Policy-makers are increasingly trying to assign economic values to areas such as ecologies, the atmosphere, even human lives. These new values, assigned to areas previously considered outside of economic systems, often act to qualify, alter or replace former non-pecuniary values. Valuing Development, Environment and Conservation looks to explore the complex interdependencies, contradictions and trade-offs that can take place between economic values and the social, environmental, political and ethical systems that inform non-monetary valuation processes. Using rich empirical material, the book explores the processes of valuation, their components, calculative technologies, and outcomes in different social, ecological and conservation domains. The book gives reasons for why economic calculation tends to dominate in practice, but also presents new insights on how the disobedient materiality of things and the ingenuity of human and non-human agencies can combine and frustrate the dominant economic models within calculative processes. This book highlights the tension between, on the one hand, a dominant model that emphasises technical and ‘universalising’ criteria, and on the other hand, valuation practice in specific local contexts which is more likely to negotiate criteria that are plural, incommensurable and political. This book is perfect for researchers and students within development studies, environment, geography, politics, sociology and anthropology who are looking for new insights into how processes of valuation take place in the 21st century, and with what consequential outcomes.

Gathering an interdisciplinary range of cutting-edge scholars, this book addresses legal constitutions of value. Global value production and transnational value practices that rely on exploitation and extraction have left us with toxic commons and a damaged planet. Against this situation, the book examines law’s fundamental role in institutions of value production and valuation. Utilizing pathbreaking theoretical approaches, it problematizes mainstream efforts to redeem institutions of value production by recoupling them with progressive values. Aiming beyond radical critique, the book opens up the possibility of imagining and enacting new and different value practices. This wide-ranging and accessible book will appeal to international lawyers, socio-legal scholars, those working at the intersections of law and economy and others, in politics, economics, environmental studies and elsewhere, who are concerned with rethinking our current ideas of what has value, what does not, and whether and how value may be revalued. The Open Access version of this book, available at www.taylorfrancis.com, has been made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives 4.0 license.

This book considers the concept of ‘value’ at the root of our actions and decision-making. Value is an ever-present, yet little interrogated aspect of everyday life. This book explores value as it is theorised, practiced and critiqued from a variety of disciplinary perspectives. It examines how value is operationalized, endorsed and contested in contemporary society. With international insights from leading scholars, chapters offer a diverse and vibrant geographical engagement with value to showcase its conceptual flexibility. The book explores value’s eclectic epistemic foundations; it’s ‘roll-out’ and legitimation across a range of policy fields; and its challenges and opportunities. The book draws on global examples of value in practice: from forest conservation in Indonesia; protected area management in arctic Norway; a state park in the US; certification schemes for biodiversity in the UK; protection of the international night sky; heritage planning in East Taiwan; a re-developed airport site in Norway; a, local food networks in Canada and the UK; a market in the US and urban development in China. The book will be of interest to human geographers, political ecologists, heritage scholars and practitioners, planners and those working in public policy, as well as practitioners and policy makers interested in how valuation processes work.

Policy-makers are increasingly trying to assign economic values to areas such as ecologies, the atmosphere, even human lives. These new values, assigned to areas previously considered outside of economic systems, often act to qualify, alter or replace former non-pecuniary values. Valuing Development, Environment and Conservation looks to explore the complex interdependencies, contradictions and trade-offs that can take place between economic values and the social, environmental, political and ethical systems that inform non-monetary valuation processes. Using rich empirical material, the book explores the processes of valuation, their components, calculative technologies, and outcomes in different social, ecological and conservation domains. The book gives reasons for why economic calculation tends to dominate in practice, but also presents new insights on how the disobedient materiality of things and the ingenuity of human and non-human agencies can combine and frustrate the dominant economic models within calculative processes. This book highlights the tension between, on the one hand, a dominant model that emphasises technical and ‘universalising’ criteria, and on the other hand, valuation practice in specific local contexts which is more likely to negotiate criteria that are plural, incommensurable and political. This book is perfect for researchers and students within development studies, environment, geography, politics, sociology and anthropology who are looking for new insights into how processes of valuation take place in the 21st century, and with what consequential outcomes.

Climate change negotiations have failed the world. Despite more than thirty years of high-level, global talks on climate change, we are still seeing carbon emissions rise dramatically. This edited volume, comprising leading and emerging scholars and climate activists from around the world, takes a critical look at what has gone wrong and what is to be done to create more decisive action. Composed of twenty-eight essays—a combination of new and republished texts—the anthology is organised around seven main themes: paradigms; what counts?; extraction; dispatches from a climate change frontline country; governance; finance; and action(s). Through this multifaceted approach, the contributors ask pressing questions about how we conceptualise and respond to the climate crisis, providing both ‘big picture’ perspectives and more focussed case studies. This unique and extensive collection will be of great value to environmental and social scientists alike, as well as to the general reader interested in understanding current views on the climate crisis.

REDD+ operates to reorganise social relations and to establish new forms of global authority over forests in the Global South.

The increase in landscape degradation in the last decades has resulted in a growing public concern for policies to conserve the countryside. This book presents theories of valuation and economic welfare which are applied to policies to conserve the landscape. Environmental, agricultural and ecological economists will be interested in this book as will geographers and those involved in planning and countryside management.

'The book is a pioneering attempt to see exactly what difference economic valuation of environmental effects would have made to six actual, on-going, development projects, if it had been done at the time of appraisal. It combines theoretical rigour with applied economic skills, presented with robust common sense.' - James Winpenny, Overseas Development Institute This book is a practical and readable guide to valuing the environment and the implications for public investment and policy, useful for students as well as professional economists, policy-makers, engineers, environmental and social planners. It describes how the environment can be valued and how these valuation concepts can be applied to investment decisions. The book provides first a general introduction to the key issues and concepts, considering the nature and magnitude of environmental problems, the cost-benefit method of evaluation and detailed methods for valuing the environment. It then analyses in detail six case-studies, based on actual or proposed major investment projects by the UK Overseas Development Administration or the World Bank. These include water quality in China, the supply of electricity in Bangladesh, slum improvements in India, mass transit in Nigeria, forest conservation in Kenya and soil quality in Bolivia. Thus the book is expected to be of special interest to professionals and students in developing countries, although much of the material has general application in developed as well as in developing countries.

Economic valuation can help improve decisions about protecting the environment . By inputing values to unpriced goods, it can make public choices more cost-efficient and thus allow limited public income to be optimally spent.