Economic Valuation of Environmental and Natural Resource Assets: Applications to Environmental Accounting

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to discuss, at a conceptual level, the task of valuing natural and environmental resources for the purposes of environmental accounting. We do this by presenting a framework for valuation that has at least three desirable properties. First, it is capable of generating economic values. There are many concepts of value that one uses in daily life, but only one concept of value provides for measurable economic value. Since one presumes that the values contained in environmental accounts must be commensurable with the monetary values contained in standard income and product accounts, one is constrained to use economic values. Therefore, the framework presented in the following pages relies exclusively on economic values and methods suitable to their measurement.