scholarly journals Valuation of carbon services produced by wild animals finances conservation

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Fabio Berzaghi ◽  
Ralp Chami ◽  
Thomas Cosimano ◽  
Connel Fullenkamp

Filling the global biodiversity financing gap will require significant investments from financial markets, which demand credible valuations of ecosystem services and natural capital. However, current valuation approaches discourage investment in conservation because their results cannot be verified using market-determined prices. Here, we bridge the gap between finance and conservation by valuing only wild animals carbon services for which market prices exist. By projecting the future path of carbon service production using a spatially-explicit demographic model, we place a credible value on the carbon-capture services produced by African forest elephants. If elephants were protected, their services would be worth $35.9 billion (24.3-41.2) and store 377 MtC (318-388) across tropical Africa. Our methodology can also place lower bounds on the social cost of nature degradation. Poaching would result in $10-14 billion of lost carbon services. Our methodology enables the integration of animal services into global financial markets with major implications for conservation, local socio-economies, and conservation.

2013 ◽  
Vol 103 (3) ◽  
pp. 393-397 ◽  
Author(s):  
Eric Posner ◽  
E. Glen Weyl

Calls for benefit-cost analysis in rule-making, based on the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform Act, have revealed a paucity of work on allocative efficiency in financial markets. We propose three principles to help fill this gap. First, we highlight the need for quantifying the statistical cost of a crisis to trade off the risk of a crisis against loss of growth during good times. Second, we propose a framework quantifying the social value of price discovery, and highlighting which arbitrages are over- and under-supplied from a social perspective. Finally, we distinguish between insurance benefits and gambling-facilitation harms of market completion.


Author(s):  
John P. Wilson ◽  
Sonal Choudhary

Sustainability accounting has become a mainstream practice for a large majority of S&P500 companies, and this reflects global society's increasing interest and concern around sustainability issues. In particular, the United Nations published its “Transforming Our World: The 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development,” and 193 countries signed up to achieving the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and 169 associated targets. The UN also called upon companies to help this process across their supply chains and developed a natural capital protocol for assessing and valuing environmental areas and a social capital protocol (SCP) for assessing and valuing human and societal capital such as skills, knowledge, wellbeing, shared values, and institutions. This chapter systematically investigates each of the 12 steps of the social capital protocol and identifies a range of benefits and substantial challenges which companies will face if they wish to account for their social impact across the supply chain.


Leonardo ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 52 (4) ◽  
pp. 349-356 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kris Layng ◽  
Ken Perlin ◽  
Sebastian Herscher ◽  
Corinne Brenner ◽  
Thomas Meduri

CAVE is a shared narrative six degrees of freedom (6DoF) virtual reality experience. In 3.5 days, 1,927 people attended its premiere at SIGGRAPH 2018. Thirty participants at a time each saw and heard the same narrative from their own individual location in the room, as they would when attending live theater. CAVE set out to disruptively change how audiences collectively experience immersive art and entertainment. Inspired by the social gatherings of theater and cinema, CAVE resonated with viewers in powerful and meaningful ways. Its specific pairing of colocated audiences and physically shared immersive narrative suggests a possible future path for shared cinematic experiences.


2017 ◽  
Vol 18 (4) ◽  
pp. 469-488
Author(s):  
Markus Furendal

If there is a duty of justice to contribute to society, which asks individuals to produce a specific amount of goods and services that can be redistributed, we need a decision-procedure to know when we have done our part. This paper analyses and critically assesses the commonly suggested decision-procedure of relying on market prices to measure the value of one’s contribution. It is usually assumed that a high salary indicates that one’s talents are put to good use, but this presupposes both that market prices of labour are correct reflections of supply and demand, and that market prices are correct reflections of social value. I criticise both assumptions and argue that the social value of a contribution cannot simply be a function of its market value, but is also influenced by the principles of justice that support the duty to contribute. Further, the market solution is incapable of valuing contributions that lack market prices, like non-marketised care labour. The market solution thus fails as a decision-procedure under other than special circumstances. This does not mean, however, that we need to give up the idea of a duty to contribute.


