Methodological and Ideological Options
To value or not to value? That is not the question
Giorgos Kallis a,
⁎, Erik Gómez-Baggethun b
, Christos Zografos b
a
ICREA and ICTA (Institute of Environmental Science and Technology), Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, Spain
b
ICTA, Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, Spain
a b s t r a c ta r t i c l e i n f o
Article history:
Received 26 October 2012
Received in revised form 16 May 2013
Accepted 2 July 2013
Available online 15 August 2013
Keywords:
Commodification
Monetary valuation
Market-based instruments
Power
Political ecology
Should we reject money when we value nature? Like most environmentalists, ecological economists are
increasingly divided on this question. Synthesizing political ecology with ecological economics, we argue
that this way of framing the question is limited. We propose a reformulation of the question into “when and
how to value with money?” and “under what conditions?” We recommend four criteria for a sound choice:
environmental improvement; distributive justice and equality; maintenance of plural value-articulating institutions;
and, confronting commodification under neo-liberalism. We call for due attention to the socio-political
context within which a valuation is placed and the political goals it serves. The relevance of this framework is
demonstrated by applying it to three practical cases: pollution damages, water pricing and payments for ecosystem
services.
© 2013 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
“At this point, the critic of money valuations, who is nevertheless deeply
concerned about environmental degradation, is faced with a dilemma:
eschew the language of daily economic practice and political power
and speak in the wilderness, or articulate deeply-held nonmonetizable
values in a language (i.e. that of money) believed to be inappropriate
and fundamentally alien.”
[Harvey (1996, p. 156)]
1. Introduction
Many environmentalists, including ourselves, are often caught in
the uncomfortable dilemma elucidated by Harvey. Costanza et al.'s
(1997) study on the monetary value of the world's ecosystems divided
ecological economists among those who accepted valuing nature in monetary
terms as a pragmatic choice, and those who rejected it on methodological
and ethical grounds (e.g. Spash, 2008). A related schism has
emerged within the environmental movement. While some NGOs discuss
full-cost pricing in the World Water Forum or carbon trading in
the Climate Summits, others are organizing alternative forums outside,
with slogans such as “water is not a commodity” (alternatifsuforumu.org)
or “our climate is not for sale” (climateassembly.wordpress.com).
Should we value nature with money or not? Revisiting this controversial
question is the overarching objective of this article. Drawing
insights from ecological economics (EE) and political ecology (PE) we
aspire to offer guidance to environmentalists and ecological economists
on when and how to engage with monetary valuation. PE is a field with
roots in geography, anthropology and rural sociology. Like EE, PE also
aspires to “combine the concerns of ecology and a broadly defined political
economy” (Blaikie and Brookfield, 1987, 17). However, PE is much
more influenced by the Marxist and egalitarian tradition of political
economy. Nature-society relationships are examined through an analysis
of social forms of access and control over resources and ecosystems
(Watts and Peet, 2004). We are not the first ones who nurture insights
from both EE and PE (e.g. Gómez-Baggethun and Ruiz-Pérez, 2011;
Kosoy and Corbera, 2010; M'Gonigle, 1999; Martinez-Alier, 2002;
Martinez-Alier and O'Connor, 2002; Vatn, 2000). But, to our knowledge,
we are the first ones to examine the implications for EE of the
expanding PE literature on the commodification of nature (but see
also Rodriguez-Labajos and Martinez-Alier, 2012).
Some terminological clarification here will help. We will refer to
the classical economics distinction between use value, the value we
give to goods for their usefulness, and exchange value, the money
potential of goods through market exchange. By monetary valuation
we refer to those processes and tools through which money (exchange)
values can be derived for non-market goods and services. A commodity
is defined as a good or service exchanged in a market. By commodification
we refer to the institutional, symbolic and material changes through
which a good or service that was not previously meant for sale enters the
sphere of market exchange (Bakker, 2005). To give an example: the
Costanza et al. (1997) study and attempts to give prices to ecosystem
services with contingent valuation represent instances of monetary
valuation. The institutional establishment of wetland banks where wetland
services are exchanged is a case of commodification (Robertson,
Ecological Economics 94 (2013) 97–105
⁎ Corresponding author.
E-mail address: giorgoskallis@gmail.com (G. Kallis).
0921-8009/$ – see front matter © 2013 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.ecolecon.2013.07.002
Contents lists available at ScienceDirect
Ecological Economics
journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/ecolecon
2000) as is the case of biodiversity offsets. Valuation may be a necessary
step in a commodification process, e.g. when values have to be assigned
to ecosystem services in order to exchange wetlands. Reversely, it may
be its end outcome, e.g. when a CO2 market value is the result of the
institutionalization of a process of emission permit exchange.
The paper proceeds as follows. Section 2 outlines the main contribution
of PE to EE understandings of the monetary valuation process.
We find that PE allows a better understanding of the monetary valuation
process as part of a broader process of commodification, and in turn of
commodification as part of the broader process of capitalist expansion
into new social and environmental domains (Harvey, 2007; Polanyi,
1944). This facilitates a more politically aware stance on when to engage
with valuation and when not. Section 3 offers some normative principles
for those environmentalists and ecological economists who may share
our values. The framework provided here is complementary to philosophical
explorations seeking the normative basis for compensation
under conditions of constitutive incommensurability (O'Neill, 2001).
Section 4 gives three concrete examples (pollution damages, water
prices and ecosystem services) to illustrate how these guiding principles
may inform choice in practical situations. Section 5 concludes.
