Nature and the Marketplace: Capturing the Value of Ecosystem Services

By J. Isaacs. 2001

178 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Review: Nature and the Marketplace: Capturing the Value of Ecosystem Services By Geoffrey Heal Reviewed by Jack Coburn Isaacs Louisiana Department of Wildlife and Fisheries, USA Geoffrey Heal. Nature and the Marketplace: Capturing the Value of Ecosystem Services. Washington, DC: Island Press, 2000. 203 pp. ISBN 1- 55963-796-X (paper). US$25.00. Recycled, acid-free paper. Economics often suffers a bad reputation among environmentalists for neglecting the natural world. To a degree, this reputation is justified. To a degree, it is a matter of misunderstanding by critics who are unaware of the capacity of economic theory to study the nature and causes of environmental problems and uncover the value of environmental amenities. Fortunately, Geoffrey Heal has come along to set the record straight. Nature and the Marketplace contains ten chapters. The first three chapters cover the fundamentals of economic theory. The basic groundwork of economics is established without reference to supply curves, demand curves, or many of the charts, tables, figures, and formulae that sometimes confound the general reader. These chapters present the importance of property rights and markets, their roles, and their limitations. Heal explains how and why markets work and the causes and consequences of market failure. The next three chapters are applications of the concepts covered in the first three. While these provide examples of the versatility of natural resource economics, they are too brief for the complex issues they evaluate. Some of their market-based solutions may appear, perhaps, a bit too tidy. Chapter 4 competently addresses the capacity for ecotourism to provide positive incentives for environmental preservation but overlooks the possible negative effects of tourism on wildlife habitat. (The negative side effects are only briefly mentioned in the book's conclusion.) Chapter 5 describes the market failures that lie behind the global warming but offers solutions, carbon emissions and sequestration markets, that seem irrelevant after the collapse of the Kyoto Protocol. Heal may have used economic theory to explain why the current forms of international organization make market- based solutions for global warming difficult to develop and implement. In chapter 6 on biological diversity, Heal explains why markets often ignore the value of biodiversity, and the possible costs of doing so. He describes a few successful market-based initiatives to protect species habitat but admits that the scope of the biodiversity is beyond the realm of economics alone. Such

Subfields: Economics and Econometrics

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/3a530cbc4c2676ac3e251aabda9a1c20fa46dbc2

How researchers see this paper

The researchers whose trusted networks rank it highest, strongest advocate first. Every researcher gets a different order.

In Economics and Econometrics

Citations in the corpus

An introduction to biodiversity concepts for environmental economists (2004, background): “A quite different case for biodiversity conservation arises from the literature on natural capitalism and ecosystem service provision (Daily et al., 2000; Heal, 2000; Balvanera et al., 2001).”
Managing ecosystem services: what do we need to know about their ecology? (2005, background): “…and demand for services, assesses threats to them, and estimates economic values (Daily 1997; Daily 2005 Blackwell Publishing Ltd/CNRS et al. 2000; Heal 2000; Millennium Ecosystem Assessment 2003; Biggs et al. 2004), but does not quantify the underlying role of biodiversity in providing services.”
Crop biodiversity, risk management and the implications of agricultural assistance (2005, background): “5 to environmental or market risks, risk averse farmers may choose to control their risk exposure through diversification (Meng, 1997; Heal, 2000; Di Falco and Perrings, 2003).”
Farmers' preferences for crop variety traits: Lessons for on-farm conservation and technology adoption (2010, background): “Biodiversity is an important component of ecological systems (e.g., Heal, 2000; Tilman and Downing, 1994; Tilman et al., 1996), and its loss can have adverse effects on the functioning of these systems, including impairment of their capability to produce (e.g., Loreau and Hector, 2001; Naeem et…”
Crop pollination from native bees at risk from agricultural intensification (2002, background): “Yet, ecosystem services are poorly understood both ecologically and economically (1, 2, 4).”
Freshwater biodiversity: importance, threats, status and conservation challenges (2006, background): “…contribution to economic productivity (e.g. fisheries) ; its ‘ insurance’ value in light of unexpected events ; its value as a storehouse of genetic information; and its value in supporting the provision of ecosystem services (e.g. cleaning water) (Pearce, 1998; Heal, 2000; Covich et al., 2004b).”
Rainfall Shocks, Resilience, and the Effects of Crop Biodiversity on Agroecosystem Productivity (2008, background): “Having functionally similar plants that respond differently to weather and temperature randomness contributes to resilience (Hollings 1973) and ensures that ‘‘whatever the environmental conditions, there will be plants of given functional types that thrive under those conditions’’ (Heal 2000).”
The Nature That Capital Can See: Science, State, and Market in the Commodification of Ecosystem Services (2006, background): “By contrast, the new and rapidly developing markets in `ecosystem services' are promoted by economists, scientists, and policymakers who insist that the commodity be measured in units of ecosystem function (Daily, 1997; Daily and Ellison, 2002; Heal, 2000).”
Ecosystem Services in Decision Making: Time to Deliver (2009, background): “A key challenge remains: relative to other forms of capital, assets embodied in ecosystems are often poorly understood, rarely monitored, and are undergoing rapid degradation (Heal 2000a; MA 2005; Mäler et al. 2008).”
Conservation Planning for Ecosystem Services (2006, background): “The potential payoffs of such a shift are tremendous for both biodiversity conservation and human well-being [2,33,95,96], promising to sustain critical services, open new revenue streams, and make conservation broad based and commonplace.”
Adaptation to climate change in Sub-Saharan agriculture: assessing the evidence and rethinking the drivers (2014, background): “Thus, having functionally similar plants that respond differently to weather and temperature randomness contributes to resilience (Holling, 1973) and ensures that ‘whatever the environmental conditions there will be plants of given functional types that thrive under those conditions’ (Heal, 2000).”
Capturing the complexity of biodiversity: A critical review of economic valuation studies of biological diversity (2015, background): “, 1993; Weitzman, 1992; see also Baumgärtner, 2007), models of optimal conservation strategies (Figge, 2004; Weitzman, 1998), analysis of biodiversity as insurance (Weitzman, 2000) and of the socio-economic drivers of biodiversity loss (Swanson, 1998), as well as economic valuation of biodiversity (”
Valuing Biodiversity from an Economic Perspective: A Unified Economic, Ecological and Genetic Approach (2003, unknown): “…useful characteristics that it possesses or useful services that it provides or enhances, since if biodiversity is desirable it should be desirable because of these characteristics or services.7 This approach is directly related to Heal’s idea (Heal 2000) of regarding biodiversity as a commodity.”