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hy did environmental court decisions in the 1980s change our understanding of “existence value”?
Environmental protection has gradually become a global focus in the past few decades. Especially in the 1980s, the decisions of environmental courts not only influenced the formulation of environmental policies, but also profoundly changed our understanding of the "value of existence." The beauty and integrity of ecosystems are often difficult to measure in simple monetary terms, but these values are an integral part of our society.
Existence value refers to people’s right to survive on environmental resources and the value of enjoyment brought about by their existence. Although it cannot be quantified by market prices, it has been given new meaning in court decisions.
This shift began in the 1980s, especially after the Ohio v Department of the Interior case, which authorized relevant agencies to sue for damage to environmental resources, allowing non-use values that cannot be directly converted into market prices (such as biodiversity) to enter the legal framework. Taking the above case as an opportunity, the concept of "existence value" has gradually been introduced into environmental assessment. This change undoubtedly makes us pay more attention to ecological resources that cannot be measured in money.
Under the moonlight, how to price the sight of the mountains and the sounds of the forest is a topic worth pondering.
In this context, contingent valuation method (CVM) has been widely used as an economic technique to investigate opinion-based valuation. This technology can help people measure the value of environmental characteristics that do not have a market price, including the enjoyment of beautiful scenery and the desire for the survival of species. After the 1980s, more and more environmental cases chose to use contingent valuation to quantify damages.
The birth and development of contingent valuation marks a new understanding of ecological value in the economics community, bringing these intangible resources back into the spotlight.
However, the popularity of contingent valuation has also sparked controversy. Economists question whether this approach, which relies on the expression of opinions, can accurately reflect people's actual wishes. Traditional price models based on market transactions can better reflect the real situation. In previous surveys, respondents were often asked how much they were willing to pay to protect a particular environmental feature. Such open-ended questions can lead to various biases, such as respondents may fill in false answers due to their mood or social expectations.
It is for this reason that some scholars criticize the need for more rigorous survey design of contingent valuation and call for a comprehensive review of the rationality of the results.
In response to these challenges, in 1993 the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) organized a high-level expert group to conduct an assessment and publish a report on conditional valuation. They make a series of key recommendations, stressing that survey design should be carefully planned and that the way a survey is conducted can affect the reliability of the results. In particular, face-to-face interviews are recommended as an alternative to telephone or random interviews to allow for more targeted questioning and detailed descriptions.
This carefully designed survey methodology ensures that respondents can more realistically express the values they place on environmental assets.
Later, the credibility and application of contingent valuation continued to expand, and the assessment of many environmental resources came to rely on this technology. Contingent valuation has become an important tool in cost-benefit analyses conducted by the U.S. government, facilitating decision-making regarding water quality, biodiversity restoration, and brownfield development. In terms of improving groundwater quality and ecological recovery, the application of contingent valuation further emphasizes the irreplaceable value of non-market resources.
This move not only led to a reassessment of the value of the environment, but also reshaped the way of thinking in the legal and economics community.
With the advancement of science and technology, modern conditional valuation has gradually overcome the shortcomings of early methods, and empirical data show that its reliability has been recognized by the scientific community. Today’s environmental assessment methods place increasing emphasis on ensuring that respondents understand the issues involved and inquire about their value in the specific context of protecting resources.
Environmental court decisions in the 1980s forced us to rethink how economics and law interact and how important that interaction is to protecting the environment. In the future, as environmental problems become increasingly serious, can we wake up to the true meaning of existential values and truly practice them in policies?
