Economic Values Flashcards
(70 cards)
1
Q
What are indirect values?
A
Benefits provided by biodiversity that do not involve harvesting or destroying the resource
2
Q
What kind of processes are indirect values?
A
environmental processes and ecosystem services
3
Q
Where do indirect values not show up?
A
do not show up in the states of national economics
4
Q
What are examples of indirect values?
A
- ecosystem productivity
- protecting water resources
- protecting soils
- regulation of climate
- water disposal
- species relationships
- recreation and ecotourism
- educational and scientific value
- environmental monitoring
5
Q
What is ecosystem productivity?
A
autotrophs form the basis of food chain
6
Q
What are water resources(?) ?
A
watersheds, flooding and drought, water quality
7
Q
What lessens flooding?
A
increased water-holding capacity
8
Q
What does filtration do?
A
filters water/waterborne diseases
9
Q
What can dams do?
A
change hydrological cycles
10
Q
Why do soils need to be protected?
A
ensures soil of appropriate structure and composition
11
Q
What does vegetation control?
A
erosion
12
Q
Why is silt harmful?
A
harmful to aquatic organisms, decreases water quality, and fills up reservoirs
13
Q
On what levels is the climate regulated?
A
local, regional, and global
14
Q
How is the climate regulated?
A
- shade and transpiration (temperature and wind control)
- carbon fixation and oxygen release
15
Q
What does a decrease in carbon dioxide fixation result in?
A
global warming
16
Q
What is waste disposal?
A
- breaking down and immobilizing pollutants
- decomposition by microbes
17
Q
What are species relationships?
A
many productive use species dependent on other species for food, etc
18
Q
What are the types of species relationships?
A
- pollinators
- seed dispersers
- decomposers
- symbiotic relationships
19
Q
What is bean root-bacteria symbiosis (indirect value)?
A
root nodules have N fixing bacteria, helps get N cycle started
20
Q
What are examples of recreation and ecotourism?
A
- enjoyment of nature
- sport hunting/fishing
- photography/animal viewing
- often has biggest impact on some local economies
21
Q
What are types of educational and scientific value?
A
media, research, and entertainment
22
Q
What are examples of consumptive uses of wildlife?
A
- commercial and sport hunting
- fur trapping
- commercial and sport fishing
23
Q
What are non consumptive uses of wildlife?
A
- bird watching
- photography trips
- nature walks
24
Q
What is environmental monitoring?
A
early warning systems seen in nature
25
What are examples of environmental monitoring?
lichen and mollusks
26
What is an option value?
the potential for a species to provide an economic benefit to human society at some point in the future
27
What is price estimation based on in option value?
difficult to put a price tag on, estimation based on previously discovered species
28
What are examples of option value?
- drugs and medicines
- pollution control agents
29
What is an existence value?
simply elicits a strong response in humans by existing
30
What are examples of existence value?
- charismatic species
- biological communities
- areas of scenic beauty
31
What are characteristics of common property resources?
- owned by society at large
- not assigned a monetary value
- used without paying for them
32
What are examples of common property resources?
- air
- water
- areas of waste disposal
- scenic beauty
33
How are common property resources changing?
- taxation
- penalties
- mandatory recycling
34
What are the types of direct use value?
consumptive and productive
35
What are consumptive direct use value?
resources consumed locally that do not appear in national or international marketplaces
36
How are consumptive direct use values assigned a value?
by considering how much local person would have to pay for item in open market (substitute cost approach)
37
How are consumptive direct use values traditionally controlled?
at local level, but these systems have been broken down
38
What is poor man's energy crisis?
local fuelwood has been used up and no $ to buy fuel
39
What are productive direct used values?
products harvested from the wild and sold in commercial markets
40
How are productive direct use values priced?
usually undervalues because there can be tremendous mark up
41
What are examples of productive direct use values?
- Timber (most sig. short term)
- non-wood products (more valuable long term)
- biological agents
- chemical prospecting
- sources of genetic diversity
42
What are examples of drugs from the plant world first discovered in traditional medical practice (include medical use and plan name)?
- THC, antiemetic, marijuana
- Warfarin, anticoagulant, Sweet clover
- Sennoside A/B, laxative, Senna
43
What are horse shoe crabs an example of?
having multiple uses of a single resource
44
What are uses for horseshoe crabs?
- cheap fishing bait (eggs)
- food source for shorebirds and coastal fish
- promote tourism to bird-watching and sportfishing
- blood used to make limulus amebocyte lysate (LAL)
45
What is LAL used for?
a chemical used to detect bacterial contamination in injection-administered medications and vaccines
46
What is Reverb (company from video in class)?
- "green tour company"
- ex. power shows using solar energy
47
What is ecological economics?
studies that interaction between economic and ecological systems
48
What makes governments more likely to protect biological diversity?
when there is an economic incentive to do so
49
What are externalities?
hidden costs or benefits not borne by the participants of a transaction
50
What may happen if there are hidden costs?
the market may fail to maximize the net benefits to society as a whole
51
What are examples of externalities?
environmental damage to open-access resources (water, soil, air)
52
What is the tragedy of commons?
the value of the open-access resource is gradually lost to all of society
53
When can tragedy of the commons occur?
can occur when there is a lack of enforcement of regulations relating to common property
54
What are environmental/economic impact assessments?
considers present and future effects of a project on the environment
55
What kind of analysis is used in environmental/economic impact assessments?
cost-benefit analysis (the values gained vs the costs of the project or recourse use)
56
What are examples of things environmental/economic impact assessments are made on?
- natural resources
- air/water quality
- lives of indigenous people
- endangered species
57
What is the precautionary principle?
when there is uncertainty about the risks associated with a project, it is better to err on the side of doing no harm to the environment
58
Why are perverse subsidies done?
because many economic activities appear to be profitable even when they are actually losing money
59
How do governments often subsidize industries involved in environment-damaging activities?
- tax breaks
- direct payments or price supports
- cheap fossil fuels
- free water
- road networks
60
Why are discount rates used?
used by economists to calculate the present value of natural resources that will be harvested or used at some point in the future
61
A higher discount rate equals?
lower current values
62
What does the use of discounting propel?
propels development projects forward
63
What does assigning lower current values to natural resources often lead to?
shortsighted decisions to use resources right away and it minimizes the value of resources in the future
64
Common thinking is that resources harvested at some point in the future (high discount rate)...
...have a much lower value to the citizens of a developing country than equivalent resources harvested now
65
What is gross domestic product (GDP)?
measures all economic activity in a country (including non-beneficial)
66
What counts towards GDP?
waste and non-sustainable activities even though they may be destructive to the economy in the long run
67
What was the Exxon Valdez oil spill?
11 million gallons of oil spilled (260,000 barrels) in Alaska 1989
68
How was GDP affected by the Exxon Valdez oil spill?
recorded as a net economic gain to US GDP due to expenditures associated with clean-up
69
What is happening at the Okefenokee Swamp?
- Twin Pines Minerals owns land adjacent to the swamp and wants to mine in it for a whitening agent
- would be harmful to swamp, reduce water availability
- Organizations want to establish swamp as a world heritage site to protect it
70
What is happening with Rivian plant?
- Rivian is an automaker that was lured by state of Georgia with incentives to build a large plant on I-20
- Rivian pulled out/paused because of local controversy (have since started again)