2. Political Ecology, Ecological Economics and Monetary Valuation
2.1. Ecological Economics
Ecological economists have criticized the fundamental limitations
of monetary valuation of nature. This is probably well-covered
ground for the readers of this journal and codified here into four
main theses that are useful for the rest of the paper (our intention
is not to reopen the discussion of whether this critique is right or
wrong; we start here from the premise that it is right).
First, because ecosystems are highly complex and interconnected,
their value cannot be compressed in a simple metric (GómezBaggethun
and Ruiz-Pérez, 2011; Vatn and Bromley, 1994), or broken
in individual monetizable parts, such as the value of a single species
or area (Martín-López et al., 2008, Rodriguez et al., 2006). There are
critical species and systems that escape human attention and may
be undervalued or not valued at all (Vatn and Bromley, 1994), and
independently of what humans may or may not value there are
species or resources without which ecosystems cannot be sustained
and for which there are no adequate substitutes or equivalents.
Second, there are multiple values and relevant languages of valuation
other than those expressed in monetary terms. This is because there are
multiple rationalities other than utilitarianism – such as consequential,
rights-based, and procedural rationalities – through which humans
choose courses of action (Martinez-Alier et al., 1998; O'Neill, 2001;
Spash and Hanley, 1995). Such values are incommensurable, yet weakly
comparable with one another (Martinez-Alier et al., 1998; O'Neill, 2001).
Third, there is no unique value for environmental goods and services
independent of the distributional and institutional settings within which
such values are expressed (Martinez-Alier and O'Connor, 2002). Initial
entitlements matter, such as whether one has the right to pollute against
payments, or be compensated for environmental damage. Each leads to
very different valuations and outcomes (Vatn and Bromley, 1994).
Fourth, social processes of valuation, including monetary valuation,
are value articulating institutions (VAIs) (Jacobs, 1997). These
are frames invoked in the process of expressing values that regulate
and influence which values come forward, which are excluded, and
what sort of conclusions can be reached (Vatn, 2005). People exhibit
different preferences depending on the socio-institutional environment
in which they express them. Different values will be favored
in a market than in a church.
Based on these four theses, ecological economists make an ethical
and epistemological plea for plural values and plural VAIs. They complement
this with a constructive methodological and political project
of developing new VAIs with increased potential to accommodate
motivational plurality. New methods include social multi-criteria
analysis (De Marchi et al., 2000; Gamboa and Munda, 2007), or deliberative
valuation (Howarth and Wilson, 2006) and decision-making
forums (Zografos and Howarth, 2008). Such processes however are
still socially marginal, other than in experimental research domains.
Monetary valuation on the other hand expands its domain and becomes
the dominant language through which values about ecosystems
and other components of the natural environment are being
expressed. Facing Harvey's dilemma and the danger to become irrelevant,
some ecological economists end up participating in the dominant
institutional processes of monetary valuation with the hope
that different values will be treated on equal grounds, but often
these end up dominated by the cost–benefit logic and monetary
values.
How can political ecology help critical EE out of this dead-end?
First, let us present the key relevant ideas of PE.
2.2. Political Ecology
PE starts from a very different vantage point than EE. The focus is not
on particular methods or practices of valuation. It is on understanding
how capitalism works, how it affects human and non-human nature
relationships, and why and how under capitalism there is a drive to
reduce all forms of value and valuation into monetary (exchange)
values. Starting from Marx's labor theory of value, a key insight concerns
the inherent drive of capitalism to expand and reach limits and
contradictions. These are – temporarily or spatially – surpassed through
inventing new outlets for accumulation (Harvey, 2006). Crucially, this
often takes the form of making new commodities through which capital
can be circulated, out of things and relations that were previously subject
to different logics (e.g. caring or ecosystem functions). Expanding
commodification therefore is a structural tendency of capitalism since
this way capital overcomes (temporarily) its crises.
While commodities are universal to all societies, “what distinguishes
capitalist commodification is the general and expanding
character of commodity production and circulation by capitalists
who deploy wage labor in doing so” (Prudham, 2007, p.412). Commodities,
markets and money existed also in pre-capitalist societies.
However it is only societies organized around wage labor on the
one hand and capital-holders on the other, that tend to reduce “the
value of all things, people and social relations into money” (Douai,
2009).1
A key concept here is “accumulation by dispossession” (Harvey,
2007, building on Marx). This refers to primitive accumulation
ex-novo. Primitive accumulation was the original separation with
“extra-economic” means (laws, violence and forced expropriation)
of producers from their means of subsistence, such as in the pasture
and game enclosures of 16th–19th century in Europe. Harvey
among many others (e.g. Federici, 2004) has argued that primitive
accumulation is not something that happened once in the origins of
capitalism and is now over. It is an essential mechanism through
which new outlets for accumulation are constantly created, especially
when accumulation is in crisis. Privatization of public services (such
as water, energy or transport), ecosystem services, intellectual
patents in genes and life-forms, land-grabs and privatization of
parks or beaches, the trimming down and privatization of social
security and health-care are all instances of such “accumulation by
dispossession”. Like in the original enclosures, people have their
collective control over common resources reduced, and need to sell
1
In Marx's theory the proposition that capital has to constantly expand through accumulation
is derived by the foundational distinctions between exchange and use
values, and between capitalists who own the means of production and wage labor that
has to sell itself in a market in order to subsist and reproduce. The precise ways in
which these relations generate the quest for constant accumulation are beyond the
scope of this paper. The interested reader should consult Harvey (2007).
98 G. Kallis et al. / Ecological Economics 94 (2013) 97–105
more of their personal time as wage-labor in order to provide for
themselves.
