The role of transformative values in ecosystem service valuation

Background/Question/Methods

Why is it important to recognize cultural ecosystem services as non-economic and non-monetized values? Should advocates of cultural ecosystem services resist the temptation to “reduce” cultural values to monetized measures? It will be argued that the conceptual foundations of mainstream economic theory make it inappropriate to interpret cultural ecosystem services. Therefore, the central question of this presentation will be: Can we propose a more appropriate way to characterize and (perhaps) measure cultural ecosystem services?

Mainstream microeconomic theory designates individual preferences, which are measured as “willingness-to-pay” (wtp), as the basic coin of economic reasoning. This same mainstream theory is committed to the view that preferences exist prior to decision situations and that preferences are fixed and unchanging. 

But it is implausible to say that individual preferences never change, so economic concepts, which encourage a static, short-term perspective, demands a complementary study of the evolution of preferences across time. How do individuals come to have preferences and under what circumstances do those preferences change? Cultural ecosystem service values should not be understood as contributors to economic analyses, but as contributors to the study of the dynamics of preference evolution.

Results/Conclusions

If we shift our analysis from monetized values toward values that operate in the dynamic processes by which cultures evolve within natural systems, we see that the values cultural ecosystem services represent drive dynamic forces by which human communities evolve and incorporate nature—often through metaphors—into their cultural consciousness. To the extent that this consciousness can be transformed, experience of natural systems within a cultural context can transform individuals allowing them to value nature in noneconomic ways. The values involved in this process can be called “transformative values”. Conservationists of the past, from Thoreau and Muir to Leopold, have emphasized how encounters with nature have triggered in them a transformation to a new understanding of the human-nature relationship. If we lose this dynamic emphasis by forcing all ideas of ecosystem services into an economic model, we will have missed this most important aspect of cultural ecosystem services.