Wilderness valuation.

Wilderness. There was a time when the beauty of the land was everywhere, running on for miles in any direction. Today not much wilderness remains. And wild, untamed places shrink as humanity continues to grow. Only 2% of the lower 48 states is protected as wilderness.

The future of wilderness in this country is being hotly debated. Questions and controversy about wilderness preservation continue. Difficult decisions, especially concerning wildlands in the West, are yet to be made.

Many justifications for wilderness preservation exist. Wilderness advocates use philosophical arguments that defend wilderness designations. Scientists and scholars study the benefits to people and nature from wildland conservation. Decision-makers examine the quantitative measures of wilderness value. In fact, each of these views has a place in decisions concerning wilderness preservation.

Benefits to Individuals, Societies, Others

Wilderness preservation provides benefits to individuals, societies, plants and animals, and ecosystems. These benefits sometimes are called wilderness values. Wilderness values can be categorized into three broad areas: personal benefits, social benefits, and intrinsic benefits. Personal wilderness benefits include developmental, therapeutic, physical health, self-sufficiency, social identity, educational, spiritual, creative, symbolic, and nurturance benefits. Social wilderness benefits include historic cultural, quality of life, nature preservation, and economic benefits. Intrinsic wilderness benefits include organism, species, and ecosystemic benefits.

The process of considering and estimating wilderness worth is known as wilderness valuation. What follows is a discussion of several wilderness valuation systems and their strengths and weaknesses.

Valuation Theory

Wilderness valuation is the process of considering and estimating the importance or worth of wilderness preservation. Most talk about wilderness values surrounds the issues of wilderness benefits. Those wilderness benefits form the center of a three-dimensional valuation theory. Figure 1 on the next page graphically represents the wilderness valuation theory. Wilderness benefits most commonly come to mind while considering wilderness values, but the deeply held beliefs and desires, or values, of individuals, societies, and nature greatly influence which benefits will be recognized and deemed important. Also, the wilderness benefits sought and achieved by individuals, societies, and nature directly influence the perceived worth of wilderness.

The left side of the Figure 1 represents the way that value ideals lead to benefit attribution and then to worth recognition. This valuation theory roughly coincides with three key aspects of wilderness valuation systems. Each justification for wilderness incorporates one or more of these valuation aspects. For instance, an economic valuation system includes a theoretical basis, a set of wilderness benefits it considers, and quantitative methods used to estimate the monetary worth of those benefits. As human, societal, and intrinsic belief systems lead to activities that seek the realization of wilderness benefits, philosophical foundations lead to a particular set of wilderness benefits that receive assessment. Recognizing the worth of wilderness benefits in money, time, effort, or sacrifice invested coincides with the various valuing methods used to measure wilderness value. Wilderness values are influenced by value ideals and, in turn, influence the final worth of wilderness. Likewise, wilderness valuation systems are based on a philosophical or theoretical base, assess some compatible set of wilderness values, and measure or assess the magnitude of wilderness benefits with some valuing method.

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Wilderness Valuation Systems

Wilderness valuation systems build on a philosophical base and assess wilderness benefits through a valuing methodology. A brief look at some of these valuation systems includes political, economic, behavioral, ecological, and ethical approaches.

Wilderness preservation in the United States ultimately becomes a political decision. Those political processes are de facto wilderness valuation systems. Deliberations about wilderness benefits and an estimate of their importance in relation to competing land uses provide real, though sometimes messy, wilderness valuation. Political wilderness valuation primarily centers on legislative methods but sometimes falls to public trusts, such as the courts and government land agencies, and could potentially include the public choice models of pure democracy.

The wisdom of politically based wilderness decisions rests on the philosophical foundations of the Constitution.

However, political processes fall far short of their ideals. Influences and compromises unrelated to sound decision-making easily corrupt the wilderness valuation process in politics.

Economic valuations receive a great deal of attention because they are compared easily to alternative land uses for wilderness areas. Federal guidelines carefully describe how economic valuations should take place. Federal guidelines allow for benefit/cost analysis, unit day values, travel cost methods, and contingent valuation methodology. Other potential methods include hedonic pricing, hedonic travel cost, and opportunity cost methods. Economic valuations aim to estimate a monetary price for the value of wilderness. Many of these methods simulate a real market where consumers must pay some amount for wilderness preservation. Adding together the amounts individuals are willing to pay estimates the worth of wilderness.

Economic valuation applies easily understood and accepted monetary measures of wilderness, something that is difficult to put into monetary terms. The rigors of economics lends validity to an extensive arsenal of measurement techniques.

Generally, economic valuation focuses on individual wilderness benefits, especially recreational benefits, and ignores social and intrinsic wilderness benefits. Economic valuation ignores many important wilderness values. Many people claim that wilderness cannot be assigned a dollar value and are skeptical about the assumptions of human rationality implied in economics.

The difficulties and problems with economic valuation motivate other social scientists to search for better valuation methods. Psychologists, social-psychologists, sociologists, geographers, and recreation scholars attempt to quantify wilderness benefits by measuring attitudes and preferences. Behavioral scientists draw on their experience with attitude testing to use tiffs measurement technique.

Behavioral valuation provides an alternative to economic valuation. Attitude measurement estimates the importance of wilderness benefits in the lives of people. It includes a broad range of individual wilderness benefits and could incorporate benefits to society.

Behavioral valuation depends on the assumption that people always act with some future goal in mind. The common irrational and impulsive behaviors of people dispute that assumption. Also, while wilderness benefits to people are broadly included, behavioral valuation misses the benefits to nature itself.

Some natural scientists, particularly ecologists, provide another way to place importance on wilderness values. Beginning with Charles Darwin, scientists suggest that humankind plays a key--but not necessarily a starring--role in the ecosystem. The rigorous nature of scientific inquiry can contribute to the estimation of wilderness worth. Federal guidelines use ecological measurement to assess the quality of natural resources for human use. Other ecologists suggest the use of an energy budget that accounts for all energy transfers in wilderness ecosystems.

Ecological valuation bases itself on the robust foundation of natural science and the scientific method. The measures of wilderness values also employ scientific procedures and ideals.

Though ecological valuation suggests concern for intrinsic values, federal guidelines still measure wilderness values that are important to people and not necessarily to nature. Energy budget systems require vast amounts of time and money to perform. They also need further empirical testing to prove them adequate.

Most wilderness advocates adhere to some type of environmental ethics as their motivation for wilderness involvement. A whole sub-field of philosophy has developed around environmental ethics. In fact, environmental philosophies cover a spectrum of perspectives from human-centered, or anthropocentric, to nature-centered, or biocentric. This environmental ethics spectrum follows from human stewardship and cooperation to an understanding of the ontological value of nature, an acceptance of natural value and the defense of natural rights. Each of these ethics provides a justification for wilderness preservation, and each suggests the relative importance of different wilderness benefits.

Ethical valuation provides a motivating justification for wilderness preservation. It also includes consideration of wilderness benefits to nature, which other valuation systems ignore.

Ethical systems lack a systematic way to incorporate wilderness values into anything prioritized or measured. Ethicists claim that the worth of wilderness cannot be measured, but wilderness decision-makers prioritize or measure information to make their decisions. Also, this system tends to focus on intrinsic benefits and may ignore human wilderness benefits.

No Clear Solutions

While no perfect wilderness valuation system exists, all systems exhibit strengths and weaknesses judged by the criteria of valuation theory. Political valuation systems include the broadest consideration of wilderness values but easily corrupt the process through the realities of political maneuverings and cold promise. Perhaps an injection of information from other valuation systems into the political process, coupled with some reform of political valuing, is the best current direction for wilderness valuation.