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2.2<br />
FRAMEWORK AND GUIDING PRINCIPLES FOR THE POLICY RESPONSE<br />
ChANGING ThE TIDE: USING ECoNoMIC<br />
INfoRMATIoN To IMPRovE PUBLIC PoLICIES<br />
“Poverty and environmental problems<br />
are both children of the same mother,<br />
and that mother is ignorance“.<br />
Ali hassan Mwinyi, Tanzanian President in 1998<br />
There is a compelling rationale for governments<br />
to lead efforts to safeguard ecosystem services and<br />
biodiversity. Public environmental policy needs to<br />
be based on moral values (concern for human<br />
well-being), intrinsic values (not letting species go extinct)<br />
and good stewardship, whilst taking economic<br />
considerations into account. These overarching values<br />
need to guide and shape new policy responses<br />
to reduce current losses and invest in healthy functioning<br />
ecosystems for the future.<br />
Private actors (businesses and consumers) have a growing<br />
role to play in choices that affect our natural capital.<br />
however, a strong policy framework is needed to ensure<br />
that decisions are efficient (society gets the most it can<br />
from its scarce biodiversity) and equitable (the benefits of<br />
biodiversity are distributed fairly). Appropriate regulation<br />
provides the context in which markets for certain ecosystem<br />
services can evolve as well as mechanisms to monitor<br />
their effectiveness.<br />
Copyright by Felix Schaad and Claude Jaermann (Switzerland).<br />
2.2.1 HOW CAN ECONOMIC VALUES<br />
HELP?<br />
Focusing on the services provided by biodiversity<br />
and ecosystems is critical to overcome their traditional<br />
neglect. The Millennium Ecosystem Assessment<br />
(see Chapter 1) paved the way for indicators to show the<br />
status of ecosystem services (see Chapter 3). <strong>TEEB</strong><br />
goes one step further by using information on the value<br />
of such services to give new impetus to decision-making.<br />
The transition from acknowledging services to valuing<br />
them may seem a small step but it is a huge<br />
step towards raising awareness. We can now demonstrate<br />
that biodiversity and ecosystem services have<br />
value, not only in the narrow sense of goods and services<br />
in the marketplace but also – and more importantly – because<br />
they are essential for our lives, survival and wellbeing.<br />
This is the case even if markets do not exist or if<br />
these values are not expressed in monetary terms: values<br />
can also be based on qualitative or semi-quantitative<br />
assessments. What we actually measure in monetised<br />
form is very often only a share of the total value of ecosystem<br />
services and biodiversity. ‘True’ values are usually<br />
much higher (see Chapter 4).<br />
valuation can help policy-makers by shedding light on<br />
the contribution made by different ecosystem services,<br />
whether directly and indirectly (see Box 2.2).<br />
Using economic values during the choice and design<br />
of policy instruments can:<br />
• help overcome the systematic bias in decisionmaking<br />
by demonstrating the equivalence of values<br />
(between e.g. manufactured capital and natural<br />
capital, present and future benefits/costs, and<br />
different resource types) even where these are not<br />
monetised or represented by market prices;<br />
<strong>TEEB</strong> foR NATIoNAL AND INTERNATIoNAL PoLICy MAKERS - ChAPTER 2: PAGE 6