2013 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-15 ◽  
Author(s):  
Catherine Corson ◽  
Kenneth Iain MacDonald ◽  
Benjamin Neimark

Over the past two decades, the incorporation of market logics into environment and conservation policy has led to a reconceptualization of “nature.” Resulting constructs like ecosystem services and biodiversity derivatives, as well as finance mechanisms like Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation, species banking, and carbon trading, offer new avenues for accumulation and set the context for new enclosures. As these practices have become more apparent, geographers have been at the forefront of interdisciplinary research that has highlighted the effects of “green grabs”—in which “green credentials” are used to justify expropriation of land and resources—in specific locales. While case studies have begun to reveal the social and ecological marginalization associated with green grabs and the implementation of market mechanisms in particular sites, less attention has been paid to the systemic dimensions and “logics” mobilizing these projects. Yet, the emergence of these constructs reflects a larger transformation in international environmental governance—one in which the discourse of global ecology has accommodated an ontology of natural capital, culminating in the production of what is taking shape as “The Green Economy.” The Green Economy is not a natural or coincidental development, but is contingent upon, and coordinated by, actors drawn together around familiar and emergent institutions of environmental governance. Indeed, the terrain for green grabbing is increasingly cultivated through relationships among international environmental policy institutions, organizations, activists, academics, and transnational capitalist and managerial classes. This special issue of Human Geography brings together papers that draw on a range of theoretical perspectives to investigate the systemic dimensions and logics mobilizing green grabs and the creation of new market mechanisms. In inverting the title – “grabbing green” instead of the more conventional green grabs – we explore how “the environment” is being used instrumentally by various actors to extend the potential for capital accumulation under the auspices of “being green.” Using a diversity of empirical material that spans local to global scales, the papers reveal the formation of the social relations and metrics that markets require to function. They identify the “frictions” that inhibit the production of these social relations, and they link particular cases to the scalar configurations of power that mobilize and give them shape.


2016 ◽  
Vol 57 (3) ◽  
pp. 385-415 ◽  
Author(s):  
Arjan Reurink

AbstractDespite the ubiquity of illegality in today’s financial markets and the questions this raises with regard to the social legitimacy of today’s financial industry, systematic scrutiny of the phenomenon of financial crime is lacking in the field of sociology. One field of research in which the illegal dimensions of capitalist dynamics have long taken center stage is the field of white-collar crime research. This article makes available to economic sociologists an overview of the most important conceptual insights generated in the white-collar crime literature. In doing so, its aim is to provide economic sociologists with some orientation for future research on financial crime. Building on the insights generated inwccliterature, the article concludes by suggesting a number of promising avenues for future sociological research on the phenomenon of illegality in financial markets.


2015 ◽  
Vol 112 (11) ◽  
pp. 3427-3432 ◽  
Author(s):  
Clint J. Perry ◽  
Eirik Søvik ◽  
Mary R. Myerscough ◽  
Andrew B. Barron

Many complex factors have been linked to the recent marked increase in honey bee colony failure, including pests and pathogens, agrochemicals, and nutritional stressors. It remains unclear, however, why colonies frequently react to stressors by losing almost their entire adult bee population in a short time, resulting in a colony population collapse. Here we examine the social dynamics underlying such dramatic colony failure. Bees respond to many stressors by foraging earlier in life. We manipulated the demography of experimental colonies to induce precocious foraging in bees and used radio tag tracking to examine the consequences of precocious foraging for their performance. Precocious foragers completed far fewer foraging trips in their life, and had a higher risk of death in their first flights. We constructed a demographic model to explore how this individual reaction of bees to stress might impact colony performance. In the model, when forager death rates were chronically elevated, an increasingly younger forager force caused a positive feedback that dramatically accelerated terminal population decline in the colony. This resulted in a breakdown in division of labor and loss of the adult population, leaving only brood, food, and few adults in the hive. This study explains the social processes that drive rapid depopulation of a colony, and we explore possible strategies to prevent colony failure. Understanding the process of colony failure helps identify the most effective strategies to improve colony resilience.


