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In this paper I consider various shifts in my research and understanding stimulated by seeking how to combat social ecological crises connected to modern economies. The discussion and critical reflections are structured around five papers that were submitted to Environmental Values in an open call to address my work. A common aspect is the move away from neoclassical environmental economics, and its reductionist monetary valuation, to a more realist theory and multiple methods. This relates to my work on environmental ethics, plural values, stated preference validity and deliberative monetary valuation. Expanding beyond the narrow confines of mainstream orthodoxy has involved exploring a range of other disciplines (e.g. applied philosophy, social psychology, human geography, political science, social anthropology, history of thought and philosophy of science) and learning from this literature to rethink economics and develop social ecological economics. A broad range of subjects are covered here, including: personal responsibility, social practice, psychology of the individual, participatory processes, value (intrinsic, instrumental and relational), Nature–society relationships and interdependencies, critical realism and the conduct of unifying interdisciplinary science. I end with a series of comments concerning the failings of orthodox economics and the conduct of scientific research for social ecological transformation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The journal Environmental Values is thirty years old. In this retrospective, as the retiring Editor-in-Chief, I provide a set of personal reflections on the changing landscape of scholarship in the field. This historical overview traces developments from the journal's origins in debates between philosophers, sociologists, and economists in the UK to the conflicts over policy on climate change, biodiversity/non-humans and sustainability. Along the way various negative influences are mentioned, relating to how the values of Nature are considered in policy, including mainstream environmental economics, naïve environmental pragmatism, the strategic role of corporations, neoliberalism and eco-modernism/techno-optimism. At the same time core value debates around intrinsic value in Nature and instrumentalism remain relevant, along with how plural environmental values can be articulated and acted upon. Naturalness, human relations to non-humans, and Nature as other, remain central considerations. The broadening of issues covered by the journal (e.g. covering social psychology, sociology and political science), reflect the need to address both human behaviour and the structure of social and economic systems to confront ongoing social-ecological crises. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article offers information about the role of technology in addressing ecological crises. It discusses that coronavirus crisis offers hi-tech corporations the opportunity to promote surveillance, home schooling and the telehealth. It explores the issue for environmental values that arises from this analysis is the source of value and its creation and specifically the role of Nature.

In this paper we explore the discourses of ecology, environmental economics, new environmental pragmatism and social ecological economics as they relate to the value of ecosystems and biodiversity. Conceptualizing biodiversity and ecosystems as goods and services that can be represented by monetary values in policy processes is an economic discourse being increasingly championed by ecologists and conservation biologists. The latter promote a new environmental pragmatism internationally as hardwiring biodiversity and ecosystems services into finance. The approach adopts a narrow instrumentalism, denies value pluralism and incommensurability, and downplays the role of scientific knowledge. Re-establishing an ecological discourse in biodiversity policy implies a crucial role for biophysical indicators as independent policy targets, exemplified in this paper by the Nature Index for Norway. Yet, there is a recognisable need to go beyond a traditional ecological approach to one recognising the interconnections of social, ecological and economic problems. This requires reviving and relating to a range of alternative ecologically informed discourses, including an ecofeminist perspective, in order to transform the increasingly dominant and destructive relationship of humans separated from and domineering over Nature. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The attempt to provide insight into the interactions between the economy and the environment has been an on-going struggle for many decades. The rise of Ecological Economics can be seen as a positive step towards integrating social and natural science understanding by a movement that aims to go beyond the confines of mainstream economics towards a progressive political economy of the environment. However, this vision has not been shared by all those who have associated themselves with Ecological Economics and there has been conflict. An historical analysis is presented that shows the role of mainstream theory in delimiting the field of environmental research. The argument is put forward that rather than employing a purely mechanistic objective empirical methodology there is a need for an integrating interdisciplinarity heterodox economic approach. In order to distinguish this approach-from the more mainstream multidisciplinary linking of unreconstituted ecological and economic models-the name Social Ecological Economics is put forward as expressing the essential socio-economic character of the needed work ahead. