Languages of Valuation

Environmental Conflicts: Clashes of Valuation Languages
Environmental conflicts are fought in different languages‘, that is, within different reference frames. Conflicts therefore might arise out of clashes of different interests or because of the existence of different value systems (see e.g. landscape values below). In the case of mangroves for instance, some people want to preserve them against the shrimp industry because they appreciate their ecological and aesthetic values. Other people want to preserve them because they make their livelihood and survive from them, and/or because they understand their practical role in coastal defence and as fish breeding grounds. Other people (or the same people, in other contexts) might appeal to the sense of culture and place mangroves provide for their traditional inhabitants. They might even argue that there are sacred mangroves. In all cases, environmental conflicts are expressed as conflicts of valuation, either within the parameters of one single standard of valuation, or across plural values. Thus, in a gold mining conflict, the company will probably argue in terms of the money to be gained (and shared locally for employment, taxes and royalties), while the opposition may argue for instance in terms of the uncertain risks to health from cyanide used in open cast mining, and/or in terms of the infringement of indigenous rights to the territory under Convention 169 of ILO.

To see value solely in terms of biomass, energy, culture, livelihood, or to maintain an a priori refusal of techniques of economic valuation in actual or fictitious markets, indicates a failure to grasp the existence of value pluralism, hence of different languages of valuation. It is possible to believe that, shrimp and gold exports are valuable items of world trade‖, while also recognising that, valuable ecosystems and valuable local cultures are destroyed by shrimp farming and gold mining. Which then is the true value of one pound of farm-raised shrimp or the true value of a gram of gold?

The reduction of all goods and services to actual or fictitious commodities, as in cost benefit analysis, can be recognized as one perspective among several, legitimate as a point of view and as a reflection of real power structures. But who then has the power to simplify complexity, ruling some viewpoints as out of order?

Landscape value

Landscape value corresponds to an attachment or emotional bond that people develop with places. There are strong cultural ties to landscapes and feelings for the visual beauty of mountains, lakes, coasts, forests, etc., which are a common bond among people or social groups of a given region. Arguments related to landscape values are commonly heard in Europe from opponents to the construction of wind farms for example. Landscape values may also be important for the tourism industry and landscapes can therefore be managed as a key component of tourism infrastructure. Landscape value often has an association with environmental and natural resource values. The values that people appreciate in a landscape may often also be important ecologically. Landscape values can be divided into use value, that is, places that provide tangible benefits (such as economic value through, for instance, tourism, or recreation value) and non-use value, namely places that have spiritual, identity or ecological values.

Application
The agents of environmental conflicts are not so well identified as the agents of Ricardian or Marxian economic conflicts – landlords and capitalist farmers, in one case, capitalists and proletarians, in the second case. It might be that a fight against effluents is led by a group of conservationists, or by a group of local women concerned by children‘s health, or by a group of indigenous people demanding compensation, i.e. demanding in the language of economists the internalisation of externalities, or appealing to non-chrematistic values (such as human livelihood or the sacredness of the land).
The management and resolution of local or global ecological distribution conflicts requires cooperation between many different actors such as businesses, international organizations, NGO networks, local groups, and governments. Whether this cooperation can be based on common values and on common languages is questionable. Whenever there are unresolved ecological conflicts, there is likely to be not only a discrepancy but incommensurability in valuation (Faucheux and O‘Connor 1998; Funtowicz and Ravetz 1994; Martinez-Alier, Munda and O‘Neill 1998; Martinez-Alier and O‘Connor 1996).

The claims to environmental resources and services of others, who are differentially empowered and endowed, can be contested by arguing inside a single standard of value or across plural values. As pointed out by O‘Connor and Spash (1999), conflicts about access to natural resources or about exposure to environmental burdens and risks may be expressed:

• in one single standard of valuation (usually monetary). How should the externalities (i.e. cost-shifting) caused by a firm be valued in money terms when asking for compensation in a court case? An appeal to economists versed in cost benefit analysis and contingent valuation would be appropriate here.
• through a value standard contest or dispute, that is, a clash in the standards of value to be applied, as when loss of biodiversity, or in cultural patrimony, or damage to human livelihoods, or infringement on human rights or loss of esthetic or sacred values are compared in non-commensurable terms to economic gains from a new dam or a shrimp farm or a mining project or from oil extraction. There is a clash in standards of valuation when the languages of environmental justice, or indigenous territorial rights, or environmental security, or sacredness, are deployed against monetary valuation of environmental burdens. Non-compensatory multi-criteria decision aids or participatory methods of conflict analysis are appropriate for this type of situation.

Any social group can simultaneously use different standards of value in support of its economic and environmental security. This is particularly true of subordinate social groups. Moreover, in complex situations marked by uncertainties and synergies, the disciplinary approach of experts is not appropriate. So, incommensurability of values arises not only because of different interests but also because of complexity that entails a plurality of legitimate perspectives and values. This point is made vivid by one question, ―What is the price of oil?‖ asked by Human Rights Watch in 1999 in a report on the Niger Delta.