Commodification is a relational moment in processes of accumulation
by dispossession. Privatization, enclosure and the institution
of private property rights, is another important moment (Prudham,
2007). Enclosures and dispossessions have been accentuated under
neo-liberalism, the historical phase of capitalism starting in the
early 1980s, which responded to the accumulation crisis of the
Keynesian/Fordist model by instituting reforms that aimed to roll
back the State, reduce taxes, and welfare expenditures and expand
private property and market exchange to new realms (McCarthy
and Prudham, 2004). This has resemblances to the liberal phase that
preceded the Great Depression (Polanyi, 1944). Under neo-liberalism
the commodification of ecosystem services, a primary interest of
ecological economics, is part of the same process that brought the
financialization of the economy, with the explosion of unregulated
financial products.
Monetary valuation in turn is a relational moment in processes
of commodification (see Bakker, 2005 for water supply, Robertson,
2000 for wetlands, and Gómez-Baggethun and Ruiz-Pérez, 2011 for
ecosystem services). Assigning a monetary value to an ecosystem
feature is necessary if it is to be exchangeable and tradable. But commodification
is not just about setting up new institutions that render
certain things tradable commodities. It involves a range of complex
cognitive, analytical, discursive, political, institutional, and material
devices reshaping human-nature relations. These range, for example,
from laws and treaties defining water as an economic good to contested
scientific methods for categorizing and valuing water flows and rights
(Bakker, 2005). PE has paid analytical attention to the shifts in discourses
and representation, necessary for rendering apparently ‘natural’
the internalization into capital of previously uncommodified aspects
of nature and society (Escobar, 1996). Robertson (2000) refers to the
heavy “discursive lifting” required for the individuation and abstractness
of genes, organisms or environments (also Prudham, 2007).
Monetary valuation techniques, such as willingness to pay or travelcost
or even more innocent concepts such as ecosystem “services”,
natural “capital” and the like, are not neutral categories. They frame
the society–nature relationship into one of utility and exchange
prefiguring commodification as a reasonable response.
Political ecology pays attention to how human agents intervene,
resist and reshape the inherent drive of capitalism to expand. Labor
and nature are not abstract categories, which are destined to be
commodified and exploited. They are active agents that influence
the conditions of their own reproduction (Castoriadis, 1965). People
often stop enclosures or recreate new commons. Ecosystems in turn
have biophysical properties that render difficult their commodification.
The limits and consequences of the commodification of
“fictitious commodities”, i.e. elements such as labor and land that
have not been produced for sale, generate counter-movements,
which resist and reshape outcomes (Polanyi, 1944). Commodification
is by its nature an incomplete and contested process, involving extraeconomic
means and struggles in streets, courts, polls, labs or scientific
journals (Prudham, 2007). Nature is in fact often “uncooperative”
to commodification (Bakker, 2003). For example, the fluidity, continuity
and temporal variability of water or the spatial and functional
differences of wetlands defy separation into measurable, tradable
and exchangeable entities (Bakker, 2003; Robertson, 2000; Salzman
an Ruhl, 2001). Such limits and contradictions, which are well revealed
by the methodological work of ecological economists, offer
opportunities for social struggles and for changing the course of institutional
change; such as for example is the case with the re-regulation of
the water industry following the commodification and privatization of
water in England (Bakker, 2005). Counter-movements might even
take the form of creating new commons, such as for example the evolution
of the struggle against water privatization into constructive proposals
in favor of municipal water cooperatives.
2.3. The Contribution of Political Ecology
The argument here is not that ecological economists should
endorse a Marxist (labor) theory of value, a discussion that would
push us beyond the scope of this paper.2
It is that the critique of monetary
valuation by EE can be fundamentally enriched if framed within
the broader historic processes of commodification and accumulation
by dispossession. Compared to PE, EE is moot on the socio-political
forces driving the proliferation and expansion of monetary valuation
in the environmental domain. EE sees valuation from the methodological
angle of the practitioner-economist. Generally, it does not
attempt to offer a comprehensive explanation for the expansion of
monetary valuation and market environmental policies. The closer
EE comes to such a proposition is with the thesis of “economism”
(Norgaard, 2009), which refers to the intellectual hegemony of the
neo-classical, free-market paradigm in economics and the rising
influence of economists on public policy and environmental thinking.
But EE does not explain how economism came to dominate. Economism
is not theorized as part of historical processes of social and economic
change. Instead, and following Polanyi (1944), PE offers a broader picture
of the forces behind economism and commodification: these are
part and parcel of a new phase in capital accumulation (Harvey, 2007,
2006, see also Naredo and Gómez-Baggethun, 2012). The proliferation
of monetary valuation of environmental goods and services (e.g. wetland
banking, carbon trading and biodiversity offsets) since the late
1980s that to some ecological economists appeared as contingent, internal
change of focus within the profession, is for PE the result of broader
shift in a specific stage of capitalism, from State-based environmental
regulation to neo-liberal market environmentalism (Bakker, 2005;
McCarthy and Prudham, 2004). Manifestations of this change are the
substitution of regulatory standards with “soft” governance approaches
based on voluntary schemes and market-based mechanisms like pollution
permit trading schemes, the substitution of tax-payer subsidized
public-good services (e.g. water) with full-cost consumer pricing,
or the proliferation of cost–benefit evaluations of environmental policies
which generated the demand for monetary valuation techniques
(e.g. Stern, 2006; TEEB, 2010). Some ecological economists, especially
those familiar with Marx's theory, have also recognized the role of
power, institutions and institutional change in shaping valuation and
its outcomes (Martinez-Alier and O'Connor, 2002). But still EE's methodological
critique remains disconnected from the actual institutional
and power changes of late capitalism.
