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Making a Governable, Value-able Nature: Calculative Practices and Eco-system Services

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Naturally Challenged: Contested Perceptions and Practices in Urban Green Spaces

Part of the book series: Cities and Nature ((CITIES))

Abstract

There is a global movement to describe the natural environment as a set of ecosystem services that have economic value . Increasingly, the approach has been adopted by governments and, in response, by non-profit organizations to inform decisions about the provision and allocation of resources. The subjection of nature to an economic rationale has been much criticised. Some of the arguments are philosophical, pointing to the inability of economics to capture the extraordinary, intrinsic character of nature. Other arguments are more practical and highlight the difficulty of determining the economic value of a good – nature – that is not traded. These criticisms have considerable force. But a different perspective on valuing nature is adopted in this chapter by considering what is done to nature in order to make it amenable to calculation. So, rather than taking the numbers that are attached to nature as given – and then debating the shortcomings of quantifying nature – we explore the actions necessary to generate these numbers in the first place. The accepted means of qualifying, quantifying and valuing nature is the product of a huge amount of social, cultural, political and economic work: work that is necessary to maintain the primacy of such an approach.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    These categories may, in turn, fit into one or several hierarchies (Lamont 2012).

  2. 2.

    Although there is great variation in the detailed development and in the application of the typology to suit different objectives and contexts.

  3. 3.

    Vivid Economics is an applied economics consultancy (see http://www.vivideconomics.com/)

  4. 4.

    The value of cultural ES is exceeded by that of other ES in natural capital accounts of rural habitats (see, for example, Lawson et al. 2018; Sunderland et al. 2019).

  5. 5.

    The NPV is the present value of the future benefits arising from an investment minus the present value of the future costs, derived by applying an appropriate discount rate to each cash flow (in this case the social discount rate of 3.5% per annum).

  6. 6.

    The IRR equates to the discount rate that when applied to the future costs and benefits arising from an investment produces a NPV of zero.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Urban Studies and Planning, The University of Sheffield, Sheffield, UK

    John Henneberry & Jing Ma

  2. Department of Civil Engineering and Architecture, University of Catania, Catania, Italy

    Riccardo Privitera

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  1. John Henneberry
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  2. Jing Ma
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Correspondence to John Henneberry .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Landscape Architecture, University of Sheffield, Sheffield, UK

    Nicola Dempsey

  2. Department of Landscape Architecture, University of Sheffield, Sheffield, UK

    Julian Dobson

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Henneberry, J., Ma, J., Privitera, R. (2020). Making a Governable, Value-able Nature: Calculative Practices and Eco-system Services. In: Dempsey, N., Dobson, J. (eds) Naturally Challenged: Contested Perceptions and Practices in Urban Green Spaces. Cities and Nature. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-44480-8_4

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-44480-8_4

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