Are we lost in the vale of ignorance or on the mountain of principle?

Abstract

Making progress in understanding global and long-run problems raised by human perturbations of ecological systems, and in making that understanding relevant to policy formulation, will require intense collaboration between, at least, ecologists and economists. There is far too little of this now and far too much fairly fruitless argument and lecturing—in part because each side seems embarrassed by its lack of ability to do what it claims needs to be done. Ecological models cannot predict the long-run changes in the multiple functions of natural systems that might follow from human actions such as land clearance or waste storage. Economists' valuation techniques cannot convincingly deal with multiple dimensions of change in the environment or with the non-use values of any changes. An ecological-economic modeling project of 20 years ago reveals a few lessons for those who would like to see progress on collaborative research ultimately aimed at correcting these deficiencies. For example, real collaboration requires investment of substantial up-front time, investment best made in the context of a mathematical model of the problem to be investigated. The model forces participants to fit their ideas together rather than to string them out independently. It also will likely force compromise from disciplinary purity. There is much to be said for using such projects to train a small group of Ph.D.s who will have observed and participated in the collaboration. The existence of such a group will do more for “eco-system valuation” than ad hoc and episodic forums involving old dogs, even though some of these would be happy to learn new tricks.