The Values of Biodiversity

The ethical claim, which is not an economic value at all

There is a sixth position, and it is the one Indian courts have moved towards. It says that a living thing has worth in itself and not because of what it is worth to a human being.

Animal Welfare Board of India v. A. Nagaraja, decided on 7 May 2014, put it in terms. The Court held that sections 3 and 11 of the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals Act 1960 confer no right on the organiser of an event but impose duties and confer corresponding rights on animals, and that all living creatures have inherent dignity and a right to live peacefully. It read that with the fundamental duty in Article 51A(g) of the Constitution to have compassion for living creatures.

That reasoning does not fit anywhere in the five economic values, and a complete answer says so.

Worked example

A State proposes to de-notify eighty square kilometres of a sanctuary so that limestone can be mined, and relies on the revenue and the employment. Set out the five values on the other side, because that is the answer an examiner is asking for when the question says "state and evaluate".

Direct use value. Minor forest produce collected by about four hundred households, grazing for their livestock, and receipts from tourism. Measurable, and small.

Indirect use value. The catchment feeds two streams that irrigate farmland downstream. The scrub is a pollinator reservoir for orchards in the buffer. Soil held on the slope, once mined, will silt the streams. None of this appears in the project's own accounts.

Option value. Twelve of the plants in the sanctuary are used in traditional medicine and have never been chemically studied. Mining removes the population and with it any future use.

Bequest and existence value. The chinkara population there is one of very few in the State. This is the value that appears in the pleadings of a public interest petition and in nothing else.

The legal frame. Section 26A(3) of the Wild Life (Protection) Act 1972 allows a State Legislature to alter the boundaries of a sanctuary by resolution. In Consumer Education and Research Society v. Union of India (2000) 2 SCC 599 exactly that was done to the Narayan Sarovar Chinkara Sanctuary, and the Supreme Court declined to interfere, accepting the High Court's finding that the reduced area was sufficient for the chinkara and that the economic development would benefit a backward district.

The lesson. The five values are the structure of the argument, not the outcome. A court will weigh them, and the legislature's own assessment carries weight, so a student who says the values decide the case is wrong.

Limits and criticism

Measurement. Indirect use and existence values are estimated by methods that a court treats as opinion evidence, and the estimates vary widely.

Substitution. Economic reasoning assumes one thing can replace another. Compensatory afforestation under the Act of 2016 rests on that assumption, and the objection to it is that a planted stand of trees is not the forest that was cut.

Distribution. The people who bear the loss of direct use value are usually the poorest, and the people who receive the project's benefits are usually not the same people. That is a question of justice, not of valuation.

Quick revision

• Direct use, indirect use, option, bequest, existence. The first two are use values, the last two non-use.
• Total economic value is the sum, and decisions taken on direct use value alone undervalue nature systematically.
• Option value is the lawyer's value: it is the argument for a species with no known use.
• The ethical claim of intrinsic worth sits outside the five, and A. Nagaraja adopted it.
• Section 26A(3) of the Wild Life (Protection) Act 1972 is where the weighing actually happens in Indian law.

Test yourself

1. Which value justifies protecting a species that nobody uses and few people have heard of? Option value, which is the value of keeping open a use not yet discovered, together with existence value, which is what people are willing to give up simply for it to continue to exist. Both are lost irreversibly on extinction.

2. Why is direct use value a dangerous basis for a decision on its own? Because it is the smallest of the five and the only one that appears in an ordinary account. A project appraised on direct use value alone will always appear to be worth more than the ecosystem it replaces.

3. Where does the intrinsic worth of an animal appear in Indian law? In Animal Welfare Board of India v. A. Nagaraja, decided on 7 May 2014, which held that sections 3 and 11 of the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals Act 1960 confer rights on animals and read them with the fundamental duty of compassion in Article 51A(g) of the Constitution.