Adapted from an essay originally written for Professor Barnett’s Theory and Principles of Urban Design at the University of Pennsylvania in February 2004.

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Ecological economics has advantages of flexibility and ability to implement that current approaches to conservation lack and can provide a starting point for the integration of conservation and economic development by calling for the assignment of fiscal responsibility for negative externalities and the development of a monetary valuation system for our natural resources.  If universally implemented in conjunction with a reversal of out-dated zoning laws and land regulations, new policies can provide a flexible and accurate system of cost-benefit analysis that allows for the ideal allocation of resources to conservation and development needs.  In particular, ecological economics can be the foundation for three strategies that could be supported by conservationists.

  1. Enhancing Conservation Mapping: McHarg’s systems mapping finds its ideal complement in ecological accounting.  In Design with Nature, he frequently cites the difficulty of comparing the relative values of natural resources to one another. He approaches the solution by developing a series of transparent maps depicting resource allocations are laid on top of one another to provide an overall view of the relative value of the various sections of the area in question.  Sections of intensive resource allocations are darkened, as map after map blocks that area out as a locale unfavorable to development.  Ecological accounting can integrate with and enhance this approach by gradating the coloration of each map based on the relative values of resources in the area as determined by ecological accounting principles.  In an area where water resources are particularly valuable, maps of the water table and bodies of water might be drawn darker than other relatively less valuable resources.  McHarg is also a particularly avid supporter of developing buffer zones between developed areas and preserved areas, which ecological accounting can encourage by increasing the prices of resource extraction from such areas or providing incentives for the development of such areas.
  2. Incentives for Parks and Plazas: Spirn, also a supporter of buffer zones, provides a couple other conservation tactics that ecological economics can encourage.* Namely, she calls for the development of parks and plazas that not only welcome to the public but also enhance the relationship of the city with its natural surroundings and underpinnings.  Again, imposing costs for limiting or destroying such resources and creating incentives for creating them incorporates the values of ecology and conservation into the market economy.
  3. Regional Assignment of Externality Costs: Ecological economics can also integrate itself with a number of present approaches to conservation in environmental planning, including the development of compact cities and place-based economies, though to do so it must go beyond its primary strategy of ecological accounting to more aggressive policies designed to properly assign the costs of a wide range of externalities.  While building new infrastructure is a common and useful strategy employed by local governments to attract growth and development, these governments need to be held accountable for the negative impact of drawing businesses away from other regions.  An aggressive and widespread policy designed under the principles of ecological economics would force local governments to pay for the losses sustained by the communities they hurt with cutthroat development tactics.  The argument that growth would immediately stop is absurd; rather such a policy would force only the most efficient developments to be undertaken.  For example, rather than a new suburb luxuriously and inefficiently sprawled into the hinterlands attracting the corporate center of the CEO who lives next door, a new development would actually have to innovate a breakthrough in infrastructure such that, even in a payout to the locales from which businesses are drawn, a profit would still be made.

Despite the clear advantages of ecological economics, several challenges must be confronted for the field to have any meaningful impact.  First, currently imposed regulations regarding land use and development will complicate and distort attempts to reorient the market towards conservation.  For example, zoning laws across the United States encourage sprawl, forcing a potential ecological accounting strategy to overcompensate in its attempt to discourage resource consumption.  Second, ecological economics must be undertaken on a national scale for it to work.  An inner city that imposes fees on a company that builds a skyscraper with so much reflective heat that it ruins the neighboring park will continue to lose out to a laissez-faire outlying suburb that lets the company do whatever it wants.  Third, although ecological accounting is the most practical and thus presently applicable approach, ecological economics works best when it establishes markets for public resources, not just prices.  In other words, the current practice of ecological accounting will still suffer from some of the disadvantages of regulation because resource valuations are performed by a single entity, which could be incorrect in its assessment and slow to correct its failures.  Ideally, an entire market of countless players would constantly negotiate prices, just like in the private sector.  Developing a system “ecological markets” is perhaps the most important task for ecological economists.

* These ideas are not presently held to be “ecological accounting” tactics, because ecological accounting is generally considered to be an assessment of the public value of natural resources.  However, as Spirn argues, urban and natural spaces are not only tied together but also similar.  In this vein, the individual enhancement of the public space can be seen as aiding the development of the city as an organic whole in sync with its surrounding environs.  The economic encouragement of such activity must undoubtedly be considered a part of “ecological accounting”.

Bibliography of Works Consulted

Bisson, Katy, and John Proops, editors. Waste in Ecological Economics, Edward Elgar Publishing, Inc., 2002.

Costanza, Robert. “Ecological Economics: Reintegrating the Study of Humans & Nature”, Ecological Applications, Vol 6, No 4, Nov 1996, 978-990.

Folke, Carl, C.S. Holling, & Charles Perrings. “Biological Diversity, Ecosystems, & the Human Scale”, Ecological Applications, Vol. 6, No. 4, Nov 1996, pp 1018-1024.

Katona, George. “Consumer Behavior: Theory & Findings on Expectations & Aspirations,” The American Economic Review, Vol 58, No 2, Papers & Proceedings of the Eightieth Annual Meeting of the American Economic Associations, May 1968, 19-30.

Krautkraemer, Jeffrey A. “Nonrenewable Resource Scarcity”, Journal of Economic Literature, Vol 36, No 4, Dec 1998, 2065-2107.

Mack, Ruth P. “Ecological Processes in Economic Change: Models, Measurement, & Meaning”, The American Economic Review, Vol 58, No 2, Papers & Proceedings of the Eightieth Annual Meeting of the American Economic Associations, May 1968, 40-54.

Mangel, Marc et al. “Principles for the Conservation of Wild Living Resources”, Ecological Applications, Vol 6, No 2, May 1996, 338-362.

Nelson, Robert H. “Sustainability, Efficiency, & God: Economic Values & the Sustainability Debate”, Annual Review of Ecology & Systematics, Vol 26, 1995, 135-154.

O’Neill, R.V. “Perspectives on Economics & Ecology”, Ecological Applications, Vol 6, No 4, Nov 1996, 1031-1033.

Simon, Sandrine and John Proops, editors. Greening the Accounts,Edward Elgar Publishing Limited, 2000.

Straussfogel, Debra. “World-Systems Theory: Toward a Heuristic & Pedagogic Conceptual Tool”, Economic Geography, Vol 73, No 1, Jan 1997, 118-130.

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