| 1. |
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| 2. |
- Gren, Ing-Marie, et al.
(författare)
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Costs of alien invasive species in Sweden
- 2009
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Ingår i: Ambio. - : Springer Netherlands. - 0044-7447 .- 1654-7209. ; 38:3
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- The purpose of this paper is to present calculations of total costs of 13 alien invasive species (AIS) in Sweden. All species are subject to control by Swedish public authorities, and estimates for most AIS include either damage cost or actual control cost. The results indicate a total annual cost between approximately 1620 and 5080 million SEK, which correspond to SEK 175 and SEK 565 per capita in Sweden. The estimates are well within the range of similar calculations for other countries, but differ with respect to the composition of costs of different AIS. Whereas costs for the agricultural and forestry sectors dominate in most other studies, the costs of AIS in Sweden are more equally divided among different categories. The results also indicate that the highest costs are attributable to unintentionally introduced AIS and that the most reliable cost estimates are related to human and animal health.
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| 3. |
- Gren, Ing-Marie, et al.
(författare)
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Ecosystem services and regional development : An application to Sweden
- 2009
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Ingår i: Ecological Economics. - : Elsevier. - 0921-8009 .- 1873-6106. ; :68, s. 2549-2559
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- This study carries out interregional comparisons of development and sustainable use of natural capital with and without inclusion of non-marketed ecosystem services. A simple dynamic model of an open economy shows that appropriate adjustment of conventional income accounts includes flow and stock components, but excludes explicit entrance of pollution. Calculations are made for Swedish regions and for two types of ecosystem services - pollution sequestration and recreational services - provided by three types of ecosystems: forests, agricultural landscape and wetlands. When comparing the adjusted and non-adjusted regional income accounts it is shown that the two measurements generate significantly different pictures of regional income and growth; regions that are traditionally considered as relatively less growth promoting are shown to hold important sources of wealth from natural capital, while counties that are rich in conventional accounts fall behind when adjusting for values of changes in natural capital.
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| 4. |
- Isacs, Lina, et al.
(författare)
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Choosing a monetary value of greenhouse gases in assessment tools
- 2016
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Ingår i: Journal of Cleaner Production. - : Elsevier. - 0959-6526 .- 1879-1786.
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- There is a societal need for using monetary estimates of social impacts of CO2 and other greenhouse gases in different assessment tools, such as cost-benefit analysis and life-cycle assessment. A number of estimates are available in the literature. Since these differ by several orders of magnitude, there is ambiguity and confusion about which to use. This review aims to give some guidance on this issue. The variation in carbon value estimates depends on several uncertain aspects – which will remain uncertain – including climate sensitivity, assumptions about future emissions, and decision makers' ethical standpoints. Hence, there is no single correct monetary value for CO2: it will depend on the ethical standpoint of the user. Due to this, estimates of social costs of CO2 emissions cannot be used for calculating an optimal emission level, although they can inform such assessments. It is suggested that marginal abatement cost values are used for emissions capped by binding targets in short-term assessments, and that social cost of carbon values should be used for all other emissions. Benchmark principles for choosing a monetary carbon value are suggested along with associated estimates. Depending on the choices made with regard to ethical standpoints and assumptions about future emissions and climate sensitivity, estimates can be significantly higher than the ones typically used in assessment tools today. The estimates need continuous updating, and there is need for better understanding and communication around the limitations and uncertainties involved.
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| 5. |
- Isacs, Lina
(författare)
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Deliberating value : On the theory and practice of valuation of nature from neoclassical to ecological economics
- 2021
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- This thesis is about whether it is a good idea to place monetary value on nature, to remedy the fact that we treat it as having no particular value to us humans, although it clearly has. The thesis is based on five research papers that can be said to position themselves on opposite sides in the debate on monetisation of nature. The first two papers consider the basis of neoclassical environmental economics and apply the value theory and valuation methods from normative neoclassical welfare theory, on which monetisation of nature is based. The other three papers examine, with increasing degrees of criticism, this theory of value and especially its central assumption that value can be derived from people’s choices, or “revealed preferences”. The thesis itself is a “reflective story” about the journey I made as I learned to think about and understand neoclassical environmental economics in new ways. I reflect upon my work from a philosophy of science perspective, consider how for-granted-taken ideas from neoclassical economics affect environmental economic analysis and its conclusions, and examine the subject of value and valuation from what has become my new theoretical standpoint, ecological economics. It concerns meta-theoretical questions about ontology, that is, ideas in a research discipline about how things really are (what is), and epistemology, ideas about how researchers can provide relevant knowledge about reality. Such ideas are often taken for granted in neoclassical economic analysis and how they affect the analysis and its conclusions is not seldom unreflective. In the thesis, I move from explaining why neoclassical environmental economists advocate monetisation and pricing of nature as important solutions to environmental problems, to exemplifying how this turned out in research projects intended to serve as decision support in practice, and then to exploring and clarifying an alternative theory of value and valuation from ecological economics based on value pluralism and so-called deliberative valuation. In a concluding discussion, I point out that there are reasons to be sceptical about whether monetisation of nature is the right path to follow if we want to change our unsustainable relationship with nature and tackle the serious ecological crises we currently face. I show that monetisation of nature in practice requires a considerable amount of pragmatism, since the applied version of the theory deviates far from its idealised claims about the possibility to capture actual, total values. I also show that the descriptive (so-called positive) part of