Ecology and Valuation: Big Changes Needed
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Abstract
Ecological Economics has developed as a “transdisciplinary science,” but it has not taken significant steps toward a truly integrated process of evaluating anthropogenic ecological change. The emerging dominance within ecological economics of the movement to monetize “ecological services,” when combined with the already well-entrenched dominance of contingent pricing as a means to evaluate impacts on amenities, has created a “monistic” approach to valuation studies. It is argued that this monistic approach to evaluating anthropogenic impacts is inconsistent with a sophisticated conception of ecology as a complex science that rests on shifting metaphors. An alternative, pluralistic and iterative approach to valuation of anthropogenic ecological change is proposed.