Readings

1
Readings

• Invasions
• Pimentel et al. 2000. Environmental and economic
  costs of nonindigenous species in the United
  States. BioScience 5053-65.
• Environmental Economics
• R. Costanza et al.1997. The Value of the World's
  Ecosystem Services and Natural Capital. Nature
  387253-260.

2
Resources

• Steve Hackett (HSU) links to economic and
  environmental economic websites
  http//www.humboldt.edu/envecon/resources.html
• EPAs national center for Environmental
  Economics http//yosemite1.epa.gov/ee/epa/eed.nsf
  /pages/homepage

3
Outline

• Introduction to environmental economics
• free market economics
• Valuing non-market commodities
• Approaches to ameliorating market failure
• Case study guest speaker Becky Niell
• Simulation model of vegetation dynamics linking
  costs, benefits, and vegetation

4
Environmental economics

• What is it?
• What does it include?

5
Environmental economics

• What is it?
• Expansion of traditional economics to include
  non-market values
• Risk assessment and cost-benefit analyses
• What does it include?
• Includes non-market values (esthetic, cultural,
  emotional), ecosystem services, environmental
  health and safety concerns, sustainable
  development, carbon accounting etc.

6
Free Market economics

• Market provides mechanism to allocate resources
  to best (highest valued) uses
• Prices provide information about values
• Ideally, resources are allocated in a way that
  optimizes efficiency
• However, does not always optomize for
  environmental resources
• Information is incomplete, some resources have no
  market, future discounting devalues conservation,
  tragedy of the commons

7
Valuing environmental resources

• What are environmental (non-market) values?

8
Valuing environmental resources

• What are some environmental values?
• Health, wellbeing
• Intrinsic values of wilderness and wildlife
• Ecosystem services
• natural capital
• Future potential values (e.g. new discoveries)

9
How to place values on resources?

• value on non-direct costs and benefits
• Estimate cost to use technology to perform
  actions conducted by ecosystems (e.g. water or
  air filtration)
• Estimate costs of amelioration (e.g. healthcare
  costs VS prevention of environmental pollution)
• Surveys ask people what things are worth (what
  would you pay to maintain ecosystem X)

10
How to place values on resources?

• value on non-direct costs and benefits
• Estimate cost to use technology to perform
  actions conducted by ecosystems (e.g. water or
  air filtration)
• Estimate costs of amelioration (e.g. healthcare
  costs VS prevention of environmental pollution)
• Surveys ask people what things are worth (what
  would you pay to maintain ecosystem X)

11
Non-market values in range and forest ecosystems

• What are some values that might apply? How would
  you account for them?

12
Market Failure caused by non-market resources

• Market failure non-optimal allocation of
  resources.
• How can it be remedied? Account for non-monetary
  values, or bypass market mechanism and impose
  policy.

13
Can non-monetary values be accounted for by
traditional economics?
14
Can non-monetary values be accounted for by
traditional economics?

• Yes we can translate all values into common
  metric () and can assess using free-market
  economics

15
Can non-monetary values be accounted for by
traditional economics?

• No some things have no value. Some decisions
  (environmental and social policy) must be made
  outside the realm of the market

• Yes we can translate all values into common
  metric () and can assess using free-market
  economics

16
Case study modeling costs, management, and
vegetation

• Simulation model predicting outcomes of various
  management strategies
• non-market values (e.g. environment values) must
  be considered external to the model to make
  management decisions