The EE micro-focus on valuation processes and institutions and the
PE macro-focus on capitalist institutions and their change, are complementary,
not antagonistic. Ecological Economics' efforts to change the
logic and concrete practices with which we value nature should not
be underestimated. Neo-liberalism and commodification are contingent,
open-ended processes contested with micro-struggles also at the
intellectual and discursive domain (Bakker, 2005). Ecological economists
are then key actors in the very struggles that PE pertains to analyze.
However, ecological economists' normative stance in favor of
plural values and institutions will be naïve and politically ineffective if
they do not recognize the social processes and dynamics that make
this normative proposal so hard to implement. Why does “economism”
2
Writing from an EE perspective Goodin (1992) argues that for Marxists the source
of all value is labor, with no role for nature. As political ecologists are right to point,
Marx did acknowledge nature as the prime producer of (use) value on an equal footing
with the human labor that metabolizes it: ‘Labor is not the source of all wealth. Nature
is just as much the source of use values (and it is surely of such that material wealth
consists!) as labor” (Marx (1891/1970, p. 7; quoted in Gómez-Baggethun et al.,
2010). Labor, Marx argues, determines exchange value, not use value (under the capitalist
mode of production). Like ecological economists, Marxist/political ecologists
see nature and humans co-producing use value, and are agnostic on how humans value
alternative courses of action, accepting plural motivations (Douai, 2009). However,
some Marxist political ecologists have gone to the other extreme arguing that EE is
wrong because it does not base itself on a labor theory of value (Burkett, 2003; Douai,
2009).
99G. Kallis et al. / Ecological Economics 94 (2013) 97–105
dominate? Why does the World Bank or International Union for
Conservation of Nature promote markets for ecosystem services and
not deliberative forums? Without a social, political–economic theory
such as the one offered by PE, the critique of EE will remain a methodological
and normative one and will not go far. Integrated however within
a theory of political economy, the EE critique can become powerful. The
normative motivation to maintain and expand the languages and articulating
institutions of valuation should be integrated not only in the
ecological economics project of re-embedding the economy in the ecological
domain but also in the project of re-embedding the – runaway,
autonomizing – economy back into the political domain (Polanyi, 1944).
In conclusion: what can we take from the two bodies of thought in
concert? First, that monetary valuations are not isolated phenomena
of methodological interest, but part of broader commodification processes,
which involve symbolic, institutional, intellectual, discursive,
and technological changes that reshape the ways humans conceive
and relate to nature. These in turn are part of processes of capitalist
development through accumulation by dispossession, accentuated
under neo-liberalism. Second, that there are bio-physical, political,
and ethical limitations to monetization, which in turn put obstacles
to commodification (EE contribution), which in turn open up opportunities
for opposing and re-regulating resources at stake (PE contribution).
Value pluralism is not only an ethical but also a political
stance, which requires political action to oppose undesirable commodification
and make sure that plural values and institutions exist
and proliferate.
3. To Value or Not to Value Nature With Money? A
Guiding Framework
Despite links and objections with commodification, monetary
valuation may not always be undesirable. This section constructs a
normative framework for choosing when to engage with monetary
valuation of nature and when not, blending some of the insights of
PE and EE. Four criteria are offered and supported. As any normative
framework, this one too expresses the authors' own values. These
are made as transparent as possible. Unavoidable, the framework
will be more appealing to those who share its starting egalitarian premises
and the underlying politics.
Before deciding whether to accept a monetary value on a resource
or ecosystem service one has to ask:
1. Will that improve the environmental conditions at stake?
(additionality).
2. Will it reduce inequalities and redistribute power? (equality).
3. Is it likely to suppress other languages of valuation and valuearticulating
institutions? (complexity blinding)
4. Will it serve processes of enclosure of the commons (accumulation
by dispossession/neo-liberalism)?
As an indicative guide, if the answer is any of the following 1 (No),
2 (No), 3 (Yes), and 4 (Yes), then one should consider staying away
from monetary valuation and, if necessary, oppose it. There is a gray
area of choice when some answers are satisfied, but in others the
answer is an uncertain “maybe”.
The answers to criteria 1 and 2 derive from foundational principles
of (social) ecological economics (Spash, 2012). The incommensurability
of values (our answer to criterion 3) is also an axiom for
ecological economics (Martinez-alier et al., 1998; Spash, 2012).
The answer to criterion 4 requires more explanation since it is
derived from PE insights. An environmental economist could argue
that there is nothing a priori wrong with enclosures and commodification
if they serve to improve economic efficiency. The starting point
here however is that continuous economic and metabolic growth is
incompatible in the long-term with ecological sustainability (Spash,
2012). Since capitalist expansion is intrinsically related to growth
(Blauwhof, 2012), processes that farther capital accumulation and
expand capital to new realms will more than likely degrade environmental
conditions in the long-term and on aggregate. Second, from an
egalitarian perspective the processes of enclosure of the commons
that are often involved in commodification are fundamentally unequal.
A good that was accessible without discrimination to all members
of a community becomes something that is preferentially
accessed on the basis of individual purchase power. Third, there are
intrinsic qualities in human relations such as love, friendship or hospitality,
and in contacts with the non-human world, that deteriorate
when these are mediated by – and assumed as substitutable by –
money (Hirsch, 1976).
Criterion 4 calls also for a judgment over what Gómez-Baggethun
and Ruiz-Perez (2011) call the “tragedy of well-intentioned valuation”.