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The contingent valuation method has become an established and major part of the toolbox used to produce monetary values for evaluating environmental changes. It has been used to inform everything from the value of ecosystem services to cultural heritage to loss of life. The method has been highly controversial at various stages but despite this, or perhaps due to the publicity, it has grown in scope and scale. Numerous occurrences of 'bias' and 'anomalies' in results have been addressed by improved design, so providing guidance on perfected approaches to making sure respondents reveal preferences in accord with theoretical expectations. That respondents may not wish to and often fail to conform is seen as a challenge for the design team to be more ingenious with their incentive mechanisms which get respondents to act 'rationally'. Failing this, data can be classified and treated to derive 'conservative' results. I document in this paper how whole areas of evidence from contingent valuation have been removed from consideration by design, with respondents expected to conform to an idealised rational agent model or to suffer branding and exclusion as having the 'wrong motives'. While the method is then susceptible to manipulation (eg to meet sponsors' requirements), if used more scientifically it also holds the potential to reveal fundamental flaws in economic theory and ways to advance that same theory. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: This paper explores and contrasts the different social processes of valuation now appearing as economic means of valuing the environment. Monetary valuation via stated preference approaches has been criticised for assuming well formed and informed preferences and excluding a range of sustainability concerns such as rights, fairness and equity. Deliberative monetary valuation (DMV) in small groups is a novel hybrid of economic and political approaches which raises the prospect of a transformative and moralising experience. Critics of standard contingent valuation approaches have advocated this as offering a way forward. However there has been a lack of clarity as to the means of obtaining values, the expected outcomes and their role. Moving to group settings of deliberation raises concepts of social willingness to pay and accept which are distinct from an aggregate of individual value, although this does not seem to have been widely recognised. A new classification of values is presented appropriate to the literature trying to merge economic and political processes. Values associated with the individual may be exchange values, charitable contributions or fair prices, while social values can be speculative, expressive or arbitrated. The use of DMV is shown to result in different values due to variations in the institutional setting and process of valuation. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: Environmental value transfer needs to be understood in the context of scientific information use in general. This provides a different perspective upon the reasons why benefit transfer in particular appears so controversial and raises concerns over the limited types of validity testing being undertaken by those supporting such applications as ecosystem services valuation. Another key issue, which we emphasise, is the unintentional challenge to standard economic theory raised by the models used to conduct value transfers. Existing value transfer practice reveals the need for a more inclusive approach if environmental values are to be addressed. We argue that there are robust alternative means for including multiple environmental values in decision processes, these cannot be dismissed out of hand, and analysts should be expanding their understanding of the available approaches which include attitude and norm measures, multi-criteria analysis and participatory deliberative institutions. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Discusses the evidence confirming the influence of ethical beliefs about the rights of endangered species in determining willingness to pay to contingent valuation method survey. Subexamples of holding rights; Holding of ethical motives in accordance with economic theory.

Economic systems and modes of analysis confront several reinforcing boundaries when considering the environment. These include physical limits to growth, the laws of thermodynamics, social limits to growth, the extent to which Nature can be regarded as a commodity, environmental ethics and philosophical divergences from utilitarianism. The consideration of environmental pollution emphasizes how individual choice and social good can be separated; suggesting the need for a decision-making structure that can incorporate a wide range of values. However, economic and political structures seem to be locked in to narrow paths of development. The way in which a dynamic path can be selected by historical accident and then only changed with extreme difficulty is explained by individual preference formation, increasing re turns to scale, and the allocation of rights. The result is to recognize that the requirements for advancing current understanding of how Nature and the economy interact are similar to the tradition of Scottish political economy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Agricultural crop production is highly dependent upon environmental conditions among which air quality plays a central role. Various air pollutants have been identified as a potential influence on commercial crops including SO[SUB2], NOx, O[SUB3] and CO[SUB2]. In particular, ozone in the lower atmosphere has been identified as a serious cause of crop loss in the United States and seems likely to be creating similar losses in Europe. In this paper the methods which can be applied to assess the economic damages from air pollution are critically reviewed. This requires measuring pollutant concentrations, relating these to physical crop damages, and estimating the reactions of the agricultural sector and consumers to give welfare changes in terms of consumers' surplus and producers' quasi-rents. The approach of the European open-top chamber programme (EOTCP) is shown to have neglected lessons learnt by the National Crop Loss Assessment Network (NCLAN) in the US. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]