neoclassical theory and its normative part overlap in a way that makes it very difficult to speak of “objective” science in environmental economics. Instead, and despite strong recognition in the discipline that environmental problems are “market failures”, neoclassical theory has an ethical and ideological bias that favours individuals’ freedom of choice and market solutions, at the expense of collective decision-making and discussions about values that cannot be quantified. The important contribution of the thesis is that it clarifies the consequences of a central idea in the theory behind environmental economic analysis, namely the idea of values as commensurable, that is, measurable in one single unit. This idea links to the misleading conception of choices as “trade-offs”, where all choices are essentially viewed as the result of people’s constant exchange of costs and benefits within themselves in every choice they make, with the result that everything gets better (or at least not worse). Based on my research, I suggest that, in reality, people do not generally “make” trade-offs. If anything, people try to avoid them, especially when it comes to difficult choices, such as those concerning the true value of nature, because such choices involve moral conflicts between values that are incommensurable. As a basis for valuing transformational change, monetisation is therefore unsuitable, as it conceals rather than reveals the ethical dilemmas that are the very definition of sustainability problems and causes us to search for the efficient or so-called “optimal” solutions claimed possible in neoclassical theory and rhetoric, although such solutions do not exist. What we need instead is to represent public opinion in environmental decision-making in ways that do not conceal people’s actual moral considerations. Environmental valuation is political. It must be done together with others through reason-sensitive means, where people’s actual experiences of value conflicts – within us and between us – can be deliberated before making decisions. This makes decision-making more complex, but as an alternative to monetisation, this realism is not necessarily unrealistic. The fact that incommensurability is grounded in human experience means that the complexity of social and environmental decision-making has a real counterpart in conflicts within ourselves. One could see this as a potentiality, because we may have more confidence in people’s ability to recognise the relevance and necessity of less simplification and more complexity in decision-making. People need to “deliberate values” rather than “consuming” them and being expected to express all sorts of values through money.
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| 6. |
- Isacs, Lina, PhD, et al.
(författare)
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'I didn't count "willingness to pay" as part of the value' : Monetary valuation through respondents' perspectives
- 2024
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Ingår i: Environmental Values. - : Sage Publications. - 0963-2719 .- 1752-7015. ; 33:2, s. 163-188
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- A frequent justification in the literature for using stated preference methods (SP) is that they are the only methods that can capture the so-called total economic value (TEV) of environmental changes to society. Based on follow-up interviews with SP survey respondents, this paper addresses the implications of that argument by shedding light on the construction of TEV, through respondents' perspective. It illuminates the deficiencies of willingness to pay (WTP) as a measure of value presented as three aggregated themes considering respondents' unintentionality, their retraction once they understood that their WTP could be decisive in cost-benefit analysis and the inherent incompleteness of WTP. We discuss why the TEV discourse persists, how it conceals rather than reveals broader notions of value and in what ways our results support the development of alternative approaches that truly endorse plurality in environmental valuation and decision-making.
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| 7. |
- Isacs, Lina, PhD, et al.
(författare)
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I didn't count "willingness to pay" as part of the value' : monetary valuation through stated preference study respondents' perspective
- 2023
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Ingår i: Environmental Values. - : White Horse Press. - 0963-2719 .- 1752-7015.
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- A frequent justification in the literature for using stated preference methods (SP) is that they are the only methods that can capture the so-called total economic value (TEV) of environmental changes to society. Based on follow-up interviews with SP survey respondents, this paper addresses the implications of that argument by shedding light on the construction of TEV, through respondents’ perspective. It illuminates the deficiencies of willingness to pay (WTP) as a measure of value, presented as three aggregated themes considering respondents’ unintentionality, their retraction once they understood that their WTP could be decisive in cost-benefit analysis and the inherent incompleteness of WTP. We discuss why the TEV discourse persists, how it conceals rather than reveals broader notions of value and in what ways our results support the development of alternative approaches that truly endorse plurality in environmental valuation and decision making.
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| 8. |
- Isacs, Lina, et al.
(författare)
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"I didn’t count WTP as part of the value": Respondents’ perspective on willingness to pay – an inductive approach
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Annan publikation (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- This paper sheds new light on the willingness to pay-concept (WTP) by taking the perspective of respondents as the departure point and exploring WTP’s accuracy with respect to the framework of “the total economic value” (TEV), upon which much of stated preference studies’ (SP) unique role in welfare analysis depends. Based on follow-up interviews with respondents to an SP survey, we use an inductive, interpretive approach and empirically show that WTP is not a suitable measure of the total value of an environmental change to society. Two findings support this claim. Firstly, to the interviewees it seemed hard to even imagine that we would equate the value of the environmental improvement with their WTP. Secondly, once they understood how their WTP could come to be used in cost-benefit analysis, they did not accept it. Our results suggest that it is more credible to refer to WTP as a measure of a subset of the value of an environmental change, rather than a “total” value. If it is used, we advocate that it is complemented with other value indicators, and that the typical reference to aggregate WTP as a measure of social welfare is avoided.
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| 9. |
- Isacs, Lina, et al.
(författare)
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Ingen vet kostnaden för utsläpp
- 2014
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Ingår i: Dagens industri. - : Specialtidningsförlaget. - 0346-640X.
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Tidskriftsartikel (populärvet., debatt m.m.)
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| 10. |
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