ECONOMICS

TO SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT
Ecosystem services are the contributions that nature makes to
human well-being. Ecosystem services include regulating services
(e.g., filtering pollution, coastal protection, pest regulation,
pollination), material provisioning services (e.g., food, energy,
materials), and nonmaterial services (e.g., aesthetics, experience,
learning, physical and mental health, recreation). Various types of
natural capital—often in conjunction with other forms of capital—
and human labor provide ecosystem services. Destroying or
degrading natural capital can result in reduced flow of ecosystem
services, with consequent negative impacts on human well-being.

ECOSYSTEM SERVICES AND NATURAL

CAPITAL
What are the best ways to apply market and nonmarket valuation
methods to translate biophysical indicators into a common monetary
metric measuring the welfare contribution of ecosystem services?
One promising avenue to valuation links environment to health.
Difficult issues include integrating natural science and economic
models to understand how changes in ecosystems lead to changes in
the flows of ecosystem services and how to measure the value of
nonmaterial ecosystem services, such as aesthetics, experience,
learning, and mental health. Even where benefits measures exist,
such as for improving water quality, it is not clear that all relevant
benefits are accurately measured. Furthermore, it is often important
to understand who benefits from ecosystem services and the
distribution of benefits and costs of potential management and
policy options.

MEASURING THE VALUE OF ECOSYSTEM

SERVICES.
What are the best ways to apply market and nonmarket valuation
methods to translate biophysical indicators into a common monetary
metric measuring the welfare contribution of ecosystem services?
One promising avenue to valuation links environment to health.
Difficult issues include integrating natural science and economic
models to understand how changes in ecosystems lead to changes in
the flows of ecosystem services and how to measure the value of
nonmaterial ecosystem services, such as aesthetics, experience,
learning, and mental health. Even where benefits measures exist,
such as for improving water quality, it is not clear that all relevant
benefits are accurately measured. Furthermore, it is often important
to understand who benefits from ecosystem services and the
distribution of benefits and costs of potential management and
policy options.

MEASURING THE VALUE OF ECOSYSTEM

SERVICES.
 POLITICS
ENVIRONMENTAL POLITICS
DESIGNATE BOTH THE POLITICS
ABOUT THE ENVIRONMENT
Effectively responding to global warming necessitates some form of
international environmental governance to achieve shared targets
related to energy consumption and environmental usage. Climate
change complicates political ideology and practice, affecting
conceptions of responsibility for future societies as well as economic
systems. Material inequality between nations make technological
solutions insufficient for climate change mitigation. Rather, political
solutions can navigate the particularities of various facets of
environmental crisis. Climate change mitigation strategies can be at
odds with democratic priorities of prosperity, progress, and state
sovereignty, and instead underscore a collective relationship with the
environment.

DEMOCRATIC CHALLENGES.
n political theory, deliberative democracy has been discussed as a
political model more compatible with environmental goals.
Deliberative democracy is a system in which informed political
equals weigh values, information, and expertise, and debate
priorities to make decisions, as opposed to a democracy based on
interest aggregation. This definition of democracy emphasizes
informed discussion among citizens in the decision making process,
and encourages decisions to benefit the common good rather than
individual interests. Amy Gutmann and Dennis Thompson claimed
that reason prevails over self-interest in deliberative democracy,
making it a more just system. The broad perspective that this
discursive model encourages could lead to a stronger engagement
with environmental concerns.

ALTERNATIVE FORMS OF DEMOCRACY FOR

ENVIRONMENTAL POLICY.
New materialism is a strain of thought in philosophy and the social
sciences that conceives of all material as having life or agency. It
criticizes frameworks of justice that center on human attributes like
consciousness as insufficient for modern ethical problems that
concern the natural environment. It is a post-humanist
consideration of all matter that rejects arguments of utility that
privilege humans. This politically relevant social theory combats
inequality beyond the interpersonal plane. People are ethically
responsible for one another, and for the physical spaces they
navigate, including animal and plant life, and the inanimate matter
that sustains it, like soil. New materialism encourages political
action according to this world vision, even if it is incompatible with
economic growth.

NEW MATERIALISM AND ENVIRONMENTAL

JUSTICE.
ENVIRONMENTAL
SCIENCE AND
PUBLIC POLICY