2021 ◽  
Vol 16 (1(21)) ◽  
pp. 45-61
Author(s):  
Lasha Beridze ◽  
Giorgi Abuselidze

The existence of pension schemes does not count for a long period, but its obligation has been historically proven, as the experience of countries has shown that the countries that have the best practices provide better social protection of the population when retiring. The article discusses the redistribution of pension assets worldwide, pragmatically and theoretically evaluating the pros and cons of retirement plans. The implementation of the pension reform in Georgia has been delayed many times due to the socio-economic situation, accompanied by the psychological attitude of the population towards distrust of the state. Georgia is on the path to European integration, where one of the most important requirements is the proper protection and social equalization of the socially vulnerable, while the existence of pension schemes ensures the accumulation of large amounts of funds, which can play an important role in capital and financial markets. The advantages of the existence of pension schemes may be reflected in the permanent increase of the equalization ratio, but it should be noted that at such times the macroeconomic indicators of the state should be relatively stable, such as inflation, stability of the national currency and others. As of today, the tasks set before the Pension Agency in Georgia are quite ambitious and require effective management, as the pension reform takes only a few years.In the social security system of the population, the pension is a mechanism for maintaining a stable material condition during the period of disability. Following in the footsteps of the development of mankind, pension systems were improved, the main purpose of which was to replace the average income per capita during the working period in a way that would not worsen living conditions. Therefore, the pension replacement rate has become a measure of the evaluation of the pension system of a country. The replacement rate in the pension systems of developed countries is in the range of 60-80%, in developing countries it is 15-30%, which is systematically subject to adjustment. Georgia, despite the normal rate of economic growth in the last decade, is not distinguished by a pension provision mechanism. From the day of independence, the state basic pension was periodically subject to changes. The change, however, was related not so much to the approach to the subsistence level as to the subsequent promises of a change of government. At the present stage, the pension system is in the process of modification, which aims to ensure adequate pension income, fiscal sustainability of pension expenditures and a more effective response to demographic changes in the population. Developing and developing countries are trying to equalize the time of retirement of the population, which is often difficult to achieve and requires both economic and political decisions, because the financing of social security from the state budget requires large expenditures. Which can often be the result of the devaluation of the national currency and high inflation, which in itself can be seen as an impediment to economic development. The increase in social spending is often the subject of controversy among scientists-economists, for example, for the development of the state, what kind of spending will be more effective, financing social or capital projects ?! Often, the increase in capital expenditures, at the expense of the social situation, is not considered a popular political decision, because at this time the dissatisfaction of the socially vulnerable segments of the population increases. One of the goals of the accumulative pension is to achieve social equality and a high replacement rate, but how much it will work in Georgia is also a question, because the unemployment rate and the self-employed are high in terms of labor force, in particular, about 30% of the labor force The amount of monthly salary that is published statistically is also problematic, because the calculation methodology is often disputed and there is no minimum wage at the level of legislation. The main functions of the Pension Agency are to invest the accumulated funds, but investments in investment assets are not defined by the National Bank and are quite narrow, for example, foreign practice allows pension funds to invest funds in both real assets and foreign financial markets. As mentioned, the implementation of such investments by the Pension Agency should be allowed in Georgia and should be used to finance national, strategic projects. Ensuring the stability of inflation and the national currency in Georgia remains a challenge. In the event of inflation approaching double digits, pension savings will lose effectiveness. Also noteworthy is the gender imbalance when receiving a pension, namely in terms of average salary and life expectancy, a man's salary is about 4 times higher than a woman receiving a pension, which should be considered unfair, the state will have to adjust the retirement age in the future. Finally, it should be noted that the pension reform, despite its shortcomings, should be considered a step forward, but it needs to refine certain issues, diversify asset management and economic stability, which will not be easy to achieve.


1974 ◽  
Vol 13 (4) ◽  
pp. 389-408 ◽  
Author(s):  
Shahrukh Rafi Khan

In the past few years, increasing attention has been given to the methods by which investments in developing countries should be appraised. Benefit-cost analyses, based on market prices and costs, do not indicate whether an investment would be profitable from a social point of view. The methods of project evaluation developed in the past decade suggest ways in which private costs and benefits can be adjusted to reflect positive or negative externalities and to eliminate the effects of distorting taxes and subsidies which influence private decisions but which do not affect an investment's fundamental economic value. One item in an investment's cost for which the market value is widely believed to be unrepresentative of its social value is labour. Much of develop¬ment theory has been built around the notion that labour is misallocated, largely because it is mis-priced. Urban labour commands a wage above its equilibrium price because of the effects of unions, minimum wage legislation and other institutional rigidities. For institutional reasons as well, rural labour is paid a wage which is in excess of its marginal contribution to agricultural output. Determining the social opportunity cost of labour is consequently essential to the proper evaluation of investment in both rural and urban areas.


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