishing reduction of unique habitats to a few measurable indicators is a prerequisite for trading biodiversity offsets.

An ecological crisis that is becoming increasingly hard to ignore is confronting policymakers with a dilemma: they are being called upon to protect the conditions for life on Earth without overly hampering industrial production and economic growth.

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.

Creating the visibility to the economic eye requires abstractions that may in the end result in much more far-reaching changes to how we understand nature than initially imagined. There are three claims implied in this statement.

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.

One of the great merits of Jutta Kill's timely discussion paper is that it shows why current debates over the economic valuation of nature matter.

The monetizing of nature is considered to be a promising tool stressing the economic relevance of environmental protection, however such an approach can pose social, cultural and ecological threats.

How far can a value be placed on the “services” of nature? Thomas Fatheuer provides a readily under-standable introduction to the subject and illuminates the concepts and instruments that fol-low from the idea of monetarizing nature. In his first chapter he explains the context of the debate.