Value Incommensurability

Conventional versus ecological economists
Values are often incommensurable. This means that they cannot be measured in the same units. The environment is often a site of conflict between competing values and interests represented by different classes and groups. How are such conflicts to be understood? The approach of standard economics is to use of a common unit – a monetary numeraire – for all the different values and then to look for a compromise (a trade-off) between all of them within a market context. By values we understand what is considered important, but what do we really mean: conservation of nature? sacredness? livelihood? aesthetics? money? national sovereignty? Typically, conventional economists apply monetary compensation to an injured party in order to solve conflicting claims. In some cases, like when asking for redress in a court of law in a civil suit, this is all that can be done: asking for money as compensation for damages. This approach assumes therefore the existence of value commensurability, that is, that all values can be translated into money.

Ecological economists, in contrast, accept value incommensurability (Martínez-Alier et al., 1998). If a territory is sacred, what is its value in money terms? If the livelihood of poor people is destroyed, can money really compensate for it? If we leave without generations with a changed climate, can we really compensate them in money terms? Nobody knows indeed how to convincingly estimate the monetary price of cultural, social or ecological impacts of deforestation and biodiversity loss, for instance. Instead of appealing to a unique numeraire, other ways are available for resolving problems related to a plurality of values.

The example of Southern Cameroon
In Southern Cameroon for instance, the valuation languages used by local populations are diverse. Most of the time, it is not the language of Western conservation (e.g. biodiversity protection) nor it is one of standard economics (e.g. monetary compensation): local populations use the languages of defence of human rights, urgency of livelihood, defence of cultural identity and territorial rights, and respect for sacredness.

The Pygmy Baka provide an illustration of this. Because of logging, the Baka lose bush meat, territories, trees, and collection spots for forest products. Another complaint is that they often suffer from noise pollution from chain saws and trucks. In the Baka cosmology, when God created the world (humans and Nature), its favourite activity was to listen to the bees. So, humans had to stay quiet in order not to disturb God. But one day, some Baka began to make noise in the forest and God punished them by transforming them into wild animals. Noise is thus considered by Baka as a severe impact of logging since it is directly related to their religion, creating a spiritual prejudice. In view of this, it is misleading – as standard economists do – to try to reduce such a diversity of languages to a single monetary measure and to put a price on forest degradation.

Conflict resolution
Conventional conflict resolution through cost benefit analysis and monetary compensation is therefore inappropriate because it denies the legitimacy of other languages. It simplifies complex value systems related to the environment into monetary units. Moreover, if the only relevant value becomes money, then poor people are disadvantaged as their own livelihoods are cheaply valued on the market, so compensation will be minimal. Therefore, market prices and monetary valuation are themselves tools of power through which some sectors impose their own symbolic system of environmental valuation upon others, thereby defining exchange values and allowing the trade-off of economic benefits and socio-environmental costs in their own favour. In fact, we realize that poor people are well advised to defend their interests in languages different from that of monetary compensation for damages, because in the capitalist sphere the Lawrence Summers‘ principle (the poor sell cheap) is operative.

It appears that only a truly democratic debate can solve valuation contests. Social multi-criteria evaluation is a tool from ecological economics that allows the comparability of plural values and sometimes helps to reach compromise solutions. It also shows what coalitions of actors are likely to be formed around different alternatives (Munda, 1995). In reality, however, it is usually the most powerful actor that imposes its own viewpoint and language of valuation. In this context, quite obviously, conflicts are sometimes the only way to change power relations that favour dominant actors and to advance towards equity and sustainability.