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Full Cost Accounting |
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Full-cost accounting: incorporating the value of biodiversity and ecosystem services (Task 3.1)
Ecosystems are capable of performing a broad range of functions: regulating nutrient cycling and climate; providing habitat for species; and producing food, fibre and medicine of direct use value to people. Human interventions in ecosystems simultaneously degrade certain functions while promoting others. For example, when humans transform natural systems into agricultural systems, there is typically an increase in human food production but a decrease in biodiversity within the system. Such interventions may cause changes in the flows of energy and nutrients in the system, with consequent effects on, for example, climate change and pollution.
When evaluating societal choices an understanding of the full range of consequences linked to the various alternatives is vital. Failure to do so can lead to inferior choices that leave society as a whole disadvantaged.
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Research Objectives
- Develop and apply methods for measuring the impacts of particular human interventions in ecosystems, both on biodiversity and on ecosystem services
- Review existing methodologies for valuation of biodiversity and ecosystem services
Assess whether measurements and valuation approaches provide complete and reliable estimates of value that can be used in decision making.
- Illustrate opportunities where a more complete accounting can lead to improved decision making, as well as cases where trade-offs between different values are unavoidable.
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| Much of the initial research will be in the context of specific decisions applied in specific ecosystems. It is envisaged that, as a first case study, bioSUSTAINABILITY will work in connection with the cross-cutting network ‘Agriculture and Biodiversity’. |
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Images
Top & Middle:
© imagesfromtheedge
Bottom: © Dave Raffaelli
Understanding the full consequences of changing natural systems to production systems is the challenge of Task 3.1
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