Whereas commodification requires valuation, the inverse is
not always true: valuation does not necessarily lead to commodification.
The tragedy is that often scientists and environmentalists engage
with monetary valuations to improve environmental protection, but
end up doing the methodological or discursive lift for a commodification
that eventually degrades the socio-environments at stake. It is
difficult to know if any specific valuation is subject to the tragedy.
Framing ecosystems as providers of services for example does not
necessarily preempt their commodification and enclosure. Until recently,
public good services were considered a State responsibility,
off the limits for private enterprises. In this sense, question 4 calls
for judgment and awareness of the political–economic context within
which a monetary valuation takes place, and in particular its relation
to concrete neo-liberal projects of enclosure.
The famous Costanza et al. (1997) study can serve as an example.
Assume that the intention of the study was to improve environmental
and social conditions (criteria 1 and 2 satisfied). In principle any
single study does not foreclose on its own alternative ways of valuing
nature, so criterion 3 may be also satisfied.3
If one accepts Costanza's
(2006) argument that a monetary valuation of ecosystems could
be used to strengthen the case for their governmental regulation,
then criterion 4 would be satisfied too. Indeed valuing the world's
ecosystem services at three times the world's GDP reveals the impossibility
of internalizing nature with market instruments, strengthening
the case for collective regulation. The “tragedy” issue then
becomes crucial: could the study have had other effects than the
intended ones? The cognitive shift in seeing ecosystems as exchangeable
and substitutable providers of economic services is not innocent;
it conceptually opens the way for their commodification (GómezBaggethun
and Ruiz-Perez, 2011; Robertson, 2000; Spash, 2008).
While this did not have to be the outcome and use of the study, it
was likely to be so, given the political–historical context within
which it took place. In 1997 there was a frontal neo-liberal attack
on environmental regulation by Gingrich's Republican-held congress
in the U.S. and the President's Council on Sustainable Development,
a high level stakeholder advisory group assembled by president Clinton
that produced a consensus report recommending to make a greater
use of market forces in environmental policy (PCSD, 1996; see also
Salzman and Ruhl, 2001). Trying to monetize ecosystems without
commodifying them (Costanza, 2006) right in the middle of a political–economic
process that was shifting the focus of environmental
policy from regulation of environmental standards towards voluntary
market instruments, represents a paradigmatic case of the tragedy of
well-intentioned valuation.
3
One could argue that the study suppresses other forms of valuation, since it gives
credibility and authority to monetary valuation, however one could also counterargue
that the dollar value of ecosystems derived by the authors is so absurdly high
that it puts in question the whole idea of monetary valuation and opens up the space
for other value-articulating institutions. Martinez-Alier and O'Connor (2002) for example
argue that economic metrics can be “put to good counterfactual or paradoxical
use”, exposing the limits and ad hoc nature of economic rationality. There is no evidence
however that this is what Costanza et al. intended.
100 G. Kallis et al. / Ecological Economics 94 (2013) 97–105
3.1. Never Value With Money?
If the logic of market-created monetary values is not the same as
that of socially or ecologically determined values, isn't then a logical
conclusion that we should never value nature with money? Some
radical scholars have argued against the monetary valuation of nature
under capitalism (Burkett, 2003), or even in general (Nelson and
Timmerman, 2011). The argument here is that as long as there is
presence of exchange value in an economy, there is an unstoppable
drive for it to expand to all realms (Douai, 2009). Money in other
words unavoidably will produce enclosures and commodification.
Pushed to its extreme, this becomes a position against the use of
money in general, since most commodities produced involve in one
way or the other some form of an ecological component (e.g. land or a
“natural subsidy”). Indeed, Nelson and Timmerman (2011, p. 17) envisage
sustainable societies without money organized into “multiplying
semi-autonomous cells – households, neighborhoods, and bioregional
communities – with strong organic multilateral networks connected
through ‘compacts’ and global principles’ … ‘community-oriented
production determined by self-managed democratic decision making”.
This stance permeates some of the most radical critiques of valuation,
and requires a brief response, since it leads to the view of “all or nothing”
indicated in the title of this article.
First, there is no universal social law according to which once
money takes root it can only expand, no matter what the social
reactions to it and the resulting institutional arrangements are. Second
following Polanyi's scheme, some commodities are not fictitious;
they are produced for sale and exchange. There is no problem with
valuing tomatoes with money; deliberative forums might be necessary
for certain ecosystem or social services, but not for all commodity
exchanges. Third, and in relation, a complex industrialized society,
even with a dramatically reduced material throughput, will find it impossible
to function without some form of money. Many of the basic
goods that serve everyday needs are produced through multi-level,
spatially fragmented industrial processes, which cannot be controlled
within bioregions or organized through mutual voluntary contracts.
Money does help things by simplifying exchange and reducing the
time spent in constant deliberations. Even the staunchest anticapitalist
regimes refrained from abolishing money when it came
down to accounting how much a factory should produce (Nelson,
2011). Fourth, debt, money, commodities and markets (e.g. for timber)
existed before and will exist after capitalism (Graeber, 2011).
What is particular is their proliferation under capitalism, not their
existence. As Harvey (1996, 157) argues: “all the time we engage in
commodity exchanges mediated by money (and this proposition
holds just as firmly for any prospective socialist society) and it will
be impossible in practice to avoid money calculations”.
More practically, as the next section shows there are many
instances where saying “no” to monetary valuations is the wrong
answer if the goal is an egalitarian socio-ecological transition.
