Ecological Economics 34 2000 247 – 266
SPECIAL ISSUE SOCIAL PROCESSES OF ENVIRONMENTAL VALUATION
The Bouchereau woodland and the transmission of socio-ecological economic value
Jean-Franc¸ois Noe¨l, Martin O’Connor, Jessy Tsang King Sang
C
3
ED, Uni6ersite´ de Versailles Saint-Quentin-en-Y6elines,
47
boule6ard Vauban,
78047
Guyancourt Cedex, France
Abstract
This paper reports on an empirical study that investigated the value, or significance, attributed to a rural woodland, and the social mechanisms by which this value may be transmitted or lost through time. A survey-interview enquiry
was conducted which combined a data questionnaire with in-depth interview procedures, centred around: i the transaction price for the privately owned plots of trees and ii the disposition of wood-lot owners towards eventual
sale of their plots, and the circumstances under which they would envisage such transactions. The forest value needs to be understood in patrimonial perspective, as a collective investment. The woodland as a whole, and the plots
individually, are carriers of meaning — elements of family and communal heritage — proudly inherited from the previous generations and destined to be passed on to future generations. The case study illustrates a more general
proposition, that evaluation of alternative uses of environmental resources, and their benefits and costs, is inseparable from the question of the distinct communities of interest to be, or not to be, sustained. © 2000 Elsevier Science B.V.
All rights reserved.
Keywords
:
Common property; Ecological economics; Environmental valuation; Forest values; Methodology; Patrimonial tradition; Social process; Sustainability; Willingness-to-accept
www.elsevier.comlocateecolecon
1. Introduction
The economics of the industrial age has fo- cussed mostly on mechanisms of production and
exchange of commodities produced capital and consumption goods. This commodity production
activity is represented as drawing upon an exter- nal environmental domain that furnished raw
An earlier version of this paper was presented at the 5th Biennial Meeting of the International Society for Ecological
Economics, Beyond Growth: Policies and Institutions for Sus- tainability, Santiago, Chile, 15 – 19 November 1998.
Corresponding author. Tel.: + 33-1-39255375; fax: + 33- 1-39255300.
E-mail address
:
jessy.tsangc3ed.uvsq.fr J. Tsang King Sang.
0921-800900 - see front matter © 2000 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved. PII: S 0 9 2 1 - 8 0 0 9 0 0 0 0 1 6 1 - 0
materials and waste disposal services. If, subse- quently, it is admitted that there are environmen-
tal disruptions associated with this economic commodity production, the question from an ‘op-
timising’ point of view becomes to know whether the economic benefits outweigh the environmental
costs.
On this basis, various methods have been devel- oped for trying to put money values on environ-
mental assets through establishing trade-offs between money-valued goods and environmental
amenities or damages. And in this way, through the enlargement of cost-benefit analysis to the
environmental domain, it has been hoped to provide a framework for a ‘rational’ governance
of economic output growth in relation to quality of the environment. But, comparison of alterna-
tive uses of environmental assets, and the assess- ment
of risks
and impairment
of habitat
conditions due to pollutants and ecosystem dis- ruption, pose difficulties of high uncertainties, the
irreversibility of many effects, and thus long time-scales. The notion of ‘substituting’ or ‘com-
pensating’ one specific value loss by another gain becomes difficult to sustain when the losses and
gains are of very different sorts and the winners and losers so to speak far dispersed across space
and time.
If we want to provide decision support while we enlarge our scope of concern to the ecosystems of
the planet and the long term, it is necessary to develop dis-aggregated perspectives on values —
paying attention to the social processes by which value — or significance — is attributed, dis-
tributed, and redistributed across space and through time. One theme within ecological eco-
nomics is the representation of ‘sustainable devel- opment’
as a
symbiosis between
economic production and ecological reproduction. This
puts an emphasis on managing and investing in the reproduction, transformation and renewal of
the bio-physical ‘life-support’ systems that under- pin commodity production systems. However, out
of the range of all possible economic and ecologi- cal trajectories, there are choices having to be
made about which environmental features and functions, which ecosystems and habitats, and
which spectra of economic opportunities, might be sustained — and for whom? Valuation is
about understanding, explaining and justifying the choices made, or the alternatives that might be
preferred.
Decision support for public policy in this con- text must seek to articulate reasons and justifica-
tions touching domains of ethics, norms, cultural and social organisation principles, for alternative
courses of action whose intent is to sustain this or that particular form of life, mode of economic
activity, ecosystem, landscape quality and so on. The husbandry of living resources, the minding
and tending of ecosystems, are forms of investing in a future that is meaning-filled culturally
formed as well as viable in ecological economic terms; in this multiple sense we may speak of the
transmission of value. This paper applies methods and perspectives for increasing our understanding
of the social mechanisms by which value, in these socio-ecological-economic
dimensions, is
at- tributed and transmitted or lost through time by
human communities. We will thus speak of valua- tion as a collective process, involving arguments
and actions for — and against — the transmis- sion of specific value claims.
Our chosen example concerns small forest pockets situated in an agricultural region of
France. Concretely, it is a question of understand- ing whether and in what sense enough significance
is attached to the forest to ensure that it is sus- tained. Although our example seems very in-
significant on a world scale, we think that its study in a fairly non-controversial setting gives
useful insights concerning policy problems of ‘sus- tainability’ — namely, the complex dimensions of
‘value’ and its transmission or loss through time.
In Section 2 we mention some background notions, drawn from strands of ecological eco-
nomics, about valuation choices from the point of view of ‘investments’ in socio-ecological economic
infrastructures, and then introduce our case of rural woodland. Section 3 outlines the process of
enquiry that was developed to learn about the value of the woodland to its local communities.
Section 4 presents the main findings of a survey- interview enquiry centred around questions of i
the price of the privately owned plots of trees and ii the disposition of wood-lot owners towards
eventual sale of their plots of trees. Section 5 discusses these results concerning monetary and
non-monetary dimensions of wood-lot and wood- land value, showing how the value attributed to
the forest needs to be understood in patrimonial perspective as a collective investment of meaning
as well as of time. Sections 6 and 7 conclude with discussions of methodological lessons for environ-
mental valuation in the context of socio-ecological economic sustainability concerns.
2. Valuation as a selection process amongst different prospects of ecological-economic
