Eco Saldo - An attempted approach to measuring the intangible heritage

EcoSaldo uma possibilidade real

de gestão global do património intangível

Nuno Gaspar de OliveiraInês Cosme Teixeira

CIGEST | Ambiente & SustentabilidadeISG | Business & Economics School

Oliveira & Cosme, 16.01.2013; Earth Condominium Conference, Gaia, PT

"In nature's economy the currency is not money, it is life." — Vandana Shiva (Earth Democracy: Justice, Sustainability, and Peace)


Fonte: Global Risks 2013, World Economic Forum


Examples of worldwide mispricing and market failures that need institutional corrections include:

• Energy — too cheap due to climate change, extinctions, and negative effects on future generations.

• Having children — too cheap since growing population will raise real prices of land, food, and energy, and contribute to climate change and other global environmental problems.

• Endangered species — too cheap because ecosystem interrelationships are poorly understood, and indirect effects could be enormous.

• Economic growth — overvalued because growth negatively affects aggregate utility and public goods (“the commons” such as air, water, soil, species diversity, ecosystem health, and climate) once we begin to reach the limits to growth.

The Visible Hand: Manipulating Market Prices by Influencing Laws and Regulations by Max Kummerow


“Progress is measured by the speed at which we destroy the conditions that sustain life.”― George Monbiot


“Any intelligent fool can make things bigger, more complex, and more violent. It takes a touch of genius — and a lot of courage to move in the opposite direction.”― E.F. Schumacher


1| Why measuring?

“Not only do we measure what we value, we also come to value what we measure”D. H. Meadows (1998)

To measure costs and benefits

Standardize to compare

Getting to a global compromise

Variability of measures

Different regions and cultures

Different ecosystem services

Trade-offs, confidence and predictability

Improving collective

management

Crucial for the management of common goods

Crossing of local, regional and global

realities


Ecosystem services valuation

It’s a hard task and it has many limitations Ethical issues connected to the intrinsic value of natural resources and

biodiversity It’s not possible to give a monetary value to every ecosystem service

1| Why measuring?

Even if the calculation is not accurate… the value is never zero!

It’s crucial to keep looking for ways to capture the natural capital, whether it is in a monetary manner or not


2| EcoSaldo – a metric for what is common

• The differential between positive and negative contributes that each nation gives or takes of the global natural systems

• A value to each unit of available biocapacity

What does EcoSaldo can be?

Provision costs - agreed compensation value that will allow the preservation/restoration of that same unit



Compensation value provision cost

Non-use valueMaintenance costNecessary investment for recovering and/or

maintaining biodiversity

Final goalMaintenance or improvement to the provision of ecosystem services



Global hectare (gha)Number of hectares with biological productivity equal to the global average

Ecological Footprint

Biocapacity

Which metric?



Ecological Footprint (EF)Quantity of biological productive soil that is necessary to produce resources and to absorb the waste produced, having in consideration the available technology and the current resource management

• Necessary area to produce resources for the consumers (cropland, grazing land, forest, fishing grounds)

• Built area• Carbon sequestration area (forests)



Has implications in the consumption and

available biocapacity

Efficiency with which the natural resources are converted into

goods and services

Different populations have different consumptions

EF= Population x consumption per person x intensity of the footprint

(gha)


2| EcoSaldo - uma métrica para o que é comum

Biocapacity (BC)

Aggregation of production yield of various ecosystems in a certain area (ex. arable land, forests)

It depends on factors such as type of ecosystem, management and health, agricultural practices

and meteorological factors

Available area to crops, grazing land, fishing grounds

and forests

BC = area x bioprodutivity (gha)



Ecological footprint and biocapacity tendencies per capita, between 1961 and 2008(source: adapted from WWF, 2012)

EcoSaldo = BC - EF

(gha)



Figura 2. Mapa de comparação entre pegada ecológica e biocapacidade (fonte: chartsbin.com/view/571)


http://chartsbin.com/view/571



EcoSaldo



World-map of EcoSaldo (source: earth-condominium.org)


http://www.earth-condominium.org/

UAE Ecological Footprint Animation- English.mp4


"All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed. Second, it is violently opposed. Third, it is accepted as being self-evident."- Arthur Schopenhauer


Eco Saldo - An attempted approach to measuring the intangible heritage

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