Valuation of Ecosystems Services: PsychoCultural Perspective

1
Valuation of Ecosystems Services
Psycho-Cultural Perspective
Manasi Kumar Pushpam Kumar
2
The paper has three sections

• Section I Valuation of Ecosystem Services (ES)
• Contextualizes the valuation of ES
• Provides rationale for valuation of ES
• Synthesizes the state of knowledge of valuation
• (dominant methodologies)

• Section II Deconstruction of Economic Valuation
• Critically evaluates the assumption of valuation
• Questions the basis of choice making while
  eliciting the preference
• Deconstructs the paradigm of valuation using
  psychoanalytic perspective

• Section III Key Message and Suggestions
• Attempts to provide the option of methodological
  pluralism in valuation
• Suggests how to make valuation socially
  acceptable and meaningful

3
Ecosystems Services are Social Capital
Photo Courtesy Rik Leemans
4
Economic Valuation in Public Policy Framework
Human actions (Response/ Intervention)
Values
Ecosystems / Resilience
Intrinsic Glue / Insurance Value
Ecological production function
Economic valuation methods
Ecosystem services including biodiversity
Source Kumar and Kumar, 2008
5
Many BENEFITS of ES are public goods (Rivalness
and Excludability, Spatial and Temporal
Dynamics Joint Production, Complexity, Resilience
and Interdependence of the Benefit )
Spiritual religious
Insurance Value
?
Aesthetic
?
Freshwater
?
Genetic Resources
?
Recreation tourism
?
Fiber
?
Food
?
Economic Value ()
6
Economic Valuation enables Effective and
Efficient Response Policy

• Market and non market valuation methods - capture
  some of the out of market services.
• Valuation helps the decision makers (trade offs
  and conflicting choices)
• Valuation has the potential to clear the clouds
  of conflicting goals
• In sectoral and project policies, valuation of
  ES makes appraisal criteria more acceptable,
  transparent and credible

7
Taxonomy of Conventional Valuation Method
8
Fundamentals of Economic Valuation Methodology

• Axiomatic approaches focusing on
• Individual preferences
• Individual utility maximization
• Well functioning market
• Perfect information

9
Market Positional Reciprocal Goods

• Positional goods or values --marked by
  equivalent-exchange principle- one of
  qui-pro-quid transactions
• Reciprocal goods and values are relational
  conception of human transactions driven not only
  by definitive exchange relationships also
  contingent upon social relations, moral
  dispositions and individual idiosyncrasies.

10
Domains of Experience/ Existence
11
Discrepancies in Memory and Actual Experience

• Experimental research shows consequences of a
  particular choice extend, over a specific period,
  
• so that evaluation of a sequence
• of results is retrospective.
• Evaluating momentary utility at the end of an
  experience, shows that in the memory of the
  subject, duration of the experience vanishes with
  time to give way to two nodal experiences.

12
So What is Remembered?
So are the calculated values not questionable?
What happens when complex types of preferences
are involved with uncertain and inter-temporal
outcomes?
Do individuals perceive risks consistently or
inter-temporal preferences at all?
13
Challenges to Valuation Rationality Questioned

• Sens paradox (1973) Assumptions of rationality
  optimum choice based on individuals beh.
  maintained w/o addressing the genesis and basis
  of the beh.
• Self selected definition of Instrumental
  Rationality (IR) and conflating rational choice
  with IR.

14
Ill-Conceived Rationality

• Resistance to the idea that different motivations
  can underlie behavior in different spheres of
  life e.g. that it may be perfectly rational for
  human beings to be instrumentally rational while
  buying a car, but value-rational while responding
  to questions of national liberation, affirmative
  action or environmental conservation etc.
• Rational choice also remains highly skeptical of
  the notion that individual action can be rooted
  in group interests, not self interest.

15
Valuation Methodologies Un-realized Pitfalls

• Economic value of ecosystem services - assessed
  in terms of financial sacrifices people would
  make for it, or economic/physical trade-offs.
  E.g. CVM studies- while valuing for large or
  small landscape, value remains the same, implying
  people are valuing the idea of conservation not
  the object in question.
• People do not express utility or even think in
  economically logical way. People make statements
  about their personal collective values- to
  define who they are through the causes they
  support (Ritov Kahneman, 1997).
• There remains an ethical and political Q. of
  hegemonization of relational and reciprocal
  outlook and discursive methodologies.

16
Freudian Unconscious
The proneness to decay of all that is
beautiful perfect can, as we know, give rise to
two impulses in mind. The one leads to aching
despondency.while other leads to the rebellion
against the facts asserted.. What spoilt
enjoyment of beauty must have been a revolt in
our mind against mourning. The idea that this
beauty was transient was giving sensitive minds a
foretaste of mourning over its decrease since
the mind instinctively recoils from anything that
is painful, they felt their enjoyment of beauty
interfered with by thoughts of its transience

• Sigmund Freud 1913
• On transience

17

• Freud's model of the personality structure
  (Source Kaplan and Saddock, 1998).

18
Conceptualizing Identity Self-other and
Ecological Representations

• Ecological identity (EI)

• It derives from a process called identification
  with nature
• Identification comes to us by civilising and
  censoring agency of super ego
• Amalgamation of multiple identity associated with
  culture, memory and language acquisition
• EI of individual can exist at different level of
  decision making hierarchy (local, national,
  global)

• Self concept is set of identities
• Reflective part of I or me is the part that
  engages with internal dialogue and is called
  self. Self concept is the product of this process

19
Conclusions and Suggestions

• Discourse based valuation
• E.g. come up with a consensual societal value of
  scarcity indicators, derived thru participatory
  process (Wilson Howarth (2002).
• Methodological pluralism.
• Interdisciplinary collaboration.

20
Key Message

• Individuals identification with nature,
  capriciously changing preferences and dynamic
  learning, ecological identity are important
  concepts in valuation.
• Psychological well-being is an integral part of
  human well being.
• Concern for ES must reflect dynamic nature of
  human-nature interaction.
• Joint appraisal of positional and relational
  goods would an ideal beginning.