4. Practical Examples
This section explains how the four criteria derived in this article
can be applied to concrete cases of valuation. Table 1 summarizes
the key findings.
4.1. Pollution Damages: The Chevron-Texaco Case in Ecuador
In February 2011, a Court in Ecuador ordered oil giant Chevron to
pay nearly US$9 billion in damages for polluting the Amazon forest,
the second largest ever judgment for environmental contamination
in the world after the US$20 billion British Petroleum (BP) has agreed
to pay to compensate victims of the Gulf of Mexico spill. Allocation of
the damages by the judge included a series of environmental and
damage valuation studies (Martinez-Alier, 2011). Were the indigenous
groups right to stake their claims in monetary terms?
Criterion 1 is satisfied. Yes, the environment stands to benefit
since a significant part of the money is to be devoted to cleaning-up
and restoration activities,4
while the fine will act as a deterrent for
polluting corporations in other parts of the world by the counterincentive
of seeing the polluter-pays principle enforced.
Criterion 2 is satisfied also. Yes, the fine is clearly redistributive: a
rich company and its shareholders are asked to correct a cost that
they shifted to politically and economically weaker indigenous communities
(Martinez-Alier, 2011). The decision is politically empowering.
Marginalized indigenous communities confronted and won a powerful
corporation, setting a legal precedent that reinforces international,
cross-border mechanisms of justice.
Criterion 3 is probably satisfied also. The process did not directly
favor the dominance of economic values and economic valuearticulating
institutions. The process was conducted in Courts (and
not through direct compensation agreements); different logics of
evaluation, such as historical justice, were sustained throughout the
process. The Court valued monetarily only those damages directly
linked to the cost of reparation of environmental and health impacts.
While compensation for environmental damages and deaths could
have increased the amount gained by the plaintiffs (Martinez-Alier,
2011), it is good that this did not happen, since it would have
commensurated ecosystem and life loss with money. The plaintiffs
maintained throughout the process that they seek compensation
only for damages and reparation and that the “crime committed
by Texaco is incalculable”.5
Most importantly, Chevron was given
15 days to apologize publicly; if not, the fine would double. This
was a clear indication by the Judge on the symbolic nature of the
punishment, expressing values of recognition, responsibility or
honor, that go beyond money (O'Neill, 2011).
Criterion 4 is also satisfied. The process is not an isolated case, but
part of a broader political struggle by indigenous communities in
Ecuador for a recognition of their identity and rights for selfdetermination.
As such the Court case was part of a challenge to the
macropolitical–economic system and was not linked to neoliberal
political processes that produced enclosures in Ecuador and Latin
America in general.
The possibility of a “tragedy of well-intentioned valuation”
requires some thinking. Could the victory have un-intended effects?
To raise the millions of dollars necessary for pursuing the case, the
lawyer of the indigenous plaintiffs borrowed money and promised
returns from legal fees to mogul investors, including a disputefinancing
capital hedge fund listed in the Isle of Guernsey (Barrett,
2011). Winning the case became involuntarily part of “a business”.
This is an example of the multiple ways in which monetary valuation
indirectly encroaches the domain of other value-articulating institutions
(in this case, courts) (Hirsch, 1976). Economic power increasingly
determines access to justice, and in turn the justice process
becomes part of capital accumulation. This highlights the tricky
terrain environmental movements, such as the Ecuadorian plaintiffs,
have to navigate when engaging with compensation if they are not
to be accused, as they were from a Federal Judge in the U.S., that
“they are in it for the money” (Barrett, 2011).
4
More specifically, US$5.39 billion are allocated to restore polluted soil, US
$1.4 billion to create a community health system, US$800 million to treat sick people,
US$600 million to restore polluted sources of water, US$200 million to recover native
species, US$150 million to transport clean water, and US$100 million to create a community
cultural reconstruction program.
5
Guillermo Grema, head of the Quichua Indian community, cited in the New York
Times article “Ecuador Judge Orders Chevron to Pay $9 Billion” (February 14, 2011,
on-line reprint).
101G. Kallis et al. / Ecological Economics 94 (2013) 97–105
4.2. Pricing Water
Full-cost pricing means charging water users the full economic
cost of the end-product they consume, including external costs on the
environment (Rogers et al., 2002). The intention is that the price of the
final product of water reflects its full economic value including
externalities. Currently, the social and environmental benefits and
costs of water use are not fully accounted for in money terms.
Non-monetary logics are used to express social values in the distribution
of water, such as for example when water is provided free of, or at low
cost to certain users. Since the early 1990s, international bodies such
as the World Bank and the World Water Forum have been promoting
full-cost pricing in the name of economic efficiency and environmental
conservation. Paying more, they argue, will make users consume less
and leave more water for the environment.
How does valuing water in money terms fare according to the four
criteria? First, although conservation benefits of full-cost pricing are
likely to be positive in most cases,6
this will much depend on the structure
of tariffs and on how and where money is reinvested. There is
evidence suggesting that given the low price elasticity of water, moral
norms may be important for conservation, but these deteriorate once
prices receive prominence (Bakker, 2001). Also if the higher prices
translate into profits for private utilities, these may be reinvested to further
growth, which would offset any environmental benefits (“rebound
effect”). Second, full-cost pricing is likely to be socially regressive, since
income taxes, the source of subsidies, are often more redistributive
than water prices. Poorer households are more vulnerable to rises in
the cost of basic services such as water, compared to wealthier ones for
which water costs tend to remain a miniscule part of household budget.
