Ecosystem Goods/Services

Q1

Economic valuation of ecosystem goods or services (henceforth EGS), just as with any other good or service, is essential to making sure that it is properly allocated and treated with appropriate care in terms of the market. In the assigned chapters it states that “by at least trying to put money values on some aspects of environmental quality we are underlining the fact that environmental services are not free.” This is an extremely important step towards setting values on EGS and hopefully treating them with the care that they require, as currently the most detrimental causes of degradation in the world’s EGS is because there is no market or pricing system that shows consumers the true prices of what they are consuming. The externalities that are produced when any EGS is used are too often not a part of the end pricing, thus keeping consumers blissfully ignorant of the true costs. These externalities need to be accounted for and will be an important part of economic valuation of EGS. The whole idea of valuation is to be able to enter these EGS in a market system rather than using them with no economic indicators to guide usage and sales. Having market indicators and price signals will show a more true and accurate costs associated with utilizing EGS. I think that estimating the far reaching impacts of EGS and adding them into pricing will certainly curb some end users enthusiasm for over use. The issues with creating an accurate estimation of value are many, and some will complain that different value systems will be used for different EGS, but there is not a universal system that will accurately create a value for all EGS. I agree with you here. Do you think that by incorporating non-marketed ecosystem and environmental goods and services in overall valuation of human well-being at least partially to the policy analysis would lead to better outcome than completely relying on only marketed goods and services? Would such internalization (or,...