Intrinsic vs. Economic Valuations of Nature and Culture

I’d like to address Redford reading’s comparison between the anthropologists that attempt to justify the investigation and preservation of indigenous knowledge by valuing it in economic terms, and the biologists who trying to do the same thing with ecosystems or species.  I know this wasn’t the main focus of the reading, but I think the point he made here was interesting and valid, and yet something I’d have to disagree with.  In this article, Redford asserts that pushing for preservation/conservation on these economic terms is risky because a misguided calculation or easily refuted statement could completely undermine your argument.  The alternative approach would be using the inherent value of indigenous knowledge, biodiversity, etc. as justification for preservation.

However, as I see it, this inherent-value solution has about as many problems as the economic valuation approach.  First is the implicit assumption of a universal value system.  This false notion was brought up in several of our readings this semester; the one that jumps to my mind is Greider and Garkovich’s discussion of landscapes.  As these authors point out, a rancher might look at the same landscape as say, the president of the Sierra Club, and see something entirely different.  While I would guess that every human values biological and cultural diversity for its own sake, the problem is that many people value other things more.  And so when the preservation of a rare plant species clashes with an opportunity to expand grazing lands, although people likely value both things, they will naturally place a higher value on what most immediately affects them.  While there is surely no harm in attempting to bring about shifts in value systems through education and public awareness, in the end you can’t force your value system on somebody else.

This ultimately, is the reason for the second problem with the inherent-value approach to cultural or environmental preservation; that it doesn’t work.  Or at least that it doesn’t work nearly as effectively as we need it to.  As Nash points out, the economic valuation of things that are essentially priceless can be extremely dangerous.  However, I think that this approach can be very useful for communicating the importance of bio- and cultural diversity to people who place less of a value on life’s diversity than they do on money.  The inherent-value approach is a lovely thought, and in an ideal world, that’s all we would need.  But the fact is that trying to convince people of diversity’s inherent value just hasn’t worked as fast as we need it to, and it makes sense at this point –as cultures and species are rapidly disappearing from the earth- to use all of the tools we have at our disposal.