Third, other factors equal, the commodification of water through
full-cost pricing privileges its economic dimension over alternative
values of water (social, ritual, symbolic, ecological) and turns a public
good into a private consumption good, shifting the weight for its regulation
from state or communities to market forces (Bakker, 2005). Fourth,
politically-speaking, such shifts in the water sector are regularly part of
the neo-liberal push for the privatization of public services often promoted
in the name of economic efficiency and environmental protection
(Bakker, 2001; Swyngedouw et al., 2002). Full-cost pricing is a prerequisite
for making water provision profitable to private businesses, more so
as it disconnects the financing of water from the whims of the State.
Alternative Water Forums are right to oppose the commodification
and privatization of water. However, statements like “water is not for
sale” may be misleading if interpreted literally. While rain falls free of
cost, drinking water is an industrial product and has economic costs.
These costs can be recovered by tariffs, taxes or debts. How they are recovered
and who pays how much is a political question of distribution.
Consider a public or municipal water system which: 1. Users or workers
own it; 2. Investments and budgets are decided through public deliberative
processes; 3. Progressive tariffs recover a substantial part of capital/
operational costs and environmental externalities, with wealthier users
who consume more covering the greatest part of the costs; and 4.
Subsidies or redistributive tariffs secure access by the poor to the necessary
quantity of water for a context-defined dignified standard of living.
Environmental conditions stand to benefit, the policies are clearly redistributive
and egalitarian and multiple forms of valuation are maintained
through, first, deliberative allocation of investments and second, through
subsidies that are decided following a social and ecological criteria beyond
narrow economic logics (Table 1). These are policies implemented
by progressive public water utilities around the world against the neoliberal
tendency for privatization (Kallis, 2007). Water is partly “for
sale” under such policies, but the four criteria are satisfied. We are in
favor of partial monetary valuation of water under these circumstances
and so in fact is the Alternative Water Forum movement, which often
cites these experiences as viable alternatives to commodification and
privatization (Hall et al., 2009).
4.3. Payments and Markets for Ecosystem Services
Payments for Ecosystem Services (PES) are most often defined as voluntary
transactions where a well-defined ecosystem service is ‘bought’ by
at least one ecosystem service buyer from a at least one ecosystem service
provider, if and only if, (conditionality), the ecosystem service provider
secures ecosystem service provision (Wunder, 2005: 3). In practice few
PES schemes fulfill all the conditions of this definition. For example,
ecosystem services are frequently ill defined (Muñoz-Piña et al., 2008)
and the funds used for the payments are regularly gathered through
non-voluntary means such as taxes or user fees (Muradian et al., 2010).
Our thesis here is that valuation processes involved in PES as framed in
the bulk of the literature are likely to collide with the tentative criteria
we set in this paper, although this may vary greatly depending on the specific
characteristics of the scheme involved and in the way the scheme is
framed (Table 1). In this sense we distinguish between market-based
payments for ecosystem services, which do not satisfy our criteria, and
public payments, in money (such as subsidies) or in kind, for rewarding
or incentivizing ecosystem protection, which do satisfy them.
Concerning the first criterion, the conservation effectiveness of
PES schemes depends strongly on the institutional design and on the
power structures shaping such design (Vatn, 2010). For example,
Muradian et al. (in press) note that some of the largest and most emblematic
PES schemes worldwide, such as the national payment programs
of Costa Rica and Mexico, have achieved low degrees of
conservation effectiveness. In the case of Costa Rica, studies have
highlighted that the program has often targeted areas with low deforestation
risk (Sierra and Russman, 2006; Sanchez-Azofeifa et al., 2007), enrolling
many large farms and private companies (Porras, 2010).
According to Le Coq et al. (2012), this allocation of payments was largely
determined by the influence of the forestry sector, which saw in the PES
scheme an opportunity to capture public funds.
Second, even if the literature tends to emphasize the pro-poor character
of PES schemes (Landell-Mills and Porras, 2002; Grieg-Gran et al.,
2005; Pagiola et al., 2005), research suggests that most PES schemes are
likely to exclude the poorer social strata. For example, Asquith et al.
(2008) report that landless immigrants in Santa Rosa, Bolivia, were unable
to participate in a local PES scheme because they have no land from
which to provide ecosystem services. Similarly, Muñoz-Piña et al.
(2008) report that while PES in Mexico are designed to reach the poor
6
This may not hold in all cases, for example when agricultural water (including subsistence),
particularly in the South, is subject to pricing and thus commensurated with
the water used by industry.
Table 1
Real-world examples of valuation and application of the four criteria.
Case Environment improved? Equality improved? Value plurality maintained? Enclosure promoted? To value?
Damages by Chevron-Texaco Yes Yes Yes No Yes
Full-cost pricing Maybe No No Yes No
Democratized water pricing Maybe Yes Yes No Yes
Markets for ecosystem services No/maybe No/maybe No Yes No
Public payments for ecosystem services Yes Yes Yes No Yes
102 G. Kallis et al. / Ecological Economics 94 (2013) 97–105
“there appears to be a bias against the poorest of the poor”, probably
due to barriers to scheme participation linked to poverty such as
fewer opportunities to interact with governmental organizations and
officials. Furthermore, some schemes such as the Costa Rican, have
benefited landlords owning large portions of land fostering further
inequality.
