Ecological Economics 34 2000 165 – 174
SPECIAL ISSUE SOCIAL PROCESSES OF ENVIRONMENTAL VALUATION
The VALSE project — an introduction
Martin O’Connor
C
3
ED Uni6ersite´ de Versailles Saint-Quentin-en-Y6elines,
47
boule6ard Vauban,
78047
Guyancourt, cedex, France www.elsevier.comlocateecolecon
1. The VALSE project
This Special Issue of Ecological Economics pre- sents results from The VALSE Project VALua-
tion for
Sustainable Environments,
a co-operative international programme of research
undertaken during 1996 – 1998 with the financial support of the European Commission. The re-
search team set out with the goal to demonstrate effective social processes for valuation of environ-
mental amenities and natural capital for conserva- tion and sustainability policy purposes.
The project was financed under the European Commission’s Environment and Climate Re-
search Programme 1994 – 1998: Research Area 4 Human Dimension of Environmental Change
Contract no. ENV4 – CT96 – 0226. The full de- scriptive title was: ‘Social Processes for Environ-
mental Valuation: Procedures and Institutions for Social Valuations of Natural Capitals in Environ-
mental Conservation and Sustainability Policy’. In the project, valuation and choice have been
approached ‘from the point of view of complex- ity’. By this term, we mean that the question of
the value or significance of environmental assets, services and features is considered in a multi-di-
mensional perspective, reflecting the variety of scales over which a problem may be considered
and the range of individual and collective interests and preoccupations that may be involved.
Individuals have specific interests in the envi- ronment as habitat, recreational space, cher-
ished heritage,
and space
of economic
opportunities;
There are social and collective dimensions of choice reflecting both scientific and social prop-
erties of the choice situations;
Scientific features of significance may include the indivisibility — that is, the collective char-
acter — of many environmental goods, services and hazards, the irreversibilities of environmen-
tal change, and the uncertainties of complex systems;
People can express views, individually and as
participants in community, on dimensions of value relating to collective identity;
Issues of fairness, justice and responsibility in-
clude considerations relating to the geographi- cal and inter-temporal distributions of costs,
risks and benefits, and extend to conflicts and compromises over what is just, right, and
proper.
E-mail address
:
martin.oconnorc3ed.uvsq.fr M. O’Con- nor.
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 5 6 - 7
In our view, valuation is not primarily a technical matter of quantifying substitution ratios which,
depending on circumstance, might be supply-side opportunity
costs or
demand-side subjective
trade-off preferences. Rather, we consider that value statements about the environment typically
emerge out of social processes of controversy and conflict. All choices, individual and collective, can
be seen as value statements implicit and explicit, but there is not a simple aggregation of prefer-
ences. Different social processes for environmen- tal valuation and management will tend to elicit
different evaluative responses. Valuation practices have a greater chance of social legitimacy and
policy usefulness when they are implemented with awareness of the deep social and institutional
dimensions of value formation.
The VALSE project set out to demonstrate these contentions through the design and imple-
mentation of effective procedures for eliciting en- vironmental
valuation statements
and for
addressing the conflicts that arise in four real situations of natural resource and environmental
decision-making. The work programme had four main aspects:
Phase I was the translation of general princi- ples for effective environmental valuation pro-
cedures that had been established from previous empirical and theoretical research and discus-
sion, into a range of working hypotheses about key physical, institutional, and ethical factors in
the social construction of environmental values.
Phase II made the passage from these method-
ological considerations to detailed research de- sign and valuation practices appropriate for the
specific features of four case studies — carried out in Spain, Italy, France and the United
Kingdom.
Phase III saw the reverse movement, from the
case studies back to wider methodological reflection, so as to formulate recommendations
about valuation practices as components in en- vironmental policy design and public expendi-
ture evaluation programmes.
Phase IV is the communication of the project
results to policymakers, researchers, and the interested public. This is accomplished formally
through workshops and symposia and a set of supporting written documents — including this
paper — and also informally through the ways that knowledge of the VALSE research is ab-
sorbed into these communities.
2. The case studies
