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