Borrowing trouble. Finding ways out of value systems discord for biodiversity policy-making

Abstract

IPBES’ conceptual framework, and the related debates prior to its adoption, provided an interesting opportunity to witness an old and ongoing tension between two value systems, namely an “economic” and utility-based value system, and a “cultural” and comprehensive value system. Arguments for and against both value systems relate, at least partly, to criteria such as practicality, democracy, comprehensiveness and respect for various forms of worldviews. However, disputes regarding the legitimacy of these value systems mostly rest on theoretical ground since they generally focus on the potential threats and future promises of approaches related to these value systems, rather than on their actual impacts and performance. This article aims to contribute to filling this gap.

Typical instruments of the “economic” value system are cost-benefit analysis and its correlate, ecosystem services valuation. The key selling point of these instruments is their ability to support efficient, transparent and democratic policy-making processes. On the other hand, their most often denounced threat lies in paving the way to the commodification of nature. In this paper, these promises and threats are put to test in the context of Official Development Assistance and the decision-making processes of five Official Development Agencies (ODAs) such as the World Bank, the European Investment Banks and three bilateral ODAs. The paper provides for an analysis of the role of cost-benefit analysis and ecosystem services valuation for supporting decision-making in the fields related to the local environment in these ODAs. Results suggest that, however favourable the context of ODA appears for economic valuation instruments, the “economic” value system has failed to deliver both in terms of its most commonly boasted promises and its most often denounced threats. This suggests renewing our views on the tension between the value systems. All value systems give birth to languages, concepts and representations that can be used as complementary rather than conflicting resources as long as the economic analysis is no longer considered as a proxy for decision-making, but rather as a useful language to speak of material interests and of distribution, and to bring these concerns into deliberation processes.

Keywords:

• value systems
• IPBES
• ODA
• the World Bank
• decision-making
• ecosystem services valuation
• conceptual framework
• cost-benefit analysis

Acknowledgements

It has benefitted from advise and support from Dr. Alice Vadrot, Dr. Aleksandar Rankovic, Fiona Kinniburgh (Iddri) and from an anonymous reviewer, whom the author thanks (all flaws and limitations of the paper remaining his).

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

ORCID

Yann Laurans http://orcid.org/0000-0001-8504-8369

Notes

1 Of course these are schematic descriptions of approaches that do frame many conversations and processes, but are actually more diverse and heterogeneous than described here.

2 In terms of environmental issues, the “economics utilisation analysis” will focus on ODA projects with consequences for the “local” environment (water, areas, species, ecosystems, landscapes, etc.), thereby excluding the atmosphere, climate and carbon.

3 “Avoid, mitigate, or minimize adverse environmental and social impacts of projects supported by the Bank”, Operational Policy N°4.00, from World Bank manual, “Piloting the Use of Borrower Systems to Address Environmental and Social Safeguard Issues in Bank-Supported Projects”.

4 The term CBA does not appear in this, and is replaced by Net Present Value (NPV) and by the Economic Rate of Return (ERR).

5 In the case of the other ODAs, this use is not established as explicitly. The IDB General Operational Policies state that “Bank-financed projects shall: Contribute effectively to the economic and social development of the regional member countries. (…) Be technically, economically, and environmentally sound, financially secure, and take place in an adequate legal and institutional framework. (…).” The EIB Statutes state that projects must be profitable and contribute to “an increase in economic productivity”. Finally, the AFD Statutes specify simply that AFD must investigate and evaluate projects.

6 In particular, Ken Chomitz, Kirk Hamilton and Stefano Pagiola.

Additional information

Funding

This article has received financial support from the French government through the programme “Investissements d’avenir”, managed by ANR (the French National Research Agency) under the reference ANR-10-LABX-01.