ENVR 201 Lecture Notes - Lecture 17: Backcasting, Ecosystem Services, Stern Review
3 Dec 2015
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Document Summary
How to value events in the future. Ex: a lot of invisible services one can get by filtering water. Ex: aesthetics & recreations (we enjoy wild, natural places to visit and for activities) Supporting services helps support provisioning, regulating and cultural services we profit from some of the supporting directly. The problem with trying to value nature is that we lose the battle. We should stick to fundamental values (certain things should be preserved in particular ways) Trying to express nature in monetary terms means you are giving up on these values. The problem with the future (aggregation problems: when we add up the value of anything, we have to add up the benefits over people. Some people could be much more wealthy than us (why should we help them: probabilities: we have to add up several futures, not just one involves risk and uncertainty. The debate among economists is said to have been a waste of time.
