New accounts
The degradation of ecosystems and the consequent decrease in the availability of ecological services, has been accompanied by an increase in their consumption. The resulting scarcity has generated rivalry in the use of natural global systems. These facts and the serious damage caused by the current ecological deregulation, have turned the availability of ecological services into an economic question.
To alter the logic of 20 years of painstaking negotiations about greenhouse gases, the rules of the game itself need to be changed. Including into the negotiations the positive contributions to the maintenance of the natural global systems and their valorization could create a new dynamic, which could lead to a reduction in greenhouse gas emission. But also it may introduce an incentive to contribute to the availability of collective benefits. Such intervention could invert the paradigm of obtaining individual benefits through the exploitation of global natural systems into one of compensations and incentives.
The current rudimentary regulatory mechanisms adopt a logic of compensation for reduction of the negative contributions and do not yet reflect the totality of relations they seek to harmonize. In this attempt to organize the collective fruition of the common systems, the positive contributions to the well-being of humanity do not yet enter into the accounts.
On the carbon market, only those that do not use the predefined pollution quota, obtain a credit. Within REDD (United Nations Program on Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation), the compensation originates from a decrease in deforestation, not in the totality of the preserved area that benefits all of humanity.
Continuing with this logic, prevents the construction of justice and reciprocity, which are necessary for an agreement. It does also not allow to alter the rule of excessive exploitation of ecosystems and turn it impossible to construct a society that is able to recover ecosystems and to make ecological services available.
An economy that provides Biocapacity
The challenge to build a Green Economy is definitely more than reducing pollution, developing green technologies, improving eco efficiency and attempting to organise the ‘function of exchange and alienation’ of the rights of pollution. As Alexandra Aragão points out: “Considering, however, the current degraded state of the environment, intergenerational responsibility should go further: it is no longer sufficient to leave the environment to future generations as it was received, it is necessary to recover the quality of the environment, approaching optimal levels.”
We know today that we already exceeded three of the nine planetary limits that delineate “a safe manoeuvring space” for humanity. Therefore, constructing a green economy cannot just be limited to the restoration of natural capital, but also involves decreasing the history of environmental liabilities, and learning to live within limits and to respect them. Managing an economy thus also means to possess a permanent management system of the conditions that sustain human life.
If the offer and demand of ecological services would no longer take the form of externalities, and would be organized in a system that captures, accounts and compensates for an increase in ecological services, they can be included as an asset in the GNP of each country. Knowing the limited ecological potential of the planet implies that eco efficiency does not just mean an increase in the efficiency of resource consumption. It also implies restoration of biocapacity through using the existing ecological potential. The development of this new activity that provides biocapacity, will be a generator of wealth and jobs in zones that were until today considered “economically deprived”. In order to invest in the recuperation and maintenance of ecosystems and to generate voluntary benefits for all of humanity it will be necessary to find ways to capture, account and compensate for these benefits.
Alternative to the market
As in a condominium, the planet is not organized as a community, because different people are organized autonomously in independent and separated sovereignties. They compete in the use of the same natural global systems, as no state can exclude itself or exclude other of their use.
When spoken about the attribution of an economic value to ecological services, often it is assumed that it will therefore be necessary to transform them into tradable products and that a conventional market will have to be created. This is not the correct approach because we are speaking of free-access goods and a conventional market cannot be used to manage goods that are not excludable.
Since all countries consume and provide ecological services that are reflected on the global natural systems, only by obtaining the balance between the generated costs and benefits it is possible a platform of justice and secure equity within and between generations. By obtaining an annual 'Ecobalance' from each country, there would exist a 'running account' that includes the credits and debits in relation to the maintenance of the natural global systems.
Since the market is not a solution, the Ecobalance offers an alternative. An international institution would be entitled with the settlement of accounts, in pursuit of the common interest. The environment is not a tradable product but a good that needs to be preserved.