Third, the dominant theory for PES is based on the assumption
that ecosystem service degradation is the result of market failures
to account for externalities, and that valuing and paying for such services
will help overcoming this failure (Engel et al., 2008; Kinzig et al.,
2008). Under this conceptualization of PES, the payment takes the
form of an incentive whereby the payment should be ideally coupled
to the quantity ecosystem service that is actually delivered. As Vatn
(2010) notes, conceptualized in this way the scheme adopts the
form of a pure ‘seller–buyer’ instrumental relationship driven by the
pursuit of profit maximization (by providers) and of utility maximization
(by beneficiaries). While, in practice many payment schemes
do not constitute real markets (Muradian et al. in press) and although
PES do not preclude non-monetary forms of payment (Asquith et al.,
2008), it is obvious that the dominant framing of PES as a way to solve
a market failure privileges market rationality and the economic discourse
over alternative valuation languages. A recent research on a
PES scheme in Chiapas, Mexico, shows that people receiving payments
perceive motivations for conservation to be more contingent on monetary
and utilitarian motives, this preference increasing with the number
of years receiving the payment (Rico et al., 2013).
Fourth, it has been argued that PES can be instrumental to neoliberal
processes of commodification and private enclosure of land
(Büscher, 2012; Kosoy and Corbera, 2010). Vatn (2010) argues that
while land ownership does neither need to be fully formalized nor
privatized to set up payment schemes, PES represent a clear impetus
in this direction. Others have argued that land titling process involved
in setting up markets generally favor private at the expense of common
property systems (Grant, 1998), and that PES can reinforce existing
exclusions (Ibarra et al. 2011), both via the dynamics of existing land
distribution and because landless farmers will in most cases be unable
to engage in them (Corbera et al., 2007a).
An alternative notion of PES (see e.g. Muradian et al., 2010) which
emphasizes their use as instruments of redistribution to environmental
protection allows us to bring into the analysis a wider range of
mechanisms, some of which are more likely to meet criteria of distributional
and procedural justice. Corbera et al. (2007b) document case
studies in Latin America, where PES-like schemes were set up despite
the fact that land titling was not fully formalized, and also in places
ruled under common property regimes (e.g. ‘Sociobosque’ in Ecuador
and the PES scheme in Mexico). This deviation from PES orthodoxy
opens up the possibility of reframing PES more in accordance with
principles of distributional justice or even as a tool to mitigate ecologically
unequal exchange. Gutman (2007) suggests that PES can be
used as a mechanism to transfer funds from the cities to the countryside,
while Gómez-Baggethun (2011) advocates reframing PES as a
mechanism to articulate compensations of ecological debts. Vatn
notes that PES schemes can be reframed as rewards (as opposed to
incentives) for an act of stewardship where the payment is more
about recognition. Rather than the profit motive, the payment in
this case can be seen as motivated by reciprocity-driven voluntary
cooperation, whereby stewards are rewarded for their contribution
to the common good. Finally, it should be noted that some PES-like
schemes have proved able to integrate a diversity of valuation
languages.
An example in the above is the Yasuni ITT initiative, in which the
Government of Ecuador is willing to leave more than 900 million
barrels of oil underground for compensation by the international
community covering 50% of opportunity costs. Valuation languages
involved in the negotiations included customary territorial rights of
indigenous communities, biodiversity conservation, climate justice,
and monetary measurement (i.e. calculation of opportunity costs). A
plurality of languages of valuation is maintained, and the project does
not contribute in some obvious way to processes of enclosure, privatization
or dispossession. We have no objections to such redistributive,
state-sanctioned programs for ecosystem services (Table 1), which are
in fact much closer to conservation subsidies.
5. Conclusions
The dilemma of whether to value nature in monetary terms or
not is one that many environmentalists and ecological economists
have faced. The conventional framing of the choice is one between
accepting the power of markets and playing their game to win environmental
concessions versus a purist perspective of saying no to
any hint of money or markets in environmental policy.
Mobilizing and blending insights from ecological economics and
political ecology this article has tried to redefine the terms of the choice
and chart a path for a pragmatic yet radical approach. By radical, we
mean that an answer to the “monetary value question” should be
given first with reference to the goals of environmental protection
and egalitarianism, including elements of distributive and procedural
justice, and second, with sensitivity to the position of a particular action
within contemporary political–economic dynamics and the rooted
positions of social and environmental movements. By pragmatic,
we mean that a universal answer cannot be given to the question
“to value or not to value”, independently of past experience, as well
as the specifics and the political context and purpose of a particular
valuation. Pragmatism is “a theory or practice that places primary
emphasis on practical circumstances and goals … [and which] distrusts
… abstract ideas” (Heywood, 2002, 43). By pragmatism we do not mean
accepting that we live in a market society and that, like it or not, we
have to play by its rules. We mean that while radical systemic change
is necessary for sustainability, this may come about through intermediate
transitory actions, free from absolutist dilemmas.
The three practical cases discussed in this paper give an example
of what this radical pragmatism might look like in practice: we gave
a qualified “yes” to payments by Chevron-Texaco, and a clear “no”
in the cases of full-cost pricing and markets and payment for ecosystem
services as usually promoted. Importantly, for the latter two, we
argued that there are alternative institutional and political set-ups
under which paying for water or for ecosystem services might do
more good than harm from the social and environmental point of
view. A dogmatic stance against any use of money offers little help
when one evaluates whether large corporations should pay for their
damages upon indigenous communities, whether democratic municipal
utilities should charge for water, or whether it is good to subsidize
communities for conserving ecosystems or keeping oil in the
ground.
Acknowledgments
We thank Jeroen van der Bergh, Larry Lohman, Clive Spash and three
anonymous reviewers for their valuable criticisms and suggestions to
earlier drafts of the paper. Kallis acknowledges support from the Marie
Curie ITN grant PITN-GA-2011-289374-ENTITLE, European Network of
Political Ecology.
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