Erik Gómez-Baggethun at LEC

Erik Gómez-Baggethun, new Professor in Environmental Governance at the Norwegian University of Life Sciences, visited the Lancaster Environment Centre last month. Erik shared a talk, "Saving nature or selling nature?", about the scope and limits of economic valuation and market-based instruments in environmental governance (abstract below).

Erik and I have written together several times (BioSci, Glob Environ Ch), and are now exploring issues related to liability for environmental damage (building on PNAS).

Intense discussions at Long Meg, a Bronze-Age stone circle near Lancaster.

Saving nature or selling nature?

Lights and shadows in the economics of ecosystem services and biodiversity

Four decades of international environmental policy have failed to reverse climate change, resource depletion and the generalized decline of biodiversity and ecological life support systems. In search for novel and more pragmatic responses to global ecological decline, environmental policy and governance are increasingly relying on economic valuation and market incentives to promote sustainable use of ecosystem services. The market approach in environmental governance is implemented through two main mechanisms: Market for Ecosystem Services and Payments for Ecosystem Services. The «polluter pays principle» underpinning the former is complemented with the «provider gets principle» underlying the latter. Despite some countries have experimented with variants of these mechanisms for at least fifty years, the notion and practice that public ecosystem goods and services can be monetized and exchanged in markets are relatively recent phenomena, both in economic theory and environmental policy, and its implementation is not escaping controversy. In this lecture, I review the development in the theory and practice of the economics of ecosystem services and examine critical landmarks with regard to their incorporation into markets and payment schemes. Ecosystem services are examined in the light of these theoretical developments and in relation to policy efforts to make progress towards a green economy. The lecture discusses the scope and limits of economic valuation and market-based instruments in environmental governance and concludes by identifying major theoretical issues and operational challenges for the economics of ecosystem services and biodiversity, highlighting the potential for transformation as well as the limitations associated to the economic approach in biodiversity conservation.