Technocratic and economic ideals in the ecosystem services discourse

BY JAN HANSPACH

A while ago we had a post on this blog about a paper by Turnhout et al. and a response by Dave Abson and me in Conservation Letters. The original paper critically assessed that the current biodiversity discourse is turning into a discourse around ecosystem services and that this, in turn, is causing the monetization and commodification of nature. We had responded that conceptually, ecosystem services by no means are bound to monetization or commodification. Rather, we argued that the ecosystem services concept was open to a broad set of normative frameworks and value systems. Now, Conservation Letters has published a response by Turnhout et al.to our response.

In their response, Turnhout et al. clarified that their main point was not that there were no alternative framings and valuations available, but that the mainstream implementation of the ecosystem services concept appeared to converge towards economic…