Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
Chapter 13
Economic Principles of Monetary Valuation
in Evaluation Studies
C. Martijn van der Heide, Neil A. Powe, and Ståle Navrud
Introduction
According to Daily (1997) and Mooney and Ehrlich (1997) , the idea that human
depends on natural systems dates back as far as Plato, who acknowledged that
deforestation led to soil erosion and the drying of springs. In his widely read and
influential book Guns, Germs, and Steel (1997) , the prominent evolutionary biologist
Diamond suggests close links between the ability of natural systems in some parts of
the world to provide key services to human societies (such as mitigation of droughts
and floods, dispersal of seeds and the preservation of soils and renewal of their fertility)
and the successful and military powerful civilizations of those societies.
'Biodiversity' - short for biological diversity - includes goods which are an
important and familiar part of the economy, and the sustained production of these
goods is a service provided to society at low or no cost by natural systems (Levin
1999 ; Daily 2000) . However, it is noteworthy to mention that biodiversity does not
only support natural systems, but also contributes to the productivity of agricultural
systems. For instance, Kremen et al. (2004) show that nearly one-third of the US
food supply by volume depends on animal pollinators, of which bee species are the
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