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Valuations and indicators
Market prices and other measures of economic value are essential guides to decision-making. However, conventional indicators of economic performance generally fail to reflect environmental damages. Likewise, environmental benefits are rarely considered in private investment and economic policy analysis. To address this challenge, environmental economists have developed various methods to value environmental costs and benefits in monetary terms.
As well as estimating the value of biodiversity in particular contexts, attempts have been made to reflect the value of biodiversity across societies as a whole, for example in national income accounts. Related work includes the development of methods for assessing the impacts on the environment of projects, programmes and policies, including methodologies for Environmental Impact Assessment and Strategic Environmental Assessment.
The ‘Valuation and Indicators’ section is divided into five sub-categories:
• Perspectives on environmental valuation - focuses on fundamental conceptual issues related to valuing biodiversity. This sub-category covers concepts such as Total Economic Value; use and non-use values; the purposes of valuation (e.g. natural resource allocation, regulatory design, property rights and pricing); and limitations and alternatives to valuation (e.g. cost-effectiveness analysis, multi-criteria analysis, citizen juries).
• Valuation methods and examples – looks into specific techniques and applications of valuation. Documents in this sub-category cover revealed and stated preference techniques; cost-based approaches; and related methodological issues (e.g. time preference, distributional analysis, risk and uncertainty).
• Valuation case-studies - includes actual examples where valuation studies have been carried out.
• Macro-level indicators – documents in this subcategory look into the development of macro indicators such as ‘Green GDP’, ‘genuine’ savings, the Human Development Index and other sustainability indicators.
• Environmental assessment – provides economic perspectives on Environmental Impact Assessment and Strategic Environmental Assessment.
A couple of introductory papers on valuation and indicators are included below.
Year published: 2005
Editorial document
Year published: 2004
Region(s): Africa, North America and the Caribbean, South and East Asia, East Europe, North and Central Asia, West Europe
Editorial document
