When looking at values of nature, one that seems obvious in
our globalized economy is the economic power of nature, or simply the monetary
value we can extract from our natural places. How does one value a tropical
rain forest or put a price tag on a 100 mile-long stretch of coral reef?
Cost-Benefit analysis. Simply put, cost-benefit analysis puts economic values
on four aspects of the environment and addresses its values and whether it
makes more economic sense to keep that wild area the way it is, or to develop
it into a more profitable venture. Breaking down this model, we are left with
four components; direct use value, indirect use value, optional value,
existence value. Direct use value tends to be the heavy hand when these four
factors are added up, and tends to favor the cornucopian ideas of developing
the environment into profit and sacrificing preservation. India faces this
value equation everyday as it brings itself into industrialization. Most of
India is not developed and relies on farming as a mean to survive with roughly
a quarter of the population being cultivators of the land with over half of the
population working in agriculture.
This is both good and bad for the
environment. On the positive, people are invested in their surroundings. They
must take care of the land so it takes care of them. This reverts back to the
indirect value and the optional value. However, the direct value is the most
important. The value of farmland exceeds the value of unproductive wild areas.
Tigers killing livestock is not beneficial for the farmer so the former are
removed for economic purposes leaving a species to the brink of extinction in
less than a century. If the values, such as existence value of tigers, are not
weighed more heavily than the equation may just become direct value equals the
total economic value since none of the others would exist.
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