Abstract

SCHWARZ, Henrique. Natural capital valuation: economic, environmental or political?. Economia Global e Gestão [online]. 2012, vol.17, n.1, pp.103-116. ISSN 0873-7444.

The eruption of the environmental dimension in economic thinking builds a new background to the old question of what determines the value of goods and services. The knowledge of the value of natural resources and ecosystem services is, in fact, a condition of their effective management and a prerequisite of sustainable development.We describe here three main theories that explain the value of environmental goods and services and their correlative methodologies: from those that maintain the monists’ obsessions of traditional monetary analysis and of energy accounting to the dualist break introduced by ecological economics.This new branch of thought refuses the idea that one sole element is at the origin of value. It adopts the principle of incommensurability, the non existence of a universal measure of value, be it expressed in money terms or in an energy unit, and proposes multicriteria evaluation as an alternative tool of calculus, in a rejection both of an economic or an ecological rationale in this field.

Keywords : Value; Incommensurability; Cost-benefit; Eco-energetics; Multi-criteria.

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