Political Science, Article Review Example

The Position Statement

Biodiversity and ecosystem services is a very big, diverse and complicated area hence I agree with the author of the given article that the approach used to price the above area of study is not satisfactory and adequate. The method used to price this is the cost-benefit analysis and it’s based on completely in making very vital decision concerning our environment and making important policies on it. Not that the method is inappropriate but basing on the fact that it does not carter for both making of policies and coming up with projects in biodiversity and ecosystem at the same time explain the non market value of the services on the environment gives room for better methods being applied.

The main problem with the above method is that all the required value and the decisions made are based on a single scale of values. With improved technology, there are various pricing methods that can be applied and they include; contingent valuation method, hedonic pricing and cost replacement of ecological services. Economists have come up with better methods that can be used to come up with the societal value of the biodiversity though most of the methods have proved to be invariable based on the price.

Contanza argument that how important the nature’s free benefits can be efficiently analyzed in economic terms, then this should give room for the policies being made on the biodiversity to be in a way to reflect the natural capital and the value of the services rendered by the ecosystem. A number of estimations of the value of the biosphere have been made and from the figures different reactions have been received with most economist questioning the figures and methods used while scientists really appreciating the effort.

With time the above figures were taken to be so crude and wrong even by Costanza himself. Many approximations were done, a lot of things were left out hence need for a better method than this. For example, the need for the inclusion of well defined ecological economic models to give room for complex interrelation between the ecosystems and economic systems. The monetary approach has been universally accepted as a way of conserving and preserving the biosphere.

Evidence

The cost-benefit analysis method has limitations hence giving room for other methods to step in. This method implies that all the cost and benefits should not be taken to be the real cash flowing in and out of the government coffers. This led to the problem of valuation of environmental effects hence the need of better methods to get the money value of the environmental goods and services. The technique include; conventional market approach, household production functions, hedonic pricing and experimental methods. These methods can provide the estimation of existence values which is where biologist have special interest.

The original techniques such as the contingent valuation method had difficulties with the reference group of pricing. The outcome of this method depended mostly on the willingness of the group of reference during the valuation especially when it came to their income. For example Van der Sraaten (1998) on the issue of the damage caused by the oil spill to the environment. The approximation was a large figure of about $5 billion and this was due to the large US population, that is in Alaska, because of their high salaries, but the figures would have been different if the valuation took place in a poor and less populated area. The above shows that the figures reflected the preference of the group and not the ecological importance of the goods and services of the ecosystem.

The other issue is commensurability of different objectives and multicriteria analysis. It doesn’t sound logical to give up economic issues for social and environmental ones. The multicriteria analysis was meant to come up with a decision that will stand in for many and structural goals. As per Vilfredo Pareto, economic activities such as mining and their economic effects will be put into consideration but its effects to the environment considered later or ignored.

Counter-Arguments

Some of the old methods used are of great sigificance and have unique advantages over the adopted methods. Like the contigent valuation method had a great significance in simulated market. The method even tries to come up with a market where units are bought and sold in the biodiversity. It creates the consumer demand and producer suply equilibrum of enviromental goods and services. The enviromental impact assesment is also another positive issue, it comes up with a workplan and procedures for getting  the best option on proposed projects. It first analyses the effect of every proporsal on the enviroment and  also on social and economic activities. Though the earlier methods were critised as not that effective, at that time, they were the only way that the biodiversity could be valuated and atleast something was done instead of living everything unvaluated. The valuation had great importance in planing and saving the enviroment.

We appreciate the original methods that tried to evaluate and value the biodiversity as they succefully come up with figures and policies for the enviroment. But following the impact the figures had to be uesd in economical planning, more accurate data was needed hence a better method had to be found thus we just have to agree with the author that the methods used were not efficient.